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

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Francisco, will you please restate this in Spanish?

See, bienvenidos a todos para quienes deseen escuchar esta reunion in Espanyol através de Zoom.

See you still in the telephone or tabletops puntos que dice more or mass you luego selection language interpretation.

Thank you.

The time is 3 01 and we'll call this meeting to order.

Madam City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald.

Here.

Council Member Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellos.

Here.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Vice Mayor Krepki?

Here.

Mayor Stapp.

Here.

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

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to our closed session items.

We have two this evening.

Item 3.1, our conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation, and item 3.2, our conference with a labor negotiator.

We'll open it up to public comment.

Duane, did you wish to comment on any of our closed session items tonight?

Yes, sir.

My name is Duane DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I'd like to comment on item number two, 3.2.

Thank you.

I'll wait till the clock begins so we do everything official.

All right.

With that in mind, I'd like to stress that I'm supportive of the current city manager being here.

And if she stays, that's a good thing.

I know you won't base it upon my opinion, but I will talk about wages today.

We are in a wartime period that probably is going to worsen for our nation.

We're having economic difficulties that are increasing.

Latest reports show that inflation in our area is up 3.8% at a minimum.

This will continue to occur.

I'm going to ask that you folks ask for a freeze on wages.

That you basically also in the negotiations for the city manager state that you're going to keep one wage for at least two years.

The main thing on all this is economic uncertainty faces us.

So please don't base your decisions on what other cities are doing and this comparative wage race that goes on and creates millionaires out of bureaucrats within a few short years.

This is not what the taxpayers need to be happening.

Money from the taxpayers needs to take care of our problems in the city.

And take care of our problems right now.

Thank you, Mr.

DeWitt.

Seeing no other members of the public present, we will close public comment and recess into closed session.

All right, everyone.

Welcome.

The time is what, 423?

Will we convene an open session?

Madam City Clerk, whenever you have a moment, would you call the role?

Thanks, Mayor.

I just had to make sure the zoom cameras were on.

Uh let's see here.

The role.

Councilmember Rogers present.

Councilmember McDonald here.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows.

Here.

Councilmember Alvarez.

What is it?

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Mayor Stop.

Here.

Let the record show that all council members are present.

Thank you very much.

We will go to item six, our report on closed session.

I can do the report on item three point two.

Uh likewise, Mayor, no reportable action on three point one.

Thank you very much.

Uh, and it's great to see such a full crowd tonight.

We've got four proclamations.

Um, or three proclamations in a presentation.

Uh let's start with item seven point one.

Uh Ms.

Rogers, would you read the proclamation for water awareness month?

Thank you.

Whereas water is essential for every living creature and is a precious and limited natural resource that must be stewarded wisely for future generations, and whereas the city of Santa Rosa is a proprietor of the water resource in the Santa Rosa community, and whereas the highly skilled staff of Santa Rosa Water are fully dedicated to protecting public health by sustaining water resources, infrastructure, and the environment 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and whereas because water is a precious resource, wise use of water should be considered a way of life.

And whereas Santa Rosa water encourages citywide understanding and appreciation of the value of water efficiency, and whereas Santa Rosa community has long demonstrated a commitment to using water wisely by minimizing water waste, installing over 61,300 water efficient toilets and converting four point three million square feet of lawn to low water use landscapes.

And whereas the city of Santa Rosa is the owner and operator of the regional water reuse system and is one of the largest recyclers of water, producing high quality recycled water for many purposes, including irrigation of parks, commercial businesses, and a community garden.

And whereas for every drop of recycled water used, a drop of potable water is saved.

Now, therefore it be it resolved that our mayor, Mark Staff, on behalf of the entire city council, proclaim May 2026 as water awareness month and encourage all citizens to do your part and be water smart.

Thank you.

We're very proud of our water here in Santa Rosa.

Do we have Lisa Coyar here to accept the award or to accept the proclamation?

The council.

I'm Lisa Qualar, water use efficiency coordinator, and I would like to thank you on behalf of the greater Santa Rosa Water Team for the proclamation, acknowledging the month of May as Water Awareness Month.

Each section of the water department strives to provide dependable, high-quality water services to our 175,000 customers, as well as excellent customer service to city residents, businesses, and institutions alike.

As a result, we continue to see sustained participation across a number of customer rebates and services, such as our high efficiency toilet direct installation and cash for grass programs that result in impactful water use efficiency.

I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to announce several events to help the community grow and their water awareness.

The first is the the annual eco-friendly garden tour that was held this past Saturday across Sonoma and Marin counties, had five low water use landscapes in Santa Rosa, including those who have participated in our cash for grass programs, those were on display.

The event continues to grow in popularity with nearly 3,500 registered for the event.

Second is the presentation of the water use efficiency awards during today's council meeting to residents and businesses who have achieved noteworthy water savings through their Water Smart program participation.

And lastly, I just wanted to mention that the Water Department will host the Water Smart Expo at the June 17th Wednesday night market.

Their customers can engage directly with our water department staff and better appreciate the value of our water.

And with that, I thank you again.

Thank you, Lisa.

And good branding with the official Santa Rosa water bottle right next to you.

Those are available to the public at various events.

We want to do a photo in just a moment, but before you before we do that, let's open it up to public comment.

Who here appreciates the water in Santa Rosa and wants to say a few words?

The podiums are open at both sides.

Seeing none, although I'm sure the appreciation is there, we'll close public comment.

And why don't you come up and we'll do a quick photo with council?

Thank you again for being here today.

We have a bit of a program here.

Turn to the appropriate page.

All right.

So as part of Water Awareness Month, we are recognizing four community members who have gone above and beyond to save water in our city.

Although, if you look at the statistics of water use in Santa Rosa over the past couple of decades and seen the steep decline, it's pretty clear that uh most Santa Rosa residents are doing their part to save water.

But we have four.

We have four notables.

Each property made water efficiency upgrades that have resulted in thousands of gallons of annual water savings.

These actions have helped make Santa Rosa a more resilient committee community, and we commend their actions.

Before we present the awards, we have a short video that we'll be playing in honor of this year's recipients.

Congratulations to Santa Rosa Waters for 2026 Water Use Efficiency Award winners for their outstanding efforts to improve water efficiency in their homes, communities, and businesses.

This year's award winners are bestwestern plus wine country in and suites, which replaced 84 high water use toilets and fixtures with ultra-high efficiency ones.

These actions save approximately 248,000 gallons of water a year.

The new landscape supports pollinators and biodiversity.

Mountain Vista Owners Association, which removed 11,500 square feet of lawn.

The water efficient landscape transformation included the installation of trees, low water use plants, and a weather-based irrigation controller.

The new landscape supports biodiversity and attracts pollinators.

Mark and Jody Vandewal, who installed an elaborate rainwater catchment system that includes three large water tanks.

They have 11,725 gallons of storage to irrigate their landscape, which will save an estimated 35,000 gallons a year.

Thank you to our 2026 Water Use Efficiency Award winners for achieving exceptional water savings.

We'll do an award presentation and a photo.

Could I get representatives from the best Western Plus wine country in and suites to come up?

Wonderful.

Todd Anderson.

Todd Anderson, so congratulations.

Let's do a quick photo here.

Thank you.

Our second water use efficiency award goes to Bennett Valley Knowles Homeowners Association.

I have friends that live there.

My wife and I are in Bennett Valley.

Thank you for representing representing our neighborhood.

We have a few, we have a several other Bennett Valley folks here tonight.

Please come up and accept your award.

Thank you to Benavelli Nobel's Homeowners Association.

All right, Mountain Vista Owners Association, Mountain Vista.

Excellent, come on down.

Congratulations.

All right.

Our final water use efficiency award goes to Mark and Jody Vandewal.

Are Mark and Jody here?

Excellent.

You have the whole family.

Please come on up.

All right, I think we're doing a joint photo.

Thanks for keeping me organized up here.

I'm the last one to know.

Let's let's do a joint photo with all council.

Congratulations again to all the winners.

And before we leave this item, I was reminded that we do need to give public comment.

So there are there friends or family or community members that want to shower praise on our our water water use efficiency award winners.

Seeing not, or do we do we have no seeing none?

We will close public comment.

Thank you again to all our winners.

Thank you for coming out today.

And we will go on to item seven point three, our proclamation for affordable housing month.

And I'm going to turn to Miss Ben Wellos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Let's see.

Whereas safe and affordable housing is a fundamental human right, yet thousands of Santa Rosa residents continue to face challenges in securing homes they can afford.

And whereas Santa Rosa recognizes the need to prioritize the development of new affordable housing, as well as the preservation and rehabilitation of existing affordable units to support long-term community stability.

And whereas the city and the housing authority have taken significant steps to address local housing needs by providing financing and monitoring more than six thousand five hundred home housing units, managing a two hundred million dollar loan portfolio and administering over two thousand housing choice vouchers, and whereas the current fiscal year in the current fiscal year, the housing authority awarded $3.5 million to support the development and rehabilitation of two hundred and ninety-one affordable homes.

And whereas the city and housing authority proudly recognize the completion of the Stewart Canary in Railroad Square, delivering a hundred and twenty-eight new affordable homes, including twenty-five percent reserved for residents experiencing homelessness with on-site supportive services and thirty-three project-based vouchers to ensure long-term affordability, and whereas the city housing and community services department works with many partners to expand access to safe, stable, and affordable housing for all.

And whereas Affordable Housing Month provides an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to promoting awareness, equity, inclusion, and justice in housing.

Now, therefore, may it be resolved that the Mayor Mark Stapp of the City of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council in recognition of our community to hereby proclaim May 2026 as Affordable Housing Month and urge community support.

Thank you, Ms.

Manhuelos.

And do we have Catherine Etzel from the John Stewart Company here?

Katherine, oh, we have some we have some fans clearly.

Catherine, come on down, say say a few words.

Got it.

Can you hear me now?

We can.

Great.

Um, good afternoon, members of the city council and mayor.

Um, my name's Catherine Etzel.

I'm a vice president of development at the John Stewart Company.

Uh, on behalf of John Stewart Company and all the many team members who worked for quite honestly over 30 years to bring this project to fruition.

Um, I want to thank you for this recognition.

Um, this project was a labor of love for the John Stewart Company.

Um, John and his partners, who he fondly called the canners, purchased the site in 1999.

Uh, it's a two-acre site, it was split into twos quite some time ago.

The third street site is where the cannery sits, and plant five is directly adjacent.

I'll come back to that at the end of my short remarks here.

Um, and John fondly liked to say that it really takes a village to build affordable housing.

This site was um not an exception to that.

I don't have time to talk about the project's history, but it went through many, many iterations of design, uh, concepts and schemes.

Finally, after years of hard work, we broke ground and began construction in 2022.

And the project opened its doors in 2024.

I really want to thank the city council um for the funding for this project.

We got 450,000 from the city, which was a huge catalytic um infusion of funding to get the project to go forward.

Uh, the building's beautiful.

Um, whenever I'm in Santa Rosa, I walk over and take a look at it.

And um, I really want to thank you for this acknowledgement.

We are now actively pursuing development of the adjacent site, which is plant five.

We are looking for predevelopment funding, and we are hoping to bring uh cannery part two, uh, more affordable homes right to Railroad Square.

So thanks again very much.

Catherine, thank you.

That's music to our ears.

It's a it's a it's a beautiful project.

Thanks so much.

Let's let's throw it open to public comment before before we do our photo.

Are there any members of the public that would like to comment on uh on this proclamation or on the cannery project?

Please.

Good afternoon, City Council.

My name is Silmar Lopez.

I'm the policy coordinator at Generation Housing Generation Housing, just wants to thank you for acknowledging Affordable Housing Month this year and for your continued work and dedication to addressing housing solutions here in Santa Rosa.

I want to give a big congratulations to the Canary Project for opening, and we hope we can continue working with you if you as we go into phase two.

And we look forward to working with you to address housing moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Omar, and thank you, Generation Housing.

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

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

And Catherine, why don't you come up with a little photo?

Thank you again to the John Stewart Company for being here.

We will move on to our our uh fourth proclamation or presentation.

Uh, this one in honor of National Public Works Week, and we've got a lot of our staff here, which we're glad to see.

Uh, Mr.

Alvarez, do you want to read that proclamation?

Thank you, Mayor.

And it reads as follows whereas public works are essential to the daily lives of our residents and critical to sustaining safe and thriving community by supporting the quality of life, mobility, and well-being of all who work, live, and visit our city.

And whereas, public works professional designs manage and maintain the city's vital infrastructure and community assets, including five hundred sixteen miles of roadway, one thousand eighty-five acres of parks and open space, seventy-three acres of roadway landscaping, 108 city-owned buildings, 320 miles of storm drains, 1,200 miles of water and sewer pipes, and a wastewater treatment plant, ensuring essential services operate reliably every day and whereas.

These services depend on the dedication and expertise of public work engineers, operators, technicians, and support staff who plan, build, operate, maintain, and safeguard the city's infrastructure, transportation networks, utilities, parks, and public facilities, and whereas, in addition to their daily responsibilities that keep Santa Rosa functioning, public works personnel respond during storms, floods, infrastructure failures, hazardous roadway conditions, and other events serving as first responders who protect public safety, property, and community resilience.

And whereas, it is essential for the residents and leaders of Santa Rosa to recognize and appreciate the importance of public work services and the individuals who provide this critical work for our community, and now, therefore, be it resolved.

Our mayor Mark Stapp, on behalf of the entire city council, to hereby proclaim May 17th through the 23rd, 2026 as National Public Works Week in the City of Santa Rosa.

I think we've got some, I think we have some individuals we want to call out here.

Am I forgetting anyone?

Thank you all for coming out.

All right, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do a photo down here, and thank you again.

Uh before we do that, are there any other members of the public that want to that want to again shower praise on our transportation and public works teams for the roads you drive on?

There we go.

Whoever's doing it.

Let's talk about our roads, let's talk about our parks.

Please.

Hi there.

My name is Robert Maddock.

I am a member of the public.

I am also the Teamsters 856 representative for a number of the public works employees.

I am here to absolutely shower praise.

It's amazing the skill, the knowledge, the commitment that all of you bring to your jobs.

I work every day trying to find uh ways to get these guys and gals paid and get their conditions better.

I really appreciate everything council's doing to make that happen and to work hard.

Every time you drive on a road, every time you turn on your tap, every time you flush the toilet, every time you take a shower.

Right here.

I can tell you from personal experience, I had a neighbor cut my uh sewer line last year.

It took six months to get my sewer reattached.

Do you know what it's like not to have a toilet flushing in your toilet?

I will tell you.

It's really, really bad.

Take care of these people.

Thank you very much, all of you individually, and thank you to uh all of you, City of Santa Rosa employees for keeping this city functioning for sticking around through tough times and for being here every day to get job done.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Robert, thank you very much.

All right, and do we have do we have Jeremy Gundy here, Deputy Director, Field Services?

Jeremy, you want to say a few words?

Good afternoon.

Mayor Stopp, members of the council, name is Jeremy Gundy.

I'm the deputy director of field services and transportation and public works.

So during National Public Works Week, May 17th through the 23rd, we proudly recognize and thank our public works and water staff for their dedication, professionalism, and tireless service to the community.

Whether maintaining parks, streets, traffic signals, facilities, and our fleet, operating and repairing water and sewer uh systems, delivering capital improv improvement projects, or providing critical administrative support.

Their work has a direct and lasting impact on the quality of life in our city every day.

Our public works and water employees also serve as disaster service workers and play a vital role during emergencies and disasters.

Public works professionals are among often among the first to respond and the last to leave, maintaining critical water systems and infrastructure during disasters, supporting evacuations, providing traffic control, clearing roadways for emergency access, and ensuring city vehicles remain operational so public safety personnel can continue serving the community.

Their commitment, teamwork, and willingness to go above and beyond, often in dangerous and challenging conditions, does not go unnoticed.

As we recognize National Public Works Week, we also acknowledge the growing nationwide effort to recognize public works professionals as first responders for their essential role they play in emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.

Please join us during the City Works Festival on May 20th from 5 p.m.

to 8 30 p.m.

during the downtown Wednesday night market in Courthouse Square to show them support for their dedication, service, and the pride that they take in serving our community every day.

The event is also a great opportunity to climb aboard some of our construction equipment, participate in a scavenger hunt with prizes, learn more about the work our crews do, and meet the people who help keep Santa Rosa a great place to live, work, and play.

So on behalf of Transportation and Public Works and our partners in water, thank you, Mayor Stapp and the City Council for recognizing National Public Works Week.

Jeremy, thank you.

All right, before we do the photo, let's go back to to the public comment.

Would any other members of the public like to speak?

Please go ahead.

Hi, I'm Gail Seymour, and I just wanted to mention that as part of the South Park Coalition.

I know that the City Council found and allocated funding so that you can renovate 100% of the park in the next couple years.

And I know we sent a thank you card, but I wanted to thank you uh verbally for doing that and thank the public works department in advance for the renovation work you're gonna do in the next couple years.

Thank you so much.

Other members of the public.

Seeing none, we'll close public comment, but I'll bring it back to the dais here because I suspect we have some folks on the dais that wish to wish to speak.

Ms.

Rogers.

Um, so I very rarely say anything during proclamations, but I did want to take the time to thank all of you, and like this is definitely an honor to be sitting up here and honoring you.

You guys do the work that we see, but we don't know how or when it gets done.

You just get it done.

Um, and also to tell you that the state sees you, the state sees what you're doing, um, and many council leaders are sitting around the table to see um how you can be categorized as first responders.

What does that look like?

Because you are indeed first responders.

When before fire can come in sometimes, before police can come in, you guys clear the way, you make a way.

When we have a problem, we call.

And when I call, I never see you, you grumble or you say anything that is, you know, oh, I don't want to do this.

You have smiles on your face, you get in there, you get the job done.

What you say when you leave, I don't know, but what you say when you're there and you're serving the public, you do it with smiles.

And so for that, I wanted to thank you for all the work that you do for our city for all the work that you do for our residents and for our visitors, and many of you are residents, and it shows.

