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Back to you.

All right.

Good morning.

We're going to call this meeting to order at 9 a.m.

Madam Secretary, can you call the roll?

Yes.

Committee member McDonald here.

Chair O'Kropkey?

Here.

And committee member Fleming is absent by prior arrangement.

Thank you very much.

We have no remote participation.

Any announcements?

Seeing none, we'll move on to approval of minutes.

Do you have anything to say about the minutes?

Alright, neither do I.

We will adopt those minutes as submitted.

We'll go to item five, public comment on non-agenda items.

Is anybody's opportunity to talk about anything under the purview of the public safety subcommittee that is not agendized?

Seeing nobody moving at all, we will close public comment on non-agenda items and we'll move on to new business.

Item 6.1 measure H implementation plan.

Chief Westrope, take it away.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair OK and Councilmember McDonald.

Scott Westrope Fire Chief of the City of Santa Rosa.

Today just have a brief update on where we're at with implementation of Measure H.

Am I presenting.

Thank you.

So we've I've shown you this slide before and we've been through it.

There's just some background on what measure H is and how it was passed.

What I will brief you on that's new information is that to date with the three tax rolls we've received, the City of Santa Rosa's received 6.642 million dollars in sales tax revenue directly to the fire department through Measure H.

So we're seeing what we predicted to be for a total of the sales tax measure to be around 60 million dollars countywide.

Um, and then our 14.4% um roll of that, we're seeing that right on target.

So things are moving on exactly as we had predicted.

Um this slide, I've shown you this before.

This was the leader's intent for the team to put together the Measure H implementation plan, working with finance and working with the city manager's office.

Uh they did a fantastic job of putting together a plan that essentially what I would label it as it's aggressive to get resources on the street, but it's also um cautious and insulated to make sure that it's financially stable and that measure H remains financially insulated from any other of the of the other um funding streams that we have.

So the really good news is that um we're moving along very well.

We've actually, um, with the two fire inspectors, we've moved two of our limited-term fire inspectors that were um grant-funded positions.

We moved them to FTEs under measure H.

So we've retained those employees, and then Fire Marshal Loenthal's team has gone through and done interviews for uh backfilling the limited term positions that are grant funded that are um will be funded for the next couple years.

So we have some good candidates for that, and we're moving forward on backfilling those positions.

So we've increased our capacity in the fire prevention bureau by about 25 percent.

Um the other news is we are able to place Engine 9 in service on October 6th along with Battalion 2.

Um, this is really a catalyst moment for the city of Santa Rosa, in that some of the media was a little misleading.

It wasn't a new fire engine, it wasn't a physical piece of apparatus, it was an engine company that went into service, and so um engine nine has been on the docket as you know since 1998.

Um we've had property for uh station nine since 1998 and just never been able to get it across the finish line.

So we now have an engine nine, so instead of 10 engines on the road every day, we have 11 engines on the road every day.

So we've really increased our capacity there.

Um and then battalion two uh typically we only had one on duty supervisor 24 hours a day.

Now we have two.

And while they do split the call volume and they do help each other out on larger scale emergencies, and it really doubles our capacity on a day-to-day basis, where the really big impact is instead of having a 14 to 1 span of control or a 15 to 1 span of control, they now have a seven to one span of control.

So the training, the district familiarization, um, the secession planning, the crew interaction, the rumor control, is really amplified by getting that second uh manager on duty on a day-to-day basis.

So and then we still have plans for a uh heavy rescue to go in service.

Um we're kind of slow rolling this from the standpoint of we need to make sure that our expenditures that we've predicted on our revenues that we predicted are solid over the course of a year, and then see what the general fund looks like in the next fiscal year.

So we're kind of letting it play out and and see how it goes before we jump too far headstrong into um staffing up the rescue, but that still is part of the plan that the financial plan that we have set for measure H, but more to come on that.

Uh next steps.

Um, we have a working group um that's been formed, and they're putting together all of the changes that would uh be necessary for us to put a heavy rescue, a staffed heavy rescue into service in the city.

It's something that's never been done before.

It'll be an operate operational area resource.

So we have a team putting together that uh development strategy, and then we're working on identifying locations with the real estate team and TPW for a temporary and permanent station nine.

Um this slide is not to make any promises that we can't deliver on.

This is just for a general sense of where we're looking.

Um as you know, the council's approved selling the Franz Kafka property for station nine that we've had since 1998.

Um, we have money to build a fire station nine through Measure H.

So we're looking in the area of Santa Rosa Avenue and Elsa Court Street, somewhere in that area.

Um, my preference is to find an existing commercial building and retrofit it into a fire station because the time and the cost would be significantly reduced versus breaking ground.

Um so we're looking in that area.

These are some of the properties that we're we're currently exploring concurrently at the same time, concurrently means the same time, but um sorry, not quite enough coffee yet.

But um, so we're we're kind of going down two tracks at the same time with the real estate team, and everybody's really working together on trying to find a place to put a permanent station nine, and in the meantime, where we could potentially put engine nine on a temporary basis because they're currently running out of station one, and we'd like to get them into their service area of district nine uh further down the avenue.

Um we develop we're developing the first report for the uh measure H Citizens Oversight Committee.

Uh we had our first meeting, which Cherokrepke is part of uh through the mayor and tax mayors and uh council members association.

Um so it's a much bigger committee than what we see with PSAP.

Uh, but we had our first introductory meeting, and now every meeting from here on out will be brown acted, and um and we're preparing our first report for that.

And then we're developing new systems to closely monitor um the revenue and expenditures of measure H and the personnel in and out of Measure H to make sure that we're we're really crossing our T's and dotting our I's with um all the financial reports that that go into this to make sure that it is insulated from the general fund.

And with that, that's the update.

Um, and I'll take any questions or comments that you have.

Any questions?

Okay.

Thank you for the update, Chief.

And I appreciate the taxpayers, you know, adding this measure.

You can see how it enhances um our deliverables for public safety.

One of the questions I have is how um flexible is this budget?

So if we were to say have lots of overtime that wouldn't have been scheduled, could you use some of measure H to backfill that as opposed to taking it out of general fund?

Um the short answer is no, it's not very flexible.

It's set up much like well, exactly like PSAP in that it's to enhance not supplant.

So there's a maintenance of effort that we have to achieve comparing the general fund expenditures from fiscal year 21 to measure H.

And so we have to prove that maintenance of effort that we're not supplanting the general fund.

So Measure H has its own essentially the way we've developed it is it's its own little fire department.

So its expenditures and its financial plan is laid out exactly like you see in the general fund, except it's its own fund, and so it has its own overtime line, it has its own operational expenses, service and supplies, and obviously the personnel costs.

So we can't necessarily rob Peter to pay Paul.

Um they they live insulated in and of themselves, and we built a financial plan at the direction of the city manager to make sure that measure H is solvent for 10 years on its own, so it doesn't impact the general fund, and conversely, we can't pull money from the general fund to offset expenses in Measure H.

So it's a very fire department was to go like this one that is insulated.

If they were to do overtime, that would get billed to measure H.

Correct.

Okay.

It has its own it has its own overtime line.

There's a budget of $600,000 per year in the Measure H budget.

So we have it set up to where if the Measure H employee works overtime in the general fund, it gets charged to the general fund.

If somebody works overtime in Measure H, it charges Measure H.

And so that's where this accounting really comes into play is to make sure that people are charging to the right codes based on where their home payroll code is.

Thank you.

Just two questions for me.

Um first uh sticking with the numbers, when do you think we will have the first set of revised uh reviewed numbers for what the actual um revenue from the sales tax measure is?

So we're coming up on the first year in March.

I would say um in March, once we see a year of um revenue, and then that gives us about six months of expenditures, we'll have a pretty good sense of of where we're at.

So I would say by the close of the fiscal year, we'll have a really solid idea of what we're looking at as far as revenues and expenditures go.

So we can certainly bring something back at the next public safety subcommittee meeting.

Um, that's a you know, point time count essentially, look at the budget where we're at with it.

But um, I would say we're we're kind of like using this year benchmark as the point to say okay.

Now we have a year of revenue, we have a year, you know, not quite a year of expenditures, and we'll have a pretty good sense of of how we're looking.

But right now we're working with um CFO Wagner on all those reporting mechanisms and just tracking on a not a daily basis but on a on a monthly basis at least where we're at and we're hitting the mark right on every time.

So right now we're looking very good as far as meeting the uh financial plan of measure H.

Okay.

And then my final question is um when looking at station nine, um, how are we considering the location with the relocation of station eight as well as the um the the construction of the Hearn overpass uh and the proposed annexation of South Santa Rosa Avenue?

It seems as though the places that you have marked out here, and I know you said this is not a promise, don't hold you to it, but it seems as though should station eight open on Herne, it these would be fairly close together or easy for one for eight to get to where these are versus if it was further down the avenue.

So it's a great question, and actually what it's tied to is everything with measure H has to be tied to some sort of deployment analysis.

So we're fortunate enough to have our own as a city, whereas smaller agencies throughout the county had to use an international association of firefighters deployment analysis.

But if you look at our current deployment analysis, what it shows is that it's an addendum at the very last page.

If station eight gets moved to where it is going at Hearn and Dutton and the Hearn Overcross goes in and is improved as it is.

So those two pieces are happening.

Then station nine gets moved from where it was on Franz Kafka further down the avenue, and it takes into account potential annexation.

So in our estimation, through a data-driven analysis, it is going in the correct location for all of those, all of those factors.

So it'll improve service down the avenue even with annexation if it occurs.

It improves service to the South Park area, which is really its first due area that we need to improve service times on in the Costco area and to Taylor Mountain.

So those all those factors come into play, but we do have data-driven analysis to back up where it's going.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Those are all of my questions with that.

We will move to public comment on this item.

Is there any public comment on this item?

