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

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

It looks like a globe.

If you're on your cell phone or tablet, locate the three dots, top down lightly, and put a check mark on your preferred language.

Click done to activate and begin the interpretation.

Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend that you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish interpretation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember Ben Wellows here.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Thank you from afar.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

Let the record show that all council members are here with the exception of Council Member Fleming.

Excellent.

I must confess, I was hoping for a bit more of a crowd.

This item deserves to have a packed council chamber.

So thank you.

Thank you for being here today.

And all of us have all of us on the day, so looking forward to the presentation.

Ms.

Scott.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members.

I'm Jill Scott.

I'm the city's real estate manager, and I'm here today with the whole team.

Gabe Osborne, our economic our planning and economic development director, Scott Wagner, our chief financial officer, and Scott Adair, who is our chief economic development officer.

And we are very excited to be here today to talk to you about the downtown economic development strategy and how this strategy really supports Santa Rosa's long-term prosperity.

So let's roadmap our conversation today because it's a bit of a long presentation.

We have a lot of information to bring to council and to the community today.

So we're going to start with Director Osborne, who's going to go over where we are today, our strategies that we have in place, our policies, and the progress that we've made towards those.

Then he's going to turn it back over to me, and I'm going to talk about our challenges that we're facing in the city, our infrastructure, our deferred maintenance, and the costs that we have along with that.

Then we're going to turn it over to our chief economic development officer, Scott Adair, to talk about the opportunity that we're going to talk about today, the exciting opportunity to bring housing, jobs, and revenue back into the city.

And then we're going to come back to me.

In fairness, we do have housing jobs and revenue in the city now.

We do.

We're going to just have more.

More housing jobs and revenue.

And then we're going to bring it back to me for the approach.

How do we get there?

What do we do?

What's our approach?

And then our chief financial officer is gonna talk to us about the financing of it, the fiscal uh, the fiscal impact of the whole program, and then back to council for feedback and some decisions.

Um, so we're excited to get started.

So we all know the five council goals that our city council has put into place to um bring Santa Rosa into prosperity, um, and for us to get better over time.

Those are fiscal sustainability and budgeting, infrastructure investment, economic development, community health and safety, and housing and homelessness.

Why we bring this up today is because there's a lot of us here in the audience and at this table that have been with Santa Rosa for a very long time.

And it's not very often in our careers that we get the opportunity to bring one single strategy forward to council that meets or exceeds every single council goal for this community, and that's what this strategy is, and that's why, as staff we're very excited to bring it forward.

So I'm gonna turn it over now to Director Osborne to talk about policies and the economics of downtowns.

Thank you, Ms.

Scott, and good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council.

As Ms.

Scott mentioned, an important strategy in really developing an overall comprehensive plan is a vision, and that vision is often memorialized in goals.

They're broad categories that give direction to staff.

The evolution of those goals takes the place of policies that get into more defined strategies and actually implementation steps.

So we'll take an opportunity here in the next few slides to talk about the policies that the city has been putting in place to support economic development, to support housing in the community, and to specifically support that in the downtown.

And it's really important how all those come together from an economic development strategy standpoint.

One of the most important documents that a city can adopt from a long-range planning is a general plan.

The general plan sets the framework and the blueprint for the city's growth.

It determines where certain growth and use types should occur, it controls land use, and then it also controls infrastructure that's put in place to support that land use.

The city adopted the current general plan in June of 2025, and that extends the vision out to 2050.

An important document that works in conjunction with the general plan is a specific plan.

What that takes is the fairly broad direction that exists in a general plan that turns it into a more evolved strategy for a specific geographic area.

Um, and one of our most successful uh specific plans has been our downtown area station specific plan.

Uh, that encompasses 720 acres that are in the downtown and the general railroad square area.

It focuses on an urban core centered around Courthouse Square, and much of the focus on Courthouse Square has been really in the middle of that and seeing how development can commence outside of that.

It focuses on pedestrian-friendly mixed-use development, residential densities and height, as well as job creation.

An important piece is has removed barriers and created consistency and permitting processes, and it has resulted in almost 800 housing units that are either approved, constructed, or under a review in the downtown station area.

In addition, the city adopted an economic development strap plan.

It's really important to understand that economic development and land use really work hand in hand.

Understanding how land is used to ensure that there is a return on investment and economic value is really critical to the overall planning process.

So one of the main pillars in our economic development strap plan is economic vibrancy and resiliency.

Within that plan, there is also a goal to bolster downtown housing, commercial, and retail business that further expands on that goal to set forward a specific action.

And much of what the conversation today will surround around is this action, which is expand downtown asset strategy, activating city-owned property for economic development purposes to include housing and housing supportive amenities with an emphasis on sustainable and walkable neighborhoods.

So, in addition to our economic development strategic plan, we had a discussion with council earlier in this month through a study session to talk about our housing strategy.

Our housing strategy really ties together all of these plans.

Another critical document is the city's housing element, which focuses on how the city can meet regional needs for housing within a certain time frame.

An important concept to embrace through the housing element is multifamily housing or denser housing.

And the reason being is most communities in California have grown significantly outward, and as they run into challenges with environmental restrictions or urban growth boundaries, there becomes more of a desire to do urban infill to meet those housing goals.

Really critical document to support the city's housing strategy.

Next slide, please.

So Mr.

Adair and I really deal with this point quite often.

And why does economic development matter?

And oftentimes, what is economic development?

Economic development is really the engine that keeps cities moving forward.

When cities are in a gross state, cities are usually doing that growth through housing, jobs become critical, revenue generation becomes critical because governments provide services to the community members that rely on that revenue.

So economic development isn't necessarily the engine in that vehicle moving forward to supply the overall needs of a community.

I often refer to it as the fuel that goes into the engine.

Economic development relies heavily on private investment, and in most communities, growth occurs through private investment.

What the city's role is often in policies and procedures and figuring out a way to make catalytic moves that actually encourage economic development, which is a really important point from a land use decision.

So when we look at economic development through a downtown activation lens, and we'll have a few more slides that talk about the importance of downtowns to communities, that really becomes more of the economic center.

So the point of basically creating really live-work-play aspects in a downtown where you're driving housing, you're driving more mixed-use, commercial, you're actually increasing property taxes per acre, you're generating sales tax, and people live, work, and play in the same environment, that creates an ecosystem that really feeds itself.

It also can create an attraction to tourism.

So creating walkable communities and activating spaces through events, drives individuals from outside of the community that then increase sales tax dollars, transit occupancy tax can occur through hotels, so tourism is a really important piece to the downtown.

Overall economic growth is really important.

So as a city grows, the burden of the government to maintain those services grows along with that city.

So understanding how the revenue is coming in along with that, how are we creating jobs, how are we creating really these livable communities where people are spending money in the community, you're driving sales tax, you're really maximizing those revenue measures.

That's a really important point.

And oftentimes with many jurisdictions that are fighting structural deficits, it's because the revenue is slowing and is not keeping up with the growth and the costs associated with that maintenance.

Housing and mixed use, and we'll we'll give a few examples in the slide about some successful successful reimagining of downtowns and other jurisdictions, and they almost always focus on housing and mixed use.

Urban infill, high density housing with some other component of commercial.

And it becomes very much a wash and repeat if that that whole story and that development concept is successful.

That brings another amenities such as hotels, it creates that retail space, and as I mentioned, in the downtown, it creates that environment that is really needed to feed itself.

Also, a critical component to this, which I think the city has achieved is public recreation space.

Is you have to create a platform that it can be programmed with vents and creates a desirable location for people to be outside.

Fiscal stability is an incredibly important point here.

And really diversifying in economic development strategies is critical.

There have been a number of communities in the past that have focused on one segment of the economy to really prop up the city.

I believe Detroit is probably one of your better examples of that and how it rallied around the auto industry.

As that falls off, the community falls off along with that.

So diversifying, hitting all the buckets is critical because it can sustain some of the downturns in some of those industries.

So as you focus on retail, tourism, understanding the unique dynamics of individual spending money to ensure they're spending money in the community.

It makes sure that you're limiting the risks that you're not really throwing all of your eggs in one basket for lack of a better term.

And this creates long-term economic value.

Obviously, job creation is a big piece to that.

Next slide, please.

So when we look at the downtown ecosystem, this dovetails a bit into the discussion about policy, because in many situations, cities will turn policy into actionable items, which can take the form of the policies, but it also gets into how dollars are invested.

So really we put a lot of effort into figuring out how we can reimage the downtown, how we can see more density, and how we can see more job activity and retail activity in the downtown.

That's taken place through permit and fee incentives.

Creating transparency to the development community through permitting process, consistent turnaround times and reducing permitting costs is critical, and a number of measures have been put in place to support that.

We also recently adopted an enhanced infrastructure financing district.

So an EIFD will take tax increment, property tax increment that is generated out of out of the boundary, and it funnels that back into projects that further support economic development.

So investing those property tax dollars into beautification, activation, or projects that can be a catalyst that actually result in other projects is really the purpose of the EIFD.

So that's actually a strategy where you're investing funds in the development of a specific area.

The city's also in a unique situation in the downtown that the city controls property and buildings, and looking at those property and buildings, which is really the theme of the conversation today, to better understand if they are achieving their best or highest use and whether a redevelopment can be a ripple effect in the economic environment of the downtown.

And I'll talk a little bit about what a ripple effect is in later slides.

It's also important to take care of public space.

Public space becomes something that attracts people to an area.

It's a vibrancy, it's something people want to be in.

So as the reunification of Corehouse Square has occurred, and as the events have come in, we've seen quite a bit of activity that goes along with those.

We've formed community benefit districts that both in the Railroad Square and the downtown area that further work on beautifying those spaces.

It's all part of that collaborative approach to make sure that we're making the areas inviting as possible.

And vents are really a critical piece to that, and a lot of jurisdictions are embracing events.

You know, you can bring a lot of people into the area for events, multiple day events can result in whole tail stays.

So, how can we really support those in the areas?

We've had a conversation in the past with the council, and we will be moving forward with bringing a formal action in front of the council later on in this year, but that's associated with entertainment zones.

This is a tool in the toolbox that is a creative way that allows people to spend money in a business through the purchase of alcoholic beverages and move those alcoholic beverages into the placemaking or the exterior spaces where you're creating the activity.

So, will it encourage more investment in the downtown?

We don't know at this point, but this is another example of really peeling back the onion and doing everything we can to encourage private investment in the downtown core.

Next slide, please.

So really the value of downtown is it's hard to oftentimes it's qualitative and it but it also can be quantitative.

Cities that have a downtown, it becomes their identity.

Cities that do not have a downtown, they attempt to create one to create their identity.

And it really is so important to the branding of a city, because downtowns historically have been the economic engine.

As cities have developed over the course of many years, it often centers around a downtown, which is an economic center.

More modern planning and growth has economic centers in other areas, but the more traditional has been around the core and build out around it.

And when that occurs and the core gets neglected for whatever reason, through planning or through the investment of private dollars, jurisdictions all focus back on centering in the downtown.

And that is because it creates a brand for the city.

For the folks that live in Santa Rosa, they recognize Santa Rosa based on its downtown.

It gets brought into the conversation quite often.

When individuals visit a city, you often visit the downtown.

And understanding the downtown needs to have a modern feel to it, it needs to restore or retain the historic value of previous buildings, sort of a very dynamic need that the community sees in downtown.

But when they're done successfully, they are an investment magnet.

And we've seen that in many jurisdictions that it has a high return on the investment when it's done correctly.

And as projects pencil out and they show a positive return, it encourages a significant amount of future investment.

It also is a focus for tourism, as I mentioned before.

Cities can market and rally around a downtown, especially in the critical situation or the important situation we are where we have a square, we have four street that we're trying to reactivate in a lot of ways from a redevelopment standpoint, but we have an event platform and we have a really good foundation to work off of, and we're seeing more activity in the downtown.

Then I think the important point is it just creates a sense of place.

And it is that amenity that even if you live in Santa Rosa, it's your Friday night, it's your Saturday night, it's where you want to go with your children on a Sunday morning, it becomes the destination in the city.

Next slide, please.

So really the aspect of a redevelopment ripple effect functions very similar to throwing an object in the body of water.

That creates a ripple, the ripple extends past that impact point.

In the economic development arena, as you invest in a specific parcel, that parcel generates in a positive economic experience revenue.

And that revenue is typically seen through property taxes or it could be generated through sales tax.

The concept of a ripple effect is does it trigger additional private investment outside that perimeter?

And then how far does that ripple go?

And a lot of jurisdictions, as they have come back and centered on their downtown, have seen significant ripple effects.

That as the model starts working and it shows a positive return, that encourages more private investment, and you really start seeing a redevelopment pattern where you go back to one to two-story buildings in your downtown core, you end up with six to eight to greater, and that starts working its way out.

So, in simple terms, a small investment potentially can have a much larger return if it is the catalyst that is basically bringing more private investment into an area.

Next slide, please.

So I think it's really important to point out that the team loves this quote from Fred Kent.

Fred Kent is the founder of Project for Public Places, which is a nonprofit that assists community with unlocking power of public spaces to build community, spark civil and social life, and expand economic opportunity.

So this nonprofit has been operating since 1975, has assisted over 3,500 communities.

And it's really to reevaluate space in a better way for a public use and economic development purposes.

And it really is every decision about land is a decision about the community's future.

And really, when we make decisions about land, and it doesn't mean that this is chiseled in stone, because oftentimes there's opportunities when you make a land use decision, and then that land use decision actually materializes in physical structures, there's often a time in which the jurisdiction must live with those physical structures.

But then you get to a critical point where it can be revisited.

But this revisiting often is thinking about what the community needs 30 to 40 years from now.

So it's really focusing on understanding what the future looks like and trying to make decisions now for those members of the community that will all be sitting in our seats 30 years from now.

Next slide, please.

So the ripple effect as it applies to downtown.

Very much when you're looking at a downtown where you have upward momentum, the amount of property tax per acre is critical.

So typically the footprint is small, but the popular tax because the valuation goes up as you develop up, can be great.

So really you're looking at more of a tax-based growth.

So it's investing in property, that's more of the immediate return.

The whole concept of doing more of the mixed-use development is really looking at the concept of an 18-hour downtown.

So that really is the live work play.

This is the mechanism that is feeding off itself.

So when you have housing, do you have a grocer that supplies the housing?

Do you have restaurants that support the housing plus outside services?

Are you creating really the tourism amenities that bring people into that to stay in that area for an 18-hour?

And then really downtown activation falls into that as well.

And obviously, that's the hotel and retail, but I think in this particular case, when we look at activation, most jurisdictions will take a look at underutilized sites.

So as we have sites in the downtown that aren't achieving their best and highest use, how can those sites potentially be the catalyst that then creates the ripple?

They will provide immediate returns with a redevelopment, but are they the catalyst that then kicks off other components in the downtown?

And the next few slides have a few examples of other jurisdictions that have gone through this journey.

The stats are listed and summarized based on those.

I'll go into those in a bit more detail in the next few slides.

Next slide, please.

So just a few examples of redevelopments of jurisdictions.

Emoryville is a really interesting test case and has been studied quite often.

Emoryville, prior to 1960, and actually through the 1960s, was very industrial, had a quite a few polluted brownfield sites, and really made a decision through the 60s and 70s and very heavily in the 1990s that it would redevelop.

And Emoryville is a smaller jurisdiction, but Emoryville put 95% of its available property in a redevelopment agency.

And it invested a significant amount of dollars in economic development.

And just to give you an idea, once again, a smaller jurisdiction, this is through 1990 to 2001, which when redevelopment agencies were running strong, Emoryville invested 160 million on economic development.

And just to put some perspective to that, that is $2 out of every five spent on public services.

So it really doubled down on economic development.

That resulted in their general fund growing by 63%.

And for a period of time, the redevelopment agency was generating the highest tax increment or tax growth per person anywhere in the Bay Area.

And what they've seen is 95% of those parcels have redeveloped.

And it's redeveloped in a concept of six to eight stories, a mixed use of commercial, providing those services very much that multi-use concept.

And now the one of the projects that's highlighted here, the Emoryville public market is now redeveloping some of that redevelopment, and it's significant.

It's looking at 700 residential units, 180,000 square feet of retail, 120,000 square feet of office.

So they're really actively trying to bring in jobs to bring in businesses to focus on the retail with a housing component intermixed in all of that.

And this really shows a solid test case.

And now since redevelopment has moved on, they're looking at other revenue measures such as transfer taxes to figure out how they can continually fund that, but they have created an organism that is driving private investment dollars there, and it is successfully working out well for the city because they're able to retain services and then their revenue is significant.

Next slide, please.

So I think Lancaster is another example.

This is interesting.

Lancaster went through the process of actually putting a five-lane highway on a road diet.

They neck that down to two active lanes and created essentially a public plaza space in the middle of the road that they then activate through events.

It creates a very unique environment.

And at the time, they had similar sort of use in the adjacent commercial where you had businesses but you had vacancies.

And after they had this project go and they programmed this project correctly, they saw a significant uptick in some of that economic growth.

That resulted in their downtown and 119% in tax revenue.

The private investment that was tracked attracted, and I think this is part of that ripple effect was anticipated to be or was actual of 130 million.

They saw 273 million in total economic output, and then obviously it had additional benefits of the pedestrianization corridor and reducing vehicle strikes and making pedestrians safer.

So I think this is really an example similar of Courthouse Square where you can invest in an infrastructure project.

And for Lancaster, that infrastructure project was the catalyst that kept driving additional development in the area.

Next slide, please.

Another example is Glendale, Glendale is a similar population of Santa Rosa.

In their downtown over an eight block core, there was a significant redevelopment, and that redevelopment really changed their downtown.

This was done through private investment with the city facilitating that.

But once again, it focused on some of the main components that are successful.

There is a retail component, residential, and this actually included a park and a public space.

So they're addressing really live work play.

And this was so wildly popular that it actually brought in similar to some of the actions that we're seeing in Montgomery Village.

I think that is also a ripple effect that when you get certain uses, it becomes attractive to other retailers and other uses that see you can actually make money in that market.

And it was a catalyst that really changed the whole theme of their downtown.

So these are just some examples.

We wanted to provide real examples of cities.

Some really pertain to the situation we're in, some were more redevelopment related, but they really focus on making economic development decisions to reimagine a downtown, and I think they represent success stories.

Next slide, please.

So with that, I will hand the presentation back to Miss Scott who will talk about strategic investment models.

So to talk a little bit more about what Director Osborne was talking about is the reinvestment model and how it happens in the city.

So using a core pillar of our city's economic development strategy on underutilized land and city property and what we can do with it.

How it works is we activate underutilized land.

So we take a piece of city land that we own that has aging infrastructure that has costs related to it, we eliminate the maintenance cost, we capture that unrealized value through tax revenue, and we transfer all of the risk and the liability that we now that we have on this aging infrastructure to a qualified development partner who can rehabilitate the site.

In turn, that site enables private investment.

We bring in a trusted development partner who knows how to develop and to bring investment into the city.

They bring housing, commercial space, high density development, a little more than we have now, and it's a strong private investment and an infusion of capital into the city.

In turn, that drives economic activity.

You see more jobs, more vitality, and a stronger local economy.

In turn, that generates all the fiscal dividends.

So it unlocks that revenue engine on that piece of property that has been sitting either vacant or with underutilized land, bringing in more revenue to the city to be able to infuse into the community.

Next slide.

So Director Osborne talked about all the other cities that are doing this, and there's many more that have done different projects and different things.

It's been proven elsewhere.

We've seen it happen.

We've seen cities just really do excellent things with it.

We've seen them bring in more housing, more jobs, more revenue.

But it is happening in Santa Rosa now.

We are doing it and we have been successful with it.

What we want to talk about today is really the catalytic opportunity that we have coming forward.

Next slide, please.

So let's talk a little bit about what we're doing first and what we have done.

This was sort of our flagship of developments, and it's a well-loved by the community, I think by council and definitely by staff.

We took, and this is really was uh we worked with the housing department to do this, but this was really their baby.

We took the old senior center site, we had moved our senior center to the Pearson wing, and the old city center site was had become a blight to the community.

It was terrible, it looked terrible, it had had a fire, the roof was caving in, it really was horrible.

We didn't know what to do with the building.

We were just gonna take it down.

What housing did was put out an RFP for a qualified development partner, and we were lucky enough to have free bird development come in and redevelop the site, and they did an excellent job.

Now there exists a 61 unit affordable residential community and a beautiful structure and building that is an amazing complex.

Every time I drive by it, it makes me smile.

Next slide, please.

The White House site, here's another catalyst site.

This is one of our major catalyst sites in the downtown.

It was, we call it the White House site because it used to be years and years ago, the White House department store, and it's now a very underutilized surface parking site.

Council has had the foresight to be able to look at this and say, we don't need this for downtown use or for core use.

Let's look for a development partner.

So we put it out on an RFP.

We found a qualified development partner in LH housing.

It's now in negotiations, and their development proposes a three-unit residential development.

So just for some emphasis on this, the total estimated downtown spending that a development like this could bring into our downtown is almost five million dollars annually, infusing into our downtown into our businesses and into our core.

Next slide, please.

Let's talk about our pop, our your pipeline a little bit.

We have a good redevelopment pipeline, which we're hoping to add to the old senior center site, which is completed with a great development.

We have the White House site, which is in an active exclusive negotiation agreement.

Right now we have a downtown core site, Garage 5, that is out for RFP looking for a qualified development partner to redevelop.

And then we additionally have parking lot 11, which is completed through the Surplus Lands Act and could go out for RFP later this year.

Next slide, please.

So now we get to the kind of the crux of what of what we think we can do economic development wise and the prosperity that we want to bring to the city.

Housing jobs and revenue is what we've talked about over and over again, building an even stronger, vibrant future for multi-generations to come.

And the site we want to talk about today in our minds is really the catalytic site for the city.

Next slide, please.

And it is the site we're sitting on today, the City Hall site.

So the City Hall site consists of 100 Santa Rosa Avenue where we're sitting today, along with the three properties across First Street, which are 90 Santa Rosa Avenue, 631 First Street, and 655 Street.

This site, this site is consists of very aging infrastructure right now.

It has years and years and years of deferred maintenance.

Can you move to the next slide, please?

So what I want to talk about now is really an infrastructure crisis.

And I can't emphasize this enough right now.

We're at a critical risk point with this facility, the City Hall facility, the facilities next door, and the public safety building on Sonoma Avenue.

All of those are at critical points.

So there's aging infrastructure, aging terminal infrastructure.

We have HBEC, electrical, plumbing, they're all past their useful life.

There's undefined exposure that we don't know.

We've done years of facility assessments and testing on this.

The exposure we're not aware of that we know likely exists, is ADA compliance, seismic safety, asbestos remediation, it's undefined exposure.

There's an operational cost to this.

So not just not just the dollars and the aging infrastructure, but our services, the locations are fragmented here.

So I don't know how many times council or staff or anybody that spends any time here has been walking around the campus and run across a member of the business community or the public, and they've said, can you help me?

Where do I find this service?

How do I get here?

Oh, you have to go to room three.

Oh, you need to go to room six.

Oh, please go across the street to room, you know, over to 90 Santa Rosa Avenue, I'll I'll walk you over there.

Um, it's disjointed.

The locations are disjointed, and we've tried for years with these facilities to make it better for the community, but have been unable to do that just because of the way the structures are set up.

And the biggest, the biggest thing is that we are sitting on seven acres, seven acres in our downtown core of prime real estate.

This is prime real estate that is used up right now with aging facilities and 350 civic employees.

Now it's very important, as I think we all agree, that those 350 employees stay in our downtown because those are important for our businesses.

But if we were able to move those 350 employees and unlock this economic engine, and that's what this prime property is, is an economic engine.

Think of what we could bring to the downtown.

So what I've talked about with our critical challenges today is really the status quo, what we call the status quo, which we know after years and years of doing the same thing is not sustainable.

Next slide, please.

I love the title of this slide because it really um it really explains what it is.

We've learned over the years as a city that the cost of doing nothing is extremely high, and that's where it's gotten to us where we are today.

So the City Hall campus buildings, let's talk about those.

And I mean this, this and across the street, the three, um, the three buildings across the street.

I'm not talking about public safe safety building at this moment.

Um, right now, just to prevent system failure, just to keep these buildings going so that we can serve the public, we need to invest 48 million dollars into terminal infrastructure.

Along with that, in excess of that, we know we have at least another 50 million plus in the next five to eight years for unavoidable lifestyle life cycle replacements and escalating liability.

And the longer that we take to put that money into it and to do these, the more expensive it gets.