So thank you very much for your service to our community.

You're here.

Thank you, thank you, Miss Rogers.

All right, we've we've kept you standing long enough.

Thank you again for coming out.

Let's do a quick photo up front, y'all.

Thanks again to our whole TPW team.

Oh, there were more.

Oh, we should have you all down front.

Thanks for coming out.

All right, we'll move on to item 7.5, our proclamation for National Police Memorial Day.

Miss McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

It's my honor to do this proclamation today.

Whereas the Congress and President of the United States have designated May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day, and the week in which May 15th falls as National Police Week.

And whereas there are approximately 900,000 law enforcement officers serving in the communities across the United States, including the dedicated members of the Santa Rosa Police Department.

And whereas Santa Rosa police officers recognize that the primary responsibility of their profession and of individual officers is the protection of the people within the jurisdiction of the United States through upholding their laws, and most important of which are the constitution of the United States and the state constitution and law derived from there, and whereas it is important that all citizens know and understand the duties, responsibilities, hazards, and sacrifices of their law enforcement agency, and that members of our law enforcement agencies recognize their duty to serve the people by safeguarding life and property, by protecting them against violence and disorder, and by protecting the innocent against deception and the weak against oppression.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that Mark Stapp, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire city council in recognition of our community, do hereby proclaim Mark Mark the May 15, 2026, as Peace Officer Memorial Day, and May 10th through 16th, 2026 as police week in the city of Santa Rosa, and further, the Santa Rosa City Council extends its gratitude and pride to the women and men of the Santa Rosa Police Department for their dedication to the community.

Thank you.

All right.

Do we have Chief?

Do we have Chief Chief Cregan here to say a few words?

Welcome, Chief.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

And I'm Chief John Cregan of the Santa Rosa Police Department.

I just want to thank council so much for honoring this important night.

And for the Santa Rosa Police Department, it's important not only for our own staff but across our nation.

Here at the Santa Rosa Police Department, we've lost two officers in the line of duty.

Chief Charles O'Neill, who was shot in his office after uh contacting a community member, and uh Detective Mary Lou Armour, who we lost in March of 2020.

Both those were impactful for our agencies.

But it's also important for the Santa Rosa Police Department to understand that we've lost two officers in the line of duty, but that doesn't really measure officers of the Santa Rosa Police Department who have been shot here in the line of duty, who have been stabbed in the line of duty, who have been run over with cars in the line of duty, uh, even just this weekend, seeing officers uh their patrol cars repeatedly rammed.

That's something that the Santa Rosa Police Department officers deal with day after day.

Some of those don't make the newspaper, are not in the community, but every day they sign up, they go out there in their shifts, they're serving their community with pride and incredibly proud of the work we're doing.

And as chief of police, I don't have to face those things.

They're facing things that I don't see.

But today we have some of the incredible men and women of the Santa Rosa Police Department who are doing that.

So we just really want to honor them and the work they're doing are 175 police officers and our seventy-four civilians that come together every day for our community.

So proud of the work they're doing, and let's give them a hand.

Thank you, Chief Cregan.

Uh, and I'm sure I speak for all of council in the city when I say that we couldn't be more proud of the work that SRPD does.

Thank you all for coming out.

We do want to do a photo here in a moment, but before we do that, would any members of the public like to say a few words about um our Santa Rosa police department?

Any words from council?

Other than a perpetual thanks.

All right.

Thank you.

Chief Cregan, you summed it up.

Um, why don't we do a photo down here in the front?

If everyone if everyone who's here from SRPD could come up.

Let's let's take a quick picture.

Hi, you two, you can all this way.

Thank you again, Santa Rosa Police and Chief Cregan for taking the time.

All right, item eight point one.

What is continued to a date uncertain?

So we are going to do an economic development update for the city, but that'll probably take place in a month or so.

And it's gonna be a good one, so come back.

Uh we're gonna go on to our city manager and city attorney's reports.

Um Mr.

City Manager, assistant city manager nut.

Would you like to do a city manager report this evening?

Thank you, Mayor.

I have no report for this evening.

Uh what from uh madam city attorney.

Yes, Mayor, I do have a report on uh settlements and litigation tonight.

Uh settlements, there were a none finalized in April, so no settlements to report.

Uh ongoing litigation.

We have a current caseload of 31 cases at the trial court level right now, uh, trial dates assigned to 25% of those court level matters.

Uh we have four cases currently on appeal, following uh favorable rulings for the city at the trial court level.

And I gotta say I like that track record.

Uh one case I'm very happy to report previously on appeal, decided in the city's favor in April.

Uh there's now a published opinion in Western Manufactured v City of Santa Rosa.

And anybody who is interested in uh mobile home park law and policy should really read that case.

Uh nice public policy win for the city, and I wanna uh send a special shout out to my colleague in the city attorney's office, assistant city attorney Nate Putney argued that case successfully on behalf of the city.

So great job, Nate.

Uh and finally, I just want to remind any everybody that while this monthly report out the verbal report is very short.

Uh, we do publish a longer litigation report with the agenda.

So those of you yearning for additional information on litigation in the city attorney's office should go and check that out.

And with that, I will uh kick it back to you, Mayor.

Thank you, madam city attorney.

Uh, would any members of the public like to comment on either the city attorney or city manager's reports?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment on that item and move on to item 10 statements of abstention or recusal by council members.

Any well, I am the I am the loan uh recusal this evening.

So I must rec I have been advised that in an abundance of caution.

I should recuse from item 16.1.

This is the uh the uh new wooy fire map item.

Uh and that's because my wife and I were over in Bennett Valley, and our home is actually contained within the MUI fire maps, and so again, when our city attorney and our uh and the fire department reviewed the item, it was recommended to me that I recuse because of our our the location of our home.

So I will turn it over to the vice mayor for that item.

Uh, but before we do that, uh we it at the time is after five o'clock.

We're gonna go to we're gonna jump ahead to item 14, which is our first public comment on non-agenda matters.

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

So we're not talking Spring Lake Village or the fire maps, we're talking about items not listed on the agenda.

Are there any members of the public here who wish to make comment tonight?

Please, sir.

The microphone is yours.

Well, thank you.

My name is uh Major Marcos Marquez with the Salvation Army here in Santa Rosa.

And last July, my wife and I were appointed here uh to continue in the administrative work of the Salvation Army.

And I'm here today, Mayor Stapp and Council members, to thank you so much.

Last week we received a wonderful proclamation.

This week is National Salvation Army Week, and uh this proclamation uh it makes this week Salvation Army Week in Santa Rosa.

And so I am so grateful for that expression from you and the council uh recognizing that.

We are deeply honored by this recognition, and we are truly thankful for the support of our mission uh and the work that we're able to do in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County.

This year represents our 135th year in this community.

Since 1891, the Salvation Army has had the privilege of serving this community through times of prosperity, through times of hardship.

This community has always shown compassion, resilience, and generosity toward its neighbors.

It's a blessing for us to stand alongside our neighbors and to help meet the needs of those who are struggling, those who are vulnerable, and those who simply need a little bit of hope.

Every day we see through those who come through our doors the strength and the kindness of this community, through our volunteers, through our donors, through city leaders, through first responders, and everyday residents who care deeply about one another.

Whether it's providing food to families or transitional shelter for those experiencing transition, or whether it's support for seniors experiencing loneliness or disaster relief or youth programs through our boxing program or assistance in moments of crisis, we are reminded by every person that comes through our doors that the most significant and meaningful part of service is found when it's rooted in community.

And we're experiencing that wonderful uh thing about this community.

This proclamation then is not only a recognition of the Salvation Army, but also a recognition of the spirit of compassion that we are learning defines Santa Rosa and Sonoma County.

We are so proud to be a part of this community that believes in caring for its neighbors and lifting those up in need.

So again, mayor and council members, thank you for this honor for your partnership, for your acknowledgement of the Salvation Army.

Thank you.

We were proud to do the proclamation.

Thank you for all the work that the Salvation Army does.

Mr.

DeWitt, I believe you wish to make public comment.

The floor is yours.

Hello, thank you.

My name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I wanted to thank the city and the staff that came out to Roseland Creek on the 28th for Earth Day and did some good things along the creek there.

I definitely want you to know that people in our community appreciate the fact that city staff takes the time to come and see in person some of the things that we face there along the creek.

For a number of years, people in the community have been looking into the idea of having the name for that park area be called Pomo Park and Preserve.

Reasoning is the first parcel of 5.9 acres was purchased with money from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District 15 years ago.

Then other parcels were added, and the city chose to call it Rosalind Creek Community Park.

Nobody that we know in our community made that decision.

It was just foisted upon us by city staff at the time.

People have been working for a long time amongst the community members to have it be named Pomo Park and Preserve.

Recently, city guidelines were released stating that you had to do a petition drive with 1,000 signatures, 500 from within a half mile of the park, and you had to do it all within six months of starting the process.

That's a bit onerous for the folks over in our area.

We understand you could do it with the better off neighborhoods, people more organized.

So we're gonna look into the idea that maybe the city council could make the decision to have the naming changed.

You put the name on there in the first place, basically.

So you could make that choice for us.

Keep in mind Pomo Park and Preserve.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Duane.

Are there any other members of the public who'd like to speak on items not listed on the agenda?

Then we will close this portion of public comment.

We'll move on to item uh 16.1, and I will take my leave.

Mr.

Vice Mayor.

All right, we will take a moment to let the mayor exit the premises and have.

Is it going to be Fire Marshal Lowenthal or Assistant Fire Marshal Jared McDaniel?

Both.

Oh, yes.

Here are images of otters, turtles, and frogs.

I'm once again gonna make my bid for one of those old 1950s technical difficulty slides that we can put up during this.

When you're ready.

All right.

Good evening, Vice Mayor, members of the council, and members of the community that have joined us tonight.

My name is Paul Lowenthal, Division Chief Fire Marshal with the fire department, joined by Assistant Fire Marshal Jared McDaniel, also with our department, for the uh updates to our wildland urban interface fire area map.

Prior to uh Jared leading uh this presentation, I wanted to take a moment to address uh some of the concerns and comments that have come from our community in advance of this presentation.

I felt it's uh given the amount of public feedback as well as the community members that have taken time uh out of their afternoon and evening to join us here to address some of the reoccurring themes that uh we heard loud and clear from our community, uh primarily in the creekside area.

Um I do want to acknowledge that they did have a community meeting that we uh did not attend.

Uh, as the mayor and I spoke to some of those committee meetings before this meeting.

Uh, we apologize.

It sounds like there was a miscommunication where some of the messages were being sent to our city staff via text message uh to a landline, and those messages were not received.

Uh that being said, um, from reviewing the number of the public comments as well as a lot of the uh social media um and comments that were received uh to council, it seemed like there was three reoccurring themes uh that came up.

One was that there was a perception that the fire department is adopting a high-risk map for the first time tonight.

The second one was concerns regarding insurance and what this adoption of our local wildland urban interface fire map has on insurance.

And then the third seemed to be a confusion about why certain parts of our community were quote unquote skipped uh from the Anadel Heights area, Benavale Heights, uh, and around Spring Lake, and then pick back up in the Spring Lake area.

I want to start off by acknowledging the fact that a lot of what I'm gonna be saying is likely gonna be repeated by Jared in some points during the presentation, but uh without slides moving, we just wanted to have people hear some of this information uh from me directly.

So our wildland urban interface fire area encompasses about 30% of our community and has been in place since 2009 within the wildland urban interface, which we referred to primarily as the Fountain Grove area, the Skyhawk area, the Oakmont area, and the Bennett Valley area, Bennett Valley, meaning between Summerfield and Anadale State Park primarily.

Those maps had been in place and unchanged since 2009.

Within those areas, the state had mapped only very high fire risk areas within those wildland urban interface boundaries that we had here locally.

Those had remained unchanged until 2020, following the adoption of our local community wildfire protection plan.

One of the objectives and action items that came out of that plan was to evaluate including Coffee Park into the wooy.

There was a decision that involved a couple different pieces as to why that was not included.

One, in consulting with Calfire and doing our own analysis, Coffee Park was had no characteristics of a wildland urban interface.

There was feedback that it burned during the Tubbs fire.

However, it is our belief that had the winds not stopped when they did that morning, that fire would have continued to progress towards downtown Santa Rosa.

That does not mean that everything between Coffee Park and downtown Santa Rosa should be considered wooy.

That transitioned out of a wildland urban interface fire and into an urban conflagration.

We also knew that the state was gonna be at some point what we thought was gonna be soon releasing maps that would be updating their risk, which could then provide us additional guidance to recommendations that we should be making to you as the council body.

In 2021-2022, Cal FIRE released high risk, very high fire hazard severity zone maps for moderate, high, and very high outside of the city limits in what's referred to as the state responsibility areas and those areas only.

It did not affect the city at that point in time, but the state adopted those maps.

We could logically look at the maps, and we knew that there was going to be changes to our risk within the city, meaning if you have very high right up to the city's boundary, one could assume that the very high will extend into the city.

But we were in limbo until Cal FIRE finally got to a position where they are ready to release the maps to the local responsibility areas or LRA, which the city of Santa Rosa is 100% LRA.

When CALFIRE released the maps for our area, we, like every other community that has LRA maps in the state, were required by law to adopt the moderate, high, and very high fire risk areas within 120 days.

Those maps were required to be adopted and were brought to council and approved in March of 2025, a little over a year ago.

At that point in time, the moderate and high has been in effect for areas outside of our previously adopted Wooe.

So we realized we had a conflict.

We had areas of our community that were in our locally adopted Wooey that contained new state responsibility, sorry, new state risk areas, and then we had areas outside of our WUI that had state adopted, locally adopted moderate, high, and very high risk areas.

And we saw them in areas that had never been mapped before, primarily around the fairgrounds and over into Benna Valley on the creekside uh side of Benna Valley that extended into Montgomery High School.

We will be we will admit that it extended a little bit further than we anticipated, but it was very clear by state law that we were not allowed to adopt anything less restrictive.

We could only go more restrictive.

So that has been in place since 2005, since March of 2025.

We then did an analysis to make recommendations from based on the state's mapping, our previous history here in Santa Rosa, the way things have been developed, where we could retract our wooy in some parts of our community, but then we were gonna have to expand our wooy in other parts of our community.

The reason we wanted to do that was to provide consistency across our community and how we're enforcing state law, but then also our ordinances.

The ordinances that are affected by our wooy involve burning.

Pile burning is allowed in our wooy.

However, the area where we're receiving most of the complaints in the creekside area would not qualify for that.

The burning can only occur on properties over five acres in size.

That was approved by council really as a measure to allow a lot of the open spaces in the Fountain Grove area and ability to do mitigation of fuels.

The ordinance also requires the removal of dead fire damaged trees in a wooey that are as a result of one of our burn scars, which does not affect the creekside area.

It requires the removal of invasive scotch broom and other growth that we're seeing in our burn scar, which does not affect the creekside area.

It applies the weed abatement ordinance, which for most part will not affect that area because most of the properties in that area are manicured and nuisance properties or weeds on a typical single family dwelling are typically more of a code enforcement.

The weed abatement pertains primarily to undeveloped large vacant lots.

The two things that it will do is it will implement our local defensible space inspections, which we previously started as an educational program and is now an inspection program.

There is no enforcement associated with that program right now.

It simply provides for a defensible space inspection.

It also requires the removal of what we first hair mulch for properties in the wooy within 30 feet of a structure.

That requirement went into effect because of primarily the glass fire, where we were seeing ember cast, that type of mulch is extremely receptive, was leading to a lot of property damage, a lot of homes burning in neighborhoods, and was tying up a considerable amount of resources.

We did allow residents when that ordinance went into effect a year to come into compliance with that.

To address the uh concern that uh the city is essentially uh through the adoption of these maps, skipping or that Cal FIRE skipped the areas in between Summerfield and the Creekside neighborhood, is inaccurate.

The uh Summerfield to Howarth Park to Anadale Heights area is primarily at risk of a fire coming out of the north northeast that would potentially burn through Anadel State Park and into that community.

The area that's being mapped around the creekside area has been mapped because of the threat from Holland Heights and Mount Taylor.

To us as a department, that area is actually a higher risk area to us because that is a naturally occurring wind event that occurs almost every evening here in Sonoma County, and something that we've actually trained for for years now, because that has been our perceived event and our perceived threat, where we get that short duration afternoon breeze that could potentially blow a fire into that part of our community, which also aligns with Cal Fire's risk and why they met likely map that area as a moderate uh and high uh risk area.

And lastly, I'll touch on the insurance.

Uh, we've established FAQs on our website, SRCity.org/slash wooy.

Um, I remember during a previous uh council item.

Uh the vice mayor and I had a conversation regarding uh insurance and impacts, and it's important to know that the insurance commissioner, when the state released their maps, provided an FAQ and a statement that we've provided on our website that said, quote, let me be clear, the Calfire hazard severity maps are not to be used for insurance rates or underwriting decisions.

That has been released by the insurance commissioner, and that affected the actual state maps, which are already in effect here locally.

Again, we're simply now taking our local WUI and essentially drawing the line around the high and moderate risk areas that have been added to the community.

So hopefully that addresses a lot of the concerns that uh council has uh received and that have been voiced by our community.

Um Assistant Fire Marshal Jared will move on with his presentation and then obviously we'll answer and address any questions at the end.

Good evening, everybody.

Thanks for uh being here with us.

Um, I'll uh briefly go through a lot of summary of kind of the proposed changes that we have to our wooy area.

Uh it begins with uh a quick definition of what a wooy is for those who are unfamiliar.

It's kind of a geographical area, it's not necessarily a place per se, but it's it's sort of a set of conditions that are all that come together that create a wooy, and common conditions include the amount type and distribution of vegetation, weather, topography, and then most importantly is the intermixing of all those factors.

So you can have a lot of those things independently of each other, but it's when you mix them, uh, is when it becomes uh the true definition of a wooy.

A little bit of historical context just to review kind of what Chief Loenthal went through.

