That's all that's Good afternoon.

I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence interpretation of the meeting.

For those just joining the meeting, live interpretation in Spanish is available, and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar.

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Isidra, will you please restate this in Spanish?

Back to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Councilmember McDonald.

Council Member Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows.

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

Perfect.

Yes, in the event that the broadcast goes down or our internet service fails again.

Perfect.

Thank you for that.

And so we will move on to item four point one, our discussion of dynamic pricing at the Bennett Valley golf course.

Gentlemen, it's a pleasure.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members, Jason, that assistant city manager.

And with that, I was very excited to learn that Kemper Sports has been on their own, evaluating conditions of the course and trying to come up with ways that they can work that they can benefit uh the city's budgets and finance.

And so with that, uh, they are here to present one of those items uh to get your feedback and determine if this is something we'd like to bring forward as uh part of our fee restructuring.

So with that, I'd like to introduce James Birchall and Greg Anderson, and they will work their way through the presentation.

Thank you, Jason, and welcome.

Uh, we're here to present uh from Kemper Sports, which was Touchstone Golf.

Just as a little information, Touchstone Golf was purchased by Kemper Sports earlier this year.

We've merged together and now um have a real dynamic team.

Uh our team is still in place with Mark Luthman, who was the president of Touchstone Golf, is now the executive vice president under the golf division of Kemper Sports.

In my role as vice president of operations, I still oversee uh the Touchstone Golf Portfolio, but also now have the support from Kemper Sports as an operation.

So we're really excited to share with you the new true demand system that Kemper Sports has introduced for Bennett Valley and how it will help financially uh the golf course do a little bit better.

And one of the things I want to make sure we're talking about our public or non-resident pricing.

Our goal is always to continue to keep resident pricing for the residents of Santa Rosa to have the best pricing.

So this uh dynamic pricing strategy is not implemented for the residents at this time.

We're just introducing this for non-resident tea times.

So, what is true demand from Kemper sports?

There's really four pillars here.

The variable pricing is the dynamic pricing, but now we'll also have some business intelligence, compens uh compens insights, as well as innovative booking strategies to help us drive more revenue for Bennett Valley.

So I'm gonna quickly go through the four different pillars here of how true demand will help Bennett Valley drive more revenue for the golf course.

The real important one for us is the variable pricing component.

We're gonna implement, they're asking to implement this for the non-resident pricing structure.

And really, there are parameters that go into effect of how we would choose to dynamically price or variably price those rounds.

There's historical data that comes into play, weather is a big factor as we know it's gonna rain pretty heavy tomorrow, so we'd want to uh variably price our rates tomorrow if we could.

What the current sale looks like, um, how long are these rates going to be available for, and then what is the golfer's response?

If we're not seeing um tea times being booked, then we can adjust the pricing, or if they're booking them fast, be able to dynamically price them uh based on the demand.

So these are the kind of five pillars or parameters of what variable pricing can do for the golfers uh again, the non-resident golfers for Bennett Valley.

This is a case study that we've done at different golf courses at this facility back in 2023 and 24.

We implemented dynamic pricing, and we saw weather impacting uh rounds and playability.

And at the top uh chart here, it says they did about 1,762 rounds.

This is four percent less than their plan.

But because at the bottom there, they were able to like dynamically price where available and what made sense, they were able to increase revenues by 22 percent or almost 30 over 31,000 because the demand was there, and we were able to adjust based on what's going on in the market for the golf course.

So, even though rounds were down, we're able to grow revenue based on the demand for the golf course.

So if it's high demand, we're able to charge more for those rounds of golf.

And this is a kind of just a big sample of what it would sort of look like when we start programming a calendar based on the time, the day, and a range of pricing per segment as we would call it.

So at 5 a.m.

on a Monday, a rate could be $33, and then at 10, 29, and so on and so forth.

But at each of these buckets, as you can call them, we would be able to put a range of pricing available based on demand, all the segments that we talked about from the variable pricing strategy.

The other part that we've been able to do with Kemper Sports coming on board is really used their business intelligence suites from price swing, and really now we're able to dive into every round of golf that's played at Bennett Valley, and as we're gonna show in a minute, what we found with the public or non-resident tea times that happened over the last nine months of this year, and how we're making our suggestion going forward for a rate structure.

But really, now with this true demand system, we're able to take the data from customer segmental segments, seasonality, booking times, and how many days in advance they're doing, what the heat map as we say, what's their average fee per day per time, so we can really analyze the T-sheet and the booking patterns of our golfers and be able to make intelligent decisions on our pricings going forward.

And then finally, or second, the comp set insight is a really uh dynamic tool that's uh proprietary to Kemper Sports that they utilize through their true demand.

And what we can do with this is look at our competitive set.

What is Ronant Park and Foxtail charging, what is uh Windsor charging, and start to see by day how many tea times are available at their golf course compared to our golf course, and the system will be able to help us make a decision on what how are we priced compared to our competitive set.

Everyone got excited the light turned on.

Is that a is that a thing?

But really, what this does is the tool goes on the internet and searches the um online to see what's available is how they're getting this information.

But this is a tool that we now have available to us for Bennett Valley.

And so what I wanted to show you here, and I'm not gonna get into too much, but this is our utilization for 2025 for Bennett Valley for the non for the non-resident or public rounds.

And you can see how we found from 6 a.m.

to 5 p.m., what our utilization of this segment of rounds, not all rounds, just this segment, and what their average price that they paid during this time.

And so taking this data, we were able to extrapolate how much money did we make from these tea times.

And so from January to September of this year, we had 8,000 public rounds booked at an average rate of about $52.

Again, when I say public, I mean non-resident, and that's about 60% of our public rounds we're writing.

And in the bottom of the chart on the left, the bottom right-hand corner, that's how much revenue.

So it's about 413,000 from this segment of rounds from every moment of tea time on the T sheet, and what their average price was.

When we took the walk-in folks that just want to walk the golf course, we saw this data that said we generated about a hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars at a certain average rate per segment of time.

And so when we take this information and we said, well, what is our competitive set look like?

What do we think is our range of pricing based on our strategies?

We came up with a range of pricing for all of these segments.

And this segment of pricing for our prime time, which is from six to twelve o'clock, can be lowered by about five dollars from what our normal fee would be to an increase of about $10 per round.

And so that gives us that flexibility based on weather, on demand, to really be able to price accordingly for the non-resident rates.

The afternoon, the one o'clock to five o'clock, it's a little bit less of a stretch, it's more about a six or seven dollar increase, or basically flat to our rates.

But this is the analysis that through the business intelligence that we think puts us very close to our competitive set, not higher than them, but competitive where we are.

Because we are, as we've talked about multiple times when I've come and presented before, we're underpriced comparative our competitive set right now.

So this gets us a flexibility.

We don't have to be the highest, but we don't have to be the lowest either, but gives us that flexibility to be competitive.

And the whole goal of this is not to lose the rounds that we have playing.

If we were to just set our prices ten dollars higher all the way across the board, people would say that's too much of a price increase, and would start probably not booking our tea times as rapidly as we want.

So our goal is to not lose the rounds but be able to uh price accordingly.

So what does this look like now?

Again, lots of charts here.

I'm gonna summarize it real quick because I know you guys have had a long day today.

But what we think will happen is as we dynamically price those same 8,000 rounds that we're writing from January to September of this year, and our data analysis says about 60% of those rounds will pay the full rack and uh dynamically priced rate.

Could see an increase of about $57,000 of revenue just from that segment of rounds being played.

A full implement uh increase is almost 90% $90,000 if everyone paid the full rack rate, which is what's shown in this chart.

But our data suggests that it's about a 60 percent that will pay the full rack rate of dynamic price.

When we talk about the walking rate, um it is um again, instead of uh it's about $28,000 of inclemental revenue that we would see in addition in that same time frame.

So between the walking and the writing rate being dynamically priced with the same rounds, we are looking at about $85,000 revenue increase between January and September for the next fiscal year if we were to implement this in January of 2026.

And again, that's at about 60 percent of the rounds paying the rack rate.

It could be higher, it just depends on on how the bookings go.

But this is an estimate for us.

So summarize, there's costs associated, which we are already implementing and have in our budget, but really the revenue growth is what we're looking to do.

We really want to help the golf course offset its debt services so that it can start paying more of its share of the debt service for the golf course, and so we think by implementing dynamic pricing for the non-resident rates only, um, we can easily generate eighty-five thousand dollars more of revenue for the next um fiscal year just between January and September.

When you add the full year, it could be a hundred thousand dollars or more for the year.

I went quick.

So I know it's a lot of data and charts, but really wanted to make sure that's our point.

So I'll open it up to any questions.

Oh, fantastic, and thank you for being as succinct as you were.

Um there are there are individuals who've been sitting through seven hours of meetings who really appreciated it.

Uh bringing it back to council for questions, uh, Ms.

Rogers.

Mine is pretty quick.

Thank you for the presentation.

It was very fast and good.

Uh my question is if I'm a non-resident, how do I know what I am going to be charged on any given day?

Like, does it change daily?

Does it change a week, a month?

Like, how does that work?

Sorry, it changes based on um all the parameters, whether it's weather, booking patterns, and everything between the public.

When you go to the website, it integrates with our booking engine, which is our T-sheet, and will change dynamically online.

If someone calls in, the staff also just looks at the T-sheet, and those are the rates that are on the T sheet that are on there.

So it's all it's all already calculated.

And this works and is being done in other things.

Yeah, so we are we've implemented it two of our facilities in Fairfield, Rancho Solano and Paradise Valley for the non-resident rates there, and um it will be introduced at another facility coming close um pretty soon.

Perfect, thank you, thank you, Miss McDonald.

That was my question, and then I just had one more question for you since you've just united with Kemper Sports.

Where are they located at?

Um their support office is in Chicago, um, but our support office that was with Touchstone Golf is also in Austin.

Uh my office is here in the Bay Area.

I'm in San Ramon, and the executive vice president is in San Jose.

And so we're still staying local in the area.

That's what I wanted to hear.

Thanks.

Thank you, Miss Fleming.

Yeah, thank you.

Um for just for the council and for the public, um, the fees that we we collect, are they diverted to um maintenance?

Are they diverted to our general fund?

Are they diverted to the profit of Kemper?

Where do the where do these additional revenues go to?

All the revenues um are go back into the enterprise fund for Bennett Valley and the city of Santa Rosa.

Um Kemper Sports and Touchstone were a management company.

We just have our management fee that we collect from the operating the facilities, and that's incorporated into the uh budget of the golf course.

Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

Let's open this up to the public.

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

Please, sir.

You can go up to the podium.

And if we are there are other members who have comments, if you could make your way to the podium right now, just to be efficient with time.

Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

My name is Fred Olibach, and um I have a comment on this.

In public policy, I look for fairness and I use the golden rule as my benchmark.

And I look at dynamic pricing, and I see this is exactly how airlines rip me off, charge more for seats.

I looked at the diagrams, they look just like how my seat changed from $50 to $80, just like that.

This is how storage lockers do the same thing.

And I'm tired of getting ripped off, and I don't particularly like golf, but I was really kind of triggered by the dynamic pricing because I've been ripped off by this number of times.

I'm I'm preparing to go to Hawaii to a friend's memorial service, and I know that my family is going to be hit hard by dynamic pricing there, aimed at tourists and guests.

So I think that this is really the antithesis of the golden rule, this type of dynamic pricing.

And so it's to me, it's a form of advanced kind of greed.

And uh the use of it by the city, in my opinion, doesn't reflect the values that the city should stand for.

Uh, what's to stop the city from doing this same thing to other revenue sources like park reservations, like at Rincon Valley?

There's demand, raise the price.

So I think this is a slippery slope.

So my suggestion is don't get started on this and don't succumb to to these kind of practices um to address the budget in times of austerity.

Uh you know, stick up for for stuff that's fair and and I just wouldn't do it.

I think it's a bad idea, and anyone who's gone online to try to get an airline seat and then had it change when you came back two hours later, and you and it's it's just really a despicable practice.

So I would say don't go for it.

Thank you, Fred.

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

Seeing none, let's bring it back to council for any final comments or direction.

Any thoughts from my colleagues?

I will just offer thank you again for this very clear, very succinct presentation.

Um, and for the benefit of the public, this is right in line with a lot of the presentations you've seen recently.

The city is looking at all of the all of the fees that it charges, whether it's for for our park services, for our recreation services, for our parking services downtown.

Um I think everyone is aware of the headwinds that are facing our budget, and so we are doing due diligence across the board.

This is a very creative way to deal with the costs of Bennett Valley, which is obviously a beloved local institution.

Uh, and it's worth noting that the golfers who use Bennett Valley are very much in support of the kinds of pricing changes that the golf course has put into place.

So the people who use that amenity are very supportive of this because they see the way that it protects the golf course for few for for current residents and for future generations.

Thank you for being as creative as you have been.

Uh clearly you have the support of council here.

Um, and uh no further direction.

Please keep doing what you're doing, and thank you for your attention to the city's bottom line.

Thank you very much.

One other item real quick is uh Greg would uh highlight on, but I'll speak for him.

We're getting into the holiday seasons coming up.

Um we have our tinsel takeover happening at the restaurant in Iron and Vine at the golf course again this year.

Please come by after when are we starting, Greg?

Uh, starting in uh the first week of December.

Yeah, and it's just a great.

We'll all be invited to a uh reception that we'll have there the first week.

Yes, so please come by and see it was an amazing thing that we did last year, and we're excited to host it again this year.

The tinsel takeover at Iron and Vine.

Wonderful.

Thanks for the invitation.

Thank you again for the presentation today.

All right.

We will move on then to a report, if any, from our closed sessions.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mayor Stapp.

There were no reportable actions taken in closed session today.

Thank you.

On to item 8.1, our commute community empowerment plan update.

Ms.

Horta is making her way down.

She's been doing double duty today.

When we had our technical issues earlier, Ms.

Horta was one of two city staff who uh graciously volunteered to come in so that we could we could get our meeting started.

Thank you for all the extra effort, Anna, on top of everything you do for our community engagement team.

My pleasure.

Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, and city council.

I'm Anna Orta, community engagement manager with the communications and intergovernmental relations office, and I will be presenting the community empowering plan update for the month of November.

On November 6th, join Mayor Staff, Councilmember McDonald, and community advisory board members Dalton and Rodriguez for the second and third community meeting.

The meeting will be held at Montgomery High School, 1250 Hammond Drive School Cafeteria starting at 6:30 p.m.

Again, this is District 2 and 3rd community meeting held at Montgomery High School, 1250 Hammond Drive School Cafeteria.

To find more information about the meeting, you can visit srct.org forward slash city alerts or email communityengagement at srcd.org.

On November 8th, the Santa Rosa Police Department will be participating in the tunnel to Towers 5K run and walk starting at 8 30 in the morning from Corehouse Square, 600 Fourth Street.

This event raises funds for disabled veterans and public safety workers with 93% of the proceeds going directly to programs that support local heroes and their families.

To register, please visit Run Walk Santa Rosa.t2T.org.

Also on November 8th, Recreation and Parks will be hosting their monthly park and month volunteer program at a place to play Community Park 2375 West Third Street from 9 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

These family-friendly work days are a fun and productive way to help beautify your local parks or community center.

Hand tools and gloves will be provided.

Santa Rosa Water hosts bi-monthly volunteer creek cleanups on the first and third Saturday of each month at Prince Memorial Greenway.

The next cleanup is scheduled for Saturday, November 15th.

All ages are welcome to participate as Creek Protectors in the cleanup for this section of the downtown Santa Rosa Creek.

Volunteers meet at Olive Park Footbridge near 169A Hazel Street at 10 in the morning.

To sign up, please visit srct.org forward slash calendar.

The Santa Rosa Police Department will be hosting their holiday toy drive to benefit Catholic charities.

Help bring joy to local families this season by donating unwrapped toys for children of all ages from infants to twins to teens.

Toys can be drop off at the Santa Rosa Police Department Front Lobby, 965 Sonoma Avenue from November 6th until the 7-12, December 12th.

Last year, over 500 toys were collected.

Your generosity truly matters.

Let's make this year even more impactful.

Finally, on November 28th, start the holiday season with the annual winter tree lining celebration at Old Corja Square, 600 Fourth Street from 4 to 7 p.m.

This is a free family friendly event filled with activities, performances, and photos with Santa, a joyful way to kick off the holiday season.

And that concludes the community empowerment plan update for November.

Thank you.

That is a full list as always, Anna.

Bringing it back to council for questions or comments.

Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you for the presentation.

Can you remind me once again when the tree lining ceremony was?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.

Yes, it's on November 28th at the old Jorja Square and it starts from it's from 4 to 7 p.m.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other questions?

All right, let's open this up to public comment.

Would any other would any members of the public like to uh make comment on this item?

Seeing none, or bringing it back to council for any final comments.

I will I will simply underline um the really big news in your announcement, which is that council member McDonald and I are gonna be presenting to the public.

We want to make sure that really highlight that for everyone here, everyone watching online.

You're gonna have this much, this much knowledge and charisma in one space, ready ready to tackle any subjects that you bring to us.

So please don't hesitate to come out.

Um and more seriously, Anna, thank you as always for all the work that you do.

Thanks for your help this afternoon.

And uh we can we can uh move on to the next item.

Much obliged.

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

Madam City Madam City Manager, any reports from your end?

Yeah, I have a few.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Council members.

So with about 43,000 Sonoma County residents expected to um receive um reduced benefits from CalFresh.

We want to make certain that the community understands where they can go to receive benefits.

So they can go to get food.refb.org.

That is Redwood Um Empire Foods website.

Um they can go there to get some donations, pick up some donations and pick up food.

Uh you will also see some additional information coming out uh from the city on food banks that we plan to host uh within the city and probably plan to partner with the county on how we can also mitigate some of these um food benefits.

