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Claudia, will you please restate this in Spanish?

Yes.

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Back to you.

Welcome everyone.

The time is one oh three, and we will call this meeting to order.

Madam City Clerk.

Councilmember Rogers.

Present Council Member O'Krepki.

Here.

Councilmember McDonald's here.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wells.

Here.

Welcome back everyone.

Sorry to be late.

We'll reconvene into open session.

Madam City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

President Councilmember Krepke.

Councilmember McDonald here.

Council Member Fleming.

Councilmember or Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Councilmember Ben Wells?

Here.

Mayor Stapp.

Here.

Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Vice Mayor Alvarez and Councilmember Fleming.

Excellent.

All right.

Let's move on to our main show.

Mr.

Wagner, thank you for being here and and Veronica.

Thank you both for being here for our official launch of this year's budget discussions.

It is.

The floor is yours.

Oh Madam City.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Uh so good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayors around here somewhere.

Uh and council members.

So first want to express my appreciation uh for the entire team to for delivering this work excess exceptionally early.

You know, normally this presentation doesn't come to us until February and while some of these numbers are unaudited, I just want to say thank you for Herculean task that you've uh completed.

I also uh want to thank the council members for prioritizing uh physical sustainability as our primary um goal during council goal setting session.

Um your commitment definitely has been instrumental in moving our goalposts forward and it's enabling us now to reach the milestones in our final journey.

So today you're gonna see some positive outcomes as a result of our mid year reductions, the end of the year adjustments, and some of the retraction from our stale appropriations.

Now while we have remained focused, um and made some progress, we want to just remind you that it's important that we remain standfast and disciplined during this process.

Looking ahead coming up in the next couple of months, we do have labor re our labor reopener.

Um have the implementation of the class and compensation study, which I think we owe it to our workforce and right around the corner we have upcoming labor negotiations again.

Um even outside of that I'm pleased to report that all of our major projects, um, including one final that has not received uh approval from the council are fully funded.

Um so we have definitely uh maintained our commitment to our constituents.

Um but again, I just want to thank the council for prioritizing uh physical sustainability because this could not have happened uh without your leadership.

At the conclusion of Scott's presentation, we will um ask for some feedback on how you would like to see reductions if any come be brought forward around February.

Uh Scott will provide some additional detail and some suggestions that we have on maybe the tiered approach to bringing back some of those suggestions.

Um, but keep in mind as we bring back some of those suggestions, we are still working through zero-based budgeting, and we're still working through organizational assessments as part of our ongoing efforts to ensure uh fiscal sustainability.

So, with that, Scott and Veronica, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, City Manager.

Good afternoon, Mayor Stapp, members of the council, Scott Wagner, interim chief financial officer here with me today is Veronica Connor, the city's budget manager.

We're pleased to give this general fund financial update.

Um, city manager stole some of my opening lines very well, so but I'm gonna reach out on some of them.

The first one I think is the most important, and in today's presentation, there's gonna be a lot of numbers and data as we in finance love to do.

But I'm gonna really frame the data and the numbers that you're gonna see into some context and some framing in three ways.

First, really starts with that point: I I can't remember a time when fiscal sustainability and budgeting excellence was council's first goal, and that was really powerful for the past year and a half in that we can this council created major actions over the past year, and that affected us greatly.

Um to summarize those actions, 15.2 million dollars worth of ongoing reductions, ten point four million dollars worth of project spending reallocated to shore up reserves, three point seven million dollars worth of ongoing revenue from a voter from uh two voter measures that were approved.

These are really substantial actions, and what those created essentially is the conversation today, where we are not coming forward today as part of a mid-year action with any proposed reductions, proposed targets for reductions.

We've been successful at not having to come back and offer the same things that frankly council did not approve last time.

We have the opportunity now to engage with some extra time, engage with extra efforts to come back at a later time to have a more targeted approach going forward.

Um the second thing I'd like to bring up is that you will see in the numbers that the city's budgeting and financial projection practices are sound.

For expenditures, we finish the year within 0.8% of operating expenditures.

On the revenue side, if we take out the enhanced tax revenues from TOT and business taxes, we finish the year within 1.5% of revenues.

We are landing really, really close on both.

And what we're doing is sound.

The third thing I'd like to bring up is that while all these are good things and they were powerful things that have happened, we still remain in a structural deficit.

Um we're in a much better place, but that being said, our current projection, which will be updated and will change for the coming adoption.

We're already at around 17 and a half million dollars.

That's still a very large number that will require additional actions, whether that be improvements to our revenue or enhancements to our revenue, or at this point, reductions to some core city services that the public expects.

So again, coming back to we're gonna look at where we've been and and where we are and where we're going.

We started 24-25 with a $13.3 million dollar deficit, very large.

But part of those mid-year actions by council was to appropriate 10.4 million dollars worth of one-time funded projects.

At the time we talked about that being PGE funded projects, those were across the different departments.

At mid-year, council additionally cut four million dollars from the deficit.

This was mostly made up of vacant positions at the time or professional services and contracts that necessarily weren't getting used.

Those were really our first cut happened during this fiscal year and after the $13.3 million uh deficit was adopted.

Additionally, after adoption, those voter measures passed.

So $3.7 million, the city realized of ongoing revenues from business taxes and the TOT improvements that we brought in from revenue.

When we looked at the results, ultimately the city finished the year about $4.5 million better than what we would have necessarily anticipated.

That doesn't mean we made four and a half million dollars.

That means we lost $4.5 million less than we expected.

So our operating realized deficit ended up being around five million dollars.

Just some really quick dirty math to kind of show that 13 million deficit again that 18.1 worth of midyear actions, the 4.3 worth of extra results.

The end result was that our reserves increased by 9.5 million dollars.

As part of these mid-year discussions, especially around the PG and E settlement monies being reappropriated, that was our purpose at the time was to shore up reserves.

We passed 2526 with an 8.4 million dollar deficit and again as we just spoke about our deficit continues to increase and really from our perspective there's two main drivers in that one is our CalPers unfunded liability that continues to increase and second is this stagnation of sales tax I'm calling it we're gonna talk about both of those more at length in a moment I'm gonna start with the last uh bullet here first in saying that this really is a a the us fulfilling our purpose here of lengthening our budget process to have a longer process that's more engaged to have greater engagement with stakeholders the community and council to get us where we are today.

What we have been doing is we have been bringing departments forward at the long range long term financial planning and audit subcommittee to get feedback on potential targeted cuts or tiers is what we're what we're calling them.

We're trying to come up with ways to go about that and one of our ideas is that to have a department by department specific view.

So not try to judge tiers from one department that provides a very different service to the community versus another we would like to get some feedback from council specifically on that today.

We've been talking about well what is the correct cut cut amount or minimum targeted reductions.

I think reserves is a really critical starting point of that we'd like to hear some feedback from council on just general principles of how the city should be looking at its reserves or its savings account how quickly should we be spending it how do we address if we fall below the mandated amount and what's our next task we want to leave room for positive change we recognize that we can't see the future and that our projections are projections there could be great things that happen as far as sales tax improving as far as departments gaining efficiencies that they may not have had or just general economic development in the city taking a positive more positive turn so next what I want to do is jump into revenues and the very top one I'm gonna talk about in a couple slides and that's interest.

That's the city's investment portfolio and how much essentially we made got a return for in the last year.

The second segment of the chart shows the improvements that we recognize from TOT and business taxes together we overperformed our budget amount by 3.7 million dollars and this is what we would have expected because as part of budget development we didn't anticipate the measures being passed so we would have anticipated this variance.

I would say that in result our TOT number ended up lower than what we had expected we were hoping for around a million dollars we ended up around 400 thousand dollars worth of positive change business taxes were much closer to the end result we were expecting we're a little bit in arrears but we'll catch up 3.3 versus 3.7 we had anticipated again, these are a positives.

What I've done is I've bucketed the remaining operating revenues into that second that third third area.

And what you'll note is that for everything else is which is what I'll call it, we ended up short on revenue by around 1.3 million dollars or around 0.6%.

So again, very small amounts being off.

The main driver of that is the city's stagnant per stagnant performance and sales tax.

And that's something that's come up at different committees in different areas.

But speaking broadly, the city's had a flattening of sales tax, and actually we were less than what we received the prior year.

We went from 70 million to 69 million.

Sales tax is the largest revenue source for the city and is not keeping pace with our expenditures.

This is a ultimately a systematic problem within the city's finances at the moment.

The underperformance really is dynamic and it's coming from many different aspects.

Part of this is a shift in consumers' behavior towards moving towards transactions that are not sales, you can't apply sales tax to.

Part of it is some what we'll call bleed from e-commerce.

But overall, the bottom line is that we are flat to frankly negative at the moment, and that won't withstand our expenditure growth.

We had areas of positive growth, particularly property taxes.

As we all know, our local property market is very strong.

Property taxes continue to come in very strong.

A couple more that I would point out as particular movers, we're seeing a continued increase from engagement when recreation services driving recreation income post-COVID.

It continues to rebound.

We overperformed that area by almost a million dollars.

These are good things.

Overall, from a grand city perspective, we were 6.8 million over budget on revenues, which is equal about 3.1%.

Here's everything I just covered, but in words, so we'll skip that one.

Interest revenue.

So this of all the numbers we looked at when we closed the books, this is the one where I went, oh wow.

Um we are very proud of this, in that the city, this is a investment strategy coming to fruit that we've built over the past three years of getting the city out of investments that had very low interest rates, taking some strategic losses, and building those into the performance that we had for the last year.

So five million dollars, again, to put it into context, I went back 30 years worth of returns.

I can't find a number near five million dollars.

The city's investment portfolio is very restrained on what we can legally invest in, and again, this is this is really we're proud to be able to come back and say, gosh, this really ended up going great.

Now, the dynamic part of this conversation around investment returns, though, is that it's not something we count on because investment portfolio investment performance is dynamic, and we don't want to tie operations to something that goes up and down.

And as you can even see in 21, it went down.

And so what happens structurally is that when we have a gear that outperforms our very conservative number, that number is gonna feed right into reserves.

It's gonna basically bump our reserves.

So the result of this good performance is ultimately that the city's reserves went up by 4.4 million dollars that we necessarily hadn't anticipated.

That's great.

These are good things.

Um again, I I think this is great.

What the challenging part of it is that we are not gonna suggest we make a drastic change in how we budget this item.

It could turn around next year and not be as well.

We're not gonna make quick movements off of the market on this.

We need to take a steady approach.

But what this does do is it addresses some questions that have come up around the city's investment portfolio by the by labor and by sometimes by council to say, what happens to all the money that you all make in the investment portfolio?

Well, it's right here, it goes into your reserves.

Here are the city's major revenue categories just charted out to show that line, and again, the one I'll point out is the one in green at top.

It's that flattening of sales tax.

And again, an interesting data point is that you can see 2425, we are actually below where we were in 2122.

That is a that's just it's not just a one-year blip.

We have this just leveling out, which is very challenging for us financially.

Here are the all all those lines mashed into one to just show that overall projection.

Again, this line's taking that jump in 2324.

One of the major reasons is that enhanced tax revenue through business taxes and TOT.

We expected a jump there.

Now moving on to the expenditure side.

So the city exceeded its final budgets on expenditures by 1.7 million or 0.8%, or a way to put it is we went over budget.

This includes though the amount that council reduced during mid-year of the $4 million.

So if we hadn't have done that, we would have ended up around $2.3 million worth of savings, we'll call it.

Most departments finished the year under budget.

One action that I'd like to point out as part of creating this this additional money was that there wasn't a pretty extensive city manager hiring freeze going on during this time.

One of the two departments that went over 1.7 million dollars for the fire department and 400,000 for public works.

I will point out on the fire department side that yes, they went over budget, it was driven by overtime.

If I look at it though, and I see that they additionally brought in a million dollars over on strike team reimbursement than we thought, I think that helps give that number a little better context, right?

Because some of that overage was directly tied to some reimbursements that we realized in the positive manner.

An important point about expenditures that I want to bring up is that the city ended up in this period where we had this term called turnback.

And at the end of the year, we would give these presentations and well, how much turn back did we have?

And it was like extra funding just falling from the sky.

We no longer have turn back, we are spending our budget, and it frankly we went over.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

We've created reductions, which have taken away some of the excess pots of money that were throughout the city for contracts that we're not doing anymore.

We are fully staffed now to a point that we weren't before.

Um, where during COVID we are we're having such a hard time recruitment, such a hard time retaining employees.

We're not seeing that at the moment.

Scott, do you want to clarify the $400,000 over in public works was due to PGE and utility costs?

So, thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, and and again, part of our struggle on the expenditure basis is it's not just salary and benefits, we're seeing our utilities costs go up so much.