But um, as we kind of talked about, we have an existing wooy that has been unchanged since 2009, uh, and that that was predicated upon the state mapping uh just the very high severe severity zone within the city, so we had to expand that realistically to look at what our wooy truly look like.

And then following that, more recently in 2022, CalFIR released the state responsibility areas which were outside the city limits, but gave us kind of a prelude of what they were gonna probably do in subsequent mapping when they map the local hazard or local responsibility areas.

Uh and then in 2025, they released those maps that are inside the city boundaries, and that's truly when we were able to get a clear picture at where the true changes were within the city limits.

Um, and as Paul mentioned, we did we did adopt those by law as required by law in uh March of 2025.

And here's kind of a couple graphics that help illustrate that.

The graphic on the left is the original very high fire hazard severity zone that was uh released by Cal Fire.

So that is what we used to um enforce state laws regarding uh defensible space and uh real estate transactions, but as you can see, it's kind of a limited area within the city limits.

So we we had to expand that.

And the map on the right-hand side, but the pink outlines, that is our existing wooy boundary.

Um, and so that's uh what we had to work with previously.

But as you can imagine, we've all experienced since 2009, there's been significant changes within the city, both to the natural environment and the built environment.

And the two key things I want to focus in on, so you have a keen understanding, and those that are here have a key understanding of what has changed substantially within the city is that uh due to recent fire activity, we've seen uh a very significant change in the vegetation and the landscape within Santa Rosa, and where we've talked about this before in other presentations, but where we once had oak grass woodlands in parts of fountain grove, Skyhawk.

We've now seen uh kind of a decimation of some of that landscape, and in the absence of those more native species, we've seen an abundance of uh invasive species thrive in these conditions along with uh abundance of dead and down fuels.

So, arguably, some of those uh burn scars that we have more hazardous conditions than we had previously.

On the other side of the scale, due to loss of our housing stock due to uh fires in the past, we've actually seen a significant number of homes in more of the fountain grove neighborhood and to a lesser degree Skyhawk and Oakmont uh be rebuilt, and as a result of that, those homes were built to more stringent building construction standards that um have wooy specific requirements to make them more hardened, more resilient from fire.

So that's a benefit, but as you can see, there's been a lot of change in our wooy, or excuse me, in our built environment, natural environments.

Uh, and then here's again to reflect the the original very high fireity zone map that the state issued, and then on the right hand side is the more recent updated LRA map that the state Calfire released in 2025, and the grayed out areas kind of in the outskirts outside of city limits is what we were referring to earlier as the state responsibility area.

So a good example is kind of the southern portion where Taylor Mountain is, you can see a significant amount of orange that we then oops, excuse me, and then hits the the southern portion of the city limits.

We can kind of foresee that that boundary was going to extend into the city limits, and which in fact this map depicts it it surely did, and then along with some other areas over in Oakmont.

Um, but these are the new maps that we we adopted uh by law.

So given those new maps, then we were we were uh tasked with the with the with the job of reflecting those maps and then changing our existing wooy.

And so there was two main things we saw that we were gonna expand the map uh the wooy map in in certain areas, and then we were also going to take this opportunity uh to contract it in a couple areas.

Um, and using those, we were able to really very precisely redraw our WUI boundary down to literally parcel parcel by parcel to more accurately reflect the the very specific boundary of the high and very high severity zones.

Um and then the contraction of the wooy or the reducing of the wooy was was predominantly identified in Bennett Valley and Skyhawk neighborhoods, and that was because either the severe the hazard severity zone was reduced in those areas or it was completely absent.

So some neighborhoods were actually removed from uh hazard severity zone altogether, and so we felt comfortable and confident that removing uh some folks from the wooy was was justified.

Uh quick note on a couple notable areas of expansion that we've kind of been discussing this evening, which is this orange kind of horseshoe depicted uh section of Santa Rosa, south of the fairgrounds, highway 12, farmers lane intersection, um, down towards Yolanda Avenue, and that's all new to our Wooey.

That's we're proposing adding them, and it's just the orange section, the yellow, thin thinner section is just the moderate, and that hasn't historically been areas that we include in the WUI.

So that's one notable area that was uh included in our new proposal.

Uh another area, two smaller areas are in this is the Oakmont neighborhood, the kind of depiction in the red ovals, south uh east corner of Oakmont, and then the kind of northern section adjacent to highway 12 and Oakmont Drive was added to some high and then smaller extent, some very high severity zone.

A key thing we want to discuss is the criteria that we use or the rules that we kind of use to dictate which parcel, as we I mentioned, we went literally parcel by parcel on this to make sure we were as accurate as possible.

And so I felt it was important to talk about the criteria that we used when we inevitably had parcels that were split, either partially in one zone and partially in another, or partially in a zone and partially in not a zone at all.

And so we felt it was important to articulate that.

And so for predominantly for single family dwellings, if any portion of that parcel fell within the high or very high fire hazard severity zone, we included them into our wooy.

And so the reason being is that the the Calfire maps, as you can and you can maybe see in a subsequent slide, the boundaries are very pixelated.

They're kind of drawn in squares, not in real flowing, and they're not with any regard to property property lines or any other man-made boundaries.

And so there was inevitably a lot of instances where properties were split, and so we had to create these criteria.

So for single family dwellings, and this was more common in Oakmont, that had common open space.

So where a person might own a single family dwelling, but then the open space or the surrounding landscape is managed by an HOA.

Then we use the similar criteria where if any portion of that common open space was within a higher very high, we included the entire HOA, and that's for consistency purposes.

And I'll a slide will illustrate that in a second.

And then kind of the last land use that we wanted to discuss was the multifamily dwellings, similarly to to the previous slide or previous bullet point.

With any common open space, again, if they any any part of the open space or common open space fell within the high or very high, we included the entire multifamily multi-family complex.

And here's a real-world example that we were uh confronted with.

So this is a small little HOA sub-HOA out in Oakmont off Singing Brook.

As you can see by that blue highlighted, those are the single-family dwellings themselves, but all that common area in between them is managed by an HOA.

And as you can also see, that orange pixelated line kind of splits more or less the southern portion of this HOA.

And so, as you can imagine, for consistency's sake for the HOA and for the residents, it wouldn't make any sense from our perspective to draw that boundary as it's drawn because it would create inconsistencies for maintenance.

And so we felt it for this application, it would make most sense to include the entire HOA so that all the residents within that little sub-HOA applied to the had the same rules to apply to.

So just a real world example.

And then conversely, we had a couple areas of contraction where we actually remove folks from the woo.

So I wanted to highlight those.

Here's section uh east of Summerfield Road, and as you can see, kind of highlighted in the red oval, those areas that we're proposing to remove is is completely out of a fire hazard severity zone.

So that's really important to note.

So we felt again confident and comfortable removing those folks.

Uh and then another section that we removed is kind of the lower portion of Skyhawk neighborhood.

Again, removed completely from the fire hazard maps that Calfire issued, so we again felt comfortable, even though that upper portion has sustained fire history, we saw we felt very uh confident that those areas could be removed as well.

Again, talking about impacts, this little diagram sort of summarizes from the state what uh state regulations are applicable to the different severity zones.

So the yellow on the bottom or orange is the high severity zone, and then the red is the very high.

And so common implications or common rules that apply to these zones would be uh compliance with building stricter building standards, and that's predominantly uh as a result of like new construction or significant remodels.

Um, and then the other smaller or less frequent item that is is common for these uh severity zones is the disclosure during real estate transactions called an AB 38 inspection.

That's just a quite uh quite simply a simple defensible space inspection that the the property the seller of a property is required to disclose to prospective buyers.

Uh again, there's local ordinances that we've kind of highlighted on the weed abatement ordinance and then compliance with our vegetation management ordinance and cheap loan fall kind of articulated within that vegetation management ordinance.

There's several items, but a majority of which do not apply or wouldn't really apply to a majority of the single family residences in the impacted areas.

Um, those a significant portion of that veg management ordinance was designed and specifically uh in mind for some of our burn scar areas, which um which aren't a lot of these new wooy areas.

Uh and then also to summarize there in total, there's 3893 properties that were impacted by this proposed change.

3,8 uh 82 were new to the WUI, and then uh 811 are proposed to be removed, just to kind of put a fine point on it.

Uh, and then in terms of community outreach and feedback, um, Santa Rosa Fire Department hosted two community meetings uh that were proposed to go over this information and then answer questions.

And we had one in person at the Finlay Center and the other via Zoom, and those were in March, late March, early April of this year.

Uh, and between the two meetings, we had I think we estimated approximately 40 community members attend them.

We also mailed and printed 3,893 targeted postcards.

We work with our GIS team to actually figure out exactly which parcels are being impacted by this proposed change.

So we were able to specifically target mailers to those residents.

So we impact uh sent out postcards to those uh residents to inform them of this issue as well as the informational meetings that were held.

Uh and for the most part, after we had discussions and answered questions and had a lot of back and forth with residents, uh for the most part the feedback was fairly supportive and understanding with us, you know, some residents opposing the proposed changes, but uh overall very supportive.

Uh and conclusion, uh, we obviously are recommending that the council approve this first reading of the proposed changes to our WooE.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much for that detailed presentation and the framework provided by you, Mr.

Lowenthal, about uh some of the uh conversations and and feedback we've been receiving.

So we'll bring it back to the dais here.

Are there any questions?

Councilmember McDonald.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I have a few questions for you, and primarily it's because my district is district three where the majority of those 3,000 homes are going to be affected.

So I understand that when we adopted the Calfire maps, that was mandatory, and we had real no say over the adoption of it.

Can you tell me who has the authority over our maps and adopting the maps as presented today?

So uh thank you for the question.

That is correct.

The initial maps that were released by Calfire that affected the city of Santa Rosa uh were adopted as required by law and had to go into effect within 120 days.

Uh the decision to uh align our local wildland urban interface fire area map boundaries uh to align with the new state mapped areas uh falls with uh our city council.

Um I would note that our reason for bringing this forward to you now is really just to provide consistency across our community uh in our effort to mitigate the risks of wildfire.

Uh we have our CWPP, which obviously many of you know is being renewed right now.

Um we hope to get a lot of community feedback through that process as well.

Um, but a lot of the actions and objectives out of the CWPP are intended to mitigate the risks within our wildland urban interface.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, um you're saying that when we adopt these maps, it's is to actually help the community where the maps are being drawn now be more safe.

That is correct.

And that would be the purpose of us adopting what you're presenting today is to ensure that there's more wildfire mitigation and less risk in the community, and that's why we update them to reflect some of what CAL FIRE is, but actually what we've seen and what our history has been within our own city.

That is correct.

Okay.

So of course, insurance has gone up.

We have no say over that.

My understanding you said is that there's a piece of law from the insurance commissioner that says that they can't base rates on these new maps.

But does it say in that law?

Maybe you can just help me because I haven't read it, that there's only a percentage that the insurance can go up a year, sort of like how we have a rent control in the city.

Would there be something in that or any temperature from the City of Santa Rosa fire department to work on capping that?

Because I know in my district, there's been an a vast increase to insurances and many homes have been dropped because of the new maps.

So thank you for the question.

I do want to clarify that the uh statement that we are connecting to through our frequently asked questions is a statement from the insurance commissioner.

Uh his the statement is is not related to uh law per se, it's it's a statement on behalf of the insurance commissioner.

Uh, in regards to our efforts to work on insurance commu uh issues within our community.

Um we as a department uh are very actively involved in a working group uh that is hosted by United Policyholders that works on addressing those specific issues.

Uh, myself, uh, as well as a fire marshal from uh Marin County are the two fire officials uh that are actively working with that working group that really uh addresses these concerns across the entire state.

And I know we've talked to our lobbyists to talk have them address the concern that's happening in Santa Rosa for at legislative platform to make sure that it stays on the radar of the state insurance commissioner and and our assembly member and senator, but I think that it's important for us to be aware of that when we're adopting maps that are a local ordinance that it could have an impact on our community members' ability to even have insurance, and I think that that's what the fear is right now, specifically in my district.

Um, does CAL FIRE have to demonstrate from a scientific base how they come up with their maps, or do they just say these are places we see have had a problem in the past, and now here you go, City of Santa Rosa?

Sure.

So Cal FIRE is does an extensive job about um providing a lot of the background, the scientific methods, the computer models, the data sets that they use, and uh as we mentioned, we have an FAQ on our website, and I have a direct link to where that information could be found on CalFIR's website because that question gets asked a lot.

So there's very detailed information on the computer models, the Ember CAS models that they use and all the different technologies that they use to develop these maps.

Um, and so I encourage everyone to go to that link because it's very informative.

Um lot of these tools, the reason the state is responsible for this task is because they have the resources and the capabilities to map an entire state as large as California, and so that's why local jurisdictions rely on some of the technologies that they implement on these maps because they have capabilities that a lot of local jurisdictions just don't have.

And then what do we base our data on?

Just from the CalFIR, or do we have our own technical data that we use for our own local maps?

So for our local maps, that uh is a little bit of what uh Sister Fire Marshal McDaniel was referring to, uh, we made a decision in the areas that were being added to rely on the high and very high risk boundaries, uh, and made a decision to not include the moderate into our newly added violent urban interface fire area, primarily because uh, in our opinion, the moderate uh is a lower risk area.

Um, but there's also no legal requirements to do anything in those areas except adopt the uh that map for the community.

Um, and the graphic uh that was shown in the presentation, the high and very high already have state regulations and laws that require action in those particular areas.

So it logically made sense for us to utilize that as the basis for um to establish the boundaries that were our local ordinance would also apply again for consistency.

I and I'm not gonna disagree with the mitigation um requirements that you're saying in any of the areas, and probably be a good thing for all of the city of Santa Rosa to have some of this like keeping the grass under four inches, those types of issues that you brought forward, removing dead M trees or things like Scott, is it Scotch Broom to that's such a weird name for an invasive plant, but there you go.

Um I think those are all fine things.

I think the thing that I'm consistently hearing is by us expanding the maps, um, what risk do we pose for community members when housing is such an issue?

But a lot of housing for 55 and older in Oakmont is even more of an issue.

So when I'm I'm looking at this, I want to be able to go back to constituents and say, this is why we adopted this, it's for your protection, it's for your safety, and we're we're governed by another entity that helps us make those decisions.

Would that be a fair thing to say to the community?

I want to clarify that the areas that have been mapped are already mapped.

They are existing and they are in effect primarily where we've been hearing a lot of the concerns and the and I'll generally refer to it as creekside area.

Those areas have been mapped and there are already laws in place for them that we had no say on that have been in effect since last year.

Okay, this uh procedure or this process is simply overlaying our wooy boundary on top of the state's boundary for the moderate, sorry, for the high and very high, and to apply our local ordinance to those areas.

Thank you.

That's very helpful, and I think it's helpful for not just me, but perhaps the community to know how those were made and why the mitigation levels are as necessary as they are.

I had questions as well.

Parts of Santa Rosa that had burned in the past were not included in these.

So to understand the data behind that I think is important because then some parts who've never burned were now included, and there's a lot of confusion over that.

So I appreciate you answering all my questions.

All right, Councilmember Alvarez.

Thank you, Mars Mayor.

And you'll have to excuse me as you pretty much answer the question with the line of question that uh my colleague just asked, but nonetheless, though, to the constituent to the resident who asks, why are you removing parcels that historically have burned and including those that have not burned prior?

What would you be what would your response be to that person?

So the areas that are being you're sorry, confirming you're asking about properties that have burned that are being removed?

Right.

And and I know that part of the answer is some of these are state designated already, but the question that I've received is why are we including areas that haven't historically burned uh and removing areas that we know have burned in the past.

So I think it's the it's the opposite.

We have areas that have not burned and there isn't the data to support leaving some of those areas in the wooy.

Again, remember some of these maps have been in effect since 2009, where some areas could have been an open undeveloped large piece of property and it's now been developed uh with newer construction, the risk is low.

So it was our opinion that if uh there isn't a need to keep a property in our locally established wooy and it's outside of the state's mapped area, then we could uh uh make the recommendation to remove them.

But I will tell you that I think you will logically see certain parts of our community, even though they may be removed from our local wooy, just like anybody else in our community.

They're still probably gonna take actions.

They're still gonna probably provide for defensible space.

They're still gonna probably upgrade their their gutters and do certain things.

We see that across the entire city.

We get requests for defensible space inspections out on Fold Road, because people just they've seen what can happen and they just want to take a higher level of um of precaution.

So there's nothing stopping people from still um uh complying with some of those rules, and there's nothing stopping our staff from continuing to engage with those community meeting members that are outside of our established WUI to make recommendations and do inspections.

I wish you would have concluded with uh smoke of the bear that only you can prove on a wildfire, right?

Okay, thank you, sir.

All right, I'll look one last time.

Any questions from any of my other colleagues?

All right.

Councilman McDonald has one more.

Sorry, it just triggered a thought.

Um, Councilmember Avarez, do we get any more support from FEMA or the state by adopting our maps?

So thank you for the question.

A majority of the quote support or what we would need to apply for grants really falls back on our community wildfire protection plan and our local hazard mitigation plan or commonly for it to as a multi-jurisdiction hazard mitigation plan.

I have not yet seen um uh from a grant application standpoint uh that affected uh but uh there's often times where when we're including a cover letter or some of the uh backup information that we do uh discuss the percentage of our community that's affected by the WUI, the number of parcels, so indirectly uh we use it as supporting.

Uh, but I can't say whether or not it uh actually is a scoring criteria.

That's helpful, thank you.

All right.

If that's all the questions, we will go ahead and open the public hearing.

Um this is the opportunity for you to have three minutes to uh say your piece on this item.

We have people signed up.

Uh this is a very um, this is a topic of large interest, so we will go through the list of people, and if you'd like to sign up, you can add your name to the list, or you can just wait until the end.

So the first person is Dwayne DeWitt, followed by Katherine, then Don, then Jennifer.

Pardon me, uh Mr.

DeWitt, can you hold for one moment for our clerk, please?

Mayor, can you please, or Vice Mayor, can you please confirm the time allotment for public comments on this item?

