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

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Claudia, will you please restate this in Spanish?

Yes.

Back to you.

All right, welcome everyone.

The time is two oh two.

We'll call this meeting to order.

Madam City Clerk, would you please call the role?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald here.

Council Member Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellos.

Here.

Councilmember Alvarez.

Vice Mayor Krepki?

Here.

Mayor Stepp.

Here.

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

Wonderful.

All right.

Let's get in right into our transit-oriented study sessions.

Thank you all for coming today.

We'll start with item 4.1, Transit Oriented Communities Policy.

Is it Mr.

Hennessy or Mr.

Osborne?

Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the Council, uh Gabe Osber and Director of Planning and Economic Development.

Joining me today is Danis Hennessey, Director of Transportation and Public Works, Amy Nicholson, Supervising Planning Planner, and Christian Condelaria, City Planner.

Before I hand this over to the team to go through the slides, I'd like to just provide a very brief overview of today's conversation.

The item before the council at this point in time is a study session associated with transit-oriented communities policy.

That is commonly referred to as TOC.

The TOC policy is a regional planning framework that was developed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission that focuses on increasing housing density and commercial activity around transit hubs.

TOC policy includes a set of recommended policies, guidelines, and procedures that cities can incorporate.

So that's a critical aspect.

We'll go through that fairly quickly.

Nicholson.

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

As Director Osburn mentioned, the transit-oriented communities policy was adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to help implement the region's long-range plan, which is called Plan Bay Area 2050.

And it provides guidance for jurisdictions to opt-in or adopt those policies to further regional housing and transit goals while also helping to reduce impacts on the climate.

Much of this work is in alignment with adopted city policy, including the general plan and the active transportation plan that were adopted by this council last year.

But beyond meeting regional and city goals, as Director Osburn mentioned, compliance with this policy would position the city to receive an additional two to four million dollars in the next OBAG funding cycle.

Because this incentive money is tied to a funding cycle, the scoring has a set date, which means any of the work that needs to be verified or adopted must be done by July 1 of next year.

So that gives us just about 11 months to complete this effort.

So transit-oriented communities are defined as the one half mile radius around fixed railway stations or stops.

So in the case of Santa Rosa, we are looking at the radius around both of our smart stations.

The incentive funding is tied to not only the city's population size, but also the number of TOCs.

So Santa Rosa qualifies for the lowest tier of incentive funding that's available based on those two metrics.

And the requirements to actually get points under this policy are sort of scaled based on the size of our community and the number of TOCs.

This slide graphically depicts the two TOC areas.

The stars indicate the smart stations, and so for the purposes of this policy, we're looking at just what's within the circle at a minimum.

You'll also see the larger boundary, which indicates where we have our adopted station area specific plans for both the North Station and the downtown station areas.

So the policy is broken out into four main elements or categories, including residential densities and commercial office intensities, affordable housing and commercial stabilization, parking management and station access and circulation.

So each category is a total of 25 points, and 85 points must be reached to become eligible for this incentive money.

And with that, I'll turn it back to Director Osborn.

Thank you, Amy.

And as I mentioned, there are three distinct programs that we're currently exploring.

We'll just set the stage on those programs, and obviously future slides will dive in a bit deeper.

Not one of these programs will take us over the scoring threshold.

We will likely need to select two.

So the first is parking maximums.

That is a bit unique.

Normally, zoning regulations deal with parking minimums, which is the minimum amount of parking that a development needs to install.

If that developer has a need to increase that parking based on demand, that developer is typically free to do so under regulations.

So a maximum provides a cap.

The developer can only add so much parking, and this is really intended to discourage the use of vehicles as the major form of transportation in that area.

A transportation demand management program is really a set of policies and programs that new development types of that really meet certain criteria are required to implement.

And that can take the form of ride sharing, carpooling.

It can be the inclusion of child care to reduce trips because the main goal is to reduce the amount of single occupancy trips that move through the transportation network.

So in coordination with our transportation public works department, we have determined that this it can be fairly simple to implement.

It has a very low scoring total, but we will be recommending this.

And as we see with some of these policies, they are very focused on the station area.

But as we look at exploring these, it may make sense to broaden that out to other areas of the city.

So for TDM, this is one of the areas where we were looking for council direction on whether it should just apply to the station areas or whether there's the possibility of expanding it out a little further.

The third program is on the affordable housing front, and this is very specific to production.

One of the allowances under the TOC policy is to broaden out ministerial or buy-right housing.

The best example I can provide is SB35, which is state legislation that sets certain criteria that if a development meets it, it is processed ministerially.

And what that means is city staff reviews it against objective design standards, makes a finding that it meets it, and then it's approved for construction.

It typically bypasses public hearings and the typical community engagement review process.

So between the three, we will need to select two.

We'll talk about some of the pros and cons as we go through this.

And as I mentioned, the final slide will reinforce this because these are the three areas that we're looking for the input on.

So really what we see with the decision framework on this type of policy, it's it's very similar to what we're seeing in the planning universe now.

Um it typically centers around more regional priorities.