Um, and then when I talked about our indefinite exposure or unknown risks, we don't we don't know what those are until we get into it.

So that hundred million dollar price tag could be substantially more.

Next slide, please.

So let's talk, I want to talk a little bit about the cost of delay, which we've kind of gone over.

So a traditional rebuild spiral, we've we are not the only ones by far in the in this spiral.

Um, many cities are, and many cities, which I'll talk about in a few slides, have or are in the process of changing this.

So in 2020, actually, I can say over many years that I've been here, um, we have tried multiple times unsuccessfully to either rebuild or move to unlock this economic engine.

We've known that this is an engine and that we want to do it, but we haven't been able to fiscally do it in a feasible way, like we're bringing to you today.

So in 2020, just to rebuild, after a very long study, just to rebuild just city hall alone on property that we already own, it was 64 million dollars.

Today, that's same because we've waited.

This is 2026, that same one building is 82 million dollars.

The real danger that we have is the hundred million plus in these aging terminal facilities.

So every year we delay, the cost rises, the cost rises, and we lose the opportunity that we can on this economic engine.

Next slide, please.

Why action matters?

We have old, old buildings with lots of issues.

As I said, every year the cost rises, emergency fixes replace smart investment.

We're getting to the point where neighborhoods could have to wait for things.

If we have to put that much money into these buildings to continue service, streets, parks, lighting, for example, could all have to wait because of that, because we have to keep these buildings in service.

Opportunity slips, homes, jobs, new revenues stay on hold, and we still have the disjointed locations that we're doing with.

We would like to better serve the community.

Next slide, please.

This is just a little bit.

We talked about the confusing journey with our disjointed locations, and this slide just tries to show the frustration we hear from business members and the community of trying to find services at this location.

So this just shows a little journey that if you'd like to get a business license, you need to go across the street.

If you then want a TI or a building permit, you need to go across the other end of the street to room three.

Then you want to business, you want to visit the business services center, you need to go over to room six.

And if you want to want to see a council meeting, you come over this way.

It's just showing it's confusing, and we hear it often, and we'd like to do better for the community.

Next slide, please.

So here's the good news.

There's a better way forward.

Um, there's a strategic investment for lasting impact for tomorrow.

Um, housing, jobs, revenue, private capital, public gain, we can create one city hub where there's one place where all of the community can go to get every service they need.

If they want to get a parking permit, if they want to get a TI permit, a building permit, um, talk to their housing specialists.

It's all in one area.

We can end this spiral that us and other cities have found ourselves in.

Next slide, please.

And now I'm gonna turn it over to Chief Economic Development Officer Scott Adair to talk about revenue generation and the transformational economic impact.

Thank you, Jill.

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

My name is Scott Adair.

I'm the chief economic development officer for the city of Santa Rosa.

For our part, the economic development division to assist the real estate and finance teams in this endeavor, put together a fiscal model and analysis on what the financial outcomes could be for a redevelopment of the downtown city hall site.

I've prepared some notes with me today.

I'll be reading from some of those notes and sharing some metrics with regards to the methodology and the outcomes of this analysis.

The analysis that we completed for modeling what development could look like on the city hall site aligns directly with City Council's adopted economic development strategic plan as was shared previously by our planning economic development director, Gabe Osburn.

The strategic plan for economic development, which was adopted by City Council in April 2024, lays out goals to bolster downtown housing, support commercial and retail businesses, increase revenue to the business community and to the city, and support a thriving economy by promoting and creating innovative infrastructure in our community.

One of the key findings from the benchmarking that the economic development team completed as part of our analysis was a discovery that public investment has been proven in other markets to serve as a catalyst driver for community prosperity.

Strategic investment in public assets, as you'll see and have seen through the examples that were given today as part of the presentation, can and has in other markets stimulated growth in private development, has supported housing and job creation, has increased economic activity in communities, and has generated new revenue streams for jurisdictions.

As you'll see in this slide, these revenues can then be reinvested back into the community in the form of services, new infrastructure, quality of life improvements for Santa Rosans, and creating a positive cycle of growth and value for our community and our residents.

And while the numbers on the following sides, them slides themselves are important, I do want to stress that this is some of the quantitative data only.

There's qualitative benefits and other outcomes from a public investment on the city hall site, which could create potentially multi generational benefits for the community, which would extend beyond any single project and could produce long-term economic, fiscal, and community driven outcomes for Santa Rosans.

And I apologize, I'm managing both the slides and my presentation.

So thank you.

Let's talk a little bit about the revenue engine.

And before we get into the revenue engine and really discuss what this site could become, I want to share that the Economic development Division, as we modeled what potential development could look like for the city Hall site.

We took into consideration a fundamental tenet of real estate and community planning and real estate development within communities.

And that is the fundamental concept, if you will, of highest and best use.

And we looked to what other communities in mid-rise urban downtown environments with demographics and other key performance indicators from an economic econometric point of view had similarities to Santa Rosa, and we looked at what developments in those communities looked like, and we came up with the following model.

And the following model lends itself to the maximum of public utility that can be driven at the site.

When I say utility, I'm talking from an economic development perspective.

This model, as you can see here, and we used allowable downtown densities and conservative floor area ratio assumptions for this model.

Represents a mixed-use development scenario, which is a classic or prototypical example of vertical integration in a downtown.

And itself is a prototypical development in what other mid-rise downtown developments look like in environments which are similar to Santa Rosa.

The total gross developed area under this model is made up of hotel, apartment, condo, retail, office, and civic space.

You'll note too that this model assumes only 3.75 acres of the total acreage site being developed, which leaves plenty of room for green space, and/or frankly, additional development, which would only further enhance the fiscal outcomes of the model.

So let's get into some numbers.

So we benchmarked after other developments that are occurring in other communities, real developments, and we looked at what a prototypical mixed-use, high utility vertical integration model could be for the city hall site.

And we came up with the model which was on the previous slides.

From that model, we were able to derive certain fiscal outputs.

And I'm gonna just talk a little bit about the multipliers and the methodology used as we put this model together so that you understand where these numbers came from.

So the economic development team, we rooted our assumptions in industry benchmarks and public information from a number of different sources, including the Sonoma County Auditor Controllers Office, the California State Controllers Office, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Urban Land Institute, the Lincoln Land Institute, the National Multifamily Housing Council, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, the California Department of Finance, the U.S.

Census Bureau, the U.S.

Bureau of Economic Analysis, the California Office of the Small Business Advocate, California Office of Economic Development, or GOBIS, and the California Economic Development Department.

And using data available from all of those sources, we modeled multipliers off of basic assumptions for apartment values per unit, condominium values per unit, hotel values per unit, office value per square foot, retail value per square foot.

We looked at what average construction costs and buildable allowances as far as our densities would allow for number of hotel rooms, hotel meeting space, number of apartment units, condominium units, total maximum opportunity for civic space.

We looked at average occupancy rates for hotels, average daily rates for hotels, average guests per occupied room, average annual room nights in the region sold per room.

We looked at what industry multipliers were for average occupancy rates for condominiums at full lease at full sale and also at apartment communities at full leaseup.

We looked at total residents per occupied unit averages.

We also looked at what all of the estimated labor force participation rates were for construction projects of this magnitude, and I've only covered maybe a fourth of all of the variables and inputs that we used in our model.

Mr.

Mr.

Adair, just one question.

For the members of the public that are going to do a deep dive into this and may not have been able to uh to memorize that list.

I'm assuming this is going to be very much available to the public as when they look into the methodology.

This more extensive analysis, which supports the three slides that are shown here is available.

It's a staff report, and we can make it available for anyone who's interested.

Wonderful, thank you.

Um, and I only go through that exhaustive list so that the public and council fully understands the amount of analysis and review that went into the numbers which are on the top of the screen here, as we modeled out what potential projected revenue impacts could be from a project for a multi-use, multi-development vertical integration project could look like at the city hall site.

We ended up with revenues in the neighborhood of 8.4 million to 9.3 million in new annual spending activity within the downtown, and an additional 1.6 to 1.8 million in direct annual recurring revenue to the city.

That figure over 30 years, assuming conservative stabilization and escalation rates, equates to about $60 million in new public revenues over a 30-year period.

These revenue sources are multiple.

We included in our analysis a review of property tax on the physical land development and improvements themselves, sales tax, use tax, transient occupancy tax, also looked at the business improvement area revenues which would be generated out of a potential development such as this one.

Our review also included ancillary revenues such as permit and licensing fees, parking revenues, et cetera.

It's important to note that these are not one-time revenues either.

These revenues would occur year after year and could be reinvested into public services, infrastructure, parks, public safety, and other initiatives of the city.

I should also note as well that this analysis was intentionally conservative.

When we found uh variables and uh inputs and multipliers to use for our analysis, and if there was a margin or a spread, we use the bottom one so that we could come with a um conservative analysis.

Economists typically like to uh underpromise and over-deliver.

If you were to look at even a slightly more moderate, uh, not aggressive, just a slightly more moderate or mainstream analysis using these same outputs.

It's very likely that a developer could actually generate or development of this site could generate north of two or two point five million in new annual revenues, recurring revenues for the city, and that the uh 30-day value could be closer to the 85, 90 million dollars for the city over a 30-year period.

Um I also want to just end with you know on this slide, there are other economic benefits aside from just the direct revenues that could come to the city in terms of new tax revenue for for a project, uh such as the one that we modeled for this analysis.

As you can see on this slide, that there would be uh both induced and direct jobs, permanent jobs as a result of um at least this model, 350 plus new permanent jobs.

The construction jobs alone would be over 700 jobs during the construction period.

This would equate to over 40 million dollars in wages annually, and that spend from those wages equates to approximately 9 million dollars in new annual economic activity in the downtown.

I should also state that there are qualitative benefits to a project such of this nature within our downtown.

Beyond direct revenues, the qualitative value of redevelopment of the city hall site could include the creation of new housing opportunities, increased downtown vitality, expanded employment opportunities, enhanced support for local businesses, greater pedestrian activity, increased tourism and visitor spending, improved public spaces and placemaking, new perceptions of safety through the increased activity and activation of downtown spaces, the attraction of additional private investment as a this being a catalyst, expansion of the city's economic tax base, improved utilization of an existing strategic public asset, support for downtown revitalization goals as laid out in the economic development strategic plan, and ultimately creating a more robust and strong urban core.

So with that, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present on this analysis and to walk us through the remainder of the presentation.

I would like to turn it over to my colleague, uh, City's real estate manager, Jill Scott.

Thank you.

Thank you, Scott.

Appreciate it.

So here we are at the turning point.

How are we gonna unlock this value?

Um, what's the path forward, and what's the strategic analysis?

Next slide, please.

It's the approach is pretty simple, and it's exactly what it sounds like.

It's called the property exchange.

Um, it's a smart strategy, it's a strong for a stronger community and a lasting impact.

It's a very carefully structured system that puts the right uses on the right property.

So, right now I think we can all agree that this is probably not the best use for this seven acres of prime downtown development, but we do need a safe and modernized building that we're able to serve the community with in a better in a better way.

It's a deliberate process.

This is years and years of um city work and asset planning that all come together to shape this opportunity.

It's mutually valuable.

The city and a private partner each get the site that fits their mission.

So our mission is to serve the public in the best way that we can in a safe and structured environment.

Um, a developer's mission is to redevelopment land and unlock that economic um opportunity.

It's risk calibrated of all of the um different ways we've looked at over many, many years and studied on how we can remove the civic element from this prime real estate.

This is this opportunity has brought all of the puzzle pieces together.

Um, there's always one that's been missing, or it's been a fiscally um infeasible at the time.

This opportunity and this property exchange brings every puzzle piece together at this prime opportunity.

Next slide, please.

So let's just talk about the mechanics of how it works.

It's exactly what it sounds like.

We trade the piece of City Hall property, we exchange it for a building.

Um, it is exactly what it sounds like, the property exchange.

Um, the hard part of a property exchange is you must find a trusted developer to redevelop a site who also owns a building that fits the city needs and is large enough for the city needs to be able to exchange these properties.

So, what it does for the city is it eliminates the risk, the aging infrastructure, the hundred million dollar liability, the ongoing maintenance, and the escalating cost cycle that spiral I was talking about that we and other cities have found themselves in.

The city receives the asset.

We receive a new building for the downtown where we can create a one-stop service hub to better serve the community.

We get economic growth catalysts unlocking this economic engine that we're sitting on, and we get reduced operating costs with no large uh capital outlay and long-term economic and housing growth.

Next slide, please.

How does this create value for the community?

It's another way to looking at it.

Today's campus, aging infrastructure, deferred maintenance, rising costs.

We get a new city hall building, a one stop service hub for the community, lower operating costs, much better service delivery.

What is the what is the community get?

A redeveloped site.

They get more housing, more jobs, a stronger tax base on a former Civic center site.

One transaction with two positive outcomes, but as we've talked about, here's the redevelopment ripple effect.

We get these two positive outcomes, which have all of these ripples of economic growth, not only for us, but for multi-generations to come.

Next slide, please.

A lot of people talk about the creek property.

So, in case anyone is in the community is not aware, on this property at 100 Santa Rosa Avenue, very near to where we sit, just a little south to where we sit, are two undergrounded culverted creeks, Santa Rosa Creek and Matanzas Creek.

They've been culverted for I don't know, probably a lifetime, many years.

Staff would suggest, or highly recommend that the city keep this property, the 1.5 acres of the seven acre site.

Keeping that property preserves the opportunity for the future.

It preserves, it keeps the creek corridor in public hands.

It preserves our right for future trail connectivity.

And the big one, the environmental flexibility.

We know that we have some challenges.

Next slide, please.

So here's the last piece of the puzzle.

Our favorite thing to talk about, the California Surplus Lands Act.

This is the last piece of the puzzle, the state law that brings us all together at this time that we haven't always had the ability to do.

So there is an exemption for property changes for agency use just for this purpose in the surplus lands act.

So we can we are allowed as a government agency for our agency use to take our current civic site.

Council may declare it exempt surplus.

Then we can exchange it with a qualified development partner for an office space where we get a new service hub facility for the community and for staff, and this the community gets this redeveloped former civic site.

Now, this is like I said, the last piece of the puzzle that has all come together to make this feasible at this time.

Next slide, please.

So just to reiterate everything we've talked to today, taking public assets and turning them into public value.

This is the theme of the whole conversation today.

Taking a civic site, redevelopment for community benefit and for economic growth.

Next slide, please.

These are a couple of different cities that are doing the same thing.

Well, not exactly the same thing we are, but all in a way that we're doing it.

This is San Pablo, and they're all cities that are similar-ish to a size to ours.

Um they have taken and transferred or rebuilt their city hall and taken that former site and redeveloped it into a mixed-use development site with housing retail and new investment and had wonderful results for their community.

Next slide, please.

Burlingame doing the same thing, really uh just a little bit ahead of us, started in um really a little bit before 2025.

Um, and Burlingame is doing something a little more similar to us.

They bought a new building, or they bought a existing building, and they're redeveloping their site, and it's about to open sometime at the end of this year.

Next slide, please.

Um, and then we have a new Laguna Gill.

Theirs wasn't their city hall site, but it was a civic site with a lot of surface parking.

Um, they took that site and really built a whole new urban center, a whole new downtown.

It's pretty amazing.

Um, it's planned to open at the end of this year, and we're excited to see what happens, but it has 275 multifamily apartments, 158,000 retail restaurant, medical and creative office spaces, 16,000 square feet of a new public library.

Um, they're expecting to create a lot of vibrancy and a whole new walkable downtown on underutilized public land.

Next slide, please.

On this slide, I wanted to go, we wanted to go over the overview of options.

So we've talked about a lot, and this has been a long presentation.

So let's just break it down into three options.

Three pass forward, each lead to a different location.

Option one is maintaining the status quo.

We know this is fiscally infeasible for us.

Keep operating these buildings, put a lot of money into them, get no community development of any kind, and not unlocking this economic engine.

It's it's an option, but it's not really an option moving forward.

Option two is we could build a new city hall.

That would give us the better service quality to the public, which would be great, but it has a very high, very high cost, a longer timeline, and a significant interruption.

Not to mention that the cost is really again financially infeasible for us as a city.

And then option three is we could council could decide to pursue a property exchange.

We would then unlock the economic engine of this seven acres of prime downtown real estate, create this revenue engine, and have the one stop service hub for the community.

Next slide, please.

This goes through very quickly each op each status, each one that we have to look at today.

The status quo, 100 million dollar plus investment, no improved continued deficiencies, no improved services to the public, very high financial risk of approximately $6 million annually from the general fund to do this for that $100 million.

Next slide, please.

Second opportunity, we could build a new city hall.

It again gives us the improved service delivery, but it has little to no economic impact.

The fiscal risk is extremely high.

Capital cost we think is about $82 million and rising every day.

Next slide, please.

Then we have the property exchange.

We exchange our property for another building.

We think the capital cost of taking an existing office structure and creating this one-stop hub for the community is about a one-time capital cost of $17 to $21 million and approximately 1 million or less a year.

It creates the central service hub.

It unlocks all of this property and puts it into private hands for redevelopment for a trust with a trusted redevelopment partner.

And it brings in revenue, vitality, all of all of the things we've talked about throughout to this city.

The fiscal risk, which will our CFO will talk about in just a few minutes, is extremely low.

Next slide, please.

And the community gets this it's a redevelopment site, new housing, open space, jobs and taxes, modern civic hub, downtown, downtown vibrancy.

Next slide, please.

Then I'm gonna turn it over to our chief, our chief financial officer to talk a little bit more about the fiscal side of this.

So we have the three paths.

We've talked about the status quo, 100 million dollars, six million dollars a year, no economic growth, still sitting on the city hall site.

Number two, build a new city hall, 82 million dollar capital costs, $5 million a year from the general fund, minimal growth, no economic activity.

We have the property exchange for redevelopment, a one time capital cost of 17 to 20 million, about one million dollars a year from the general fund, but we get new revenue of 1.69 to 1.8 million a year.

That is, as our chief economic development officer talked about, a very conservative estimate of what can come in.

This is multi-generational estimates.

This can go on and on and on through not just our lifetimes, but our children's lifetimes.

Downtown spending infusion of eight to nine million dollars for our businesses in the downtown to support them, job creation and wage generation.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Scott Wagner, our chief financial officer.

Thank you, Jill.

Uh, my comments will be brief today on this item, but I do wanna say that today's presentation very much fits into the themes and presentations that council or that finance has been bringing to council for the past couple years.

This is a way for the city to address a major liability that has developed over decades.

Uh, again, similar to some other areas that we've been working through together.

Additionally, um, growing the economic vibrancy of Santa Rosa.

Importantly, uh, this also fits into the concept of reinvesting in a better Santa Rosa.

Really, financially, this is very simple.

The options in front of us are very different.

We can make a minimal investment in that better reinvestment in Santa Rosa that will cost less, or we can pay more to maintain the status quo as Jill described.

That difference there ultimately either will add or reduce our burden to our structural deficit that we'll be talking about later on today in our public hearing.

At its core, this is an issue again that has developed over decades that the city financially has not been able to address.

Frankly, that was due to strategy.

A shining tower of glass, Taj Mahal, brand new city hall was never a viable option for the city.

Staff has brought forward an option that is innovative, it's different, and can create meaningful financial impact to our city and rises all boats with our tides.

Jill did a great job of talking through the numbers, but again, when we're looking at this property exchange option of around a million dollars worth of potential debt service versus staying where we are to put a band-aid on our facility of five million dollars, I would much rather prefer as the CFO to recommend a one million dollar option.

Neither are free, but our current facility is not free.

I want to add that as we've gone through prior facility reviews and come up with these very large liabilities.

Sometimes those can be looked at as a paper problem, a paper number.

Those are no longer a paper problem.

Staff is going to need to come back to council with a request for real funding to address this facility if we are remaining here.

That initial number is gonna be $48 million worth of funding.

This is again to Jill's point to keep our facility open and operating to the public, which the public deserves.

That is 50 years old.

Every member of the public, and we all understand those are not good investments.

The council and the city has been making very good financial decisions over the past couple of years.

This is an additional opportunity for us to reinvest in that better version of Santa Rosa.

So just really quickly, I'll go through next steps and then we'll turn it over to council for all your comments and um uh next next steps.

So uh fiscal year budget is coming up in the capital portion, staff would recommend creating a capital facilities reserve of one-time funds to move this forward.

Next step would be to just discussion of property exchange sites that we considered that we've looked at.

Um, third step is a potential property exchange proposal could be brought to council sometime in summer or fall.

And then in the future, we would need to come back to council for citywide facility and asset management plan update.

Next slide, please.

And we'd like to leave you with this last one of our staff's favorite quotes, which is the best way to predict the future is to create it.

And with that, we're here to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

A poetic conclusion.

Thank you all.

We knew this was gonna be an uh uh an excellent presentation.

It is rare that we have decisions uh come to council that are so clearly historic, where the city's gonna go down one path versus another and people are gonna remember it.

Uh so I'm looking forward to the questions that we have from council today.

Uh which of my colleagues would like to begin.

Mr.

Crepe, you want to kick us off?

Sure.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, real quick uh just looking at these numbers, the 48 to 100 million dollars for option one and the 82 million dollars for option two.

Um I'm not the CFO, but I have looked at the budget a time or two, and we don't have that money anywhere, do we?

We don't, and I think that's what's placed the city into these again, what I would describe as decades of inaction.

Because when you try to address a really large number that you can't address, typically what couldn't happen is inaction.

You just say, Well, we've got no money to put into it, we will do nothing.

That game only goes on for so long with facilities.

It's the same thing again.

I'll keep bringing up the car example.

You don't change your oil long enough.

You can pretend that you don't have that expense, and then you blow your engine.

We are at the blown engine part of this history of this campus.

Um, and when that engine blows, now you have real expenses.

And that's again when I brought up we need to start coming back to council now to address some of these plumbing electrical issues, are um many, many issues that I could bring up.

These are now going forward going to be real expenses.

So option one and option two, to your point, Vice Mayor, I would advise is being um not they're not possible.

We do not have that funding.

That's not an option for us.

Um, what it is an option would be option three towards a smaller amount versus an ongoing maintenance issue on our campus.

That is again, as I brought up, a rising tide that will help our structural deficit, frankly, on the short term, medium term, and very much on the long term, once the economic vibrancy really starts running.

Thank you.

Um, Miss Scott, you talked about a development agreement a couple of times for the layman.

Can you describe how that works with a uh property exchange?

So in a property exchange, it's not the same as what we've seen on, say, White House side or when we did um the senior center.

And those instances, we do a disposition and development agreement.

Um, and those times we really lay out what the city wants to see or the community wants to see in that development, and we hold their feet to the fire on that.

Um, it's a very long process, and a property exchange that can't happen.

There can be a development agreement, which is a very different form of agreement.

Um, that a development agreement can be something that lays out a possible project, but once that exchange happens, the city loses control, doesn't no longer have control of the property.

That's why it's very important to put it in the hands of a trusted developer partner that we know will think about the needs of the community when doing this because the city does not control what that development is.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

Thank you very much.

Um then when you we're talking about consolidation, I understand the um the efficiencies for businesses and residents for this campus, but should there be a property exchange if we move into a to a larger belt?

I think I get what I'm trying to get at is that this is a deceptively small um campus in terms of office space.

So if you could talk to the talk about that for a second and then talk to you, would there be any further um efficiencies for the general public with a consolidation and how that would benefit the city from outside just this campus?

I'd be happy to.

We have we do not have enough usable space.

There's not there's a lot of space in here that we we just can't.

Um right now we've outgrown everything.

We have an entire building, which we call the old West America Bank site across the street that is completely unusable and can't be um people cannot be in that building.

So it may look like we have it may look like we have something like 90,000 square feet over here when we really have about 40,000 square feet of usable space and 350 employees.

Um, what was the second?

I'm sorry, I forgot the second half of your question.

The second part would be if we were to move into something that was say 50, 70, 80,000 square feet, whatever it might be.

What other efficiencies could come from that in terms of consolidation, not just for the general public, but from a city standpoint?

How could that affect us positively?

It could be amazing for a city from a staff point of just city uses, like we can get a lot of departments together.

Right now, it's not just a major thing is serving the public, but our departments are disjointed.

We could bring staff together to work proactively together.

We could have a more modern, efficient use.

We can bring a lot more employees in than we are able to consolidate here.

So there are a multitude of efficiencies that we can bring.

Thank you.

And my last question is in the property exchange model, how do we avoid further long-term liabilities like we have here?

Is there a way that we could, you know, so we don't we don't move how do we not move into something that has further ongoing expenses down the line that we maybe incur how?