We want to make certain that you know while we sit in office and I'm certain I can speak for this council.

You know, we want to make certain that we're leading by example to make certain that our residents and our community and our children uh have uh food.

Uh so more information will come out on how the city of Santa Rosa is helping.

But in the meantime, again, you can go to get food.refb.org.

Also, I would like to announce that uh charging smart goal designation is um Santa Rosa has earned the charging smart gold designation.

It's a designation from the National Charging Smart Program, and it recognizes our leadership in expanding EV uh charging infrastructure.

So we're pleased to announce that we are the first designee in California to earn this designation, especially on the West Coast.

Um this achievement reflects strong collaboration across departments with community partners and to make EV adoption more accessible and more equitable.

So thank you to our team and I believe Chad Hedge.

I thought I saw him walk in the building as well, has been partnering um with um PGE to make certain that we have EV charging stations uh across the city.

And last but not least, I'm proud or pleased to announce that the bike pet overcrossing bid has been released with proposals uh expected to be received on uh December the 16th.

So I'm sure that all you all are excited to see that finally come to flourish.

Thank you for each of those updates, Madam City Manager.

Um and Madam City Attorney, any updates on your end?

Good evening again, Mayor.

No uh report out of the city attorney's office today.

Thank you.

Let's go to public comment.

Would any members of the public like to uh comment on either of those reports?

Janice, the floor is yours.

And again, if any members of the public are interested in commenting, if you could be waiting by the by the podium uh just to save time.

Janice, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Janice Carman here, and I ran against Diana one year ago.

And I remember when we came into the chambers here, and she announced it uh a point.

Um, I'm not sure which meeting it was, but that she was not willing or not able, or can't means won't, would not help the schools.

And she was a state affiliated representative for the state of California.

Shameful Diana.

Uh Janice, what does this have to do with the council with the Madam or the City Manager and City Attorney reports?

Oh, with the minutes.

So you're doing the minutes right now?

No, we're we these is comment on the city attorney and the city manager.

What's going on here at the city council?

So Janice, this mayor is going with diamonds.

I graduated.

It's just shameful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

These comments need to be on the items that are listed.

Are any other and would any other members of the public like to comment on the city manager and city attorney's reports?

Seeing none, we will close public comment.

We will bring it back to or we will move on to item 10 statements of abstention or recusal by council members.

Anything from council?

Any statements of abstention or recusal?

Seeing none, all right.

Moving on then to everyone's favorite mayor and council members' reports.

Are there any members of the council who would like to make reports?

Mr.

Okrebke?

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Just one thing real quick.

Last week uh the public safety subcommittee uh met and had a few discussions, including the Measure H implementation plan from the fire department as well as a report out from the police department on the use or more accurately the misuse of e-bikes and e-motorcycles throughout our community, which has been a rising concern, especially amongst people around schools and uh with those of young teenagers.

So hopefully, um something more comprehensive will come before this body in the future, but uh we will but until then uh I want to ensure that the public knows we are aware of some of these issues and are doing what we can to address it through education.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you.

I'll make it click.

Uh two things.

One thing was I definitely enjoyed myself at the SRPD trunk or treat.

That was a lot of fun.

Um I got to pass out some candy with the mayor and see a ton of community members and a lot of participation from the department um and other stakeholders we have in the community.

And then the second thing is on 1111 at 10 30.

We will be celebrating our Veterans Day and honoring our veterans for all the work that they have done.

Um, so if you would like to come to City Hall down at the flagpole, we will be raising the flag in honor of our veterans and the sacrifices that they have made at 10 30 on November 11th.

Thank you.

Um Ms.

Ben Wales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, just had a couple things.

Um, I just wanted to report out for the uh the Sonoma County Coalition on Homelessness uh that I thought would um folks need to know about.

Um the uh 2020 continuum of care notice of funding opportunity, the NOFO, um 4.2 million anticipated for Sonoma County.

There's gonna be some dramatic changes that are rumored in the upcoming NOFO, which may impact local permanent supportive housing uh projects.

These changes include a shift in funding priorities from best practices such as housing first to transitional housing with conditions on sobriety and accepting services.

Um staff is uh gonna be monitoring this closely, and and I should say, you know, the coalition is really concerned about this.

Um the board received represent uh a presentation on the strategic plan and need to update the plan given the dynamic policy and funding environment.

As a follow-up, the Department of Health Services Director Nolan uh Sullivan will provide the board with an overview of count countywide homeless services at the December meeting.

The board also identified the need to identify priority populations and funding uh priorities and to develop scenarios uh uh for potential funding reductions.

So I think that's our greatest concern our reductions um at the federal level.

Um, on a better note, um, I did want to um announce that I uh have an appointment for the board of parks and recreation.

I'm appointing uh Pam Rivis.

Uh she is uh she works for the Petaluma River Park Foundation, and so she has uh great background in parks.

Um, but she lives here in in Santa Rosa.

She also worked with me at Sonoma State as an American uh Vista, and uh just really excited uh to make that appointment tonight.

So thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just need to report out that um I attended an event for the Sonoma family meals on behalf of the city.

It was called their knife's um edge event.

And unfortunately, although it was a very successful event, they really read to us some of the disparities that are happening in our community around food insecurity.

So I was happy to hear what city manager said and what the county is going to be doing to help the 43,000.

I think they said even up to 50,000 families are going to be impacted by the reduction in the SNAP benefits as well as 13,000 potential families that will lose those benefits permanently.

So congratulations to Sonoma Family Meals for their successful event.

I was lucky enough to sit at a table with the parents of the young man who actually did the desserts.

So I got extra cookies, and they were the best chocolate chip cookies I think I've had in my life.

So congratulations to them.

The food was delicious, and thank you for the opportunity to go to that on behalf of the council.

And I also attended the trunk or treat event, and my understanding it was the largest turnout that they've had in quite some time, but it just continues to grow.

So thank you to all the different community members that participated.

Um they had rows of treats for kids and families in a safe atmosphere from cars and everything else.

I appreciate for everybody who um had gone to that and also who have participated.

Thank you.

Three quick items from me.

Last week, the long-term finance uh and budget subcommittee met.

Uh, and so Ms.

Ben Waylois and Mr.

Krepke and I we received a first of all report on from our IT team around the IT budget and projects, and then a more general report on uh revenues and expenses for the city, and then also a fairly um extensive dive into Calper's expense uh expenses or uh Calper's costs rather.

Uh that meeting is available online.

Uh there was also a meeting of the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

Uh, for those of you who like discussions about bylaws, this was the meeting for you.

Um there were also some uh some updates regarding uh some of the GSA plans, but bylaws were the name of the game.

Uh and then finally, we had there was a meeting of the uh water advisory committee on Monday.

I filled in for Ms.

Rogers uh and we inv we elected a new chair and vice chair.

Got a I got a uh an update on the Eel River Potter Dammy Water Valley Dam project, which uh is obviously a high priority in the area, uh, and then some general updates.

So that concludes my report.

We'll go to public comment.

Any members of the public wish to comment on any of the mayor's or council members' reports?

Peter, I see you at the at the podium.

You want to go ahead?

Peter Alexander, common sense and spiritual courage.

Are we joking?

Food and security in the home county of Luther Burbank.

For decades, not just me but others have said we need to do a huge massive garden greenhouse programs, and we're looking about food and security.

Gemini crickets, we're not in Alaska or New York.

And I mentioned about the veterans.

Did our American veterans put their lives on the line?

And how many gave their lives for what?

To become a nation on their knees to usurus bankers, anti-U.S.

Constitution, United Nations, and their bar lawyerly minions.

And if you don't know what bar means, that's the British attorney registry.

Political will will gladly follow the people's will.

And there isn't anybody within the sound of my voice unless you're a wealthy lawyer and banker that doesn't have five reasons to strike the system into submission.

It would free the U.S.

Constitution.

It would free law enforcement to serve the U.S.

Constitution, not the corporates.

And it would free people like in front of you to not be encumbered by a bunch of unseen strings from the United Nations and their bar lawyerly minions.

And they could do a much better job, and I'm sure they would appreciate it.

The homeless twenty four billion dollars disappeared.

Consider looking this up.

Educate yourself.org.

Educate yourself.org.

Go to concentration camps.

They were called REX 84 camps.

Now they're known as FEMA concentration camps.

And since 2007, over 20 million have entered those camps not to be returned.

You can't find this anywhere, but yet it's true.

Ted Gunderson and the FBI, my old friend, he put this information out 20 30 years ago.

This is nothing new.

What is the power that we have?

I mean, a lot of us feel like what can we do?

Well, we can unplug from the system.

Stop paying into the system.

I can tell you what the sheriffs will do if you stop paying your mortgages and your rents.

They will give you the biggest round of applause you've ever seen because they're getting tattooed and missed mishandled also.

They're under the auspices, same as ICE, which is a federal deal, which is run by bar lawyers that don't belong in public office according to the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.

Now the difference between us and our law enforcement is law enforcement is being disenfranchised and handcuffed, which is why half of Oakland quit and almost all the senior officers in the Bay Area quit when all this stuff started happening a few years back.

But ICE is being uh bolstered for their work.

And if they were only dealing with criminals, that would be one thing.

Thank you, Peter.

Are there any other members of the public who would like to make a comment?

Janice, go ahead.

Microphone.

Can you turn the microphone on?

Thank you.

The chair is the mayor.

And it it was a pretty awesome meeting.

Um I'd been talking about uh AI and somebody doing something about AI for a while.

And uh Brian Tickner uh and his um associates gave an incredible uh talk about AI at that meeting.

And the one thing that I don't say about uh AI, and one of my concerns is that it's going to come down bigger than it already is, and that when it does, I have concerns that the city of Santa Rosa isn't gonna be ready for it, and I know with the constraints and the difficulties, challenges with the budget, that it's hard to find money, but I'm hoping and uh something's gonna, you know, help change this in the future, that there'll be money set aside like the general fund that will be just for AI and infrastructure uh for the uh city of Santa Rosa and probably extend into the county, but there's some partnerships going on anyway.

So um I just wanted to say that that it's really on my mind, AI, and I I think that it's gonna be real important, especially since our president is increasing his family's wealth with um I always forget it, it's that coin thing.

Um I can't think of it right now, but I was the you know, the coin that people are doing that's the blockchain uh Trump has really increased his family wealth with that, and that has to do with AI as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

Any other public comment?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment on this item, and we will move on to item 12, approval of minutes.

Are there any edits or additions to the minutes?

We would have public comment, any public comment on the minutes?

Items 12.1 or 12.2.

Seeing none, we'll close public comment and adopt the minutes as submitted.

Which brings us to item 13 consent.

Madam City Clerk, are you ready?

We will see.

At your at your leisure.

Thank you, Mayor.

There is a bit of lag time on my normal system due to the universe today.

It's been an interesting night technologically, yes.

The item 13.1, motion approval, issuance of a purchase order for the purchase of network hardware.

Item 13.2 motion award F003120 professional service agreement for VoIP phone system implementation and services to Sirium Network Inc.

Item 13.3 motion second amendment to professional services agreement number F00 2776 with Burke Williams and Sorensen LLP for General Municipal Legal Services.

13.4 motion approval of second amendment to blanket purchase order number one seven one seven three five with creams towing inc.

Item 13.5 motion approval of the first amendment to the cooperative purchase of Digital Health Department DHD software from Tyler Technologies Incorporated to update and modernize fire inspection software item 13.6 resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa superseding and replacing resolution number 2023 213 and declaring pursuant to government code section 54221 that real property owned by the city located at 1942 Rose Avenue, Santa Rosa, California is exempt surplus land.

Item 13.7 resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa approving summary vacation of portions of public service easements located at 2771 4th Street, 190 Farmers Lane, and 277 4th Street following completion of long drive and vicinity sewer and water improvements project.

Item 13.8 resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa superseding resolution number RES-2025-076 and approving the grant of easement to PGE over a portion of city-owned property located at 700 Fifth Street, APN 009-012-025.

Item 13.9 resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa approving multiple bid awards professional services agreements for revenue analysis and support services.

Item 13.10 ordinance adoption second reading ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending Santa Rosa City Code sections 6-20.020 definitions 6-20.140 suspension of revocation of license and 6-0 or 20.260 appeal procedure.

Thank you.

Bringing it back to council.

Are there any concerns or questions for any of these items?

Seeing none, we'll open this up to public comment.

Are there any members of the public who wish to comment on the consent calendar?

Seeing none, we will close public comment.

Uh and I'll bring it back to Ms.

McDonald for a motion.

Thank you, Mayor.

I move items 13.1 through 13.10 and waive further reading of the text.

Second.

We have a motion and a second by Mr.

Krepke.

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

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember.

OK?

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows.

Yes.

Councilmember McDonald?

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with five affirmative votes, with Council Member Fleming absent and Vice Mayor Alvarez absent.

Thank you very much.

All right.

So I note the time is 5 03, and I just wanted to take a pause and reflect on the fact that this body has been meeting now for more than seven and a half straight hours.

And in spite of a 75-minute delay because of technology, we've arrived at our first public comment on non-agenda matters only three minutes late.

This is a a cause, a cause for celebration.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

You are you were here to witness this.

And with that, we're gonna open this up to we're gonna we are gonna open up the public comment on non-agenda matters.

So this is the chance for the public with particular reference to the students who are here to comment on any items not listed on the agenda.

We know that many of you are here for uh for our general plan discussion, but this is for items not listed on the agenda.

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

Peter, are you interested in speaking?

We'll start with you, and if any other members, and I'm again, I'm challenging the students.

Uh, make your way to the podium so we can get through this efficiently.

Peter, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

I didn't get a chance to finish before the 24 billion dollars that disappeared for the homeless was uh uh I have every reason to believe was spent in uh uh incarcerating and transporting uh hundreds of thousands of our homeless to FEMA camps uh and paying the FEMA camps to do that.

That's where the 24 billion dollars went.

I don't know if you know this, but I'm part of a very famous gang, the Peanuts Gang, but I have affiliations with others, including the CSPOA, the Constitutional Sheriff's Peace Officers Association, half of which are veterans.

I also have connections to the Hells Angels.

They're patriotic, constitutionalist minded.

Half of them are veterans, and Greenberry surgeon Dr.

Jeffrey McDonald is now still in prison after 54 years for blowing the whistle on Bush's heroine, the same Bush that had John F.

Kennedy executed.

This anti-US constitutional bar association, the British Attorney Registry conveys nobility titles on their Lang lawyers, making them esquires.

They're not supposed to be in public office, and yet they dominate the House and the Senate and most political positions.

This is not right, it is not good.

The Black Panthers and American India movement were started by two Air Force veterans, Dennis Banks and Big Man Elbert.

Most all car clubs and motorcycle clubs have a serious percentage of vets, all who took a the oath to the California and United States Constitution.

California veterans arise united.

You're invited to the West Oakland Bart beginning tomorrow, November 5th.

Remember, remember November 5th, 11 a.m.

begins the 40-day strike to claim this country back.

Aside from a small percentage of notable exceptions from the Bar Association is a criminal enterprise by suits who never work except with each other to usurp the medical marijuana arena, the immigration, the homeless, the DMV arena, and the insurance skimming.

Veterans arise as one.

To all the green growers in the green growers game, all farm workers, homeless, and their advocates, all veterans, join us, because the only true vote you have is put to put our bodies on the line.

No violence is being requested or required, but to unplug the system, knowing we are the most powerful people in the most powerful state.

To the betrayed, this being our veterans and long-suffering truckers and labor without compromise, arise.

So too law enforcement.

Join with the CSPOA now.

To the lost, forgotten, and broken, take this to heart as spoken.

You being the slaughterhouse-bound crying animals, the homeless and the long incarcerated.

To you, I say, breathe deeply and pray with authority and grace.

Self-governance is our birthright.

Self-endowed through Christ consciousness.

Thank you, Peter.

Thank you, Peter.

All right, Nate, thank you for your patience.

We're over to you.

All right.

How are you doing?

My name's Nate Coogan.

Um, I have been a Santa Rosa resident for most of my life.

Um I have been in the professional world here, uh owning businesses and whatnot, been an entrepreneur for oh, probably 25 plus years.

Um most recently I've been a commercial real estate advisor here in town.

Um the reason I'm talking to you guys today is because of the measure EE, the general business tax, um, there's been some amendments in there that I got a letter in the mail for request for compliance for a small um office condo unit that I have that I have very difficultly been trying to make sense of an actual investment in my own um time.

Um I have been able to rent it out here and there uh after COVID, it's just been crazy uh after the office exodus.

But to make a long story short, um there is an error in the uh between the code and what is on the FAQ for the city of Santa Rosa um F um code, and so the code reads um any rent uh any rental of residential property, a person shall be considered to be in the business of renting residential if they rent for consideration for more than three dwelling units, blah blah blah.

Anyways, the old um code, which is in the FAQ reads owners of any commercial um rental property or residential property renting more than three units are required to pay business tax upon gross receipts, da-da-da.

So, the guys like me that's got that have one single unit, it's it's a commercial unit.

Now I gotta pay 200 bucks on revenue of almost nothing after mortgages and whatnot, um, expenses and what have you.

The next tier up of um gross receipts I is taxed at.001, the lowest um uh tier, which I would fall into is taxed at.01.

So I have to pay 200 for 20,000 in gross gross receipts.

The next guy up has to pay um 20 for the same uh for 500,000 in receipts.

So that's where the small guy is getting squeezed here.

So that's what I have.

That's why I'm here to talk.

And there is an error that the city manager and city attorney have been notified of I hope by HDL because when I talk to them on the phone that said that's what they said they were going to do.

Um, that's the third-party compliance um group that is, you know, watchdogging this thing.

And they said that I was found by their discovery department, which is really funny because if you guys are out there trying to discover guys like me spending money on because I put a sign out on the thank you, Nate.

I think the time has expired.