We're seeing uh just the what our employees need to perform their job duties with the supplies they need just go up.

Primarily again, public works pays for the utilities of the city.

So that's why they take that burden.

Thank you.

Here's that information on a chart.

Again, it shows the numbers that we just spoke about.

Uh one question that consistently comes up when we show this information is what is non-departmental?

Um, why is there a negative there?

And frankly, it's a it's a function of accounting and it's a function of budgeting.

That's where we keep what we call our vacancy credit.

It means that we know that we're not going to be fully staffed at any point during the year, so we have to essentially recognize that somewhere and we recognize it there.

Here's the corresponding one line chart for expenditures versus revenues that we saw a few moments ago.

And I won't flip back to the blue line, but the red line is going up at a sharper angle than the blue line.

We anticipating it continuing to grow up.

So I'll shift our conversation this point to reserves.

Um, I went through some of this math a moment ago.

Um, and so I'm gonna I'm gonna cut to the chart in a minute.

But again, I think the critical part of the conversation with reserves is your council's mandated policy.

And what is our runway on that?

And our runway is certainly better than it was a year and a half ago, but it's still very daunting, and it really creates a need for us as the city manager so well put to be diligent in our efforts going forward.

Here's our chart.

And it it shows the math exactly how I put it through it earlier in that $13.3 million dollar deficit.

We corrected that by four million bucks.

We had a little bit different result of our of when we actually look at the numbers.

Again, I'll bring up $4.3 million dollars versus the investment portfolio.

It really makes up that difference.

So what I'm doing is I'm saying, well, the results of operating, if we hadn't done those last two things, our reserves would have gone down, and they would have went down to 63 million dollars.

What I the number I should have put on this chart that I didn't realize until later was the fiscal year 2023 number, because that number was 84 million.

And so, yes, our result is that our reserves went up in this current year, but we had that downward projectory.

And frankly, what's correcting it at the moment is the enhanced tax for taxes from the measures that are passed and the 10.4 million dollars worth of one-time funds.

What I would say is in our current year that we're in, any of those corrections that I just spoke about for our $8.4 million budget, we don't have at the moment.

We don't have an enhanced tax measure coming.

We are not making mid-year reductions.

So we would expect our current year to fall more closely in line with budget.

Our long-range financial forecast.

So this shows our current year $8.4 million deficit and how it grows to that $17 million number the next year.

I want to give a couple of points of clarity.

The first being that we don't do a significant update to this until we run our payroll model.

And that doesn't happen until January.

Typically, the way that works is that once we run the payroll model, these numbers get a little worse.

I am anticipating that this year.

And one of the reasons being is that not included in any of these projections are additional impacts from class and comp.

We are moving some of those forward currently, but as those move forward, we will anticipate those creating a greater impact.

Now, some of the positive things that I spoke about, meaning the enhanced tax measures, our uh lowering of sales tax, we've included the best information that we had at the point when this was developed that included those mid-year changes towards revenues and expenditures.

Actually, sorry, I'm gonna go one back because I skipped the important part.

So when we look at the reserves run down, which is a consistent slide we've been bringing forward to council, we see that 17.3 million dollar deficit, we see it eating away at our reserve amount.

This is all considering that we do nothing, which I don't think that'll be the case.

Things change and we will do something.

But to note here is that the coming adoption year is fiscal year 2027.

And if nothing were to change, and we ended that year, and so I'm back here and showing you the fiscal year 2027 results in a couple years or a year, um, we will be below council's mandated reserve amount of 17% of expenditures, giving an estimate that I think we'll be around 41 million dollars.

So we'll be below our mandated amount.

That is not a lot below that number, certainly, and it's not in a vacuum very concerning, but the growing deficit after it of that 30 million dollars is what is what makes it unsustainable.

On a one-year basis, we're okay, but it's that growth factor that we're still just trying to get ahead of.

That is our task.

I'd like to take a moment because I found it valuable for myself to reflect on the reductions that were made.

Uh, those were very long sessions here at council, and it's easy to forget all the things that did happen.

So, what I want to do is just take a moment to just summarize our approach last year, and that was without having done any reductions yet, it is a very valid way to go about it for an agency to do an across the board cut of 8%.

That's what we came up with.

Across the board, 8%.

Departments come up with your reduction amount.

We haven't cut anything yet, go for it.

Um what we are wanting to get feedback from council on today, though, is to have a more targeted approach because we're not starting from scratch like we did a year ago.

We frankly know what the community's feedback has been.

We know where we've already lost, we can't cut the same thing twice.

So again, building on that tiers concept I brought up a little while ago.

This is the result of the uh department cuts on a who met the 8% or who didn't.

This is not to uh you know highlight any any particular department, it's more just a matter of this is really the effect and where those cuts came from.

I think that's important for us to keep in mind as we move forward.

And uh again, I think a critical point of we started budget development as part of this current fiscal year with a 19.3 million dollars and adopted an 8.4 million dollar deficit.

That is a significant council action.

So part of the feedback from the long range long-term financial planning and audit subcommittee is that the count that they would like for us to bring more operationally focused data.

And so we've made attempt at doing that uh through showing how the allocation of general fund funding has changed over time from a department perspective.

The charts pretty much speak for themselves, but what we've seen from a big picture perspective is that the general fund has never funded uh public safety at the level that it has as of now from a allocation of budget basis, meaning that if the city only had one dollar to spend, we are spending the most of that dollar that we ever have on our public safety functions.

This first chart shows both of our public safety departments, police and fire merged together and in the purple, and then what I'll call green is everything else, and you can see how that has changed over time.

Um, much of this is driven by salaries and benefits costs.

Again, coming back to what I brought up earlier, Calper's unfunded liability particularly hits public safety at a higher rate than miscellaneous, is a driver of that function.

The next chart shows police.

Again, we see police grow in their percentage of budget allocated.

What I think is not relayed or portrayed in this chart is that you can't explain operations in a chart.

Um I completely agree.

Part of the struggle though, with how we've messaged this chart is that we are dedicating more than we ever have, but our we're just not keeping up with costs.

And so this does not equal head count within the police department, and that's part of that struggle, is that even though we are pumping more funding in, it's not equaling more head count.

Again, caliper's unfunded disability is a major function of that.

Um, this is where I think the operational data can help explain the operational results in a good way.

Same chart for fire.

What I will point out is that not included, this is only the general fund, and it's only general fund operations.

So what would not be in here would be the safer grant or um uh measure H.

Excuse me, and PSAP, thank you, Veronica.

Um, not all inclusive, but again, same idea that the general funds commitment to the fire department on an allocation basis has increased.

The pink slide is what I'm deeming operational.

And let me help explain what operational means.

Um, the city has gone through a lot of reorganizations over forever.

You know, as long as the city's been around, it's been reorganizing to gain efficiencies.

It's extremely hard for us to do a data analysis of those functions that are not public safety and not administration because they've been trading programs forever.

And so what I've done is just balled them all together and said this is non-public safety and it is not administration.

So think PED, think public works, think uh Wreck and Parks when Wreck and Parks was still a a section.

This is just a way to get them all together to make an apples to apples comparison.

And the final chart on here is is administration and a uh almost cut by a third.

I think the takeaway that I am sharing from this particular slide is that we have a very lean city, very lean, and we're able to accomplish a lot administratively through gain deficiencies, but I think it's again an important message that we are we are allocating our resources at a general as a general fund to the areas that council and the community have asked for, not administration or or other areas or you know, those those points.

So with that, as I'm known to do, I covered a lot of information, and I will be very pleased to take any questions that you all may have, and I welcome any comments or the discussions on any of the points that we've had today.

Thank you.

Thank you both, and thank you to the entire fiscal team.

Uh we echo that the city manager's comments at the beginning for all the work that you've done really endlessly over the past 18 months.

Uh and as always, your presentation is both substantive and snappy.

So thank you for that.

I'll bring it back to council for questions.

Looking to my colleagues, Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you.

Thank you, Scott, for the presentation.

I have a couple clarification um questions.

On the budget, we are um on the emergency budget for fire, it was over 1.6 million.

You mentioned that some of it could be attributed to emergency calls.

Do you have any idea if it was a million, million three, about how much of that, and and if and if you do have that in our mid-year budget, or when we're looking at these, I think that would be helpful to have in the future.

Yeah, thank you.

So the number was 1.1 million dollars.

So the way I think about it is if they were over 1.7, but 1.1 of it is really attributable to strike team reimbursement going over the revenue budget.

I to me, I I kind of netted out in my head that it's more closer to that amount.

Um, certainly that's that's very valuable feedback for us.

We are gonna do our best to try to make mid-year changes and and look at those things absolutely.

It can be challenging to try to try to hit a mid-year number when we still don't know all the impacts.

But yeah, thank you for that comment.

Thank you.

And then when we look at our prior deficit before we made those cuts, I think that that also can be helpful as we're look moving forward to say you were gonna have a you know uh 17 million dollar deficit, we got down to 13 million because of how it grows on itself.

Um, and I see that right now we're in a little surplus, but because we're not through mid-year, we don't really know.

So I'm wondering if if you have any idea of as I look at slide 14, um, it it was not making as much sense to me, and I'm really trying to understand it of what the adopted deficit is, what the new numbers show, and how that's going to grow or lessen the deficit in the out years, and maybe this is the final number, and I'm still just hoping that it's less.

So if you could walk me through that really quickly.

Yeah, thank you.

So I'll start with my first asterisk from the beginning of the meeting, and that especially our projected deficit numbers are rough at this point, right?

Come January, we're gonna have a much better idea on what we're looking at for fiscal year 27.

To your other question, though, what we're trying is what we're trying to portray in this chart is really the rundown on reserves, in just here are our projections, and here's how much runway that gets you as a council and as a city towards when you are out of money, and right now this has improved greatly, you know, from where we were.

Ultimately, though, we're not at a point where we can look at a two-year basis and say to ourselves, we aren't almost at the point of insolvency within two years.

Now a lot's gonna happen between now and then, but again, this is more to give a context of a lot more work needs to be done to get our deficit addressed.

Because you're right, it's snowballs, it grows exponentially.

And for the bank it positions, you mentioned that we're fully staffed.

Do we have any that we expect to fill by end of year, or do we think there still could be some turn back on that?

I just am remembering prior slides looking at an HR and what positions still had not been filled where we're at.

Thank you for that.

And so let me clarify.

I shouldn't say fully staffed because certainly not every position in the city is filled from a finance perspective, and I look at how our projections are, I consider us fully staffed, meaning that the amount that we anticipate being full, we are full to that amount.

To your to your other point, we just aren't anticipating mid-year reductions going forward on the basis of unfilled positions or unspent budget.

That's really a well that you can only go to once as part of a budget reduction strategy in the beginning.

Because what we're experiencing as an organization is that we've made the cuts to those areas of spending in those areas of personnel that we could already.

Thank you.

And then you mentioned that the sales tax um issue is an issue across the state, it's not just happening in Santa Rosa.

I just want to make sure I heard you correctly on that one.

That I mean, we can encourage people to shop.

I try my best, but I'm wondering if like what is there or what is our strategy for that type of growth?

If we're seeing that's a pretty big hit, almost everything that you got back, you ended up giving to just that one area.

I I couldn't characterize it better.

And I will just add that what we're seeing just from a broader economy basis is that there's two types of economies going on right now in the country.

There's the asset class economy, and then there's the consumer economy.

And the consumer economy is what drives sales tax.

And ultimately, consumers are spending so much of their earnings on non-taxable goods, housing, health care, food, that they have less to spend on taxable goods, and that's affecting us greatly.

Thank you for that.

Um, a couple more questions I have.

When we looked at our investments, I know that that's been part of our conversation in the past in long-term finance.

How are we a diversifying that?

If the average person is getting 12 to 18% on their investments, what were we getting in the city?

So I appreciate the work and the focus on that.

It the proof is in the pudding on that one, so to speak, and of course the market's been up a little bit for all of those who are investing.

But when you say that it just increased what we have to have in reserves, is there a way that that interest can go back?

And I'm not sure if it can legally to help our unfunded liability specifically through CalPurse, or is there any language that allows us to invest in paying down that uh unfunded liability?

Thank you for that question.

So you read my mind.

Um, so city manager and myself have been really strategically looking at calipers.

There, I will say there is a lot of work happening on that in the background.

Part of that discussion when we have it, is going to need to include a greater policy.

And I think incorporating something like you just suggested is as far as hey, if our investments are doing good, maybe we should look at putting it towards a liability, but putting it towards our big liability and getting to what the city manager and I discuss as a uh exponential factor, right?

We want to have a multiplier effect on our actions on an investment basis and on a liability basis.

We don't want a dollar for a dollar.

We want to take our dollar and turn it into three dollars.

And so I'm looking forward to that discussion coming back.