And on this front, transit-oriented communities is very focused with its growth pattern.

It is looking at increasing growth around transit areas.

So what we've seen from the regional side is it's really focusing on public transportation, and there's also the climate goal aspect to it.

So it's very focused.

And it's also uniform across the state.

It doesn't necessarily take in the uniqueness of Santa Rosa in the specific corridor areas.

It's very much blanket to the state.

So those requirements are either coming through as specific requirements that the city must adhere to, or they're voluntary, but they're voluntary and they're usually tied to funding opportunities.

So because infrastructure is a priority of the council, um, focusing on the policy work that then brings money in becomes critical.

And that's really the two prongs we have here.

It's regional priorities, but it's also getting into funding opportunities through OBAG.

Now the challenge is how does this then fit that this more regional approach to the uniqueness of Santa Rosa?

And that gets into really our local focus.

Um, when we look at the different station areas, they are very unique from uh their existing development patterns.

Um, when we look at a focus on housing, how does that affect economic vitality when we're really looking at economic development goals?

So, really, how does it meet the neighborhood context and the business needs in that area?

And then, of course, everything looks good on paper, but when we actually try to put it into production, what is implementation look like?

Um, so as we look at increasing densities, as we look at potentially parking maximums, those are more requirements that developments must adhere to.

So, how does that really work from a market feasibility standpoint?

So that's the other lens we look at.

So these are all really council priorities, and I think these all blend together in this policy.

And one of the efforts the team goes through is to make sure we balance out all four of these.

Next slide, please.

And at this point, I will hand the presentation to Director Hennessy that, and he will talk specifically about the OBAG funding.

Thanks, Gabe.

Um, just to put some context on this, uh, we went back through the previous three cycles of OBEG funding just to look at what that eligibility and that money has done for us.

And um it's more than just transportation to public works.

It in addition to streets and signals and pedestrian and bicycle improvements and a number of transit improvements that are on there.

There are also three separate um city planning efforts.

There's uh park money, there is um money for the parking enterprise team.

Um I just I do want to highlight a number of high-profile projects on this list too.

Like the bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing that's under construction does not get done.

The Southeast Greenway master planning effort that we're currently undertaking does not happen without this money.

Um, so this more than 18 million dollars over the last decade plus has really meant a lot in terms of it moving forward, some key city initiatives.

Next slide, please.

Um, the four areas that uh Amy went over earlier.

One of them is station access and circulation, and I just wanted to highlight why we score so well in this category.

Um, specific to station access and circulation, we'll talk in just a minute about what we've done around the areas.

But what they're looking for is to do is make sure that the public realm supports a number of options to move about this area, and that we're supporting the people who do live there in as dense a fashion as we can, but also with as many different uh safe possibilities to move around.

Um so a lot of the policy work that this council and past councils have done have put us in a great position to do that, as evidenced on the next slide where we show the scoring categories, and we're already meeting all of MTC's goals for us getting the maximum amount of points, and we cannot do any better based on this scoring rubric.

Um a little bit about specifics there about why, though.

Um, the most recent uh active transportation plan that we adopted last summer meets their criteria for identifying gaps and prioritizing projects.

We um have currently um are continuing to identify low-stress bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the area, not the least of which is again the bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing um and the Jennings crossings, but also connecting those two facilities to the rest of the existing network and between those two new facilities.

You all have also adopted a uh as a city um complete streets policy that's been in place for the last decade and has been guiding a lot of our work.

Um so again, we we're in a great position, and this is a category that's a strength for us.

Uh I'm going to go over the next category, which is residential density and office intensity.

Um, this focuses on getting a lot of people near transit through increasing uh a lot of our residential allowances and uh basically the commercial building heights in the areas.

Um, a lot of this is to focus on reducing the vehicle miles traveled by people in their cars and also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Uh this goes along well with our general plan or get in our greenhouse gas reduction strategy.

Um, and then moving forward, this also helps to preserve industrial and open space zoning districts to make it also a place for people that want to live in these more dense areas.

Um, for this category, we are actually looking at an anticipated total.

Um, we are looking at potentially doing some uh planning processes in the future, and we're starting to go undergo one right now, which I will go over.

So, our north station area is currently not consistent with the TOC policy.

We have to hit a average of 25 units an acre in the North Station, and it's currently at a nine units an acre.

Additionally, our commercial building heights have to increase or utilize what's called floor area ratio to meet these requirements.

But for our downtown, it is actually consistent with TOC policy and limited to no work needs to be done in this area for this category.

Uh as I stated before, we do have a plan in progress.

So we recently started as of July 1st to do the North Station Area Specific Plan update.

We received a grant from MTC to do this work, and then we have additional funding from our advanced planning fund that is going to help uh go and cover some of these costs.

Um this plan has to be done within the year time frame that we have by July 1st, 2027.

Um we're working with a consultant team, and we are hoping to uh complete by this date, and also it contains a subsequent environmental impact report.

Thank you.

Um moving on to the affordable housing and commercial stabilization category.