Our technology system is not operating quite correctly tonight.

Um Madam City Manager, do we want to have any members of our staff just just say a few words in the back?

Yeah, if we could have someone gather his information, we can reach back out to him, please.

Thank you.

Are there any other members of the public who'd like to speak on non-agenda matters?

Again, students.

I'm keeping you on the hot seat.

This would be worth extra credit tomorrow, I'm sure.

Okay, uh are there any are you looking to see?

Are you looking to speak?

You have you have the floor, and then Janice, you're next.

Hello, my name's Rebecca.

Uh I've owned Energize Hot Yoga located at 522 Wilson Street for 14 years.

Starting on October 1st, 2025, 7th and Wilson Street area has been greatly impacted in a negative way by a large influx of homeless and transient people.

With Redwood Gospel Mission and other Catholic charities services close by, this small area was already overly impacted by homeless and transient people.

The reopening of St.

Vincent's dining hall, 610 Wilson Street in District 5, has tipped the scale too far towards over impact.

Not enough security, communication, accountability, cleanup service has been put into place to support this additional homeless meal service.

6, 7th, 8th, and Wilson is already overly impacted by homeless and transient people hanging out.

I have not seen the security measures, cleanup crews, communication accountability put forth to actually make this work in a sustainable, healthy manner for neighbors, customers, tourists, police, business owners, etc.

to feel safe and secure.

Before St.

Vincent's reopening, the area was already overly impacted with not enough security measures.

The scale has tipped too far one way, and it's not good.

Coming out onto the street and talking with neighbors, business owners, and actually paying attention to what's going on.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Janice.

Janice Corman.

And I have a um issue that's going on and on, and that is that it hasn't been resolved in any way.

Uh and that is that there was clear cutting of a uh property across the street or near me that was not um permitted at all.

There was uh nothing to allow this, and I watched a beautiful uh old forest disappear.

Well, I was calling the city and some were my neighbors, calling the county, showing up at both, and nobody did anything.

And then I later have a violation that's been filed against me.

And what has happened, and I did take forestry in another state, I've claimed this before.

The concrete where the trees that the machine was pulling the trees out by the roots and pulling them over the fence, the concrete and the asphalt in the street has collapsed because there's nothing to support it anymore.

And my driveway is all cracked up, it's messed up.

My next door neighbors is the same way, and uh I had tried to follow this, I had tried to find out what was going on.

It took uh eight months to finally be called and be told it was a totally illegal project.

Uh they haven't done anything else other than grade it, but they graded it straight across, and it should be graded differently.

It has floodplain there as well, which I announced at a waterways meeting.

And one of my uh challenges with the city is the lack of leadership and the lack of leadership is that I should have been contacted, I should have had someone that was actually in my corner, not in the corner of the people that decided to do this and go and cut these trees with no permit and build.

They were going to build a small subdivision there.

It's also a rancho from rancho um Los Gilicos originally, it's Mi Wok country, and there are lots of of uh springs and creeks underneath this floodplain.

So this is a real problem, and at this point I have a violation against me, and I've lived in my house for over 40 years, so I should be grandfathered in for anything that you try to say that I've made a violation in this case.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

Would any other members of the public like to speak?

We will close public comment.

Let's see.

In fact, well, that was the end of it.

Actually, we're just we're closing the first public comment on non-agenda matters.

Sorry, I was lost my place.

Uh, and we're gonna move on to what is uh likely the main show for the evening, and the reason why so many of you are here.

We're gonna go on to our first public hearing concerning the general plan 2050 municipal code and zoning map implementation.

I believe we have Amy Nicholson here to present.

Excellent.

Amy and Ashley, welcome down.

Do you help with the you're good?

You're good, all right.

Game.

This is we have a we have a party.

Welcome, welcome to all of you.

The floor is yours.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

Gabe Osburn, Director of Planning and Economic Development.

And joining me today is assistant city attorney Ashley Crocker and Amy Nicholson, supervising planner in an advanced planning section.

Before I hand the presentation over to Amy, I like to just give a brief overview of today's action.

This is our implementation package for our 2050 general plan, which was adopted by the council earlier this year.

So this action really is amending the zoning code for in various code sections for consistency with the general plan.

It also includes a really interesting component for our housing strategy, which is our missing middle.

Missing middle actually focuses on housing types that often don't exist in communities.

We have built a lot of multifamily units, a lot of single family units, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, those units that were fairly popular many years ago, aren't as popular these days.

And if we start at that level and we align our policies around strategies to solve those problems, it will overly it'll generate an overall housing strategy.

And that's really our goal in the coming years, and working with our internal partners and housing community services to create a solid comprehensive housing strategy.

So today's action really builds a solid foundation for that and helps us bring in the policies and initiatives that allow us to implement some of these policies and programs that are really in our guiding light, which is our general plan 2050.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Amy Nicholson and she will take us through the presentation.

Thank you.

And good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Amy Nicholson Supervising Planner.

As Director Osborne just mentioned, the general plan 2050 was adopted by the council this last June.

And the general plan is the top tier planning document for the city, and so any other land use related plans or regulations must be consistent with the general plan.

One of the city's main tools for implementing the general plan is the municipal code, including the zoning code as well as the zoning map, and those uh are the focus of today's item.

I'm going to very briefly walk through these text amendments.

There are amendments to four titles of the municipal code.

Uh one is to Title 19.

This is a chapter that regulates park and recreation dedication and improvements.

And there are a number of amendments proposed to this chapter to implement the vision of parks in the city's general plan.

There is also a proposal to remove what's called the growth management ordinance from the municipal code.

This is because the city's current general plan no longer includes a growth management element, and that was removed due to conflicts that this presented with the city achieving its local goals as well as achieving state mandates.

One that I would call out here is the streamlining for electric vehicle charging equipment, and this would be allowed as an accessory use on a developed site as well as as a primary use.

Instead of it being defined as a structure, it would be defined as the use of a parcel, which would allow for more properties to achieve the general plan density and develop in a manner of property owners' choosing.

And just to add, all of these amendments are included in detail in attachment one to the staff report as well as ordinance one.

So moving on to ordinance two.

This is an ordinance that includes uh just over 2,000.

Well, it's about almost 2100 properties.

This slide uh should be revised to show 2089 properties, which would be rezoned to be consistent with the underlying general plan land use.

And so this graphic here depicts the general plan land use diagram, which sets a land use for every parcel within the city, and then also expresses the intensity of that land use on that parcel.

The California government government code requires that zoning implement the general plan land use, and as a part of this effort, staff went through every part every property within the city to determine if the zoning was consistent with the general plan.

And in this case, found just over 2,000 properties where that was not the case.

This was a topic that was discussed pretty extensively at the Planning Commission meeting last month.

There were some concerns raised by residents where the zoning change would be a significant one.

So this is a neighborhood just east of Memorial Hospital on Parker Drive, where the general plan envisioned office, and that was a land use that was established at least 20 or 30 years ago, but the zoning was for single-family residential, and the whole neighborhood is developed with detached single-family homes.

So following that meeting, the planning commission recommended that the council consider a general plan land use amendment for these sites or directing staff to do that work.

And so staff subsequently removed those properties from the ordinance.

So ordinance two does not include the rezoning for any of those properties along Parker Drive.

Now I will discuss missing middle housing.

So these regulations are proposed in ordinance one, and they're relatively lengthy because they include a lot of development and design standards.

And then the properties proposed to include missing middle housing are shown in ordinance three.

So missing middle housing, as used in this presentation, and this the city's zoning code reflects a term that was coined by Opticos Design.

This was a firm based out of Berkeley that the city worked with on this effort, and missing middle housing is defined as house-scale buildings that include multiple units in walkable neighborhoods.

So the term middle does not refer to any affordability level.

So another benefit of missing middle housing is that it addresses some of our changing demographics in our community with smaller households.

So we started this effort by giving the consultant team some criteria for missing metal housing sites within the city.

So this included looking at properties that were designated for medium density residential development, and then outside of the city's more hazard-prone areas, which are shown on the left part of this slide.

Next, we looked at mapping uh walkable parts of Santa Rosa.

So this includes commercial centers and areas where people can meet many of their daily needs by walking.

And so that amounted to the parcel shown here on this slide.

And just to kind of characterize the general locations, we're looking at areas on the periphery of the downtown, the junior college neighborhood, along Farmers Lane and Sebastopol Road, commercial shopping center in Bennett Valley, up on Marlowe and Piner Road, as well as the Cotting Town Mall.

And so just to speak a little to these colors, the purple reflects missing middle medium.

These allow for slightly larger missing middle housing buildings, and I'll show a slide on that in just a moment.

And then the shades of pink and red reflect missing middle small zones.

I wanted to spend a moment just talking about missing middle housing in the city's preservation districts.

It is proposed in five of the eight preservation districts, and in these particular cases, any new development would be subject to what's called the landmark alteration permit, which is review by the city's design review and preservation board.

These units would also be subject to any development standards that are required in our historic districts, which includes a height limit of 35 feet.

So this slide shows a few examples of missing metal housing, small units.

You can see two versions of duplex units as well as cottage courts and forplex units, and the missing middle medium zone.

So this is again just focused around Cottingtown Mall, would allow for slightly larger multiplexes as well as courtyard buildings and longer runs of townhouse and live work units.

This slide shows an example of the regulations that are proposed to implement missing middle housing.

So the example on the left is for a duplex unit.

You can see there are a lot of details here, and this is really to ensure that the structures are designed in a scale that is really compatible with a lower intensity neighborhood.

Another item to note is that parking is always required at the rear of the site, and this is to de-emphasize cars as a part of these developments.

And another feature of missing middle housing is the requirement for sort of an interactive environment with the streetscape, and so each missing middle housing unit is required to develop some frontage type.

The example shown on the slide here is of a stoop.

So to summarize, missing middle housing would be integrated through two means.

One is through adding a new section to the city's combining district portion of the zoning code.

In this case, missing middle housing is an option.

So this there would be no requirement to construct missing middle housing.

It does not change the legality of the existing development on the site.

It's merely an option if a property owner elects, and then they would need to follow each of the standards that are listed within the zoning code.

Ordinance three, as I previously mentioned, is the is the changes to the zoning map.

So this would allow missing middle on just 1,991 properties within the city.

And just to speak a little bit to the process, we did present this to the design review and preservation board several months ago for its feedback.

What we heard was general support of the proposal as well as an encouragement for the city to allow for a more streamlined planning review process for these projects, given the extent of the development standards that are included within the code.

I will reiterate though that any property within any of our preservation districts would still be subject to planning review through that landmark alteration permit.

So this implementation package was noticed in a number of ways.

So it it was specific to the planning commission date, I want to clarify.

In the comments that we've received.

For missing middle housing, because this was a project that we have been working on for a number of years, we actually had our first community meeting back in 2021.

That was a general meeting, and so it wasn't noticed specifically to properties because we weren't sure which properties would be included in the initiative, but that was well attended.

And then we also had a meeting in March of this year.

That meeting was noticed directly to property owners proposed to be included in this combining district, and we uh had great attendance for that meeting as well.

Some of the comments that we heard were concerns about neighbor neighborhood impacts, including preservation districts specifically and concerns that parking may be inadequate.

We also heard uh support for the different housing opportunities that this would provide and encouragement for the city to broaden the scope of where it would be allowed.

Uh staff did receive a number of comments for the properties proposed to be rezoned for general plan consistency.

Uh many of these were general inquiries about how the use of the property uh may change and uh what the new requirements might be, and so many of those questions staff was able to answer.

Uh in most of these cases, the changes are quite negligible for properties.

Uh however, as I mentioned previously, there are the properties located east of Memorial Hospital, uh, which we have removed from the ordinance uh before the council.

This item has been reviewed in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, and the amendments before you were analyzed in the environmental impact report done for the general plan 2050.

And there's also a separate CEQA exemption, which applies for properties being rezoned for consistency with the general plan.

So it is with that that the planning commission and the planning and economic development department recommend that the council approve the first reading and introduce three ordinances to amend the municipal code to implement the general plan 2050 to rezone properties to implement the existing general plan land use, and rezone properties to add the missing middle housing combining district.

Um it is further recommended that the council direct staff to bring forward a general plan land use amendment to resolve some of those inconsistencies that I mentioned earlier that can be rolled into a packet that's already in progress by staff uh for later on uh this winter.

Thank you.

Amy Ashley and Gabe, thank you so much.

There was an incredible amount of work to go into this.

Um, thank thank you for this effort.

Thank you for all of your community outreach.

Uh obviously, this um this uh has been a watch closely by members of the community, and thankfully so.

Um you mentioned Parker Drive earlier, and that was uh thank you for notice or thank you for highlighting how community feedback uh allowed the city to change course on that particular on that particular issue.

Um let's bring it back to council now for questions, Mr.

Krupke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, sticking with Parker Drive for a sec, I mean we went through a lot of information.

First of all, thank you for our for all of this.

Um this is great.

Um we've talked about missing middle housing for a while as it were, and so um sticking with Parker Drive.

I just just to be clear, I want to be clear because I did sit in on a portion of the plan of the planning commission meeting of this, is that the response is that it was historically the land use was one thing and the zoning was another.

And so you're trying, so I'll let you answer.

So we're trying the it's your recommendation to keep it as is being used now, correct?

Yes.

So the zoning is for single family residential, and that's how the properties are developed, but the general plan land use is for office, and so um at this point the recommendation from staff and the planning commission is to do a general plan amendment to change that land use from office to low density residential.

That would allow the zoning and general plan land use to be consistent, and it recognizes the existing development of the neighborhood.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I know that might be some redundant um information, but I think it's important to kind of drive that home that that is the recommendation that both planning commission and staff has presented to us.

Um Director Osburn, I you and I have talked a little bit about the communication and messaging around this process, and um, even it it it land use and and planning, even to get a uh a working knowledge can take some time to understand what everything means and how it's applied.

Um can you speak a little bit too uh I know you touched on it at the very beginning of the presentation, but more to the messaging and um of how this came out and what we may or may not have done well and cut and address some of those issues.

Yes, absolutely.

So I think in a situation like this when it is a very strategic approach, especially for missing middle, where we can understand the specific parcels that are affected.

Um, we have a tendency to want to do direct noticing.

Um that provides an opportunity for the individuals to really understand, it potentially creates a communication channel.

Um I think sometimes what that can also do is create misconceptions about the process if there isn't necessarily the staff to community member interaction.

Um, and I think we've saw that a little bit with our missing middle response.

Um missing middle is an optional allowance, it is not a requirement.

Um, and I have heard concerns about eminent domain and how the city may move forward.

So, how do we better communicate with the members of the public to be able to educate?

Um, because I think Council Member Krepke, your point is that it is very challenging.

Um most members of the public do not understand land use policy.

Um, it takes a lot of years of getting comfortable with that.

Uh so really what we try to do is engage to the best of our ability.

Um, mailed noticing helps.

Um, going to the community helps, understanding the people that have the concerns and creating an opportunity to just sit down with staff and go through that helps.

Um so really as we evolve our engagement processes where it's really going to where people are at to be able to educate, to be able to put yourself in their shoes.

I think there's a lot of evolution that can happen in that.

Um, but in this situation, I think it started from a solid platform as we wanted to do direct noticing, where in many situations we fall back on general meetings that are generally noticed.

Um, not everybody watches those.

We have a very busy life.

Um, so this was really an attempt to try to kick start those conversations, and I think the evolution of that is then how do we educate people once we start that communication channel?

Thank you.

I pre I appreciate the reflection on this process, and and um I've been dealing with land use issues for seven years now, and I I still don't feel comfortable with it at all times.

Uh, it is a very complicated and technical um subject.

So I appreciate that.

Uh that is all of my excuse me, all of my questions for now.

Thank you.

We'll go over to uh Miss Ben Waylos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um thank you so much for the presentation.

Really, really appreciate it.

Um and I uh first of all I want to say I'm um excited about the concept I have been for a long time of um missing middle housing.

So um please know that's kind of where I I am coming from.

Uh but I have, as we all have, I think have had um many constituents come forward with many concerns still, even though I know you've you've done a really good job of outreach, but there are some folks that are still concerned about some of these issues that you just mentioned eminent domain, housing values.

How could you talk a little bit more about how if any, if there will be any impact on folks' existing houses at this, you know, once this goes into effect and that can be for any either any of you, I guess.

Thank you for the question, council member.

So because this is an option, there's uh no requirement to construct it, and the the way that each house is now on these properties would be allowed uh to remain no modification would be required.

So this is rare in having zoning, that's an option as you move forward.

So the only case where any change would apply would be if a property owner elected to do a new development on their property, and in that case, they would be subject to the regulations that are included in missing middle housing.

So each of those design and development standards.

A lot of times with long-range planning or rezonings, so the vision is looking to many years into the future.

So sometimes that can be um a bit challenging for all of us because we know these neighborhoods in a certain way.

Uh, but we wanted to take the opportunity to set up areas of the city where missing middle housing could be successful at some point and have the tools available uh if and when that time comes.

And I think you mentioned in your presentation that this is not required for for new development, but it is an option.

Correct.

So it would only be required if somebody wanted to develop this particular type of housing.

They would then look at the that section of the zoning code and follow each of those standards.

But a property owner could develop a single family house there if that's what the base zoning allows in the same way, you know, now that they would be in the future should this uh move forward.

Thank you, Miss McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

Actually, all my colleagues have asked my questions.

So I'll just um differ to those.

Thank you again for the presentation.

And I it was really around the Parker Drive question, and I think Mr.

Okrapki took care of that.

Thank you.

Ms.

Rogers.

So I have been told uh by multiple residents that it is expensive to do any changes or alterations in the historic preservation district.

Would these changes make it more expensive?

Or does it have anything?

Would it make it more expensive, less expensive, um, just give them options when we're talking about financial.

Thanks for the question, and I I will do my best to address it.