Um since we didn't uh discuss it earlier, we'll just we'll we'll go with three.

Please go ahead, Mr.

DeWitt.

Hello, my name is Duane DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

Thank you for the very thorough presentation today, and thank you for discussing the whole idea of community wildfire protection.

The reason I'm here is because there's a section of Roseland that's also vulnerable.

The city owns nineteen and a half acres.

We call it the Roseland neighborhood.

Right now, today, the underbrush is as high as my shoulder.

Basically, we want to make sure that you look at this area because it has a history of fires.

It also has people who live along the creek and start fires almost every night.

One of the dilemmas is the fires get out of control sometimes.

The wind is strong.

You can check with your fire department on how many calls for service they've had along Roseland Creek.

Everybody there builds wooden fences on their houses on the north side of the property the city owns and the east side of the property the city owns.

So essentially, please put us in to your wildland urban interface protection area.

We think this is very important.

Many of the property owners on McMinn Avenue and Hughes Avenue have contacted me and said, Hey, we see you out there volunteering, doing things, trying to make this better, and yet we still get fires in there, and it's a city responsibility.

They wouldn't mind being a part of the Wooey, if you will.

Thank you kindly for your time.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Um, next up is Catherine, followed by Don, then Jennifer.

And just a reminder you can use both podiums so you can switch back and forth.

Catherine Garing.

Going once, twice.

We'll move on to Don, followed by Jennifer, then Patrice.

Um good evening.

My name is Don Nauman.

I'm a resident of Creekside Neighborhood, and I'm an attorney.

I'm here tonight regarding the proposed high fire risk classification for this neighborhood.

Our petition and notice of legal opposition with over 100 signatures was served on the city on May 6th.

The proposed map that's being adopted is based on faulty satellite modeling, and as such is arbitrary and capricious.

This map lacks rational basis.

For example, Creekside north of Yalupa is labeled as high risk, while the south side with identical fuel and topography is not.

A fire does not stop at Yalupa, but this map does.

This is one of the many internal contradictions that prove the city has failed its duty under Government Code 51179 to conduct an actual ground investigation of local topography, fuel moisture, wind direction, and the seasonality of those winds, just to name a few.

Under Santa Rosa Municipal Code, Matanzas Creek, which is also now known as the Fire Wick, is under the absolute dominion and control of the city.

The city accepts millions in state and federal funds to maintain this natural habitat, which has now created a fire hazard.

The city's failures to abate this hazard is the catalyst for this high risk fire map.

The city is effectively profiting from keeping the creek wild, while the residents of this neighborhood suffer the economic loss of skyrocketing insurance, the fire risk stigma creating a diminished home value, as well as the costs of hardening the properties.

The city cannot privatize a risk of a public asset it receives money to maintain.

Until the city fulfills its statutory duty and its municipal duty to abate the hazard it created, this vote on the proposed map must be state for both procedural and substantive grounds.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up we have Jennifer, followed by Patrice and then John.

A reminder you can go to both sides so that we can rotate quickly.

Do I need to hit the button or am I on?

Oh, we're on.

Okay, good.

Okay.

Um hi, my name is Jennifer McNeil.

I'm also here on behalf of the residents of the Creekside neighborhood.

The City of Santa Rosa has received significant financial infusions for fire safety, including its portion of the $95 million PGE settlement and over $33 million in various state and federal mitigation grants, which are meant to handle community hazards.

However, this reclassification proposal ignores that intent, shifts the entire financial burden onto the individual residents of the Creekside neighborhood.

This results in the city retaining public funding while homeowners are forced to bear the cost of mandatory fire hardening, landscape removal, skyrocketing insurance premiums, and devalued properties.

Our petition, which I served on city council on May 6th, was signed by over a hundred residents in our neighborhood, a large majority of who are retirees on fixed incomes.

The other large demographic in our neighborhood are working families with small children due to multiple schools in our area.

These neighbors cannot absorb massive insurance premium hikes.

They cannot afford the thousands of dollars to retrofit homes and remove landscaping as required by high fire building codes.

This reclassification causes home values to drop because of the stigma of being in a high fire area, just as these residents need their equity most, all while their monthly costs are forced upward by a map that they had no voice in creating.

You are pricing people out of their homes.

The hazard of the city sites is justification for this reclassification.

Matanzas Creek is the very hazard the city has failed to abate.

Proximity to Fed Matanzas Creek is used as a weapon against our neighborhood, yet the city refuses to perform the necessary maintenance and fuel reduction in Matanzas Creek, which is its responsibility.

It is unjust to penalize homeowners for a hazard that has occurred due to city neglect.

How do you tell homeowners that we have to fire harden our properties, but the city doesn't have to do theirs?

We demand the council state a vote on the proposed map for the Creekside area.

We also demand that the council use the PGE's settlement and federal and state grants to harden the public areas before you demand that our neighborhood harden our private homes at the cost of our financial security.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up is Patrice, followed by John and then May Lee.

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council Members.

My name is Patrice Doyle.

I'm an attorney and resident of the Creekside neighborhood.

Our notice of legal opposition was served on the city of Santa Rosa on May 6th.

It documents a fundamental failure of municipal duty and a massive financial risk to the city's general fund.

For years, the city has allowed hazardous fuel loads to accumulate on city-owned parcels and within the Matanzas Creek corridor.

This maintenance is the responsibility of the city.

Further, the city received millions in state and federal grants, including its share of the $95 million PG<unk>E settlement, but yet it has done nothing.

You're now attempting to reclassify our creekside neighborhood as high fire risk.

This demands that homeowners, including fixed income seniors, pay for the fire hardening and landscaping to mitigate a risk that originates on city land.

Further, you are creating a very real threat to our ability to maintain and pay for homeowners' insurance, all because the city is shirking its responsibility.

As a matter of law, this constitutes an inverse condemnation claim.

By using our private properties as a buffer for your unmaintained land, you are damaging our property interests for public use without just compensation.

If we prevail, the city will be required statutorily to pay our attorneys' fees, expert witness costs, appraisal and engineering fees, and any other fees and costs incurred and granted by the court.

By ignoring our May 6th notice of opposition, you are knowingly creating a multi-million dollar liability.

You have the funds to abate the hazard today.

We ask that you stay this vote for the creekside neighborhood, fulfill your maintenance duties first, and protect protect taxpayers from the litigation trap you are setting for the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

John, followed by May Lee, then Lauren.

Hello, I'm John Papison.

I've been a resident for Santa Rosa for over 50 years and uh live in the Creekside neighborhood.

And we're not arguing that there's a fire risk, we're not arguing there's a risk, it's just the classification of the risk, and and we're partners in risk management on this.

Um the distance between the Anadel Heights high risk classification and the Creekside neighborhood is about a mile to mile and a half distance, and that seems to ignore fire science with embers traveling over a mile distance to reach our neighborhood.

Um, and so the city's failing to provide any scientific basis for that leapfrogging of embers according to the map.

And then also the Matanzas Creek as a wick that Jennifer pointed out.

Um, you know, that reclassification.

If you look at the map, Matanzas Creek goes from high risk in our neighborhood to uh to safe risk as it crosses Yalupa and over it into Annadell.

And so it seems like it magically changes from high risk to low risk uh for that creek.

So also so I just want to re-emphasize that to encourage the city council to stay this vote for reclassification, and to also provide legally binding timeline to restore the creek.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh May Lee, followed by Lauren, then Gail.

Hello.

Uh, dear city council, I'm Maylee Purvis.

I'm a retired engineer, a school parent volunteer, busy being an Uber mom driving to multiple schools and sports practices, uh, along with my teacher husband, science teacher husband.

I read the Press Democrat article a couple days ago about the proposed movie boundaries.

And after receiving help to figure out how to navigate these maps, um, I I don't understand why some homes in my neighborhood are being upgraded from no risk to high risk.

I understand a little bit more based off of the presentation.

Thank you.

Um, but uh it logically, um I guess it doesn't make sense to me.

We're not adjacent to woodlands, and the neighborhood immediately behind us is moderate risk.

Five houses down from my house are also moderate risk.

Bennett Valley has never once been a part of a fire corridor since 1944.

So I implore due diligence to realistically assess the local risks if we are going to impact so many newly added people in Bennett Valley.

When we purchased our Bennett Valley home across from the Safeway, our current insurance said we need a fair plan.

They quoted us a price that was double to triple the cost of our home insurance we pay now.

We called several more insurance companies who flat out refused us.

Finally, we signed on with a military member homeowner insurance policy.

As of March 2024, this same insurance, they no longer take on new properties with a wildfire risk of one, the lowest risk.

If we had not been able to secure insurance, we probably would have walked away as buyers.

The change in risk levels does have the potential to impact home sales and home values across Bennett Valley, and we did experience that.

Things are already in turmoil with respect, and I'm afraid that with this, things will get much more worse after we implement these changes.

So I encourage a ground level local assessment, approaching this cautiously and thoughtfully.

And I just wanted to add in general, it makes sense to make our homes more wildfire defensible.

We've implemented changes in our home, and we have been through two evacuations in the large field looking up area.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you very much.

Lauren, followed by Gail, then Chris.

Hello, I'm Dr.

Lauren Raymond.

I'm a professional scientist and educator.

I'm here to try to raise awareness about some of the problems with Cal FIRES maps for the Woo.

As you have heard, our concerns represent a variety of things, including insurance, property values, and defensible space.

But I'm here to talk about poor science.

First, if I can interrupt you real quick, and you get uncomfortably close to the microphone, we're having trouble hearing you.

Oh, sorry.

Is this better?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um I'm here to talk about poor science.

Note that every major wildfire, starting with an 18 unnamed 1870 fire, for example, a 1965 Hanley Fire, the tubs and nuns, all of those were driven by winds out of the northeast to the southwest.

Those are all the ones that affected Santa Rosa in or around nearby.

No major wildfires are listed in the fire history to have formed on Taylor Mountain and spread north as a result of north directed winds.

Zero fires between 1898 and 2025.

Now I want to comment that winds associated with fog in the summertime are not the winds that Calfire is concerned with.

They talk about the five percent worst case scenario winds.

So those winds are irrelevant.

Calfire's assessment of the benefiting high hazard zone is based on south to north winds blowing from a fire on Taylor Mountain.

Second, the so-called scientific method employed by Calfire is highly flawed and produced incorrect results for Santa Rosa.

CalFIRE describes your method as one with a series of successive steps involving using data on fire history only between 1991 and 2020, and using other data, several estimates, averages, statistical probabilities, and multiple computer models interspersed with estimates and model output to yield zones.

Clearly, the zones are based on a stacked set of inputs and outputs.

This is really a house of cards in which one piece of faulty information leads to the collapse, and in this case, a failed prediction and an incorrect fire zone.

An old but pertinent phrase about computer modeling is garbage in, garbage out.

Two things go in: model decision or design and data.

And both design and data can be flawed.

Calfire needs to reassess the proposed fire hazard zones based on ground measurements of data, especially on fire season winds, and major wildfire history over the past 70 years in Santa Rosa.

Please ask them to do that as a counsel.

Thank you for your hearing me.

Thank you.

Gail, followed by Chris.

Hi, I'm Gail Seymour.

I'm a 30-year property owner on Cypress Way in Santa Rosa.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Considering the many Santa Rosa residents who were unaware of the WUI WooE proposed updates, I respectfully ask that you postpone your vote tonight and give us adequate time to investigate and to understand.

I hope that you'll pay really close attention to the recent letter you received from Dr.

Lauren Raymond, who just spoke.

His expert meteorological analysis addresses specific concerns and questions.

So the computer model uh modeled wooy analysis from Cal Fire appears arbitrary and is inconsistent.

I think we've heard the criteria that were used by Calfire, but how were the criteria weighted?

For instance, historic fire in an area like Coffee Park or Fountain Grove.

How was that weighted when they the model spit out its information or its data?

Cal FIRE obviously did not confirm the data analysis through direct observation or ground truthing, and I think the city could could do that and then give that information back to Calfire.

I know sister agencies don't like to challenge each other, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the city asking questions of the modeling that Calfire conducted.

And additionally, I want you to please consider your process of notifying the public.

This was important information that we all needed to see back in early March.

Your staff said when I called that the notices were sent and that they must have been mistaken for junk mail.

I pay very good attention to all of my mail.

I subscribe to the US Postal Service photographs that come in every morning.

It's called informed mail to see what I'm going to receive.

I did not receive your notice.

Um I've talked to over 50 people, and of those 50 people in the Cyprus Creekside area, only two people recall seeing a notice.

So if your staff thinks the notices were overlooked because they look like junk mail, then please consider in the future that you send out mail that looks more official and will be appropriate and will not be overlooked by recipients because I think it's really important that we had this information a lot earlier.

And thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Chris Smith, and of course, I want to thank you very much for serving on the city council for all you do.

I know it is not an easy job.

I was hoping to speak for to you for less than two minutes about lines on a la on a map.

Uh, we all know that in modern times and all around the world, it can make a huge difference to your life, perhaps a devastating difference to your life, just exactly where you stand, where you walk, or where you live in relationship to a line on a map.

Think of national borders and congressional districts and such.

Uh when I moved when I was fortunate to move on to Creekside Road in this beautiful city 35 years ago, my my home was on a there was a line behind my home that said I was in a floodplain.

And uh I thought, well, I'm a little surprised.

Go up my my backyard, like many of them, and you go down about 30 feet to Matanzas Creek.

I couldn't imagine, hardly imagine how a flood could come up.

But any rate, somebody challenged the justification for that line on that map, and now I don't live in a floodplain, and I'm no longer playing uh paying flood insurance, but I did for a while live on on that with that line on my map.

Now we are uh in my neighborhood uh facing the possible drawing of another very consequential and uh potentially very impactful line on a map, and you've heard I'm sure a lot of you've heard and read a lot of compelling justification for you to take uh make sure that there that this line the drawing of this land this line is reviewed deeply and we just want to make sure before you draw this line that we are sure that it is entirely logical, thoroughly researched, entirely legal, and ultimately ultimately justifiable.

Um you can be sure I think you've sensed that this particular line on this particular map is very important to us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Is there anybody else that would like to speak on this item?

Hello, uh, my name is Fred Olabach, and uh I didn't research this item as much as I would like to.

So I think that if it's possible, if the council does delay the vote, that would allow me to sharpen my arguments in support of the map because I don't feel like I'm entirely prepared to make a statement.

Um, but but I do do kind of take exception to uh the fire marshal's presentation as being arbitrary and capricious, that the uh cow fire data is garbage, that I I think that a lot of times when you when you have a public policy conflict, that what you end up is alternate universes of facts colliding, and so it makes it seem like it's gotta be all this way or that way.

I think in general, when I look at uh I walk around Santa Rosa a lot, and um I live in a uh flat area that you know I'm I'm up against Amber Cast myself, and uh so I see that and I also see the median household income maps in Santa Rosa.

And so as soon as the as the topography goes up like one foot, the median household income and the median home value goes up a lot, and it's frequently those areas that come to housing project um housing project hearings where there's a proposed high density infill, the city has a plan for, and those folks say, well, we don't want that because that's gonna impede our evacuation, but then yet here you have a situation where you have people who maybe have to mitigate the hazards of where they live, so it seems like they kind of the the cohort in general maybe wants to have it both ways, and that doesn't seem really fair to me, but I'm not entirely prepared to address the creekside area because I don't exactly know what what the topography is there, but um I think that uh this this is a reckoning on where people live and what they need to do, and so if if if we're gonna if the city's gonna be asked to not do dense infill and then to not draw lines on maps where people live in in foothills and elevated areas where where they have to bear the responsibility of where they live, then that's an impossible situation for the city.

So the city has to balance the affirmatively furthering fair housing law and the actual fire hazard, and you know, come to some kind of uh you know public policy policy balance, and so you know, home home values are an issue, and and um in these areas they're much higher.

So, and then also the idea that the creek is a is a uh that ecosystem services are decreasing people's property values.

I see sort of uh kind of reaching for you know almost any argument here, so that's just for now and look forward to the rest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item?

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing.

Um before we come back to the dais uh division chief.

I saw you vigorously jotting some notes.

Do you have some responses you'd like to give to some of the concerns you heard?

Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, so I do appreciate the comments.

Um I did hear some reoccurring themes, and in no particular order, I'll try and address uh as many of them as I can uh prior to hearing additional questions from council.

Um I heard a lot of comments uh about uh the mapping of the risk areas, and I just want to reiterate the fact that that uh has taken place.

Uh that was done as required by law.

The city of Santa Rosa had to adopt those just like every other city that has local responsibility areas across the entire state of California, and that took place uh a little over a year uh ago.

Um I did hear a number of comments uh about uh the Matanzas Creek.

Um I can't speak specifically to what maintenance is or is not required on the creek.

However, I'm happy to have a conversation with uh uh other departments with our city.

I will tell you though that I do get uh a lot of feedback regarding creeks in general uh in different parts of our community, uh, including uh council member McDonald's district.

I think one thing that's very important to note is that creeks uh similar to portions of creeks that I've seen in the Matanzas Creek area do act as green belts.

Uh when we've had communities that want fuel management, fuel reduction to take place in creeks, it has the potential to uh promote additional sunlight and the drying of the creek.

We can use Mountain Hawk as an example of a lush green creek that is quote overgrown, and a part of Mountain Hawk where the creek was uh cut and open and the side of Mountain Hawk Drive on the north side completely burned and actually acted as a chimney to burn the home at the bottom of Mountain Hawk.

Uh that fire with the intensity that it had literally could not burn across Mountain Hawk Drive at the bottom of we'll call it a chimney or a chute because it transitioned from a maintained cut creek bed to a lush green, heavily vegetated creek bed where the humidities are higher, there's more moisture in there, and it actually stopped the fire in its tracks uh at the bottom of Mountain Hawk.

Um we got a lot of feedback from similar concerns in the Oakmont area and have actually worked to uh not do that type of fuel or convince them not to do that fuel reduction to again act as a greenbelt and stop the spread of fires in certain parts of our community.