Uh, this set of policies really focuses on ensuring that there is housing available for all income levels in our TOCs, as well as reducing the risk of displacement for any residents who live within affordable units.

The policies also emphasize supporting small businesses, and so there are a number of options to achieve each one of these goals, and I'll talk through quickly how the city is currently in compliance with TOC policy without doing any additional work, and then conclude with a policy option for the council to consider.

So, in the production policy category, the city scores four out of eight.

So there is one existing program we get credit for.

In the preservation policy section, the city gets full points, and in the protection policy category, the city receives four out of eight points.

Um, and then the full point total is received for a commercial stabilization policy.

So I'll just briefly walk through what the city currently has in place under the production category.

So this is really looking at how do we encourage and incentivize the development of housing units within these areas.

The city currently has a development certainty and streamlined entitlement process.

So we achieve four points here.

And then on the next slide, we receive full credit for the preservation category through two means.

One is the city's existing mobile home closure ordinance, and another is a program that the housing and community services department administers, which is a rehabilitation loan program for income qualifying households.

In the production category, the city receives four of eight points for the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance, which was amended by council uh several years ago.

And then finally, in the commercial stabilization category, the city receives credit for the business concierge program, which provides assistance to small businesses looking to start up or expand.

So, really the focus of this section is to discuss the ministerial housing ordinance option that Director Osburn mentioned previously.

There are multiple ways for the city to achieve the point threshold that's required for this incentive funding.

Um in the housing category in particular, options are quite limited because many of these policies require ongoing funding commitments.

So the staff identified option at this point in time would be the development of a ministerial housing ordinance to apply to the two TOC areas.

Is we don't have grant funding, and so this would be fully on planning staff to develop over the next nine or 10 months in order for the ordinance to be effective by the July 1st deadline.

Another consideration with this ordinance is that it would apply to some of our preservation districts within the downtown TOC, and that would require some additional work related to our objective design standards to ensure that those new developments proposed within those preservation districts were uh compatible with the existing historic environment.

And with that, we'll discuss parking management.

One moment, Miss Fleming, do you have a question?

Yeah, I do have a question.

Um I'm just curious if we go back to the housing um pieces.

Um, I know there was actually a lot of housing options, some require um financial commitments, but a fair few we put in there don't.

Um can you talk about how you decided to choose that one over the other ones that don't require financial commitments?

And maybe say what they are for the council.

Sure, absolutely, and thank you for the question, council member.

Uh staff has been working for I think over a year and a half on uh this policy as it's evolved over time.

So it has been updated just as recently as February of this year, um, really diving into what the policy options um what policy options might be available for us to reach that 85 point total.

In the housing category, um many of the policies require ongoing funding commitment or uh large one-time funds.

So for example, to uh conduct new studies, and no grant money was received from MTC in this housing category.

We were fortunate to receive money for both land use changes and our parking work, but we did not receive any money for housing policy work.

So that uh sort of further limited uh what could be pursued given the city's existing um finances.

I guess what I'm wondering is like I I think one of the options is coordinating with the county um on one of their housing um options.

I don't know, which is one that we put in there intentionally to relieve cities of of a really big burden.

Um, I know that rent stabilization was another option that doesn't require a financial investment from the city.

So I just am curious when you say they're limited, it doesn't I'm just curious how we ruled out those other options as as we got here to your recommendation.

Let me look back at you don't have the answer policy.

I just know we put in a few of them so that there was some real options for cities.

Sure.

Um, I would say that and there were numerous different options in each of the the three categories.

We um I would say the majority of them were ruled out because of the requirement for funding and the ability for staff to be able to manage the work and accomplish it in the time frame that is allocated, which at this point is is less than a year.

There were also um several options that sort of logistically, and I'm gonna potentially turn it over to Director Osburn for more discussion on this, were um something that staff didn't feel was appropriate to be deciding on uh a vacuum, and so that's the reason for coming before you with like this ministerial housing option to consider.

I just think that because at MTC, I mean I was intimately involved in making the menu of these, like me and two other people were negotiating this.

We put forth a pretty big menu, and I can't say that we ever envisioned not having I didn't envision that we wouldn't be discussing all of the options and having the council make some decisions, obviously with staff input, but I think that the council probably doesn't even know all of the options that are available under the policy.

And so I just um you know put a lot of effort into it and would love it if we could like go through the options so that the council has a chance to weigh them out because we there are a few that don't require um financial commitments.

There are a bunch that do, but there are a few that don't.

Maybe it's for another point in time.

Yes, thank you, council member.

And I I think the the core of your question is associated with what were the total number of available options that were presented to staff as part of this.

So as we go through this, we can circle back on the back end and discuss some of those policies and programs, as I mentioned, or as Ms.

Nicholson mentioned, one of the main criteria was meet the deadline, uh ensure that there aren't long-term funding commitments.

So there were some criteria that pulled that out.

But we can talk about those programs.

We can talk about why we pulled those out and go through the really the full menu item in the housing area.

Okay, thank you.

The next category, the last category is parking management.