It may be fees, uh, planning permit fees that people could be uh talking about.

So we do have, and Director Osborne's really the better person uh to speak about the fee schedule, but we do have different fees for landmark alteration permits depending on the extent of the development as well as if it's being proposed by a property owner, a homeowner versus a developer.

Uh so there would be depending on the project itself, it may be a dip a higher fee than if it was just a homeowner that was building their own house.

And I can add council member, I think a lot of times those comments are referring to the cost of construction.

Um so as homeowners are doing improvements, especially something in the missing middle component where it would be a significant redevelopment of the site, it's really based on the cost of materials and construction.

And as we develop more design focused objective design standards, sometimes those create additional cost elements.

But a big piece of the historic districts is compatibility in the neighborhood.

So having objective design standards to make sure these units are compatible can increase cost because those design elements oftentimes are a bit higher.

And the best example I can give are right angles are fairly inexpensive.

Anything other than that adds additional construction cost, design cost.

So when we think about objective design standards, oftentimes we have to think about the cost of those because we can make wonderful objective design standards, but they can create a situation where they're cost prohibitive when it comes to development, and we're not achieving really the units or ultimately what we're trying to do with that property.

Um so I believe that's mostly what those comments refer to, and it is quite possible in historic districts, if not likely, the cost of construction is higher based on the aesthetic requirements.

Thank you for that.

I think part of it was um going to get it approved, it and not quite being ready for approval.

So going back and you still have like your contractor and the architect in there waiting, and you're paying for them, and then you have to go back to get it approved again in the time frame that it's taking it.

You have people that are on retainer.

So it was a lot of uh back and forth or people feel that it is a lot of back and forth and not very streamlined for them just to get the project completed and done.

And I can see if someone feels that they are um like doing multi-unit projects or something, they're helping, right?

Because we need housing, so they're helping.

But why is it so cumbersome for them to actually get projects done?

Yeah, absolutely.

I can address that.

I think what we've evolved to with how codes and requirements for new development have evolved.

There's a significant amount of time that goes into the development of a plan and the review of a plan.

Um, one of the things that we're attempting to do now is working closely with the development community on complete submittals to ensure that we're not going through reviews and review cycle to really shrink that down, because then it becomes predictability in the process.

And it doesn't always feel like six months can be a lot, but it can in the construction industry because you can lose a contract or you can try to find another contractor, but it might be a difficult piece because it's higher in price, and all of a sudden you can't do it.

So really for us, it's working closely with the development community to understand it is a partnership that to move applications forward in a very consistent and streamlined fashion.

We need delivery of a product on the other end.

So how do we work in partnership and in Tamden to make that work?

That is really a challenge with development, and that's what we're taking on right now is to better understand how we can shrink that down, create transparency and predictability in the process to avoid those concerns and potential additional costs.

Thank you, Miss Fleming.

Yeah, thank you.

And thank you all for going doing all this work, and thank you to the community for coming out.

You know, I represent um two uh historic preservation districts, and I know in our neighborhoods, like we we want we want good development, we want good neighbors, but we don't want to lose the character of our neighborhoods, and that's really what I I think a lot of this is about.

And so I just was curious to know like a couple of things.

I think it was in your presentation, but the the height requirement um limitation is 35 feet.

Um is that correct?

Yes, that's correct, and that's a requirement for missing metal housing uh units themselves, and it's also the height limit in our historic preservation districts.

So there will be no change on the current height limit in the historic neighborhoods.

Correct.

Um but I I do want to clarify that even if missing metal housing allowed for a taller building, the historic regulation still applies, so those would still uh protect the height within those neighborhoods.

Okay, that's helpful.

And then the other thing you said, but just wanted to be really clear that um you said that they would go before the design review and preservation board.

And what I'm curious to know is would that I've seen some missing middle actually feathered into Ridgeway um recently on Ridgeway Avenue?

Um, but I'm just curious to know, like, when those boards hear those items, do they apply the design standards that do that do the unit?

I've never sat on one of those boards.

Do they need to be somewhat consistent with the design of the units that are the houses that are already in the neighborhoods?

That's a great question.

Uh so the city has a zoning code chapter about our historic combining districts, and it has character defining elements for each of the preservation districts.

Uh, we also have design guidelines that relate to our preservation districts, and so part of the planning analysis that happens for landmark alteration permits is to look at uh the way that new development is designed to look at materials and to ensure that there is uh an element of compatibility for those new projects to integrate uh into those neighborhoods.

Okay, yeah.

When I go around Cherry or Ridgeway or McDonald, like I only I don't see too many vacant lots.

Would these units be placed on ex lots with existing houses?

Like I think overcrowding is a concern.

Like, would they be on existing lots like ADUs or or would they be on undeveloped lots?

How would that work?

So missing middle housing has some pretty specific regulations for the dimensions of a lot for one of these units to fit, and so in many cases where you have an existing home, it's not going to work.

And so the opportunities may be um, you know, on sites that are either undeveloped or if they were developed more recently, not historic homes, and there's an interest in you know reworking the site.

Um, but because missing middle is very um standard specific, it it doesn't leave much wiggle room to overcrowd or anything like that.

There's very specific lot dimensions in order to construct a new unit.

And lastly, I think so overcrowding, height, um, character, and then parking, right?

So you said there would be um requirements for parking on these sites, or how does that work?

Can you go over that again?

Yes, so there are parking requirements based on the unit type, and so it, you know, it in some cases it's one space per unit.

I would have to, you know, go through, but it it depends on on the unit type itself.

But it's slightly reduced from uh what the zoning code requires for non-missing metal housing projects because there is a an emphasis on these being located in walkable neighborhoods, but there is still a parking requirement.

Okay, and lastly, so five elements that I flagged as potentially concerned for um the neighborhoods is um you said that there's um a requirement for some sort of front-facing feature like a stoop.

That's a lovely idea.

What are some of the other um ways to satisfy that requirement?

Uh porches, and there's a few iterations of porches, courtyards, uh I think those are the three I can think of right now.

But there's probably six or seven examples, and and some of them are a little more geared toward like a mixed-use type project, uh, where it's more of a shop front, but that's only allowed in that wouldn't be allowed in Ridgeway, it's like the more commercial parts of the city where this is proposed.

Okay.

So is it mostly these requirements to try to encourage like interaction and community?

Is that the purpose of it?

Yes.

So there's a big focus on neighborhood and street interaction and and the parking being sort of behind the scenes behind the house.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And I think I'm simply going to reiterate the points that most of my colleagues had made.

But just to be just to be sure I'm understanding, it seems like there's two things being emphasized here today.

One is the city in very specific areas, which you have identified through painstaking labor, wants to open up the possibility, not the requirement, but the possibility of slightly higher density housing.

It's not it will which will not be built via eminent domain, it's not required to build, it's not even there's not even a necessarily a project in the works, but there's a theoretical possibility that on certain sites slightly higher density housing might might um emerge at some point in the future.

That's point one.

Point two is if this housing were to emerge, it has to be neighborhood appropriate, that it's subject to the design review and historic preservation board requirements.

Uh there are other there are additional requirements, including height requirements that means that it has to be amenable to that neighborhood.

It can't be a skyscraper docked in the middle of a group of single family homes.

It has to be neighborhood appropriate, including things like parking, um, density, et cetera.

Those are the two things that the city is attempting to emphasize with this this um very precise missing middle housing overlay.

Is that accurate?

Yes, the only clarification I would make is the design review and preservation board would only review missing metal housing projects within the preservation districts, so outside of those areas, uh there would be a staff level review to ensure all the standards are met, and that includes height and parking and and items like that, but it would not be in a public meeting.

Um is that true for every size, or is it still subject to if I recall the 10,000 square foot requirement?

Yes, so this is a bit of a uh departure from what we normally see.

So typically the design review and preservation board will see projects based on size.

Uh however, due to their comments, uh the board's comments at the meeting, they really wanted to reduce any obstacles they could to see missing metal housing be constructed.

And so the idea was if we could do a staff level review outside of the preservation districts, that would be uh the board's suggestion.

That's helpful.

Thank you very much.

But again, the uh an equal emphasis, um, there are equal emphases on again opening up the possibility for additional housing, but making sure that housing is neighborhood appropriate.

That's that's accurate.

Yes.

Perfect.

Thank you.

All right.

I know we have a or we know we have an uh an interested group of residents here today.

Let us officially open up our public comment period.

Uh we have a few of you who've signed in already.

If you are interested in making comment during this or participating in the public hearing, please do provide your name up top or be ready at the podium.

Please make your way to the podium before before it's your turn to speak so we can keep this efficient.

Uh I will start calling out names here, and let's start with Fred, Abby, and Richard.

Please use both podiums.

Peter, I see you if you want to put your name in, uh, but let's we're gonna start with Pete with Fred, Abby, and Richard, and let's use both podiums, please.

Fred Fred.

Fred, let's start with you.

Thank you, Mayor Stepp.

Um, I agree with the uh planning commission's recommendation and staff recommendation 100%, and um I would encourage the council to vote yes to all and see this as only the beginning of needed zoning and co-change reform to address what we have in the United States as a race and class segregated um residential status quo.

If the city urban growth boundary is sacrosanct, then the only choice for residential inclusion and housing equity in the city is to make existing neighborhoods denser, first with general changes and later with less general and higher density.

If we can't see clear to a path of residential inclusion under the current zoning and code regime, then the UGB must be expanded so that the necessary workforce, working class, and BIPOC cohort can live here.

But since land use is checkmated by the UGB on one side, and on neighborhood character and neighborhood compatibility dogma on the other, then newcomers have to be shoehorned into less space with less amenities and into the worst spots.

As I looked at the map, all the new missing noise and air pollution.

So I see that voting yes now is only a start, and I can't object to including missing middle housing on the edges of city neighborhoods.

And um that's just a nutshell of my comments.

I hope you consider voting yes on this and see it as just a start.

Thank you, Fred, Abby, Richard, and then Craig.

Do you want to lean in?

Yeah, there you go.

Lean into the mic, Abby.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members.

I'm Abby Arnold.

I'm a homeowner and a senior, and I'm very supportive of the general plan update and the zoning changes needed to implement it, which are before you tonight.

Um, we really need to have housing for available for everyone, and our lack of available housing has had so many consequences.

And I just want to talk tonight quickly about the school what's going on with the school district.

Our because we lack enough children in our community because there's no place for families to live.

Our school district is about to go into state receivership.

And I don't know if people are aware of what that means, but basically the state is gonna take over our school district.

And the last from what I understand, the last school district in this area that this happened to was Vallejo, and it happened 21, it took 21 years for them to get out of receivership.

So, how is that gonna affect our property values just because we've kept people away from living in our community, and we've allowed our population to get older.

We need the revenue that is gonna come from the property taxes.

We need the children who are gonna live in uh in these neighborhoods and these new housing opportunities, and um I think it will benefit the schools and the community and the city as well, as we are struggling still after how many years to uh relate to what Prop 13 has done to our ability to um raise taxes.

So I really hope that we will build more housing, that this will be a way to make it compatible with what's already there in the neighborhood and bring more neighbors and more new people to be part of our wonderful community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Abby.

We'll go to Richard, Craig, and Cal.

Uh from Coffee Park.

Um, and I wanted to thank the council for this opportunity to address the general plan.

Uh, in the Santa Rosa General Plan 2050, what I especially liked was the graphic on page 122, figure one three, uh Santa Rosa 2050 General Plan Vision diagram, uh, which shows all the items to be considered in the in the vision.

Safe, equitable, prepared, inclusive, and just, just to name a few.

Thank you for laying that out so graphically.

I like pictures.

What isn't addressed in the general plan, however, is California law SB 1123, a new law that was effective July 1st, 2025.

Under SB 1123, vacant lots up to 1.5 acres zoned for single family use can be subdivided to allow up to 10 new homes with a streamlined approval process with no public hearings and fast ministerial permitting.

Each subdivided parcel may also include accessory dwelling units, ADUs, or junior ADUs, and these are not counted towards the 10 home cap.

Please note the no public hearing portion of this bill.

Already developers are using this law to market lots they purchased immediately after the fire on which they couldn't build their vanity projects.

Specifically, 2016 Dennis Lane, Dennis Lane is the northern edge of Coffee Park, uh between Coffee Lane and uh Barnes.

Uh, 2016 Dennis Lane had had plans submitted to planning in 2022 for seven duplex units.

The neighbors to 2016 Dennis, however, saw that this was crazy.

And 2016 Dennis is owned R R 20, rural residential, has no sidewalks, no curbs, no off-street parking, and there are no buses.

There are no commercial sites nearby.

Dennis Lane is a narrow rural road.

During the Tubbs fire, the only there was only one way out.

Adding an additional 20 cars and seven duplexes would have made a bad situation much worse.

The neighbors had their voices heard in community meetings, and the planning department denied the building plans for many of the reasons shown in the general plan vision.

Now the same developer is marketing this as an opportunity to build 10 new homes with ADUs.

That's right, 20 units up from the 14 he originally planned.

And SB 1123 denies the community the opportunity to voice their concerns.

So we need the council's help.

This project cannot go through as proposed in the marketing materials.

How can the community's voices continue to be heard on these projects that make no sense for the for the neighborhoods that they're being proposed in?

Thank you for your time and your ongoing help.

Thank you, Richard.

Craig, Cal, and then Matt.

Hi, my name is Craig Keene, and this is a follow-up on 2016 Dennis Lane.

My house backs up to the 1.3 acre parcel on Dennis Lane on the southwest corner of the lot, which is a subject tonight.

I'm here to voice my concerns about how many homes can be built on this 1.3 acre lot.

I see that this lot is being advertised on the market, and the builder can build 10 homes with 10 ADUs on it.

There are so many things wrong with the possibility of having 20 homes on this 1.3 acre lot on Dennis Lane.

All of us who lost our homes in 2017 due to the Tubbs fire have gone through a lot of grief, and some who are still going through their grief from this devastating fire.

Craig, if you could lean into the mic, please.

Okay.

It just doesn't feel right after this tragic fire that burned down our homes.

There are people coming out of town or occasionally local people to buy a property, not to help the community rebuild what was pre-fire, but to try to make as much money as possible at the fire victims' expense.

We also see this going on in Southern California and Hawaii.

I think this practice needs to be looked at and see if there needs to be some regulations on it.

If the owner of the land lived in my home for the last 27 years of their lives, as we have, and their home burned down, and a builder from out of town came in and proposed these 20 new homes behind him.

How can the city of Santa Rosa allow this to happen?

This just does not look like a competent plan.

Here are just a few reasons why the possibility of this plan does not look like a competent plan.

There are not there's not enough parking spaces for 20 homes on the 1.3 acre lot.

Two to three cars per home would be 60 cars on the 1.3 acre lot.

It will also add a tremendous amount of traffic to Dennis Lane and Barnes Road, which are not the safest roads.

There are no sidewalks on Dennis Lane, which is not safe to walk on.

So imagine having 40 to 80 people living on this 1.3 acre lot, wanting to go for a walk around the neighborhood and having to walk the majority of the time on Dennis Lane and not a sidewalk.

Also, during the Tubbs fire, it was gridlock.

I can't imagine another 50 to 60 cars added to this small 1.3 acre lot trying to get out to save our lives.

This will affect all of us there.

If another fire comes or any other type of emergency that we need to get out quickly, such as a major earthquake.

These are just a few reasons why this proposed building is not a good idea.

I hope the city of Santa Rosa will look at this proposal with the with the existing community in mind that has been there for decades supporting the community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Craig, Cal, Matt, and Stephanie.

Cal.

You're up.

And if we could use both mics, please.

So Matt and Stephanie, if you could be on cue.

Uh good evening, Mayor Stapp, Council, and staff.

Uh, thank you very much for your opportunity to speak.

Um, I am here to urge your support for this item tonight.

I urge you to support the staff's recommendation.

It's not lost on anyone that we continue to be in a housing crisis, and this is just another tool that we can add to the toolkit.

It's not mandatory, it's an option.

This is really a great opportunity to create a housing typology, especially a foresale typology that is that is actually something that someone like myself, who is 33 years of age could potentially buy, and then hopefully continue building, you know, my own personal wealth generation here in this community.

Uh, you know, there is a a scenario where I will be forced to leave one day because this community is just not hospitable to young people.

And so I really encourage everyone to continue leaning in to continue promoting more housing generation and more housing policies that will make this a uh more fertile uh community for as Ms.

Arnold noted for the young families uh that will attend the Santa Rosa City School District and hopefully keep that school district afl uh aflow and out of receivership.

So with that, thank you very much.

And again, I urge you to support this item tonight.

Thank you, Cal.

Matt Stephanie and Gwen.

Matt.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members.

Uh, respecting your time and the long day you've had.

Uh, I had a I was gonna use my full three minutes, but after hearing the staff report uh and the recommendation uh were specifically relating to Parker Drive.

Uh, all I would like to say is to I I encourage you to support that uh recommendation, and I want to uh publicly thank your planning commission, uh, your staff members, uh, Amy Nicholson and um Ashley Crocker in particular for guiding them through that process.

You proved to the neighbors that you were listening to what we said, and we trusted the process, and it is uh, in my opinion, delivered what we were looking for.

So I thank you all for that process.

And that concludes my remarks.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Matt, and thank you for your brevity.

Uh Stephanie Gwen and Pam.

I'll try to keep mine a little short.

Good evening, Mayer, Council members and staff.

My name is Stephanie.

I'm the deputy director at Generation Housing.

We represent over 300 members of Sonoma County residents and organizations who support more affordable and more diverse housing across the North Bay, starting in Santa Rosa.

Um, I first want to recognize the tremendous amount of work that city staff consultants and community members have put into developing this initiative.

We're grateful and supportive of the design review board's recommendation to further explore additional streamlining opportunities.