In a new in a new building.

Um there's a property exchange does work in the same way as a purchase and sale agreement in the matter that there'll be um a portion of time that we would enter into an inspection period where we're going to inspect the property that's chosen by council if you decide to move forward and make sure that we um are moving into a building that is in great shape.

Again, what's going to be very important to your point so that we don't get into a situation where we have deferred maintenance is we're going to put together a facilities plan that makes sense, and we're gonna ask come to council and ask you to fund a plan year over year where facilities can actually maintain the structure to that standard.

So we don't find ourselves in the situation that we are now.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Miss Ben Wales.

McDonald.

Thank you so much for this presentation.

This has been a tough one for me, and I know I've been super clear about it.

Where I'm like, can you tell me if we invest this?

What's the economic output from that?

So I appreciate all of you taking time to help even my brain digest, which is a big topic in economics, um, and then be able to go back to our community with some sound bites of how it works just on slide 48, why we have to do something, what it means to our general fund, and what it means to the longevity and sustainability of the city of Santa Rosa.

So I have so much gratitude right now for the work that went into this.

I love the data that you gave to us, Mr.

Adair, with um knowing that everybody has weighed in on this.

I really appreciate that it's been data-driven, and so it can come back to council in a way that we can really stand behind what we what we what I believe the council is going to decide to do today if I'm a gambling woman, which I am.

So a couple of things for clarification, if I may.

Um, have we talked about, and and this is not to deter what the plan is right now, but have we talked about not having all the employees in the downtown area?

Um, I've seen that happen where they'll they'll say maybe this is a building outside of the downtown area that's cheaper or a little bit less for us to maintain.

Can you give me just a little bit of why it's so important to be downtown besides just City Hall?

Keeping these 350 employees downtown is really vital to the businesses downtown.

So um, and director Osborne, if you want to um weigh in on this, I'd love to hear what you have to say, but we have heard from businesses over and over again that are actually like oh, this city is today, the city is off today or closed today, we'll close our restaurant today.

It's very vital to keep those 350 employees in the downtown.

Could you go to lunch or what's the what's the goal of that?

Just ease of actually coming to get a permit and actually going through the steps for a business.

I think it factors into a few things that get into human behavior, which is very convenience-driven.

Um, that oftentimes, if you have employees in your downtown, those employees are spending dollars based on the services that exist in the downtown from a convenience standpoint.

So having over 300 employees in the downtown does support businesses that provide lunch.

It does support businesses that provide dinner, it supports businesses that provide goods that from a convenience standpoint, employees are doing on their breaks.

So one of the big issues that occurred in the downtown is when the banks started reducing the number of employees that they physically had in the building, and then they started leaving the downtown.

That created a significant impact to the businesses that really fed off of the employees that circulated in that area.

So ensuring that those tax dollars are created through the day, jobs do that.

Okay, thank you so much for that.

That's helpful as well.

On slide 38, you talked about an exempt surplus space.

Does that mean tax exempt when we do the exchange so they are able to not pay the tax if we're exchanging?

No, the word exempt, and I apologize if that was confusing.

The word exempt is exempt surplus.

So it's just in relation to the actual act, the surplus lands act.

So it there's two ways to surplus property.

Um, it's either exempt or not exempt.

Usually it's a buildable or not buildable, but in this case, with an exchange, uh the state allows you to call it exempt surplus.

It has nothing to do with taxes at all.

Um, and saying that it's exempt surplus means that you do not have to go out through the entire surplus lands act process, you get to just exchange, which is a big piece of this puzzle.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Um, Scott, could you tell me if we have to have a bond or anything to be able to pay for the new property?

I understand there could be potential costs associated with uh retrofitting that to fit a staff.

Yeah, thank you for your question, Councilman McDonald.

Um, I I don't want to get too ahead of the financing specifics, but I'll say broadly.

Our broad goal would would likely be to finance the exchange with available uh reserves of the city.

We are going to have a conversation uh later at budget adoption that maybe lays out the mechanics of what could potentially fit that option.

Um it will additionally again, these conversations are all connected, and so the themes that we've been bringing forward as part of the budget conversation of ensuring that we're maintaining a two-year window of council maintaining its uh policy around reserves is maintained, right?

The it needs to hit every aspect of that, but but to your to your question, yes, I would I think it would be very predictable that financing the building to match a useful life of us moving into it with our payments would be very advantageous to us on an ongoing budgeting basis.

So, really a full moving in the furniture fixtures, tenant improvements to get the build the the place all souped up for us when we're ready to move in.

That's that roughly what we're estimating around a million dollars of ongoing would end up providing for us, and we would do so the city through the financing mechanisms that we already take advantage of.

COPs, leasing financings that we used, for example, on Courthouse Square.

So, not not a unique way to approach it.

We've done this before, it would just be applying it towards a city facility.

Thank you.

I'm glad you addressed um the ongoing maintenance that has been neglected on all of our infrastructure, and I wouldn't just suggest it's the buildings we own downtown, just in general.

Um, I know the last time we talked about the policy of um the Calpers and when that starts to fall off, being able to bring policy back for deferred maintenance specifically.

So I'm happy to hear that there's a plan that's coming to us regarding this exchange and what will happen when we move to a new building so that we don't have the exact same same thing happen in 50 years to that council.

So that would be one of my cautionary things is getting that fiscal analysis of how much the new building would be to maintain and then appropriating money, and as we move forward on any type of exchanges or what we're gonna do in the city, that we're we're also looking at that.

Um I just have a couple more questions here because you've been so great about answering a lot of them as we move through the slides.

One thing that I know we continue to do is add people and um outdoor space and facilities, but we don't often account for that in our general fund budgeting.

So I think a public safety specifically.

So if we're infusing the downtown with more people, we're infusing it with you know more things for us to take care of, and we're getting income of about two million dollars a year.

How do we plan to offset that if we have to bolster our services to serve people?

Or what can you tell me how that works economically?

Thank you for that question, and I think what's core in the conversations that we've been having around that specific concept is that the best growth that can happen in the city from a financials perspective is downtown.

Frankly, we have more of an investment around public safety, we have more tools in our toolbox to provide services to the community here versus our neighborhoods, right?

The neighborhoods are more spread out, there's more streets, there's more infrastructure with them in those areas.

There is absolutely a uh a simpler financial model for more dense development downtown, and I think again, this this plays into some things that have been building downtown, whether that's the EIFD, to me, I see this as the catalyst potentially the catalyst project that these other policies and decisions have been kind of waiting for.

It's a chicken or the egg conversation.

I'm not sure which is the chicken or which is the egg, um, but one of them is is one of them.

So, yes, I think I think there's an opportunity there.

Thank you.

And um, do we have anything when we do a property exchange where we make sure that there's a some language on when they break ground?

I know once you give it over, it's kind of at the discretion of the developer on what they want to develop.

But is there anything that you can add that requires it to be done in a short amount of time?

Well, we we don't, as you said, we don't have the opportunity in this kind of agreement to be able to say it's gonna be done in a long time.

That's again is why we need a trusted development partner to push that forward.

Um, if we do do, if council does decide to do an actual development agreement with the developer that's chosen, um, that development agreement will only last for so many years.

So they will be incentivized to do that development within that time span.

That's helpful.

Thank you so much for answering my questions.

I appreciate the presentation today.

Thank you.

Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

I had a quick question about the economic development and having staff downtown, which I think is very important, but which I've also heard from um retailers and restaurants downtown is that when staff aren't here or when things are closed, that there are not as many people down here.

So I know that that is one portion of it, but how do we tackle the second portion?

Would that be through the housing to ensure that there is constant because I mean it sounds great to have an 18-hour downtown from someone that gets off work and wants to go downtown to do things?

And sometimes unfortunately, it's dead.

Yeah, thank you, council member, for that question.

I think and and similar to what Mr.

Wagner mentioned, much of this is the chicken or the egg and the concept of what has to happen first to be the catalyst for the next.

And I think a lot of the discussion was either businesses or housing produces the foot traffic that the businesses benefit from.

But in some situations, the housing becomes more attractive when the businesses are there because they're creating that environment and the services.

So really it's been an investment, and I think that's why multi-use is really so critical because multi-use development tries to bring in all the components and it tries to create that ecosystem within a singular development.

But really, the strategy in the past has been to push the housing units because, in addition to the workforce, which has changed over the years with remote work, not everybody's in the office at the same time, and many of the businesses that focused on the day services have felt that.

So as the residential comes in, does that support more of a night service?

And I think many of what happens as you modernize a downtown, the business practices change along with that to meet the demands.

So really what we have focused on is it becomes a foot traffic issue, and those pieces that develop the foot traffic, both on the commercial and the residential side are really critical to the businesses because they're the customers.

But the spending practices of those customers are dynamic, and the downtown businesses will have to expand their business model to account for what the more modern look of the downtown looks like in the future.

But I think it's really just increasing that foot traffic because it has fallen off over the years and it can happen in a few different ways.

So when you look at the type of housing that you would like to promote, I'll say downtown, just economics.

I would think people that are low income spin could possibly spend less money on going out to a restaurant or going out to the bar or whatever.

So how are how are we trying to balance having both low-income, very low income housing within our core, and also having people that can help with the economic drivers?

I hope I'm asking the question correctly.

Yes, you are, and I think it's a very difficult problem to solve.

Um so there obviously is a housing for all concept that we have to maintain an equitable balance in our housing delivery to the community.

Um, and unfortunately, when people get stressed, much of our money goes into housing or things that do not generate sales tax.

So it gets into a discussion about discretionary spending.

Um, and many of the downtown communities that have really sort of revitalized have done so around market rate housing, and the reason being is because it brings that discretionary income into the equation.

I do think that there is a creative inclusionary model where you can look at different income levels, that 80% AMI in our community is very difficult to hit.

A lot of us are really sitting at that level, but that also does not mean that 80% AMI is not enjoying the amenities that exist in downtown.

Um so I think it really is balancing the diversity, but there is really an important component from an economic development standpoint of discretionary spending and how that discretionary spending stays within the downtown ecosystem.

Um thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

This is very, very exciting, even to just have the conversation.

Indeed.

Uh, other questions from colleagues?

This funny?

Yeah, thank you.

I really appreciate how thoughtful you have all been and creative about solving a problem that just absolutely has to be solved.

Um, I don't think there's any doubt that there's a better solution out there than this.

Um, you know, my questions are just around how we're gonna maintain as much um public control over as much of the future development, and by that, you know, being really smart about the developers that we choose to work with, and then you know, just the future of housing and affordable housing in our downtown.

I want to balance the fact that we have a lot of affordable housing proportionally in our downtown, the value that having affordable housing um brings to our downtown in terms of workforce, but the real cost to the future of our enhanced infrastructure finance district by continuing to cite affordable housing in down the downtown and to discourage future affordable how housing that would have welfare exemptions in this specific boundaries of the EIFD at this point in time while we're working on capitalizing it in the short run.

Thank you.

Um just a uh excuse me, an historical question for me, a bit of additional context, and you've you've all highlighted it very nicely.

Uh, but can you can you talk again about how long this decision, this issue has been percolating?

So for the public, this is this is emerging suddenly onto the scene.

But even for me, a relatively new council member.

Uh, this this was being sort of talked about on council three years ago as we were we knew we had a problem emerging, we were looking for opportunities.

You gave an example of one of the slides about how this was looked at back in 2020.

Uh, I suspect it goes back many years before that for the public.

Can you give a sense of the progression of this issue and why it's coming to a head right now?

Sure, I'd be happy to.

So I'll give you a few examples.

Um I've been with the city for 25 years.

When I first started, they were talking about this.

Um, they knew that the buildings were old then and that we needed to move.

Uh, another interesting example, I was us talking to Director Burke today who started in 2003 and said that she the first few months that she was here in 2003, um, everyone told her don't get too comfortable, we're gonna move soon.

We need to get off this property.

That was in 2003.

So I thought that was a funny story.

Um, we have myself over the last 10 years have worked on multiple trying to find multiple different solutions.

Um, we've spent so much staff time and effort trying to figure out how to do this, and as I alluded to in the picture, there has never been one that has been fiscally feasible that we could find.

Um, and at this moment, all the puzzle pieces have come together.

Um, and so we have an opportunity right now that we haven't had in the last 20 years.

Thank you for that.

Um, and so that and so the catalyst are one, there's an opportunity, and those opportunities don't don't always emerge, and there's a real need.

Um, and I do I do appreciate the scare tactics.

Believe me, we we heard it here on the dais.

Um, but I'm thinking about the skeptics in our community who are gonna look at those slides, they're gonna say, Oh, those are big numbers.

Where did those numbers come from?

Um, Scott Wagner, are you really gonna drop a 48 million dollar request on council's desk here in in in the coming months?

Can we get a little bit more granular, a little bit more concrete, and if we decide to stay in our our historic brutalist chambers here, what are the bills that are coming due?

Give it give us can you can you break those down?

You mentioned eight HVAC, we know that's an issue.

We've got some ADA stuff.

Um, all of us have tripped on the steps walking in the council chambers.

Give give us some give us some examples of of the bills that really are coming to due in the next 12 to 18 months.

So just to preface those numbers, those came from facility assessment reports.

So those are all verified numbers.

Um the scary portion of it is that there are those unverified risks that we don't have numbers for that could take that forty-eight million dollar number and multiply it substantially.

So what we would need to see in the next few um within a year, I would say, um, and facilities would probably say, No, Joe, you need to do this in the next few months.

Um, we need to change out HVAC systems.

In order to do that, we need to remove asbestos.

In order to do that, we need to move out all of the employees and put them into lease space while we do the work.

You can't have staff here while you're doing this.

Then we need to upgrade electrical systems.

We have some very, very serious plumbing issues, and I mean with sewer systems that are very dangerous, that we need to update uh as soon as possible.

Um there are a multitude of different things.

Once we start opening up the building and doing those things, we have ADA concerns, we have lead concerns, we have seismic upgrades that need to happen.

Um, it goes on and on and on, and those are not even including lifestyle life cycle costs that I was talking about in the next five to eight years.

Um I'd like to add, uh, yeah it's true that I that we as staff would not be coming back for a 48 million dollar request, but but the specifics there are very important is that what we will be coming back with if we decide to stay is a is a financing of that 48 million dollars that then locks the city into this campus, potentially.

So it is it would it would really double down on the city remaining within this facility and would cause again to not have the greater issue addressed.

It's a band-aid to miss Scott's points.

We're talking about the basic functions of this campus.

We're talking electrical, plumbing.

Those are things that the public expect to exist in their city hall when they come to conduct their business here.

We have a responsibility to provide those things.

That's why, again, when when I when we mention that these numbers that have been on paper and facility reports, they have to be real going forward because it's not hard to Google City of Santa Rosa, City Hall, and see that we have shut down City Hall over the past couple years because the facility needed to be closed.

This is not theoretical anymore.

That can was kicked for decades, and this is the current group that unfortunately the CAN landed on.

And those those seven-figure requests which are coming in the near term, are those are those capital improvement program dollars or are those general fund dollars?

100% general fund dollars, which then would 100% impact our ability to provide public safety services, addressing our streets.

It would have an immediate impact to the services that the city provides to the public.

All right.

So we'd be forced to make capital improvements to a a to this facility, and that would um displace money that we're spending on public safety, parks, other key public services.

That's the that's the choice before council.

That's correct, Mayor.

All right.

All right, I'm gonna keep my community skeptic hat on for a moment.

Uh our colleagues over at the county, they thought about doing a program like this in the very recent past, where they they thought about moving some of their employees to a new facility with some of the same logic.

How how does our strategy differ?

With all due respect to the county, and I do have respect for them.

Um this is a property exchange, which is very different.

Um, this is fiscally what I would call a very fiscally reasonable and responsible way to do this.

Um any price that we would pay or developer that we would um come into an agreement with, um, the city would be very responsible in the costs of how they could do this.

So what we're looking at at one million dollars a year is a very small number comparatively to what the county does need to do.

Now the county does have a lot more employees than the city, and I don't want to um say anything negative about what they're trying to do at all, but ours is definitely a very fiscally responsible way to go.

That's clear.

Um, and do I recall the correctly that part of the county's strategy was to move uh several hundred employees out of Santa Rosa up to the up to um the site further north, and this was gonna have an economic impact on on our city.

As opposed to as opposed to our plan, which, and I'm glad uh council member McDonald highlighted this.

We're keeping everybody downtown.

We're doubling down on downtown Santa Rosa.

Correct.

Yes, we want to keep those 350 employees in the downtown and then add additional people through housing and commercial and multi-use.

Wonderful.

All right.

Well, this is sounding like the facilities version, a little bit like the facilities version of our pension reduction uh strategy, where all of a sudden there was an opportunity, an opportunity emerged, and the city has jumped on it in a way that's gonna save us tens of millions of dollars, actually, and and become an economic development driver.

Am I understanding that correctly, Mr.

Wagner?

I very much agree.

This fits in the theme of what we've been talking about over the past couple years of large fiscal liabilities that have developed in the city over decades, that this group is particularly dedicated to being creative and coming up with real solutions for to actionize them and bring them forward to council for action.

I very much agree.

But between a hundred million dollar city hall liability and a 482 million dollar bench and liability, if we can set the city on a path to have a plan to addressing these, which I believe we will, that creates a better Santa Rosa, reinvested Santa Rosa, as I talked about, a better version of us fiscally financially going forward.

Thank you.

And when Mr.

Back when Mr.

Wagner says this group, what he should what he means is the senior leadership team that we have here, starting with our city manager all the way through the rest of staff, who who in recent just in the last few months have come up with some incredibly creative and quick solutions that will be remembered in the city for the amount for the amount of money that they save and the economic development that they um that they catalyze.

We can't we can't thank you enough.

I think that's the end of my questions.

Anything else for my colleagues?

Mayor, I'd like to just offer two additional perspectives if I may.

So one is I really am so just so proud of this team as they were going through the presentation.

Um I was just so thrilled and excited for them because I know this is something that is really important to the staff, but it's also so important to the community to our business sector.

I see that Ananda's here from the chamber.

You know, I I think this is so transformative that it's an honor and privilege to be here today to just witness the conversation because it really could set Santa Rosa on a whole new different path.

I've had the privilege in my career to actually work on a new city hall for a city, and it was for the city of Long Beach.

In fact, if you go to Long Beach, you'll see there's this city hall, there's the port headquarters, and my name is actually on the plaque for the Port of Long Beach new headquarters because I had um you know the unique opportunity to be sitting on the Harbor Commission when we made the decision to do that.

It was a new construction, it wasn't a property exchange, but we were able to do a new construction in Long Beach because there was a port that generated $2 billion of revenue every single year.

And so the city had the port as a partner, they could consolidate uh port headquarters that was far away and get rid of the aged, deteriorating city hall structure that was not seismically appropriate, much like I'm sure our buildings are here.

And so the new construction made sense in that in that situation because of an economic engine that is very unique.

And here in Santa Rosa, the minute that I heard about this opportunity, for me, it was an absolute no-brainer with my CFO background.

There's no way that a new construction could be financially feasible.

The status quo cannot continue.

We are at that terminal point of the the asset life of the buildings that um our employees are actually you know working out of and that the public is coming to every single day.

This is a pivotal point, and we can no longer just continue the status quote.

There would have to be a budget recommendation on how to band-aid this situation, and you'd be locking it in for 30 years.

It just makes absolutely no sense from a financial standpoint, and so I just wanted to put my stamp of approval on it.

Yet again, I'm bringing it forward with the team, but it it's just really a no-brainer.

And then to the point on the housing, I would I would urge us not to look at any housing opportunities at this site to be either or uh, you know, market or affordable housing.

From my experience, when cities invest in their downtown to this degree, and you create a whole new economic engine with the vitality that can be provided with uh even in some cases, market rate housing.

For one, we have an inclusionary housing ordinance that's fantastic.

So we know we'll have affordable units, but the multiplier effect and the property tax that's generated allows for a lot more affordable housing development as well.

I saw that even in places like Huntington Beach, where the inclusionary housing ordinance ended up having there's I think 5,000 affordable housing units in Huntington Beach, you would never know it.

It's all within it's an inclusionary, truly inclusionary housing where it's being developed, but there was a spillover effect of what was happening in the downtown area in the red redevelopment areas with the waterfront Hilton, the waterfront Hyatt, if you've ever been there to that coastal city, but it all came from uh just the explosion of housing that developed because of all of the redevelopment that was happening and the property tax revenue every year exceeded our expectations.

And when your property tax is generating that level of a pickup above your standard, then you have the money to invest in affordable housing.

So it's not an either-or, it all has to be thought out very carefully.

You can do both, but it starts with for one, not sitting on prime real estate uh that we have, you know, for a public use that's so dispersed and so spread out.

I couldn't find my way to the interview to become the interim city manager without desperately calling Dominique, and I parked in garage nine.

I didn't know where it was going.

I went to the courthouse.

They were like, You we don't know why you're here.

And so, this is just not efficient for the public.

It's a great opportunity.

Um, I'm very much in support of this, and as someone who's worked on different projects with city halls and housing, and in my new role, I'll be working on affordable housing as well.

So I have a strong commitment to it.

It's not something that I don't believe in.

I'll be dedicating the next phase of my career to this.

This is a fantastic proposal, and I'm really proud of what the team has done, and hopefully, you know, you'll have confidence in this path forward.

Thank you, City Manager.

Given given your background and what you're what you're going off to do, uh, your Impermoder, um, your sign-off on this project.

That that's means a lot.

Um, let the let the record show, including for our press Democrat, that we've had we have not one, but two CFOs who have vetted this project and signed off.

Thank you both.

Uh, with that, let's open it up to public comment.

We have a few folks signed up already.

Mr.

DeWitt, would you like to kick us off?

Excellent.

All right, we'll warm that up for you.

But for those looking to make public comment, if we could use both podiums to keep this meet, keep this moving, and we're gonna have two minutes per public comment today, I understand.

All right, looky there.

Looky there.

All right.

Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I brought you an example from almost 30 years ago, in which at that time the business editor, the press democrat, was pointing out that 20 years before that, big mistakes were being made here in Santa Rosa regarding our city planning.

It's interesting to hear what you've all been talking about for years and pointing out now that we know in the public that the status quo has been doing nothing, and that there basically has been a dearth of investment in our public assets, and now we're at the point where because of the deferred maintenance over all these decades, you just want to tear it down.

It's a sad state of affairs because this building is only 61 years old.

It's younger than me.

I've been here throughout this whole situation, and this is actually if you'll look at it in a different manner.

We don't have a trusted developer to go to to work with.

The picture that I saw was of the ATT building right across the street over here.

I would suggest that you lease from the federal building and the state building, which have numerous vacancies right now.

Why don't you just put a million dollars a year into leasing and let somebody else take care of the stuff that you don't take care of?

That's what this all boils down to.

Deferred maintenance hasn't been taken care of, and it will never be taken care of because your status quo is doing nothing.

What I'd really like to point out, and this is really important.

There's a term for all of this, and you can look it up in any American English language dictionary.

It's a textbook definition of a boondoggle.

People coming forward saying, Oh, we gotta do this with the public's asset, and that'll make it better.

That's what Ernest Hahn said to us 50 years ago as they tore down our downtown and put the Third Street to pressure.

Thank you, Dwayne.

We'll move on to Mr.

Lopez and then Miss Sweet.

Welcome, Omar.

Good afternoon, everybody.

My name's Omar Lopez.

I'm the policy coordinator at Generation Housing.

Um we're here today to express our support for these efforts.

Specifically, we support option three, which is the property exchange with the preservation of the creek.

Uh staff stated seven acres in the heart of downtown uh Santa Rosa, sitting underutilized as a missed opportunity, not just for housing, but also for jobs and for the tax base that funds the services our community depends on.

The status quo isn't productive, it's an annual drain with an immediate $100 million price tag and maybe more.

Public investment anchors growth and gentle done city will help activate it.

And Justice House Kathati, just this week, sorry, uh Katharis showed the North Bay how sustained focused investment in housing and economic development can produce a budget surplus while the rest of the region struggles.

That's what long-term thinking buys you.

The city and stealership have shown their willingness to engage in this long-term thinking, which we saw in last week's conversation of SB 10 and AB 1033.

Um these state policies can incentivize housing development on existing parcels closer to existing amenities, and they're especially relevant around downtown where gentle density and new ownership opportunities can connect more people to a thriving core.

Santa Rosa has the land, the policy direction, and the moment and the moment.

We urge you to move forward with option three, and at the same time, we urge you to continue the AB 1033 and SB10 conversation and how it can tie into this work.