This one is largely actually focusing on increasing biking, walking, and other active transportation modes by reducing the car trips and car parking necessities in the area.

Um, this is to prioritize our shared transportation modes, which includes the SMART, uh, our city bus, uh, we have various other transportation partners as well as the Sonoma County Transit system.

Um, and then this is to reward management strategies and reduce all of the automobile trips in these TOC areas.

Um, so for this one, uh, this one has an anticipated total.

We have quite a bit of work going into this category.

So as you can see, we're gonna focus mainly on three of these, but I did want to go over briefly a couple of these.

So we are implementing vehicle parking minimums.

This is actually part of state law.

Um we cannot actually have vehicle parking minimums within a half mile radius of our smart stations, and so that is implemented through our downtown station plan currently, and then we'll be moving forward with adopting that for the North Station in the future.

And then we will also be uh looking through some changes for vehicle, sorry, for bicycle parking minimums, and then for unbundled and shared parking, we do not need to do uh work in these areas.

Uh we are looking for some direction on our vehicle parking maximums for both residential and commercial, as well as some parking management strategies that we'll go into further.

So for parking and transportation demand management, we have been working with a consultant team with a grant we got through MTC for 150,000.

This was specifically for all of the things that you see before you.

We are looking at vehicle and bicycle parking zoning code uh requirements, some updates to some of our other various zoning code sections, and um moving forward, and we also previously worked with the consultant team in the downtown area, and you with uh if you can remember, uh, we had a some parking changes in the downtown last year for uh different monetary changes.

And then uh during this process, we have been working with this consultant team, and we began the outreach portion from February and March.

Uh, this was focused on gathering some input from various stakeholders in the area.

Uh we had seven focus groups and five stakeholder groups.

Some of the people that we met with were Cottington, the Children's Museum, the Junior College, Santa Rosa High, and various other uh developers and surrounding apartments.

Uh topics discussed were transit, active transportation, parking and carpooling, and we just wanted to uh provide an update on the existing conditions in the area, facilitate some discussion between some of the participants, and provide a project overview about TOC.

Uh during this outreach, we receive uh quite a few impact around positives and areas of for needs of improvement.

So wanting to focus that SMART and our bus are very important services that we have in the county and in Santa Rosa.

Um, there definitely are some improvements that they uh identified, such as frequency and coordination between all the various agencies for transportation methods, um, and also focusing on needing to increase walking and biking in the area, and found that there were some areas of need for improvement.

And additionally, the large topic of concern was parking and the need for uh parking in the North Station area, especially around the smart station.

Uh car pulling was not a thing that really came across clearly in this conversation.

Um previously we also worked with the consultant team, as I mentioned for the downtown in November.

This focused on increasing or changes to price parking areas for garage and meters, uh creating and introducing parking validation, uh creation of premium parking zones for incentivize our active transportation methods, our transit systems and other methods of transportation, and the removal of certain parking meter areas for free parking to promote our economic development in the city.

So, one of the first topics that we'll be going over is our vehicle parking maximums.

This is kind of a tool to assist with a lot of our existing programs, such as the general plan, the GHG reduction strategy, and our active transportation plan.

This is something the city does not have, and it's not something that we are all very well aware of at the time, but the parking maximums would be asking of us to do 1.5 spaces per residential unit or four spaces per 1,000 square feet of non-residential space.

For the city, this and for the area, this is a TOC objective, and a city would be at a city initiative to reduce vehicle miles traveled and our greenhouse gas emissions, while also promoting all of these methods of transportation.

There are some challenges related to vehicle parking maximums, including developer financing and feasibility.

There are some issues that have come up that we've learned through our engagement strategies related to how commercial real estate leases are structured around parking space requirements and how financing can impact the ability to build some of these developments with reduced parking.

And then we are also aware of how some businesses require some type of review of average daily vehicle trips and how a reduction in vehicle trips could impact the projects and businesses that we could have in the area.

So the first decision point would be for vehicle parking maximums in the residential area.

There are four different categories of options here.

So one is full consistency at four points.

That is labeled in the green circle, partial consistency at two points, which is two parking spaces per residential unit.

It's the orange, and then the pink is any type of parking maximum that we would like to create in the area, and then the other option is a no parking maximum.

So provided for you are four of our four different projects that have occurred in the city and seeing how they align with these different scenarios if we were to implement parking maximums.

For one of our newer projects under construction, that is Lance Drive Housing in the North Station area.

It's pretty much across the street from the North Station.

If we were to do uh full consistency, it would be difficult for them to move forward.

Well, not move forward but it would be difficult for them to really, if they were a new project coming in, they would have difficulty moving forward with that.

But if it was for the two parking spaces, that would be feasible for them.

Um for Aviara, that is actually one of our other North Station projects to the south of the station, that would be able to have the ability to do it in any scenario here.

And then Annadell is similar to Lanch Drive, and then downtown, we have the Stuart Kennery apartments.

They also have the ability to do it in any scenario.

However, we wanted to provide additional information that the city does provide 39 spaces through parking permit program that also helps offset some of the issues related to parking for them.