Seeing none, we will bring it back for final comments.

Any final comments?

None for me.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Really appreciate it.

With that, we will move on to item 6.2, the wildland urban interface area mapping.

Fire Marshal Lowenthal, please.

Good morning, Council Member O'Krepke and McDonald.

Uh, my name's Paul Ollenthal, fire marshal with the fire department here to bring forward uh what we kind of teased uh during our council uh meeting earlier this uh month regarding code adoption.

There was questions that surfaced around insurance as well as around our wildland urban interface.

Um and the purpose of today's item uh is to again tease some of the changes that we are proposing, uh catch you up on uh changes that have occurred to our mapping for both the state's uh high fire and uh severity zones, uh our existing wildland urban interface uh and kind of the history of uh where we're uh at today and where we've come from.

So as you know, um uh after the CWPP, the community wildfire protection plan was adopted about a week and a half before the glass fire.

Uh one of the uh objectives of the plan was to identify uh any potential changes to the wild interim interface, but it was specific to Coffee Park.

Um we did an analysis of Coffee Park, um weighed a lot of the concerns that we had heard uh from uh individuals like Councilmember McDonald with insurance rates and whatnot, and it just did not meet uh the intention of what the true definition of wild end urban interface should be, even given the history of what had occurred in that neighborhood.

Uh so there was a decision that was made uh back then to not uh move uh Coffee Park into the wildland interface, and we kept the boundaries as they were, also knowing that at some point in time Cal FIRE would be making recommendations in and around the city, and our goal would be to use that information to also make uh potential further changes to the community.

Uh so in December of 2022, Calfire did release uh what they refer to as their state responsibility area maps uh for their high, very high and moderate risk areas immediately around the city.

Um our goal is to kind of uh monitor what was happening on the outside of the city because we knew there was the potential that that would affect how the city would become mapped.

You can obviously assume that if you've got red or very high immediately adjacent to the city, even though we weren't seeing the city's maps for quite some time, that there was likely going to be some red immediately in the city, or where we had the very high previously and we don't have it, we knew that we'd potentially be going down in severity.

Um that being said, uh we brought uh our maps uh as required by law for these um uh state responsibility areas to you guys, but that was uh after they were initially released to us in February of 2025, and we're ultimately adopt earlier this year in uh March of and April of 2028 were the first and second readings.

So just to kind of recap where we are today, so these are the current wildland urban interfaces that we've become very familiar with that have been uh with us in the city since 2009.

Um we primarily referred to them as the Fountain Grove area, the Bennett Valley area, the uh Skyhawk area, and then Oakmont.

And Oakmont has historically also uh taken into account the little uh uh piece of land uh on the county campus uh just north of the skilllicos.

So this is what we first saw in 2022.

Um we had our old uh SRA state responsibility maps outside the city in your top left corner, um, and you can see how um previously the red kind of touched and uh hugged into the Skyhawk area and also dropped down towards Oakmont.

And for the most part, the rest of the city stayed at a relatively low uh risk uh for quite some time.

Uh then in the bottom right-hand corner, you saw our first glimpse of the changes that were coming to the city.

Um we saw Fountain Grove uh immediately north of Fountain Grove move into more of the moderate, but then we saw the area uh directly uh kind of on the old Redwood Highway near the Kaiser campus uh stay at the low risk area, which in a roundabout way kind of helped us with our thought process on any potential changes to Coffee Park that we did not previously make uh when we brought this uh those recommendations forward several years ago.

But a couple surprises kind of popped up.

Um we saw uh the areas uh near Taylor Mountain, Kowana Springs Road around the fairgrounds go from uh a lower risk to a moderate uh sorry to a high risk.

And then we saw our Bennett Valley area get very high, where it was previously moderated, moderate, and then we saw Oakmont kind of get some lower risk immediately adjacent to the city limits.

So it transitioned from a moderate in the park to you can see the yellow, which uh dropped it down out of high and very high down to moderate.

Um we still saw a lot of the quote unquote red uh pushing further towards highway 12.

So previously the only high-risk areas that we had identified in the city by Calfire that required by state law certain uh requirements to be in effect, was a small little island in the middle of Fountain Grove, uh the area uh up and around Skyhawk, the Pythian uh campus, and then we saw uh from a very high standpoint kind of the southern end of Oakmont.

When the maps got released uh to us finally after a couple years of of waiting, um our uh sus our suspicions were confirmed, and we saw our fountain grove area primarily remain the same, but we saw some drastic changes around the fairgrounds, pushing pretty deep into uh what we refer to as our Bennett Valley district or District 4 around Montgomery High School, Creekside, a lot of those neighborhoods, as well as uh it kept a lot of parts of Anadale Heights and Bennett Valley Heights very high, but then we saw other parts of our existing wildlife interface completely come out of any mapped risk by the state, both in the uh Rincan Valley uh area as well as the uh Bennett Valley area.

Um we also saw um the Stonebridge area in Oakmont go to very high, and we saw the state mapped areas.

Now again, these are areas that were required by law to enforce state codes uh spill over well into Oakmont on the north side of uh Oakmont Drive.

So in between Oakmont Drive and Highway 12, which was an area that had never previously been mapped as a wild interval interface area.

And then we saw the risk associated with the hillside of Oakmont, the White Oak, the areas essentially in between Oakmont Drive and Anadale State Park reduce in risk in some areas.

And that's been kind of an interesting conversation that we've had with uh our residents uh in the Oakmont area over the years, is they've historically seen Anadale as a threat to their community.

And we've explained to them that really when you look at the high-risk fire danger days, we're typically faced with the north wind, those dry winds that come out of the north northeast.

And we've always explained that really Anadale is more of a uh at a risk from Oakmont pushing into Anadale.

The typical wind flow that we receive here in Sonoma County in Santa Rosa is that southerly winds that come off the coast, kind of push the afternoon breeze with the higher humidity, and that's where the risk really is to Anadale when, or I'm sorry, to Oakmont, when we would have that southern wind potentially pushing something out of Bennett Valley up into Anadale and into Oakmont.

But those are typically short duration, short-lived events, and are typical to what we see around here in Santa Rosa, where we get a couple hours of afternoon breeze, and then it pretty much dies off.

A lot of that was kind of confirmed with the new modeling that we saw here.

But that being said, we had to still make some recommendations and kind of figure out how to take what Calfire is giving us, and again, knowing that we have areas that are now in high and very high and have to have rules applied to them that would be the same rules that we'd be applying in our own wildland interface, and then come forward with recommendations on how to redraft, redraw our current wildland urban interface maps, and potentially, although we've always looked at how we're going to expand our wild land interface, look at opportunities at contracting it where there's no, in our opinion, reason to keep a community or a portion of our community in those areas, especially given the concerns that we've heard from council as well as our um our community with insurance and just being mapped in an area that may not actually need to be mapped in that specific area.

That being said, finally, um this, and again, this is a difficult conversation to have and trying to keep it in a couple slides.

Uh, when obviously we bring these recommendations forward to our community meeting, as well as back to council with a formal recommendation.

We'll have a lot more detail and a lot more explanation.

But what you're kind of seeing here is a combination of single hatches and green and red, and then cross hatches.

So cross hatches is where we recommend that we keep the wildland interface as it is, uh the single green hatching, which is what you're primarily seeing in South Santa Rosa, Southeast Santa Rosa around the fairgrounds as well as around again from Montgomery High School kind of pushing into Creekside and out towards uh Woodlake near the Bene Valley Golf Course would all go into our new wildland urban interface, our own local with some of our own local rules, and again, these are areas that are already going to have to now require by law to comply with state responsibility uh requirements for uh uh wildland urban interface areas.

We're recommending that we expand it in Oakmont, keep Oakmont as it is on the Anadale side of uh Stonebridge, sorry, Highway 12 and Oakmont Drive, but expand it, kind of along White Oak Drive, uh out to Highway 12, include the entire campus of the county.

Um we're recommending looking at pulling it back in the areas that you can see that would be to the northeast of uh Calistoga Road and Highway 12, the Safeway Calistoga shopping center, uh, as well as the neighborhoods immediately around it.

Uh we're looking at expanding it off of Calistoga Road uh to the west of it.

You can see it uh up in there, as well as um uh actually that's it.

So a lot of changes, a lot to kind of unfold here, but again, wanted to at least give you a snapshot of where we're at uh as a department and the recommendations that we're prepared to make and again uh uh relay to our community based on recommendations from Calfire, our own personal uh history here, as well as some of the feedback we've gotten from council.

So with that, uh take any questions.

All right, thank you very much.

Council.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Um, just a couple questions, and I'm not sure if this falls with you, fire marshal, or if it's something that goes to the permit department, but I know there's some new changes in legislation around CEQA and what um builders need to do so we can really meet the requirements of affordable housing and building in our area.

But when we have these new maps in the WUI, um does that then trigger that those uh requirements need to be made to make sure that there's more safety in place, or is it do you have any idea if there's a caveat that still allows building to move forward?

Um I know there's one area specifically in my district that looks like it's going to be in one of your WUI maps, but I'm not sure how that works, and I think that's the concern from residents over on the east side of town is that there's some type of waiver that the state has put in place when it comes to CEQA or um future building.

So thank you for the question.

I'm not aware of anything that based on the maps would allow them to waive CEQA.

And in fact, uh, with some of the requirements in place now, there's more uh SQL requirements specifically around evacuation, like we know, um, and other elements.

Um we have looked at locally, uh we've had conversations about whether or not uh we uh as a city want to make recommendations that may limit types of construction in the wild element interface.

Uh we uh have that uh as an item in the general plan to explore that, but we haven't uh physically uh adopted anything that would limit it at a city level.

Um a majority of what you're seeing with the maps uh really uh revolves around code code requirements uh primarily for building, uh to your point, uh, but also some of our local ordinances.