Like the presentation states.

Standing still isn't free.

Every year we wait, the community pays more and gets less.

And by the way, I was born in 2003.

So this conversation has been going on my entire life.

Just a fun fact.

That's it.

That's a good conclusion, Omar.

Thank you very much.

Ananda, you're up.

Mayor Stapp, Council members, my name's Ananda Sweet, CEO of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce.

First, thank you for the thoughtful consideration of city expenses and fiscal stability in this conversation today.

And thank you for leaning into economic development opportunities downtown.

We know that a strong, vibrant downtown serves at the heart of our economic economic heart of our community.

Strategic investments downtown that increase foot traffic, activate public spaces, and attract investment result in an economic multiplier effect that supports long-term economic vitality and city fiscal stability.

Public private partnerships and tools that encourage private investment downtown have a strong track record of creating meaningful impact by combining public vision with private resources for strategic investment.

We appreciate your strong desire to keep city staff downtown, and we urge your ongoing supportive efforts to activate downtown as the economic engine of our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ananda, the Santa Santa Rosa Metro Chamber.

Ms.

Close.

Thank you.

Hi, Jen Close, ED of Generation Housing.

I just wanted to add a little something to Omar's great and official Generation Housing comment.

But we're really in support of this in option three.

And I understand Mr.

DeWitt's skepticism because as you all noted, we've been talking about this for an Omar's entire life.

And so, you know, that seems natural, but what I see up here is a lot of excitement right now from staff.

I feel the energy is palpable.

I see it here at the council, and I see you all wanting to be doers.

And you get to be doers.

And so I want to congratulate you for that mindset for taking a growth approach to this.

And say that we are here to support you any uh way we can.

I of course want to echo and and um and repeat our urging to also pursue other housing solutions at the same time that can actually bolster and feed into this downtown focus.

Um and the other thing, and I just I actually was prompted to stand up here unplanned because of the city manager's reference of um the city of Long Beach where I was uh just this fall.

And if you haven't been to that um city hall and and that city center, it's absolutely extraordinary.

But what's also extraordinary about Long Beach is that it's the best urban schools in the country, the best urban schools in the country, and that part of those and that those things exist together because of long-range planning that we're cooperative and we're intersectional and understood that they need um to have strong schools to feel to feel the strong workforce, and then that that's gonna create a stronger economy, and that that cycle is gonna repeat itself.

And so the other thing is that I just want to say that just kind of like we've done any time post-disaster, and maybe we could call this an economic disaster, um, is that we really think all of us and work cooperatively with our other community partners, with the schools, with the workforce developers, making sure we're gonna have the construction workforce we need to make your exciting vision happen, all of that.

So, any in any way uh case, I'm excited.

Um, I grew up here, and we talked about Courthouse Square my entire life.

Thank you, Jen, and thank you for the tie-in education.

Good good segue.

Uh, are there other members of the public who would like to comment on this item?

Yes, Janice, you have the floor.

Yes, and thank you, Mark.

Uh Mayor.

Um I really appreciate the uh presentation today.

I sat in on the beginning of what looked like the uh opening uh last week at the design review, and um I I think that there's a lot of details that are coming into focus and it's looking good, but it is a lot of money.

I'm gonna say, top of my head, I'd like to see this unfold in like three projects that happened and had incentivized deadlines for how to do it.

The the other thing is that uh when you were uh talking about it, um, there there weren't a lot of things that were coming to my mind that we needed still.

And I started talking here about AI uh about two years ago, a year and nine months ago, and now I realize that I have somebody sitting here that could talk all about it.

But uh AI is really finally hitting, and uh we did finally have a uh really good uh presentation conversation.

I think it was in October last year, maybe it was August, from our top person at the city, and that was at the finance uh committee meeting.

Uh it's probably the 31st of uh September, 30th of September, something like that.

But uh the uh other thing is I was present at the county when uh the assessor uh property uh treasurer was uh pushing the EFID, and he was doing that because he felt that Santa Rosa would offer the county money.

So there's not enough time to do all of this, but I hope that it's not made a decision today.

I hope it comes back with AI and the building.

If you're trying to turn it for the building at the community, I mean the county, that building is really in bad shape.

And my husband worked for 17 years in the beginning of the time.

Thank you, Janice, Fred.

Good afternoon, members of the city council and staff.

Um, this was a pretty good sales job, and uh one of the things I've learned when as a shopper is don't buy the first car on the lot, and I also really don't like pressure sales, so I think that it's it would be good to not just go for a vote on this today.

Um, I'm thinking about uh 1960s urban renewal and the promise of urban revitalization and the the displacement and the segregation that came about as a result of urban renewal and the the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats and trickles down, that didn't ever pan out.

What panned out is that people end up on the other side of the tracks and unincorporated areas, and what I see coming here is is a kind of further segregation of market rate housing, the economic vitality of those guys spending, and then all the housing getting forced onto Santa Rosa Avenue.

And so I think, as you recall in the South Santa Rosa Pacific plan, the city council did direct staff to pay more attention to the displacement and gentrification issues as a result of that economic development plan as well, and so I think that would be called for here as well.

Um the downtown area has just as many disadvantaged communities as Santa Rosa Avenue.

You're the city fathers and mothers, and the city residents are your family, and so you need to take care of everybody here, and the people who are on the lower end of the spectrum just keep losing out.

That rising tide does not lift all boats.

So I would suggest that that you leverage this sale with the city had a blueprint already for a hotel condos, etc.

Make a blueprint that will have a better spread of all different types of income mixed in there, and also that um that uh running out of time here.

But uh that I would suggest that you really do leverage it as best you can and don't take a bad deal.

Thank you, Mr.

Albach, Mr.

Schwartz.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I'd like to take a moment.

I'm Paul Schwartz, I'm a commercial real estate broker here in Santa Rosa, also a member of the Generation Housing Advisory Board.

I just like to comment that I think uh I in a conversation with uh Jill recently, uh she used the term game changer for this proposal, and I I truly see it that way.

I compliment the staff on creating what it could be an absolute game changer for downtown Santa Rosa and Santa Rosa as a whole.

I think the imp the economic impetus for other investments in Santa Rosa would be greatly improved and streamlined and fast tracked, I'll say by virtue of a project of this magnitude.

I think the economic benefits are uh both direct and indirect, and I think it it's absolutely the best thing that could happen in the downtown area, not just for City Hall, but for the entire community, and I uh compliment the staff again on the work that's been done and encourage you to support it wholeheartedly.

Thank you.

Paul, thank you very much.

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

Seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back to uh to council for final comments.

Ms.

Fleming.

Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to sort of synthesize a little bit of what I've heard today from um the public comment that came out.

It's always so wonderful to hear these different perspectives.

Um, you know, Fred said something about a high high pressure sale, and I just want to say that this is not the first time the council has been introduced to this idea.

This is not the second time that we've we've considered this.

In fact, in the entire eight years that I've been on council, I've heard versions of this, and so I just want to take a moment to say that this has not been a fast or rushed process, that this has been something that our professional staff, our teams of people have been working on for decades in order to bring us something that makes sense, and so um the way that I'll be giving my direction is to encourage us to go with option three.

Um it may seem like a high pressure sale, it's honestly our only good option, and sometimes that happens where we have to make a decision that um is happens to be a good decision, and it happens to be the only decision, but that doesn't make it a bad decision.

In this case, it's actually a pretty good choice, and it's a clear one for me.

So thank you for your hard work.

I'm supporting option three.

Thank you, Miss Ben Willows.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, first of all, I want to thank you all for such a thorough presentation.

Um, and I just want to say I um I also uh support option three.

I it to me it's the only thing that makes sense, and as um city manager said it it's a no-brainer.

Um, and I don't feel pressured in any way either.

I think I think um we know what we have a real good idea of the condition of our buildings, and we're not alone in this.

This is happening across Santa Rosa and across the county.

Um, and so I I think this is an opportunity to take control of our situation here at the city, and it would be a shame if we didn't.

So um I just wanted to say that I'm most interested just in general um, of course, economic development and job creation.

I thought those and those are the things that uh drive me to say we need to make this this change, and also um to make sure that the the residents that come to see us are safe as well as our employees.

We want them to be safe as well.

So um I just want to um thank you for this.

I think it's long over, obviously way long overdue since 2003, Omar, since you were born, uh, and probably longer than that.

And so um uh, yeah, I want to support this completely, and um I'm really anxious for the next steps.

So thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

McDonald.

Yeah, thanks again for the presentation.

I love challenging the status quo.

I always use that, Dr.

Phil.

You know, how's this working for us?

It's just not.

That's why we've been continuing to, you know, kick that can down the road, and then I like to say some of our roads are dirt roads with a bunch of potholes in them, and this building is the um that exactly.

So, you know, the city's been faced with a lot in the last decade.

If you look at the tragic wildfires and the emergency issues we've had across the city, it's easy to see why deferred maintenance wasn't the top of our list in the last decade.

So, you know, it's it's fun to be able to play Monday morning quarterback.

They shoulda woulda coulda.

We um can want to hang the sins of the fathers on poor decisions, but really we have an opportunity right now to be not only transformative to the downtown Santa Rosa to be able to create this space and an economic driver for the city, um, but it is a good choice.

Uh, no one will strong arm me into making a decision based on being last minute.

I think that I'm pretty clear about that.

I don't mind voting no if I don't believe in something.

The research that went into this, the data-driven research that you brought forward to council, um, is actually I think a reflection of how thoughtful we've been over the years and what we wanted to see before we were able to make a really solid decision and having the ability to do the property exchange.

Everything just seemed to line up right now.

So um absolutely I'm gonna be supporting option three.

I leave it to our professional staff to find out the best way to not only create those economic drivers in our downtown area, but to create opportunities for retail and housing for people that um need it, and so thank you again for this presentation today.

I feel like I'm much more well-versed in how this um the economy is going to be driven by these developments, and so well done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Over to Miss Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I definitely support option three.

Um I can't say it enough.

This is very exciting.

Thank you for all of your work um that you've put in to this process, and it has been a long time coming.

I I think that for the public, it may seem as if we're doing things uh very quickly.

Um, but the infrastructure that we have here at City Hall.

I know I can't speak for everyone, but it has kept me up at night, knowing some of the things that are going on here and some of the things our staff have to deal with.

Um, in addition, I'm very excited about having a hub to make it our what we to make sure that the public can access the services that we have more efficiently and they don't have to go to multiple places.

So this is very exciting.

I look forward to seeing what you have to bring, continue to bring things uh to council um for us to look at and approve and just thank you for having uh the approach to look at everything because we could look at it very siloed, but it's not, it's all interconnected.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Alvarez.

Thank you, Mayor.

You know, for myself, it really comes down to that I'm very thankful that we're not facing litigation, we're not facing lawsuits from our staff and employees of the city of Santa Rosa, and that the stars align themselves where we have an opportunity before us that we could take advantage of and only improve the services uh for our city, but also the the workforce, the the morale.

But going back to our community, you're absolutely right.

How many times have we been stopped outside?

Uh, trying to find the permitting window, trying trying to find the city managers, the clerks.

And it all starts of the way that we are providing services for our community.

That's what we're each one of us are here doing.

So to be able to improve that, improve the the customer service, I think that's what ultimately people are going to be most appreciative of, even if they don't know what's happening behind the scenes.

Now, going back so many years of of this conversation, this can be kicked down the road.

Uh it's it's time, and I I'm definitely honored to be part of the of the team, the the the city that took the initiative to theoretically grab the the horn by its bulls of horns.

You raise everything.

You want to try that again?

No.

I I I do not want to try again, actually.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Uh, but nonetheless, though it's time.

It's time, and I'm glad I'm part of that team that's making it happen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thanks.

Yeah, uh, just I don't think I need to, I think you already have your direction, but I agree with the direction of my colleagues.

Um, option three is not only the best, but the only option.

But I do usually we say, like, hey, can we you know pull back and look at a greater view of things?

What I'd like to do is like zoom in, um, because these are some big numbers and some big issues.

And uh, Ms.

Scott, I think you told me this story is um when our air conditioner breaks, um, and I know first we're problem, air conditioner breaks, right?

But in order to fix it, we can't go to Home Depot or or order a part.

Our team has to go online to like eBay or some other secondary market place to find dated parts that they don't make anymore, so that they can have them delivered and fixed, because we can't replace the air conditioner at in whole because then you get into the asbestos and all the other issues that you've raised already, and it just it's this Pandora's box.

So it's not just this greater issue of over the next X amount of years, it's gonna cost Y amount of money.

It's on a day-to-day basis, our teams are running into issues because of the condition of our facilities.

And so um, I just want to kind of uh uh zoom in on that and just how difficult it is for our teams on a regular basis.

Um, but uh really appreciate the presentation, all the work that went into it, the laundry list of resources that you've used that to verify those numbers is exceptional.

Um, and so thank you so much.

Thank you, and likewise I will not repeat um all of the all of the points my colleagues made, all of which I agree with.

Option three is is obviously the only the only choice we have here.

Um what I would like to highlight is the um the big swings that staff are taking, how you are coming to council with with things that really move the needle in a big way.

I mean, we're not playing small ball anymore.

That is a testament to you, it's a testament to Miss Farrell and the leadership that she has brought here in in her six months here.

We're we're the the environment that has been created for our staff to feel comfortable coming to council with ideas like this and forcing us outside our comfort zone, holding you know, for nudging us to take bigger swings.

That's the real long-term value to the city, um, above and beyond uh uh potentially a new city hall in some economic development.

Please keep doing that.

This is this is just wonderful to be a part of this.

Uh and that concludes my remarks.

Uh, any anything else from your end?

Do you have the direction that you need?

All right, this was fantastic.

Thank you.

But the fun's not over, folks.

We're gonna move on.

We'll let our team uh vacate the the dais and then we're gonna move on quickly to uh we had no we had no report, we have no we had no closed session.

Oh, I guess we had a study session.

Do we need to report?

Madam City Manager, report on a study session.

I don't think we do, do we?

All right, we can move right along.

Uh let's move on to our proclamation uh for the for the evening item 7.1, our proclamation in honor of LGBTQ plus Pride Month.

And for that, I'm gonna turn to Miss Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

Whereas the City of Santa Rosa recognizes the month of June as lesbian gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning LGBTQ plus pride month.

June is recognized nationally as LGBTQ plus Pride Month, a time to honor the history, struggles, and achievements of the LGBTQ plus community.

And whereas the city of Santa Rosa will continue to advocate for LGBTQ plus rights against defiance and hardship through practice and continuation of alliance and advocacy, safety and security will increase for LGBTQ plus individuals in Santa Rosa, by promoting safety and security, LGBTQ plus individuals will trust that the city of Santa Rosa cares for their protection from place in community, and whereas Santa Rosa is proud to be a diverse, welcoming, and inclusive community that values the dignity and worth of every individual, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, identity, or gender expression.

And whereas LGBTQ plus individuals have made invaluable contributions to the cultural, civic, economic, and social fabric of the beautiful city of Santa Rosa.

And whereas the city of Santa Rosa commits to fostering a city where everyone is free to live authentically, love openly, and thrive without fear.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that our mayor, Mark Staff, on behalf of the entire city council, do hereby proclaim June 2026 as LGBTQ Pride Month in Santa Rosa and encourage all residents to honor this observance of authenticity and love.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Rogers.

And do we have Joy here to say a few remarks?

Oh, please.

Yeah, head to the nearest podium.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Joy Bessin, and I'm the youth advocate for LGBTQ Connection Sonoma.

Thank you, Mayor Stapp and the Santa Rosa City Council, for this proclamation that declares June as Pride Month here in Santa Rosa.

It is an honor to be accepting this proclamation for the second year in a row on behalf of my team who contribute immensely and wholeheartedly to our mission of serving the diverse LGBTQIA plus community in Sonoma County.

As a queer individual and a Santa Rosa native, it is my honor to be accepting this proclamation on behalf of the LGBTQIA plus community here in Santa Rosa.

This proclamation means more than words can say.

It reflects a commitment to equality, respect, and safety in this city.

This proclamation is appraisal for the vibrant and beautiful queer community of Santa Rosa with a rich history that deserves to be protected, embraced, and conserved, not just for Pride Month, but for all year round.

Through every intersection of identity, queer trans black and indigenous people of color have contributed abundantly to transformative justice in our community and beyond.

We must amplify their voices, represent them, and provide inclusive spaces for them to thrive.

The recent political climate and current administration have been detrimental to our local LGBTQIA plus communities and LGBTQIA plus communities at large.

In times like these, recognition for the LGBTQIA plus community is so important and highly valued.

When we can come together and be proud of ourselves and each other, it is nothing to be taken for granted.

When our humanity and visibility is faced with scrutiny and vitriol, moments when we can come together and celebrate our achievements is our own form of resistance.

We must keep feeling joy and appreciating the little and big steps we make toward a better future ahead.

Thank you all and happy Pride Month.

Joy, thank you very much.

And we're gonna want to do a photo here in just a minute with you and anybody who who came with you.

But first, are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this proclamation?

Miss Rogers.

So I just wanted to take the opportunity to say being a mother of someone that is uh transgender.

My daughter has dreamed of moving away and owning a lot of land.

That has always been her dream.

But with the current climate right now, as much as I would love for her to stay in California forever, um, I'm getting my my wish, but not the way that I would like to get my wish.

My daughter does not feel safe to leave California.

And so I'm happy that there is a place, although it's very restrictive for her right now.

I'm happy there is a place that she can be and feel safe and feel at home.

And even within our family, um, there has been some behaviors or attitudes I would say that I'm not very proud of from uh some of her family members.

And so I this hits home for me because I just want my baby, the person that I brought home from the hospital to always feel loved.

Um so thank you for being here.

Thank you for for doing this.

But it's not about preference, it's not about any of that, it's about everyone is a person, and we all deserve to be here.

We all deserve to be loved.

And so, regardless who my child lays down with or who she decides she wants to be a part of or whatever she wants to be.

That's okay with me because I love her because she is her.

I don't love her for a pronoun.

And so I just wish more people would see that and people that were all people, and we all deserve to be here, and we all deserve to be loved and have compassion and empathy.

So that would be all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Rogers.

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

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

And Joy, why don't you come on down?

If there's anybody with you, please please bring them.

Let's take a let's take a photo.

Joy, thank you again.

All right, let's move on to uh item item nine, nine point one, or item nine, actually, our city manager and city attorney's reports.

Madam City Manager, any report this evening.

No report this evening, Mayor.

I just wanted to, since it's my last city council meeting, I just wanted to thank all of you for what has been an incredible six months.

I've just had uh the most exhilarating and fun time here, despite the seventeen and a half million dollar challenge and all of the other challenges that I had to address while I was here, and it's just a huge testament to how amazing this city is.

It's left an imprint uh on my heart.

When I came, I thought I would do this and then quickly retire.

I needed to pay one more uh the two quarters of tuition, and so um I really thought, okay, I could do six months and and learn the community and do my work and move.

I didn't expect to get entangled uh in a good way in terms of my heart and my soul and really feeling a sense of community and a warmth here that I've really been thankful for, and it it was from everybody, the community, the employees, and obviously all of you.

I've I've mentioned to some of the employees how in my career I've always gotten two out of the three.

Either uh a city will have great community, great employees, but sometimes the city council is, you know, constantly infighting and they don't get along, and that makes it difficult for staff, or the council gets along beautifully, and the employees too, but the community really struggles with whether we're being transparent, and you know, there's a tough relationship in terms of building trust with the community and different permutations and combinations, and this is really the first time in my career where I feel like all three were really strong, that there was there's always trust that needs to be built with the community, but the community here is respectful and they're engaged and they want what's best.

You as a council have wanted what's best for the community, and the employees have been really dedicated and very creative.

And so it I just want to thank you for the opportunity.

I know you'll be in great hands with uh soon-to-be interim city manager Jason Nutt, but I just wanted to thank you for your dedication to this community.

I've experienced it firsthand.

The courage that you show to make bold decisions is not common.

The ethics that I've shown that you've shown, and that I've experienced the integrity and the character that you bring to the work is extraordinary, and it's also not always the case.

And the care that you've shown for the employees has been wonderful, and giving me the latitude and the freedom to lead in a way that was authentic for me and that I felt was productive and really enabled for us to be as creative as we felt like we could be, and you gave us the grace to do that and encourage that along the way, and I'm really thankful for that.

This was so meaningful for me that it made me decide not to retire and then go back to my home community and you know take on you know a role that has some really significant challenges.

So I don't know if I'll be blaming you all for that in a few months when I can't fix the homelessness problem and the greater Los Angeles County area uh through this public financing agency.

But thank you for filling my cup and for healing that part of me that felt like local government was broken, and it just meant so much to me to have the opportunity to get to know you all so much better and to work together to serve this incredible community.

So thank you.

But we should we want to we want to linger uh on our city city manager for just a second.

Um thank you for those words, Lorianne.

Uh, and I'll I'll speak on behalf of council to start, and then council can weigh in way in afterwards.

Uh, when we invited you here, it was with a pretty narrow portfolio.

We knew we had some budget challenges, we wanted some expertise in the area, and your background was was Taylor Maine.

And you could have come here and focused on that very narrow niche, worked with Scott Wagner on the budget and called it a day.

Uh, you could have phoned in the rest, and you didn't.

In the six months that you were here, you made a you left a legacy.

You made an impression here across the board, and that starts with uh internal culture that moves on to the the to things like the discussion that we just had, where very long-term strategic thinking for the for the city in terms of our our infrastructure.

Uh, you made a state you made a difference across all city departments.

The leadership team could not speak more highly of you.

We, I think I speak for the group, had a just an amazing time working with you, and you've shown us how to be better council members and things that the city can do differently and better.

And we couldn't thank you enough.

I'm gonna stop there and let my colleagues speak, and then we do have a little gift.

We're not gonna let you walk out of here without a without a memento from Santa Rosa.

Um, but first, uh, which of my colleagues would like to would like to say a few words?

Ms.

Rogers, you want to you want to hold on to the mic?

Give a crack at it.

So uh for me when Marquisha left, city manager Smith, I was like, I am not like I'm not getting close, I'm not working with anyone else, they just come and leave.

I'm not doing that.

Um, but just to see how you worked with staff, how you worked with us, that you were you were innovative, even though you were only here for a short amount of time, just how you wanted to propel Santa Rosa and leave a legacy like who leaves a legacy after six months like that doesn't really happen.

And I don't think that we we were prepared for that as the mayor, as a mayor said grateful and thankful for everything that you've done.

And for me, thank you for when I didn't understand something, you were able to just slow it down for me a little bit and teach me and let me know how it works because we don't know how it works on the city manager side.

We know how it works on the elected side.

So no matter where you go, even if you may not like us in six months from now, because you decided to sign up for something else.

I know that they will be very blessed with all that you have to offer.

And I'm just grateful that you were able to come here for the time that you were.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mr.

Alvarez.

Thank you for the kind words regarding Santa Rosa.

They're truly appreciated.

But I know that we are in a better path because of your efforts.

And I definitely want to thank you for for the long term energy that you that you might not be here any any in the six months, but yet your energy will still be here.

And I do appreciate that of you.

And the rest goes without saying.

And we will have crabs once again sooner or later, even after catch them when we're in San Diego taking me to LA.

So you can see them.

Yep.

Thank you for bringing your immense talent and fresh eyes to our city.

I think you achieved more in six months than many have in decades, just because of the um the quality of your character and um just the sharpness of your creative spirit and and your heart.

And so just a really sincere big thank you.

I think it's also important for the council, for me, for us and the community to hear how much is right about this town.

You know, when you're working on problems for years after years to decades, right?

It's easy to get down on a place and think, you know, oh, this place is broken, it's unfixable.

Um but really when you get that outside perspective.

I love talking to people who've just moved to Santa Rosa and they're like, oh, I came from this place or that place.

This place is great, the air is clean, the people are so kind.

You know, we have so much going for us, and sometimes an outsider reflecting that back to us, somebody who's become an insider, is really just so special.

And then um finally I just want to say, you know, for folks who aren't aware of what La Casa is, La Casa is something that as a member of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, I look up to this is the only entity, it's the only one there's four regional housing finance authorities in the state of California, and this is the only one that has been capitalized, and our city manager is going to go on to be their first CFO, and this is a huge BFD, and I cannot wait to hear the tales of how it works, and I hope we stay in touch, and I just wish you and them just the very best luck.

I can't think of a better opportunity for someone as talented as yourself.

Thank you, Miss Ben Willis.

Thank you, Mayor.

Oh my gosh.

Um I, you know, I echo what's already been said.