Again, we are currently working on it, and so thank you for your comment.

I appreciate that, and I appreciate the work.

I know this is some of the things I don't know if it's our policies, if it's a cow's purse policy.

I think that's still helpful for council to know if it's something, you know, there's our law and then the real law.

So I'd like anything we can adjust to make it so that it works better for us.

I'm I'm all for that.

You mentioned the tiered cuts, and and I I briefly talked about this with city manager about tier one, tier two, tier three potential cuts.

And I think that that's a great way to bring information forward to council.

Um, when I look at tiered cuts, it's almost like how can you cut things maybe without a lot of disruption to service?

What would be disruption to service?

And and what I've seen in the past, and maybe you can help me walk through this a little bit is when we've had a cut, um, it's very clear.

I'm gonna use public safety as an example.

If we cut police, your response time is gonna go from six minutes 31 seconds to seven minutes.

So I weigh that differently than perhaps if we make a cut to and I'm not trying to pick on a department, but say PED, and you're getting a permit or economic development.

How does that affect our economy, or how does that affect the day to day day-to-day community member using services?

And I think as we look at tiered um cuts, those are the decisions that maybe council would like to have.

I know for me, it's almost like you sort of want a menu because you need to know the impact of how that's going to harm or change the community and and how we um go about doing our business.

So I don't know if that's part of the plan.

If you can give me feedback on that, that would be great.

Uh, thank you for that.

So you touched on a lot of things that were messaging out to our departments.

I'm gonna first focus on you brought up menu, and that is the exact phraseology that we've used in the long-term financial planning and audit subcommittee presentations.

Something that both city manager and I are trying to do is give uh more context and detail to that group to help better understand the weeds of a department specifically.

And the one of the ways we've done that, we've done that is for example, in recreation, they got up and gave a menu, meaning these are all the services we provide, and that's a great way for us to get feedback on how do we how do we develop principles towards what's tier one and what's tier three in rec.

Help us understand that.

And you can you can pick on finance instead of PED if I'm up here in the future, so that's okay.

Um, but yes, we recognize that the services within our department are very different.

The service of the finance department is very different than the service of the police department.

But the police department really loves getting paychecks, right?

So I gotta make sure that my department's able to deliver that for them.

We are a team and we all interact that way with each other, especially administration, but having a more nuanced conversation department by department, I think is gonna help us along this path.

And and I don't want to say that any cuts should be made because I know we're already, you know, down to bare bones in every you know area of the city.

I just think as we move forward, if that has to be part of the conversation and that's being brought forward, those types of uh kind of in-depth or I call it like a granular look at how the operations go, is helpful for council to know when we're being asked not to cut or to cut in other areas.

Um, and I think the only other question I had is on the utilities.

I know we use Sonoma Clean Power, so everything we use is through the geysers, is my understanding to power our buildings.

Do we have buildings that have solar power, or have we looked at investing in solar so we reduce our PG and E or maybe we already have it, and I just haven't ever dove into that arena?

Broadly, um I would need to do an inventory of my brain real quick, but to your point, yes, because council member, we go through the Evergreen program with Sonoma Clean Power, so all the city's energy is fully fully renewable.

Um second part of that, we have a pretty vast solar array.

If you just look at our city as a as a network.

Um certainly I think that you know, one of the areas that this finance subcommittee has asked for is like again more information about our facilities to better understand how can we gain efficiencies out of our facilities.

We've had many looks at how we can incorporate solar more, etc.

So, so to your point, yes, we have solar.

I would love to see us have more to create more savings, and I think we're gonna explore that.

Through the chair.

Go ahead.

If we could promote um Director Hennessy on the line, we want to talk to you about uh to your question, some of the uh initiatives we want to move forward as it relates to utilities.

So if we could promote Director Hinnesie, please.

One moment, director, did you hear the question?

Yes, I did.

You ready for me?

All right, go ahead.

Yeah.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Councilman and Down.

Um, we are looking at a number of ways to reduce uh uh costs, including the release of a recent uh request for proposals for companies to do exactly this is basically an inventory of our energy usage and asking them uh based on their qualifications and their history of doing so to come in at a no cost basis and find ways for us to establish savings.

They would essentially get paid by finding those savings and having some of that potentially um transmitted to them, but we're given our state of infrastructure and the resources available to us.

We took this model developed by several other cities in California.

Um we got great feedback from them about what some companies were able to do, and we look forward to receiving those statements of qualification next month, and then pursuing this uh early in 2026.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that information, and I appreciate the presentation.

I know I always have a lot of questions.

Having these updates is really really helpful as we move along and have hard but budget conversations, and I appreciate not just finance, but all of our staff that has to go back and keep looking to see if they can find any spare change in their cushions.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Looking to council, are there other questions?

All right.

Well, then I would like to take us back briefly to when the city manager um and our our interim CFO were showering council with compliments for our focus and discipline over the past year.

Um, all of us on the Dais encounter our our former counterparts on councils on council uh socially.

Is it the official view of the current finance department that this is the first council to make fiscal fiscal responsibility its main priority?

What can we report out?

Yes, Mayor.

Thank you.

That was that was exactly the right answer.

Thank you for that.

Um more seriously, if we could go back to slide eight.

I I have a I think I ask this question every time I see this slide, and I just want to um I just want to confirm my memory.

The slide deck really was very very well done, by the way.

This is comp this is complicated, nuanced information.

Every slide was clear, the story was clear.

Thank you for all the work that went into this.

Um the charges for services, that line that dipped.

Am I remembering correctly that this is a this is a fairly inclusive category?

It doesn't include the the permitting charges that we that we adjusted this year, but we're talking wreck and parks fees, all sorts of fees that the city charges for the services it provides.

Um can you can you refresh my memory on that point?

Um yes, the charges for services line does have a variety of items in there.

It is mostly wreck and parks or recreation charges, which is why we see that dip in the COVID years in 2020 and then start to rebound.

Um it does not include a lot of our large ped fees, such as building division permit fees and encroachment permits and short-term rental permit fee, but it does include a lot of our other PED revenues, such as our planning fees and some of our smaller items like mechanical permits, electrical permits.

So as that new PED fee structure has come into play, we have seen that has contributed to part of the rising line towards the end of this chart.

Thank you for that.

Uh and discussions, discussions about the fees that we're charging have been a consistent theme over the last 18 months.

And I think this slide really lays it out nicely for the public why we were spending so much time there, where you can see that we we were increasing revenues or generally increasing revenues across the board, sales tax being a a bit of an exception.

Um, but we were not keeping up with inflation with respect or at least the cost of this the cost of the services we were providing with what we were charging.

So even last week here at council when we were talking about raising rec and park fees this is why we're doing that because we've got to we've got to keep pay we've got to keep pace with the cost of what with the cost of those services so that we can continue providing them.

And I think this this chart really makes that uh makes that very clear uh and then Scott you also mentioned the fact that the um one of the later slides which which shows the uh the impending deficits that are growing 17 million next year somewhere in the 20s the year after that then into the 30s um that that does not include likely adjustments to uh to salaries and benefits you mentioned the class and comp study um that's important for us to keep in mind here at the dais because these again this is uh somewhat conservative actually these these deficits that we're showing they they could potentially be larger but it's important to note that with the work that this council has done over the past year with with respect to the compensation that we're providing employees and with what we expect to come um we are more competitive with with our local market for uh for our employees and that's ultimately a good thing we just need to make sure that we we keep we keep our budgets in line with that so thank you for highlighting that as well and then finally for me with respect to the to the tiered approach um I am looking forward to seeing what the what the department specific items are it has been my hope and we've talked about it multiple times during this process both here at the dais and then also in long term finance that um ultimately we're not just talking about cuts because we're not going to cut our way out of this issue we've got to reinvest and build and restructure and we've seen a lot of that go on over the last 12 months with parks and rec being the most notable example but not the only one uh and so when these tiered cuts come back I am looking forward to seeing what ideas departments have for how we do things for how we do things better.

It is possible to do we're not just gonna we are going to be smaller but we don't have to just be smaller we can also get better at that at least our our our core services so thank you for highlighting the fact that we're not just coming back with across the board cuts that's that we're gonna be more nuanced and a little bit more creative.

And with that if there are no other no other questions oh Ms Fleming please jump in.

Thank you mayor thank you for this presentation it's pretty clear that we have a long road to hoe that we've we've done some really good work you've done some really good work and we haven't gotten in your way and that's what we're committed to doing as far as I can tell is we're gonna keep supporting smart financial decisions.

One of the things that I saw when I went on the housing tour in Vienna a few weeks ago was that people are out in public and they are not looking at their phones.

And it was really kind of refreshing to see this and one of the things that they had done a really good job of doing in addition to building enough shared infrastructure in the form of housing and other amenities is that they have a really built communities and as we go forward I know that uh people don't usually become accountants because they're in the business of uh throwing events um but I just am saying this for everybody in this room to hear that how we move forward is going to be about how we invest both in sound fiscal policy but in sound social policy that promotes people putting down their phones leaving their homes getting out in public um in order to be face to face and also having the side effect of capturing more tax revenue one of the issues at my day job and I'm sure the mayor can attest to this is we have events now and we maybe make our nut on our fundraising but people don't show up and so it's not incumbent on on you the people who um count our beans to do this but I I just want everyone to hear that we need to think about ways to promote social behavior and as when we do promote social behavior we promote economic vitality for our city, so thank you.

Thank you.

And if there are no other comments right now, let's open it up to public comment.

Are there any members of the public who wish to speak?

Janice, go ahead whenever you're ready.

Thank you.

Um thank you uh to uh Mr.

Wagner and um his assistant, Janice Carmen here.

It's nice to see Eddie back and all the counsel um it's kind of like uh being in a bad snowstorm and trying to keep everybody warm.

But I I think the presentation was really good.

I have seen it at the uh finance meeting, uh, a large part of it anyway.

And um I think it is a matter of just really continuing to tighten belts, but I also brought up at that meeting um AI and um technical services.

I didn't really catch where the technology comes into this, but I I just have this sense of it that it's going to be something that's going to drop quickly, and everybody's gonna have to get on board about AI, and the money that's going into it and the buildings that are going up in Georgia and uh Florida's threatened Santos is trying to keep them away.

Um, there's a lot of stuff happening around this, and I think that the city needs to have it on their radar, and needs to be uh at least surveying how this is going to work out for the city, because if we don't get on board with it, we're gonna be off board, and we won't be able to uh pill our bicycle fast enough to get back on.

Um that that's my only comment, but I I didn't hear where the technical services were included because it is going to cost money, and that's gonna be one that's gonna surprise a lot of people, I think.

Thank you, Janice.

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

Seeing none, we will close public comment and bring it back to council for any final final questions or comments or directions to staff.

Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so I just had a couple of things first.

I would like to say thank you.

Uh so thank you to the finance department, thank you to the city manager, um, thank you to all of our staff and to community members because I know that there have been a lot of growing pains with this process.

So, in addition to that, I know we were talking about public safety and expenditures, and I just wanted to say that from what I know, um public safety expenditures have grown, but so has the population of the city of Santa Rosa and our needs.

Um, and there are a lot of ways in which we can continue to cut, but I'm not sure that is the type of service and or customer service that we would like to provide to uh the residents in Santa Rosa and or our visitors.

Um, and in addition to that, um I would like to continue to strategically explore cost savings and ways to increase revenue throughout the city.

So if there are ways to rearrange or strategically cut, um, I would still like to explore that, but also how do we continue to increase our revenue?

Thank you.

Any other comments from council?

Miss McDonald.

I want to piggyback on what council member Rogers just said when it comes to specifically public safety.

What I'm seeing here is an increase as a percentage of the budget.

What I'm not seeing is is there being an increase to bodies because if the cost of everyone goes up, it looks like we're increasing, but that doesn't actually give us a clear picture when it comes to actually providing services.

So it just shows there's inflation and we have you know um raises that are deserved and needed in the city, but I think that's also a piece of data that can be missing sometimes is how many people or is there any type of data that shows how many people should we have in these positions to serve a city of our size?

That might be a helpful data point for me in the future as well.

Thank you again.

Other comments, and I'll conclude just by reminding the public that this is this is gonna be a very regular item over the course of the next nine to well, nine months plus.

Uh, in fact, we've got another meeting of the long-term finance subcommittee next week on the 30th.

Uh we will be having at least quarterly updates here at council.

Um, the city manager is working with um the the public advisory group, the the budget advisory group made up of of members of the public.

So there is a lot of public attention with respect to the budget this year and in the years to come.

Uh for those who are watching and interested, there are many ways to plug in.

So thank you for your interest.

Uh and with that, we will conclude this item.

Thank you again both very much.

And I think we've got we've got about 20 minutes or so until we hit four o'clock, so we will recess until 4 p.m.