I heard a lot of comments about uh us adopting uh risk areas and insurance, and I believe we addressed that earlier.

That again we are not adopting the risk maps, those have previously been adopted last year, and we have the comments uh from the insurance commissioner.

There's a number of comments about uh being included in tonight's map affecting uh home hardening.

Uh that is not the case.

Uh our ordinance uh as well as the state standards apply to new construction uh or homes that have significant remodels requiring uh those uh building codes uh be in uh put into effect.

Uh there is again comments about uh the lack of quote unquote risk mapping between uh Benavalle Heights, Anadel Heights, um, and the creekside area.

And again, uh when Calfire mapped those areas, those are two very different mapped areas and two different risks associated with them.

Uh it is not based on Embercasts skipping over uh Yalupa.

It's a risk from the Mount Taylor Hall and Heights area, and then a risk from Anadel State Park.

Again, two different risks.

Um there's a lot of comments uh again that uh about the Calfire map, and again, this is uh not a public hearing related to Calfire's maps.

Uh this is a public hearing that is specific to adopting essentially an overlay of our local wooy on top of the previously adopted Calfire maps.

Uh there is also the potential that this adoption would create impacts uh as we outlined really uh the only quote unquote impacts it would have is the inclusion of the defensible space inspections, uh which we actually get a lot of requests for across the community, and then the mulch.

The uh vast majority of the ordinance that would apply to the wildland interface would not affect this area.

Um and then uh there was comments about uh areas that haven't historically burned not being considered a threat.

That's exactly the opposite, and I think that's where a lot of the state's recommendations are coming from.

The concern is areas that have not had fire history, and that it's only a matter of time that some of those areas could be impacted by fire, and the state has seen enough devastating fires in areas that had never had fire history, and what measures can be taken and should be taken to reduce that.

There was also lastly the comment about not being at risk of a west wind event.

That is absolutely not uh the case.

We have had multiple fires in our community.

We had a 50-acre fire on the west side of Santa Rosa a couple years ago.

Um I'd have to go check the wind direction.

I'm pretty sure it was out of the west, but we just burned a little over two and a half acres in Fountain Grove with an afternoon wind uh uh just below Key Site.

Um but this county, although we uh have fires, our community doesn't hear about a lot of our west wind afternoon wind fires because we have a department that has a great response and an excellent staffing uh that's able to mitigate a lot of those fires and keep them small to where we're not getting Nixels, we're not getting uh wireless emergency alerts, we're not evacuating people, but we have the west wind events, we have the afternoon grass fires and they're put out quickly, and we want to keep it that way.

Um hopefully, oh sorry, I promised last thing was the comments about the mailers.

Uh we did verify uh with our order that we did have uh the mailers that went out.

I also want to note that not only did we rely on the mayoralers, but we also relied on our city connections.

We relied on our social media.

Um City Connections has 180,000 subscribers last time I checked.

Um I would hope that a number of our community members that uh are in this area are subscribed to that, that we do use multiple channels to get uh topics like this out to our community.

That should do it.

All right, thank you.

Um, final thoughts, further questions.

Ms.

Manuelos.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh thank you so much for the um presentation and for addressing all the things that are I think everything that came up in the public comment.

I just uh sort of wanted to um clarify back kind of a couple things that that I think I heard you say, and I just want to make sure I understand.

So our what we're trying to do tonight is um make sure that our wooy boundaries overlay this the state previously adopted, I think that's what you just said, um, boundaries.

That is correct for the high and very high areas outside of our existing WUI.

Okay, okay.

And then on the insurance uh concern, which we we got a lot of um correspondence around that.

Um and again, I just want to clarify for my own understanding.

Um, the insurance commissioner stated or wrote a letter that stated that that uh insurance rates cannot be based on whether or not you're in the woohee, basically.

The insurance commissioner released a statement that explained that the cow fire hazard severity zone maps cannot be used for.

Make sure I get my quote correct.

Insurance rates are underwriting decisions, and we've le linked that statement to our website at srcity.org/slash wooey maps as a FAQ.

Okay.

Okay, and then there was that.

I don't have the um presentation up right now, but I was looking at this the staff report again.

Um for real estate purposes, because uh a lot of folks have mentioned um property values, which is a concern.

Um they do have to disclose if they were to sell their home, uh, whether or not they're in the wooy map.

Yeah, regardless of what we do tonight with our local wild and urban interface fire area, state law has already dictated that the mapped areas that are in the high and very eye already have to comply with the disclosure requirements that has been affect in those specific areas since March of 2025.

And just my final clarification is on uh adopting this.

I basically and if I'm using the wrong language, you know, feel free to correct me.

Uh, adopting the state boundary boundaries is mandated by law.

Correct?

Yes.

So the adoption of the moderate high and very high zones within the city of Santa Rosa was required by law and had to be done within 120 days, could not be less restrictive than what was essentially passed on to us, but could have been more restrictive.

We did not do anything more restrictive than what the state provided to us last year.

And if we were to not do that, what would be the ramifications of that if we were not to do adopt this?

That's a great question.

Um from what I understand, they would essentially force it upon us.

Or if we were to go back and say, Well, we have some problems, you know, to question it.

Yeah, there uh there was a number of communities uh that had questions and concerns regarding uh the way that the maps were uh identified.

Um we specifically on behalf of the city of Santa Rosa uh actually uh attended a lot of the public hearings as well as the feedback uh that we provided on behalf of the city well before they released our maps.

We were actually providing feedback on the state's maps and their process.

Um so we uh used the different avenues to um uh provide feedback initially, um, and then it became very clear that uh these maps were were moving forward.

I sit on obviously a number of different working groups, and there was a number of frustrations and concerns that were shared by fire officials across the state.

Um, but uh they they were they were moved forward under under state law.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Ms.

Fleming.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Brenwill has asked the majority of my questions.

I had one remaining question, which is um what authority does the insurance commissioner have to hold these insurance companies to his preferences about their implementation of his his opinions?

Is it binding in any way?

So um I I can get back to you on that question, but I'm seeing the vice mayor shaking his head.

I mean, I I'm the daughter of an insurance man, and uh I think I know the the answer to the question, but I just figured since you're the expert here, I would give you an opportunity to uh let us know.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Final thoughts?

Councilmember McDonald.

Thank you.

Um, I just have one question.

Would there be any risk for the city if we decided to not adopt the maps that you present to us tonight?

I don't know if uh risk is the right word.

Um we have positions uh that are funded through our department uh through settlement funds uh to conduct defensible space inspections as well as our PG, sorry, our measure H funds.

So there's obviously money that has been uh injected through sales tax as well as PG settlement money money to do inspections on our community to keep the fire risk uh as minimized as much as as possible.

I know I repeated a number of times.

I've worked with a lot of the council members here over the years, and we've heard the message loud and clear that the city cannot afford to go through another major wildfire.

We have a lot of risk that's been identified in our community.

Um we want to continue to do the defensible space uh inspections as well as uh have the adherence to the ordinance uniformly um across our community were applicable.

So the only risk uh per se would be delaying us the ability to take some of those proactive uh measures in those uh mapped areas, especially uh as we head into uh this next quote unquote fire season.

I appreciate you answering all my questions and and that helps me as well to know because I know that was a tax measure that passed um and we were you know very pro-public safety, and it's because of all the fear of wildfire.

So it's I'm glad to see that we're looking at the maps in a way that helps prevent these large wildfires from occurring again in the city.

I appreciate all the work that went into this as well as everything that our fire department does to keep Santa Rosa and um the outer lying area safe.

So thank you again.

All right.

I have a comment.

Go ahead.

Yeah, if everyone's done with their questions.

I I just wanted to say um a big thank you to the community come out who came out today.

Um it's never fun to realize that you're part of uh a risk area, and I think we all learned the hard way um almost 10 years ago now that we live in a community that where there are places where we think we are safe where we're not, and and vice versa, and that this is a community that is prone to to wildfire, and that um these maps may feel unfair and capricious, and yet it seems like they're essential in terms of the state as the state relates to us and that that they're coming for us whether or not we like them, but that they they do give us some additional tools in our toolkit to to harden our community against wildfire.

Um I know that it's um a difficult thing um to be added to a wooy, and um I'm sorry for the the inconvenience that this will cause folks, but I I do believe that while frustrating that this is the the only viable path forward at this point in time, and I'll be supporting our staff recommendation.

Any other final comments?

Um, my time to shine.

All right, so the I'm not big on I'm not an expert in maps, I'm not an expert in fire movements, however, I have been a licensed insurance agent for 20 years.

So to answer some of your questions, Prop 103 defines how rates are uh determined.

Um it is something that that is the black and white of the law.

However, the insurance commissioner can issue what are called bulletins, which is what you're referring to, and then also in filings and disapproval letters, they can um essentially make legally binding statements which are enforceable.

An example of that is last week, um, state farm was hit with over 300 violations uh by the um uh not as not with maps, but in another matter um with 300 violations of uh California code and violations of the California Department of Insurance.

So that's that.

Um, but what I will say uh moving on from that is thank you so much for this presentation.

Thank you for again to the community for coming out.

Um it is not an easy thing to um to uh understand this, however, I hope you understand why we're doing it and um that it is not Santa Rosa doing this to you, it is Santa Rosa coming into compliance with something that the state has already done.

So um with that, I will look to uh councilmember Alvarez for a motion.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I would like to present an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa to amend chapter 18-46-2025 California Wildland Urban Interface Code adding section 18-46.202 definitions with local amendment and update the existing designated wildline urban interface area and wait for the reading of the text.

We have a motion from Councilmember Alvarez and a second by Councilmember Rogers, Madam City Clerk, when you're ready.

Thank you, Councilmember Rogers, Councilmember McDonald, aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Yes, Councilmember Ben Wells.

Yes, Councilmember Alvarez.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

Aye.

And Mayor Staff has recused.

Let the record show this passes a six affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

Um, we will pause for a couple of minutes while the mayor uh rejoins us uh as we move on to item 16.2, our second public hearing of the night, and then we're gonna get a little bit more than that.

All right, folks.

Thanks for your patience.

For those of you who are fans of public hearing, rest assured we have three more tonight.

So settle in.

We're gonna move on.

I I raise your hand if you're here for the Spring Lake item.

There we go.

All right.

Keep your hands up if you prefer to go home sooner rather than later.

Why don't we bump that one up?

Um, and we have been at it since about three o'clock.

Uh, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the spring lake item.

Then we're gonna take a short break for council and then come back and do the remaining public hearings.

But let's go on right now to item sixteen point three, our public hearing regarding the Spring Lake Village East Grove.

Um causing staff to have to pick this one up off the bounce.

Apologies.

I'm reading my notes, but you're not you're not Christine.

So good to good to see you.

Uh, kick us off whenever you're ready.

Sure.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, Council members.

The project before you Spring Lake Village.

Uh, the project is expansion of the existing Spring Lake Village Continuing Care Retirement Community located on Montgomery Drive.

And it's proposing to expand to the to a nearby project by adding thirty-two new living units in your living units.

The project would add the site, would add a community facility, uh, open spaces, on-site and off-site improvements.

The image below shows the existing Spring Lake Village campus in orange and the proposed expansion in red.

And the star here indicates shows the location of the project in the city, and this project requires approval of three entitlements that I'm gonna go over them in the next three slides.

So the project requires approval of a minor conditional use permit.

Per our zoning code, every community care facility with more than six beds requires approval of a use permit and has to be placed at least 300 feet from another facility.

The proposed community care facility meets this requirement and is almost function as an expansion of the existing campus and with shared management and operations.

The project also requires a hillside development permit because uh there are areas with slopes more than 10% on the project site that will require grading.

However, the project has been designed to minimize disturbance in the natural topography and grading, and it's also being designed to meet with our hillside development standards.

Also, the project requires a rezoning for the parcel at 225 Los Alamos Road from rural residential with Cynic Road Combining District to PD PD district to be consistent with the existing Spring Lake Village Campus policy statement.

As a result of that this rezoning, the current planned development for the existing campus also will be amended accordingly.

And here is an aerial view that shows the location of the project at the corner of Highway 12 and Los Alamos Road.

And here I will go over the history of this project.

So the project was submitted, originally submitted in 2014, and it proposed 24 units.

In 2016, the city issued a notice of preparation for the environmental impact report and held a scoping meeting to gather input from agencies, tribes, and community.

Same year, the applicant made changes to the project, expanded the project and added more units and brought it up to 32 units.

As a result of this, the city had to issue another notice of preparation.

Then in 2021, the draft environmental impact report was released for the public review, and it was presented to the planning commission.

Following the circulation of the draft EIR, the applicant elected to proceed with alternative to maximum avoidance alternative, which is identified as uh which is identified in the draft EIR as an environmentally superior alternative.

And same year and in 2024, the applicant submitted this revised plan.

The same year, the project was presented to the design review board as a concept item, and in 2025, following additional consultation with the tribe, the applicant made further modifications to this alternative and submitted revised plans.

The uh on March 11th of this year, the final environmental impact report was released for review, and on March 26, the project was presented to the planning commission, which unanimously recommended approval to the city council of all entitlements and certification of the final EIR.

So here is the modified version of Alternative 2 that was submitted in 2025, which is the project before you.

Cultural resource studies.

Tribal input led to changes to the project design and also additional site testing to mitigate impacts on cultural resources.

Last year in June 2025, the city sent the pre-closure letter to the federated Indian Grayton Rancheria and following by the final closure letter on April 20th of this year.

And as for CIQA, I will hand it over to our consultant to go over the CIQA process and summarize the key analysis of the environmental impact report.

Alright, good evening, Mayor Stapp, Council members.

I'm Brian Baccherini, an environmental planner with GHD here in Santa Rosa.

So tonight I'll just provide a brief about five-minute overview of the environmental impact report for this project.

Uh and an EIR is the highest level of environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

It evaluated an originally proposed project along with one design alternative.

During public review, the comments were received at a planning commission public hearing as well as through written letters from the public and reviewing agencies.

Next slide.

So the draft EIR identified impacts and mitigation measures for the topics listed here.

So for wildfire, mitigation is included to reduce the potential for fire during construction.

For noise, mitigation includes reducing construction noise and vibration, and then for ensuring the mechanical equipment and the emergency generator all meet the city's noise limits.

For bike safety, mitigation includes new signage along Los Alamos Road.

For biological resources, mitigation includes protections for special status species, nesting birds and bats.

Mitigation also includes compensating for fill of a small seasonal wetland on the site and a roadside drainage, and for protection and replacement of trees in accordance with the city's tree ordinance.

Mitigation is also included to prevent erosion, protect water quality, and to prevent potential impacts to paleontological resources if they were encountered.

Then, as Monet said, for cultural and tribal cultural resources, mitigation includes a treatment plan in coordination with Native American tribes, monitoring, avoidance measures, and other procedures to minimize disturbance.

So, in addition to the topics listed here, the EIR also includes requirements for implementing geotechnical design recommendations, compliance with the California Building Code, the California Fire Code, the Santa Rosa Fire Department standards, local ordinances, as well as air quality and greenhouse gas control measures during construction.

The originally proposed project resulted in three significant unavoidable impacts.

Alternative two did not result in significant unavoidable impacts.

So for that reason, it was identified as the environmentally superior alternative.

The next few slides will just highlight a few of the changes to the project and the environmental setting that are discussed in the final EIR, including the revised version of alternative two, off-site transit improvements, and then changes to the Los Alamos Road frontage near the project site.

So as Monet explained, uh after the draft EIR was released, the project was essentially paused.

The city and the applicant took a look at the project and the alternatives, and the focus shifted to alternative two.

So the city then conducted additional Native American tribal consultation and additional departmental reviews on the revised plans.

Another change was the addition of off-site improvements along highway 12.

These include moving the westbound bus stop, so shown here on the north side of highway 12 to before Los Alamos Road intersection, and then extending the sidewalk to the eastbound stop on the south side of the highway to improve ADA access.

Another change was to the environmental setting along Los Alamos Road.

So after the draft EIR was released, PGE completed utility work within the city right-of-way, including a new utility vault, driveway, utility lines shown in this picture.

So the final EIR discusses and reviewed these changes.

Includes copies of all the written comment letters, summary of the public and planning commission comments, and then responses to every comment received.

The final EIR includes eight master responses that address a lot of the common concerns, along with an evaluation of the project changes discussed earlier.

The city looked very closely at whether recirculation of the draft EIR was required, and it was not.

The proposed project is now a refinement of an alternative that was already evaluated in the draft EIR, and the changes did not create new or worse impacts.

So for the final slide and summary, the draft EIR evaluated the an original project and alternative two.

Alternative two was identified as the environmentally superior alternative.

The draft EIR was circulated for review and comments were received.

After that, the project was paused, allowed time to further evaluate and refine that alternative two.

So a modified version of alternative two is now proposed, and the final EIR documents the full secret record for the for the project.

Munet.

Thank you.

So with that, the planning commission and the planning and economic development department recommend that the council by three resolution and two ordinances.

One certify the final environmental impact report and adopt the CEQA findings of facts and mitigation monitoring and reporting program.

Introduce an ordinance to amend the takes off the Spring Lake Village Plan Development Policy Statement and introduce an ordinance to rezone the property located at 225 Los Alamos Road from rural residential scenic road to plan development scenic road and approve a minor conditional use permit for the community care facility and approve a hillside development permit.

That was our our report and presentation.

The applicant has a verbal presentation that if there are no questions for staff, we can listen to their presentation.

Perfect.

Money, Brian, and Jessica, thank you so much.

Before we do, before we we see if there are any questions, we need to do ex parte disclosures.

We go right down the line here.

I did have a conversation with applicant.

Thank you.

Mr.

Alvarez?

I attempted to have a conversation with the applicant, but our time schedule did not uh permit, so therefore I didn't speak with anyone.

Thank you, Miss Fleming.

I have nothing to disclose.

Mr.

or Vice Mayor?

I had a conversation with a representative of the applicant and visited the site and have nothing further to disclose.

Thank you.

For my part, I have nothing to disclose.