Uh it has been a pleasure really um working with you, um, Lorianne.

And I, you know, I jokingly told you one day that my my boss is named Laurianne, and this interim city manager's name Lorianne.

And at times I had to like really is my boss or is it the city manager?

So um I I thought what when does that ever happen?

Because your names are so unique.

Um I have really felt really um how easy it is to work with you, and I really appreciate that.

And in the short time that you've been here, I think the thing that you've taught me the most is really thinking about long term and thinking about the future and the decisions that we're making now and how they're gonna affect um those who come way after us um long after we're gone.

Um, and the way that you have helped us with our budget with what we discussed earlier today with economic development and and changing buildings and all of that, um, you know, you have done so much for us with us and also the staff, the way that I I can see how easy it is for them to relate to you.

Um I don't know if we'll ever get that lucky again.

I I feel the same way that uh um my colleagues have said, you know, when you came, we didn't know what to expect, and we just wanted to get through this next six months and um and uh to continue to function somehow, and it's actually it's been a huge gift, and so I just want to thank you, Miss McDonald.

Yeah, um, I want to say thank you so much, Lorianne.

You came at a time that I think you were so needed as a trusted voice of your financial background, but what I saw from your leadership from my perspective, not only of how you influenced me, but you really trusted our professional staff to bring forward very innovative, creative ideas, the calipers, the real estate and development.

Because of your vast experience, you were able to bring them to council, prepared and ready for those questions, but also giving them that latitude to bring it forward finally.

So I feel like you've allowed a lot of our staff that opportunity to be seen and bring this forward and get it across the line.

And sometimes I've seen where interims come in and they like it because they can come in and they can get things um kind of going and then they're out of there.

They don't worry about uh if anyone likes them that much because they're only here for a short amount of time.

But that was actually not your strategy at all, and not how you work.

It's not who you are.

You came in, you built a team in a very quick amount of time.

Um you worked with our um incoming inner interim city manager, Jason, just beautifully, I think, to get him prepared.

Uh and not that you weren't before Jason, but really working together as a team and working with our CFO, and so I appreciate it so much.

And for me, um, at the time that you came in, it it felt um chaotic to say the least, for where I was at, and I appreciate you've um helped me to have the faith back in government, working with our team.

And so thank you.

Uh we appreciate you so much.

We're gonna miss you, but we're excited to see what you do.

So bring those other good ideas back when you're ready, and we'll keep growing in Santa Rosa um continues to flourish.

So thanks again.

Thank you, Mr.

O'Krucky.

Yeah, I think some of my colleagues have pretty much um said almost everything there is to say.

Um, you know, interim city managers can um uh as my uh councilman McDonald just said, can come in and make some hard decisions to be the bad guy and get out, or they can they can just be a caretaker and be like, I'm not gonna upset the boat, right?

As long as it's still afloat when I leave, that's my job, and I'm out of here.

You hired someone new.

Um, but as someone else said, that's not your character.

I think you showed your character by wanting to take on challenges and being kind of innovative and challenging staff uh of how to do things.

And uh I think you know, in any organization, whether it be public, private, whatever, with leadership, you can go to, you know, rank and file and your average um your average employee and say, hey, what do you think of the leader?

And you'll get a you know, it's it's not on uh it's not atypical to hear like a well, don't get me wrong.

I really respect them, but or you hear a um, they're good, but I've also seen that I I've never heard that about your interactions with staff.

Um, so either everybody into the city is a great liar, or you really are that good.

Um so I just want to say thank you for that.

And and and you push staff, you support staff, you push us, you support us.

Uh I really do appreciate that, and I appreciate your time here.

It was also really cool to see someone new to the area.

And as we, you know, when you live somewhere like the vineyards and Alcatraz and all this other stuff, we see it, and it's kind of like, oh yeah, that's also there.

But like seeing it through someone's eyes, that you know, oh, you guys do this.

Oh, you have that, that's so cool.

And we're like, yeah, it is cool.

Like, yeah, I really, you know, it kind of refreshed it.

Um, I'm glad we talked about economic development today, especially downtown.

So I think Elko Key's gonna get a revenue hit when you move on.

Um, she you might have you might have been you should have been charged rent the amount of times you spent there.

Um, so hopefully you will come back and visit us.

We can all get together and go to Elkokee, and uh it'll be great to see you again.

So please don't be a stranger.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Well, as our city undergoes its time of self-reflection right now, I think it's worth um sort of thinking about where our recent city managers have moved on to.

So Lorianne's heading off to be CEO of La Casa, one of the biggest and most consequential organizations of the state.

Our previous city manager moved on to become city manager of Sacramento.

Um that should give it it says something about a city when their leaders move on to positions like that, and that.

That should give us confidence too that we're we're a we're a place that can train and build leaders for for other other parts of the state.

And with that, we don't want you to forget about Santa Rosa, the place that you help so much.

So we have two small things.

Uh, one of course, because you're a foodie and because it's Sonoma, a little bit of wine from a winery called Matanzas Creek, right outside the city limits.

So when you drink it, think of R.

All right, a little bit of a memory.

And then the second gift, I will, you know, you don't have to open it now, but it is a it is a local artist who makes bowls from wood recovered from the fires.

So charred wood, sort of it's the it's the story of making something beautiful from it from a tragedy.

And so when you when please please think of Santa Rosa when you look at it.

I hope the minutes will be adjusted.

Just think of Santa Rosa.

That's what I was trying to convey.

All right.

Um, but it is a tragedy that our city attorney has to follow that.

Autumn, we're gonna go right right from that to talking about settlements and active litigation.

I'm sorry for that lead in.

Thank you, Mayor.

You really set me up uh there, very hard to uh follow that.

Heartfelt uh farewell to Lori Ann, and I will miss her as well.

I will I will miss her since it's more.

So best of luck, Lori Ann, and I hope I hope that we do keep in touch.

But with that, I do have a litigation report uh for May.

Uh, there were two settlements previously approved by council in post-session that were finalized in May.

The first uh Pearson, the city of Santa Rosa, and that settlement and release executed on March 31st, 2026, and the amount of three million six hundred and eighty thousand dollars paid on behalf of the city in the municipal claims.

Payment was issued on uh May 6, 2026, with one million paid directly by the city, and two million six hundred and eighty thousand paid by the city's risk pool.

The second settlement to report is with the former city attorney, Teresa Stricker.

The city entered into a settlement agreement and release of claims with former city attorney Teresa Stricker with a settlement amount of 145,000.

This is not a separation agreement, but rather former city attorney Teresa Stricker submitted her resignation on May 2026, in May 2026, announcing her last day with the city would be June 2nd, 2026, by entering into the agreement uh former city attorney Teresa Stricker waived all potential claims about her employment.

And moving on to ongoing litigation, we have an active caseload right now of 27 litigation matters with trial dates assigned to approximately 30% of the trial court level matters, and we have a further five cases currently on appeal following rulings in favor of the city at the trial court level.

And mayor, that concludes the litigation report for tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam City Attorney.

Thanks for picking that one up off the off the rough transition.

Uh we'll open up the public comment either on active settlements and litigation or how wonderful Lorianne is.

Uh Mr.

Hilbert, I see you have the mic.

Would you like to kick us off?

Okay, yeah, Michael Hilbert.

Um we're gonna expect to see a very substantial payout in that um shooting of that unarmed almost over by St.

Rose Church.

So that's very, very unfortunate.

Shouldn't have happened.

I I imagine that's active litigation at this point, or maybe not yet.

But secondly, this 3.68 million dollar settlement.

Uh that's really appalling because the city of Santa Rosa had zero liability or blame in that case.

That was a case of um a small child in the in um crosswalk on Holland Avenue getting run down while in the crosswalk by uh reckless and attentive driver, and it doesn't add up that the city is taking responsibility and paying $3.68 million for that because that was 100% the the fault of the driver.

Ran down with a child in a crosswalk.

Thank you, Michael.

Mr.

DeWitt.

Yes, sir.

Thank you kindly.

I wanted to say, oh, first I'm Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland.

I asked the city manager to stay.

Typically, many of the things I ask for down here don't happen, but hey, I understand it.

She moved on to a different spot.

The city manager just before her was a really nice city manager, also.

I'd wanted her to stay, but didn't know she was leaving.

I've known every city manager since Minturn, 61 years ago.

The whole thing about having a city manager for the future.

I hope you folks are looking for somebody young, somebody who might be female, because they appear to be a little bit more compassionate than all those white guys I met along the way.

All right.

So I'm putting it out there.

I want you to hire a woman of color, perhaps, sooner than later, and keep them.

When you put it into the contract, you say, hey, you don't get a pension unless you stay 10 years.

We got to make sure we get these people to stay around, all right?

And that they're here for the long haul so that the community can actually feel invested in the position of the city manager working with us.

Did you know that the city manager back in the day?

He came to the opening of the Boys and Girls Club back in the 60s.

You'd see the city manager at different things, and it was happening.

That's a really important thing for the community feel of the trust that the administrative officer for the organization is paying attention to the taxpayers and the families and the people.

And get that next one.

As soon as they get here, tell them we want to have a meal over in Roseland.

We want to have a community meeting over in Roseland.

It's not all about presenting the police officers to us and all this other stuff.

No, we want the new city manager to come and talk with us and hang out and feel like part of the community.

Thank you kindly.

Good luck to you, Miss Farrell.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Are there other members of the public that would like to comment on either report?

Saying none, we'll close public comment on this item.

We'll move on to item 10 statements.

Statements of abstention or recusal by council.

Any statements of abstention or recusal this evening?

Ms.

McDonald.

Um thank you, Mayor.

I have a couple of different items under the budget that I'll be recusing from tonight due to a personal relationship.

Thank you.

We will then move on to mayor and council members members' reports.

Are there any reports this evening?

Mr.

Alvarez.

First, I want to uh thank the Healing Uh Grace Foundation for the work that they do in the community.

I was fortunate enough to be with them uh at the Palms Inn doing a barbecue where nearly a hundred hamburgers hot dogs were served to the residents.

Uh they're doing great work and I'm not ordered.

She's not here, but also uh want to thank the cab for helping with the grant to make that happen for the healing grace.

So uh cab applications, uh money doing good work in the community.

Uh secondly, I'd like to ask the support of my colleagues to produce an ordinance to address unpermitted food vendors with the lens on environmental impact.

And I'd like to make the motion to put that on the agenda.

Second.

Could you clarify the ordinance of it, Mr.

Alvarez?

Yes, sir.

It's to produce or create an ordinance to address unpermitted food vendors, uh, pretty much street bending in the city of Santa Rosa within its city limits with a focus on environmental impact.

Uh specifically Greece uh being poured, but nonetheless, so it's it's it's a motion that I would like to put on the future calendar.

Understood.

So we have a motion, we have a second.

So that would that would come back at the next meeting.

Is that correct, madam city clerk for a vote?

Uh yes, so when we agendize it rather.

Yes, so it'll come back at the next meeting for council to determine if it should be brought forward for a future agenda items.

That's perfect.

All right, thank you both.

Do you have what you need, Madam City Clark?

The motion okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Alvarez.

Uh Ms.

Rogers, let's let's stay with you.

Thank you.

So uh quickly, just wanted to give a shout out to the Rotary and thank them for honoring our police officers and firefighter of the year at the luncheon that they have annually.

Um I was accompanied by a couple of my colleagues, Councilmember McDonald, Mayor Stapp.

I think that was it.

Um, so it was a good time in uh Cal Cities.

I attended the Cal Cities Policy Committee June 4th and 5th for governance transparency and labor relations policy and public safety.

Um we spoke about wildfire mitigation, um, fire insurance and the city liability.

Um there was a presentation on city liability, and I found it very interesting.

Speaking about how people feel like they're suing like our police officers or they're suing our fire, but in reality, uh there's a big chunk of that money that comes from the general fund that can be doing a lot within the community.

So when people are getting these uh great big settlements, um people are like yeah, we stuck it to the police, but really they're we're sticking it to um the municipality in which they are a part of.

So that was uh a pretty wide discussion, and there was a lot of uh feedback on that.

I was able to attend the pride parade with our own mayor staff.

Um that was fun.

Um he was decorated to say the least.

Um, not everything needs to be presented to the public.

Oh, okay.

Sorry about that.

Um, and then the 56th annual Sonoma County Juneteenth Festival, and I know some of my colleagues were there prior to me getting there.

Um, so thank you for for representing.

That was a lot of fun and had a lot of yummy food, and I look forward to seeing it next year, which it will not be at MLK Park, because that will be under construction, so that is great.

Um, I wanted to give a quick shout out to uh Santa Rosa Fire Department Squad 2.

For um, as many of you know, I'm an avid gym rat is not a good term.

I'm a goer, I love the gym.

So I was at the gym this morning, and we had a 75-year-old who fell off the treadmill, and squad two came, and prior to squad two getting there, um, there was an employ there was a nurse who is married to one of our fire station eight employees who was helping the lady who fell off the treadmill.

So it was a big family affair this morning at the gym, but squad two came in.

Um they we didn't have to bring the big uh apparatus, so that was nice, but just to see them uh in the community and working, and I looked from a distance, but it's really great to see our staff out in the community doing what they do and doing it so well.

Um, and I hope Miss Janice is okay because she did need to be transported to the hospital.

Um, happy birthday to council member Alvarez.

Um, I'm happy you were born.

I thank your mama for that.

So happy birthday to Council.

And my dad too.

And your your mama, and happy birthday to council member Alvarez.

And um, I know it was already said, but um, City Manager Farrell, I really do want to thank you and wish you the best in all your endeavors.

You have truly left your mark on Santa Rosa, and I'm thankful that you came.

So thank you very much.

That concludes my remarks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes, I was able to attend the Rotary lunch, and so thank you to Santa Rosa Rotary for putting that event on, and just congratulations to Officer John Crispin as well as firefighter Nathan Dilley for their awards that they received that day.

I wanted to give them both a shout out, it was well deserved.

My understanding is that firefighter Nathan Dilly could have been in a movie, like rescued somebody from a burning vehicle.

And so I just want to know that they're uh we have a lot of everyday heroes working for the city of Santa Rosa, but these two were called out this year.

So congratulations to them.

I also went to the fire pinning ceremony for their promotions, as well as some new recruits that are coming to the city of Santa Rosa.

And just want to say thanks for being willing to work for us and welcome to the team.

And last but not least, I want to just do a quick, I missed the park a month event on Saturday.

I try to go each month.

But I I was at the World Cup, so I didn't get to this one.

Don't feel sorry for me.

I know.

But I want to say thank you.

In April was um the volunteer uh month event that they host at one of the parks where um all the volunteers from our parks are consistently helping, and there's people that work at our rural cemetery, and the ladies at Duterk Park, and there's um folks that work at the Prince Memorial Greenway as well as Southeast Greenway.

These are volunteers across the city that help keep those parks going, um, day-to-day, and I just want to say thank you to all of them.

Um, I was uh had an email sent to me from Carol Quant, who is the chair of our parks and rec for just reminding me and thanking me for attending that event.

But I just want to say thank you to her and everybody else who helps in those those open spaces we all love.

Thank you, Mr.

Kripke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Just a couple quick things.

We had um last Monday, we had uh economic development subcommittee meeting with uh, which was a pretty hearty agenda with some very uh important topics.

Uh amongst them it was an update on uh and direction given on plans for the California Welcome Center on Railroad Square.

There was also a discussion on tourism and uh its trends thanks to Dr.

Eiler from uh some university I can't recall.

Um, and also uh there was uh a discussion on the Ruth of Sawa panels and how we're gonna go forward with those and direction given on that, and then finally a large discussion on Roseland and how uh the city and staff would like to protect the cultural and uh heritage and vibrancy of that neighborhood going forward.

So, some really important topics that were discussed in a very um uh robust meeting, but uh important nonetheless.

Thank you.

Just to keep a few quick items for me.

Uh at the last Sonoma Cream Clean Power Board meeting uh, I guess a week ago.

More discussion of how to push geothermal exploration forward.

Speaking of uh how the county punches above its weight in a lot of ways.

We have the geysers up there, the world's largest geothermal field, and we want to double the amount of power that puts out.

And Snow Clean Power is doing a lot of advocacy to make that easier.

Uh, we also had a Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting.

Um, it was mostly administrative, but we did approve a budget for this coming year.

Uh, and then as has been mentioned, leaving the leaving the committees aside, we had two large events.

We had country summer and the pride parade here in Santa Rosa.

I know that the county technically gets to claim the claim the fairgrounds, but everybody knows it's really Santa Rosa.

And so we had 15,000 people there, including our new joint, our new joint command center with SRPD and the and the and Santa Rosa Fire.

Uh it was uh it was a pleasure to get this to sneak back there and see how that works.

Um, thank you for keeping everyone safe this weekend.

Um, and again, you had the pride parade with a few thousand people, and you had the country summer.

Um, everybody was in town.

Uh and then the Juneteenth event, as uh Miss Rogers mentioned, that was well attended with doubling on our number of vendors from past years.

So that was outstanding.

And I will conclude with not a not a meeting update, but a grant update after a year plus, really two years plus of advocating for the feds to finally cut our check for our buses.

And all as we approached the deadline here in September, they finally said, fine, we will give you your 9.9 million dollars that we agreed to back in to in 2024, which allows the city to buy 10 buses, nine.

Thank you, Mr.

Hennessy.

Nine new buses for the city.

So we're not having to lease them from Golden Gate Express any longer from the Golden Gate Bridge District.

Um, so that was a big win.

Nine point nine million dollars for the city, lots of advocacy from our lobbyists and behind the scenes.

So a bit of good news, Mr.

Hennessy, thank you to you and your team for pushing that forward for so long.

Uh I will conclude my report and let's open it up to public comment.

Mr.

Hilbert, I see you at the mic.

Michael Gilbert, I just want to simply put an objection on the record to this unpermitted food vendor nonsense.

Food vending is an all or nothing deal.

You either permitted by the health department, the county health department, permitted and collecting sales tax, or you're not permitted.

You should be subject to being shut down.

There are no partial permits for, you know, operating unpermitted.

We recently uh heard about a uh taco stand that just popped up in the parking lot of uh the reality shopping center at uh Guarnville Road and uh Fulton, just you know, without asking the property owner or any of the businesses or just set up shop in the parking lot, no permit from the health department or nothing, you know.

I would suggest you know look at um enforcement and then shut down the unpermitted vendors.

Thank you, Michael, Mr.

DeWitt definitely wanted to uh make a comment based on what Mr.

Alvarez has put forward and Miss Rogers also.

There are a number of unpermitted food vendors operating in various parks.

The one on Southwest Park on Hearn Avenue, one of the vendors actually hangs their wares from the sign that says no vending in the park.

Why don't you change the policy and make it so you can vend in any park throughout the city so that people can pursue an income, and at the same time you can get a revenue stream.

For years I've heard the city always plead poverty, saying they can't take care of what they need to do, especially at the parks.

So if you got a revenue stream from the vendors, that could help with the upkeep of the parks.

On any given night now at Southwest Community Park, there could be as many as five, not just one or two, but five separate vendors setting up with barbecues with a lot of stuff, a lot of equipment.

Every night one rolls in and they got their thing going with a whole clientele that starts coming at six in the evening, and they stay till after eleven.

So if you could make some revenue from this, that would really help the parks.

And then one other thing, keep in mind it's not just the grease, asthma.

The kids in Roseland have the highest rate of asthma in the county, and the barbecues are essentially adding to that problem.

We have some cars from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District now riding through doing air quality tests.

We need to link in with them, find ways to get funding to help those vendors find ways to avoid that toxic pollution that comes off of the barbecues.

They could have hoods on there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Duane.

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

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

And we will move on to uh item 11.2.

We've got a couple of appointments to make.

We'll start with 11.2.1.

Our appointments to fill upcoming vacancies on the Sonoma County Library Commission.

Uh, Miss Fleming has stepped away.

Vice Mayor, would you mind jumping in?

Sure.

Um I'll make a motion to appoint uh Sarah Lagos as the city county representative and Josh Hemzehi as the city's representative on the Sonoma County Library Commission.

Second.

We have a motion and a second by Mr.

Alvarez.

We'll go to public comment.

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

Seeing like lightning tonight.

Any discussion from council?

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

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald.

Yes.

Councilmember Fleming?

Yes.

Council Member Ben Wellos?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez.

All right.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Step.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes the sixth affirmative vote.

Thank you.

And one more appointment to make.

We'll do item 11.3.1, our appointment to the renewal enterprise District housing Fund Board of Directors.

And for this, I am going to uh announce and request that the council approve our current appointee, a familiar face to all of us, Mr.

Mr.

Gwine, who used to who ran housing here at the city for a number of years, also sets on the Burbank Housing Board, and it is uh it's hard to think of a more qualified person for this position.

Thank you for your service.

I'd request board approval, a motion and approval for Mr.

Gwine to continue to serve.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion, and then we have a second by Miss McDonald.

Uh let's do public comment.

Mr.

DeWitt, you have the floor.

Member of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group, and I've known Mr.

Going during those years, and I am glad that he's here and involved in things.

I hadn't seen him since he left the city.

I was hoping that along with this reappointment, you folks could explain better to the public what the red is doing.

A lot of folks don't know about how it got set up and what it does.

And there's a lot of money involved.

So it would be really interesting if you could just take a moment to say, hey, this is what the red does and how the money gets going.

I'm sure that there's good things happening over there, but you never really read about it in the news or hear much about it.

Last I heard there was like I think it was 10 or 11 million dollars there at one point.

So if you could give us some news to use, good luck to you, Mr.

Going.

You have a wonderful time at that.

Thank you, Mr.

DeWitt.

We're not gonna do that presentation here, but we do have RED come in annually.

Uh, and you can also visit their website and to get all the details.

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

Seeing none, we have a motion and we have a second.

Uh, if there's unless there's any further discussion.

Seeing no further discussion, Madam City Clerk, why don't we call the vote?

Thank you, Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye, Councilmember Fleming, Councilmember Ben Wellows?

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Aye.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes unanimously.

Thank you.

We will move on to consent.

Uh we have items 13.1 through 13.21 this evening.

Are are there any questions on any of the items?

Does anyone wish to poll any of these items?

Seeing none, we'll go to public comment.

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

Mr.

DeWitt, kick us off.

All right, sir.

Duane DeWitt from Roseland.

Item 13.6.

Two and a half million dollars to do a master plan for a park.

This is really a lot of money, folks.

And the thing is, you need to have a better public participation approach.

Authentic community engagement needs to happen on these types of parks.

Usually what happens is staff controls it.

They say uh we checked off a box, we had a meeting, and away we go.

Also, what's really important is you're gonna have this uh North Santa Rosa Station Area Plan, specific plan update.

You're getting some more funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and it's going to be for planning, public engagement support, and environmental review.

I've been to a number of meetings of the MTC in the past, and I've actually tried to um make comment on their public engagement policies.

Their current one is up right now if you want to uh chime in and talk with them about it.

I've been doing it for over 20 years, and I point out that basically they don't really engage the public.

Okay, especially the bus riders.

I'm a bus rider from the way back, remember when Golden Gate Transit got started here in Santa Rosa over 50 years ago?

And riding the buses and having community engagement in the planning for the buses is really important.

So I'm hoping that you folks will point out on this that you want some authentic community engagement, not just ticking off the boxes.

And then last but not least, you folks have been giving the money for the homeless stuff.

We got a homeless emergency, and you're doing a local housing allocation program plan.

We've had a housing allocation plan for decades.

We need to get more housing, obviously, closer into the town.

That was pointed out today in the earlier study session.

So more housing downtown, build it up taller more people thank you thank you uh mr hilbert before we go to you uh one point of clarification for Mr.

Hennessy um item 13 point six that's in well actually that's it's actually worth having you come down to the mic for this one if I'm if I'm thinking correctly sorry to sorry to make you stretch your legs but just for my recollection um that is actually all public involvement is it not that's a that's a Sonoma land trust grant uh and the Southeast could be one volunteers coming together to make uh a project that the city would not have been able to accomplish otherwise uh move forward yeah so of that the scope and um fee that we solicited for um we specifically included in that request for proposals that 30 percent of the effort be explicitly for public engagement and outreach and receiving feedback uh we received 12 proposals for that most of the firms hit that number and exceeded it um of the 2.3 million dollars uh 750 thousand dollars is from an MTC grant uh almost a million dollars is from uh generous donations funded through the Sonoma land trust and the remainder is measure M funds that have been sitting in that account for some time um so we'll be proceeding with that starting next month upon the authorization of this contract the fact that you could do that off the cuff Dan that's impressive I made some of that up I'm sure just but just j just to underline we the city the city has not promoted this enough the fact that we had Sonoma land trust and our volunteers come in delivering significant significant amounts of money to push forward the project that they are in large part responsible for because they fought for for 14 years and now they're assisting with the planning yeah that's we need to promote that we have a cooperative agreement with both the land trust and the Southeast Greenway campaign they'll be involved their trusted partners throughout this process um they have been involved in every step of the way from developing the request for proposals to helping doing the funding plan to interviewing uh consulting teams um they're completely on board um and we're excited to go people will be sick of hearing about this this time next year Dan thanks I'm putting you on the spot so that's just such a that's such a great story uh all right Mr.