The next decision point we'll be going over as well is for vehicle parking maximums for our commercial sites.

Uh, same similar breakdown for colorers.

Um, the first example that we have here for you is Lance Drive.

Once again, they do have a retail phase.

Um, and it is showing you that they wouldn't be able to do full consistency or partial consistency, but if we did create some form of limited, that would be a possibility.

And then for Cottington, um, we displayed the parking categories for Target, Dick Sporting Goods, and Cardington as a whole.

Um, it shows that they all park within the four spaces per 1,000 square feet, and during our feedback sessions with some of the people, that it is pretty normal for leases to have the four spaces per 1,000 square feet, and that Lance Drive has opted to increase the amount of parking that they wish to have for the people that to go there.

Um, it also is good to know that Cottington is providing additional spaces as well to surrounding residential uses so that they do have an excess of parking that they're utilizing to support the uses in the North Station surrounding them.

To provide some further context on how parking is impacting, at least in the downtown.

The city does provide 1,480 parking spaces in our garage and our lots.

This is for both businesses and residents.

Many of these spaces were provided mainly due to development uh need.

A lot of these developments, as they were moving forward, found that they needed more parking for their residents, either through financial reasons for business loans or the residents were demanding more parking spaces.

So they have worked with uh the residents have been working with our parking team to get some parking permits in these areas to reduce some of those issues.

Uh currently we do have the parking infrastructure to absorb the demand we've been facing around the area downtown, but we do have a bit of a limited supply.

And future developments are already speaking with our teams to see any options in the garages and lots to help with offsetting some of the reduced parking that they want.

Um, however, across the city, we have been seeing quite a bit of parking overflow, not just in the downtown, we've seen it across all of our areas in the city.

It has led to a lot of issues with street illegal parking, and that has faced a lot of difficulty to a lot of our staff members.

The next thing that we wanted to go over is our transportation demand management.

This is another category under the parking section.

This is focusing on providing flexible options for our people in the city for transit, carpooling, biking, and walking to provide more flexible and safer ways to go around the city.

As travelers begin to use other methods of transportation, this does help reduce vehicles miles traveled and single occupancy vehicle uses and reduces congestion in the areas.

It's also good to know that TDM is actually something that enhances TOC provisions overall.

It enhances the vision by promoting transit and ridership for smart and buses by requiring developments to provide more infrastructure for walking, biking, and other methods of transportation and not just for parking for cars.

So for transportation demand management, we have been working with a consultant team and have a draft of what this could look like for the city.

This would be for new development coming into planning.

There would be a threshold for this program.

So if it is a residential project, that would be 20 residential units as the minimum or 20,000 square feet for a non-residential project.

These TDM programs have a wide category of options.

And these points contribute to what is considered a vehicle miles travels reduction for purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act.

So this would be helping reduce some of our environmental, sorry, increasing our environmental efforts around the city.

So the categories that we have here before you are for development that includes affordable housing and healthy food retail and on-site child care.

And then there's also our transit category.

So maybe the developer team would like to increase transit services to their site.

Maybe they want to provide a transit subsidy to their employees or provide an unlimited ride program in combination of what already are existing city programs for limited ridership, as well as providing bust-off improvements.

Some other categories are for bike and pet improvements, for vehicle parking and unbundled parking and shared parking, and then another category related to education and programming for transportation demand management and things that are available for residents and for employees at a project site.

So there are some case studies of how transportation demand management works as a program across the county, but also across the state.

So first, uh Sonoma County Transportation and Climate Authorities.

They've created what is a regional resource and also a bit of a technical assistance and toolkit.

That was referenced with the consultant team and staff as we prepared this program so that we can align with the county on this effort.

We also wanted to provide a large example similar to the program that we might be proposing in the future, if agreed by council, is that with San Francisco, they utilize a point-based system similar to getting the 20 points here.

They have a wide variety of menu of TDM options for a new development to consider.

There would be a lot of ongoing monitoring with staff as part of this project.

And then it also focuses mainly on produce reducing vehicle miles trips and shifting people to different modes of transportation similarly to how we are proposing.

For a small city scenario, there is San Carlos in San Mateo County.

They have a smaller population less, but they do still do this type of program.

They do what is kind of like a TDM checklist, a lot more streamlined for their type of city needs.

And they have a threshold of 10 units and 10,000 square feet, somewhat similar to what was proposed before, and also focuses on reducing the same type of vehicle miles traveled by 20%.

So for this decision point before you, we have mainly wanting to see the wide areas of the city you would want this to connect to.

So the first thing I wanted to go over is how it connects to what are called our priority development areas.

These are actually areas established by MTC to help with promoting in field development, increasing residence, increasing residency transit usage, a lot of jobs in the area for school, shopping, and for services.

So by proposing this plan for our priority development areas, this would really help with implementing our greenhouse gas reduction strategy and our general plan.

Both of these plans really focus on providing a TDM plan across the city.

And so implementing this program at least to our priority development areas would help with moving forward with an adopted document that we have seen that we want to move forward.