Across Santa Rosa and the county, our housing stock is deeply out of balance.

The stock that we have.

We have an abundance of single-family homes, and now we're excited that we're building more large multifamily complexes, but we are missing the diverse neighborhood-scale options in between duplexes, warplexes, cute cottage courts, courtyard buildings, the kinds of homes that can serve first-time homebuyers, teachers, seniors, young professionals, and families looking to build wealth.

This framework fills that gap.

It promotes an option for gentle density, housing that strengthens neighborhoods without changing their character, and in fact re-legalizes the type of housing we see in some of the most desired neighborhoods in Santa Rosa.

This initiative is an important step toward housing diversity, equity, and climate resilience, and we strongly encourage you to move this forward tonight.

We're proud to support this item and look forward to continuing further work with the city as we ensure we meet the housing needs and goals of our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stephanie.

Uh Gwen, Pam, and then Kevin.

My name is Gwen, and I live in the West End district, which is a historic district, and it's pretty small historic district.

We've seen several multi-housing units come up around us.

And I just wanted to bring attention to one of the blocks that has been chosen for rezoning.

It's just seems like there's a little disconnect in choosing this block.

It's uh the Duterk Commons, which is um it was built in 1999 with sweat equity, and um it's required that all of us that live in this 32 unit, 32 house block, um, have to sign a um affidavit saying that we are the owners and that we live within our house and we don't rent it out at and I think there's only two of the houses that are being rented out at a fair rental um price.

So um just to be clear, if you look at the Burbank housing website, you can read a little bit more about this 32 unit, which is very dense for one block.

Um, I see no opportunity to build ADUs on this block, and I think we're all tucked in really, really, really tight.

So um it's uh was built with um the homeowners' support.

Um they had to contribute 30 hours a week to build and building their house before they moved in, which would um created uh 10% down payment for the purchase of their house.

And um a lot of the people that built those houses still live there.

And I would point to if you I know that we live in a historic district, and this these houses are not quote historic, but they're built up to more um current regulations and standards, just one consideration.

Um, and um we don't really have yards, we all have parking, we've all lived there a long time.

I've lived there 15 years, many people have lived there 25, many people's children grew up there and now are raising those children, those children who grew up in that neighborhood are raising their children in those houses.

So I just would urge you to really think about like rezoning something like this, which was supported by the city as a project to keep people in like low-income, none of these people would be able to afford houses in the city now.

It's basically a picture of the American Dream, our block.

So I just wanted to just bring it up and hopefully you can take the the that into consideration in um taking out the rezoning of this block because it's just feels very targeted.

It's the only block in our neighborhood that's targeted for this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gwen.

We'll move on to Pam, Kevin, and then Peter.

Pam.

Hi, my name is Pam Fraska.

I am a part of the neighborhood known as Parker Drive, which is how this effort, previous effort, and I thank you for this, to rezone this neighborhood to commercial office, has been referred to as the Parker Drive project.

Um my particular address is not on Parker Drive, and so I'm just looking for some clarity to make sure that those of us that live on the short ends of the block on Talbot on Doyle Park on Alderbrook, that we also will retain our current zoning.

And I'd like to know that before I leave here tonight.

Thank you, Pam.

I'm sure we can have staff uh address you after after public comment.

Kevin, Peter, and Al.

Just wanted to be pretty quick here.

Coming at this from a perspective of a father, but also a youth mentor, someone that desperately looks to the future, with policies that are hopefully gonna steer us in a different direction, both environmentally and socially.

So what I wanted to say was I'm I'm super stoked that this is all happening, generally speaking.

Um you're not just looking at the the long-term um environmentally, you're also looking socially.

Generally, when you have all of the same houses for blocks and blocks and blocks, people tend to jump in their cars.

The built environment has been built around the car.

Uh, you don't need me all telling you that.

Um, but I really do appreciate um that we're looking at um a lot of different things aesthetically, parking in the back.

All of that sounds fantastic, right?

Um, building to come up to the front, so it just makes it more aesthetically pleasing when you're moving around our built environment.

Um, the one challenge I was uh hanging out for DD Muerton's Halloween this weekend and uh I met up with some neighbors in the Duterte Commons.

They were talking about um what's happening here, and again, when I look at the what you what you're what you're proposing for our city, it's beautiful.

Um, but that that rezoning in number three at the very end there is a tough one for me because um I don't know every single one of the 32 owners of that space, but I know a handful of them.

And one of the things that was said is that they just had no idea they felt they feel blindsided.

Um so I would say definitely push this through.

I think it's a wonderful thing for for the future for our for our youth, um, for all of us ultimately that are trying to stay in Sonoma County, but if there's a way to look at that specific Deterk Commons property, um, because this one just doesn't feel right to me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin.

Uh we'll move on to Peter, Al, and then Brad.

The deceptions are great and the illusions are greater still.

This is simply a United Nations project.

And it sounds pretty good until you realize that uh they don't care about you or your constitutional remedies, which have been taken away from us.

Kevin, you some and his insurance.

Could you clarify the the uh connection to missing middle housing?

I'm sorry.

Could you clarify your connection to missing middle housing?

With the this is this is a this is a this is a public hearing on the missing middle housing overlay, the zoning changes.

How does your how does your comment relate to that?

My comment uh, well, I would start off by suggesting that you, the rest of you and everybody listening read the book behind the green mask by Rosa Quarry, who was a forensic commercial real estate uh appraiser uh with a specialty with eminent domain.

I can tell you that if she were here, she would change the entire uh deal on this for people's comprehension.

I can tell you that uh Deborah Taveras has stopped thecrime.net has spoken to this topic exclusively for a long time, seven, eight, nine years ago, doesn't do so anymore because she didn't want to have happen to her what happened to Rosa Corey from Santa Rosa.

Again, Peter, could you clarify the connection?

We're not discussing eminent domain or crime.

This is a discussion about zoning and the uh exact houses.

Well, if you let me finish, we'll we'll we'll figure this out because you have a minute and thirty, but please like please make your connection clear, Peter.

Well, I had an extra 30 seconds, thank you.

This is a program that is not in your hands.

It will only get worse.

It's a matter of Packham and Stackham uh uh apartment complexes along freeways and along uh railroads, which will now go throughout the city and take away a lot of the beautiful things of this city.

I can tell you that this is connected to the very reason why there is a current RICO conspiracy lawsuit against the county uh as the permit people have stolen many many seniors' homes over the last uh decade, and they are now being slapped with a RICO lawsuit.

I very much encourage anyone to read behind the green mask or watch the YouTube's of Rosa Quarry, K-O-I-R-E, and then go to stopthecrime.net to see the same topic being addressed, because I don't like being told what to do by the agenda 21 of the United Nations.

So I say, in finishing, self-governance is our birthright, self-endowed through Christ Consciousness, and only be under God's jurisdiction and will.

God works through our body like electricity works through a lamp, and with a lamp, we can shine the light of electricity into the dark.

With our body, we shine the brilliance of God into the world.

I invite you to look up Russell means prove me wrong, YouTube watch.

Thank you, Peter.

We're on to Al Brad and Armando.

It's Al Stavola.

I live uh on Kingwood Street between Dutton and Link.

Contrary to the trends you guys called out.

I uh I we're a single family, single income family.

Me and my wife, my two daughters, we live in the smallest house you can imagine, pretty much with a very tiny yard and just enough parking.

And um I have some concerns.

I realize you can't answer questions today, but uh a couple times it was called out that you've done a really good job of communicating, and uh not to knock it, but all I've seen is one letter giving a very vague description of what this is.

I've seen no other information shared through the mail.

Your website does not contain a lot of great detail.

I think you did a great job today of explaining what this plan's about, and I very much appreciate that.

Uh I do still have some questions I'd like to see answered in some way, shape, or form.

Uh, first and foremost is how does this rezoning potentially impact my property value and my taxes?

Um, is this going to now push me out of the only house that we could find after much searching that we could afford?

Um, is there any plan to institute some sort of an HOA?

And as we know, HOAs come with fees, which again could push me from we can just afford this to we can no longer afford where we live.

Um are you working with developers to try to encourage residents to sell, or is there any sort of plan to prevent that from happening?

Um I'm already hearing from some of my neighbors that they feel threatened or feel like they're going to be forced out, which I know you've said you're not is not the case, but you know, we've all heard stories about these developers, and some of us have seen it happen, building these, you know, much larger houses than can fit on a property with multiple units, and then the pricing is higher than anyone can actually afford, and they're sitting vacant, and you've pushed families out.

Um I want to know if you how do you would plan to hide the parking?

Uh, we live on a roughly 2,000 square foot lot.

It's tiny, it's up against, and we've got four people in a house and two cars.

Uh, we're up against four other houses that have similar situations.

Where on earth would you hide parking when every single spot on our street is already filled with cars?

Um, let's see.

I think I have a few other questions.

Um, maybe that's pretty much it.

But I think you guys, you did a really good job of presenting today.

I'd like to see more of that shared in a way that we don't have to actually like come in here to see it.

I mean, I'm glad we did, but if there's a way you could send it via mail or make it much clearer to everyone, you know, none of us are property, you know, management experts.

Maybe some are, but uh, you know, I see several members of my community, people that live on my street here, and we have similar concerns.

So I appreciate you guys doing this today.

And um, you know, I do think there is a need, absolutely, that you have correctly addressed for affordable housing in the area and for the changing dynamics.

But for some of us, this is what we can afford.

And if we feel like we're being forced out, this could very much ruin our lives.

So please consider that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Al.

And just as a reminder to everyone, all the information presented at today's meeting is available online as part of the city council agenda.

Uh, we'll move on to Brad Armando and Scott.

My name is Brad, and I live on Parker Drive, and I just want to um thank you all for everything that you recommended, and thank you to the planning commission for listening to our concerns.

Um, presently, we have 17 of our residents here tonight.

Uh, we're a very cohesive neighborhood, and we're we communicate very well, and we've all been in the neighborhood at least 20 plus years each, and we're we're very happy that as I said, you've heard us, and we thank you.

We thank you for your time and appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Brad, Armando, Scott, and then Alex.

Hey there, everybody.

My name is Armando Cruz.

I live on 723 West Ninth Street.

Uh, but I did also want to mention that I'm here representing 904 through uh 904 Link Lane, 905 uh Kingwood.

The reality is that everybody keeps saying uh that this is such a beautiful plan, it promotes housing, it promotes density, gives more affordability in the housing.

But then the other reality of that is everybody keeps talking about let's do this, but let's not do this on this specific block.

That lets you know people's true sentiment about this because the reality is that this is going to be decreasing the neighborhood uh uh livability within those specific blocks.

So people don't like it at its core, they like it, but they just don't want to see it around them.

So that really should reflect as to how we really feel about the overall project from the stretch of Link Lane all the all the way down to Kingwood, uh West 9th Street, there's never any parking.

There is always overcrowding, there's always people that are fighting for the uh any spots that are available.

So those are some of the things that I do want to reflect uh for everybody there.

These don't pose fire hazards, they do these do potentially increase crime and these do potentially increase the overall frustration that would arise from the individuals.

The reality is that my neighborhood does feel misrepresented because some of the families that live at the other locations, they do not speak proper English.

They do not know how to voice their proper concerns.

They were always asking to have this translated in Spanish when it comes to the meetings, but this is not something that's being represented.

My entire block from Kingwood all the way to West 9th Street, Link Lane, Renee Court.

A lot of them are Spanish speakers and they don't even know what's going on.

I'm gonna have to go to their houses tonight and have it uh be the one that translates the information for them.

So that's one of the things that I did want to call out.

In addition to that, we talk a lot about this is optional.

Uh, and there's many other people on here.

My neighbor Al that lives on Kingwood Street said that our lots are very tiny.

Sure, this is pretty on paper, sure we can increase the density, we can rezone it, it's optional, but at what point does it not become optional?

Because we're saying we're gonna propose this so that it can be an option.

If nobody has the ability to meet the dimensions, if the lot of somebody does not allow for whatever dimensions are required by the city, doesn't that make the plan useless?

Does that not mean that we have to combine multiple lots to be able to fit one of the requirements?

Sure, that might not mean that we're being kicked out forcefully at the moment, but we're fearful that this is gonna open the door later down the lane.

Hey, out of the two uh two hundred uh two thousand lots or the two thousand homes that we recommended this, nobody really opted into it.

We're still gonna get fined by California, we're still gonna get fined by whoever at the federal government, we're still gonna get whatever.

We didn't accomplish our needs to increase the housing.

So, what are where does that leave us all?

Because everybody on here is saying we don't want to see this in our neighborhoods.

Remove this specific law, remove that specific law.

That lets you know that nobody's gonna volunteer for this.

So that's one of the things that I did want to go ahead and uh question.

The second item I did want to mention is during the September meeting, the city uh was specifically asked, how does this factor into the affordability?

The answer that we were quite literally giving during that meeting is we don't know how it factors into the affordability, but it does pencil out for the developers.

Well, who are the developers and why do I as a homeowner care about what pencils are for them?

I'm trying to preserve my community, I'm trying to preserve our homes, our home values, and our safety.

So I do uh I do just want to raise that this does create.

Thank you, Armando.

Uh we will conclude with Scott and Alex.

Uh and if there are any other members of the audience who wish to make public comment, now is the time to be making your way up to the to one of the podiums.

Otherwise, Scott and Alex will be our final two speakers.

Scott, go ahead.

Hi, my name's Scott.

I'm a resident and homeowner in the DTurk Commons block.

So I'm gonna be echoing what uh some of my neighbors have already said.

Um, so do you know that's in the historic West End neighborhood in downtown Santa Rosa?

The entire DTERC Commons block has been included in the missile meeting missile, missing middle housing rezoning project currently underway.

And if you're not aware, the DTERC Commons is a 32-unit single-family development.

It was built in the 1990s, and Burbank Housing was involved with that, and you had to do the sweat equity, and that's where you had to put in so many hours a week to compensate for your 10% down payment to be able to live in one of those houses.

They are still primarily owner-occupied.

You do have to sign an annual affidavit stating that you are the primary residents and you are not renting out that property.

Uh, that is an annual thing you have to do.

There's only a couple homes, like they stated, that um that are being rented out because the homes foreclosed, and that's the only way that gets taken off the deed.

So I think that's something very important to identify.

But if you if you pull up a plot map for for the West End neighborhood, if you look at the average block, 20 homes.

20 homes is the average block.

We have 32 homes in that block.

It is very, very dense.

We have cul-de-sacs that go in towards the center of the block.

There is six homes per cul-de-sac.

Um it is extremely dense.

400 square foot backyards.

So the request is was that an oversight to include that in the missile meeting, the missing middle housing, and to please take it out of the you know the rezoning that you're planning because nobody can put an ADU in their lots, it wouldn't fit, and it just it doesn't make sense to add the option for that to even be there, and we would really request that that gets removed from this agenda here in the missing middle housing.

Um we have lots lots of homes already in the pipeline.

You know, we've got what the Pullman project that just got completed right in the West End neighborhood, the cannery project, you know, that's halfway underway.

They've got another hundred some odd units that are gonna be going up there.

There's the Burbank Housing Project that's right on what Fountain Grove Parkway and Mendo.

So that's you know, getting built up.

We have a lot of home, we got 50-53 units going on E Street.

So there's a lot of stuff in the pipeline, and one thing I'd like to end on is just the affordability.

So on these multifamily jobs, oh, and 400 units on Guernville Road in Dutton right there.

So locking in something that's gonna be affordable and not just a small percentage, but something that's gonna make a difference.

Thank you, Scott, Alex, and then Greg.

Uh hello.

Um, my name is Alex, and I'm from the West Knight and Link uh Land neighborhood.

Um, this plan sounds very appealing.

I'm deeply concerned that it's not sustainable uh for preserving the character of the neighborhoods that me and my neighbors and many other long-term residents have built.

I understand the city faces state housing mandates and growth pressures.

Well, this plan teams focus on meeting those requirements at the expense of our community.

If implemented as proposed, I fear Santa Rosa could become another Pasadena or San Jose putting stability, safety, and unique identity of my neighborhood at risk, including the entire city.

I urge the city to carefully consider this plan and be fully shunned spray and about its intentions so residents like me can understand the potential impact on our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alex.

Greg.

My name is Greg Nash, Parker Drive resident, and just here to thank the staff and the planning commission for their recommendation that I hope you continue with today in the in the change to the uh the uh rezoning for our neighborhood.

We'd like to preserve the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Admirably succinct.

And with that, do we have one final public comment?

All right, go ahead.

Two properties here in Santa Rosa.

One's a house I live in, small house, another one uh nearby is another small house.

I've asked for it to be rezoned.

I've been waiting a long time for this.

I I attended a meeting, I think it was in the summer of 2019.

I heard about this general plan update.

I thought, wow, this is great.

So I I asked for my property to be rezoned, it's on the list.

I was told it was gonna take three years, end of twenty-two, it was supposed to be done.

Here it is, end of twenty-five.

Thank God it's here.

Let's get her done.

That's all I gotta say.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh Anna, you're up.

Mayor, City Council members, public, and the audience.

Thank you for the presentation.

I was actually listening to it on my car ride here.

Uh I think that today the city council should really listen to the community members that are here tonight just to express the need of just as our mondo, I believe, expressed about a lot of Latino families not knowing about this and me coming from a Latino family.

I had to translate a lot of things for my mom, and I do understand that a lot of things from the city is now in Spanish, and we have become more of a bilingual city.

But for parents and families that work two jobs and get home very tired, they don't really lean on looking online or looking at their newsletters or even looking at MEL for that matter of fact.

I think that there should be more of a town hall or more of a focused group that actually um that actually talks about what's happening in their overall neighborhoods.

And I am a loan signing agent, and what I have been seeing overall within these past years is that we're making housing, which is great, right?

But we're not we're we keep saying affordable housing, affordable housing, but what I have seen over and over again is just market rate housing.