So again, for areas that um are are now gonna be in our wildland interface, uh a majority of them are areas that are already in the state's high and very high uh risk areas, and those will have to comply with state law regardless of what we do with our own wild land urban interface.

Um the areas that we're um making recommendations to reduce our wild urban interface, our own local mapped areas, which would be of above and beyond the states areas, uh, would primarily affect whether or not they're going to build to wildland urban interface standards through the fire code and building code and comply with some of our local ordinances that we've recently adopted that involve defensible space, what type of landscape mulch, uh things, things like that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh I don't have any questions, so we will move to public comment on this item.

If there's anybody who would like to speak on this item, please move towards one of the microphones now.

Nobody is moving, so we will end public comment and come back to the dais.

Any final comments, Councilmember McDonald?

Uh for me, um I'm good with your recommendations for the local WUI.

Um, and I appreciate this presentation.

One thing I do want to caution is that when we do talk about the WUI to not make any promises or assertions about insurance.

Um, legally, uh insurance carriers are not allowed to use these kinds of maps.

Specifically, they they probably won't use a local map, but the the uh Cal Fire fire severity maps.

Um they're not allowed to use those uh by law.

I'm not saying that prevents them from using them, but they're just not supposed to, but there's other things that go into insurance availability that other than just these maps.

So with that caveat, thank you very much for this.

I appreciate that uh the presentation and uh we will move on to item 6.3 uh addressing bike e-bike concerns.

Chief Cregan and Captain Marinzik.

Okay.

Good morning, council members, committee members.

Dan Morensic, I'm a captain with the Santa Rosa Police Department.

I'm here just to provide a brief presentation related to e-bikes, some of the things that we're seeing in Santa Rosa, as well as some recent um legal and law changes regarding them.

So first, real quickly, just kind of a definition of what e-bikes are, because there's a little bit of a misunderstanding, I think, in the community and throughout.

So they basically are bicycles, and they have a battery-powered electric motor that provides assistance.

I'm going to kind of detail in some later slides some of the different classifications of e-bikes, and then if they don't meet those classifications, they're not actually an e-bike.

I also put in here a caveat that electric scooters and electric motorcycles are not e-bikes, and I'll explain a little bit the differences with them.

And again, there's several different classifications of e-bikes, and really they're based on capabilities such as how fast they can travel and some other requirements of how powerful their engines are.

Again, if they don't meet the classification of an e-bike, they're considered a motorized bicycle and a license is required.

So I think that's one of the things that we kind of often are seeing in our communities that there's a lot of people on what people think are e-bikes, but they're not actually e-bikes, they're motorized bicycles, and they're required to have a motorcycle endorsement if people are gonna ride them.

Again, just a couple slides to show um electric scooters, they are not e-bikes.

So in order to operate an electric scooter on a roadway, you are required to have a driver's license.

If you do not have a driver's license, you are not supposed to be operating an electric scooter on the roadway.

And to the right, you'll see a motor uh motorized or uh electric um motorcycle.

And I think you can see one of the differences between these and e-bikes is there's no operable pedals on it.

So that is classified as an electric motorcycle, and you are required to have a motorcycle endorsement as well as a valid driver's license to operate one of these.

So there's been some recent legal changes in the law uh regarding e-bikes, and really what it's done is it's broken e-bikes down into classifications.

So if you take a look at this slide, there's a class one, a class two, and a class three e-bike.

And in order to be considered an e-bike, you need to be able to fit into one of these classes.

If you have an electric bicycle, but it doesn't fit in one of these classes, it's not actually an electric bicycle.

Again, it's an electric motorcycle, and you're required to have a valid driver's license and a motorcycle endorsement.

So I'm just gonna touch really briefly on some of these classifications.

You can see class one um e-bike, and it's not required to have a throttle.

So on the handlebars, there's nothing to actually adjust how fast you can go.

You need to be able to operate that using the pedals, and the electric uh motor will assist you as you're pedaling, but you still need to be able to operate it.

There's no age requirement.

Anybody can operate one of these.

However, if you're under the age of 18, you're required to have a helmet.

And um the maximum speed these can go is 20 miles an hour.

So if you have an e-bike and it assists you past 25 miles or 20 miles an hour, it's not actually a class one e-bike.

And then if you look to the right, there's a class two, and really the only difference between what a class two and a class one e-bike is is that a class two has an electric throttle on it.

So it actually allows the rider of the bike to use that throttle on the handlebar to adjust how fast they're going, and it doesn't entirely need to be operated by pedal power.

And lastly, to the right, a class three e-bike.

A lot of the same things.

There's no throttle, however, it can reach up to a speed of 28 miles per hour, and these you are required to be 16 years of age to operate these.

So if you see a minor, somebody under the age of 16 who's operating one of these bikes, they are not legally allowed to do so.

So that was just a real quick rundown of the different e-bike classifications.

But one of the things I wanted to highlight is because I think over the last couple years, we've definitely seen a proliferation of e-bikes in our community, and I think as a result, we've definitely seen an increase of incidents that we've had in our community.

So over here's a slide of the last couple of years, just showing e-bike incidents that we've had.

These are just incidents where whether it's e-bikes driving recklessly, not following traffic laws, it shows the incidents that we've had in our community, and that blue bar graph underneath shows the actual collisions we have that involved an e-bike on a bicycle.

So we can see over the last three years that we've definitely had a pretty steady increase, starting with we had 33 e-bike incidents in 2023 to we had 80 so far this year in 2025, with several months still remaining in the year.

So we're definitely seeing an increase of these incidents in our community.

And I put a little caveat in here that many of the complaints involve juveniles and are in the area of school campuses and parks.

So one of the things we've specifically seen with e-bikes is a lot of complaints of juveniles, specifically juveniles under the age of 16, oftentimes middle schoolers, that are riding these bikes and riding them unsafely.

And so some of the things that we're doing, right?

So I talked a little bit briefly about what the different types of e-bikes are, how we've seen an increase of these in our community along with some of the complaints associated with them.

I think one of the things to note is that e-bikes are still relatively new, so there's been a lot of legal and law changes at the state level, even recently.

Um I'll go and talk about a couple of them in a follow-up slide.

So part of it is making sure that we're up to date internally with some of the new laws and regulations surrounding e-bikes.

So what we've done is we provided internal training, we provided internal bulletins to our officers to make them aware of some of these recent changes and what some of these legal requirements are, as well as some detailed information on the classes of e-bikes and when somebody would be riding in and out of class of the proper e-bike.

Public.

So I've talked about how we've trained people internally.

I think one of the things we've seen too is uh a lack of understanding of what actually e-bikes are and even those classes that I talked about.

So we've provided uh media releases and an educational campaign trying to educate parents and uh their children about what e-bikes you should be riding, what are legal to do in e-bikes, what are not legal to do on e-bikes.

You know, again, I think one of the things we see is e-bikes provide a lot of convenience, right?

It allows people to travel at a speed they wouldn't normally be able to.

But I think there's also with the good intentions, there's a lack of understanding within our community of when kids are legally allowed to ride e-bikes or when they're not allowed to ride e-bikes.

Uh school partnerships.

So one of the things I've talked about, we've seen a lot of complaints, specifically around kids.

We've seen a lot of complaints in and around school areas.

So we've partnered with schools, um, we've had officers, sergeants provide educational material, educational resources, talking with school administrators as well as teachers, educating them on e-bikes and what kids are allowed and not allowed to ride and how they're allowed to ride in and around campus and on city streets.

And then the last thing is enforcement.

Like I said, a lot of these issues we're seeing, we're seeing with kids under 18.

So we always try to start with the educational piece first because I think there's a big, again, lack of understanding about what people are allowed to do on e-bikes, what they're not allowed to do on e-bikes.

So we're definitely starting with education.

Um, one of the things, in addition to education, we've looked at is having these dedicated enforcement days or education days where we've had our motor officers, our traffic teams going out there, looking at high profile areas where we're seeing a lot of these e-bike incidents occurring, such as in and around schools, and then they're making traffic stops and trying to educate them on what they're legally allowed and what they're legally not allowed to do.

On this slide, additional options.

So I again I think we've seen a lot of changes of e-bike law over the course of the even the last year, and we see different communities, both here within Sonoma County and outside Sonoma County, putting additional restrictions on e-bikes and e-bike usage.

So I just highlighted some of the things that other counties or other cities have done, such as additional age restrictions, additional helmet restrictions, additional prohibited locations, such as riding on sidewalks and parks on bike paths, things such as that, speed limits, and I included a couple examples here, such as Marin County and San Diego.

So oftentimes, we've received a lot of information that Marin County has specific e-bike laws that we don't see in Sonoma County, and that's because Marin County is part of a state pilot program that allows them to put these additional restrictions, such as age limits, helmet restrictions on e-bikes that exceed what is actually allowed by state law because they have a specific carb out and state law that allows them to test this pilot program.

But that is something we still have options we can look at here in the community of different different or additional restrictions that we want to provide.

One of the things to note with e-bikes is just because it's an e-bike, you still need to obey all the rules that a normal bicyclist would on the road.

So you have to obey those rules as a bicyclist, and you have to follow the specific rules of riding an e-bike.

Um so some of the things that a lot of cities have looked at in the past is restrictions on where you can ride, such as sidewalks.

Here in Santa Rosa, we actually have a prohibition of riding sidewalks in the downtown area in the railroad square area.

So that also extends to e-bikes as well.

Um there's some issues I think with signage possibly needing to be updated with that to make people aware that they're not allowed to ride bicycles in the downtown corridor, but that is a restriction that e-bikes are required to meet along with bicyclists.

And I put down here just to kind of talk about really how this is evolving so quickly, both at the local and at the state level, uh, AB 875.

So this is a law that actually just got passed October of this year.

So October 1st of this year, this was signed by the governor, and this is an e-bike impound law.