All right, the time is four o'clock.

Welcome back, everyone.

We can reconvene.

Madam City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers, present.

Councilmember O Kepke?

Here.

Councilmember McDonald.

Here.

Councilmember Fleming.

Here, Councilmember Ben Willows?

Here.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Present.

Mayor Stopp.

Here.

Let the record show that all council members are present.

Thank you.

We will move on to item six, our report on study and our report on closed sessions.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

There was no reportable action taken in closed session.

Thank you.

We move on to item nine, our city manager and city attorney's reports.

Madam City Manager.

I have no report items this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um I do have my monthly litigation report this evening.

Um there was one settlement over $50,000 that was previously authorized by council in closed session that was finalized in September.

In Stillwater Insurance Company versus City of Santa Rosa, plaintiff alleged property damage, loss of the use of a private residence and other related losses resulting from a water event that occurred on approximately February thirteenth, 2024.

In settlement, the city agreed to pay eighty-eight thousand dollars in exchange for a release of all claims.

The settlement proceeds will be paid entirely from the water enterprise fund.

That settlement aside, we have currently 36 litigation matters with trial dates assigned to approximately a third of those matters.

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

We continue to try to resolve smaller cases where appropriate at little or no cost to the city.

That's the end of my report.

Thank you.

We will uh we'll go to public comment.

Are there any members of the public who'd like to make comment on that item?

There we go.

That was that was a delay, Janice, but the floor is yours.

It's just that it took so long, and I bet some interesting things were going on in that room.

I would have liked to have been a flea on the wall, but I'd like to hear something about what the meeting was all about that you had talked about in closed session.

That's all I'm using.

Thank you, Janice.

We will close public comment, and we'll move on to item 10: statements of abstention or recusal by council members.

Are there any statements of abstention or recusal this evening?

There are none.

Bringing us to item 11, our mayor and council members' reports.

Are there any other mayor and council members' reports?

Ms.

Rogers, please.

Alright, I'll make it quick.

So I would like to say that I did enjoy this Saturday attending the floating pumpkin patch at Ridgway.

It was a lot of fun, and our staff did very well.

Saturday, November 8th.

We're having not we, the city.

In the city, there's a Tunnel to Towers Foundation 5K run and walk at Courthouse Square at 8:30.

And I plan on attending.

This walk run will pay homage to America's heroes.

The foundation is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting uh injured veterans and first responders, and the foundation was created in memory of someone who lost their life during 9-11.

So I'm very excited to welcome them here to the city of Santa Rosa, and I'm hoping that they will make this an annual event.

So November 8th at 11, I mean at 8:30.

And then in addition to that, on November 11th, we will be celebrating Veterans Day here at Santa Rosa City Hall at the flagpole.

Um that will start at 10 a.m.

And mayor, that concludes my report out.

That was admirably succinct.

Thank you so much.

Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to report out that Zero Waste met last week.

Our biggest topic of conversation was around the acquisition of property loaded located at 195 Concourse Boulevard.

Previously, Zero Waste had thought about building a center for their headquarters, and it was going to cost more than double from the budget.

So they've decided to go this way.

Every city actually had to be present in order to for us to make that acquisition happen, and we were all there, so that could happen for Zero Waste, and just congratulate them on all the efforts that they did last week for every event that they had across Sonoma, Marin, and Apppa counties to reduce reuse and recycle.

Thank you, Mr.

Kropke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Just one thing.

The mayor and myself were able to attend a joint meeting between the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the Sonoma County Fair Board to discuss United Soccer League's interest in the horse track part of the fairgrounds for potential development site to host the stadium, possibly other um uh attributes that may be beneficial to the community.

Um direction was given to engage with the city.

Uh those discussions will continue, and we will hopefully have an update uh soon as to what the path forward is.

Thank you, Miss Ben Willis.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh just one quick thing.

I wanted to mention that I attended the uh West End Neighborhood Association last week.

Um it was a wonderful meeting.

Um staff were there, uh, um Anna Orta and of course um my cab appointee Doug Mondell.

Um, and it we honored uh two members of the community.

One who um has passed away, the late Tim Yates, who did a lot of work on the on DeMail Park and cleaning it up along with his wife, and uh Tress McKinley, who does work on um both uh Brown Barn as well as DeMayo and as well, she's also a very active member in uh the Friends of Prince Memorial Greenway.

So it was a beautiful meeting.

Uh I want to thank staff, all the staff that came out.

Uh we also had a uh presentation on the flood maps, which was really helpful, and a number of other things, and so um it was a great meeting, and uh I just wanted to report on it out on it because they really know how to bring community together, and I really love the way that they do that.

Um, so with that, that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Fleming.

Yes, thank you.

Uh yesterday, the Renewal Enterprise District convened um with the member, Councilmember Balnuelos, as well as our supervisors Chris Corsi and Rebecca Hermosillo, and notably we reviewed a report around expanding our boundaries, um, in terms of where we could in the future invest in.

And some of those uh boundaries are outside of the city of Santa Rosa, and they're around transit in particular smart hubs.

And the purpose of this is not to begin funding uh multifamily housing at these areas, but is meant to attract additional members to our JPA, members, which might be the municipalities wherein these um these transit oriented communities are located, with the idea that we could use our JPA status, which is between the city of Santa Rosa and the County of Sonoma in order to more affordably build housing in other jurisdictions when other jurisdictions are ready to uh join the renewal enterprise district or fund these projects using us in some sort of fiscal sponsor or membership manner, and we're open to having those discussions and we want the word to get out to the other cities that we are paving the way for them to do this in the future.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, just wanted to let everyone know that we that we being you and I took a bus ride on our local transit, and it was great to see the amount of work that's being done to further the the or satisfy the needs of our community.

Uh we we met a lot of individuals who were going to work to pick up pick up paycheck uh alongside with her family first child, and the vision fell to this individual.

So it was great to see the amount of of needs that are being met through our local and public transit.

So I want to remind all the youth you write for free, city employees, you write for free, and I definitely take advantage of it.

And I do want to invite the community out to uh Rosalie University Prep tomorrow at 6 30, where district one and seven will be holding their community meetings.

So I hope to see you all out there.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

And I think I have just one.

Um, Ms.

Rogers, did we talk about the uh the SRPD canine event on Friday night?

We did not go for it.

All right, well, if you uh if you weren't there along with what 150 to 100 other people, you missed a fun party.

So congrats to SRPD and the canine squad for the first ever uh fundraising gala uh to support our three canine units.

It was a huge success.

It was a black tie affair.

It was a blue tie affair, actually.

It was black tie, but the ties had to had to be blue.

Um and Miss Rogers played impromptu auctioneer uh bringing in a few thousand dollars, several thousand dollars actually to support our um our canines uh and the and the canine teams.

So again, congrats to SRPD.

It was a great event, and hopefully it's a new annual tradition.

Ms.

Rogers, did you want to add?

I just wanted to point out that it helps to support our active canines, but it also helps to support our retired canines who still need to be taken care of.

Thanks again.

All right, that concludes our mayor and council members' reports.

Uh any public comment on those items.

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

We'll go on to cons on to uh consent.

Madam City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

Item 13.1, delegation of authority to the design review and preservation board.

Item 13.2.

Approval and issuance of a purchase order for the purchase of six BMW R 1300 RT-P motorcycles.

Item 13.3.

Motion approval of the professional services agreement, construction management and inspection services for the Route 101 bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing.

This item has been continued to a date uncertain.

Item 13.4.

Motion approval and issuance of a purchase order for the purchase of one MADVAC LS 175 Compact Street Sweeper.

Item 13.5.

Motion, second amendment to the professional services agreement number F002929 with Jarvis Faye LLP for specialized legal services.

Item 13.6.

Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa approving the second amendment to professional service agreement number F002714A with paina investigations for pre-employment background check services.

Item 13.7.

Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa classification and compensation.

Resolution number two for item 13.7 resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending the city salary plan and schedule by eliminating reclassifying or adding positions and authorizing the city manager to implement these changes included in the fiscal year two 2025 through 2026 budget subject to the completion of the meet and confer process.

Item 13.8 resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa approving a professional services agreement with RAFTELS Financial Consultants Incorporated for an operational and staffing assessment.

Item 13.9 introduction of ordinance entitled ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, amending Santa Rosa City Code Section 6-20.020 definitions.

That concludes reading of the consent calendar.

Thank you very much.

Bringing it back to council.

Any questions or items to be polled?

Ms.

Rogers?

Um I did have a question on 13.7.

Um in the name of transparency.

Mayor, am I free to proceed?

Oh, please please proceed.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um, so my question is: why does this appear on the consent calendar when uh it's uh financial amount, uh substantial financial amount ongoing um and not as a report item?

Dominic Blanke, human resources director.

Um, it's on the consent calendar because this is stuff that has already been approved through labor negotiations, and so just the implementation of that body of work.

Satisfied.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Both any additional questions from council.

Seeing none, we'll go to public comment.

Would any members of the public like to comment on any of the consent items?

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

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to move items 13.1 through 13.9 and waive further reading of the text.

Second, we have a motion and then a second by Mr.

OK.

Excuse me, Mr.

Mayor.

One of the items uh was postponed to a later date.

Um, and so um I would suggest that the motion exclude item 13.3.

With that uh guidance by our city attorney, I'd like to move items 13.1 through 13.

With exclusion of 13.3 that has been uh moved to uh date uncertain and we have further reading of the text.

And Mr.

Krupke's motion still stands, or second, I should say.

So we have a motion, we have a second.

Thank you for that correction, Madam City Attorney, Madam City Clerk, whenever you're ready to call the vote.

Okay, council member.

I'm sorry that we have one additional question, Miss Fleming.

Yeah, I would like to know um why we are holding off on that item, the one though about the overcross, and when we are expected to hear it again, director Hennessy, are you on the line?

One moment while I promote him.

It's it's so rare that we have drama on the consent calendar.

This is a nice change, actually.

Some simple inquiry, and I'm glad we're keeping keeping Mr.

Hennessy on his toes today.

Thanks, Mayor, and thanks for the question, Councilmember Fleming.

Uh, this item was continued because it came under um additional scrutiny as a result of the new DDE requirements from the federal government.

We had issued it under one set of rules.

Um, we now understand the B, a different set of rules, and based on discussion with other jurisdictions and advice of our city attorney's office, we're gonna rebid the this is for the construction management and inspection item.

We were way ahead of schedule and getting them on board early.

So this is not critical path.

Um the contractor understood and looks forward to uh rebidding this for these services uh when we rebid this later this month.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions from council on the consent?

Oh, Miss Fleming again.

Yeah, well, no, I just wanted to know about what the timeline was.

That piece wasn't wasn't answered.

Maybe Mr.

Hennessey knows when the public might expect to see this item again.

Uh we will have honestly, it might be um second meeting of November, maybe the first meeting of December.

Um, be the timeline for we'll be re-releasing the RFP for these services in the next few weeks, and then we also will be releasing the RFP for the actual construction bid item also in the next few weeks.

So they might be in parallel now, but again, this is not a critical path for us to allow construction in the spring.

Okay, we get it, but we're just so eager.

Appreciate the weakness.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else from Council?

All right, we have a motion and a second.

And now now, Madam City Clerk, whenever whenever you're ready for the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember O'Krepki.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming?

Yes.

Councilmember Ben Willows?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with seven affirmative votes.

Thank you.

All right.

And since the time is not yet five o'clock, we're gonna jump ahead to our first report item, item 15.1, a report on the 2025 California Fire Fire and Wildland Urban Interface Code Adoption with local amendments.

Uh and Mr.

Johnson, I think you're joining us today.

Thank you.

Mr.

Johnson, you might have to pull the mic a little bit closer.

Is it on?

There we go.

Nope.

There you go.

There we go.

Thank you.

So good morning or good afternoon, Mayor Staff, Vice Mayor Alvarez, and council members.

My name is Mike Johnson.

I'm assistant fire marshal with the San Rosa Fire Department, and I'm here today to introduce and give a report on the 2025 California Fire Code and the Wildland Urban Interface Code adoption.

California's building standards are published every three years.

This includes a California Fire Code and new California Wildland Urban Interface Code.

Once adopted with any local amendments, these will become effective January 1st of 2026.

The California Fire Code and California Wildland Urban Interface Code include requirements for building, fire vegetation management, as well as other standards.

As stated earlier, these codes are published and adopted every three years for statewide application by the California Building Standards Commission and enforceable by all jurisdictions throughout the state.

Local jurisdictions are allowed to adopt, are allowed to adopt additional amendments based upon local conditions.

Earlier this year, AB 130 was signed by governor by the governor.

This was in June of this year, and created a six-year moratorium on any new local amendments that apply to residential units.