Hilbert over to you okay thank you um thirteen point sixteen and seventeen I object to both of those there are no legitimate uh metrics on these things they're phony thirteen seventeen is just uh liberals hand now money it's a legitimate thirteen six sixteen that's a million dollars to keep that um safe parking parking lots section of the parking lot open that that's eighty five thousand dollars a month that's ridiculous to just be paying that to just watch uh a parking lot and there's not that many people there I'm just sorry that your friend Jack Tibbets is not still here because you know I bet he's the type who'd love to get his hands on that money he liked while he was here to have the government give money you know regardless of whether it was spent uh responsibly or not just he was always there to be on the receiving end but anyway did you read that he came out of the closet of red hatted maggot I found out it's funny as hell right thank you Michael are there any other members of the public who'd like to comment seeing none we'll close public comment and I'll turn it over to Mr.

O'Krepke for a motion thank you Mr.

Mayor I will move uh items thirteen point one through thirteen point twenty one noting amended resolution on item thirteen point eighteen which was provided by staff today and published prior to the start of the meeting second we have a motion and a second Madame City Clerk you can call the vote whenever you're ready to confirm that was second by council member McDonald thank you.

Correct.

Councilmember Rogers Councilmember McDonald aye council member Fleming council member Benwelluth yes council member alvarez.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

I mayor Stapp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes unanimously.

Thank you.

All right, folks.

We've been at it for three hours.

So we're gonna take a 10-minute break.

We'll come back very shortly after the quarter hour.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Welcome back, everyone.

The time is what is it?

It's uh five nineteen.

We will reconvene in open session.

Uh Madam City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers, Councilmember McDonald, your Council Member Fleming.

Your Councilmember Ben Wells.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

Here.

Mayor Stepp.

Here.

Let the record show all council members are present with the exception of Councilmember Ben Wellows.

Wonderful.

We're going to do our first public comment on non-agenda matters before going out of the public hearing.

So item 14.

This is your chance to comment on items not listed on the agenda.

Fred, you have the floor.

Budget issues and the uh survey that went out that that resulted in the five five uh priorities, and I noticed that the the survey said there were about two thousand responses, and out of the number of people in the city, I calculated that was about 1.2% of the city all responded to the survey.

So I hope that the city is not basing its priorities on that low level of survey response.

And uh, one of the things that I've been thinking is that the council and staff should be able to look at the demographic facts of Santa Rosa and see the median household income, education, et cetera, and determine what the greatest needs are.

And so I was I would think that in addition to potholes, police and fire, that uh addressing the city's level of disadvantaged communities, which is about 40 percent of the population, should be a top priority.

And so, just in my way of thinking, you shouldn't need to have a survey tell you that you know what to do when you can see those facts plain escape.

So that's just a thought I had for your consideration.

Thank you, Fred.

Uh, we're gonna go to Dwayne DeWitt, and then after that, Michael Hilbert and Cameron Miller, and if we could use both uh lecterns, that would be helpful.

Dwayne.

Go right ahead.

All righty.

Hello, I'll bring you to the Wayback Machine once again, Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland.

So this was written 30 full, well, basically 30 years ago, and at the time the gentleman writing it was pointing out about the um planning mistakes of the last 20 years, and he was talking about downtown Santa Rosa.

So today I was surprised that you guys have already been working behind the scenes for years to get rid of what we call City Hall and do something different.

But what he pointed out is that downtown Santa Rosa is fractionalized.

That was 30 years ago.

He was pointing out that there was a dilemma of having people not enough foot traffic to the storefronts, and that there basically was not enough people in the downtown area.

That's 30 full years ago, right?

So this isn't me saying this when I come to you.

This is basically that person at that time, Brad Bollinger was known as Mr.

Business in downtown Santa Rosa.

So he was saying these things, all right.

So you're talking about trying to make some positive things happen.

One of them you're looking at the United Soccer League, and you're gonna bring those guys in here, and they're gonna basically get some stuff going here, and uh it's gonna be helpful to us, we hear.

But what's happening is you're not involving the public in a lot of these discussions until after the fact, like to find out today that the deal's already done.

You showed us a picture of a building that the city used to own right there on Santa Rosa Avenue.

That's now where you're gonna trade our city hall to, and that man got that building because there was a financial incentive involved with the promise there would be housing put into the ATT building, and now we're gonna have to pay to get it.

It's not fair.

Thank you, Dwayne, Michael, Cameron, and Sarah.

Michael Southwest Santa Rosa is gang infested, and it's got a tremendous amount of this um Norte X4 vile graffiti, and somehow people seem to accept this as just normal.

It shouldn't be the case.

And some instances you also see the the blue from the other team, you know, right over top of the red.

That fatal stabbing at Montgomery High, you know what that was?

You can read the complaint uh for the civil lawsuit.

It was a Nortaneo punk who went into a classroom to physically assault a Sereno, and he got a knife in his his uh abdomen for his trouble, and the stupid school district paid out six point eight million dollars as if they were both victims, you know, that that's really um tells you the extent to which um the gang presence is appalling, and I'll add in something else on a personal note.

Uh a week and a half ago, I was physically assaulted by a tattoo-covered Mexican guy while ride trying to ride my home bike home from the store.

You know, and I I'm pretty sure it was uh had a racial component to it.

You know, it's the same sort of thing you expect to get in encounter in uh a hell hole like Stockton or something like that.

So from my perspective, that's the reality of what Santa Rosa is today.

Thank you.

Thanks, Michael.

Cameron, Sarah, and then Camille.

Cameron.

Hi, I'm Cameron uh with North Bay Organizing Project, and uh just here to talk about uh the ongoing contract uh that the city has with Flock safety and those types of security cameras.

My yeah, main concern.

I was at the past meeting where you discussed noncompliance with ICE, and there have just been so many cases where even cities uh with noncompliance ordinances um ICE has been able to get around that, and there have been data breaches with Flock Safety.

Um, and they can still use those cameras to track people, and that's really concerning, and just makes that noncompliance uh not feel as real or I just don't trust it as much.

Um, just in general, I'm very concerned with the idea of our surveillance and security being um managed by AI and outsourced, uh, that just feels very wrong with me.

And there's been data leaks and so many problems with it already, and uh it doesn't take much imagination to picture just how bad it could get.

Um I've all read books and seen movies, uh, where you can, you know, imagine what that looks like.

Uh and uh I just don't want that to happen here.

Uh thank you.

Thank you, Cameron.

Uh Sarah, Camille, and then Jenny.

Sarah.

Josh Wayne.

I am a resident of District 1, Alvarez, and I'm here to also touch on my concerns with flock safety.

I outright feel like it is a very easy way to fall into abuse of power.

It is on 24 7, it is ran by AI and a third party.

There's been numerous, like Cameron has said, numerous issues come up with it misreading O's and Zeros and pulling over the wrong people because it's AI and it's not being double checked.

So yeah, that's those are my biggest concerns as far as being a citizen.

That isn't an area where flock is like there's a lot of fucking flock cameras in my neighborhood, and it's stressful, and it feels like I need to be super paranoid and super concerned, and I can't really exist without eyes on me.

And it's kind of like, am I already guilty even though I haven't been doing anything wrong?

So yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Sirah.

Camille, Jenny, and then Noah.

We can.

You can also lower the podium a bit if you wish.

I would love that.

Thank you.

Oh, when.

Thank you.

Uh, my name is Camille, and I'm a constituent of San Rosa District 6.

Um, I'm also part of this group through North Bay Organizing Project uh dedicated to defending our community's civil liberties.

And uh I am deeply concerned about Flock and the lack of local regulation around what is essentially surveillance technology, especially as I'm learning something new about every week about Flock in California, just inhaling footage of our routines and whereabouts and putting us at risk to frequent data exposure incidences, whether they're accidental or intentional.

Santa Rosa right now shares data with Oakland and San Francisco, which are two cities facing class action lawsuits right now, over Flock regarding data sharing practices and tracking drivers' movements.

It's also known in California where SB 34 and SB 54 prohibits law enforcement from sharing license plate data with federal agencies or sharing resources to aid immigration enforcement.

It's known that police are casually violating that and searching for flock searching FLOC's databases on behalf of ICE and customs and border protection.

And that concerns me because even if we trust our own police department, how do we know that none of the cities that we're sharing data with aren't you know granting favors like that?

Um and these countries, this these contracts are covered by hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, and I'm not sure where that cost shifts when the grants end.

Um, and if not already, I would like to know if you can define for us the point where our current data sharing with all of Flocks, you know, subtly updated terms and agreements would officially cross the line so that we don't have, you know, location-specific dossiers on all of us.

So our eyes are on you, this city council, to show us how you plan to navigate that when our tax dollars and data is on the line.

Thank you, Camille.

Jenny, Noah, and then Joy.

Good evening, City Council.

My name is Jenny Gilpin, and I'm a constituent of District 2 here in Sonoma County.

I'm also an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

And I've showed up today to urge you guys to reevaluate our contract and our partnership with Flock surveillance.

And it's because Flock is an untrustworthy company.

When Flock pitches its technologies to city like ours, they promise complete local control over who sees our data.

But their actual track record tells a completely different story.

Just a few months ago, in February 2026, Mountain View discovered that federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE and CBP, had been secretly accessing their local surveillance data for months.

They did this without permission or knowledge of the Mountain View Police Department.

The Mountain View Police Chief completely lost confidence in Flock as a vendor and immediately ordered all of their cameras turned off.

But this wasn't isolated, it wasn't just a software glitch.

At the same time, an official audit was done in Ventura County down south.

It revealed that Flock had inadvertently shared their local surveillance data with out of state and federal agencies over 364,000 times.

Again, this occurred entirely without the department's knowledge or approval, violating California state laws designed to protect citizens' privacy.

Flock has demonstrated a blatant disregard for regulatory and legal boundaries.

They're facing sweeping class action lawsuits right here in California for creating what attorneys call an illegal, unconstitutional mass surveillance dragnet.

In Ohio and in Illinois, when the city has canceled the contract and told them to get rid of their cameras, they turn them back on and continue installing them.

We are dealing with a hyper-aggressive venture-backed surveillance company that repeatedly treats local policy restrictions as mere suggestions.

And I urge the council to reconsider the flock contract this fall.

Thank you, Jenny.

Noah, Joy, and Sophia.

I'm Noah Lewin.

I'm a District 5 resident and also part of the Civil Liberties Task Force through North Bay Organizing Project.

And I want to share some similar concerns I have, like my uh task force members as well as concerns people who we have spoken to during canvassing efforts have voiced about Flock regarding security and funding.

So I wanted to bring up some questions also about the budget and funding.

Right now, the city gets 423,000 annually through a 36-month grant contract to fund Flock cameras.

But I wonder how this money is going to be, how we're gonna get this money when uh the grant runs out, and if it would come from other services that the city provides, um, because although certain services might not be uh marketed like uh secure, like to prevent crime or solve crime, like how flock is, these much-needed services do prevent crime and promote community well-being and safety.

Another concern is the lawsuits in cities like San Francisco and San Jose, pertaining to government employees outside of the city jurisdiction accessing Flock data from within the city.

And as of February 2026, the terms and conditions of Flock no longer have any language prohibiting the sale of customer data.

And while they claim the cities with flock cameras have legal ownership over the data, Flock has, to quote from the terms and condition, the exclusive right to determine and control the method, timing, format, and medium of the sharing of data.

And while city leaders may promise that they won't use data unlawfully and unethically, they cannot promise that the company itself will do the same.

Thank you.

Thank you, Noah.

Joy, and then Sophia.

Can you hear me all right?

My name is Joy Ayudelli.

I'm a lifelong Santa Rosa resident and constituent of District 2.

I'm also a community organizer with the North Bay Organizing Project.

For the last year, I've been working with a dedicated group of community members looking to defend their civil liberties and fill the gaps in this work locally.

The main issue that we've been following is regarding the company Flock Safety and more specifically their automatic license plate readers.

We've recently started going door to door to talk with our neighbors about concerns with local surveillance.

Despite the Santa Rosa police department operating over 120 Flock cameras, community members seem to know very little about this equipment if they're aware of its presence at all.

This is particularly concerning because it lets us know that our local community was not involved in this process of adopting the technology, which has actually proven to do a lot of harm.

Flock safety made a public statement earlier this year assuring California customers that they had turned off the function for out-of-state sharing altogether.

However, a number of California cities have found data breaches through their audits that confirm their flock camera data was accessed by federal and out-of-state agencies.

This is a clear and direct violation of California Senate Bill 34.

In recent months, Flock has also made a number of changes to their terms and conditions portions of their contract.

Most notably, these changes include the addition of a perpetual license, which gives Flock the right to keep ALPR data indefinitely, even if the city were to terminate its relationship with Flock today, as well as increased protections against Flock's liability for misconduct, which would shift cost for data breaches from the company to Santa Rosa taxpayers.

The lack of data security and increasingly long trail of misconduct on Flock's part, as well as their quiet contractual changes that clearly prioritize their profit and protection over actual community safety have made it clear to me that we cannot trust the Flock Company or any of its equipment.

I do, however, want to put my trust in you, our elected representatives, to be open to having conversations with community and do what's in the best interest of all of your constituents.

I hope that we can move towards a more community-centered and informed approach to safety rather than relying on an outsourced system that is putting our community and its data at risk.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Joy.

Sophia.

Hello, my name is Sophia Norton.

I'm a lifelong resident of Sonoma County.

I am also a leader of the North Bay organizing project.

I feel that it is extremely necessary to examine the overall cost of law enforcement surveillance technologies like Flock Safety ALPRs on our community, and not just the financial cost of the equipment, of which Santa Rosa is spending roughly 400,000 annually on its contracts with Flock Safety, an expense that is currently covered by federal and state grant money, but I'm assuming the cost will shift to the city of Santa Rosa once this money runs out.

Not to mention the very real possibility of concerns surrounding liability.

In a recent update to Flock Safety's contractual terms and conditions, Flock has put extensive protections in place against liability for willful misconduct or gross negligence.

This essentially means that liability is shifted from the company to the taxpayers, even if the error was Flock's doing.

This is not a matter of if, but when.

San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose are all in active class action lawsuits regarding Flock violations.

I am very concerned about the human cost of these invasive and unreliable AI mass surveillance technologies.

It is well documented that the data that Flock collects are personal information, has been shared to federal agencies like Homeland Security and ICE, despite supposed protections, like California Senate Bill 34.

Policy policymakers who care about racial justice, immigrants' rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ rights, privacy and free speech, and civil rights must pay attention to how surveillance may affect different members of their community.

These technologies are putting our community, our neighbors, at unnecessary risk of harm.

The harm far outweighs any supposed supposed benefits of these technologies.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sophia.

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

Seeing none, we will close uh we will close public comment and we will move on to our public hearing for the evening.

Item 16.

Mr.

Wagner, it is a busy day for you.

Welcome back.

And I should note that this is the our public hearing and the adoption of the City of Santa Rosa uh fiscal year 2026-2027 operations and maintenance budget and capital improvement program budget.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Mayor Stapp and members of the council.

Uh I'm Scott Wagner, Chief Financial Officer.

Along with me here today is Veronica Connor, the city's budget manager.

Uh we are very pleased to be presenting this proposed budget.

Um, and with that, I will hand off to our interim city manager Farrell for her opening comments.

Thank you, Scott.

First, I wanted to thank staff for putting this budget together.

This was a team effort and the culmination of several months of work and analysis on the part of myself, obviously, our CFO, our budget manager Veronica Connor, and the incredible staff in the finance department, but also all of the executive team members that we have and their department budget liaisons.

We've had a series of meetings regarding our proposed budget recommendations, understanding and acknowledging that we had a significant uh financial deficit and you wanted long-term and intelligent solutions.

And so we had a study session in April, and then we also followed up with our May 5th and 6th study session.

So this is the fourth time that we've been before you to discuss budget options for next year.

As we've discussed previously, this is a two-year strategy.

So you'll hear again this evening the highlights of year one, but you'll get a little bit more in-depth information on uh the potential impacts to city services in year two, which would be July 1 of 2027.

If we don't have additional revenue coming into the city, I'll share that as someone who's a former finance professional.

We have a fantastic team that's dedicated to the city's financial sustainability as are you.

I think this is a really solid proposal that we put together.

It continues core services without uh dramatic draconian impacts to services.

However, more still needs to be done, and so with that I'm going to turn it over to our team here to go into the details, and uh we'll uh handle questions at the end.

Thank you.

Scott, back to you.

Thank you, City Manager Farrell.

So I'll begin our presentation today with a brief overview of what will be included.

Um we'll start with our calendar along with any proposed changes since our buddy budget study session.

Um, as City Manager Farrell mentioned, we were asking our department heads to come down and give a more robust discussion around year two.

In our budget study session, I gave an overview of most of our department's impacts, but today we're giving them an opportunity to come down and give some additional information and counsel and get any feedback needed on year two.

We will additionally be ending the today's presentation with an overview of the capital improvement program for the city for fiscal year 26-27.

We'll start with our budget timeline and and thankfully for me, and and we're at the end of this timeline for the current year.

What I will always add in these conversations is that budget is a very long process that does not start in May with our budget budget study session.

It really is an eight-month process.

And we will stress that budget making is a little bit of math, a lot of collaboration, and a lot of communication and a lot of work from a lot more employees that are just here today.

The reality is that of our 1200 member staff, we consider all of them to be budget experts because they're the ones activating our budgets into service for the community.

So, as with any budget-making process over the past five weeks, there has been some minor changes.

I will state from the beginning that this proposed budget today very much falls directly into line with the direction council gave at our study session to return with the city manager's proposed budget and not make any substantive changes.

But some updating that has happened that we will point out is that there was a $64,000 increase within our housing agency to better reflect an more updated number from HUD that we've got for allocations, not groundbreaking stuff there.

On a second matter, as we've looked at our measure H, which is our fire special tax that lives outside of our general fund through our analysis, we believe at this time that the fund can sustain an additional fire captain to its budget.

That fire captain, uh Chief Westrup will be able to discuss a little bit more later, but it is to serve a function of a training captain, a 40 hour captain within the fire department to bring additional resources there.

We've additionally increased appropriations in council prior council approved projects from our ARPA special revenue funds of $703,000.

This is very much an action of accounting to meet federal spending requirements.

We are not changing appropriations on a what should happen within the projects that council already approved.

We are not proposing any change to our ARPA projects.

We are up against a kind of uh an audit requirement versus a federal requirement on how do we make our budget match what the federal folks want to see.

And the way that we've come to a solution is that that fund has interest revenue that we can appropriate that will act as a gap for a period of time until we're able to release all uh project funds from the projects.

Big picture short, at the end of the day, this is a $703,000 increase that gets offset with a decrease the very next year.

It's a net zero.

This is really a function of governmental accounting.

We are gonna have a conversation later based on today's presentation, along with council feedback as part of the budget study session around the general funds reserve policy.

As what was mentioned earlier, we want to keep taking big swings here at the city.

Part of those big swings that come forward will be addressing the general funds uh reserve policy that hasn't been updated in 20 years.

Um, but this we have an opportunity tonight with today's with tonight's adoption to set aside some funds and assign them through our reserves to a capital need that we all see coming at this point.

The last uh thing that I'll note is that of the city's labor contracts, we currently have one bargaining unit that is out of contract as of July 1st, and that is our fire management uh group.

That is a smaller group that is not all of our firefighters, those would be battalion chiefs or division chiefs and some of our fire prevention folks that go out of contract on 7-1.

We have included a holder here of $200,000 into the budget that we've increased for the proposed contract that would be ratified at council in July.

As we've been discussing, the city has been moving forward with a two-year budget strategy.

I will highlight that that does not mean that council is adopting a two-year budget tonight, but what we are moving forward is a two-year strategy.

Through year one, we've been able to come up with a multi-pronged approach to deal with a deficit that initially was $17.5 million.

We've done things through strategic use of reserves and adjusting staff staffing as grant funding's expired, along with decreasing our head, decreasing our position control by positions that are currently vacant.

We've also used some innovative financing that council has been able to review, including a relook at our pension strategy and adoption of a way that the city can pay off our pension liabilities quicker and pay less.

Ultimately, though, the city still remains in a structural deficit that will require year two at this point to have a $9.8 million dollar deficit.

Our year one strategy will give us some time to address how we are going to tackle that year two deficit, but we will talk about that more at length in a moment.

With that, unlike the budget study session where I was a bit of a one-man band, I am gonna lean a little bit more on Veronica and hand off revenues to her.

Thank you, Scott.

So taking a look at our citywide budget, we're going to go through a number of financial slides that we have seen in April and in May.

So I'm not going to belabor these very much, but move through pretty quickly, but point out some of the major changes.

This slide shows our citywide revenue, including all entities, all funds, all departments broken out by fund groups.

The only change on this slide since May is in that housing authority line item.

It's increased by $64,000 in accordance with our updated HUD allocations from the federal government.

Next slide, please.

And on the expenditure side, again, we're looking at citywide expenditures for our proposed budget for next year.

This includes all funds, all departments, all entities.

General fund is at the top.

This is, of course, our largest source of spend is of spending in the general fund.

I'm sorry, spending in the city's budget.

And the changes that we see from May include our special revenue line item.

This is where we see an increase from that fire captain added to our measure H fund, as well as the increased capital projects appropriations for the ARPA spending that was discussed on a previous slide.

And we are also seeing a small increase in the housing authority for those updated HUD allocations.

And this is just a visual showing all of our expenditures by fund citywide.

The general fund is our largest source of operations, followed by our enterprise funds.

And so moving on to our general fund budget overview, narrowing down on just that top line of those previous slides.

In May, we came to council and we proposed a budget that ended in a $7.6 million deficit.

So due to some kind of late-in-the-game changes and settlements of that Unit 9 labor contract, an additional $200,000 worth of costs will be added on to this deficit.

This happened, the timing was problematic.

We could not incorporate this into our public hearing notice or our budget document that is attached to this council item, but we are including it here.

We will address it verbally and where it affects our slides.

So ultimately, the budget that we are proposing today will actually have a deficit of $7.8 million and require $7.8 million use of reserves.

So we highlight this here just to show that it is a change from the May study session, and it hasn't quite been feathered through all of our slides, but we will highlight it where it'd be.

Exception of permits, fines, and charges.

This represents some of our building permits.

We've been seeing a different trend in planning and economic development where we're seeing some smaller dollar value permits come through the door, not as much large projects.

Volume has remained high, but the dollar value decreasing a bit.

So we are projecting a slight decrease, and this is one we will be watching closely.

And again, a visual of the previous slide just showing that property taxes and sales taxes are more than half of our general fund revenues.

This makes up more than half of our ability to run our general fund programs.

As we look and we think about the general funds mix of revenue, it's important to understand that Santa Rosa is uniquely dependent on sales tax for an agency of our size and complexity in the services we provide.

Santa Rosa is a true full service city.

We provide our own fire, we provide our own police department along with many other functions here within our general fund.

At the end of the day, when we talk about property tax, for every dollar that a Santa Rosa's uh homeowner pays in property taxes, the city retains 11.7% of that.

So just under 12 cents goes to the city.

With city schools receiving 55%, and then the county coming in second.

The way that you will normally hear me describe this is that the city comes last in that allocation of property taxes.

The same can be true of sales tax.

For every dime that a someone in the city of Santa Rosa is transacting to pay for sales tax, we receive 1.75 cents.

So under two cents is what we receive.

So I will I will add that often sometimes I look at that and I say, well, our sales tax is 1.75% of what we actually get to keep.

The state comes first with a six six cents of that of that 10 of that dime, and then along comes the county receiving two and a quarter cents for each dime.

And I should add, as I I forgot one of my talking points here.

Going back to property tax, it's really important to understand that the city of Santa Rosa receiving 12% is very low.

And the reason for that is Prop 13 is essentially that our property tax percentage has been locked in since the early 70s.

We can go to neighboring agencies that are very, very close, but I will not name them, and they receive 20%.