So what we see is even in our community and anecdotally, I can say we see a lot of these kids riding on bikes that are not within the class of e-bike they are allowed to ride, or they're not even an e-bike.

Um so most of the time these bikes are exceeding the 28 miles per hour.

They're a motorized uh bicycle, not meeting the e-bike standards.

This new law allows us or gives us the authority to impound those bikes.

So if we see somebody under the age of 16 or somebody who's riding an e-bike out of class, we are actually allowed to take that bike and impound it for a minimum period of 48 hours before we return it to them.

So this is definitely a new law.

I think that because all the statewide issues and local communities seeing this issues that was signed recently to help address some of these issues that are being seen.

And just on our ongoing commitment, what we're committed to do at the Santa Rosa Police Department is work collaboratively with our partners, our government organizations, city schools, you know, really focus on making sure people are educated about legally what they're allowed to do on an e-bike and whether they can ride an e-bike or not, and then with that education comes that enforcement piece.

If people are choosing to disregard, then we'll look at other ways of how we can force that in order to make sure people are riding e-bikes safely in our community.

Um, and we'll continue to evaluate the resources we have, looking at focused operations as to how we can address some of these issues that pop up.

And again, I really want to focus the education piece because I think there's definitely a lack of understanding or a lack of knowledge about what constitutes an e-bike and whether somebody can legally ride an e-bike or not.

And that is it.

Um any questions that I can help answer?

Thank you very much, Captain.

Questions?

Thank you for the presentation.

On the citations, do those go to the kids or are they for parents to pay?

They do, they go to the kid, they go to the uh kids.

However, with juvenile traffic court, kids are often required to appear there with their parents, and then it's addressed more on a rehabilitative model, as opposed to necessarily just a punitive fine model.

Great.

And I see that you're coordinating with Santa Rosa City Schools, but um, have we reached out to the other surrounding districts that are still within Santa Rosa?

We've had conversations with them, but we're still in the process um of yeah, working collaboratively with them and providing some educational materials to them.

Great.

And I know we could also maybe add this to the violence prevention program.

There's a lot of folks in that particular realm that work with youth and so we might be able to help get them information about what's um required or not required based on age.

Definitely I do like the thought of being allowing kids to have e-bikes I think it's more convenient depending on where they live if there's hills and things that they have to go over.

I'm sure that having an e-bike makes it easier for them.

So I like that we're going out and educating them on what they need to have and what they don't need to have.

So just so I'm clear on the class one they don't need to have a driver's license they don't need to have any any type of permit like that they could just have to go under 20 miles per hour and have to have a pedal exactly no e-bikes actually require you to have a driver's license but the class three e-bike that goes up to 28 miles per hour requires you to be over the age of 16 to operate oh okay but none of them have to have a driver's license or a permit not for an e-bike for other things such as for a motorized bicycle electric motorcycle or an electric scooter yes.

Great thank you so much.

Thanks for the presentation a couple questions from me captain um are these are the classes listed when purchased so like when you buy something does it say this is class one two three or is that something for you to determine yourself?

Yes it's a good question.

What I talked about a lot of recent legislation that's come out recently that actually was a recent law I think that was passed within the last year.

So every e-bike should actually have a label fixed it that says what the specifications are as well as identifying whether it's a class one a class two or a class three e-bike.

Thank you.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here this is probably something you don't know but do you know the let's say like a 14 year old like what speed can they get up to on a traditional bike?

Can they get up to 28 miles an hour or 20 miles an hour?

They can I think depending how good a shape they're in.

Going downhill air is saying if they're going downhill yes.

Definitely going down definitely going downhill.

I mean obviously it depends on the bikes but you can have a road bike and achieve you know going 50 miles per hour going down the hill on a road bike so it really depends on the bike and obviously the capability of the rider but it's definitely possible.

Alright so un with without gravity assistance it's very unlikely they would be able to reach 28 miles an hour as a 14 year old.

During public comment maybe somebody can address that who's more familiar with with uh bikes.

Let's see uh you know what I'm gonna take the opportunity because he's here um TPW director Dan Hennessy walked in I'm gonna ask was were e-bikes uh and electric motorcycles considered during the adoption of the active transportation plan thank you for the uh question council member yes very specifically they were they're noted as an important part of our mode shift goals in terms of growing the pie in terms of who's biking both uh both ends of the spectrum kids and senior citizens okay so I would say in concert between your department and the cabin's department this it is this is a great idea for uh shifting transportation methods but uh within reason yeah there are a number of concerns that we have about designing for in particular class three e-bikes um 28 miles an hour is not something that we have typically designed for with respect to narrow spaces and turns um related to people on bicycles and that is shifting our design standards based on the proliferation of those vehicles okay great thank you very much um any further questions all right we will move on to public comment uh we will start with airs and then Chris back to three minutes.

Am I on now?

Ah, there we go okay um erisweaver of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition.

For the last seven years, a class one e-bike has been my main vehicle, and I put 18,000 miles on it.

And the bike coalition does do um we have a curriculum uh that we're developing and have developed for middle school kids, and we have one for adults.

We've worked with Sonoma Clean Powers e-bike program, and it's it's e-bikes have just been such a game changer in getting so many more people on bikes, but we do see and experience the problems with um with misuse.

Um a couple things I wanted to add to what was on that slide.

Um another thing in the vehicle code about e-bikes is the motor has to uh cannot be more than 750 watts.

And I do see things being sold that have pedals that are higher power and higher speed, and the stickers are really hard to see.

It is really hard to see to tell when a bike is an e-bike.

I mean, you can see if it's an e-bike or it's one of those, we're calling it an e-bike, but it isn't doesn't really fit those classifications.

Um, but yeah, if somebody's going 28 miles an hour on flat, and especially if they're not pedaling, that's not an e-bike.

So cite them, please.

Um two things that I want to want to talk about.

One is about how we talk about the whole thing.

Um, these other kinds of vehicles or that have two wheels and and pedals but don't fit the standards.

Um too often I see in the in the media and in press releases from various law enforcement agencies is referring to them as e-bikes when they're not, and that's such a challenge.

So the more that we can all say, no, that wasn't an e-bike, that was an e-motorcycle or a moped, um, the better it is because it sort of taints the whole e-bike thing.

Um, the other is what do we do about it and at what level?

I think um those of us in the bike advocacy world are in agreement that the um the state regulations aren't quite doing it.

Uh and I it was probably too late for you to have gotten it in your packets, but I did send all of you a press release from Calbike.

Um there is uh a group of um transportation public safety and public health organizations under um organized by Calibike, have created California independent electric mobility council, and they are all um over the next I think eight to nine months looking at um developing updated guidance poly recommendations uh to um inform the state, and I really think that the state level is where legislation should be happening on this.

I don't think that doing local ordinances here and there frankly are gonna solve the problem because we already have lots of rules about, you know.

I mean, have has anybody ever been cited for violating the three-foot law in passing a bicycle?

I don't think so.

Um, but so many of the um sort of the problems besides you know, teens are going to teen and their individual behavior um is at the manufacturer and the sales um point.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Thank you, Eris Chris.

Uh Chris Cunther with Bikeable Santa Rosa.

Just want to agree with and reinforce um a lot of this, and obviously, you know, it's important to keep reinforcing the idea that e-bikes and and council member McDonnell, you said this are really um convenient for folks um and in particular parents riding their kids to school, elders who are getting on bikes and and getting around and folks who obviously rely on them to commute long distances.

Um it's also important to recognize that even though incidents are climbing, at least nationally, a lot of those are still involve cars.

And so some of the safety concerns around e-bikes, even separate from motorcycles and scooters, still have to do with the underlying problem around bike safety, around improving infrastructure, and the city should keep pursuing those goals.

And then I definitely want to say that um the education efforts are really valuable, not demonizing e-bikes.

Um we certainly agree with that, but at the same time, I think at least speaking for us, we are supportive of some additional restrictions to try to manage this problem, even including speed limits on certain bike paths.

Um so we're open to those things.

I also agree with Eris that that working that out at the state and national level and then getting recommendations down to um local municipalities is a really good approach.

So thanks for this discussion.

Thank you, Chris.

Is there anybody else seeing none?

We will come back to the dais for final comments.

Um I think that Chris made a really great point of do we need to have um signs posted for speed limits for e-bikes and some of those bike lanes, specifically if they haven't been designed to go up to a certain speed limit or a note that says, you know, only these classes of bikes can be in these lanes for the safety of those who are riding a bike and walking in those.

The other thing I wonder is do we have an increase in incidence because we have an increase in people riding the e-bikes.

So is there any correlation that shows we're gonna have more incidents just because we have more people riding bikes or writing things like that?

And so that's that's something to always kind of consider is you know, we want to make sure that kids are safe or anyone safe riding on e-bikes, but I would be for adding signage or making sure that the speed limits even for e-bikes in those lanes would be appropriate if we have the budget to add those through, or as we do designs, we bring those in as well.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um yeah, I think this is an interesting conversation.

Uh I know the chief and I first mentioned this maybe three months ago, three and a half months ago, that we might want to address this, and it was my the impetus for me mentioning it to him was going to pick up my son from uh aftercare at school, and you know, probably a 12-year-old on a motorized bike just went zipping by and almost hit another kid, and um starting to hear more stories about that and seeing stuff pop up online from our area, then we're in county, Petaluma, uh various issues.

And I I want to say that I don't think uh while we're while we are classifying this as e-bike, I think there's some education component when it comes to e-bike.

I think it's the misuse of electric motorcycles and the different classifications by uh individuals, it's the real problem here that I think needs to be addressed.

Um, so I'm all for education.

Um, even having our police department during these this outreach, um, you know, possibly refer to the educational uh program that um Snowma County Bicycle Coalition has.