All local amendments already in place can be carried forward.

Updates or amendments to the 2025 fire and wooy codes were examined and developed at biweekly Sonoma County Fire Marshal meetings.

This collaborative effort helps bring alignment between our neighboring jurisdictions.

The following are some of the partnering agencies that were involved in this collaborative process.

You could see that there was Petaluma, Heelsburg, Sebastipool, Sonoma County, Rancho Adobe, Sonoma Valley, and Rooner Park all partake in this collaborative effort.

The final document was then peer-reviewed by the other fire agencies and industry professionals.

It is recommended that the City Council introduce an ordinance adopting by reference a 2025 edition of the California Fire Code as adopted and amended by the state of California and further amended based on local conditions for use in chapters 1844 and 1846 of the Santa Rosa City Council, repealing existing sections not applicable to the new model codes and Santa Rosa City Code to reflect the new model code.

Introduce an ordinance adopting by reference with local amendments to 2025 California Wildland Urban Interface Code and approve the first reading and introduced an ordinance entitled 2025 code adoption.

Adopted resolution setting a public hearing on November 18th for adoption of the new ordinance.

Any questions?

Thank you very much.

Important and often overlooked work.

I'm gonna bring it back to council.

Questions?

All right, well, we need to play for a little time here.

We've got we've got to make it to five o'clock.

So, oh no, I've got questions.

No, I I've got questions.

So, my my first question is given the given that grazing is such an important tool for the city in managing the urban wildland interface, and giving given the amazing feedback that our community that SRFD received from the community this year with the sheep and the goats running free up in the interface or up in the wildland urban interface rather.

Are there any is there anything in our ordinances about grazing?

Again, giving the the credit given the critical nature of this to our community.

Mr.

Lowenthal, do I see you coming down?

Talk to us about grazing.

I think it's a setup, Paul.

Thank you, Mayor, for the question about grazing.

Uh currently uh we do not have a plan to incorporate grazing into our code.

Uh however, we do continue to support it.

Uh we're grateful that we had the uh 250,000 allocated out of the funds specifically for grazing this year.

As you know, it was a very successful program.

We're able to use it in some targeted locations uh in uh parks properties primarily uh in areas where we've typically just done seasonal uh work for weed abatement purposes and the ability for the goats uh to work in areas like Upper Brush Peak Park, uh the uh new greenway that we have uh adjacent to Spring Lake, uh, youth community park uh and several of the parks uh and properties that we coordinated between fire public works uh team as well as our parks staff was a great uh opportunity to uh roll out an important uh opportunity like grazing.

So thank you uh for that uh grazing opportunity and for answering the question.

That was that was an impressive answer off the cuff.

Um if we can't officially add these to our to our ordinances, can we have at least pictures in the in the PowerPoint slide decks in the future of the sheep and goats grazing?

So it is important to note that we do bring an annual report back to you for our community wildfire protection plan.

Uh so our next report will definitely uh highlight the grazing opportunities, and this is also a good opportunity to let uh both you and the community know that we're in the process of rolling out uh the update to our current community wildfire protection plan, which is you if you remember, was approved uh last by council literally about a week and a half before the glass fire started.

Um, and so that uh plan has been a roadmap uh with 46 actionable agenda actionable objectives uh and nine different categories.

So it'll be great to see how much progress we've made over the last five years, and we look forward to the community's feedback uh and in being able to incorporate more grazing in the next five years through the community wildfire protection plan process.

Another impressive answer.

Thank you very much.

Did Miss Fleming or Fleming leave the dais?

Did she leave her question with you?

Miss Rogers, you're she didn't leave her question with me.

I just wanted to say, Assistant fire marshal Johnson, you did a great job with your presentation.

The mayor cannot help himself.

And I look forward to seeing you provide future presentations.

Thank you.

Other questions from the days?

Miss McDonald?

I do have a quick question, and mostly it's because I think uh the majority of people are getting their new homeowners insurance um updated.

With these new standards that California is putting forward, are they working with the insurance commissioner at all on the cost of insurance and that potentially becoming prohibitive to so many of our residents?

Um I know mine went up like a thousand dollars a year just over the last year.

I don't live in the WUE, but I live near it.

So I'm just wondering if this affects our residents at all just by adopting this.

I know it's a state standard, but I'm hoping you can help me through that.

So the actual code adoption won't necessarily affect what you're talking about, but indirectly, there's a couple things that have taken place.

Obviously, you know, because uh assisted fire marshal Johnson and our team brought to you earlier this year the changes to our high and very high fire severity zone maps, in addition to bringing our community wildfire protection plan back to you council uh eventually after it's approved or or we're looking for your approval, uh we're also gonna be bringing back uh an item probably early 2026, uh, that will be redefining our current wildland urban interface.

So when Calfire rolled out their maps for the moderate high and very high, there's certain things that we had to do within our city for the high and very high.

Um, but based on Calfire's mapping, we have seen the ability to make recommendations both through feedback from council as well as uh the ultimately uh scheduling of a community meeting, but we see the opportunities to increase because we're gonna have to, our our own local wildland urban interface in some areas, but we also see a unique opportunity to actually scale back our wildland urban interface in other parts of the city, and that will indirectly help some of those residents because A, they're not in the states high or very high anymore, um, not even in moderate, and then we, based on our fire history and what we've seen here locally, have the ability to seek feedback again from council and the community to pull some of those residents out.

So they would no longer have the design designation of being in the wild and urban interface fire area for the city and could potentially help with their insurance.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Seeing none, we will go to public comment.

Are there any members of the public that would like to comment on this item?

Peter, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

Peter Alexander, I was watching and listening.

It said the interface interface codes and they're worried about uh, you know, talking about sheep and goats and homes and neighborhoods surrounded by moats.

So they're talking about weed eradication.

And again, after uh my investigation with several investigators has found that the reason that there's such reticence regarding the living cactus fences, which are verifiable firewalls, and produce uh some of the sweetest fruit in the world, which is low glycemic.

Turns out that uh the opposition includes big pharma.

They don't want people eating healthy, they want people eating this junk food so that we have uh obesity problems and troubles, and so they can sell more drugs.

So they don't want a living cactus fence.

And then uh is the one person down there, the very nice lady said uh her insurance went up.

Well, the insurance companies don't want the living cactus fences either because they'll stop fires, and you can't charge money for common sense.

Um you always charge money for things that aren't so much common sense, it seems.

So then there's a third one uh big agriculture does not want uh living cactus fences either, because gee whiz, I mean, just because Cactus Pete says it's the right thing to do, and Senator McGuire liked it, and Luther Burbank certainly uh proved his point.

Um how do you charge for something that doesn't require water?

So water district can't make money because they don't need to be watered, and so we have all these situations going on.

So this insurance, and including the fact that uh the Bar Association is against it because they run the insurance companies.

So cactus is a very prickly question, and it needs some uh goodwill from our local statesmen and stateswomen here because am I making this up?

Maybe, but not so much.

Maybe Governor Newsom doesn't like this because even though uh Senator McGuire liked it a lot.

Governor Newsom uh didn't like it because, well, gee whiz, I've outed him for a lot of his little addiction problems and so forth and so forth.

So I'm not here to make friends with big big people in big places.

I'm here to provide some common sense that was already gifted us by Luther Burbank.

And how is it that the fire department what have they been ordered by the governor not to speak to me about common sense with living cactus fences?

They work, it's a firewall, and the food is delicious.

You can do more with a cactus leaf than you can a potato, including dicing one up into a beautiful gazpacho with heirloom tomato, the best place of all the earth to grow veggies and fruits.

Do it the right way, we end all disputes.

So I invite you to use your will to put forth this place and honoring common sense from Luther Burbank and ourselves to benefit us all, including the fire situation.

Thank you, Peter.

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

Seeing none, I will close public comment and I'll bring it back to Mr.

Kripke for a motion.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I'll wave reading of the text and introduce an ordinance entitled Ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa repealing chapter 18-44 of the existing Santa Rosa City Code and adding new chapter 18-44, adopting by reference with local amendments, the 2022 edition of the California Fire Code, ordinance of the California ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, adding a new chapter 18-46, adopting by reference with local amendments, the 2025 edition of the California Wildland Urban Interface Code, and adopt a resolution entitled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, setting a time and place for a public hearing for the proposed adoption by reference of portions of the 2025 California Fire Code and the 2025 California Wildland Urban Interface Code with local amendments and administrative changes.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second by the vice mayor.

Madam City Clerk, you can call the vote whenever you're ready.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Hi.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Van Wellos?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show these ordinances were introduced with seven affirmative votes and resolution adopted with seven affirmative votes.

Mr.

Johnson and Mr.

DeLone Thal, thank you for all the work.

Thanks for putting up a little a little humor.

And with that, we'll go to our second report, item 15.2, a report on the revisions to city council voting procedure for electing uh mayor and vice mayor.

Madam City Attorney, thank you for all your work on this.

Welcome back.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members.

Teresa Stricker, City Attorney.

So as you may recall from last month, we had a um close, we had a study session where I brought forward to you a number of different voting processes and look looking for direction about whether and how you may want to improve your processes.

Um the remaining ones we are still working through to bring you back your options that I would imagine would probably come back to you in early 2026.

Um, so the one that we have this evening is the voting process for electing a mayor and vice mayor.

So your current process, as you may recall, uh, is set forth uh in your charter that um every two years you elect one of amongst yourself to serve as a mayor for that two-year term, um, and then annually you elect a vice mayor to serve a one-year term.

So your current process is setting set forth in your manual of procedures and protocols.

And as we talked about about a month ago, I'm just going to go over a really high level what that process is.

You all are familiar with that process.

Calls for nominations, each nomination requires a second and an acceptance by the nominee.

If we have only one nominee who accepts, that nominee is elected by unanimous consent, or you have two or more nominees that accept your election is by a process of elimination through a written ballot procedure.

In that procedure, each council member votes by ballot for one fewer than the total number of nominees.

So if you have four nominees, you would each vote for three.

If you have two nominees, you would each vote for one.

All nominees receiving either zero votes or one vote is eliminated, and then subsequent votes are taken.

With each council member voting for one fewer nominee than in the prior round, and only nominees not eliminated may be voted upon.

Once a single nominee receives a majority vote, that nominee is elected.

And there's currently no process specified about how you move forward when you have a tie that occurs that cannot be resolved by existing rules.

So some examples of those are a three-two-two vote, a three-one-one-one vote, or a three-three vote where you only have six members voting.

Those are some examples.

Okay.

So I'm going to walk through now based on the feedback that I received in close, I'm sorry, in um study session in September, what we are bringing forward to you and recommending for adoption.

So based on that feedback, we are have modified the process as follows.

So one change is we the proposed rule would limit to three nominees, limit three nominees by adopting the following nomination rules.

These are all new council members may nominate or second only once, but may not do both.

But you can't do both.

Okay.

In the situation where you have more than one nominee, and again, as I said before, under this rule, you can only ever end up with three.

So in the situation where you have either two or three nominees, you would use the following modified elimination process.

Again, we're voting by ballot, that's not new.

Each council member would vote for only one nominee, regardless of the number you have.

If a nominee receives a majority vote, that person is then elected.

If after that vote, you have no nominee who receives a majority vote, then you would eliminate the nominees with zero votes.

If no nominees received zero votes, you would then eliminate any nominees that have one vote, but you only do that if elimination does not result in only one remaining nominee.

And that's because we need to make sure that there is a majority vote.

So for example, if you had a three-one-one vote, uh if you had a um three-two-two vote, let's do it differently.

A three-one one-one.

So one nominee received three votes, and the other remaining nominees only received one vote.

If you eliminated all of the one votes, we'd be left with one nominee, but that nominee would not have received a majority vote.

So then you'd be stuck.

So again, that elimination only happens if you still have at least two folks remaining, and then you would re-vote.

So I'm I am seeing that perhaps that was too confusing.

Do you want me to go back on that one?

Vice Mayor.

Well, you said three-one-one-one, it was one too many after all the maximum amount of you're correct.

You're correct.

So it would be three-one-one vote, and that would be five members voting, whether that's because you had an absence or someone decided not to vote.

So if you had a three-one-one and you eliminated the nominees who were received only one vote, you would be left with one nominee who received three votes, that's not a majority.

And so we need to have a majority of you pick your mayor.

So again, that elimination works only if we still have others in the mix.

And then you would go back and redo your process.

You would again have another vote by ballot.

So now I'm going to talk about some additional rules.

Um, I just wanted to go back.

Um, when we had talked about this gets so complicated so fast, but when we had talked about the nomination rules, um, I think that only part of that got incorporated, and perhaps my direction wasn't super clear then.

But um the what I had intended was that it would be one per you can nominate a person, you can second a person, you can only do those things once, but you cannot nominate or second yourself, and if you do it like that, you eliminate all need for all this other stuff.