This is actually something that is beyond the TOC requirements and would be something that council would need to consider and moving forward as more of a leader in the North Bay and promoting this type of program to the entire prior development areas.

Another option for applicability of our areas is for the North Station and for the downtown station area.

This would be supporting our smart stations and our transit mall, but would not be providing the same benefits to the rest of the city as would be for the priority development areas.

A lot of these areas would benefit from a lot of the improvements to sidewalks, to other transportation methods, to promoting different types of transit to their employees and residents and any type of benefits that they could offer to their employees.

And then the last type of applicability would be just to apply it to the North Station only.

This would be not difficult on staff to do, but it is not exactly fully putting forward with what we think the city could offer.

And then the last one would be maybe going forward with not a TDM program, but that would lose out on a point and also something that really would really benefit the community.

As part of this program, it does have about staff time, about three to five years monitoring with the developer.

And also has ongoing and one-time cost for developers.

For the city and staff side, this would be kind of a program that would be handled between TPW and for planning economic development.

Staff teams do, our two staff teams do review projects together, and this would be another component that could be implemented at the same time.

It would not be a difficult lift for our teams.

There are a variety of TDM measures that are in place across the city.

They just are not formulated into a program like this.

Being able to formulate it as one type of thing together does make it easier for all the departments and does make it a lot more visible for the community and for environmental groups to be aware of.

Wanted to provide you some additional information on how TDM works in the city currently, and for actually a brand new project.

Many of us are aware of Casa Roseland.

So here are some of the ways they're able to achieve and even go above and beyond the 20 points.

So they are in the Rosen priority development area.

So this would be one of the PDAs that this could be applicable to.

They are 75 unit and 100% affordable housing program under the TDM program.

This goes above and beyond the requirement.

And then they do have 324 shared parking spaces with the entire five parcel Tierra de Rosas project.

That also provides them a lot of points towards reaching their 20-point score.

And then additionally, they do provide 33 spaces on bundled parking to their residents.

So if a resident decides they do not want a parking space, they do not have to pay for one.

This increases their score for their TDM program.

And then additionally, if there's on-site child care, that also increases their score.

And they provide that for young children and teens.

Additionally, they also provide quite a variety of private bicycles parking spaces to the residents.

And then for other areas in the city that we could showcase potential projects in the future if we went forward with this.

If you're looking at the Mendocino Avenue corridor to the north, maybe we could proceed foresee a mixed-use project that is about 50,000 square feet of office and 100 units of multifamily for them to achieve what they want to do.

They could do our bicycle parking requirement.

They could do pedestrian access upgrades, they can do unbundled parking and price workplace parking for their employees.

This does put them above the 20-point threshold and easily gets them to where they want to be without having to do too much effort.

And mixed-use projects do have an easier time of reaching the TDM program requirements just for being on the same site.

It makes it a lot more feasible.

For another type of project, if we were looking at the Santa Rosa Avenue Corridor to the south of us here for an office project, they would be able to do this through bicycle parking, more pedestrian access upgrades if they want to do a carpool program for their employees, as well as an employee packing cash out program if their employees don't want to park on site.

This type of project would be easily be able to hit the 20-point threshold that we discussed before.

And for non-residential projects, they do have a variety of ways they can achieve to the hit these points.

So they could hit some pro some heavy point-sided efforts, or they could go for a lot of single value measures, depending on what they want to go for.

And then the last type of hypothetical project we could look at is in the Sebastian Road Corridor.

This could be a hundred unit multifamily unit project, the bicycle parking, transit passes, affordable housing, affordable housing, transportation methods, real time displays, and that one easily get them to the 20 points as well.

These are not difficult programs for them to achieve.

That concludes the last category, and we're going to move back to the whole TOC framework and how what our scoring looks like as a city.

So moving on to the city's path to TOC eligibility, you can see on the slide here that a total of three points is needed to hit that minimum eligibility threshold.

You've heard that the city is well positioned with work that has already been adopted and some work that's underway, but we need to find those three points through additional options should we wish to be eligible for that incentive funding.

So the three items that we've emphasized are shown on the lower portion of this slide.

So going back to the parking maximums, this one has sort of the biggest range of points that are available depending on how broadly it's applied.

So as few as one point could be achieved through that, or as many as eight.

And that can be differentiated based on new residential or new commercial development, or the number of parking maximum spaces that are established.

So that one certainly has the most flexibility and the most number of points available.

Transportation demand management, as you just heard, is not worth a lot of points, but it does further much of what the city has already committed to through the general plan and greenhouse gas reduction strategy.

And we do have staff available who have expertise in this area and can help administer the program and review new developments as they come through the process.

Just to reiterate both of those topics, parking maximums and TDM do have consultant support through an MTC grant.

And then the ministerial housing ordinance would be drafted by staff.

It is worth a total of four points.

And it would apply at a minimum to projects that include 15% or more units as affordable, although that percentage could be changed depending on council's direction as well.

And so we are happy to answer any questions, and I can get back to a discussion about housing policy in just a moment.