And what I've seen from my profession is that people from the Bay Area, South Bay, East Bay, no matter what bay, they're coming over here, and locals are getting kicked out.

If it's not because of the increase of property taxes, it's just a sense of everything being overwhelmingly um expensive.

And I'm speaking as the as a community member and also somebody that comes from a Latino household.

Sonoma County is just becoming super expensive, and a lot of people from the Bay Area, they're coming over here, and a lot of the locals that have been here throughout the generations, they're being forced out.

So if there's a common ground for us to meet, so people are not worrying about their property taxes increasing.

And I love Santa Rosa City Schools.

I went to Santa Rosa City Schools, and I'm a proud graduate of s of Elsie Allen class of 2015, which is exactly 10 years ago.

But Santa Rosa City Schools, their past uh board members, they put themselves in that budget in that budget situation that now the new trustees unfortunately they have to pick up where they started, and they're trying to improve all they can.

And although, yeah, there's threats of the state and whatnot, I really do think that city council should really try to look for other solutions than adding additional property taxes to residents here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anna.

And with that, we will close our public hearing.

I will bring it back to council for a motion from I believe it's Miss Fleming.

Um, any f any further discussion or final thoughts?

So um, I think that um I just want to clarify for all of the folks who came out today what the process is.

I'm gonna put forward a motion, and then we are going to ask staff to answer the questions that you raised, and then we will do our best to incorporate um whatever solutions we can to accommodate um as best we can everybody's concerns in that process.

So by no means is the motion on the floor the last that we'll hear of it.

So with that, um I'll read an ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending titles 18, 19, 20, and 21 of the municipal rule code to implement the general plan 2050 and add missing middle housing regulations, file number PLN 25-0393, and then additional ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa.

Would you like me to have this is for the city attorney?

Do you want me to read them all first?

Yes, I believe I I believe so, and I would like some clarification from assistant city attorney cracker, all three ordinances at once is proper.

Is that correct?

Yes, that would be fine.

And if to the extent that you want to recommend any amendments to any of them, we could address those one at a time.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Continuing on ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa rezoning 2,089 properties to implement the existing general plan land use designation file number PLN 25-0393.

And finally, ordinance of the Council of City of Santa Rosa rezoning 1,991 properties to add the missing middle housing combining district file number PLN 25-0393, and then um additionally direct staff to bring forward a general plan land use amendment to resolve general plan land use and zoning inconsistencies for certain properties within the city.

Second, all right, we have a motion of second.

Um I know we've got at least one question on the floor and perhaps some additional discussion.

Um Miss Ben Willis, why don't we start with your question?

Thank you.

Um I just had one quick question of uh about the um one property uh the Deterk Comments.

Um I am very familiar with this property, and I've seen the all the units, they're very condensed.

There is no room to build anything, so I don't understand why it's in included in this packing, and to me, it's not a NIMBYism thing or anything of that nature.

I just it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

So I wonder if you could speak to that.

Sure, thank you for the question, council member.

Uh so uh as part of this initiative, planning staff worked with a consultant to identify specific criteria to um properties to determine if missing metal housing may work.

Um this was at a higher level, so there wasn't you know driving by and looking at how everything was developed, it's more um in theory does it meet these requirements, and at some point in time in the future is this a type of development that that could work given uh the location, it being walkable, it being designated medium density outside of our fire uh and flood prone areas, and so uh you know that's the the best way to answer that question, but I understand you know, hearing the comments and we learned about this recently, um, what the concern is with that particular site or neighborhood.

Would it be possible to look at it further then at this point or is that not an option?

Yes, so I actually have a map.

Well, I have several slides um which reflect two of the neighborhoods that were discussed that I can put up on the screen.

Um, if that would be okay.

So give it just a second, okay.

So this slide here shows the Duterte Commons area in the light pink, and we do have the ability to uh identify those properties um to be removed from the ordinance in this meeting as as depicted on this slide.

That would be really great.

Uh thank you.

That's and if you were to do that, that would be an amendment to ordinance three, um, and we would just note to remove the specific properties as identified on the Deterk Commons slide as shared with you this evening.

Thanks.

I have a follow-up question on that item, but I'm uh Ms.

McG.

Ms.

McDonald, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

My follow-up question is my understanding is it's not just that specific area that they're concerned about rezoning, but the kind of uh neighboring little areas, if those are also able to add multi-like family homes or like duplexes or condos because the parking is so congested.

So could you show me on that map perhaps what other houses are going to be rezoned or what other properties surrounding that little area are going to be rezoned to allow for more condensed housing?

Thank you for the the question and clarification.

So this is um this area shows what we were just speaking about, and then uh not far away is the Kingwood Street neighborhood.

So this is also off of West Ninth.

And so the the properties, we've heard from uh several property owners tonight, as well as in uh written comment that have concerns about missing metal housing along uh Kingwood Street.

Um I did have a verbal conversation with a property owner that had a concern about it on Renee Court, so just immediately west of Kingwood Street.

And so um this anything shown in pink here is missing metal housing proposed and is included within ordinance three, and then that's relatively close to the Detert Commons area.

I want to be clear, I'm very much for the middle housing um issue being addressed tonight, and I appreciate all the work.

My concern is if it's already a very um highly condensed area with problems with parking, and would then we allow on some of those lots because it was kind of that bird's eye view of specific areas.

My concern is that we didn't just go street by street to see where we could fit more people in those areas.

So I'm not sure the will of the council to look at all of those on a map to see what houses specifically or if there's been public interest in saying there's concern around that tonight.

But uh I I and I don't know how hard it is to come back and make another amendment to the general plan.

It's quite complex, and you've done so much work.

So yeah, I'm concerned about those surrounding areas.

Um, if you were interested in also amending to remove those, that would be similar to what I said on the deterk is we would identify those properties shaded in pink uh on the Kingwood Street and Renee court slide.

And I would actually add to that, council member.

I I think in in these situations when we look at transition in a neighborhood, it just naturally brings up some of these concerns with parking.

Um when we look at that transition, because some of the designs are very difficult to fit into the existing housing, it almost looks at more of a redevelopment of those areas, and really the long-range planning has to look at that, but I also understand that the concerns that that creates in those neighborhoods that live through that experience on a regular basis.

So as we approach missing middle, um, we are happy to move some of these to the side to further analyze.

Um we obviously want to test out this concept and create opportunities, but if it's not the right time for this neighborhood, um we can put it on the shelf a bit, take a further analysis at that and bring it back at a later period of time with you know sharpening our pencil a little bit to better understand what those impacts would be.

I wish I was more familiar with the area.

There's clearly some areas for development in those neighborhoods.

There's lots of land that is, you know, clearly on this map big enough.

It's the other smaller, more condensed areas I was concerned about tonight.

Yes, and I think those do naturally bring up that concern.

So as I mentioned, we're happy to look at that as essentially a phase two to this if that is the council's desire, and and we can take a harder look at that.

And then as we roll out missing middle and we do further analyses later on down the line, then we look at more appropriate locations throughout the city.

I think it's always challenging when you're trying to add these to smaller areas instead of rezoning a total block or a total neighborhood, it always creates this challenge.

But as I mentioned, we're happy to look a little deeper if that's the council's desire and put this in a phase two.

We have a few other questions from council.

Let's go down the line here.

Uh, and I have questions at the hand too.

Uh Ms.

Rogers, let's start with you, then go to go to Jeff and I'll jump in.

So looking at the map, there's clearly parcels that can be redeveloped if the owner chooses to do that.

Um, and also looking at the map, there are parcels that I can barely see, so I'm pretty sure that they cannot be redeveloped.

How do we, without going through and like picking out numbers or certain parcels?

What is the process that we can implement or or make so that they have the so they wouldn't qualify?

Uh whether we do square footage of a parcel or and even doing that, I know that you can get creative like with a duplex because you're essentially just splitting a home in half.

So it would just it could be a really tiny home, maybe for one person, but it couldn't fit a family.

So I there's like two sides to the coin.

Um how do we make it work, but also let people know that we we hear them and we know that some parcels are just too small.

Thanks for the question.

So one option might be looking at this map here, identifying the parcels on Kingwood Street.

So those are the smaller properties that we're talking about.

And we could update the ordinance when it comes back to the council for the second reading, which reflects the removal of each of the Kingwood Street addresses.

Would you say, I know there was a gentleman that spoke and he said his lot, I think he said like two two thousand square feet, or it was really tiny, what he said.

Is there a square footage that we can, or would you really have to go to each individual individual lot?

Actually, before before you answer that, Ms.

Nicholson, um maybe we take a we we do a quick reminder of what this zoning is meant to accomplish.

Um I'm not sure that that we need to get into it a lot by lot discussion and more of a sort of a conceptual review of what any kind of overlay like this is is meant to meant to encourage.

And actually, uh, am I correct in thinking that that the Duterk properties are kind of an interesting example of this because the Duterk properties are in a sense they are a miss, they are missing middle housing.

And the the the goal, and tell me if I'm wrong here, the goal of including a property like the Duterk property into this is because it, if say 40 years in the future, something that property is redeveloped for some reason, the city's goal is if we're to be redeveloped into something like what Duterk is now or some other um similar example of missing middle housing.

It's not to add additional units to the to the properties that are already there or do construction on that site right now, because as it has been mentioned, that's not that's not a possibility, it's to make sure that we've got that possibility in some in some for in some future scenario.

Yes, that's that's correct.

And so because we're talking about over 1900 properties, there are some sites where development is easier to picture if it's an it's if it's a vacant site, and then there are sites that are um smaller and are currently developed, but we're looking far into the future, so it may not be something that is is immediate.

And I will add to that, Mayor, and I I think that's an incredibly important point, and I think it's important to understand the relationship between zoning and development requirements.

In many situations, zoning is the overlay, development requirements can make it technically not feasible to build on the size of the lot.

So when we look at these smaller lots, they are zoned for that, but they likely will not go through that transition.

Um so we will not experience that housing on the smaller lots because they're effectively prohibited based on the size.

So from a recommendation standpoint, what staff would recommend is from a zoning standpoint we keep the area we don't, so either include it or not, and we can start looking at our design criteria to better understand what that looks like.

But this is long-range planning.

It is possible that areas are redeveloped over the course of 50 to 60 years, and this just really ensures that that type of housing category is placed on those parcels, with really the understanding that it likely will never be on all of those parcels.

That's not what we achieve with zoning.

Um, but just to make sure that we understand where we are, the level of planning, it's I think it's keeping the boundary or what we were to recommend is removing it out really for simplicity of getting through tonight, keeping some of those in the mix, um, and then I think that just allows the design standards to to make that either feasible or not.

Um but some of the points about increasing property value and and property tax, this does not do that.

Um, we do a lot of zoning where we have aspirational goals and we don't see it because it's not technically feasible.

And I know that doesn't necessarily create the confidence in the community, but I think it's an important point to focus on.

Thank you for that.

Uh Ms.

Rogers, I interrupted you.

Does that do that address your points to some extent?

You did, Mayor.

And yes, it did, and I think uh part of what I'm hearing the concerns are are maybe not the owners now, but maybe a developer comes in and because it's zoned a certain way, tries to put in a lot of units on a very small lot that's not even gonna live there, but it will have a great impact on the people that do live there, both now and in the future.

So that is why I asked because it seems like we were getting to the let's cherry pick lots versus looking at it in totality about what we're what we're trying to do.

Correct.

Thank you for that.

Mr.

Krupke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Yeah, um, I'm gonna ask some very specific questions just for clarity.

Um does this rezoning force anybody to uh join an HOA?

No.

Is this rezoning force anybody to give up their property via eminent domain?

No, it does not force anybody to redevelop their property.

No.

Does this force anybody to join their property with another an adjacent lot?

No.

Does this force anybody to uh uh vacate their property for any reason?

No.

Okay.

So um should there be a redevelopment in the future?

Let's say a house burns down 15 years from now, 10 years from now, and somebody wants to redevelop it.

Will that redevelopment have to still abide by our planning codes that are in uh in place either now or at that time?

Yes, and that would be for what the base zone allows.

So it could be the structure that was that burned, or they would have the option to create missing middle housing if they can meet all of the standards required by missing middle housing, which includes uh minimum lot sizes.

Okay.

For a duplex, can somebody just throw up a wall in the middle and then it's a duplex?

An existing house, can someone just put a wall down the middle and create a duplex, or is there other things that go into it?

Correct.

There are other regulations and in many cases that would not be allowed.

Okay.

So in my opinion, as we look as we look for this, um uh as we're looking at this, I I just want to remind everybody this is the 2050 general plan.

It is a plan for the year 2050.

It is not right now, it is not tomorrow.

It is not forcing anybody to do anything, it is giving the capability of uh uh to somebody in the future to alter what is there decades from now.

Would that be accurate to say?

Yes.

Okay, I just want to remind everybody of those of those factors.

Thank you.

Ms.

Fleming, did you have a good comment?

Well, I just I think I heard a friendly amendment from uh council member Van Wellos, and I was gonna say that I'm I'm willing to accept the friendly amendment for the Deterk area specifically, and I wanted to say why I will accept that, but I would be reluctant to go through cherry picking through the rest of the neighborhoods.

Um I mean, we'll see what the rest of the council wants, but here's my reasoning is that that neighborhood, because of the sweat equity and the special character around um people, the community there, it seems like it's uh it deserves some special protection, although I have to say the special protection I don't think in the end will be necessary.

I think that it's it's unlikely that you could even get another um development on that property that would conform to this, but I understand the concern around it, and I think that that's worthy of um of acknowledgement.

Um, and I just want to say that I I know that it is tense for folks.

The idea of having um a higher level of use um or having further density in these neighborhoods.

We've seen this done all over the place, these zoning overlays, and rare rare is it the case that anything ever gets built because it's so expensive and cost prohibitive to build, even with this zoning improvement.

Um, what it does do though is that in the future, if you are to sell your property um or the area is gonna redevelop, then it is there are more options for future use decades down the road.

And so to my mind, like in moving this forward, it's not to change the character of your neighborhood today, it's to make sure that we have options in the future when it is appropriate.

The market won't develop these properties now because there's not a demand and because it's not yet appropriate where they're not being built.

So I just want to say like I think that you know, uh a gentle touch here is really what we're trying to do, not trying to force anything on anybody.

Um, and I'm just curious to know um what my colleagues think about that approach to just adding in the DETERG and not hopscotching around any further.

I have a question about Duterk.

Could you remind me what the current zoning is for Duterk?

I would need to look up the base zoning.

I my recollection is that it's uh it's for medium density housing, so probably R3, but I would need to confirm that.

And so if we were to remove that from the from ordinance three, there it would remain, the base zoning would remain, we just wouldn't have the missing middle housing combining district uh at the end of the base zoning.

What's the potential long-term impact of that?

So if if for some reason that 30 years from now that property or 25 years from now, that property was redeveloped without the missing middle overlay.

What uh what options are um excluded or allowed that we might we might we might not be thinking about right now?

Well, missing metal housing allows for more units than what zoning in general plan does.

And so it they have to be designed in a very specific way, so there is that balance, but um in most cases there would be fewer units realized on a site if missing metal housing was not an option.

That's my um in response to my my colleague.

I guess that's my concern right now of us as I perceive this the goal of this of the missing middle overlay is to have more more really creative great neighborhood developments like Duterk.

That's in some way the model.

And if we start um again uh somewhat in a fatigued fashion here, start cherry picking from the days, then we're potentially opening ourselves up to um unintended consequences 20 years from now.

Because again, we're not this has this will not have any impact on this site now.

It's for what it's what happens 20 years from now when for some reason that site's redeveloped with an entirely set of new neighborhood considerations in mind.

And so that's my concern in um starting to make adjustments now after all the work that staff has put in, and that we're not we're not thinking through some of the some of the ramifications longer term ramifications.

I think that you make a fair point.

I think that so to my mind, you know, as a as a big housing advocate, I'll be honest with you.

I think we we do need to build housing.

It's really essential for our economy, for our health, for all that.

I I try to temper my enthusiasm with making sure that we don't feel like people got railroaded on the path there.

And so, you know, I'd be I I think that the idea of going through and cherry picking any of them is really problematic to be honest with you, but I think that if we're gonna not do that today, then we need to have a plan to make sure that this special development and the folks at Duterk feel that protected and included, and so perhaps like you know, we you know we delay this to the next meeting just you know to give staff the time to do that work, or we do something because one of the things that the worst thing that I think we could have is a backlash against all our forward housing momentum.

So I just I think that that there's risk either way.

There's risk to doing to cherry picking and then having let's say this name you know they want to redevelop in 10 or 20 years, and they can't because they didn't adopt that we'd they'd have to have a zoning code amendment, right?

Um so I hear what you're saying.

I think a path forward could be to hold item three until our next council meeting and do additional community work.

Um looking looking to colleagues for uh their sense of this item.

Is there a is there a is there a desire on council to look at this more carefully?

I um if you're asking, I'll I'll just go, Mr.

Mayor, um I think that might be a good idea.

Um I uh I understand the difference between between zoning and and development.

Um I was just concerned because of all the work that had been done to build that particular property um and the fact that it's already 32 units and it's and it's packed in and and it is actually what I'm hearing it's it is missing housing.

Um so uh I think maybe taking a little bit more time since we are a little bit fatigued.

I don't think that's a bad idea at all.

It's a good suggestion.

Um sense from the rest of the council.

We have one shoulder shrug.

Ms.

Rogers.

We're gonna come back to it, but I I think that that would mean that every single piece of property that is developed, then we would have to go take it, take it off at some point, right?

Because you're saying it was already developed in that in that way.

So that means if someone goes in the future and develops a piece of property, we're saying, oh, it doesn't meet uh the criteria, we wouldn't want any additional development.

So we then take it out of we we pick that one out, so then that property doesn't qualify is what it sounds like because that one is already developed and what we're what we're aiming for.