Because you can only then have two nominees, so you that would that would be one way you could go about it, that you can't second yourself.

You could certainly do do it that way.

What I took back was that the there was a limitation on nominating yourself but not seconding.

Okay.

I thought that the that we had said to limit it in all those ways to reduce some of the complications here, but perhaps I didn't get that from the whole council.

Okay, Miss Rogers.

Okay, any anything else right now before um we continue?

All right, thank you.

Vice Mayor.

In in the case I was just mentioned prior.

Would accept the nomination be the same as second in the nomination, accepting is not the same as seconding.

Thank you for clarification.

And in every case, the nominee has to accept because it would be possible for you for two of you to decide that you really wanted someone to be your mayor and have that person not be willing to serve for one reason or another.

It's a big job.

Um we have one slide left left to deal with.

Would you prefer to finish the presentation and handle questions at the end?

Um it excuse me.

I'm I that may that may work, and maybe that might alleviate some of the questions, but I'm also happy to do it as as the mayor pleases.

Why don't you finish your presentation?

Then we'll then we'll get into the nitty gritty here.

Sure.

So I'm gonna jump back.

So this is where we were limited to three, and again, this is with you all have the ability to second yourself but not to nominate yourself.

That's how this is drafted.

Um we talked about what the modified elimination process would look like.

And now there are two new rules we've drafted, these are entirely new, um, that helps you if you get stuck.

And so the first new rule would be a runoff vote, and you all have adopted this sort of in the moment where you've been stuck before.

So this is where you have tied low vote getters.

So that example that we were just talking about with a 3-1-1 vote is a really uh perfect candidate for this discussion.

But it could also happen if we don't have all of you voting either due to an absence or an abstention, and you have a 2-1-1 vote.

So in that case, you would take a runoff vote between the two the two nominees that are tied as the low vote getters.

So it'd be the one-one votes.

And you would eliminate one of them, and then you would re-vote using that same ballot procedure that we just talked about with the two remaining nominees.

So that procedure you're familiar with, we've drafted it in as what you do when you're in that situation.

The other, and this is an additional rule, it's not an instead of rule, is that we have built in a random selection process for situations where all of the other rules don't work.

Well, when does that come up?

It comes up where you have complete ties.

So if we have a three-three vote, or if we have a two-to-two vote.

Now you'll see that this assumes someone is not voting, either because of an absence or because they choose not to vote.

So in those situations, that the runoff isn't going to help.

Um, and so what we suggest is that council must decide to do one of two things.

Following a discussion, council can decide to revote, try it again.

Maybe you've convinced your colleagues to vote differently, or council can decide by motion to use a random selection process.

And the random selection process that we have used here in the past as I understand it, I haven't experienced this with you, is Dina's hat.

Dina brought the hat from our Uncle Sam hat, which is literally random.

You we, you know, throw the pieces of paper in there, we mix them up, we pull them out, and that is your mayor.

But you would need to decide in the moment, pass a motion that will determine that says you are gonna um move to random selection.

So it would be council's decision whether to try to convince yourselves to revote and see if you can work through it, or if you've decided you're truly stuck and ready to use random selection.

That is the end of the presentation.

I'm happy to take questions.

I'm also happy to talk about um council member Fleming, your thought about um uh limiting it to only not allowing a council member to either um nominate or to second themselves.

Thank you again for all the work on this.

I'm sure we've got questions uh before going back to Ms.

Fleming's point, Ms.

McDonald, you had a question uh a moment ago.

Thank you, Mayor.

It actually was on that specific item.

Um I my understanding, and if I recall the conversation was um in a democracy, we always allow a nominee to second themselves for a vote.

So I thought that that's why we allowed that part, but not the first part of nominating themselves.

So I don't recall us giving the direction to not allow us to second ourselves in the event that somebody was nominated.

So I'm not sure how I feel about that, other than it does seem to get to a quicker um either fewer people being nominated and seconded by the council, and so it makes it a quicker process.

If it's easier for their uh the community to understand to do it that way, I could I could understand the benefit of doing it, but it feels a little off to me that we wouldn't allow somebody to do that when in every other circumstance we do.

Thank you, Miss Fleming.

Yeah, I think that um, you know, originally this idea came to me from Chris Rogers, the idea that you you don't nominate or second yourself, and in doing so, what what it means is that we would then in general, unless a nominee then nominated another person and a nominee from another camp then seconded that, then it's pretty unlikely that you would have more than two.

And I think the reason why that's so important for the public is because what then happens is then there's a shadow game for who's gonna get past that next round, and the public is not privy to all of those behind the doors conversations that do happen about who is going to get nominated in return for nominating whoever else and who's gonna get a second round vote.

And I think the public deserves to have clear and transparent voting from us about what we're doing.

And I think it's just too darn gamey.

And the bottom line is that the public ought to be electing the mayor directly, in my humble opinion, but that's not what's before us today.

So I'm trying to provide a really clear path forward for the public to understand what's going on and for them to be more privy to how we select our mayor.

Thank you.

Other questions from council?

Vice Mayor.

My question more is a runoff vote.

The examples that we're using is a three-one, two and one.

But in the case of a three two one where the number does amount to six, would it be possible to put language if council agrees that the two lower numbers do the runoff and then face the the majority uh vote getter?

In this case, the two-one would have the runoff and then face the three.

You could certainly draft it that way.

The way it's drafted now, I wonder how my fellow colleagues feel about that.

I'm sorry.

I wonder how my fellow colleagues feel about that.

Ms.

Rogers?

I'm okay with that.

Ms.

McDonald.

Did we say if you only have one vote that that person would automatically be eliminated?

So in a three, two, one vote, could one also assume that the person that only got one vote could be eliminated from that round, automatically moving the one with two votes and the one with three votes forward for consideration.

That's the way the rule is the proposed rule is currently drafted.

I think the the question was whether um we should draft it differently.

And so um I agree with you that currently it is drafted that if you had a three, two, one, the person with the one vote would be eliminated, and then we would re-vote between the person who got three and the person who got two.

But I see what you're saying, Councilmember Alvarez is to let the person that had one vote and the person that had two votes have a runoff to then let council decide who could go up against the person with three votes.

Is that what you're recommending?

That is correct.

Okay, I could support that as well.

Ms.

Rogers.

Can I clarify um my support?

So if there is a a three to one, um, the person that has one vote, assuming that they voted for themselves should be eliminated.

What I was more thinking is a three to two, because that means that that's the total of the council, correct?

So that's more so what I was thinking.

The one vote though, they're voting for themselves, they should be eliminated.

That's like a given to me.

Vice mayor.

I could definitely understand that point as well.

My whole thought process is since they're still receiving one vote, what if it wasn't them that voted for themselves?

I mean, it's highly unlikely, but just giving them the chance to just get removed through the voting process for transparency.

But I do also agree with it if a person only gets one vote automatically removed, then the second runoff would be the three against the two.

I I could I could support that as well.

Mr.

Kreppy.

Yeah, I I think just with the one vote, regardless of who it is, either the person voted for themselves or they didn't vote for themselves, which I think is telling no matter what out of seven people.

Either they believe that they're the only one that believes they could do it or only one other bullet person believes they can do it and they don't believe that they can do it themselves.

So I think it should be kept the way it is, where it's an automatic drop if there's just one vote.

Other thoughts.

All right, uh, vice mayor.

Is is that the way it's currently written?

Because I don't believe that's the way it was it is.

Oh, that's perfect.

Okay, great.

So the way it's currently written, um, all of the um those who received no votes drop.

And if you've eliminated anyone, then you re-vote.

But that's not the case of receiving one vote.

If you have no one who received zero votes, then anyone who received one vote drops.

Okay.

Unless by doing so, it's the problem I talked about at the beginning where you have one person left because you've eliminated two people, and you only have one person left, and that person didn't have a majority vote.

Okay.

So, um, and the the reason we do the zero votes drop first and then revote is that you could end up with a situation where you've eliminated too many people because you're eliminating both the zero and the ones all at once.

So we want to take it one at a time.

Anybody that got zero votes, they are eliminated, we re-vote and then look at it again.

If I'm so it it sounds like we've I mean we're there.

I'm just wondering whether the probabilities or what situation we've ran into where a person multiple people ran into one vote.

I mean, it's probable, so I should probably wait for that to happen in the future.

But it just seems that the three-one-one, since there's seven of us or six of us at one time, it would be three and then three ones.

So I find that to be highly unlikely.

But then in that case, the ones would do a runoff to see which one was majority amongst the ones to run against the three, right?

Correct.

So the one would not be dropped in that case.

If you have a tied for for because the way it's drafted at most, you could have three.

Now this assumes that the suggestion that council member Fleming made doesn't not get adopted, in which case you can't.

And I'm really speaking of like how to how to make a peanut butter salad here.

I'm saying when you're saying ones are dropped, I'm like, no, actually, there won't be dropped until they would do a runoff in this case.

So the zeros are automatically dropped, but if a person received one vote, that necessary doesn't mean that they're gonna be dropped.

So especially when there's other ones in the in the can we in the group.

Can we put the presentation back up?

I'm gonna go back to the um.

Okay, so this is the page where we talk about the modified process.

So under the second little arrow where it says elimination, this is where you have nobody who received a majority.

Um so you would either have three candidates at this point in time or you would have two.

So if no nominee receives a majority, then you we eliminate the zero votes.

If there was no one who got zero, then we eliminate those with only one vote, unless by virtue of doing that, you're left with one candidate who didn't receive a majority.

So where could that happen?

And I'm gonna jump to where you get stuck.

It's under the runoff vote where you have that three-one one or the two-one one, in which case, if we eliminated the ones, we'd be left with that problem with one candidate who did not receive a majority.

So we don't want to eliminate at that point.

We want to do that runoff.

So the two nominees that received one vote each would have a runoff.

Each of you would vote for one of the two of them.

Whoever wins that would remain, the other person is eliminated, and now the person who won the runoff competes with the person who got the two or the three, and we do it by ballot again.

So that runoff is your way of dealing with the problem of if we eliminate somebody with one vote, we're not left with anyone.

And I don't mean to make that peanut butter sandwich, but it really is if only one individual receives one vote eliminated.

If multiple individuals received one vote, there's still runoff, even though they only got one vote.

Correct, correct, Mr.

Krepke.

Any other any other thoughts right now, Ms.

McDonald?

However, if you had the three one-one and the two ones ran off, and then you ended up with only one vote for one person and the other person was to receive majority votes, it would automatically be the election of the mayor, because you have to get to a majority if if I'm counting the votes correctly.

So even if you ended up with just those two people, you would still end up with your mayor on that secondary vote because you would have then moved some of the votes over to that person that got three, they would end up with majority, which only needs four.

So if I'm doing the math correctly, you should be able to still eliminate the person with one and end up with a mayor in that specific voting.

I want to go to the where was it, the three, two, two.

On that one, is it an automatic that the two-two do a runoff?

Because I think that point's not clear, and that's the scenario I recall us having in the past.

Yes, we would, and we should have included that in as the three, two, two, because you wouldn't be eliminating anyone.

Your elimination rules don't provide for eliminating someone who gets two votes.

I think that part should be clarified.

That because that has been the case in the past that the three two two, the twos will automatically go for a runoff vote and then go whoever gets majority on that goes against the person with three.

I think that needs to be clarified.

Sure.

And I can um if you're wanting to move forward with this this evening, we can make that clarification here, and you can adopt that.

I think that's one that I've seen us get stuck on before.

Yep.

Agreed.

The two items that are still on the table, since it sounds like we coalesced around the the runoff strategy that were in agreement with what's been presented, is uh the issue of whether someone uh can can either nominate or not nominate but vote for themselves or second their own nomination, um, and then the uh the use in the case of that you are really that we're really stuck in a 3-3 vote vote that we we move that we vote we can potentially vote to move to a random selection process.

So uh one at a time, with respect to the uh the question that Miss Fleming raises about whether we uh can second our own nomination.

Um, what what is consequence census?

She does make some compelling points, I admit.

Vice mayor?

I like the point where we're gonna get to the end result faster, but I do like the idea of having three candidates opposed to two.

But however the council feels, I'd see that either one of us definitely either one of those definitely increases transparency to the public.

Other thoughts.

So we have one, I don't care.

Uh Ms.

Rogers.

I think you should be able to second.

Second yourself.

Uh why don't we do a quick straw poll and then Ms.

Fleming can weigh in?

So, in terms of um retaining the ability to second oneself, who is who remains in favor of that?

One, two, three, agnostic.

I'm a little agnostic myself.

I could be persuaded.

So, all right, Miss Fleming, you the floor's yours.