Miss McDonald's, nothing.

Miss Manuelos.

Um I had a conversation with the representative for the applicant.

Thank you very much.

Uh all right, with that out of the way.

Are there questions from council at this time?

Mr.

Alvarez.

Thank you.

You stated that that the tribal entities uh identified issues.

Did I get that part right at the at the origination of the project?

Correct.

What were those issues?

And how were they resolved?

All right.

So the draft EIR determined that the originally proposed project would result in significant unavoidable impacts to cultural resources and tribal resources.

Now there's a confidentiality that has to be established.

So I can't give a lot of detail, but even with mitigation, because construction activities at the site were determined to potentially impair the integrity of archaeological resources, the impact was determined to be significant, unavoidable.

So in response, an alternative two was developed through collaboration with the city, the project applicant, and the affiliated tribes to reduce these impacts and still meet the basic project objectives.

So the modifications to alternative two compared to the version that was originally proposed, substantially reduce the impacts to cultural resources and tribal cultural resources.

And I understand the confidentiality part of it.

So I'll just ask straightforward was anybody's great grandma found on the site, and do we suspect any other great grandmas being found on the site.

I think there's there's limited things that we can disclose about what was found in that.

So I don't know if our city attorney um wants to or assistant city attorney wants to speak more to that.

Hi yes thank you and I understand the question but um just to pick up on what my colleagues were saying uh under state law um we cannot release information that's related to location description or use of tribal cultural resources we can't disclose that during the environmental process during the document or disclose to the lead agency so um and I appreciate the effort to answer the question okay and ultimately the and the the tribal councils did sign off on the project is that correct we received um you want to talk about I mean we received back and forth we did close consultation pursuant to AB 52 we did however receive additional um feedback from the tribe saying that they would like to have additional conversations if you guys want to add anything else um at that point we reviewed everything that we had done and under the state law um we can close consultation once that we have we decided that we've acted in good faith after reasonable effort then a mutual agreement could not be reached so after we got that additional correspondence from the tribe we did a preclosure letter then we did a closure letter we got additional correspondence and then we sent them a final closure letter um under this provision of the resources code that says um we've acted in good faith we've gone I mean I think responded to virtually every request that we got and I'll defer to our environmental consultant to walk through that but that's uh our final letter was under that second prong of our ability to close after good faith so it's my understanding that we act in good faith continued good faith but those continued conversations do not continue would that be correct the last round of the last round additional conversations correct although I will note that the the last mitigation measures that they requested which had to do with testing in additional areas that had not been previously tested the city and the applicant team did agree to that so in the final round um of negotiations if you will or discussions we did go ahead and add that mitigation such that I believe the entire site um will be tested and I want to defer to this guy for how that works but we did add that mitigation measure which was quite significant at the end.

So as of right now the entire site has not been tested.

Can you explain the testing thank you?

I appreciate you so the uh there was a number of uh studies that were done uh councilman alvarez uh over over the course of the environmental review ground penetrating radar can and for forensic subsurface investigations uh surface surveys so different types of surveys and studies have been developed on different areas of the site and there was a request in the kind of the final collaboration and consultation efforts to add in some additional uh allowances for some additional surveys and testing if if if desired because the city will be entering into a treatment plan with the tribes and there will be a number of different measures that are in uh uh implemented during that construction monitoring uh different types of um testing as we mentioned here so there there's been additional allowances built into the final mitigation measures uh addressed and and those are documented within the final and correct did I hear you say if desired so that at this point it has not been desired to do complete testing on the entire site.

During the environmental uh impact report, what is that it was not it was there was not a request by the tribe to to do additional uh studies throughout the site, but at the end there there was a discussion of potentially uh having having the allowances to do that.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

And thank you for taking the energy to answer the question.

Thank you.

Yeah, and we do have yes please uh monet is looking up the actual mitigation measure if you'd like to have that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

She's getting that right now.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Other questions, Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you for the presentation.

I have a few questions.

Um what is the setback from highway 12?

What's the room from that to where the ADA sidewalk goes in?

Could you tell me that?

I think it's a hundred, or let me check.

Is it either 50 or 100?

Because it depends, is it the one story or two-story?

So let me look at the map.

I can't tell you.

And the reason I ask this is because we get um asked a lot, specifically in district three about um evacuation routes, and that'll lead me to my next question.

And there's been some conversations about putting potentially like a bike path along the front of some of these developments to help to serve not just as a bike path but as potentially an evacuation route if necessary.

It's nothing on the books, it's just discussions I've had over time with uh Supervisor Gorin, and uh so I I thought I'd ask to see what that distance is to see if there would be any potential of the ability to add a bike path along the front of this development.

That is 50 feet.

Okay, I think that's wide enough for a bike path.

Um thank you for that.

Uh and I can just uh add so the project actually would widen and restrict section of Los Alamos Road uh to provide a five-foot wide class two bike lane adjacent to the project site uh that's consistent with what's envisioned in the Santa Rosa bike and pedestrian master plan.

That's actually very helpful.

Thank you for adding that on.

I appreciate that.

Um just to ask a couple more on slide 16.

Um PGE had brought in the power lines.

Are those power lines going to be buried or are those going to be above uh ground power lines?

Those are already installed and they're below ground with great.

That's good to know.

I think I know PGE has been working or I haven't heard of much work to be honest, by the uh from them, but to make sure that those lines are buried makes it safer for fire issues.

Um, what if something else was found during construction um from a cultural aspect?

It's something that council member Alvarez said.

Do we have people out there ensuring that there, if somebody was found or if there were artifacts found, is construction stop and how's that mitigated?

Just because this is not something I've heard that in the past where we've had this concern.

Yes, so so mitigation.

There's there's four different mitigation measures related to cultural resources that are identified in the EIR, and we have a copy for you uh of the language here.

So the uh first measure is related to developing a cultural resources treatment plan, and as part of that, there's coordination with with the tribe to identify the different types of measures that would be taken during the construction process.

So there's protection and preservation, there's preconstruction data recovery, construction monitoring, all of that occurs so during construction process, there's there would be representatives of the tribe, there would be archaeologists on site, all collaborating together.

So in the event that something is identified, there's through this treatment plan that's developed, there's a whole procedure in place to how to respond to that.

Thank you.

Um on the new maps, has anyone done a crosswalk with the new fire maps that we just had the hearing on a moment before to see if this was designated in a high risk or very high risk area?

So Paul Lewenthal can answer that.

You thought you were done with my questions for the night.

I apologize you're getting your steps in.

Thank you for the question.

So the area was mapped as a moderate, so it has been recorded as required, but the area is not included in the high or very high fire zone.

So it is not being recommended as part of our new wildlander interface fire area.

Thank you for that.

You can stay there for a moment.

You may have to answer the next question.

For evacuations, because this is something that comes up over and over when we're building in the WooEy, specifically this district, what do they have to do to provide that?

Because this is 32 units and residents that I would say need some assistance for evacuation plans.

How's that going to be addressed?

Or what do we require during building for them to provide for us to make sure that those are safe?

Yeah, so uh we do have more restrictive requirements for unit counts for multiple for more than one point of access.

This would be under it with that number of individuals to address general evacuations for that area.

Um the fire department working closely with uh Mike Van Middy and his team have established what we refer to as the flush plan.

So we've we're looking at evacuations the East Santa Rosa much differently uh than we do other parts of our community uh for the existing home as well as for the existing population, as well as anticipated growth uh in East Santa Rosa for uh prevent for preventative type issues.

Um, I will note that Spring Lake Villages uh in that uh that campus, uh the existing campus, is probably the most active and prepared community uh serving senior population that we actually have in the city of Santa Rosa.

Uh we work on an annual evacuation plan with them where they actually evacuate uh their residents to our temporary evacuation point at a place to play.

In fact, we actually just got our annual request from them to assist with their permitting for a place to play, and working on a date to again exercise uh their evacuation plan.

So that's been one of things that we've been stressing is populations that need the assistance uh that are in the fountain grove and East Santa Rosa area take these proactive measures.

Uh they are a leading example for our community.

Excuse me, that's very helpful to hear.

And um, can you tell me the number of units that would trigger them to have a submitted evacuation plan?

I'm just curious about that now.

So that's two different things for the access points for evacuations or fire department access.

We have a local ordinance that requires two points of access for our access and for evacuation purposes for more than 50 units.

The overall CEQA that takes into account evacuations for developments is looked at us, looked at by us no matter what.

Just for the for general development requirements, that's not based on a unit count.

In your opinion, could you tell me if you feel that um with 32 units they should be required to have a submitted evacuation plan versus just working with us?

I'm not saying that they haven't done a phenomenal job.

I understand they do a great job, but um just asking in your opinion if if that's enough people that we should require that.

So I would have to defer to the applicant, but if the process or the thought was to take the expansion and incorporate it into their existing plans that they already have, then from the fire department standpoint that would be than more than enough for for us from a uh evacuation planning perspective.

Again, they have evacuation plans that exist for Spring Lake Village campus.

Um, the points of access, then it would require two versus the one.

No, this would only require the one point of access onto Los Alamos Road from a code perspective if it remained under 50 units.

That's right, but I'm saying, in your opinion, would is 50 units an appropriate number for safety for evacuation, or should the city consider lowering that number?

Because we're seeing that they need two points of access for safety.

I know what our current code says.

It says this.

I'm asking, in your opinion, specifically in the WUI, would it behoove us to actually look at that number and reduce how many units are required or pull that trigger to having to have two access points?

So the city's code right now is more restrictive than state law already and has a lower number for the second point of access.

That's very helpful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

Seeing none, we are going to open the public hearing.

Oh, mayor.

Order the presentation.

My apologies.

All right, we'll start with the presentation.

Uh whenever you're ready.

Council, thank you for considering this application.

I am Mary McMullen.

I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Front Porch, which is a nonprofit owner of Spring Lake Village.

I'm here with Ferdy Buat, who is the executive director of Spring Lake Village.

Just want to note that as a nonprofit organization, our mission is to inspire and build community, creating meaningful relationships and responding creatively to changing needs.

Here in Santa Rosa, we serve many folks at Spring Lake Village, at Friends House, at Jennings Court, which is an affordable housing community, and we have been part of the community for uh 40 years.

So I do think it's important to express how this modest development will add to the need and address the need for senior housing, but also free up general housing.

And what I mean by that is we attract local folks who move to our community and then free up their housing for new families in Santa Rosa.

And all of this helps achieve Santa Rosa's housing plan and build community, which is important to both of us.

As part of Front Porch, Spring Lake Village brings great experience and a solid legacy of innovation and attention to detail that will continue with this new neighborhood.

We are an employer of choice in Santa Rosa, and our residents are integral and an important asset for the Santa Rosa community.

They invest their time, their talent, and their donations in local causes and nonprofits, and they support local businesses through their commerce.

And I would argue that this symbiotic relationship with Santa Rosa is incredibly meaningful and responsive and meets our mission and your goals as well, especially as needs change.

So as you can see, we've invested a decade in this planning process because we believe that this neighborhood is a responsible expansion.

Our commitment to planning extends to our commitment to continued partnership, as was just mentioned with the city on fire evacuation planning on emergency preparation and management.

Our commitment also extends to the pedestrian and bike path and a shuttle for residents to integrate the campuses and continue our collaboration with the city traffic department to manage the load on Montgomery Drive.

So through the extensive revisions we've made to this plan, we have shown our dedication to resolving key issues and creating an asset for Santa Rosa.

I ask for your support of our mission and our application.

Thank you.

Members of the city council mayor.

I am an attorney at Perkins CUI, and I'm here on behalf of the applicant.

As you've heard, this has been a very long and thorough process of environmental review and project review.

This review really reflects the commitment of your city staff, the EIR consultant, the members of the community that have made good and helpful comments, the tribes who engaged in consultation and were very forthcoming, and the project applicant team.

As you also heard, this resulted in a CEQA document that finds, based upon all of the evidence, that all of the impacts of this project have been reduced to a less than significant level.

That's something to appreciate.

I do want to drill down a little bit into the effects on tribal cultural resources, which you've been hearing about.

As you know, the applicant redesigned the project, a wholesale redesign, in order to address cultural and tribal cultural resources.

That redesign moved the development away from the areas of the site that were the most sensitive from a tribal cultural resources perspective.

The um applicant also worked with the tribes with with regard to investigations of tribal cultural resources between 2017 and 2021.

Those investigations included thorough investigations by a licensed archaeologists, shovel testing, and as the as GHD mentioned, canine testing and ground penetrating radar.

To the question of has the whole site been tested.

The way this works is one starts in the area of the known archaeological resources, which tend to be closer to creeks and to areas where there's known cultural resources.

Those areas are tested first.

The shovel testing keeps going farther and farther out until nothing is found, and that is where you set a boundary to the cultural resources.

The additional mitigation that has now been added to the EIR at the tribe's new request is really to make sure that even outside that boundary, we're gonna go the extra mile.

We're going to do additional testing before ground disturbance occurs, just to make sure that there's nothing there.

That was at the request of the tribe, and it was agreed upon by the applicant.

The other thing that's going to happen is there will be tribal monitoring during construction.

The tribes will be will be invited to be there, they will be consulted at all times.

The conversation will not stop, and the consultation does not stop.

We will continue to engage with the tribes throughout this process.

Finally, these additional changes were made at the end again to be responsive to the tribes.

The what was a um potential road or EVA access through the panhandle portion was changed to a pedestrian pathway in order to make it narrower and less deep in order to be responsive to the tribes.

This was done in consultation with the fire department to make sure that we were still in compliance with all rules and regulations.

We also moved a cottage, and as I said, we changed that mitigation measure.

All of this to be responsive to the tribes and make sure that we were doing everything that was being requested of us.

We thank you for your consideration of the project.

Um the project, the whole project team is here, so if you have any questions that the two of us can't answer, we will have someone who can.

Thank you both, and thank you to the entire Spring Lake team.

All right, now we will open the public hearing.

Are there members of the public who would like to uh say a few words tonight?

I'm seeing none.

So we will then close the public hearing and bring it back to council for any final questions or discussions.

Looking to my colleagues.

Seeing none, I'm going to oh Mr.

Alvarez.

Thank you, Mayor.

To the applicant, you stated that that there will be tribal monitors during the the process moving forward.

Uh so I imagine that you've been able to continue conversation with the tribes, or they've been responsive to you moving forward.

That's a good question.

In the early part of the consultations, there were direct conversations between the applicant team and the tribes.

More recently, the tribes have chosen to consult directly with the city with the applicant team not at the table, and that is their right.

Um, and so you know, we're we're trying to be responsive with at the same time, um, respecting confidentiality rules, but out in the field when the tribal monitor is there, they will be there with the applicant's construction crew.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Uh, let's let's get a motion on the table, Miss McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

I've been advised that I can do this in three motions.

So my first motion is to move by resolution that we certify the final environmental impact report and adopt the CEQA findings of fact and mitigation monitoring and report program.

Second, all right.

We have a motion and a second by Mr.

O'Krepke.

There's no discussion, we'll go to a vote on that on that motion.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Council Member Fleming?

Councilmember Ben Wellows?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez?

Before I say my vote, I'll actually be voting May on this, but not because of the lack of effort from the both the city and the applicants.

I definitely respect both efforts to move this project forward.

In fact, I will actually look towards our tribal partners of not continue the conversation whether it was comfortable or not.

But I think to the respect of, and I won't disclose anything that's been found or not found on their property, but I would hope that moving forward in the future, they will continue the conversation.

They will come to the table to have the conversation about their ancestors.

Because what I hear on many of events that we attend, we hear about this land acknowledgement to our Lakota and Miwok uh tribes.

We pay respect to those members who have been here before.

We look at the the city of Santa Rosa.

But yeah, we we kind of bury that history, and I don't want to see that continue to happen in the future.

Out of respect to those, or the saying goes, if you forget your history, you you're you're doing to repeat it, right?

So with that being said, I will vote no, but I definitely respect both the energy that's been put up, the respect that's been given to to the project in itself, and I definitely do acknowledge that moving forward.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this motion passes with six affirmative votes.

And then I'd like to introduce the two ordinances one and two is presented by staff and on slide number twenty.

Second.

We have a motion and a second again by Mr.

Okrupke.

Adam City Clerk, what you may call the role or call the vote whenever.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Nay with the same appreciation.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stapp.

Yes.

Let the record show this motion passes a six affirmative votes.

And then I will be moving resolution resolutions two and three presented by staff related to the conditional use permit and the hillside development permit.

Second.

We have a motion and a second again by Mr.

Okropke.

Adam City Clerk, we can call the vote.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Council Member Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez?

Nay.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this motion passes with six affirmative votes.

Thank you all.

All right.

As as was forewarned, because Council's been at it for uh well over four hours now.

We're gonna take a we're gonna take a 20 minute break, but we're gonna be strict to my to my colleagues who like to linger over their dinner.

It's not gonna happen tonight.

We're back here at seven thirty-five.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks for your patience.

Your Thank you for your patience, everyone.

It's precisely 20 minutes since we went into recess and we were back.

I'm sure my colleagues are making the way down the steps right now.

Madam City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows.

Here.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Vice Mayor Okke.

Here.

Mayor Stepp.

Here.

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

Thank you very much.

All right, we'll go back to our public hearings.

Two more to go.

Item 16.2, our public hearing on 1977 Marsh Road Pre-zoning.

Let's see, we've got uh Hannah with us tonight.

And Mooney.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Stapp and Council members.

My name is Hannah Michelson.

I am the project planner for 1977 Marsh Road Prezoning, a request for annexation.

This property is located at 1977 Marsh Road, which is a currently unincorporated and adjacent to properties within the city's limits.

It's currently developed with a single family dwelling, and the parcel is 1.05 acres.

The purpose of this annexation is to obtain city sewer service to support the future construction of an accessory dwelling unit.

The project is located in the northwest quadrant of the city, and it's within uh unincorporated county island.

The general plan land use is very low density residential.

Um to the west is very low red very low uh residential to the north is low residential, to the east is low density residential, and to the south is very low density residential.