So then every time one is developed, we're gonna let say it doesn't we wanna take it out of do you understand what I'm saying?

I think I I think if I may actually uh Mr.

Krepki, you you had your hand up first.

I guess just my question is is if we're gonna revisit this, what level of analysis are we going to do?

So my my suggestion wasn't to revisit it to do analysis.

So then I'm sorry, I'm just not clear on why we would bring it back then.

Uh Ms.

McDonald.

I'm in agreement with Council Member Krepki, and I think Gabe, you did a wonderful job actually talking to us about like the future.

I think a 2050, and sometimes I think I'll be dead by then.

So um it won't matter.

But to be honest, I think the only one that I heard really clearly tonight was the Duterk Commons and the concern around that.

I am comfortable removing that from this particular document because of the outcry of the community because of how those houses were built, because of the parking, and they wouldn't even meet the qualifications of the missing middle housing.

But just for the ease of the community and how those houses have to be either foreclosed on to be resold or what they had to do to get them built in the 90s, I would be comfortable taking that, and I don't feel like it's cherry-picking because we actually had a lot of conversation around it, but I think to go through if if the council wants to start going through piece by piece, then yes, bring it back.

But I would be comfortable pushing this forward, getting it done.

Staff has taken an extensive amount of time and met with us ahead of time to make sure we could understand.

There's still some confusion by even myself tonight.

So I'd be comfortable putting this forward with just the removal of the Deterk Commons tonight.

Thank you.

And if I might just interject for some parliamentary procedure.

And when we come back for that for the second reading, that will be removed from the table and the ordinance.

If I may, I think that I know we've been we've been the council has been meeting since 9 30 this morning.

We it's been a long day for us.

So I know that we're eager to get this done.

I think that the goal is actually to move forward the ordinance as it is without the friendly amendment, but I think that if we do that, we cause ourselves problems.

The idea of waiting would be so that we could come back in two weeks um and adopt the ordinance as written after having done some outreach to this neighborhood.

And if we can't at that point, then we would read it with the friendly amendment.

That would be my suggestion.

And then that way we have the preserve the best chance of going forward in a unified fashion.

Is that the consensus of council?

And the goal again back to Mr.

Krepke's question is that there would be a uh very specific outreach to um the Deterk neighborhood and a clarification for council of what the of what the impact Mr.

Krepke.

I think if we're gonna reach out to the Turk, we should reach out to Kingwood as well.

So my question would be with that we're only talking about a two-week time frame, and that's a a tight turnaround.

I mean, I just think that we ought to talk to the folks who showed up here today.

I think that could happen tonight ideally.

Like I don't know that we need to have a project protracted process.

I just want to make sure that we understand their concerns and that they understand that what we're trying to do and if we can come to an agreement then we'll read it as written if we can't then we'll I mean I'm not foreseeing like a long drawn out process here with all kinds of Ms Rogers.

When it comes back for the second reading are we able to make any changes at that at that time.

It is preferable to make changes of of this magnitude at the first reading at second reading only non-substantive changes are allowed.

And Councilmember Fleming you don't want to take that property that's not the desire to I'm willing to do it but I don't think that it's good policy.

I think that it's expedient it gets us done with this very very long meeting but I don't think that it plans for if in 30 years this group of homeowners wants to redevelop their property for whatever reason then we'd be at this problem again whereas I think a few conversations may get us to the point of everyone saying oh this makes sense and it's just as a cleaner process.

I think my confusion there is it seems to me that this by by leaving the Turk included in the missing middle m missing middle overlay it increases the options for those homeowners or whoever the owners are 30 years from now as opposed to decreasing them which is what we'd be doing.

Frankly given the impact on staff and giving the given the fact that this is in some ways a distinction that it that does not make a difference because this property is not going to be negotiated and thanks to thanks to um or as Gabe outlined um given the other considerations for very small lot properties of this kind there's there's a fairly limited way that it could be developed in the future regardless of whatever overlay we have if there is a concern around this particular property I'd be more inclined to um lean towards expediency which again is not going to make much of difference in in the end anyway save save staff the time and simply pull this from the list or or submit it as written which is my personal preference because this has been done with a lot of work by staff and frankly seems very much in keeping with the with the ethos of this property I do think I do think of Deturk as being exactly the kind of property we want to encourage in this in the city and that in some ways this this um this 20 or the the 2050 um uh plan is an acknowledgement of that so I see this as celebrating as opposed to but by leaving it in there I see it as celebrating the Turk rather than threatening the Turk and that's why my my preference would be to leave it to um adopt this as written if um we can't move it forward in that way because of concerns then I am fine ultimately fine in um asking that we pull the Turk that single neighborhood from the from the plan because again it probably will not make much of a difference in the long run um but either way my preference would be to move this forward tonight just for for reasons of well for the reasons of expediency.

So so if I could uh mayor I do want to uplift council member Fleming's uh comments because um we do want people to show up if people showed up tonight um and we want the community to understand that we did hear them so I I think we could come up with a balancing approach and we could find some time to bring this back.

Maybe it's not the two weeks um but I do think we owe it to Councilmember Fleming's point of good government to be able to go back to our constituents and you know garner some feedback and I don't know uh director Osburn if you have any comments to that uh yes thank you city manager uh one option here which I think works well with existing priorities and this the workload that the staff currently has if we remove both areas we allow a significant amount of time to work directly with the neighborhood so they can be educated on the requirements they could understand what development would look like we can bring this back through a general plan amendment, which we do throughout the year.

So we package those, and we can give council the opportunity to take another look at those two distinctly different areas.

And I think that that would be an efficient way to handle it it.

It wouldn't be a significant burden on the team.

Great.

That sounds like we have a winner.

All right.

All right.

You got you got that.

You want to um add that into your your motion so um so I'll I'll add an amendment to my motion.

Um, removing for the time being, um, the deterk Commons and the Kingwood area as um illustrated in our presentation today, and direct staff to um work with those neighborhoods and bring it back when we do our next general plan amendment.

And just for the record, that is an amendment to ordinance three.

Yes, um, the ordinance of the council of Santa Rosa rezoning 1991 properties to add the missing middle housing combining district file number PLN 250393.

And the second still stands, thank you both.

We have a motion, we have a second by Ms.

Rogers, and we are at long last ready for a vote whenever you are.

Thank you.

Councilmember McDonald.

Councilmember McDonald.

Oh, Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember OK.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming?

Yes.

Councilmember Ben Wellhof.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez is absent.

Mayor stop.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes, and Vice Mayor Alvarez absent.

And thanks to all the committee members who showed up and those who have have lingered to this point.

Uh we'll move on to item or our second public hearing, um, item 16.2, our public hearing on the development related cost of service fee update.

And we have it's a busy night for Mr.

Osborne.

Ashley and Amy, thank you very much.

Uh, okay.

Okay, Gabe, we are a hundred percent paying attention.

Ready to go.

Um thank you, Mayor Gabe Osburn, director of planning and economic development.

Um, I do understand that it's been a long night for all of you, and I will try to move through this as quickly as possible.

Um the item before the council at this point in time is a minor update to our development services fees.

So our development services fees provide support financial support to the primary core services of PED, that is plan review, permit processing, and inspection.

Um, most of our fees are based on financial strategies that the council adopted back in 2004, which focus on a hundred percent cost recovery for that service.

Uh so just a little background um on March 5th of 2024, the council adopted a comprehensive fee study.

Uh, for the most part, that fee study set all of our costs at the full cost for providing the service.

Um, it resulted in both increases and decreases.

Overall, it is increasing revenue, and it approved targeted fee reductions for certain development goals, housing, um, grocery, child care, uh, replacing sidewalk sections, things that provide an overall benefit to the public.

Um, and February 4th, uh, we did a revisit of the fees under a council study session.

Um, I think that's an important P to important piece to a comprehensive study, is to better understand in that first six months to a year what the community feedback is on the adopted fees to understand where the challenges are to understand what was potentially missed.

And in that study session, we discussed some refinements to the fees, and we committed to bringing that back for the council for adoption, which is what we are doing today.

Um, really the annual review of our fees, which once again I think is an important point in in previous years.

Uh fee studies would often set the fee and leave them in that state for five years.

Um, the community is much more dynamic than that.

So, what we're doing is looking at them on an annual.

Um, and there's two pieces that we do.

Um we assess the real world application, we understand how whether it creates avoidance or not.

Um, oftentimes we will develop um various service improvements that streamline service and we align the fee with that.

That's usually when you see a reduction of fees.

Um we do gather community feedback, and many of our changes are based on community feedback that we heard through this process.

And it also may allows the council to make more timely adjustments to these fees.

So, really, just a quick chart on our revenue and expenditures.

I know that I've showed this chart to the council before, but it really is showing the goal of what we're trying to achieve.

Um, our permit totals are the bars with blue being building, the red line is our revenue, excuse me, our expenditures, and the black line is our revenue.

Um, what we saw in 2021-22 is high permit totals, but a revenue that was dropping.

Um so when the council adopted a comprehensive fee study, you see it's actually at fairly significant spike in 2425.

We anticipated that it would drive approximately a little under 2 million in revenue.

It's actually driving more than that.

So the difference that we have seen is more like 2.3 in additional revenue for that.

I have set a target goal for the department to try to achieve cost recovery to the tune of 70%.

There are certain services that we just can't charge for for customer service, some of the things that we do, and it is a reasonable target and more of an industry standard.

When we look at Q1 of 2526 and compare that to previous years, we're actually getting very close to that.

So it's growing, we're at 62% at this point, and what you see is really a lowering of the expenditures and an increasing of the revenue.

Our goal is to get those lines closer together for fiscal stability.

So I'll go through some of the changes just so they're clear and transparent.

We have two different fee types that are surcharges, so those are fees that are applied to any fee that's paid, and that's a percentage collected, so 12% goes to advanced planning.

The team that just presented, when we do all that work, that is supported by that fee.

So it's an important piece to moving policy work.

And our technology surcharge supports our technology infrastructure and everything we do.

What we found is that did not have a cap.

So there's certain projects that are fairly large, and they were paying a disproportionate share of that impact.

So we're proposing a cap of $5,000 on the advanced planning fee and $2,500 on the technology surcharge.

The third fee on this list is fairly minor.

We had some duplicative fees with our application extension.

So we actually set that at a rate of $76, which is just the true cost of doing this.

I will add that all these fees that you see here are based on the fully burdened rate times the amount of staff hours that go into a process.

So on our planning side, we have a hillside development application that was brought forward under a director review as part of our resilient city measures.

We're setting the fee at $838 for that.

It currently does not have a fee.

One of the most important ones from a community standpoint were tree removal.

That fee was at 1,677.

And we have created a tiered structure that's a more efficient process that brings that down to more reasonable amount.

That is an area when the fee gets too high that we actually have an avoidance situation.

This is a prime example of us creating an efficient process, reducing staff hours, the fees lowered along with that.

When we hear experience projects that have multiple entitlements, they normally pay the full fee.

There is an economy of scale there, and there's some efficiencies when we are pairing those together.

So what we're doing is charging the highest rate for the first entitlement and proposing a 50% reduction for all the other applications.

A parcel map waiver is a state allowed process where you see efficiencies.

We have a current rate that's around 9,000, and we're proposing to reduce that to 2,047.

An important piece here with our environmental document creation and review.

One of the pieces that we had discussed in the study session was how we can provide more financial support to our city attorney's office for the review they do on lengthy environmental documents.

Currently, how we handle that, there's a pass-through fee.

We create the environmental document through consultant services.

The applicant pays the full cost of the consultant services.

So what we're proposing to add on to that is legal counsel.

That assists our city attorney's office with just having some other expertise in that, doing initial review, and this is really on your bigger environmental documents that can really take a year's worth of staff time with some larger projects.

So we're also providing a decrease on our summary vacations.

So the council sees that quite often, their minor easement vacations.

This facilitates the process, a little easier.

We've streamlined it, so we're lowering that cost from around 10 to 2,974.

On our engineering fees, we have a self-certified process for debris haulers when a debris bin is placed in the right of way.

That is currently 400, and the fully cost recovered rate through efficiencies is now proposed to be 136.

We have a process where we waive a portion of the encroachment permit fees for sidewalk replacement for residential when they are less than 100 feet.

What we found is it makes sense to do that for commercial as well.

There are churches, there's some nonprofits that benefit from that, and it makes them easier to do these spot sidewalk replacements, which have an overall benefit to the public for creating a better pedestrian corridor.

Certificate of compliance process is a legal determination of lots.

That's a very formal engineering document.

In this particular case, it balanced out we had a single fee of 1,055, and there's two pieces.

So we created a tier structure, one reduced.

When you're subdividing land, we have a separate application that's around the same price of 1,539.

But a standard document, which is a significant amount of staff time, we put that at full cost recovery at 2,173.

It's an important note that these are incredibly uncommon applications.

We often receive one a year if that building fees are fairly minor.

Uh so plan review and inspection, we currently base that on square footage.

So for very small projects, it's possible to create a fee that is less than the minimum base floor cost for providing services.

So we just set a floor.

So plan check fee is a minimum of 126 and inspection fee is a minimum of 102.

Temporary certificate of occupancy, which is fairly common.

This is a situation when a project would like to occupy prior to getting a final on a building permit.

Uh triggers a whole series of inspections, and we found that that wasn't really achieving cost recovery.

So we're proposing a slight increase there from 193 to 580.

Um, and then a really minor application, a type one, type two exhaust hood, which are generally large hoods for commercial kitchens.

Um, that is a situation where it requires a healthy amount of review when it's a standalone, but it's incredibly rare to be a standalone.

So this is an increase slightly to 569 to be full cost recovery.

So really fiscal impact.

What we're really talking about here are minor adjustments to the fees.

Uh, we're also talking about fee types that are fairly uncommon.

Um, so when we look at this overall, the the two that make a difference are the reduction in sidewalk as well as the reduction in the planning applications when there's multiple, and we assume that based on permit volumes that are fairly consistent, that can be a reduction of revenue about 40,000 per year.

So our recommendation is to amend the fees consistent with exhibit A, which is attached to the resolution.

Uh the fees must take effect 60 days from the date of adoption.

So that puts us very close to where we normally update fees, which is January 1.

Um, and then the other piece that I think is important is our overall fees with a council direction increase based on CPI consumer price index.

So they keep up with increased costs.

So we're proposing that all these fees have the same.

So all the fees and the fee schedule update July 1 on the CPI.

So we would like to add this to that as well.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions the council may have.

Nice pacing on that game, and thanks for the good work as always.

Bringing it back to council for questions.

All right.

My only question is did I hear you right?

But thanks to the the fee adjustments, we're we're um on track to bring in about two and a half million extra per year that we weren't bringing in before.

We are, and they're on the overall permit total without overburdening any permit type.

So we should see that amount when we're having light development years and robust development years.

So that is correct.

We're we're seeing a fairly significant increase in the revenue there.

Well, that's a big impact on the bottom line, as everybody knows.

Uh, thank you for embarking on this project, and thank you for this regular cadence of updates.

This is this is effective.

Uh, and with that, we'll open the public hearing.

Are there any members of the public even here who wish to comment?

Anyone from the chamber wish to make their thoughts known?

Do you know that was a no?

That was just a joke.

All right, we're closing public comment.

Back to council for a motion, any final discussion.

And the motion is uh who is it?

Is this is this?

Oh, it's uh Ms.

Rogers.

Over to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just want to thank you and your department for doing this.

We received a lot of feedback, and this just goes to show that it may take a minute, but that we do listen and process the feedback appropriately.

So, I would like to adopt resolution entitled resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa adopting new and amended development related service fees and waive further reading of the text.

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

O'Krepke.

Madam City Clerk, we can call the vote whenever.

Thank you, Councilmember McDonald.

Councilmember McDonald.

I'm sorry, we're out of order on our votes tonight.

So I apologize.

I apologize.

My online system is still not functioning, so I'm happy to do things on the fly.

I'm used to it being uncertain way.

I apologize.

Thank you for understanding.

Councilmember Rogers.

Hi.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows.

Yes.

Vice Mayor is absent.

Mayor stop.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes a six affirmative votes.

All right, Gabe.

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to item 16.3.

Our third public hearing for the evening.

This one uh regarding our downtown Santa Rosa parking and rate adjustment.

I think we have Chad and Tanya here.

Welcome to both of you.

Good evening.

Mayor, council members, city manager, thank you for having us again.

Uh I will also be able to make it through this fairly quick.

We've we've been here once before.

We haven't changed anything in our presentation.

Uh there are a couple questions that some of you had at the last presentation that I'll highlight as we move through.

Uh before I start just quickly, I'd like to thank City Manager Smith.

This is the last time she'll get to hear my parking presentation.

So you're welcome.

Okay.

So again, we went over all the issues that we had that got us to the point where we applied for the MTC grant.

Um we addressed the uh the first hour parking hadn't incentivized anything, first hour free increases loitering.

Our voucher uses at all-time low.

Validation program was only being used by certain companies, revenues had not returned to pre-COVID levels.

And then we went through the fact that we we had the MTC grant that we came through with the focus group.

When they went out, we had David Roachford here with us when they went out and they had the survey with over 1600 respondents, multiple uh meetings with business owners.

Uh employees find it difficult to access affordable long-term parking, safety and parking garages.

Participants noted difficulties with finding available parking.

I think we've heard that uh quite often.

Confusion around inconsistent pricing, uh, and then the few businesses that offer the parking validation that we currently have.

So again, on the 1572 responses from the MTC study, uh, distance destination availability parking spaces, safety and security and price were the top four concerns of the respondents.

Feel free to tell me to slow down.

Um, again, we came through talking about the study recommendations that we were trying to get across, uh revised schedule, a fee structure, um, construction management planning amendments, wayfindings.

Again, a lot of these things we've already addressed and completed internally within parking.