But it would be great to hear from the council on those three different policy options presented on this slide and any additional feedback that you have generally.

Thank you.

A really nice summary of some complicated issues, and we have some fascinating policy trade-offs here.

So thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I'm sure we have some some questions from council looking at looking to my colleagues.

We are formulating the questions in our head.

Who wants to who wants to start?

Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation today.

This is not an area that I find that I'm an expert in at all.

So I appreciate how much you dove into each of the sections.

And it seems to me that the amount of money that we're getting in grants for this, it's worth to it's worth it to do the policy work to get the correct amount of points, is what I'm hearing from Director Hennessy as well as all of you today.

So I look at it as a little bit of a tiered approach, and I'm wondering if you can walk me through this a little bit.

The first one seems that there's some kind of low-hanging fruit things that you can do in-house with staff to be able to update the policies to get us to the minimum amount of points required.

Is that so?

Yes, council member, I think that would be a fair assessment.

Uh, there are certain things as mentioned that are, as Mr.

Hennessy mentioned, that there's certain policies in place that we already have that are getting us points.

So that's fairly easy.

Um, then what really the staff focused on is of the available options of those options, how many of those can we do within the required time frame, which is fairly aggressive.

So when we talked about the North Station plan, um we know we need to change the densities.

That's a must.

We put that on the track to move it forward.

Now, as we go through that process, there are certain things we can do in that area, which are essentially add-ons to that.

Um, but then we got into the three that have some pros and cons to them to really understand where the the council falls.

But then I think to um council members Fleming's point, there are a lot of items in there that staff has reduced simply because we need to meet that time frame.

So as that evolves, there can be more of a conversation about those other topics from a policy standpoint and whether the council has a desire to incorporate those, incorporate those.

Obviously, they become a bit of a priority setting.

Um but really the main focus was to hit the deadline to ensure that the city is competitive in those dollars and really balancing out to the best of our ability.

So, yes, it is a mixed bag of things that are already done.

It's a mixed bag of things that we know we can do within the time frame.

And then there are certain areas that's more of a policy decision where we can go a few different directions and knowing some of the concerns in the community about ministerial housing, we wanted to have a conversation in front of the council about that, and then parking maximums are really a unique sort of topic that the city hasn't explored in the past.

So having that really sort of come out and be the case, that was our focus area.

But we're happy to really discuss any of those points that were made.

But your assessment is correct.

Great.

That's that's kind of where I'm heading is if we're able to accomplish these, you know, certain ones fairly easy from here to July 1st, 2027.

To me, that makes sense to focus on those ones that you feel like you could do in-house or with the consultants that we have already.

So it's not really reaching too far into the financial commitments and all those other things.

But my question is if we're able to do that, and then we actually want to take it a step further for the competitive grant after that, and we want to dive in further to some policy or or looking at if we are committing to something financially, but the grant that we might receive for that is you know a lot more.

Um, then I would want to look at some of those fiscal components so we have an understanding of, you know, yeah, you might have to ante up some money, but the money you're gonna get is is well worth it.

So, but I don't want to like deter from meeting the deadline for the July 1st, 2027, or deter staff from other work in their work plan that I know you have set forward for them.

So, what I'm seeing is what's the easiest way to make the points right now to get the work done right now so we are competitive, and then what could we show MTC or OBAG or whoever the group is that we're applying for the grants for?

Um what could we do to show that we're making those efforts, but we might need a little more time than the strict deadline.

And I'm I'm sure Councilmember Fleming has a long list of things that she feels we can knock out, but without that list, um I also feel like there's a level of staff knows what is on their work plan for the next 12 months, and so I'm hesitant to say do this instead um without you vetting that process a little bit more, um, Director Osborn.

So I think those are some of my questions just for clarification before we give our final direction to staff.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Ms.

Fleming?

Yeah, um, one of the questions that I have is that um, and I think this goes to council member McDonald's point, is that there are tiers for funding based on how many TOCs a jurisdiction has.

I think at present the city of Santa Rosa has three to get it to the next tier.

We need would have to have one more, which is four.

I'm wondering if any of these um options would best get us to four TOCs in a way that's efficient with staff time and maximizes our our return on our staff time investment.

Thank you for the council member or thank you for the question, council member.

Uh so Santa Rosa currently has two TOCs, so both of our smart stations.

And so MTC has set up criteria for that incentive funding, as you mentioned.

So we're in the two to four million dollar category along with many other Bay Area jurisdictions.

In order to move up to that next threshold, which is four to six million dollars, we would need two additional TOCs, and those would need to be planned or existing before this July one deadline of next year, or the population would have to increase over 200,000.

And so we we did have a conversation with MTC staff just to see if there was a way or what the process would be to qualify for additional incentive money, and it's tied to those those two criteria.

One of the things that I was thinking when um when I was looking at this originally is like a city like Petaluma, which has you know a third of our population size has two two TOCs because they have two train stations.

Um, and that it's hard for me to imagine that there's not a way that we could maximize densities or potential zoning densities around a couple of other locations in the city that would would help us, maybe not in this round, but but pretty soon.