Uh I think there's a lot of probable ignorance by parents as to what the laws are and what their kids can and cannot do.

Um, you know, little Joey has one, so can I have one mom?

Sure, okay.

And then, you know, they're bombing down uh a blacktop at a school at 30 miles an hour, right?

So that's uh what I think we need to address in this.

Um I I would like to see the interesting pairing of transportation public works in our police department uh address this in some way, shape, or form with the work as the work plan allows with you know possible signage, education, um whatever we need to do.

So uh I would look forward to that.

Um, but I think there is a a cross section of yes, there's more adoption of e-bikes, but I think there's also uh more misuse of electric um whatever you want to call them personal vehicles, um personal transportation.

So thank you very much for this presentation.

Um, I don't think this is the last we're going to hear of this uh issue.

Um so if we can get ahead of the curve as much as we can, I think it would be great.

So thank you very much.

All right.

With that, we will move on to item 6.4 uh response to recommendations.

Actually, you know what we're gonna take a five-minute recess because we only have two people and neither one of us can leave the dais.

So um we're gonna take a five-minute recess real quick and uh come back at 10 a.m., I think that's a good one.

All right, thank you.

We will come back in session.

And Chief, please take it away with our uh OIR uh responses.

Thank you, Chair Krepke and Councilmember McDonald.

I'm John Cregan, Chief of Police here in the City of Santa Rosa.

And we're going to go through this summer in July.

Our independent police auditor who's OIR group, and that's Steve Connolly and Mike Genaco, came to City Council and presented their annual report from 2024.

And they came up with five distinct recommendations for improvements that we could be making at the police department.

Our independent auditor Steve Connolly is on Zoom today.

So if there were any questions, he's going to be reviewing this and he'd be able to answer any questions, and he's available today.

So they reviewed in the year calendar year of 2024, 62 personnel investigations.

Some were internally generated by the Santa Rosa Police Department.

Others were through community complaints that came in to our professional standards team.

And that's one thing that's really important to note that we have a dedicated professional standards team of a sergeant and a lieutenant who are reviewing any complaints that we have come in, and that way we have really a more systematic approach and a more detailed approach with those investigations that we go through.

And they literally have daily contact with Steve Connolly, our auditor, talking through any complaints that come in and reviewing those.

Another important thing to note is this year our independent police auditor is span it more than just the complaints and our started looking a little bit more holistically, not only at our use of forces, even if it didn't result in a complaint, but our vehicle pursuits.

And in 2024, we had 45 separate vehicle pursuits in our city, and he was able to look a little bit more holistically at those.

We were able to uh just over two years ago upgrade to all of our 67 patrol cars have the fleet cameras at them now.

So there's three different cameras on those vehicles, both inflation from the outside, but also of anyone who's a passenger in the vehicle.

So it gives you a lot clearer view of what's really occurring in pursuits, and it has what I find very fascinating for me.

It has, like on the dashboard the speed exact speedometer, uh like that, so I can see exactly how fast they were going with the conditions that were present at the time.

Now we'll go through the five different recommendations, and after us carefully reviewing those at the police department, some of the steps we're doing to address the recommendations.

So recommendation number one is that from our auditor's recommendation is that we should continue to prioritize prioritize the enhancements to the standard use of force review process through the training and reinforcement of expectations for supervisors at all levels regarding uh thorough holistic evaluations that are well documented, include confirmation of relevant follow-up.

So for us, we have every single one of our uses of force are tracked uh with it.

So, and one important note for that is in 2024, we went to under just under a hundred and eighteen thousand calls for service.

Out of those 118,000 calls for service, we made just over 6,500 arrests.

So, in that same time period in 2024, we used force 248 times.

So when you put it in a comparison, okay, 118,000 calls, 6,500 arrests, and just 248 uh uses of force, that's just 3.8% of our total calls for service and just.21% of our arrests.

So such a fraction of those.

Another thing that's important, even out of the 248, most of those are minor uses of force, and what the most large one, 194 of the 248, were takedowns.

Uh with it, and that's like a leg sweep takedown, a hair pull takedown, a variety of takedowns that we do.

Because what we're taught is when you have a combative suspect, what's safe is for the suspect and for the officers, get them down to the ground as quickly as possible.

You can more contain them as less injuries to both the officers and the suspects involved.

Others are control hold, sometimes personal body weapons.

Uh in 2024, we saw no firearms uh fired, we saw no uh in custody deaths in the year 2024.

So, but out of those 248, every single one of them is entered into a tracking system and is evaluated.

So not only does the sergeant, who's the first line supervisor, review that use of force, looking at the body worn camera, the fleet camera, reading the report, the sergeant physically goes to the scene of those incidents and is able to talk to the suspect, evaluate the full circumstances.

It's just then reviewed by lieutenant who's a mid-level manager who does a second independent review of those.

Any ones that have significant uses of force or certainly with any concerns, go to the captain, like Captain Marinzik, who is just here, and they do a review.

And if we were to find any issues, then it goes to our professional standards team for an internal investigation, and it may result in training or discipline uh based on those circumstances.

But we agree with Steve Connolly's recommendation here about what are ways that we can enhance our review of this and make sure that some things that maybe aren't in policy but still could have been a better job are documented and we follow through.

So one of the themes that you're going to be hearing about today is that we're upgrading to a new program called Axon Standards.

And Axon Standards gives us the ability to more holistically dive deeper into some of the data that we have here.

It also our cameras.

Our cameras are all axon cameras, our fleet cameras are axon cameras, and it more seamlessly integrates those into the review process of our all of our uh technology that we have.

So those are one of the things that we're gonna be talking throughout this presentation.

How we're working with our independent police auditor with our professional standards team to expand the questions in the review of our uses of force and our pursuits and our complaint process and give me as the chief and our independent police auditor a little bit broader information.

It's building out dashboards that we can track specific incidents that are occurring.

I'll go to our next recommendation.

So recommendation number two should take advantage of the uh impending redesign of the computerized force tracking to create specific guidelines that further standardize detailed reporting and analysis after a use of force.

So this is what I'm talking about here.

We've already purchased the program, we're part, we're uh migrating all the data from our last program that we've had for years called IA Pro to this Axon Standards program, and our goal is to have that launched by the end of this year that we'd be fully operational on the new axon standards with it.

And one of the things that it really does that I'm that I'm interested in, I think our auditor is gonna do as well.

You're able to use analytics.

So sometimes we get I'll get an email and say hey, last week uh an officer drove by speeding, or an officer was rude to me, or I saw an officer treating someone unprofessionally on a bicycle stop, but it's very broad, and they don't know the name of the officer, they don't have a description uh with it, so it makes it more difficult.

Now with axon standards, we're able to put that limited information, and it actually uses computer analytics to go through our body warm camera and our fleets and find these are incidents that match what you're talking about.

And then we're able to, because we're recording thousands of videos uh throughout the week and through the month with our officers.

So we're able to look at, and we can even put key words of talking about if they were to say a phrase, and it'll bring that up.

So it's making us that we can find more of some of these like vague complaints or broad complaints.

We're able to dive deeper into that, find specifically the incident they're talking about, and make sure that we're able to analyze is there credibility to this complaint, and are there things that we could have been doing better with it.

And again, what we're doing is working to expand.

We have a you like drop-down questions that the police sergeants and supervisors do about what the incident is, and we're working very closely with our independent auditor and our professional standards team to expand the list of those questions.

So we're gathering even more broad data, and what our goal is is to be able to transparently report back to our community what's occurring, and then to really make sure that we're using this data, some of the technology we have to analyze what is our response to these calls and how can we be doing better.

Recommendation number three uh SRPD should look for ways to maximize the influence of its training cadre uh in assessing and improving officer performance and high-risk operations.

This is one I'm really proud of.

I've seen if we've been a police officer for just over 26 years, have seen over and over, generally in law enforcement, where you see some of the same mistakes made over and over and again, and we're not doing as good of a job as we can of addressing like these are common themes that we're seeing, whether it be simple mistakes, whether it be a lack of training, and then making changes in the organization to address that.

So, one of the ways that we're doing not only is the RD the use of force and the pursuit remodel we're doing, but we created these two dedicated training officers.

We didn't actually ask for new positions from council, we used our our existing staff and reallocated and put two, so two full-time training officers, and all they're doing is they're going through standardizing our training, they're looking at the themes that we're seeing, whether it be from complaints, whether it be in accidents, whether it be in use of force incidents, and saying, Man, we've seen six times where someone's got injured and doing this takedown.

We need to do some more training on this takedown to minimize the injuries, not only to suspects or to officers involved, or we're seeing an uptick in complaints in this area.

So they're really like looking for these trends and then building our training.

So we have kind of more that upstream approach that we're seeing these are some problems, and we're building training to be able to minimize that, and even if we're seeing things across the nation, that we're getting ahead of it to make sure that problem doesn't show up here at the Santa Rosa Police Department.

So, really excited for that.

It's also bringing consistency to our training.

Last year in 2024, we did just over 24,000 hours of documented training with our officers.

That's astounding.

So this team is able to help make sure we're consistent with that, that each one of the trainings were meeting the standards that we want to be able to do, and that we continue to kind of raise the bar here for the Santa Rosa Police Department.

PIT is an acronym for pursuit intervention technique, and you may have seen that on TV where an officer comes up to the rear bumper of a vehicle and nudges it, it makes the rear the rear wheels lose traction and will spin out.

And we do it in a controlled manner of under 30 miles an hour, and we're able to do it in safely in these pursuits.

But our officers are using it, but what our independent police auditor talked about is we ought to be doing more training on that.

And was puzzled is why we're sending officers all the way to Fresno to receive the PIT training with it.

I strongly agree with them on this issue.

This comes down to funding, with it that we don't have the ability to do our own internal PIT training here.

Our training fund has been stagnant now for almost eight years at the same amount.