We've talked about it, curb management, EV implementation.

Again, we've worked through these a lot very well with planning, economic development.

A lot of these things we've already uh started, including our EV implementation.

The parking uh progressive parking model.

The standard, you know, we try to keep that 85%.

You can see on the maps that we are hitting over peak occupancy in areas of downtown and railroad square uh due to the increase in visitors, the increase of uh uh frequency in visitors, and we're trying to figure out a way that we can assist businesses while still maintaining um affordable parking downtown in the garages on the screen.

You'll see our proposed, which again have not changed our proposed changes to or increases.

Uh the current rates that are at $1.50 will go to two dollars and fifty cents.50.

The value that are currently at a dollar will go to $150.

We're increasing the number of free options, taking out meters across the city, uh, creating different types of permits to help support these changes.

Um again, the premium lots, one fifty to two dollars, value lots, $1 to $150.

Uh economy lots in $1314 are gonna stay at one dollar, and then the value across the garages, we're just bringing them all to a dollar.

Some are more than that, some are less than that, but now all garages will be one dollar.

The proposed garage permit fee changes we've talked about.

The evening employee we already have, $10 permit for evening employees in the town.

We don't have the current new business account permit.

We're gonna offer that at $25.

The low wage permits we currently have at $31, we're gonna reduce those to $25.

The part-time permits, which we currently do not offer, those will be at $25 an hour.

The unreserved permits we currently have anywhere between $62 and $95, depending on the garage, and those will all be set at 60.

Unreserved permits and garage fives, that won't change.

Garage 5 sits at a pretty high uh occupancy level, and then a reserved permit in all garages.

That's a specialty permit.

You're saying I want to park here, so we're gonna put all those at 160.

Uh the proposed lot fees at downtown and railroad square or continuum.

So the current fee in lot two, ninety-five dollars.

We're not changing that.

Lot six, we're not making any changes.

Lot seven, uh currently underused.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take that from eighty-five to seventy.

Try to encourage more folks to come over there and park.

Lot 13 14, the permits under the freeway.

I apologize.

Uh $50, we're gonna reduce those to $25.

And then uh commuter lot, uh lot 14.

We're also offering commuter permits that are currently $31.

We're gonna drop those down to 25 to try to encourage more people to use smart or uh public transit.

As we keep going.

Uh the permit spaces, these are some of the new ones we talked about.

I want to highlight the first line, the 800 block of fourth and hope street.

Councilwoman McDonald, you asked last time how we were gonna create those.

They're currently permitted spaces.

We're gonna keep meters there, but allow people with a permit to park in those areas.

So we're creating those again at $80 to try to encourage the usage from the overflow in 888 Fourth Street and 891 Third Street.

Uh residential unreserved downtown garage, something new again.

We're starting, we're gonna propose those at $60 a month.

Residential reserve downtown garages again to support the new developments.

Make sure these folks have spots, $120.

Uh lot 13 residential reserve spaces for the cannery site.

We're already seeing a huge, a large increase in uh permits coming from there, so we're gonna offer and continue to offer those at $50.

The residential permit program right now, it's $20 per account, no matter how many vehicles you have.

We're gonna change that to $30 per vehicle.

We do have a large number of folks who have a driveway and don't use it because they don't have to, so this will help encourage folks to if you have a driveway or a garage, let's get those cars off the street.

Again, our current and uh future free parking options, so free Sundays right now and uh on the streets.

We're gonna everything's gonna be free on Sundays going forward, garages, streets, and lots.

Currently, there's a mix.

Uh, we're gonna remove meters from the following areas starting after this this meeting.

Uh 600 block of first street, uh Sonoma, different areas where the usage is low where we can take out meters.

Uh there'll be time limits.

So now folks will have additional uh free options.

And then spots where we've already uh removed meters.

I want to circle back to another question that council member Rogers asked.

We are actively gonna take out a meter in front of the library, and we're gonna create an ADA space based on the conversations we had uh last week.

And then again, some of the things that we want to do to try to uh incentivize these changes and and make it clear that we're we're helping to we want to do our best to help replace first hour free with a target of incentive for people coming to stores, restaurants, the first hour free safety issues that we're gonna uh take out.

Um, are leading to loitering vandalism and other crimes.

City will continue to work with uh Metro chamber to onboard account and validation system.

We just got our first mock-up of uh flyers that were being created that we're gonna give out to all the businesses and pass out at all the community events to help uh encourage folks to use this system.

We parking will offer $30 of free validations a month to these businesses to encourage them to sign up for the program.

We'll continue our collaborations with the uh DAO and Railroad Square boards.

Uh and the cost to us will be just about $5,400 a year per account to encourage this initial growth.

Um and then again, we talked a little bit about the need to bring our parking citation fees up to the neighboring agencies.

Uh the this does nothing to the twelve dollar and fifty surcharge that we pay to the county won't go away.

Again, every citation we went right off the top because of that, including the fees that we pay when we process citations.

Parking uh our police department parking citations go through us as well.

Um so we we're trying to make sure we can streamline these things.

And then on the board, you'll see that overall uh revenue loss or gain through the enforcement program, and um because of our lack of staffing, uh which we're getting better.

Uh we have came up short uh year after year, and these changes will help us to to have an account to where we can sustain our our own enforcement operation.

And this is just a list of the changes.

The only citation fees that are going to be adjusted are those below fifty dollars.

That's it.

So uh 35 to 50 will now go between 50 and 65.

And then again, the proposed uh citation fee adjustment, you know, the projected revenue uh 1.674.

Again, this will go directly towards the enforcement cost and help to cover those costs so we can continue our patrols and our uh neighborhood interactions.

And then here's where we are, and here's where we started uh back in June 2025, and that now we hear our today uh November 4th and next questions and uh do you have any questions for us?

Thank you uh for the succinctness of that presentation as well, as well as the uh 350,000 to our general fund.

Bringing it back to council for questions, nothing, nothing from you, Ms.

Rogers.

No question, but not only do I think the community was heard, I feel like I was heard tonight.

So thank you so much.

All right, well played.

Any other questions from council?

Ms.

McDonald?

Well, sort of questions and comments.

I want to thank you for doing outreach to the businesses to see how you can do um a validation system so that when we're going in and using specifically the businesses downtown.

I'm excited to hear that you're looking at what we can do to support them, and then you know, because I've been does three hours work for having it free.

Does that make it easier?

And I know people are like, no, stay away from that, but I still stand behind that.

But I'm happy to hear that we're working with businesses in Railroad Square, so I appreciate that.

And can you just give me a timeline of when that's gonna start?

I might you might have said it in the presentation, but we're I think at hour 10 now.

The validation when you're gonna start working on that.

Yes, um, soon.

So, the only uh hurdle we have right now is the technology implementation that we're working through with our uh company.

So uh we have a validation program right now.

We're trying to expand it more.

So definitely before January one.

Okay, and then I know another question that comes up all the time is the deferred maintenance on the garages.

How will this help your fund with the deferred maintenance on our parking garages?

Great question.

So uh the the time I've been here, the three years I've been here.

I've put off all uh projects because I did not know where our revenue is gonna come in, and we've been taken out of our reserves to pay our salary.

So this change will help us to uh balance out zero and then put a couple hundred thousand dollars a year into our reserves that we can now start planning our long-term projects.

We already have a long-term plan through an engineer for each garage, and then um this will just make us feel better about spending that money.

Great.

And then I do get complaints, um, and my even myself trying to use the meters of some of the meters not working.

Can you just tell me where someone would go to deal with that or if they did get a citation, it was because of meter?

What what's the process for that?

That's a great question.

So we have uh we have 24 staff.

So it all the phone numbers on our website.

I I give now, but we have the front counter number.

We have parking maintenance staff who are always available.

They'll come down and address it.

If somebody gets a citation they don't feel they deserve, there's three levels of appeals you can go through.

But any questions you have, you can uh the community can come to our front counter at 90 Santa Rosa Avenue.

They can call 543 3325, which is our front counter number.

They can email us at SR Parking at SRCity.org, and we are very responsive and we want to make sure we address these things.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, we'll now open the public hearing.

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

Looking again at the chamber.

Seeing seeing no one, we will close the public hearing and bring it back to let's see.

Who's doing the motion on this one?

Uh Miss Ben Wellos.

Thank you.

Uh, so I move the resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa approving the proposed new and revised fee schedule for the parking district impacting all on-street and off-street parking and wave reading of the text.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second by Ms.

Rogers.

No, I was just waiting if the mayor was gonna be.

Oh, yes, we're I'm apologies.

We're ready for the vote.

Thank you.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Aye.

Council member Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellowth.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez is absent.

Mayor Step.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes the sixth affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

And Chad and Tanya, thank thanks for your patience tonight.

Thanks for all the work and in seriousness.

Thanks for the extra 350,000 to our general fund.

We appreciate it.

All right.

And now we're going back to our our last significant item of the evening.

Uh item 15.1, a report on the adoption of the 2024 Santa Rosa Tourism BIA annual report, budget and future work plan, and continue continuation of the annual assessment on Santa Rosa lodging businesses.

All right, we've got it's been a busy night for you, Gabe.

Scott and Gabe, welcome.

Hello.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members, city manager.

My name is Scott Adair.

I'm the chief economic development officer for the city's planning and economic development department.

And I'm joined here today by our department director, Gabe Osburn, here to present on the 2024 Santa Rosa Tourism Business Improvement Area Annual Report Budget and Future Work Plan.

The SRTBIA was established by City Council in May of 2010 through ordinance 3946 under the parking and business improvement law of 1989.

The purpose of this is straightforward.

It is to fund programs, services, and activities that promote tourism in Santa Rosa and support our lodging operators.

The assessment is structured through a 3% fee, which is collected from guests who stay overnight in Santa Rosa lodging establishments.

These funds are dedicated to tourism and marketing activities, which are intended to drive overnight visits.

Lodging operators remit these assessments quarterly to the city.

After a 2% administrative fee is retained, the remaining 98% is distributed with 30% to the city's economic development division and 70% to the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, which manages activities under the tourism marketing contract with the city and also manages the California Welcome Center.

The governance for the SRTBIA is shared between City Council staff and the SRTBIA advisory board.

The advisory board is appointed by your council.

It makes recommendations on the use of the funds and prepares the required annual report each year in accordance with state law.

City Council adopts this annual report, and it has done in previous years, the budget and the work plan annually.

This is done to ensure transparency and oversight and is also done in accord with the California Streets and Highways Code requirements.

Staff in the economic development division provides support and liaises between the SRTBIA board and council.

Over the past five years, as is indicated on this screen on this slide before you, the SRTBIA has seen consistent growth in annual revenue from its creation to with an amount of just over one million dollars in 2020 to over 2 million dollars in 2024.

This growth reflects both increased tourism activity in the region, the efforts of city staff and our partner, the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce, and also the resilience of Santa Rosa's hospitality sector.

These funds are directly reinvested into programs that strengthen the visitor economy and drive tourism into the region.

So attached to this item today and before you this evening is the SRTBIA Annual Report Budget and Work Plan, which are structured as three complementary documents packaged into one.

The annual report outlines the previous year's activities and expenditures.

It also lays out travel and tourism analytics.

The budget identifies how the assessment revenues have been used in the past and how they're anticipated to be used moving forward, and the work plan expands activities to better align with today's tourism landscape.

The SRTBIA advisory board did meet on September 25th to review and approve the same annual report budget and work plan, which is before you this evening.

As required by law, this report does include any proposed boundary changes, activity improvements, estimated costs, and other funding sources.

However, no boundary or assessment method changes are being proposed this year.

And I realize I'm moving through this very quickly, so uh and thank you for that.

The new work plan is forward-looking and was created in close collaboration with the SRTBIA board members, our tourism regional partners, local partners, and with the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber.

It allows new flexibility to be amended annually.

It includes several new key updates which did not exist in previous iterations of the plan.

It shifts administrative and clerical duties back to staff for efficiency.

It includes the development of a Santa Rosa specific tourism strategic plan.

It includes expanding collaboration with other regional tourism partners, evaluating SRTBIA board operations for efficiency, including evaluation of processes, board composition, and meeting frequency.

The plan, the new work plan, also has an addition to allow for support of arts, culture, and other economic development initiatives, which strengthen Santa Rosa as a premier travel destination.

There are no fiscal impacts associated with the approval of this plan, as this has no direct impact on the general fund, and under CEQA, this action is not considered a project, therefore has no direct or indirect environmental impact.

So the recommendation from staff for this evening is that City Council by resolution approve the 2024 SRTBIA annual report, budget and future work plan, and continue the annual assessment on Santa Rosa lodging businesses as already defined and established in city code.

This action will allow us to maintain strong and data-informed tourism program, which supports local jobs, enhances our visitor experience, and reinforces Santa Rosa's role as the North Bay's hospitality hub.

This concludes my presentation.

I'm here to answer any questions that you may have, and also would like to highlight that our partner, the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, is also in the room as well.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Scott and Gabe.

Um, excellent presentation and very timely.

Bringing it back to council for questions.

You have two, like literally a couple.

All right.

Ms.

McDonald, so the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just had a question on slide, I think, or on the packet page 10.

It referred to short-term rentals.

And I just wondered if there had been any projections of what we are going to see on income from the short-term rental TOT since that was passed in 2024.

I'm not sure if that was part of this budget yet.

So this budget does focus on the BIA portion of the assessment, which is placed on hotel years and is separate of the TOT, which is generated by hoteliers and short-term rentals.

However, yes, to answer your question, looking at board composition and the impacts of whether and how STRs are being represented or not being represented through the process, is part of the new work plan work that will be conducted uh in the following year by staff.

So just so I'm clear on that, Scott.

Then we aren't going to see an increase to the STRBIA on this one on short-term rentals.

That just goes straight to our TOT funds.

I'm sorry, I thought you were capturing some of that with this as well.

There's no additional assessment being being proposed for STRs, our TOT rate increased from 9% to 11% in January, as you're aware.

The BIA rate is intended to remain the same at 3%.

Okay.

Thank you so much for that clarification.

That was not clear to me, so I appreciate that.

Um as far as the Wednesday night markets, does any of this money that goes to the BIA support that particular downtown event, which we know draws in a lot of people, and is that part of the work plan?

Yes, it is.

And these BIA funds have been used in the past to support events such as Pride, Country Summer, Wednesday Night Market, and other events that are occurring in the square.

Okay, thank you.

And then the last was when were we voted in the 10th best spear city in the nation, and how are we going to capitalize on that uh for the timing and the process behind that?

It might be best to refer back to our chamber partner who's in the room today.

Uh this was accomplished through a lot of their work under the Visit Santa Rosa initiative.

But yes, we certainly are looking at how we can capitalize on that.

That is uh part of the impetus behind why we're recommending the development of a new Santa Rosa specific tourism strategic plan, which we have not had in the past previously as a community.

It's something that we as staff, the chamber, our visit Santa Rosa partners are very excited about so that we can route all of our future efforts with regards to bringing tourists to the area in a data-driven approach and a strategic approach which is specific to Santa Rosa.

I see you have a beer passport, and I think that's great.

I was thinking more of like an Oktoberfest style thing, so I didn't know if there was going to be more around that because we are known for our wines, but also for our microbreweries.

So I I just wanted to see what we were doing in that regard.

But thank you for the definitely looking at all of us, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation and for the work.

All right, any other questions from council?

Uh we will open this up to public comment.

Um again, we have visit Santa Rosa and we have the chamber here.

Any any comments from either of you?

Thank you both for being here and for all the work.

All right, no other members of the public present.

We will close public comment and bring it back to the council for a motion.

And I think this one is Mr.

O'Krewke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

A lot of information there.

Um, didn't know Santa Rosa, at least our social media was so popular in Poland of all places, but uh it's uh top five.

Um, cool.

Unless it was all you and your recent trip to Poland, uh it's pretty interesting to see.

Um, sorry, we're all a little uh punchy after today.

Um with that, I will move a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa accepting the 2024 Santa Rosa Tourism Business Improvement Area Annual Report, adopting the budget and future work plan and approving the continuation of the annual assessment of Santa Rosa lodging businesses.

Second, we have a tie there.

I'll give that one to Ms.

Fleming uh for the second.

Madam City Clerk, whenever you're ready.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember McDonald.

Hi, Councilmember Rogers.

I had a comment that the mayor didn't take because he didn't ask us about comments.

So, really quickly, I want to say that I was very concerned coming into the Santa Rosa Airport about tourism and not seeing us having a lot of brochures or anything there.

Um, and with respect to that, I have heard uh continuously from people that live downtown that there is always something going on in the square in downtown.

So they are very happy, and that is why they are there.

And I think that that is what is gonna attract people to the housing that we have downtown.

So I think we're doing you guys are doing a great job.

So thank you, and I will say aye.

Thank you, Councilmember O'Krepke.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Willows.

Hi.

Vice Mayor Alvarez is absent.

Mayor Stopp.

All right.

Let the record show this passes a six affirmative votes.

All right, Gabe, thank you for a long night.

Scott, thank you.

Uh and to the chamber, visit Santa Rosa.

Thank you again for all the work.

All right.

We are we will move ahead then to item 17.1.

Just a notice that we've got uh we do have a written communication regarding quarterly boards commissions and committees, our committee attendance report.

We will do a final public comment on non-agenda items.

Uh any is there are there any members of the public here who wish to comment?

There is one.

All right, we've got one public comment.

Sir, the floor is yours.

Actually, I wanted to talk to Gabe if he has a minute about I'm trying to get a building permit to build a small little ADU.

It's been almost nine months, and there's a lady at the building department, a plan checker, who's just putting it through the grinder.

Please give if I could just talk to you about it.

Thank you so much.

That's all I gotta say.

All right, thank you very much.

Seeing no other members of the public present, we will close public comment and we are officially adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.

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