So even within our own county, there is a disparity between how local government gets funded.

And the reality of our situation is that that forces us to be far more dependent on our sales tax than the typical agency.

General fund transfers in are another source of resources we have to run our general fund operations.

This hasn't changed since May.

Um, the item to highlight here is that we are going to see 5.6 million dollars come in from our pension fund.

This is part of that fresh start strategy to reduce the burden of pension costs on the city that council recently approved.

Next slide, please.

So moving on to a discussion of the general fund expenditures, I will hand this back to CFO Wagner.

Thank you, Veronica.

So, from the big picture perspective on city expenditures, this current contract or this current uh budget does not align with any major increases that are uh not outside of our contractually obligated increases that we're seeing.

So for that, we have a 4.9 million dollar already agreed upon contract with our labor units, including that.

We've additionally brought forward a $1 million increase to police departments over time and a $2.5 million increase to the fire department's overtime budget.

I want to highlight that these are not increases in the amount of overtime we are expecting these departments to experience.

What this is to do is to align the budget with what we are realizing within the department's actuals.

These both of these departments run 24-7 operations with mandated staffing levels.

So there is a an on there it is not aligned currently with what we are experiencing in total overtime cost with what our budget is.

We are seeing overages within our current year for both of these departments.

These are to get us back on track and representing our budget towards what we're seeing in operations.

We had overall a $1 million dollar increase in contractual expenses within our professional services that included $550,000 for election costs.

26 27 will be an election year, and we see a blip and an increase during those election years that then goes down in the next years.

Overall, we see a $700,000 increase in vehicles.

This is offset against a one million dollar decrease in the change of our large apparatus financing that we're doing at the city.

We have brought forward a policy in a direction to council that we are decreasing the amount that we're paying into fire apparatus replacement to better align costs with the useful life of equipment.

We're going to be utilizing lease financing in the future for these pieces of equipment while at the same time not pushing off their replacement schedules, not decreasing the total amount of units, but just doing a little bit better job of matching the expenses to when we use the actual apparatus.

We're seeing a $500,000 increase towards IT.

This is really just following in line of increase in cost of our staffing within the IT department to provide the services they provide along with the software licenses that increase year over year.

From a big picture perspective, as Veronica mentioned earlier, we have an increase in revenue around 4.5% versus a six and a half percent increase in expenditures.

The city is still within a structural deficit.

For our major decreases, we've brought forward almost $10 million worth of general fund solutions as part of this year.

We have $4.9 million worth of savings from our departments, eliminating vacancies being held within the departments.

Additionally, we have 3.8 million dollars worth of savings from the state from the city's pension stabilization pathway that we've put forward.

Our fresh start program, we're going to be realizing 3.8 million dollars worth of savings in year one, but the better news is it'll be 28 million dollars over the next five years and 37 million dollars over the life of the program.

We're additionally seeing a property tax or property uh insurance decrease to just align with our required reserves with our JPAs.

This budget really reflects many strategies that the city considered to address its structural deficit and to be creative in moving forward with ways that would impact the community the least.

And we considered many different things.

As we've mentioned prior, we are eliminating vacant positions, ultimately a vacant position is not providing service to the community in that moment while it is vacant, and we have gone through the exercise within our departments to really go through and eliminate those positions.

We're moving forward with our major apparatus lease change, where again, we're not kicking the can on our equipment and putting us in a bad position on maintenance with them.

We're just fixing those costs to align them better to when we're using them.

We are going to use reserves on a one-year basis of $7.8 million.

The city currently has a healthy reserve, and we'll be talking about reserves a little bit more later, but this strategy ultimately uses that amount of reserves to avoid a draconian level of cuts within this year one.

Year two strategy is going to be more challenging when it comes to the use of reserves.

Our pension strategy savings strategy.

Um, I think we've talked about enough at this point, but we're very happy that that has moved forward and council has adopted it.

We are flex programming for expiring grants.

We currently have positions held within the fire department where either federal or county funding has gone away.

We describe these as flex funding programs where when the funding goes away, we have to adjust the program.

This current proposed budget does adjust those programs to decrease uh those staff staff members accordingly.

We of our 12 firefighter positions that are included within these grants, we are not laying off any of them.

We have landing spots for them within available positions within either the measure H fund or the general fund.

So fortunately, we will not be losing any current members of staff.

We've moved forward with department consolidations.

So last year, the rec recreation and parks was absorbed into transit and public works along with housing and community services.

As part of this budget, the CERO department will be incorporated into the city manager's department to have a better alignment of functionality between those two groups that work so closely together.

We are aligning of budget to actual spending.

This is how we talked about our OT being in disalignment with what we are experiencing through the actuals within the funds.

We have also moved forward with enhanced cost recoveries.

We have really drilled down on our departments to ensure that we are maximizing our cost recoveries within our chargeable areas, whether that's fees for recreation or planning, those are all things, or credit card recovery fees, where we are modernizing the city's approach towards credit card fees.

And like many agencies, we are now going to be offering the public an option to either pay with an ACH or pay with a credit card fee with a convenience amount.

That is not an across the board change across the city.

We will not be charging a convenience fee for a lap swim or a parking meter.

It is going to be very directed towards some of the larger areas, whether that's planning permits or frankly, some of those customers are very used to paying with a check or another means outside of a credit card.

We are also doing a minor reduction towards capital support, which will really be funded through existing CIP funding.

This is just a better alignment of CIP programming being in the CIP fund, except at instead of the general fund.

Overall, as I've mentioned, we've developed almost 10 million dollars worth of solutions that we are very proud of for the uh ingenuity and the outside of the box thinking and really drilling down where we can accomplish these savings.

I will mention that we will have a more robust conversation around year two.

And while these are all very exciting and positive things, many of these are wells that we can only visit once.

Once you redo the pension policy at the city, we can't go back and get another savings in this amount.

And we've considered these savings into our future budget predictions.

And with that, I will hand it back over to Veronica to go through expenditures.

So our proposed budget for fiscal year 26-27 general fund expenditures total 231.1 million on this slide.

That will actually be 231.3 when we add in the 200,000 dollars from our management contract MOUs that have been settled recently, and that will affect our salaries line item.

The large variance here, as we've pointed out in May, is our overtime has increased by over 50%, as our CFO Wagner touched on on previous slides.

This is merely to align our budget with what is actually happening in operations and to right size the budget for the operations of the city.

And this financial table also has had no change since the May study session, and we will need to increase that fire line item by 200,000 to account for the MOU changes.

Throughout the whole general fund here is broken out by department, and we can see that most departments have had small increases.

We've tried to keep costs flat where possible.

This is just due to department reorganizations that's going to take a couple years for those to even out.

And I will note that in our fire department, despite the increase in overtime and the significant reduction in staffing that CFO Wagner spoke about, we don't see a decrease in the department here.

And that's because we are flexing those staffing with our grant funding.

The positions we are eliminating were funded by grant funds or from outside funding sources in recent years.

So rather than seeing a substantial decrease year over year, the benefit that's having is preventing this line item from increasing by several million dollars more.

And this pie chart is just a visual of the previous table, and it shows that here at Santa Rosa, we spend the majority of our general fund resources on public safety, 64.5%.

And one additional use of general fund resources are transfers out.

These are uses of resources that we don't categorize as salary benefits, services, and supplies.

They instead go to other sources, and they are used primarily for homeless services, capital projects, parking enforcement, Bennett Valley Golf Course, debt service, and other areas.

And our final proposed general fund budget still maintains our baseline requirements for our public safety and prevention tax.

So we like to lay this out here to show that we are still adhering to that maintenance of effort that's required.

As we look at the city's long-range financial forecasts, what you'll note is that the city still remains in a structural deficit even after two years of very large cuts through the general fund.

We still have a snowball that is rolling downhill with larger numbers.

These numbers though are much better than where we started this conversation a year and a half ago.

A year and a half ago, really two years ago, the 26-27 fully burdened deficit was over $30 million.

Actually, excuse me, it was over 40 million dollars.

We've made a lot of progress.

I don't want anyone to think that the efforts and the hard decisions that have been made have not made a difference because they very, very much have.

We're just in a position where on an expenditure basis, it's going to be very, very difficult to keep cutting.

We're gonna talk about that more a little bit later when we look at the overall staffing dynamic of the city.

But when I look at this chart, the numbers that pop up really pop out is 3031 still being at a 22.4 million dollar deficit.

Part of that and the big jump between 2030 and 2031 is the measure queued sales tax falling off.

Uh that sunsets in March of 2031, and that is 24 million dollars worth of revenue for the city.

That's something the city will need to address uh address.

But ultimately, when we look at this, look at this chart and we think about the history of the past couple of years, we've made some meaningful improvements to revenue, whether that be business license tax or TOT, we've made very difficult cuts.

The city has tightened its belt, it's sharpened its pencil, it's done all of these things.

This is the math that we're left with.

There has been periods at the city due to, frankly, things that we could not control, whether that's a global pandemic or other things that we are at the city didn't know were coming, where your forecast can end up being a little bit off.

The reality is for the past four years, Veronica and her team have done a remarkable job projecting these deficits, and they've been very accurate.

We do expect this to be the reality of the city and not it go in a much better or worse way.

Our projections are based off of trying to hit the target versus projecting in for a def for a recession or projecting in for good things happening or bad things happening.

We are trying to hit the target.

What's important to note there is that if there is any greater macroeconomic uh happenings that would affect us negatively, would make these numbers much, much worse.

With that, we'll move on to a discussion around general fund reserves.

Uh, this is our standard general fund reserve spend down chart.

Um I mentioned every single time.

I show this, this chart lives one year in the future.

So when folks ask how come the years don't exactly line up, it's because of those pesky governmental accounting standards that myself and the finance team just love to do.

Um, but but that's why that happens.

The big picture here is that the reductions and the solutions that have come forward with staff have ensured that the adopted budget will remain above council's mandated reserve policy of 15 to 17 percent.

We project ourselves to have around a 62 million dollar uh reserve at the end of this coming budget year.

Uh, that is above our policy.

Furthermore, as we've been discussing since the beginning of the city's financial issue, we wanted to have always a two-year approach towards ensuring that we are remaining above council's mandated policy.

This proposed budget does that.

We are still about five million dollars over where that two-year target number is.

Um, furthermore, I I will add that the other critical number on here, though, is you see it goes down to 14 million dollars in 2030 that will be here sooner than you know, we realize these years are flying by.

Why do we have a general fund reserve?

And that is very simple at the city of Santa Rosa.

It's to maintain operations during macroeconomic crises, whether that's the Great Recession or those things, or future economic crises, which which will happen.

Uh we don't know when, and for natural disasters.

Uh, the city of Santa Rosa is you has been uniquely tested that way, and that we know through the Great Recession and through the fires in 2017, that we needed our 15 to 17% to account for those things.

As we've mentioned and per council's feedback from the study session, we recognize that our reserve policy should be revisited.

That is part of our plan within the finance department and city manager's office over the next years to come back to the long-term financial planning and audit subcommittee to have a robust conversation around the reserve policy.

But really, when we look at our reserve policy, it's not what I would call modernized.

Um, agencies normally will include things like IT infrastructure or pension funding or uh facilities funding within their reserve policy.

That's something that we need to look at best practices and what's been successful for other agencies and come back with it.

Council's already made a tremendous step with pension funding.

Really, the next follow-up to that is to make sure that future councils in the city are in a place to maintain those successes.

The prior item tonight talked about the city's emergent facilities needs.

And what staff is proposing we do this evening is to assign $4.5 million of general fund reserves to address facility conditions as of the end of this current fiscal year.

Now, I want to define what an assignment of reserves is and what an assignment of reserves is not.

An assignment of reserves is a way to show on the city's financial statement that of the city's reserves that council knows that there's about a $4.5 million need that's coming, but they have not appropriated it yet.

This is a way of segmenting your savings of the city towards saying I know there's something coming, but I haven't given direction to staff to be able to spend.

Staff and the city cannot spend an assigned amount that will have to come back to council.

This is just a way of taking a step towards modernizing our reserves and saying that we have a bigger conversation around our reserves to happen, but we know it's missing this one component, and we're gonna address a portion of that as of the end of the fiscal year.

That is really to critically stabilize either repairs or a proposed strategy to address the city hall campus, with what is is is a can that we can no longer kick down the road.

And with that, I will kick it back over to Veronica to talk about overall staffing changes of the proposed budget.

So back in May, we listed proposed staffing changes line by line.

We're not going to do that again.

We're just gonna look at it from a summary view, but I will point out some of the major changes we see on this table.

Um, the next two slides show proposed staffing changes for all funds.

This is not just the general fund, this includes funds citywide, and most of these big swings are the result of department consolidations and reorganizations.

We see the community and intergovernmental relations office going into city manager.

We see parking leaving finance, that's the reduction of 28 FTEs.

Um recreation and parks was dissolved, and recreation became its own standalone department.

And on the next slide, we will see TPW increasing due to parks.

On this slide, we see fire has a reduction of 19 FTEs, and that is the majority from those grant funded positions that has been expiring, and so we see a major reduction in the fire department as well as a couple vacancies in HCS.

Next slide.

Thank you.

So overall, we are proposing a reduction of 27.0 full-time equivalents across the city.

Twenty-six of those are in the general fund, and there is a net 1.0 reduction in other funds.

Of the 26.0 positions in the general fund, three of them are filled, and the remainder are vacant.

So with the proposed reduction of those 26.0 general fund positions, that would bring the general fund staffing down to 707 FTEs.

This is just a couple people above recession era historic lows.

And we've seen a 20% cut from our pre-recession highs of staffing in the general fund.

And we are bringing ourselves down to the absolute minimum in the name of trying to close this budget deficit.

Thank you, Veronica.

And um, before we get into the year two conversation, where we'll be asking our department heads to come on down and give some greater context towards the impacts of what we're looking at as part of our year two strategy.

I would welcome any counsels from the questions from the council on the first part of our presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Looking to council.

Any questions at this point?

Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you.

Thanks for the break, and I appreciate the opportunity to ask a couple clarifying questions just as we move along, so I can make sure I'm understanding what we're adopting today.

So can you remind me on slide 20, you talk about an increase to animal control?

I know that's an item coming later in the agenda.

My if memory serves, um, we already had a very large increase from animal control last year, if that's correct.

Um, does anyone have those numbers?

I can't seem to find them, but it it felt to me to be a pretty large increase, and I see another half a million dollars that are going to that service.

So I just think it's important for the community to know these are kind of uncontrollables that come forward, and uh you don't remember if we had any last year.

Yeah, thank thank you for your question, council member McDonald.

Um, let me share a few things.

Yes, this is a contractual requirement of the city that's based off of the animal control being experienced within the city.

Um I will say that this is an item going forward that the finance department and city manager's office will be coordinating on to ensure that uh that that there is proper understanding of really what's coming from them is really I think my focus at the moment in that having that proper understanding of going forward.

I I would need to revisit the last year's expense.

I don't believe it was it was it was to this level.

Um I will also clarify that there's an additional item coming tonight that is based off of fee recovery for them that's going to address um specific fee increases related to animal control that frankly has also been included that fee increase in this number that we're seeing today.

Thank you.

That's exactly what my follow-up question was.

Is to find out if that helps to offset this budget and if it's actually been plugged in.

Um, could you tell me on slide 17 the breakdown of the dollar and the dime again?

Um if Santa Rosa was to go out for an increase to sales tax, say, does that portion come straight to Santa Rosa or does it get broken down again?

Yes, thank you.

So, for example, if the city were to renew its current sales tax measure of a half cent and move it to a full cent, that would bring in an additional 23 and a half million dollars for the city.

That would go directly to the city of Santa Rosa.

Um that would not fall into the same allocation that we're seeing here, where some of it would go to the state, some of it would go to the county.

This is deeply important because the services that we're seeing the community ask for are frankly our services.

What we're noticing is that they're asking for public safety and they're asking for streets, and those are frankly the services that we provide versus the important services provided by the county and the state.

I think going into your next part of your um budget, we address some of that as well about potential issues if something like that wasn't being considered or on the table.

Um, can you tell me by margin how close we were to the target of hitting our budget this last year?

If it was within three percent, five percent.

Where were we at on that?

Thank you.

We we're we're not quite done yet.

Um I will say though, of the past three years, we've been within two percent.

I think both two or three of the last year.

I will say that I think my gut, don't hold me to it.

Um, well, you can, that's my job.

Uh, is we'll be probably even within one percent this year.

That's how tight we're gonna be.

We're gonna what what's happened and we had a discussion amongst the executive team is that when we remove more spending that wasn't happening, your budgets become much much tighter because there isn't the contract that you didn't end up using, or there isn't the vacancy we've cut our vacancies.

That's gonna make budget uh tracking much more important for the city going forward.

Uh, it's always been important, but we'll need to be more focused on it and also bringing that to the long-term financial planning and audit subcommittee to make sure council's aware of how we're doing, but but we are gonna come in so so close this year.

I think on the revenue side, it takes a little longer for us to get an idea of where we are, because that's comes in in arrears, but we're pretty close on revenue.

We're having like last year, we're having a positive year with investments.

Um, that's to be expected, but razor thin is the answer.

Thank you for redoing the portfolio so that we can uh you know get those gains.

That was a smart move a while ago from your team as well.

Um, how many vacant positions do we still have in the city of Santa Rosa when we're looking at such low numbers that we have for staffing?

Do you have any idea of the top of your do we have 20 positions left?

Do we have 50?

I'm looking for my phone a friend for a perfect number.

So I I don't have the perfect number, but but here's how I consider it from from my perspective.

The amount of vacancies that we currently have within the city is below the amount we expect to have.

So we are far more filled as an agency than we've been in the recent history, but also more filled than we would expect.

Because we've cut our cut our vacancy.

That's why I'm asking, because sometimes, yes, the numbers at the end of the year when we haven't been able to fill the positions, we can see a gain, but when we start to narrow how many vacant positions we're at, I think that's important for the target and the community to know as well.

It's not like we have a windfall, we just weren't able to find the bodies to fill those positions yet.

It's a very important question, so thank you for asking it.

And and I would also just I'll I'll just be very direct in saying that, especially during COVID where we had a really large vacancy, more than we would expect, and then all of a sudden more than we would expect revenue, neither of those things are true right now when we look at our our actuals.

So there is a there is a change of a to your to your great point.

We will not be up here later going, oh, it turns out things ended up being better than we thought.

That's just we're too far along the year, that's not gonna happen.

That's really helpful for I think us to know from decision making basis.

Um, do you have any data is on slide 32 talking about staffing levels that show for a city our size where we should be even by department on how much staff and and I think it's important not because we're trying to say, oh, we don't have enough staff in these things, but for the community to know, and for for even myself, you know, should we have this many police, this many firefighters based on a state or national average?

Do we have that data someplace?

It probably is somewhere in HR or or within our departments?

But even looking at our staffing levels, TPW, PED, I think that's important for us to know as council, like this is how low we are on our staffing per community member levels.

Yeah, I I'm gonna welcome the department heads to include that as part of their talking points around year two.

I think it's very important.

I think each of us understands how our own staffing has changed here over time.

I can tell you from the finance, I'll speak to finance since I'm here right now.

Um the finance staff is down 25% over a very short period of over a period of time, and and that's across my department and for like like for like positions.

So we've already cut the finance department by a quarter.

Um I'm gonna let the less of the rest of the department heads give their give their numbers.

But yeah, we can include that as part of the coming presentation.

I know there's been significant cuts to every single department.

It's not that as much, but it's also knowing how we're performing compared to other agencies, and when you look at the designation of money after Prop 13, because I think we were still rural when we actually were designated that to me, it's around that conversation of we're not getting our fair share, so it's hard for us to staff appropriately to serve our community.

And so that would take an act of legislation unless the county can make that decision to just give us more money, which we're due.

Um, as far as slide 35 goes, um, are we hitting 15 or 17% in reserves?

Do you have that number?

We are over 17%.

So we are we are we're over, and I'll give that I I can do that math real quickly and and exactly where we're at, but it's not just about where we're reserves are funny because you really need to keep a focus on that spend down slide.

And to us again, it's not just a matter of where you are on a current percentage, it's how quickly does it go away.

Right, right.

It's it's great to have a lot of money in your savings account, but it's not if you're really taking a lot out each month.

And that's that's our current situation is we have a solid two years of remaining above our policy, and then after that we precipitously fall.

Thank you for that.

And I I think that has that's all my questions up till now.

Thank you so much for the presentation thus far.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I think it's always good for um average Joe's like myself who don't know complicated financial issues to get examples.

So when we talk about uh our share of property tax, and you see a giant building go in downtown that is, you know, millions of dollars or whatever.

Can you give us an example of how that size what it dwindles down to what our share actually is?

Yeah, thank you for your question.

And and these are these are the questions that we very frequently get as staff, and that the community or or even our our employees will say, hey, there is a brand new $50 million building being built in downtown Santa Rosa, and that is going to be a boon for the city through property taxes.

So to put that in perspective, I'll I'll cut out all the fancy math to get me there.

But that $50 million building that gets built in downtown Santa Rosa equals $66,000 a year in property taxes to the city.

Um excuse me, $60,000 a year to the city, right?

So that 12 about 12% number.

That I I I want to want to share that because it's just important when I think folks, the average Joe asks, well, where'd the money go?

Again, it comes back to that property tax dollar.

Well, it went most of it went to the schools right before us.

Most of it went to agencies before we get our just 11.7% cut.

I I do want to I do want to though temper my comments in saying that as a finance person, growth is critical.

And just because you're not seeing that huge boon from property taxes doesn't mean we're not experiencing positive economics from growth.

It certainly is true.

The power of your example, though, is really to show that, and this is literally happened to me where it's the city's getting a million dollars for that building a year.

Where did it go?

And I go, no, the city is getting like 20 grand.

That's what we're getting.

So they understand that there's not just where does the money go?

It doesn't come to us that in that way.

So to use your example, the the property tax share is a literal distribution, like easy math or simple math of you get X percentage of this, whereas the economic infusion is more conceptual in nature, harder to actually um characterize.

Is that correct?

That's perfectly said.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right.

Back to back to the presentation.

So we'll begin our year two discussion.

And really, I think history is so important of the past couple years for the community to understand that this council along with staff has made some very, very difficult decisions around the city's budget that have ultimately landed to where we are here to do that here today.

In 2526, there was over 15 million dollars worth of budget cuts along with 54 employees reduced in the general fund.

2627, we're moving forward with 9.5 million dollars worth of budget cuts and 25 FTEs within the general fund, making almost 80 employee cut to our general fund.

General fund staffing is now 20 percent below its all-time high while at the same time the city's population has an increase 12 percent, but also the the demands on the city or or the services that we need to provide are more.

This is a different city than it was 20 years ago, and the services that the city needs has increased.

We have currently have a, as I mentioned earlier, measure Q expires in 2030-31, which is going to be an additional 23.5 million dollars worth of revenue coming off of the books.

It's really important to hear a message that the city's committed to transparency to the public and the council on the potential impacts of what's going to be happening here in year two and beyond to our public safety departments, including police and fire, our parks and our public works departments, without a commitment towards an enhancement of our revenue.

Our next year's budget currently projects at a nine point eight million dollar deficit, and it's expected to go to grow to 22 and a half million dollars.

As such, our city manager directed our department staff to come up with a plan within year two to address that deficit.

As council has direct has has mentioned and directed staff before, ultimately reserves are a short-term fix.

They give you a little bit of time to come up with the plan.

Unfortunately, though, our plan going forward is staggering on what's going to be required from the city, and it honestly will put forward a model of public service uh delivery that the city has never tried before.

It's a much, much lower level than what the community and we should expect as staff.

Part of the important thing to understand about our budget, though, is that facilities conversation that we've been having is that there are missing components of our budget is how I would describe them as CFO.

Deferred maintenance on city infrastructure is growing each year.

And when I say city infrastructure, I mean all city infrastructure, whether that's streets, facilities, overpasses, bridges, you name it.

But unfortunately, within our operating budget, there has not been capacity to address these growing liabilities within the city.

Per, you know, when we look at those reductions citywide and how we would reach a number, if if we if we just went out and we just reduced our budget based off of reducing employees, it's going to be very challenging.

But the reality of the composition of our budget, which Veronica spoke about earlier, is that our budget is made up of people.

It's made up of employees.

Over 76% of our budget is people.

Frankly, the remainder of it is a lot of areas of cost that were non-discretional.

That first year budget for so for 27-28, we're gonna be talking about an additional cut of 42 employees.

This would be 11 police, 11 uh 11 employees through the police department, eight employees for the through the fire department.