Yeah, I think that if we want to proceed with I'd say what I call the shadow mayor race, um, we ought to figure out a way to be more transparent with the public with it as it stands now.

There really is no great purpose in seconding yourself.

If you need a second and you can't come up with it, seconding yourself for the purpose.

I mean, I think what we think of is being voting as is an American ideal, right?

And we all want to vote and we all want to be part of it, but this is not exactly that.

Here we have our democracy is about being transparent, and we've been elected by the people.

That is where we get to vote.

Um, and on the things we vote for, that is also where we get to vote.

But on this one particular thing, when we second ourselves, if you can't get a second from someone else, what you're doing is you're mudding the waters for the public.

It's not about your rights at all.

Your right is to be here and part of the process and to even be nominated.

We're not depriving you of your rights by preventing you from seconding yourself.

If you can't get a second from one of your colleagues, you're not gonna get the thing, and there's no participation points here.

That's not why we're here.

We're here to get things done for the public.

It's not a game for us.

So I think that that's really the point that I'm trying to make.

Miss Rogers.

I think that that would be fine if I could talk to my colleagues and come up with the second, but because we're held to a different standard about the number of people that we can actually speak to, and we want to make sure that we abide by that.

I think that it would be okay to second yourself.

Um, it's not like I can talk to all six of my colleagues to come up with the second.

Good point.

Thoughts from this end of the dais?

Ms.

McDonald.

I see both sides, and I see what um, you know, council member Fleming is saying is that if you don't come up with a second in those moments, however, I have also seen us where somebody will second themselves and end up being mayor.

And I think it's because in those moments, we're seeing who's actually eligible for those positions and sometimes making a decision right in real time as we have the discussion.

And and sometimes that is done because we don't have an opportunity to talk to each other about this due to the Brown Act, and we're trying to make it transparent because we're doing business in public, but I I've seen people sway, um, you know, depending on what the discussion is, depending on what public comment is and who people are telling us they want to have represent us as their mayor.

So I think that it in some ways I see both sides of it as we want the cleanest process possible, but until we go to an elected mayor for the city, this is about as good as we're going to get.

And so I still feel that it's somewhat democratic to let us nominate or at least second ourselves, but I agree with not having not being able to at least nominate yourself.

So I'm gonna probably go with Natalie on or pardon me, um, council member Rogers on this matter just because I I want it I've seen it shift in this meeting, and I think it's due to me, at least it's been because of the public comment.

Mr.

Krupke.

Yeah, since I was one of the ones that was agnostic on it, um, I'll just say that the the Brown Act comment kind of swayed me a little bit.

Just because you could go to so, you know, um Mark could come to me and be like, hey, I want to run for mayor, and I say, Hey, that's great, and then he goes to somebody else, you know, goes to Natalie and says, Hey, I want to run for mayor, and she's like, Well, I'm already supporting somebody else, and now Mark has no idea if he can get a second or not, and kind of has to, you know, hope instead of understand um it it doesn't give you a clear idea of if you have any support or not.

Um so there you can't not knowing if you're gonna have support going into this process is problematic if you can't if you can't second yourself, because then you can let things play out.

You're like, hey, I think I do have support, but I can't talk to anybody about it, anybody else about it.

So let's see how that plays out.

You get eliminated.

Well, guess I didn't have support, and you move on.

So um, while it does elongate the process and there is the quote unquote possibility of shadow games going on, I think it is because of the brown act restrictions, that is the one thing that that kind of sways me a little bit.

Fair point?

Other thoughts?

Miss Fleming?

Finding out when you can't get a second versus finding out when the vote comes down, don't seem too far apart to me.

Um, I think the public should be very clear that this is not a super transparent process, and that by making three, you know, the possibility for more than two nominations, that I don't think that it's a reality that people don't have their support lined up ahead of time.

And I don't think pretending here that that's not the case is really fair to the public.

I think we ought to acknowledge it if you all want to keep three the possibility for three or more nominees on the floor.

I think that we need to be real about that this is games gamey.

And to be clear, we are limiting the number of possible nominees to three today.

Yeah, but then there's this whole thing about runoffs, and I know people trade votes for those runoffs for nominations in terms of runoff votes, and I just think we need to call it out and be real about it.

Vice mayor.

I would hope that by not being able to make more than a nomination or seconding that would lessen that.

And I also believe that by having one seat, one vote opposed to multiple uh votes would also lessen that uh probability of the gaming ship.

Because you're absolutely right, it does exist.

But I think by making those two changes and we move in the in the better direction.

Well, I won't be supporting um us going to anything other than the suggestion of you nominate someone else, you get seconded by a third party.

That'll be what I put on the floor when I have the motion, and you all, if you don't want to support that can do that.

But I just think that it's time to give it a rest.

Point taken.

Thank you.

Um again, when we began this discussion, the the two two of the main items that this group wanted to address were first of all the ambiguities around the process, and then secondly, um the fact that we can we've been getting stuck without it without a clear remedy, and so we've had to invent things on the fly.

Um back to that second point.

Uh is there consensus around what what the city attorney has suggested in the situation where we've got a three-three deadlocked vote, for example, to take the classic example, and no one's gonna switch sides, but we have to make a decision.

Is there agreement that we write in that we that we do put into writing that that the council at that point can vote to go to a method of random selection?

Quick straw poll.

Is there is there a consensus around that point?

So Mr.

Krepke, say I would just say, can we go to games of skill darts or all right?

So it looks like Miss Manuelos.

So it looks like there's uh we've we've got consensus on that point.

So we can so we can take that that particular issue off the table.

Thank you very much for your your solution, uh, Madam City Attorney.

Vice Mayor.

Sorry to bring right back at you, but is it possible to maybe give three options of what those methods are so when that time does come, we're all sandstone about what was available when the times were good.

I think I think we have our literally it is the hat.

I'm I am supporting so we've drafted the rule that you'll have to designate by motion.

Um we just brought the hat as the option.

If you want, we can write in there names and a hat to be clear.

I would hope that we would set everything in in in as a clear understanding.

So when that time does come, we agreed prior to the situation arising.

So we can uh we can make that change.

If you want to adopt, we can make that change this evening.

Um, and I want to say that the um the concern that council member McDonald had about the 322 is actually drafted in here, and I apologize I should have listed it on this presentation, but it's it's drafted in as the first example, and so it was very clear in drafting this that that is where you've been stuck in the past.

Ms.

McDonald.

I think just going back to the 3-3 vote, and I'm fine with the names in the hat if we only ended up with six people on the dais.

What I think my question was is if you have seven people and one person's just deciding to abstain from a vote, that's where you get gridlocked.

Is there any language that we could say you must vote in the event of a tie or to force a vote, or is that not something we can do in this case?

Well, I mean, there's really no way to force it.

You have rules that say that people should vote.

Um and this rule you know keeps that in there, but there's nothing we can do.

I mean, we can uh we can if it doesn't already say shall we can certainly make it say shall, but there's no way to enforce that, right?

It's it's there's no way to there are other rules that we can uh enforce, right?

If someone writes instead of one person, two people, we can just I would disqualify that, right?

Because they were not breaking they were breaking the rules.

I can't force a any of you to vote.

I can encourage it.

You all can encourage it, but it's really a self-policing kind of issue, and so um and there could be six people because I've also been on the other end of selection where there was only six, so it could have been a tied vote in that case.

So it could have been.

Um, is this gonna be part of the same rules when we actually are going to select somebody?

Because I know we talked about that process as well today is just this, but will that carry over to the next?

So we are gonna bring an item for you to talk about what to do when you have the vacant council seat um kind of a vacancy off cycle, and you choose to appoint as well as the other circumstance.

So that'll be coming at you.

That one is a little more difficult to draft uh because the number of potentials are much greater and unknown, and so we want to make sure we we bring something that actually improves your process.

So again, probably January.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh my sense is that we go to public comment, then we can bring it back for a motion, any final discussion.

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

Peter, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to acknowledge uh it looks like there's at least two or three students here.

Uh I'm not sure if they're a high school or college, but um, you know, I also notice every time you got a big thing of snacks down there.

So if you had snacks for everybody else over here, it's you have a lot of high school college students here, and the things would be much more interesting.

If you want to vote, well, go ahead and vote me for governor, although I do like the sheriff for Riverside, and uh if he steps out, I'll be available.

But I very much enjoyed listening to the word transparency.

It was used at least three or four times.

Transparency.

I think it'd be a great idea if uh you had debates at the great schools, at junior high schools, at the high schools, and at the colleges, and or invite them here, make sure they're snacks.

And that even though you don't exactly speak legalese, you abide legalese.

And most students, including from our age on down, do not know the Constitution.

A lot of these cities are acknowledging the Native American heritage and culture nearby, but uh we disregard the U.S.

Constitution, which came from the matriarchal Iroquois, and how the 13th Amendment has been dismissed and disappeared, which allows lawyers to run the show, which is not what this country is about.

So, I would like to have you put these thoughts to your mind because legal ease is not necessarily lawfulness.

There is a difference, and if our government and courts operate on uh at least uh supposedly on the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments have never been followed, for to break one breaks them all, um, then where are we?

Where's the transparency?

How far back do we want to go in the transparency?

I think it'd be a great idea to have uh a body like yours explain the Constitution for what it really is to this youth so they can see what's going on, and as far as like prop prop 10, that's this big prop 50.

Uh, what are we talking about?

Voting for that.

You all know that uh when it comes to presidential uh uh votes and the government uh governors of California and New York, your votes are all counted before they're cast.

What do we talk?

We already know this.

So I'll finish by saying, I am Peter, I'm hellbent and heaven sent.

So comprehend comprehend you the ultimate dissent, your ultimate voice, your ultimate vote be the 40-day freedom strike.

As Malcolm X famously stated, power never steps back except in the face of a greater power.

California labor and students strike withdrawing our financial support from bankers and utilities.

Truly, I tell you, is the greater power.

Anything less is useless.

I am commandingly calling the call to action for all time is now and now is the time.

Thanks, Peter.

Janice, did you wish to speak?

Floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor.

Janice Carmen here.

Uh I was present when uh both Mayor Mark and Mayor Al uh Vice Mayor Alvarez were elected uh last year, and it was uh it's as confusing today as it was then, and I was new to it that day.

And I've said it before that I think that the average public would be very confused by any of this, and I do think that the city attorney should not be giving any kinds of presentations unless they're specifically related to her and her specific work here, and she is not in charge of voting.

And it's just odd to me.

I do know that people who are in charge of voting, and um I don't think the attorney should be here pitching something, and the reason is because there's a sway to that that you think she has special knowledge.

She may or she may not have about voting, but it's not her expertise.

That said, I support what Victoria said, and I said it last year.

The mayor should have a four-year term, and I'd like to see you pull away tonight and go and change the charter to a four-year mayor.

This is the biggest city north of San Francisco, and we need a mayor who can be a mayor full time and uh takes it on as the responsibility that it is for other cities.

So I'd like to see the mayor have a four-year term, and I'd like to see you change the charter immediately, if not sooner.

Let our mayors are let our uh lawyers, our 10 or 11 lawyers that had been hired.

Let them all work on the charter and have it come up with perfect language that we can elect our mayor.

And as far as the urgency of this, uh, unfortunately, Eddie is going to be rotating out, and that is the only urgency.

So I think you should just address Eddie's position at the moment that he will be rotating out and leave the rest uh to changing the charter and coming back and seeing what we can do about electing a real mayor for four years.

And um this 322 and 311 and 333.

I mean, uh it it's really it's it's just sounds nutty.

It sounds like somebody's talking about the lotto or something, and I just don't think that anybody that is interested uh in the process could be informed by listening to this.

It just sounds like nonsense, and it might make sense to all of you, and I also remember who got no votes last year, and that was somewhat painful.

So I understand where you all stand and you want to uh manipulate and uh have things work out in the direction of your small uh area, but I'd like to see a mayor four years, and that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

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

Students, now is your chance.

You could weigh in on the internal voting mechanisms of Santa Rosa City Council.

Thank you for sticking for sticking this out and seeing democracy in action.

All right, seeing no other members of the public, we'll close public comment, and we will bring it back to Ms.

Fleming for a tension-filled motion.

Uh looking at the any any final comments before uh Miss Fleming does the motion.

I I will I will make a comment just to signal that you are you were are very close to convincing me and I would have no trouble supporting you, although I have to admit that uh Miss Ms.

Rogers' point about the Brown Act swung me over uh to team Rogers in this one, but otherwise I think you're I think your point's entirely valid.

I think that if the Brown Act were observed, then I would be in favor of what is written, but I don't think that there's any illusion that it is.

So I'm gonna go forward and I hope the press democrats not listening to this meeting.

Hopefully they checked out.

I think that we have to be honest that the process is not transparent and the public deserves a clear clean process, and that this uh is the way to a clean process.