In those eight years, costs for travel, plane tickets, training, food, everything has gone up.

So with 24,000 hours of training, we're not able to do that.

We're estimating that a PIT program, not only we have to have specific pit trained car or cars that have like bumpers on the side of them.

With that, we've worked closely with our fleet program with maintaining it.

It would be roughly $50,000 a year for us to be able to do internal PIT training with it.

So that's something that we're gonna continue to work with some of the budget complexities that we're facing right now.

We'll continue to push that, but I'm not sure where it falls on the list of priorities, but it's certainly something that we agree with our auditor with.

In the meantime, we're gonna continue sending officers for the one, they just go one time in their career to the pit training.

It's a one-day course in Fresno.

We don't have the ability to do ongoing training with that, but we'll work toward finding ways.

We've reached out to other uh agencies in the area who have some PIT trainings.

Uh they weren't willing to let us join their PIT programs just because of the cost that it does to their damage to the vehicles.

So uh we don't really have any other options.

The also the spike strips agree with this.

We have some spike strips that we purchased over 20 years ago that are a little bit more outdated, so we're looking at the cost of some more updated spike strips that can be used more safely and more effectively with it.

I was actually just meeting with my training team just earlier this week, and they have some demo products that we're looking at.

So we're gonna be testing those, and our this is what our training officers are able to do, and we'll be looking for some uh funding for that and looking for ways that we can absorb that in our in our current budget that we have.

So progress is on way on the pit training, uh, with it, but really right now what it holds us down to is this our training funds.

Recommendation number five, SRPD should continue to prioritize the comprehensive review of vehicle pursuits incidents and should extend the willingness to address performance that deviates from policy and expectations with formal discipline when warranted.

Uh, for this, we're not afraid to hold people accountable uh for these pursuits, and we actually did initiate several proactive internal investigations and and held officers accountable for pursuits this year, and most of this is what you see is officers that are driving faster than the conditions allow with it.

So obviously the suspect is trying to go as fast as they can.

At some point, we have to weigh like, okay, is this worth the risk of what we're chasing this person for at this point uh with it?

Sergeants are constantly evaluating, we cancel pursuits.

Uh last year we were just over 30% of our pursuits.

The sergeant are the officer themselves self-canceled the pursuit, just saying, all right, based on the circumstances.

So if it's three o'clock in the afternoon and we're going nearby a school, it has to be a pretty grave circumstance for us to continue a pursuit.

Unfortunately for us, most of our pursuits occur in the nighttime and early morning hours, uh, often are associated with and pair drivers uh who are driving uh trying to flee from us.

But that's certainly something, and this is what we're expanding with the new axon standard system.

Really incorporating our axon fleet system that we can look exactly of what the speed is, what are the conditions, and evaluate this.

So we're gonna continue to work with our auditor carefully analyze these and make sure if we have officers who aren't meeting, our expectations are held accountable, but really using our training team to make sure that we're doing an intensive training, that we're making sure our officers understand how to be able to safely navigate pursuits, and it's a balancing act.

We want to hold people accountable who are fleeing, who may be involved, and we've had several of our cannabis dispensaries that have been uh burgerized in the nights, and those almost all have resulted in pursuits when we found uh the vehicle fleeing the area.

So we want to balance and be able to make sure and not have crime and safety issues in Santa Rosa, but make sure that we can safely uh manage these pursuits throughout our city.

So those are briefly going through the five recommendations, each one of them.

I agree with the independent police auditors' recommendations, and we're holistically making steps to make sure that we have those improvements with it.

We've also worked with our city manager to make sure that each one of our complaints that are coming in, we have a complaint dashboard, not only on the city manager's website, but also on the police department's website, that our community can go to to be able to see in live time as we go throughout the year the complaints that are coming into the Santa Rosa Police Department.

Our independent police auditor has a page on our website as well where you can reach out directly to our independent police auditor through phone or email, and then we continue to have that, like I've talked about almost daily contact with our auditors talking about incidents, and one thing that really sets the Santa Rosa Police Department apart is our thorough review of our access of our auditor that our office or that our auditor gets the complaint is immediately upon our receipt of it, is able to review the body worn camera footage, the fleet cameras, and what really sets us apart is our auditor is a part of investigation.

So we we just did an interview yesterday with an officer, and our auditor was there part of the interview, is able to directly ask the officer questions, and that's something that lets the auditor really lift up the hood and look a little bit more uh deeply at the incidents and is able to provide me good recommendations when I get the ultimate recommendation at the end of the day with it, and I always meet with the auditor if there's any type of confusion or discrepancy on the discipline that we're gonna impose.

So those are the five recommendations.

Uh love to take any questions, and our auditor will be here to answer any questions if we need to as well.

Thank you, Chief.

Questions.

Thank you, Chief.

And I I one want to congratulate you and your department on 24,000 hours of training and their commitment to always improving what they're doing, which I think is exemplary already.

Um, one of the things that you mentioned was um this constant feedback on the cameras.

Do the cameras automatically go on as soon as the car starts, or is it when they go into pursuit?

And same with their body worn cameras.

How does that work and when is that triggered?

So the cameras when they're on are always recording, but we have to turn something to activate.

So we have a series of things.

So the officers can manually activate their cameras, both on their uh car or on their uh body worn camera.

But we have on the car, like when you turn the lights on, then they automatically uh go on.

We also have a program axon signal where it builds like a perimeter around a call, so when you drive into that area, it automatically activates your camera.

So actually, just this week I was driving down fourth street in the morning, an officer had made a traffic stop, and I just drove by and I turned on my body worn camera as I drove by uh with it.

So that's what it does uh with it too.

And that's where we're because what we saw sometimes during the stress of these incidents, you're racing to get out of your car, you're jumping out of your car, maybe someone someone who fled from a vehicle, and then they're not activating the cameras during the stress.

So we're trying to take kind of the user error out of that.

So all pursuits are gonna have the body worn, it's gonna have the fleet camera automatically on because the second your lights go on, they automatically go on with it too.

And then what we're working with the body worn cameras is through that like perimeter with it.

But what we've seen is our officers so heavily rely on the body worn cameras that they've gotten to really just it's like second nature to them now.

And what we're really trying to encourage is like when you're driving to the call, turn on the camera then with it, and we might get a minute of a steering wheel record it, but I'd rather that so then the second they get out of the car, it's already on and we're able to capture that, and it has a 30-second buffer at all times.

So when you activate your camera, it goes back 30 seconds uh in the video, and it provides just video, no audio, uh, with it for that 30 second buffer time.

And that's to help sometimes that uh you may just be sitting there having coffee and someone comes up and confronts an officer, and we want to get the full picture of what occurred.

So that's why it's going back 30 seconds.

Thank you.

Um, and then you talked about the pit training.

Uh, I think that's what it was, where they um where we need new equipment for that as well, but have we thought about combining our efforts with the other jurisdictions around us, like the sheriff's department or the other uh police departments that are local to see if there would be uh shared cost to bringing the training local?

Yeah, we did.

So we met the sheriff's department does have a pit.

So we hoped we met with them and stuff, but unfortunately they weren't willing to uh join pit services with us, and they they just didn't want to absorb uh the training costs with it, or really they were more worried about that it does more wear and tear to their vehicles uh with it.

They're the only ones who has a has a dedicated PIT program here in Sonoma County.

We also reached out to the Sonoma County Police Academy to see if if that through the Santa Rosa Junior College, and they were the same, like it's not worth the cost to them to take it on, and they have so many other programs.

So really our option, we used to have a PIT program.

We we cut it years ago just to the cost with it.

So our option is to take four retired patrol vehicles that are coming off with that like that.

They put these metal guardrails on this on the side of them.

It costs $2,500 per guardrail.

Our fleet team says to put those on with it.

And then the biggest thing is this the ongoing cost of keeping those of doing the repairs.

You got to replace the tires at a much higher rate because they're spinning around constantly with it.

So they estimated that it would cost us about $50,000 to get this program off the ground uh with it and to be able to continue it uh forward.

So it's something that we'll continue to monitor because I think it is an important way to safely in pursuits uh earlier with it, and then I'll continue the conversations with the others in the region and to see and and maybe uh outside of the sheriff's department, maybe there's other jurisdictions of Roanor Park and Petaluma that we could work to kind of come in with them on one uh with it.

And so we haven't engaged them yet because they don't have programs, but maybe it's a way that they would work with us and we could share some of the costs of the pit cars here.

So that's something that we'll can continue to work for.

Thank you.

Thanks for that presentation, Chief.

Um for the PIT training, do you need a EVOC course for that, or is that can that be done in a number of ways?

We mainly do it when we did it here locally, we were able to rent out some of the uh unused uh runways uh out at the Sonoma County Airport, and that's where the sheriff's department does as well.

That's where we do our evoc training uh with it now.

So that's the most effective way to do it, and it's even better if you can like hose down like the runway so then it it gives make not as much damage to the cars if there's more uh not as much friction on the roadway.

So that's where we're primarily doing it is we we have uh a contract with uh Sonoma County Airport and use some of their unused runways area that we can safely do our pit training and evoc training.

Okay.

Um and then back to the but to the cameras.

Um it's our practice that if they go off for any reason that needs to be logged, right?

So like you're incidental, like you're coming on, you have to log off, you have to log while your body worn camera came on.

Yeah, so if it comes on, then you have to categorize it with it.

So for us, the second you you have you're required if you're in uniform, you have to have the body worn camera on if you're a detective, like going out and serving a search warrant with it too.

So if you if we know of any call that you're on where it didn't get recorded with the body worn camera, then we would uh investigate that and that would be a complaint with us to it.

And then we're able to track so any of the uses of force, any of these things with it, we're able to track if like an officer were to turn off the camera mid-interview or mid-incident with it, then uh that would not be meeting our policy, right?