The proposed zoning district is RR-20, which is consistent with the general plan's land use of very low density residential and also consistent with surrounding R20 parcels in the area.

It's accessible via Marsh Road off of a shared private driveway, and it's located about 0.08 miles west of Marlow Road.

And it qualifies for CEQA 15183 in that the prezoning is consistent with the general plan, and excuse me, it qualifies for an exemption under section one five one eight three, and additionally, it qualifies for an exemption under section one five three one nine in that the future annexation of existing private structures developed to the density allowed under the prezoning classification.

The project fits that description.

This was answered by the water engineering division, and no further public comments uh were raised after this one.

Therefore, it is recommended uh that the planning commission and planning and economic development department, excuse me, the recommends that the council by ordinance introduced an ordinance to pre-zone the property located at 1977 Marsh Road to the R R20 Rural Residential Zoning District, consistent with the very low density residential general plan land use designation.

And this concludes my presentation.

I'm here to answer any questions.

That was brilliantly succinct, huh?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Before we go to questions, we got to do ex parte disclosures.

We're on the line here again.

Ms.

Rogers, anything to disclose?

No, Mayor.

None.

Nothing to disclose.

Nothing to disclose.

Nothing to disclose.

Nothing.

All right.

Nothing to disclose from any of us.

Any questions from our group?

Alright, no questions.

We will open the public hearing.

Are there any members of the public here to uh make comment on this item?

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing.

Uh bring it back to council for a motion.

Any final discussion?

Uh Ms.

Mr.

Krupke.

I will move to introduce the ordinances presented by staff.

So we're gonna give that one to Miss Rogers.

So we have a motion and a second by Miss Rogers.

If there's no further discussion, Madam City Clerk, we can we can call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming is absent.

Councilmember Ben Wellis?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Aye.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

That the record show this motion passes with six affirmative votes.

Hannah Money, thank you very much.

We'll move on then to item 16.4: our public hearing on the status of vacant positions and recruitment and retention efforts in compliance with the semi bill 2561.

Thank you very much to our HR team for lingering as long as they have.

And so our first slide is the background.

So AB 2561 went into effect in law in 2024, but actually the effective date was 2025.

We did our presentation last year, and so we're back again this year to follow up on our vacancy rate for this fiscal year.

AB 2561 requires a few things within it.

It's to track the vacancies and then present information on the status of our vacancies and our recruitment and retention efforts, at least one fiscal year before budget adoption.

And three to identify any policies, procedures, and recruitment activities that may present obstacles in hiring.

In addition, there are some other triggers related to additional obligations when the vacancy rate reaches a 20%.

So within our workforce information, basically there's a thousand two hundred and seventy-seven positions budgeted within the city.

Under there is all of our different departments that uh run our city.

And then our citywide vacancy rate as of March 26th was 9.2%.

That's pretty standard in an organization of our side.

We kind of see a rotation between 9 and 12 to 14%.

It's typically average for a city or an agency of our size.

The statistics there are ranked by the different units and the total FTEs that are budgeted, and then kind of where they fell within the vacancy rate at that time.

Second slide is the continuation of the units um 11 through our 18.

And with as of March, we had 117 vacancies, which gave us a 9.2% vacancy rate.

Good evening.

Some of the obstacles that we have include the budget deficit, which, as we heard last week during the budget study session, there had been also a hiring freeze.

The hiring freeze is a soft hiring freeze, and we've continued to conduct recruitments throughout that period of time.

We've been working on our salaries becoming more competitive.

There's been quite a bit of progress in that area still some room to go.

Labor shortages in certain fields continue to be an issue for many different industries that are technical including engineering so that's true for a lot of employers not just not just for us.

This is just a general overview of the recruitment process as a merit-based agency we have to provide recruitments that follow this type of a plan this is the typical recruitment process for most public sector agencies.

We advertise our vacancies we have exam steps along the way there are interview panels examinations background and then of course the hiring stages that take place as well some folks like uh pictori depictions so this is a more visual overview of the same process and steps that I just talked about some of the recruitment sources that we use are are presented here on this slide we try to target a lot of different um sources so that we have blanket coverage of our recruitments and for some industries we have to take a more targeted approach with certain journals or or um places where they would find those advertisements our recommendation tonight is to accept the vacancy report and conduct the public hearing we are here to answer any questions that you may have and as uh director blonkey mentioned the unions are also able to provide presentation as well which has been requested by our Teamsters labor representative Robert Maddock who is here this evening wonderful thank you both for this presentation uh and Mr.

Maddock do we want to do that presentation right now?

Please why don't you come up here thank you I'm Robert Matdock Teamsters Local 856 staff attorney representative and I represent uh five bargaining groups here at City of Santa Rosa that's units four your your uh um sorry uh support services unit six the professional unit unit seven the technical unit unit 17 which are your city attorneys and unit 18 your mid managers that's over 500 of your employees here at City of Santa Rosa and I can tell you that vacancies are one of the biggest problems.

Of course I've been here before you to tell you how big pay was a problem and I really do appreciate the efforts that have been made so far.

I think they are significant in terms of how that has affected the vacancy rate itself I've spoken with uh some of your department heads including that water um the the change in the pay structure and improvements are making a difference in the retention of quality employees and actually recruiting more employees I also want to share with you in terms of some of the vacancy issues regarding um some of the technical skills such as engineering one of the ways that I think the HR team has has and we've worked together is uh to remove some of the licensing requirements that aren't really necessary for some of your supervisory positions in management I think that's a benefit uh there can always be an engineering license if someone has it but you open more positions to quality people uh to get into those um direct deputy director and director positions and and in level management a couple things I really want to mention about the specifics in the vacancy pointing to unit seven the technical unit that really is where you you have some of the highest one of the highest vacancy rates and you have uh 38 point four or five FTE positions currently vacant.

What I would tell you is there's a really big frustration in any of your enterprise fund uh areas where they feel why is money being collected for us and we are having our pay and our vacancies held open, our pay kept low and lower uh and vacancies held open uh because of general budget issues.

I know that the interim city manager has made some changes, and we have more uh recruitments going on, but I would strongly encourage this council to direct HR and departments to try to fill those positions, especially in the technical positions where it actually causes danger to your employees to be understaffed.

You're getting people worn out coming in at night on call.

You're having staffing issues with people, for instance, operators in training who are doing more than they should do, that has personally been involved in some uh issues out at Laguna Treatment Plant involving that.

What needs to happen is to keep your enterprise funds, particularly the water, fully staffed.

The ratepayers may not like it.

I don't like it, I'm a ratepayer.

I just had my rates increased.

But there's no justification to have ratepayers get benefits off the backs of our employees, especially for other cities, Katati, Roanoke, et cetera, that this city manages the regional plant for.

City of Santa Rosa employers or employees are paying the price from not being at market.

And that price includes, I was just having a conversation with someone said Marin Water was paying over $10 more per hour for the exact same position.

That's just down the road.

So those are issues that are continue to impact you.

The other issue I really wanted to mention is your administrative folks in Unit 4 are really suffering too.

They're often overlooked because who's the most important, right?

Firefighters, police, the people on the streets, public safety.

But those are the people that make things actually happen.

Right now, in police, the administration, the admins are being cut and reduced.

Just had another person announce retirement, and I will say I believe it's because of some of those staffing issues.

Um staff at police needs just as much support and staffing as the police themselves.

I was a deputy district attorney.

I worked at that office for 16 years.

I cannot tell you how important those evidence techs are, the people who drop off discovery.

We had an incident recently where Santa Rosa did not deliver their discovery, the criminal reports as required by law to the courts in time.

That is a big issue.

That is a discovery violation that the district attorney has to explain, but that was a city of Santa Rosa staffing issue.

We need to get that dealt with.

So I know the Bottle Rock folks canceled uh the La Onde this year.

Let's move it to the fairgrounds.

You have a great venue for that.

Let's bring in that kind of thing, bring in revenue, then we can pay our employees, right?

We can support our local uh people and keep them from becoming homeless, right?

That's the that's the main thing.

People need jobs.

So the last thing I wanted to really hit on uh because this is something we can talk about pursuant to this law is your policies and how they affect the vacancy rate here.

I won't mention a name, but I know a specific person and number of people actually who are affected by mistakes in your payroll where your confusing payroll policies caused your payroll department to give people raises bigger than they should have, and then say, hey, that's a gift of public funds, you need to pay us back.

Well, your employees already spent that money, they didn't have extra money.

They can't pay that money back.

And and the answer is, well, it's a gift of public funds.

We can't do that.

Then don't make a gift of public funds in the first place.

It is illegal.

So I am asking this council to direct the city staff to meet and confer with the unions on the issue of updating all of your policies, but primarily the payroll policies and your personnel uh policies and rules.

Some of them are very archaic, some of them are very punitive to employees, and your own managers can't even properly interpret them without making errors.

I've been pounding that uh, I'm sure uh your HR staff will share.

I have been uh pounding that table issue uh for uh probably three years now that that has to be done.

Uh I'm proud to say we've completed all the first meetings on the class and comp.

That has been a major, major haul overhaul.

We've uh done I think incredibly good work together.

There's still a little bit more work to finish up.

That's a huge improvement, I think, that is gonna change the vacancy.

Well, close with this.

The vacancies are as big of a morale issue, if not bigger, especially for units where if they don't have someone next to them working, it's dangerous, it's a problem.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, Robert.

And thanks to thanks to our team for the presentation.

Uh bringing it back to council for questions.

Ms.

Rogers, thank you.

Um, I did have a question.

Can you tell me some of the positions that are in uh unit seven again technical?

I can't, huh?

There's the operators, uh water operators, you have mechanical technicians, trying to civil engineer tax, the civil engineer specialists, electrical and water, um, housing and community service technicians, and these are just some of the lab analysts, these are just ones that are listed for vacancies within that unit.

Okay, yeah, that that does seem like uh a large a large number.

I think if it was broken down a little bit more, it wouldn't seem uh so large, but some of the positions that you um just named off are very technical, and we do want to make sure that uh one safety is a priority so that they're safe when they're doing it.

Um, and I've been out to the the water plant, which is in uh district seven.

Uh, but I do know that sometimes they have to go in when things are, you know, so 24-7.

So to make sure to ensure that they are able to go in, that they are not sleep deprived, that they're able to make the decisions that we need them to make is very um very important.

Also, I know we're working on transit, correct?

We're still working on on transit, and that one has been difficult to recruit and retain at times, but we're getting better.

It's a little bit of both of both.

It's also having the buses in enough transit buses actually go around and actually staff them fully right now.

Like I said, they have the new buses coming online, but they're not here yet.

So we actually don't have enough buses to fully staff up.

So that's why you kind of see that residual kind of balance of the bus drivers.

I think today I saw a sole bus, not a sole train.

Woo!

I saw a sole bus, but it was a trainee bus.

I thought that that was kind of interesting.

Um, so I see that we do have some people that are currently uh currently training.

And then another one that look it was definitely a problem, but a lot of our other departments rely on, and it looks like we're getting better on that are the mechanics.

When I first uh got on to council, I know I went and visited and they were like, we started off with this and now we're down to this.

So I do know that a lot of the other departments, um, such as our public safety depend on uh mechanics, and it would be great if we can get them uh fully staffed, and that they have all the certifications and things that they need so that we invest in them so that they're able to work on um some of the vehicles and things that we have in the city.

I uh learned in visiting them that that is a complaint that they have is that they may have only have one person that can um do a certain something.

Um, and if we don't invest in that, then they're gonna go elsewhere where they can get paid, where they can get paid more, and so that one person that we have that can do that has a certifications if they leave, then the department doesn't have um what they need to ensure that what we need as a city uh gets done.

And then lastly, I'll say um that policy review um is always a great thing, and we do have some some old policies, and I think that as they come up, I would I would hope that HR is able to go through them and take your feedback that you have, and then if it needs to come to council or whatever that may be, but that we are able to do that.

Understanding that we're always asking our staff to do more with less.

And so us getting our our staff paid uh probably is a great priority.

Um, and then if we have additional time where we can go through all those policies that we will, but as they come up, definitely tell HR and they will write it down and and get to it.

Um, I don't know the timeliness of that because we are asking all our departments to do more with less at this time, so apologies for that.

And I do appreciate that and respect that answer, I gotta say.

So thank you.

Um, if I can just also just quickly add uh regarding those uh very technical positions, one of them that's being cut uh regards land surveyors.

Um I'm very familiar with that.

My brother's a land surveyor, um talking to some of your staff, the the land surveying position can save the city money uh because your consultation fees for that I believe are going to Utah for someone to do right now.

Or I was uh told that it's the consulting for getting uh map signed and that sort of stuff is more expensive by far than it would cost to pay the employee.

So that's one of the things where you can you know trip over a dollar to pick up a dime, right?

So, you know, consultant fees for that kind of stuff uh can go through the roof.

So thank you, Robert.

Miss Ben Willis, do you have a question?

Sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Thank you for all the information.

Um, I just was wondering um I think you mentioned that um we know we have a freeze, but it's a soft freeze.

I think that's the term.

Um, and I just wondered, um, what criteria or what determines whether or not a position will be opened up.

Um yeah, so at this time, like I said, this presentation is based off of a snapshot.

So currently we have 110 vacancies as of today, and of that we have 60 are in some sort of recruitment process.

47 are either budget realignments, reallocations, or we've put them up as potential um eliminations.

And then there's really only three that we don't have any requisition process happening right now.

So we're not holding, like I said, per se on the criteria.

So we're we're trying to roll them out as quickly as we can.

Okay, thank you.

And and so along that line is in this in this economy, and I have I don't have a sense really because they're saying many people are not moving because they're afraid to move in this economy.

So is recruitment an issue.

Um I'll take it in if you want to jump in.

Um, yeah, so right now in our recruits are actually getting a lot more candidates than we have in the past.

So our recruitment numbers have definitely gotten up, and we might even get to the point where we're gonna have to actually have cutoff dates or cutoffs to a certain amount of positions where before we would have continuous recruitments or we weren't getting the applicant pool that we needed.

So we are seeing a shift.

Okay, so I know that you mentioned that the 9.2% is average, I guess, for lack of a better word, or or um what we find generally.

Um, so uh since you are getting lots of applicants, which I think is, I guess that's a good thing, um, is the goal right now, again, in this economy and with our restrictions to still try to fill some of those positions.

Because I know, as is Councilmember Rogers said, Um, we don't we we want to uh make sure that folks um uh that that our folks we already we're already asking our folks to do more with less, and we know that, and of course we're I think um concerned about burnout and morale and all those issues, and then that goes to retention.

So I'm just wondering, you know, what and I know you're under a lot of strain also.

I I recognize that and I respect that.

So I'm just wondering what what direction are you getting at this point in terms of trying to address all of that?

Yeah, so I think that you know, with any agency of our size, we're we're here, we're people, right?

That's how we offer our services to the public.

And so you're gonna always kind of have this re revolution of a you know, nine, ten percent because people are promoting, people are moving, people are retiring.

Like it's just that kind of continuation of that number.

Um, in terms of direction, like I said, as we presented within the budget study session just a couple weeks ago, that's where the reflection of what positions could we potentially reduce in order to cut some of those costs.

And yes, we the staff will feel it, right?

But these are positions that have been vacant for a little bit of for a while was kind of the criteria that went into it, and the department has provided that feedback too as to what they feel like they can absorb or the work has already been shifted.

So those were the presentations that were done for the budget study session, what we recommended, and that doesn't reflect it on this.

Like I said, the vacancies uh to the ones that we're filling.

If I could add through um through the mayor, uh, some of these vacancies have been building over the course of time as we've been uncertain about the future of our budget situation and how we're gonna address it.

So the the direction to the human resource department has really been recent over the last month or two to start filling the vacancies that we felt we were in the clear to go ahead and do so.

And so the numbers that you may be seeing at 110 current vacancies might not be as consistent that way moving forward as we continue to go through the recruitment process on a more consistent basis.

So I think the HR department is working very hard to try to catch up uh in some of the preparations we had for the upcoming budget.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Willows, Ms.

McDonald.

I just want to thanks for the presentation for your comments tonight.

One thing that I want to talk about is something that Councilmember Rogers said to give some direction on around review of our policies.

It's also my understanding that if there was an overpayment in payroll, that is considered a gift of public funds, and so it has to be paid back.

I know more of my background has been in schools, and it just actually happened to my son that's a vice principal where he was overcharged for benefits, and he has to pay it back over time.

But I think it's important for council to have clarification on what the law states for that.

So our employees also know where's our accountability when there is an error, and then how do we thoughtfully do that with our employees?

Because if there's an overpayment, most people can't say I could pay it back in a month or two, the money's gone.

So I think that those are policies that we should be reviewing.

I'm gonna say based on some of our outdated policies that have come before council over the last four years, that would be a priority for me to have that specifically reviewed around personnel if that's a direction we can go in tonight.

Um the other question that I have is when we look at the vacancies and and I know Mr.

Maddox brought up um the surveyors.

Um I know I've said it in budget many times.

Have we done the crosswalk of how many contracted services we have for outside and then the difference of bringing people in-house with our unfunded liability and calipers?

We've always been told it's cheaper to go out, but I still think that with the rising cost of contracts, it's something that we should go back and look in HR closely specifically on technical positions.

That um is it actually more to contract with someplace in Utah versus having somebody in-house?

So those are things I think as we dive into the budget, and unfortunately, when you get cut down to very little and left in our budget is when you get to focus on those harder questions on is it cheaper here and there and there's more time because there's actually nothing more to cut.

So I think those are all great points that were brought up tonight, and I appreciate the work that you're doing for filling vacancies and really just to our employees for all the work they continue to do with fewer people and fewer resources.

Thanks.

Thank you.

With that, let's actually open the public hearing here.

Are there any members of the public here who wish to make comment?

Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and we'll bring it back to uh I believe it's Miss Ben Willows for a motion and any final discussion.

Thank you.

Uh let's see.

I'm I move to receive and file a report on status of vacant positions and recruitment and retention efforts in compliance with assembly bill uh 2561.