Survivor Santa Rosa is a very odd evening.

We can all admit that it is it is a very distinct moment on council that if that part is true.

And and the thing is is here we have this opportunity to be a beacon of hope amongst a democracy that is crumbling around us at the national level.

We can at least be straightforward and transparent here.

But um I can give you all the option.

If if I if you think I have a second from you, then I'll put uh forward a second option.

Otherwise, somebody else can read this.

Um can I get a second?

Wow.

I'm I'm tempted, but I don't think I think I think council thinks we've we've taken a few steps forward and wants to stick with that, and so for that reason, I'm gonna I'll I'll stick with the the presentation as it was, or I'm I'll stick with the um the changes as presented, but I did want to signal that your your suggestion I thought was entirely valid, but again the brown the brown act consideration swung me over.

Okay.

If that's how you feel about it, mayor, you can make it.

Ms.

Rogers, would you would you mind?

I'll make the motion, way of a reading of the text, adopt resolution titled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa revisal city council manual of procedures and protocols.

All right, we have a motion by the vice mayor and a second by Res Rogers.

If I may, Mr.

Mayor, I wanted to clarify.

Um, are you is that motion to draft in rather than saying a random selection process designated by the council?

Do you want to say random selection by throwing by putting names in a hat and choosing randomly?

Or something substantially?

So there I I sensed I sensed that there was a desire given just to just to um make concrete as much as we can.

Does anybody have an objection?

Ms.

Rogers.

Only reason why I would say that to have an option is because like what if we're up here and Dina forgets her hat or something like that happens and we don't have a hat, and that's the way that it's stated.

I think I think we would still would specify a drawing of names.

Something something like didn't necessarily wouldn't necessarily have to be a hat, but uh a drawing of names, something like that.

Drawing of names by random selection.

Perfect.

Looking to counsel for some head nods.

All right.

Mr.

Mr.

O'Krevki, did you have?

Okay.

And drawing of names from the hat.

Ms.

McDonald.

And I believe we also said the point of clarification on the 322 vote.

It was in your notes, but not in the presentation.

So just to make sure that that's also part of the motion.

It is actually in the in the motion, it's in what was drafted in terms of your rule.

I apologize that I, when I was drafting the presentation, I just want to make sure it was I missed it.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

No, that's fine.

Thank you.

So I think Madam City Clerk, I think we're ready to call for the vote, unless Madam City Attorney, anything else we need to tighten up?

I'm sorry.

Oh, Miss Ben Whales.

Just a quick question.

Could I hear the motion again, please?

Of course.

Vice Mayor.

Yes, of course.

Uh way reading of the text and adopt resolution titled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, revising city council manual procedures and protocols and adopting the pulling of the names out of the hat in a in a breakable time.

Are you wanting to specify how to do that?

The random drawing of the names.

So does that include whether or not you can second yourself?

So we it does not prohibit seconding yourself.

Um Madam City Attorney, do you have everything tightened up that we need to have tightened up right now?

Yes, I just wanted to um council member Ben Willow, so you clear on the motion on the floor.

Yes.

Okay.

All right, madam city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers?

Aye.

Council Member O'Krepke?

Aye.

Council Member McDonald?

Aye.

Council Member Fleming?

No.

Councilmember Ben Willows?

No.

Vice Mayor Alvarez?

Aye.

Mayor Stepp?

Aye.

Let the record show this passes with five affirmative votes and council members Ben Willows and Fleming voting no.

And let the record also show that that our city council can bring drama even to the discussion of what kind of voting procedures we put together to say nothing of the actual vote itself.

Again, students, you need to tune in for both the vice mayor and the mayor votes.

It's more exciting than you than you think.

Madam City Attorney, thank you so much.

Oh good.

I will just clarify that this will be the process that will be in place for your um selecting of your vice mayor, which I understand is the second meeting in November.

Um we can at any point in time if you all ask me to bring it back to tweak the process if you don't like it, either after that or any other time.

So just keep that in mind.

And if this this one doesn't work, we can keep trying.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

This was this was a tough assignment.

All right, and with that, we are we are gonna have our single public comment on non-agenda matters for the evening.

So Peter and Janice, this is your time.

And again, I'm looking to I'm looking to the students.

Uh this is a chance for any members of the public to comment on items not listed on the agenda.

Um actually, we got Peter, we're gonna we're gonna stop you for a second because I didn't see we have we have Tay with us.

Tay, you're first up, grab a grab a podium and you're you're good to go.

We'll go Tay, Anya, and then Peter.

Kin says that criminal activity has a serious impact on citizens of California.

It states that victims of crime are entitled to reasonable notice of all public proceedings upon request to a speedy trial and a prompt and final conclusion of the case.

So I could keep going on and on, but I'm not here to recite the constitution that I'm all sure you're very familiar with.

My name is Tay Butler, and I'm here to tell you how my wife and I were victims of a crime.

And so far we have not had access to any of these rights.

Um I don't have a lot of time, so I can't go into the details of what happened that night, but it was captured in my dash cam video and provided to the police.

Um but I will explain how a very apathetic response to my rights as a victim has led us to this point of me standing in front of you a second time seeking justice.

So let me begin uh just by breaking down basically what happened.

My wife and I were surrounded and harassed.

We were subjected to racial slurs, and I was ultimately jumped and attacked by five to six individuals.

They shouted about freedom of speech, they made degrading comments about my blackness, and they spat at my wife.

When I got out of the car to protect her, more of them surrounded us.

They screamed at the N-word inches away from my face, as we sit with our backs to the car.

Then five to six of them jumped me.

They wrestled me to the ground, punch me in the face and head while I struggled to defend myself.

And after striking me several times, the main instigator went to walk away before turning back to strike me one last time before running away.

So our version of events is supported by video.

Um we provided all this to the police, and despite this, we have not received any results or outcome of any following investigation.

We've we were disregarded at the police at the scene that night, and we've only been given a runaround since.

Police representatives have told us repeatedly that the officers at the scene acted properly, but according to the 28th Amendment, that's just not true.

When we identified one of the assailants at the scene of the assault, we were told that it was his word against mine.

We've been told a variety of excuses as to why he's not been detained and allowed to leave the scene, from him claiming to be an unassociated bystander to just him defending his friends, and then ultimately the police conceded that they just got bad intel, that he blatantly lied to them, and that his story was corroborated by witnesses who were not even present at the time.

So this has been very frustrating for both of us.

This has consumed both mine and my wife's life for the last five months.

Um, and you can tell that I was met with even more mixed emotions when I recently read that Lieutenant Chris Mahern went through something very similar a couple of weeks ago.

Um he was subjected to homophobic slurs while hanging out with his group.

And what baffles me is that after his altercation, the person was arrested on susp suspicion of hate crime.

When we were told that it would be impossible to prove because there were no swastikas in our incident.

So, as evident by our assault and the lack of any results presented to us, it's clear to me that we're being denied our rights listed in the California constitution.

So let's not forget that the words in that constitution says that everyone has a right.

And everyone, all citizens are affected by this.

We all have a right to go out in public and not be harassed by slurs, and that's thank you, Tay.

And SRPD will be in touch as they have been in the past.

Anya, did you want to say a few words as well?

All right, thank thank you both for being here.

Uh Peter, you're next, and then we'll go to Tyler.

Thank you.

Um, Peter Alexander.

So, couple little points I just wanted to share.

I I I see in the paper that the Farm Bureau that a worker embezzled 375,000 from the Farm Bureau.

And this could just be a rumor, but uh uh they're maybe making a deal with Girodelli, who works there, to start a whole new uh a whole new line of vegan chocolate bars with Zoe Rosenberg on the on the cover of the chocolate bars.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but uh it's just a rumor.

I'm just letting you know.

At the same time, they're charging her, and this case is going on.

Uh, they're charging her for four chickens, but in the meantime, they uh claim in the newspapers that over one million chickens and ducks were euthanized because of bird flu that this group brought to that those barns.

Whatever happened to that?

Was that just a blatant baloney on the media's part uh or the or the owner's part?

Did they sell the chickens or collect the insurance?

Just exactly what happened with that.

I'd like to know.

I'm curious.

And there is a certain person in this room that also provided some of these people a uh manifest from a Pennsylvania trucking company that was bringing in eggs from uh Pennsylvania to these places that were that are in question.

Okay.

What's next?

Um I'm not sure if this is true either.

Carlos Santana might be signing guitars, he's a vegan, he might be showing up on Thursday or Friday with Clint Eastwood and Arnold.

I'm not sure.

These are just rumors.

But a lot of people are very interested in this case.

Now, regarding uh Andy Lopez, there's an event tomorrow.

I'd like to invite people to that.

I know that uh uh the supervisors one time I spoke.

There were 200 people very angry until I said something like Andy was an angel.

And everybody got quiet, put their hands up, and then I said, Well, angels are here for a reason, and we're disregarding the reason.

So I hope that uh we take into account that Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Einstein, Gandhi, Jesus, Peanuts Gang.

I mean, they're all vegans, and and this still is being kept in the back, but it's very true.

As you do under the least of me, you do unto yourselves.

Iolera, what is this?

A socialist communist bar association backed psyops operation against law enforcement.

They have no jurisdiction, and they deny the U.S.

constitution, which has already uh uh gotten rid of the uh Thirteenth Amendment, which if the Thirteenth Amendment were back in the U.S.

Constitution were the law of the land, 90% of the bar lawyers would be out of work.

Imagine that.

People that never work to start with, except with a linguistic liability to tell uh uh fancy words into lies and and charge people for for whatever is gone.

But I think that a horse and buggies could come back and there'd be new jobs for them cleaning the streets.

I think that we're all better than this, and that we um need to uh pay attention to our kindness to animals.

Thank you, Peter.

We'll go to Tyler and then Janice.

Hello, my name's Tyler, and I wanted to start off with the SRPD mission statement, but I will say what something something that Victoria Fleming said earlier, which is we should be a beacon of democracy as it is crumbling around us.

The SRPD mission statement is that Santa Rosa Police Department is committed to making Santa Rosa a safe place to live, work, and play.

And the SRPD code of ethics says, as a law enforcement officer officer, my fundamental duty is to serve the community, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence and disorder, and to respect the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality, and justice.

Justice, that is what we have come here before, and we have come here again begging for it.

Your constituents, our neighbors, my friends, were assaulted on the street in broad daylight in May, and the police won't even read them their Marcy's rights and haven't even assigned them a victim's advocate.

We came here begging for a report to be made on the 20 July 22nd, and nothing has happened, even within the context of the police budget having been nearly doubled in the midst of a city financial crisis, and our police liability insurance has skyrocketed to an unsustainable degree, further exacerbating the financial crisis, and even after all of that, a three million dollar settlement for police brutality.

Does this city council have the ability to reign in the police or does it not?

Justice is not ignoring or closing our eyes and covering our ears to the injustice around us and pretending it is not there.

These are your constituents.

And when we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and we say liberty and justice for all, I thought we all meant it.

As Obama said, to the Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative, at a time when we face enormous global challenges from the environment and climate change and to empowering women to income inequality, perhaps now, more than ever in human history, you have the power to change your communities, your countries, and the world.

I am begging you for change.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

I don't think the microphones working.

The microphone doesn't seem to be working.

You're on Janice.

The microphone's working.

Oh, is it?

Okay.

Um, shoes to follow.

Um, I just want to say that um you're all public servants, and we the people appreciate what you do every day.

And I came to the city um, I think it was Monday, and I saw that there had been the vandalism, and um it it it's very unnerving and very disturbing to um have this sort of thing happening, and I remember there there was a time when I took the Israeli paper for I don't know, a few years, and um I actually wrote a screenplay around that time, and it was about uh the people coming up onto the beach and a baby that uh suffocated, and it moved me a great deal that this was going on.

But at the time, I did think that you know, one day our borders may have these kinds of things happening, and now we have so many violent uh crimes that we've never heard of uh before happening, and uh there's no discrimination about who or what or how it happened.

There was an elderly man in the paper a few days ago described as a uh person who had road rage and he um he turned the corner and hit two women and seriously uh injured them and stepped on it to do it.

So there's just all of these things, and they the county has now called the mental health uh agency the uh behavioral health.

And I don't know how to take that because behavior seems to be like something you train for, but the mental health it's not necessarily your trained for it, even though I know there's a couple of people on the board that are.

So um anyway, it's supposed to be domestic violence awareness month, and I don't know, it just seems like violence is like a virus.

It just seems to kind of like move through our society now, and I think kindness and uh you know, overtures of help are something that remedy a lot of this um kind of difficult thinking that uh makes people act in rage and violent ways.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

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

Last chance, high school students.

Thank you thanks for coming out tonight, everybody.

We're adjourned.