But I uh I guess the policy is so stringent that like even you driving down forestry, going to work, and yours accidentally came on because you were within that perimeter, you still have to log that.

Is that correct?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

So yes, I was thankful for the officer as I drove by that.

So when I come in, I have to go in and categorize that video uh with it like that.

And we can do it like on an app on the phone.

Uh the officers can categorize, and you have to put in that one.

Then I put that, hey, I didn't stop for the traffic stop, so I am able to categorize like, hey, this is not a video that's of any evidence or value, but you put if you do a traffic stop or a case number, you put the incident number, the crime report number, and then they're tracked, whether it's a misdemeanor or felony, and then we have a retention with I believe misdemeanors are three years, felonies or five years, and if it's a pending investigation, it's until the investigation is over uh with it too.

So all those are categorized uh with it, and then that's what's super helpful for us that even years down the road, if a complaint were to come in, or if we start investigating uh any uh officer, and we could start looking at a pattern of behavior, and that's where this new Axon Standards program is going to be so helpful that we can start looking for, like, hey, have there been incidents where this was said or this behavior, and we can use the uh analytical tools of Axon Standards to be able to dissect more of these calls.

Great, thank you.

That's that's all of my questions for right now.

Um so we'll go to public comment.

There is no public comment, so we will, or there is no public, so we'll close public comment and bring it back.

Do you have any final comments?

Um, so Chief, just going back to the cameras, when you were at, and I want to congratulate you on your chunk retreat last night, it was a huge success.

I I ran by the fairgrounds um that's building, pardon me.

And it was great.

But so if you're just in that type of situation with all of those officers, do they have their cameras on the whole time?

They don't, so they're they're on, like we're but in there that buffer mode.

So they're not recording uh with it, but they're all gonna be on, and then the buffer mode.

But our policy says that if it's like a community event or just like having like coffee and meeting a community member that your body worn cameras on, it's not on actually recording, it's just in that buffer.

But if something would have broke out, a fight would have broke out, or some tragic incident would occur, they would all been able to hit their camera, they would have turned on, it would have been buffering back 30 seconds and they would be able to record what was occurring.

Great, thank you.

Thanks, Chief.

Um I think it's important to note that when you're looking at these um OIR recommendations, um, all five of these, they seem to be proactive process and training, that they're not reactive to any sort of singular incident that happened that you know, or or practice that we have that needs to change.

Um, but it's more, hey, you should continue to do this going forward, or hey, you should look into doing this.

And it is it's process and training.

It's not uh, what do you want to say?

What do you want to call it?

Uh basically, you know, reactive to some sort of major incident that we were found at fault to be doing anything wrong.

It is you're doing great.

Maybe consider doing this.

And I think that speaks to our level of professionalism and training within the police department.

Um I feel bad for our OIR representative that's sitting on Zoom right now because these are so um, while important, they're they're so um lesser uh of severity that I don't really have any questions for them.

So I appreciate them joining, but um uh you know, great job by the police department, great job by by your command staff and training staff to to have a police department that has five process and training recommendations to consider.

So great job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're really proud of that.

And ultimately, it's the men and women who are out there every night and day making these stressful decisions out on the field who are just doing incredible work.

So I'm really proud of them.

And and it's been a good partnership with OIR that they're really helping.

And and as they said at the council presentation, there, right, this point, it's like fine-tuning things, and that's where I like that we're fine-tuning to really make some of these process improvements to make sure that we're even better prepared for this next year.

But thank you very much.

Yeah, great, thank you.

So, with that, we will move on to item seven.

There are no matters held in committee and eight to depart room reports.

Chief, please.

Thank you.

So we'll turn it over if we can bring this next slide up with it.

We're gonna do a brief update on some of our problem-oriented policing uh with it that we're able to address.

And this is something that we've really been working to educate our community on uh more.

So we're divided into nine separate police beats, uh, not to be confused with the council districts uh with it.

So nine separate police.

You can go to our Santa Rosa Police Department website under the about us, and then you can bring down it as a beat map, and then you can also enter your address, and it'll tell you exactly what beat you're in within the city with it.

We're in beat nine uh here right now and city hall, so it's important.

But what I really like to be able to make sure educate people on is when you bring it down.

So this is the beat map right here showing the different beats across uh the city and how we kind of are geographically, but each one of these beats has a dedicated sergeant, that's the first line supervisor, lieutenant, the mid-level manager, and nine patrol officers that are signed to each one of those beats.

And if you go to our website under the About Us, it'll tell you your sergeant, your lieutenant, and all nine of your officers, and it'll give their name, their email address.

You can email them directly with it.

And what we're trying to do is better connect our community over things that aren't like emergencies that are occurring, but like problems.

Of like, hey, even the e-bikes is a good example of hey, we're seeing a bit uptick and e-vike uh issues around Rincon Valley Community Park with it.

Those are that's an area like that.

And then the community members can email their beat lieutenant and sergeant and saying, hey, this is an issue we're having, or whether it be related uh to any other type of problem in our city, and we're really trying to focus on the officers communicating with each other, coming up to address some of the issues in each one of those beats and hopefully address some of our community concerns uh with it.

Also, another thing that we really want to encourage people is we're putting out information, whether it be about some things like with the e-bikes that we talked about, other community issues on Civic Ready, and Civic Ready is our messaging platform, not only for significance, but also day-to-day activities, whether it be the trunk or treat event that we had last night or other things.

So, encourage people to go to our website.

You can just Google Santa Rosa Civic Ready, or you can go to the city, our police department website, and we all have links to be able to sign up for Civic Ready.

And these are some of the things we're trying to do culturally in the department about educate our community more about the nine beats, have our officers get out of the car, be doing more foot patrols, whether it be downtown, whether it be in parks, community spaces, is to be out there connecting with our community, and more diving deeper and addressing some of the community problems that may be popping up with it.

The other thing too, you can just you have a general question about the police department, uh, you can email at SRPD info at srcd.org, those regard team, and they'll they'll allocate them to the team that's most appropriate based if it's a abandoned vehicle complaint or a graffiti complaint, whatever it may be.

Another greatly underutilized tool that we have in the city is the My Santa Rosa app.

So I love to show people uh the My Santa Rosa app, and you can put in it'll give you a category, whether you're reporting uh abandoned vehicle, whether you're reporting a dead deer on the side of the road, whatever it is, and it'll go to the appropriate department, and we work to quickly be able to not only respond back to you in the My Santa Rosa app, but to send the appropriate city staff out there.

And I've used the My Santa Rosa app myself several times to report issues in my neighborhood and have seen seamless uh contact bar city uh departments getting out there and doing it.

And at the end of the day, if you feel like you're not getting the information you need or the resources you need, you can always email me directly at the JCriegan at SRCD.org, and I'll make sure that we give you the resources that you need.

So just wanted to quickly kind of talk about our nine beat structure, how you can understand of connecting with the sergeant and lieutenant in that beat, how we're working as an organization to really start diving deeper into the little micro issues that in each one of these nine beats and start being able to show some measurable improvements, and also understanding this problem oriented policing philosophy is that we're not gonna solve it necessarily always with the police department, but partnering with her, whether it be our fire department, transportation public works, code enforcement, whatever it is, and using all of the resources the vinyl century partnership has been a game changer for us using all these different partners to be able to address some of the issues that may be occurring in your beat, but we just need to know about the issue.

So reach out to us, let me know about it, and we'll make sure that we address it.

And that was just a quick update on that.

Any questions?

Thanks, Chief.

Any questions?

No, just another plug for the My Santa Rosa app.

Uh it is fantastic.

All right, hold on.

We'll go to public comment, no public comeback comments.

Um, the My Santa Rosa app anecdotally you can see where people have used it on social media, and no matter which department it is, uh, you know, the police department obviously great, but also transportation public works, whatever it might be.

There is a very quick turnaround, and there's even the ability to track where your um complaint or or communication uh is in the process.

But uh I do appreciate this with the renewed focus on uh problem-oriented policing and the outreach, um, the uh various with a cop programs, whether it be coffee, tacos, fruto, whatever it might be, um, are always a success.

So thank you.

Please continue to do that.

Um with that, uh, we will move on to the fire department.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Chief Westrope.

Good morning again, Council Member O'Krepke and McDonald.

Scott Westro Fire Chief of the City of Santa Rosa.

I'm gonna provide a brief update on the fire department here.

Um, hopefully, get through this quick, so I know I'm between you and your regular jobs.

So in I kind of always run the same theme here, but in staffing updates, um, what I want to highlight here and and what I've changed a little bit to highlight here is showing how many employees that we have that live outside of the general fund, and it's something that we're proud of that we've gone out and found other funding sources to increase staffing or to maintain staffing throughout the department.

So we have a hundred and seventy-four FT total imposition control, 12 or safer employees, and we're working with a consultant to build a revenue stream project that we can bring forward to hopefully pay for those employees in perpetuity.

We have 14 employees currently in Measure H.

Um, the six that we talked about earlier for the rescue have been deferred till next fiscal year, and they have 10.25 positions in PSAP.

So we've really tried to not impact the general fund yet increase service, and that's how we've done it.

Um currently in operations, we have an academy of seven firefighter paramedics.

They're due to graduate mid-December.

Um, they're all doing very well.

And then throughout the course of Measure H and our retirements and things like that, um, we're working on backfill and promotions, and and our goal is to be a constant staffing uh by the end of the fiscal year.

Um, in response, we have two vacant positions that are currently being held.

Um in fire prevention.

Um we already talked about the movement of the fire inspectors with Measure H and the limited term fire inspectors, and then we have one vacant community outreach specialist position.

In administration, we're at full staffing, and one of the things I wanted to highlight too based on where we came from out of the this year's uh general fund budget and the reductions we had to make in the fire department is we have a new organizational chart that's available online.