Second.

A motion and a second by Miss Rogers.

Any final discussion?

Miss Rogers?

Not final discussion, but I would like don't be laughing at me.

I would like to thank the HR um team because I I know we only have two employees and we keep you guys very very busy just with our two, uh, not to mention with all the other uh staff that we have in the organization.

So thank you very much for all that you do in helping us to maintain our staffing levels and everything else that falls under your priorities.

So thank you so much.

Agreed.

With that, Madam City Clerk, we can call the call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

I councilmember Fleming is absent.

Council member Ben Wellows?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez?

Aye.

Vice Mayor O'Krepki.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let's record show this passes a six affirmative votes.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Thank you, Dominique.

Thank you, Robert.

Uh with that, we are gonna we're gonna jump around a little bit.

We're gonna go back actually to our consent items, um, and hopefully allow a few more staff to uh to head off to bed.

So uh let's see, we have items 13.1 through 13.4.

Are are there any questions?

Anybody wish to pull any items this evening?

Saying none, I'll look to the vice mayor for a motion.

Oh, yes, public comment.

Apologies.

Any members of the public wish to comment on consent?

Seeing none, all right.

Now I'll bring it back to the vice mayor for a motion.

Move to approve consent items 13.1 through 13.4.

Second.

All right, we'll give that to Ms.

McDonald.

So motion by uh Vice the Vice Mayor and a second by Ms.

McDonald.

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

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Hi.

Councilmember McDonald.

Hi.

Councilmember Fleming is absent.

Council member Ben Wellows.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Hi.

Vice Mayor O'Kepkey.

Hi.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

That's a record show.

This passes the sixth affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

All right, Dina, you're next up.

We're gonna jump ahead then to item 15.1, our report on SB 707 and related council actions.

This has been the one that everyone's been waiting for tonight.

Everyone, you take your time, you take your time.

You settle in and you walk us through this item because we are we are here for it.

Are you prolonging the drama?

Is that what this is?

This feels like SB 707 in action already.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council.

Thank you for having me here this evening at the very end of the meeting.

Uh Dina Manis, your city clerk.

This evening I'm going to be presenting on SB 707 Brown Act Amendments.

Uh, the uh related council actions that we need to be in compliance with 707 and Brown Act.

So today uh we're gonna cover the background on SB 707 amendments, prior council action and review, and then the next steps moving forward.

So in March on March 10th, I came to Council to present to you on the Ralph M.

Brown Act.

Uh the Ralph M.

Brown Act is the open meeting laws here in the state of California.

Uh those laws were amended by SB 707 and it was adopted in October of 2025.

Oh, let me take a breath here.

Um 707 recasts the existing provisions of the Brown Act and adds new requirements around trans uh transparency, diversification of participation methods, and now requires agencies to increase outreach efforts for improving public engagement.

Some provisions were operative January 1, others were are going to be operative July 1.

Uh the items that we have already implemented as of July or January 1 included uh providing a copy of the new Brown Act and a list of all meeting locations to appointed officials as well as elected officials serving on a legislative body.

We've sent out reminders regarding the social media provisions, which are now permanent as 707, removed the sunset date.

We've also updated procedures around council compensation discussions now being prohibited in closed sessions.

Prior council review and action to date.

So like I mentioned on March 10th, 2026, we held a study session to review uh the critical components of SB 707 and council gave direction to come back with the actions required to become into compliance on April 21st.

Council adopted council policy 76 related to a or entitled request for remote participation accommodation for legislative body members with disabilities.

This is to come in line with the attorney general's um pass decision.

So if there was a council member or a border commission member who had a disability that prohibited them from participating in person, uh they can participate after approval of this disability for a determined amount of time, and they their participation counts as in-person participation and does not impact the quorum.

So this is just a council policy that memorializes that.

Additionally, council repealed council policy 34, citizens' public appearance and addressing the council on agenda items, as that item and that policy has been now incorporated into our open government section of city code and into the city council manual procedures and protocols.

Today we are here to discuss the next steps in the final or the next pieces of the puzzle around the Brown Act, and we need to amend the City Council Manual Procedures and Protocols.

We are required to adopt an internet and telephonic service disruption policy for city council meetings.

And lastly, we are staff is recommending to introduce an ordinance to amend certain sections of Santa Rosa city code related to open government.

And all of these actions are to come into compliance with state law and then related operational and procedural alignment.

These next few slides, I broke it up into components that you affirmed from the study session, so we can move through these pretty quickly, and there's one final component or request or staff recommendation that there was some additional discussion and research that council had asked us to do.

So I'll do what I can to zip through these slides.

First and foremost, the amending of the city council manual procedures and protocols.

There are four different sections that we are recommending that council update.

This is the disruptions and decorum and order for the audience.

Section 2e, public comments on agenda items and both the first and second public comment on non-agenda matters.

Item 4b: the right to address council to correct previous clerical corrections and remove reference to council policy 34 and reference Santa Rosa City Code 1-10.060, public access and comment.

For section 1-H or 1.h, this is to address the Brown Act amendments related to disruptive behavior by the public during the Brown Act meetings and allow for operational procedures and procedural alignment.

Really, what this memorialized was council treats remote public comments or remote public commenters and attendance the same as they would be treating those who are participating in person.

So if you have a disruption on Zoom, they are going to be handled and addressed in similar fashion as if we had a disruption in council chamber if it was due to a behavior issue.

This is an anticipation of increased public comment via Zoom or the remote participation option.

This just gives council, the chair or vice chair or the facilitator of the meeting some flexibility to change that a little bit easier.

Manner of addressing council.

Again, this really just we're hoping to modernize and simplify the speaker card language again to address the impacts on staff time having to prepare minutes and getting an adequate and accurate summary of the statements being made by the public commenters.

Sometimes that requires repeated listenings of the public comments, and if we are anticipating an increase in public comment, we're trying to balance that with staff demand with not increasing staff, or time demand and not increasing staff.

Next, we are required to adopt an internet and telephonic service disruption policy for city council meetings, ultimately because open government laws and the state is leveraging connectivity as a means for participation.

Council is required to adopt this policy, and we had no issues with this.

Council affirmed this recommendation during the March 10th meeting and study session.

I will note that in the event that we have a service disruption here in council chamber, the English broadcast to the Comcast station remains plain, and the meeting is continually recorded.

That is on a separate feed, but if our internet goes down here in council chamber, that means our Zoom and our YouTube goes down as well as our Spanish interpretation option or opportunity.

As required by the Brown Act, Council must recess for recess open session for at least one hour while staff attempts to restore service or until they restored service.

At that point, if service isn't restored, council may reconvene the meeting and proceed with the meeting, but only after making findings by motion that there is good cause to proceed.

And council affirmed the adoption of this policy in March.

Council also affirmed the amendment to council policy 20, citizen participation.

We're simply modernizing the language on this policy to align with the current operational structure and operations.

Brief note, the council, you know, did acknowledge that staff has made considerable efforts to engage the public and the missing my notes here.

To engage and encourage underrepresented and non-English speaking community members to participate in public meetings, in part by showing outreach and participation policies dating back to 1987, like this one, but it hasn't been updated since.

So we're just trying to get it up to speed.

Next, we are staff is recommending that council amend Santa Rosa City Code 1-10 and a variety of subsections on broadcast, public access and comment and minutes.

Um of these components were previously affirmed by council at the March 10th meeting, and really the broadcast component is to align with the now or the proposed internet and service internet and telephonic service disruption policy for city council meetings.

We're really just correcting it for clerical errors and current organizational structure.

And then on the minutes, dot zero seven zero, we're aligning with the new Brown Act provisions that require additional detail be included in the minutes related to remote participation and simplify the public comment summary requirements again due to the anticipated increase in participate in participation via remote access.

Next, this is the item or this is the section that uh council wanted us to do a little bit more research on, and this is related to interpretation services at city council meetings.

Staff had recommended that we come back to amend this section of city code to allow meetings to proceed if Spanish interpretation services have been disabled in council chamber with an internet and telephone service disruption, and staff had undertaken good faith efforts to restore the disruption.

Like I said, currently the city's Spanish interpretation service provider participates remotely via the internet, and for remote and in-person participation at regular council meetings.

So, again, if our internet goes down, our interpretation services go down.

At that point in March, council gave direction to explore leveraging bilingual staff receiving bilingual pay for interpretation services during an internet and telephone disruption.

Human resources evaluated this option and determined it would not be appropriate for city staff to provide occasional interpretation services at city council meetings for the following reasons that you see up on the screen.

Interpretation is a specialized certified profession requiring specific training and licensure.

Assigning this work to existing staff raises compliance, quality control, and liability risks if information is misinterpreted.

Adding interpretation duties would fundamentally alter the scope of the affected positions, which would require then new job dis new job classifications, recruitment standards, and pay ranges, and the modest differential would not be appropriate given the professional requirements of interpretation.

Using bilingual staff also may bring up equity and consistency concerns if interpretation responsibilities vary by department or individual staff capacity, creating uneven expectations and workloads.

Lastly, use of qualified certified interpreters or artificial intelligence ensures accuracy, neutrality, consistency, and appropriate risk management across the organization.

And to be clear, our disruption history is not extensive.

In the last five years, we've had one internet service disruption.

That was just this last fall.

IT resolved it in two hours.

And since then, IT has also implemented some secondary backups.

So if one internet service provider goes down, we can flip over to another service provider.

So we have learned from the one time it happened and have tightened up the ship.

So back to the interpretation concept.

Staff has strengthened the recommended amendment language for interpretation to provide guardrails against excessive use of the interpretation exception.

And the amendment as it is currently drafted now recommends that council may reconvene the meeting without language interpretation services to hear any remaining time sensitive items on the agenda.

Both the Santa Rosa City Code.030 of the open government section and the proposed internet and telephonic service disruption policy for city of city council have also are also include communications and outreach requirements.

Will provide in English, Spanish, and any other languages that come on board as required under the Brown Act and our city code related to actions taken by council during those meetings where interpretation services have been disrupted due to an internet and telephone disruption.

CERO will have discretion on communication and outreach methods, but should include a brief summary of what happened and what action was taken and shared across various communication platforms like gov delivery or the equivalent social media platforms in the city connections newsletter.

Therefore, the city clerks and the city attorney's office recommend that the council by three separate resolutions and one ordinance, amend the city council manual of procedures and protocols, adopt the city council policy entitled Internet and Telephonic Service Disruption Policy for City Council Meetings, amend city council policy 20 entitled citizen participation, and introduce an ordinance entitled ordinance of the city ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa to amend Chapter 1-10 Open Government Sections 1-10.030, 1-10.040, 1-10.060, and 1-10.070.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions for you this evening.

Madam City Clerk, thank you.

The amount of work that we have that was involved in putting this together was uh so very large, so very time consuming and so very tedious.

Thank you very much for your uh your service to the city.

Uh let's throw it open for questions on SB 707.

Come on, folks.

Fine.

I'm gonna ask one.

Could we cut back to uh there was one slide that made me a bit concerned?

I think it was uh let's see, where was it?

Uh let's go back to the disruption history slide.

Slide 11.

I've noticed that Mr.

Tickner has chosen to stay around, and we are only one week removed from his threat to minimize uh cybersecurity here in the city.

Should we be interpreting this slide as a threat to hold council hostage over SB 707?

What are our IT services going to be going to maintain maintain this letter or letter maintain this level of consistency?

Mr.

Tickner, please, either either podium is fine.

We just want reassurance that that our IT services are going to maintain the same level of excellence going forward.

Get given the uh the the potential impacts on our lifestyle.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor Step.

Uh Council and Brian Tickner, Chief Information Officer here for the city.

Uh, yes, I assure you that the services will still continue.

We've actually, uh, since that one disruption, as Dina mentioned, we've added some additional resiliency.

We've looked at it um a lot beyond that too.

So it's not just fail over to a different internet provider.

We've updated some equipment.

That actual uh disruption was caused from a network switch that affected this whole room coincidentally at the exact same time.

And it the funny thing there, it was an old phone that threw the network switch off.

So we've we've we're replacing our phone system, not just because of that, but it was due to some old equipment that uh threw the network off and and so forth.

So uh we've we do realize that the internet is a big part though, and technology in general is a big part of these particular meetings, and so we do have um we take that with a lot of respect and are doing what we can to continue uh improving that.

A thorough and politic answer, Brian.

Thank you for letting me put you on the spot.

All right, I won't torture any of us any further.

Um, we'll throw open throw it open to public comment.

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

Ah, seeing none, all right.

We'll bring it back to uh let's see.

Oh, it's it's Miss Rogers for a motion.

Hi.

Correct in that we have to do three separate motions, or we can all do them the same.

On this item, they can all go in one.

Okay.

So I'd like to make a motion to adopt the three resolutions and introduce the ordinance as presented by staff.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second by Mr.

Alvarez.

Unless there's further discussion, we can call the we can call the vote.

I would like to say thank you to you and your staff, and also thank you to the IT department for all the work that you guys do to keep us running.

Here, here.

Councilmember Rogers, aye.

Councilmember McDonald, aye.

Councilmember Fleming is absent.

Councilmember Ben Willow?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez?

Vice Mayor Krupke.

Aye.

Mayor Stapp.

Yes.

That motion passes with six affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

And a sincere thanks to both of you.

Dina, this was a ton of work, so thank you for uh for getting us through it.

Thank you.

There's more to come on the staff side of internal procedures and protocols that we will be implementing to support all of these items that you have just approved.

I'm sure, and we can thank our formal count our former colleague uh assembly member Rogers.

We could we should have a memorial plaque, a dedication plaque to him somewhere down in the IT room.

There we go.

Alright, thank you both.

Alright, now the true test of how of how much uh my council colleagues want to get home.

Uh we're gonna move on, we're gonna go back to item 11.

Mayor and council member reports.

Who would like to?

Of course, Miss McDonald, lead us off.

And Anna, you can move closer to the front if you want to if you want to hear Ms.

McDonald more easily.

Thank you, Mayor.

It's actually my pleasure that I get to introduce um Georgia Meissler.

She's a renewable energy and infrastructure project manager with decades of experience in guiding complex public and private utility initiatives from concept through execution, building on a master of public administration degree from San Diego State University.

She's led many projects, spanning public infrastructure, finance, electrical and water system planning, environmental permitting, and long-range policy development.

She's very excited to bring her experience to the city of Santa Rosa's Board of Public Utilities and to contribute to this successful planning, coordination, and build it of build out of critical utility projects that strengthen community resilience and support long-term regional growth.

And so I'm very thrilled to be appointing her to the BPU commission today.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you.

First, I would like to say that I attended the uh exchange bank welcome reception for our Sonoma County new executive, uh, along with mayor staff and uh city manager.

I also met with the Santa Rosa Manufactured Homeowners Association, which I was able to get a lot of feedback, which I will be uh discussing with interim city manager.

And then uh I wanted to invite everyone out to um the Memorial Day event that will be at the Santa Rosa Memorial Park, 1900 Franklin Avenue, uh being sponsored by Expresioso, keeping veterans local, marine corps, league, heart and armor, and Vietnam Veterans of America, uh Redwood Empire chapter 223, um, where we will um honor the service members that we have lost.

So um that will be Monday, May 25th at 10 a.m.

Um the program will start, and volunteers are always needed um as early as 6 a.m.

to set out all the flags that we put at all the grave sites.

So if you um are itching to volunteer, we'd love to see you there.

Uh and then lastly, uh as public servants, I know we we give a lot and we are um away from our families a lot, so I wanted to take the opportunity to wish my now 15-year-old uh Jalen Rose a very happy birthday.

I love you, Jalen.

Thank you, Ms.

Rogers, and happy birthday, Jalen.

Um Mr.

Alvarez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I want to take a moment to address uh an incident that happened outside of the Cinco de Mao festivities uh a couple days ago.

And um, I don't say ums often, but this one definitely made me pause.

This is this is an incident.

Uh no, these are festivities that have that have happened for many years now.

And sadly, you know, we we get the rap of of the negative incident that happens, but I want to set the narrative straight from what I've been hearing.

And that is that the perpetrators are not from Roseland.

Had they been from Rosen, they would understand what great things are happening in the community, how we are one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing uh economic districts of Santa Rosa, if not Sonoma County and beyond, nor do they understand the great collaboration that's happening between our law enforcement and the residents that make up Roselyn.

And I believe the quick apprehension of these suspects attest to that.

So, so for me, I want to set this the record clear.

Rosalind is not the same beast that it was yesterday, nor is it anywhere near how great it will be tomorrow.

I am from Rosen, I am proud.

And uh Sally, we have our president school board uh Anna Diaz and I who are mere feet from the shooter, uh, but it's a definitely reminder of the narrative that we are still combating, but it is not the rose of today.

And I want to set that clear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Alvarez Vice Mayor.

Two quick things at SETCA yesterday.

Uh we finally uh passed the coordinated claim, so that is now in place and funding can be put in place for the mascots program aligning um transit for city bus, uh Petaloma Bus, Sonoma County Bus, Smart, Golden Gate Transit, and so on down through uh the Northern California area.

Uh and then secondly, um, this morning was the meeting for the Cal Cities uh fire insurance working group.

Um, and we met.

There's some information that has come back for legislation that's going forward and some input.

I've ordered that on to the city manager, uh, assistant city manager in CERO, and they can disseminate it.

Um, or if any of my colleagues wanted, I can send it to you directly.

Thank you.

Uh, and with that, we'll throw it open to public comment, seeing no members of the public remaining, we will close public comment.

We'll move on to item twelve, approval of minutes.

Were there any edits to uh let's see?

Yes, any edits to the April 21st, 2026 minutes?

Seeing none, we will uh any public comment.

There are no members of the public here.

So we will approve the minutes as submitted.

We will then jump ahead to item 17.1, where we do have uh a one written communication, our quarterly board's commissions and committees attendance report, which is provided for information.

Uh our last public comment on non-agenda matters, there are no members of the public remaining.

So we will close that public comment and we are adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.