These are already areas that the city has taken some pretty big cuts to, along with all the other departments.

But what is additionally concerning is when we look at the structural basis of our deficit, the ongoing long-term fix is a look at cutting 92 employees.

I'm gonna be asking our department has to come down a little bit later to kind of talk about what that looks like for our departments going forward.

But from that graph perspective, again of looking at the history of the city and the uncharted territory we'll be entering, it'll be an overall decrease of FTEs of the general fund by 25% of all time highs.

And as I mentioned earlier, the population has gone up, the needs of our city have gone up, the demand on our services have gone up, and there just needs to be a realization and a reality.

We provide our services with people, and we have 25% less people to provide them.

With that, I'll be asking our chiefs to come down and present the public safety impacts of our year two discussion.

With that, I'll pass it off to Chief Kriegan to present the year two public safety impacts for police department.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council.

I'm John Kriegan, our chief of police, and we'll quickly go over those.

And CFO Wagner already set the stage that if we don't see some revenue generating measures built within the city, the police department specifically is going to be seeing 11 more police officer positions cut from our budget.

I want to set the stage though for our uh city council and certainly for our community.

Last year we reduced the police department's budget by 3.2 million dollars.

That was 15 positions, nine sworn police officers, six civilians, and to kind of put that in perspective like our historical staffing that we've seen over the city in 2006 with our highest staffing for the police department.

We had 190 sworn police officers.

Today we have 175, so 15 less police officers than we did in 2006.

Our civilian teams took even a greater hit.

We had 91 civilians in 2006.

Today we have 74, so 17 less civilians.

So that's 32 less staff members at the police department today than we did in 2006.

Even a more shocking number when I talked into our community is in 1999, we had 183 police officers here in the city of Santa Rosa.

So 184, sorry.

So we have eight less police officers than we did in 1999 in our city.

Our city has grown by almost 40,000 people in population since 1999.

So dramatically less services.

The city is growing, getting more complex.

And I put that just to put the understanding of taking us to 11 more police officers being reduced.

I was looking at the numbers this week, and that'll be taking us to the levels that we saw in 1994.

And you have to just make sure that we understand the gravity of what we're doing here for the city of Santa Rosa.

And then really for the impacts, and that's where I want our communities to understand the impacts.

Where I would first start doing, I've been trying to strategize with my command staff team.

Where would these cuts come up from if we take another 11 positions?

And what I would have to do is look at our specialty teams with our gang team, narcotics, traffic, our downtown enforcement team, and our set team.

And the question came up from council earlier about where do we compare in staffing?

We actually did a staffing study in 2022.

So just four years ago, we did a staffing study right as I was stepping into the role of chief, and it said the staffing study said that we should have 95 officers assigned to patrol.

We're actually doing shift sign-up coming up in two weeks.

We're signing up 77.

So 77 when the staffing study said 95 in patrol, because we've seen such dramatic reductions.

So I can't take them from patrol anymore.

They're already below uh standards, so they'll have to come from these specialty teams.

But understanding the impacts for our gang crimes team, we had a lapse from 2019 to the end of 2023 with our gang crimes team.

In the year 2023, we had 12 homicides in the city of Santa Rosa.

Actually, in year 2022, 12 homicides, and seven of those 12 were gang-related homicides.

So you saw the majority of our homicides were gang-related crimes that are impacting youth in our community, families in our community.

Since we've brought back the gang crimes team, we haven't actually had a gang crime or gang homicide that's occurred in the city of Santa Rosa.

And what we really focused on is the four prongs with that of prevention, intervention, education, and enforcement, and it's had a dramatic impact.

We saw that just recently on Cinco de Mayo, that within hours, we had a shooting right there at the festival.

Literally within hours, our dedicated gang crimes team were able to review evidence and be able to identify the uh offenders and that use, use some of our technology that we have in our city and have them in custody.

Those are the things you lose when you don't have a dedicated team for gangs.

You don't have someone who's bringing justice to those seven families who lost a loved one due to gang violence in our community.

You don't see incidents that were so jarring to have on our Cinco de Mayo festival of have those shootings.

You lose those.

We have officers who will go document the incident, but we're certainly not going to have the resources.

Same with traffic.

Last year we had nine fatal collisions in the city of Santa Rosa, 689 injury collisions in the city of Santa Rosa.

Those all have an impact on our community.

So having the dedicated resources for traffic enforcement.

Our downtown enforcement team, and we hear regularly from our community about the impacts of our downtown enforcement team.

Last year, just for the year 2025, our police department tracked 10,598 homeless-related incidents where call officers went to those calls.

Quite frankly, we're missing several thousand.

That's when an officer actually went in the system and tracked it as a homeless-related incident.

So somewhere close to 15,000 of our calls were related with our homeless community.

Our set team, we brought that in uh 2021.

Our set team, since they've been formed in 2021, has taken over 250 firearms off the streets of Santa Rosa.

Just the four members of the set team.

250 firearms, those including automatic weapons, Uzies, Tech Nines that they've gotten off of our.

So we just have to understand you won't have those guns are now gonna be in those communities.

Those guns are gonna be used in our community.

Our community's gonna feel the impacts.

Uh certainly what we'll see is some of our response time.

Now officers will be doing more investigations in the field because they won't be able to call out a specialty team to assist with them.

So you're gonna see the response to violent crimes and to all call and calls in the city of Santa Rosa start to increase.

Also, I ask the question on every chief's interview that I do for every police officer employee.

They do a final interview with me, and I ask them about why Santa Rosa and every office, every department is hiring right now, what's drawing you to Santa Rosa?

And two things come up every single time.

The first one is the specialty teams that you have, the more opportunities, and you guys really focus on reducing crime in the mute in the community, and you utilize these specialty teams.

And the second is the morale of our department that people feel supported in this organization.

But those things are both so closely linked to having these opportunities.

The officers see fulfillment in their career to be a gang crimes detective, to be a traffic investigator, to be a violent crimes team member.

So having these also has the impact of recruitment of additional officers in a very competitive world of hiring police officers right now, and then also for the retention of our staff of keeping good officers here that we invest in, that we're sending the training, that we're getting their experience.

So I just want to really just talk about the ripple effect of retention, recruitment, the safety of our community, the ability when you call 911 to have an officer respond there very quickly.

We can do the next slide.

The next one, I've already talked about some of these things about responding to the time and what it's gonna take.

Patrol officers are incredible resources in the department, but what they're designed by nature is to be like the first responder to stabilize the incident to get the basic information on a more complex incidents such as shootings, homicides, sexual assaults.

Then they call in like these special teams that have the more enhanced training, they're more prepared to prepare for court and to make sure we're successful in the prosecution.

So what you're gonna see now is patrol officers who are spending more time, which is making them not available to go to the emergency calls, but also you're gonna see a decrease in the ability to do thorough investigations in these cases.

That's gonna lead to more increased violence in our community because we're not bringing resolution to some of these violence incidents.

You're gonna start seeing more visible blight across the city without the downtown enforcement team.

It wasn't that long ago before we expanded the downtown enforcement team that we saw encampments.

We've had encampments up to 200 encampments on Old Stony Point, off of Bennett Valley Road, above Home Depot.

All those were in the excess of hundreds of encampments.

That team has been able to really help.

We're also been really looking at these positions across our city and looking like what can we do to increase or decrease the crime that's occurring across our community.

And something that's really important to me, and I believe it's so important to our community is the community engagement of having officers who have the time to go out and engage our community, whether it be walking downtown or through uh shopping centers or parks across our community, our formal events that we have, like taco with a cop at national night out, and the list goes on and on.

When you don't even have enough officers to go to the 911 calls, you're not investing in Taco with a cop neighborhoods in Apple Valley because we don't have the ability and are the staffing to be able to have those type of events.

So I just really want to stress the ripple effect that you're gonna see across with the safety, with the response, and quite honestly, it comes down to the safety of our staff of being able to, when they're whether they're being salted, whether we're seeing some of the incidents across our city, that when they call for emergency backup, that we see that arrive on a timely basis.

And those are some of the things I just want to be able to educate for our community about what we're facing, and it really puts on us some of the urgency to come together as a city and a community on some of our revenue generating ideas that we have for the future.

Thanks, John.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Scott Westrope Fire Chief City of Santa Rosa.

Um, so sort of along the same vein, um, just gonna talk about illustratively what we are looking at as a fire department with if the projected budget reductions are actually enacted.

Um, and just to kind of start the conversation for council and the community, um, when we look at our core service as a fire department, our core service is 10 fire engines, which are the smaller fire engines that you see on the streets every day, two ladder trucks, which are the longer articulating ladder trucks with two drivers and one battalion chief.

And we look at that as our core services because that's the staffing that we've had since 2007 between the general fund and Measure O or PSAP.

So I'm gonna come back to those numbers.

So that 10-2 and one battalion chief number, I'm gonna come back to, but that's how we've been operating since 07.

We've been fortunate enough to, and we're proud of the fact that we've gone out and found alternative funding sources to enhance our service.

Um, the first is with Measure H, which uh CFO Wagner referenced earlier.

Um, with Measure H, which is a countywide fire service sales tax measure, we've been able to put an additional engine company in service, an additional battalion chief in service, two additional uh vegetation management inspectors, and as as CFO Wagner talked about earlier, we've we're able to add a uh specialty captain, which would be a 40 hour position that will help transform this new engine into a heavy rescue and become part of a countywide regional heavy rescue program.

So it'll be a very specific position that helps build out an entirely new program.

Um we have also had an enhancement, the fortunate um ability to enhance service recently with the two safer squads, which we've talked about a bit ad nauseum here that um will be going away as of June 30th.

Um they were based on a FEMA grant, the FEMA funding has run out, and those squads will be going out of service as of June 30th.

So some of the enhancements that we have are gonna stay.

Measure H lives in and of itself, it's its own little, I call it its own little fire department, um, and the the safer squads are going away.

So talking about the impacts and and we'll get to in the next slide, it'll it'll talk about specific numbers.

But for the fire department, and then I can honestly say for the entire city, we've trimmed all the fat.

Um, we've trimmed bone off bone at this point, and for the fire department, we've done everything we can to maintain the level of service this community deserves and expects.

But with the numbers that we're facing in the upcoming years without additional revenue, we will have to look at service impact to the community.

So, sort of like the city, we're a little bit higher on our salaries and benefits.

We're about 78 to 79 percent salaries and benefits.

We've managed to go through and we have lost personnel throughout the last two years.

Most of them unfilled, some were filled, some were grant-funded positions, but we're trying to maintain that core service.

But we're really to the point now where if this comes to fruition, we're gonna be faced with very, very difficult operational decisions.

The easiest one to talk about, and I mean easy from a standpoint of being able to comprehend it is we are looking at at least one fire station closure immediately in 2027, July 1st, 2027.

Going into the future, in that 2030, 2030-2031 plan with the 5.8 million dollar reduction, we're looking at an additional engine company and a truck company at the same time.

So potentially, if this was to play out as finance has laid it out for you all so well, there's a potential to lose two engines in a truck company in the next three or four years.

What does that mean?

It's you know, it's pretty clear there's gonna be an impact to call response times, particularly EMS, which is about 70% of what we do, and it will impact our core fire suppression readiness.

Just to give sort of a basis of background here, our city council goals for response time is we're to respond to 911 emergency responsive incidents within five minutes, 90% of the time.

Prior to the enhancements that we have added in, we were around 59% at our lowest.

With the squads and with engine nine, we've gotten that up to about 65-67%.

So we're really seeing an increase in our response time uh capability.

So that will go down, obviously, pretty significantly if we lose 9% of our response force in one engine, 18% and two engines, and then half of our truck companies, it's gonna go down significantly.

It will impact the reduction of wildfire prevention and wildfire response capabilities.

Not only will this be impacted on a day-to-day basis, where we cross-staff our wildland engines.

So if engine six gets dispatched to a wildland columnist Calistoga grade, they cross staff a wildland engine.

That capability will be reduced as well.

And also, if we're looking at sort of the larger scale events, whether it's upstaffing for a red flag or being able to call personnel back for a major incident, such as the tubs or the glass fire, that capability is gonna go down significantly as well.

Um, there'll also be a reduction in special operations capability, such as technical rescues, whether it's you know trench rescue, high angle rescue, water rescue, whatever the case may be.

The main reason is those are a core truck company operation.

They are specializing in those rescue capabilities, but they're supported by engine companies.

It takes a lot of people to perform a rescue, so all of those capabilities will go down while at the same time we're trying to grow regional program.

Um the resources, if if this all plays out the way that it's been laid out in front of you, we will be below 2007 response capabilities numbers when PSAP or Measure O went into place.

So it will reduce us even with measure H down below the numbers that we saw in 2007.

We've seen a 66% increase in call volume during that time, and as everybody's talked about, we're using sort of the same numbers here, a 12% increase in population.

Obviously, our threat matrix has changed, it's ever evolving.

Um, not just the wildland problem, but you look at the traffic problems, the earthquake problems, all the things that we see as a threat on the board, they're always evolving and changing, and so um things have changed drastically, but we have remained pretty much status quo.

Next slide, please, Scott.

Um so the other thing, and Chief Kriegan touched on this too, it'll impact the recruitment and retention of quality employees.

Um, when he was talking about what he asks why Santa Rosa, I get the same answers.

It was actually kind of shocking.

It's it's the opportunities that we have in our special response units, our special operations teams, our ingenuity, and the way we do things here, but it's also we're seeing it's it's this the spirit of Santa Rosa, it is the family of Santa Rosa and the team of Santa Rosa that makes people want to come here.

Two big things that we saw is we saw coming out of the tubs and glass fire.

People wanted to come here because they saw what Santa Rosa was.

They saw how the team operated, the South of the Fire Department operated, how we all supported each other and how the community responded.

They wanted to be a part of that.

We've also seen a handful of employees come to us with our recruitment and diversity strategic plan because they want to be part of that and growing the few the future of the organization.

So those opportunities will also be diminished if this if this happens.

So one of the things I want to emphasize, and and you know, the slide says this is illustrative is you know, we're dedicated to doing everything we can to reduce the impact on the community and especially in the emergency response capacity, but there will be negative implications from this.

There will be operational impacts because of this.

We will work with our team, we will work with the city manager's office, the CFO, our labor group, to find ways to reach these numbers, but they are going to be painful, and they will have very negative impacts on the organization.

So what's laid out for us, which you saw in previous slides, is um in 2027, it's a reduction of eight FTE, totaling 2.5 million dollars.

And very simple math is that's an engine company.

It's nine people and 3.2 million dollars to run an engine company.

So it's it's very simple math that we are going to have to eliminate one of our 10 engine companies that are on the streets in the general fund right now.

In 2030, with a reduction of 18 FTE and the equivalent of 5.8 million dollars, that's an that's an additional engine company for at least half the year, and a truck company and a truck company is about 4.9 million dollars a year to run.

So add those up.

It's going to be a truck company and an engine company for six months.

So as I've repeated myself several times now, um, that is what we're facing is the reduction of one and a half engine companies and a truck company, um, should we not find additional revenue streams?

Um to council member McDonald's question, one of the things where we're at right now as an organization puts us pretty close to our goals in our 2016 strategic plan.

And you got to think about how the world has changed since 2016.

So we're still short, we should have a station 12 now.

We don't have that.

And in our new strategic plan and deployment analysis, it calls for additional companies and really the more pervasive use of the squads, but we'd prefer to have an engine company on the street.

So that's sort of the answer to your question.

Um as of July 1st of 2026, with this budgeted jobs adoption, our general fund, our general fund personnel account will be the same that it was in 2020.

So, yes, we have additional personnel through other funding streams, but that's going to bring us back to 2007.

The point is, and I think you've heard and we've shown that the department has not grown commensurate with the community, um, has not grown commensurate with our risk matrix.

Um, and at this point, we're fighting to maintain this the service levels that we have right now.

Um, but this is a threat to bring us back down to pre-recession numbers and to not be able to maintain what we have right now.

So that's how vital it is to us.

We need to grow, but we're trying to maintain, and without additional revenue, we will be dropping below those maintenance levels.

Thank you, Chief Crean, Chief Westrup.

Uh, with that, I'll welcome Director Osburn along with Director Basinger to go through recreation and then planning and economic development.

Oh, Mr.

Wagner, uh, there's that we we may have questions here in the day as specific to public safety.

Uh do you mind if we do questions now or do you want to hold no man?

Of course, Mayor, if that's your direction, absolutely.

Why don't we do a department specific?

Uh sorry, gentlemen, to bring you back down.

Mr.

Okropke.

Yeah, so I'll wait for Chief Westrope to make his way back down.

Sorry, that was my request.

I just didn't want to do the rotating chairs, it's ask questions while they're there and not have to have them come back down.

Um, my one specific question is is um, we'll start with Chief Westrope and then go to both of you is the greater impact this has on the greater community.

So, Chief Westrope, can you um tell us a little bit about why our fully staffed truck uh trucks are unique within the area and what they can do, and then also for the both of you with these reductions, what does that mean for the greater Sonoma County with mutual aid calls?

Thank you for the question, Vice Mayor.

So I'll actually start with our engine companies because um they're they're sort of unique to Sonoma County.

Uh Measure H has helped get most engine companies in Sonoma County up to three person staffing.

Um, in bigger cities in you know San Francisco or in the LA County area, you'll see four person engine companies.

Um but we're really we've always had that 300 staffing, which is uh vitally important for structure fires or medical aids or vegetation fires, whatever the case may be.

Um our truck companies are very unique because they're the only fully staffed trained truck companies between San Francisco and the state line north of us.

Um so we're we're very fortunate to have the two ladder trucks with trained personnel who are able to go out and train others on truck company operations, but they handle things.

Um, you know, we get a lot of questions of why'd you cut a hole in my roof during a structure fire?

Well, there's a very specific scientific reason behind that, it saves lives, it saves property, and and it costs a little bit of plywood and sheathing.

Um so they're very specific at that, they're very specific on rescue, uh vehicle extrication.

Sort of the they're you know, we sort of joke that they're a 62 foot rolling toolbox, they can kind of do anything and get it anywhere, so but really the unique capability of of them is that they're the only ones that are available between San Francisco and and the northern part of our border.

And um, so as far as the mutual aid question goes, um, there will be certainly impacts to mutual aid, um, both at the you know the strike team level with do we have the personnel to send out strike teams safely and still protect our community?

Um, are we gonna be able to send mutual aid engines out as part of um as part of the California mutual aid plan or not?

You know, there's there's gonna be a point in all of this where we're gonna have to start figuring out what we're gonna say no to.

Um, and for the fire department, I know the police department as well.

I don't mean to speak for the chief, but we don't typically say no.

We we go on people's worst day and we solve whatever that problem is, and so um the help that we got in 2017 and 2020, we've been trying to pay back, and we'll never be able to pay that back.

But we try to send as much equipment out as we can to help other communities, and that capability will be reduced based on these reductions, these proposed reductions of personnel.

So we're very fortunate to have what we have in both um all of our personnel, the ladders, the the engines, everything.

Um we try to help.

I mean, the truck companies can go out on mutual aid.

We've been down to Petaluma several times and other communities that don't have staff ladder trucks and help them with large scale incidents.

Um, but that capability we reduced as well.

So I appreciate the question.

Hope I answered it fairly articulately.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

And that's it's such a great question about the mutual aid, and you see it two parts here locally, and some of the mutual aid that was it's really visible to our community is some of the things we've seen with our side shows, and we saw side shows were out of control four or five years ago, and we came together as a region of here in Sonoma County and with our Marin County teams as well, about having a mutual aid response to the side shows, and each of us sending Santa Rosa led the way with that protocol and certainly leads the way with the most personnel.

But you see also with uh wildfires and for the wildfire evacuation, it's so staff heavy in those first hours of getting people knocking on doors and warning people and saving lives.

We've repeatedly responded to Lake County to Napa County, uh to those areas, but all the way to the Oregon border in far northern California that we've seen seeing teams of officers, not only for the evacuations, but in the days after that, when we're having whole neighborhoods that are evacuated, and you certainly see people who exploit victims in those cases and start looting homes, and they need the help.

And we've seen how overwhelming, especially some of our Northern California agencies who have even less staffing than us.

So it's important, and just like Chief Westrope said, our mantra is we don't say no to a fellow law enforcement agency who's calling for help.

We've seen that firsthand here in Sonoma County, and it all depends upon each agency being able to help each other in their time of need, but it's sometimes when we don't even have the staffing to go to 911 calls in Santa Rosa, it becomes more difficult to send to our neighboring jurisdictions, and that's where we really want to come together.

And Santa Rosa at all levels at every single one of our departments in our community saw the resources pour in to help us in our time of need, and that's something that always weighs heavy on us to make sure that we return our favor to those same agencies and be there for those communities because we know the significant impacts of it.

Would it be fair to say that if there was a a severe a serious incident of some kind in Windsor, we would be able to get more as as today, we would be able to get more resources to Windsor faster than probably the Sheriff's Department because of how they're spread out so much.

And we certainly respond to allied agencies across the across Sonoma County to help in their time of need, especially some of the smaller agencies that don't have necessarily the resources with our SWAT team, with uh some with our Hotch's negotiation team.

And we work side by side with our Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, and they give us that same support.

So we're able to help respond to those emergency calls for assistance when whether it be a deputy or an allied uh police officer who's calling for assistance, and that is the the real world impacts of us sending those resources there were literally seconds matter, and we may be the swiftest response time to those cities.

Any other questions?

Uh you wonder your you can sure do your comment, Miss Rogers.

Thank you.

Um, so I was just gonna say I think we do have uh some high numbers, especially when we talk about public safety, whether that's police or fire, but I think the beauty in um I think those numbers can be higher, is what I'm trying to say.

I think the having the police out with tacos with the cop allows people to ask questions, allows uh to educate the public, and I also think that having our fire staff out and educating people on what they can do to mitigate risks around their house, what that looks like, things that may not cost a lot of money uh for them, I think is is very important.

So then we get to the response times, and just me this morning when the 75-year-old fell off the treadmill and hit her head and she's bleeding from her head and her nose.

I'm like, oh, how long is this gonna take?

Right, and my in my council, in my inner council voice, I'm like, how long is this gonna take for them to respond?

I know it may not seem like a long time, and there are situations where people are harmed more severely than she was, but watching her, it's like how long is it gonna be before before they get here?

So I just want to say that I think that it's very admirable for what you both have been able to do.

And I know looking at the numbers looking forward does not look great, but the fact that we do have staff that want to come here, I love coming to the pinnings, I love seeing the people getting sworn in.

There's something very wonderful about that, and I do want to preserve that.

And then I have the question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, because in order to finance um public safety, which is general fund, um, I need to get money in and I need the other departments to work.

So I think that is a big dilemma that I setting up here that I'm looking at, is like, so what comes first?

I need my economic development because they make money so that I can have the public safety so we can have the response.

So these are just some thoughts that I'm having that I wanted to share with you because I think that you're doing a great job.

I just don't I in my brain, I can't put one department over another because for me we're all needed, and we all work as a big family and a unit, so that makes it pretty difficult when we're sitting up here.

But I do appreciate the exec staff and your ability to sit down and try to figure some of this out before you bring it to us.

But thank you both for the work that you do to keep us all safe.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right.

Well, I think it's worth highlighting again as it is on the slide itself that we're talking about here.

These are these are for illustration purposes only of the kinds of discussions we'd be we'd be will be having next year if we do not come up with additional revenues.

Obviously, this is gonna be a community conversation.

This is a community conversation, and the community will have a choice about what what you know what it wants to do with respect to providing a city additional revenues or making some of these painful cuts.

So thank you for providing some examples.

We'll be having this conversation again in the future.

Mr.

Wagner, back to you.

We're gonna do it at the end.

No, it won't be department-specific, Dwayne.

Um your guess is as good as mine.

We're going department by department.

Mr.

Wagner, thank you, Mayor.

Um, with then thank you to Chief Cree and Chief Westrope.

Uh with that, I'll welcome Director Osbourne down to talk about planning and economic development and Director Bassinger to kick us off with recreation.

Good evening, Mayor Staff and members of council.

I'm Megan Bassinger, Director of Housing and Community Services, which includes the recreation division.

Um so I want to start off with reminding you recreation provides programs, facilities and services that keeps the community engaged and active.

And so as we were looking at the potential budget cuts in the upcoming year, we focused on what we want to retain and what is valuable to our community.

Um so you'll notice the list does not include the senior center.

We did not touch or are not looking to touch the city's two aquatic facilities, which are relied on by our high school swim teams, our organized aquatics groups.