I didn't um put it into the slide deck, but um there is a new org chart there that shows the restructuring that that had to occur with the loss of a deputy chief, the loss of an admin secretary, and the loss of a deputy emergency manager.

Um and with that as well, we've been working um with all of our partners throughout the city on an emergency management redundancy and especially in the alert and warning programs, some redundancy and on how we can back up uh emergency manager Bregman should the need arise.

So making sure that we have that redundancy built into place.

Um, some exciting news is on fire stations.

Um, as you likely know, fire station five and fountain grove, which we lost in the Tubbs fire, is slated to open any time now, but we're having the grand opening on November 15th.

Um so we're really excited to finally return um service into a full-time fire station in fountain grove in the next couple weeks.

Um, on the day before that, on Friday, um, we're having the official groundbreaking for fire station eight in Roseland.

Um we're expecting that station to be completed in June of 2027.

If you're driven by there recently, um you can see there's construction fencing up, it's graded off, all the all the buildings are gone.

So there's work already started on that parcel.

Um, but we're excited to have um a new station at Roseland here in the next couple years.

Um we talked about station nine and the measure H presentation, so I'm not gonna repeat that.

Um and the other thing we did last year, and and it kind of slid through under the CIP accounts um in the budget is we moved where infrastructure projects are funded by CFF funds, and one of the things we did was we closed a couple accounts, particularly related to station five and station eight, but we opened one for fire station 11.

So fire station 11 is on Lewis Road across from um the Safeway in the junior college district.

They've been in a temporary fire station since 2007.

It's a triple-wide mobile home.

It was supposed to be there for five years, and here we are 18 years.

So the good news with that is and and my sell to the city manager and and assistant city manager and TPW director is it's the easy button with very heavy air quotes.

Um because we own it, it's Sequid.

We have general concept plans for a full-time fire station there.

So we started putting money into that account.

Once we show that it has a consistent revenue stream, then we can go and look for debt service and potentially build that station here not too far off.

So we're starting to move money into there so we can get them out of that that mobile home that they're in now.

And then on the fleet side of things, um I think I've said this to you for probably the better part of a year, but um we have uh five type one engines, which you see there on the right on order.

Um they are on the assembly line now and they should be completed in March of this year.

Um, four out of the general fund fleet replacement program and one is out of PSAP to replace the old PSAP engine, and then the um two type six engines that we bought um that was the end of the Wu 2.0 uh PGE settlement fund dollars are in service.

They were in service for the end of the fire season, but you see them there on the left.

Um so it's a huge addition to our our fleet.

And the last bit of exciting news here is that uh our second canine umyx, he and his handler Ben Bask uh successfully graduated last weekend from the NICST first response canine training program.

So Ben and Onyx are now officially um part of our behavioral health canine program along with Maverick.

So Onyx is the polar opposite of Maverick.

Maverick is very methodical and slow and mellow, and Onyx is not.

Um so to kind of get the both sides of the fence there, but um, congratulations to Ben and Onyx.

We're really excited to have um redundancy in the KN Behavioral Health Program.

Um Corey was uh Captain Rickert was promoted to battalion chief, so we're fortunate to have Maverick in our office every day for the time being, um, and then Onyx will be stationed with uh engineer bask and and be available.

So um just thought I'd end that on a high note.

Everybody likes uh the the puppy program, so um we will get them to a meeting here soon um to where you can all meet onyx.

And with that, any questions or comments you might have.

Any questions?

Um thank you so much for the presentation.

I have a question around our staffing size.

So we have 174 full-time employees for a city our size that has undergone some really horrific fires and with the wooy maps that are just being redrawn.

Do you have some data behind how many we should have on staff to make sure that we're covered as far as a city goes?

We we do have some data.

Um, it's about six years outdated.

We're actually in the process right now of completing a new deployment analysis and community risk reduction plan, which will have new data, and we'll bring that to um likely this committee first um when it's completed.

But we're just we just sent off the final uh draft of it.

But to kind of put it in perspective, I guess is the is the best way to do it, is there are national standards for that.

But if you look at the fact that in 2007, which was the last time prior to engine nine that we added a new engine company, we were running about 18,000 calls a year.

Last we ran over 30,000 calls a year, and we hadn't added new resources, so um we're definitely on the way to it with the addition of the squads through Safer and the addition of engine nine, we're on our way there.

Um, but those recommendations for were from about 10 years ago.

So we're just kind of catching up.

So we certainly need more resources on the streets, it's just a fine balance of as you very well know the budget and financial constraints.

But um, we will bring back some um new data-driven analysis here in the next couple months.

Thank you.

And I appreciate staff doing the reorg so that we don't see the impact on the community as far as that goes.

So I appreciate um everybody updating and taking on more with fewer people, and so thanks to the entire team.

I had a question about station 11.

You mentioned that that will potentially start to become a permanent building.

Is it going to be in the same location?

So will it just be a teardown and rebuild, or what's the plan for that?

I if I recall it's one of our busiest stations.

It is, it is, it's usually the top one or two of our our busiest stations.

So going back to when measure O passed in 2004, and that is a measure O station, the plan was they didn't have enough funding to build a station.

So there the design of the whole project that's now almost 20 years old was to put the temporary station there with the permanent um engine bay and then build a station on the front of that property.

So it's all part of the general project and planning of that property.

So it'll go on the same property, it will not be a teardown, it will be building the fire station while the current station is in service, and then we'll they'll remove the temporary structure from the rear of the property.

So it's all part of the plan.

Um it's just outdated, and we'll have to update things, but um it'll be in the same location on the same piece of property, and it will remain in service the entire time.

Thank you.

Just a couple questions from me.

Um, where are the type six engines stationed out of?

Um we move things around, and so uh one type six is station four on Ulip Avenue, so it really covers the Anadel area.

Um, the other is at station eleven, um, which is the Lewis Road station, and then we move the type threes around um to different locations.

So for the most part, we have a wildland engine, but almost every one of our stations, particularly focusing on the wildland rent interface areas between the type threes and type sixes.

Great, thank you very much.

Um, and then um we'll go to uh I have no more questions, I'll just have some final comments.

We'll go to public comment.

There's no public, we'll come back.

Final comments.

Um I love the canine program that you are bringing to the fire department as well.

I think they do bring a calming presence, even if um Onyx is a little bit crazier, sort of like children.

You have one, they're very calm, they're very good, and then you have a second one, and it's different.

So um, but I appreciate that um bringing the good news to us and I love that program.

And if the fire department finds it to be really helpful, I'd be encourage you to continue it and add more canines if we can.

Thank you.

And just a side note to that is um it's a it's a plug that really there's not a major impact to the general fund there.

That's all been funded through the Santa Rosa Fire Foundation.

So um, really appreciative of that um that they pay for uh the training, they pay for the the ongoing cost and care of of the animals.

So um it's been uh it's been great.

We've done it at very little cost to the city.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, uh huge shout out to the Santa Rosa Fire Foundation, their board members are fantastic um individuals.

Um what station are Ben and Onyx uh stationed out of?

It's a great question.

I'm not sure.

He was stationed at station five, but there's so much movement I can't keep track of.

Um what I would say is, yeah, do make sure that um, you know, if you want your funding to stay intact, that you get the mayor and Onyx together in post-haste.

Um I do also think that you missed a great opportunity to rename Onyx Goose.

I mean having marrican goose would have been phenomenal.

Um, but that's just my personal opinion.

They come named, so we don't have much of a choice.

People change names all the time.

That's true.

Um, anyways, uh easy.

Um, yeah, this is great.

Um I appreciate the update.

The one thing that the one thing I do want to touch on um is the fleet.

Um you and I spoke about this last week that our fleet is due for upgrades and we've wanted to upgrade for a while now, but can you address what the issue is with upgrading as quickly as we would like to?

Yeah, absolutely.

So um fleets become a big issue, and it's not just in Santa Rosa, it's not in the state of California, it's the national problem.

So, the major manufacturers of fire engines, which there aren't a lot of, have been largely consolidated by private equity, and so what we've seen is a significant and drastic shift in the cost of fire apparatus as well as the delivery time and apparatus.

For instance, um the fire engines that we just received that we ordered in fiscal year 20, we purchased for 850,000.

That same fire engine now is 1.2 million.

The latter truck that we ordered two years ago or that we received two years ago was 1.25 million dollars.

The one that's currently on order is twice that cost and has a four-year delivery time.

So we're seeing the cr the the prices increase drastically, and at the same time, the delivery time is four to five years, where we typically it would be about a year.

So we started talking about this with our state and federal lobbying teams a while ago, and it's really we reached the national level where there's been um some uh Congress oversight put in place and there's some Congress studies going on.

Um International Association of Fire Chiefs is deeply involved to try to do some investigation, put some regulations on these companies that are just driving the cost through the roof.

And the, you know, the the concurrent issue is that what we're seeing in fire engines is just like anything, it's the the aluminum's failing, the steel's failing.

We're seeing the electrical components where you know when I when I started it was all levers and knobs, and now it's all electronics.

If a mother board goes out, the engine's done.

So trying to regulate it tighter at a federal level will help us out.

It's just gonna be a long, um, a long time to get there.

And at the same time, our fire engines are not holding up like they used to.

So fortunately, you know, it started out as a Santa Rosa.

We we thought it was a Santa Rosa issue.

Um, and when we brought it to the federal lobbying team, they hadn't heard of it when they were here two weeks ago.

They brought documentation that it's at the congressional level.

So it's it's a national problem that we're willing to combat and willing to take on, and we're working with our federal lobbying team on on getting there.

So appreciate the question, and and it is uh it's a really trying time for the fire service as far as fleet goes.

Thank you.

Excuse me, thank you, Chief.

I appreciate that.

And with that, um, I we'll move on from this item, and that moves us to item nine adjournment, and we will adjourn at 10.50.