And so that's what I'd be looking for, especially with our parking um where we can.

And so that's what I'd be looking for, especially what with our parking um where we can I think that's that that seems to me I'm I'm guessing I'm looking for you to tell me if I'm wrong that the parking was the one that might accelerate us more and housing uh near near transit the parking establishing the parking maximums would give us the most points.

Is that your well so there's points, but there's also just the fact of having two TOCs um and one is at the North Station, one is at the downtown station.

Um I was wondering if you had evaluated other sites to try to qualify them as TOCs because it's it's just kind of mind-boggling that we'd be in the same class as a city that they're at our size, and probably if we'd had a good census, we'd be close to 200,000.

We have uh regular relationships with the staff at Smart who have not expressed any desire to have additional stations within Santa Rosa.

And so our understanding from MTC staff is that it has to be a a fixed railway station or stop to qualify as a TOC.

Um our transit mall doesn't won't count toward that category uh based on those discussions.

And council member, if I can add to Ms.

Nicholson's comments, we did go through that journey to see if there's any way we could expand that out.

Much of it is really grounded in MTC's criteria for what is considered a TOC.

So, you know, looking at transit or other forms that aren't rail was the start of that journey to understand if we could somehow maximize that to get to four because that is the funding threshold.

Um I think it's important to note we will continue the conversation as this journey evolves to see if we can free up that criteria.

But the feedback that we've received thus far from MTC is really grounded in that criteria that was identified in the slides, and that's really what they're falling back on at this point, which does the two rail stations or the population.

Um but I think it's important to note that as we go through, we'll we'll continue this.

It's all really fairly new, things may change in the future.

Um, and I think uh it really a high level looking at a jurisdiction of Santa Rosa's complexity to other jurisdictions that are much smaller with two rail stations, uh, doesn't necessarily seem to be the most equitable distribution.

Um, but we're really managing that process and we will continue that conversation with MTC.

Yeah, because I you know I do understand the piece about I mean it doesn't make more sense necessarily to add more rail stations, but we do have other transit hubs in the city that are larger than a lot of transit hubs across the Bay Area.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Penguillos Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Uh really um uh I'm not an expert in this area either, but I love all these topics.

Um I just wondered going back to your um question in the direction that you're looking for and kind of along the lines of council member McDonald, um looking at your um end date, the July 2027, which I know seems it's a year from now, but it is it it'll come very quickly.

I know that.

So I'm wondering when I look at your three areas, uh the parking, the transportation demand management, and the ministerial housing, um, what you all feel you have for you know, for lack of a better word, capacity to do in terms of looking for direction from us.

So thank you, council member, for that question.

Um I would say that the parking maximums, the transportation demand demand management, um, parking maximums are fairly easy to incorporate.

It's really just understanding how that intersects with the code.

Um Director Hennessy is willing to partner on the TDMs, so that actually brings more resources to the table.

Uh those two I think could easily be done within the time frame.

Um looking at the ministerial housing, that that is a bit of a push.

There likely is a significant amount of community engagement we would go through through that process because it does change development types and neighborhood compatibility issues and noticing and all those things that that people can get concerned about.

Um so that one would likely be a reprioritization.

So if we were to rank those, those two become as far as the simple path to get to that deadline, a bit easier to do than the ministerial housing.

Um but if the council elects to bring ministerial housing forward as the recommendation, the staff can adjust.

Uh, it's just a little difficult at this point to understand what that would do to additional resources or excuse me, additional projects that we have in the queue right now.

It likely will delay.

We'd have to come back and analyze that a little further.

Um, we would try to manage all of that, but that one it's it's a bit more susceptible to knocking other priorities off because of the level of staff hours that go into something like that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

My colleagues have already played one side of the coin, so I'll play devil's advocate on this just to you know try to help me get an opinion.

Um further formulate my opinion.

So parking maximums, you had said was kind sort of a new uh subject or topic though for the city of Santa Rosa.

Um based on feedback of your to your department on changes in the past with parking minimums.

How do you feel parking maximums would be received by um surrounding communities or not surrounding communities, surrounding neighborhoods of uh some of these developments?

It's it's a bit difficult to say at this point.

What we have seen in the downtown where parking minimums were very favorable because of the cost of developing parking and incorporating that into the development, um, that was a very popular addition to the code, and number of developments took took advantage of that.

Uh, but developments also took advantage of the surplus parking that existed downtown.

So there was surplus that they could still meet the demand of the residents that wanted parking through that avenue.

Uh when we get into the North Station, that doesn't really exist.

So the developments in the event that that parking needs to be maintained on site uh could run into an issue, and it usually happens on the lending side.

That if if the the appropriate resources do not exist to justify the rent, it can be a bit difficult for the flow of money.

We we have heard of that.

Um, I think what we should show through the presentation is that when we look at those maximums, there's only a smaller number of the the projects that it went through that it'll actually affect.

So, with that being the case, I would say that there is limited impact because naturally the market is responding in a way that still flies under the radar of that maximum.

Um, but these are areas where we do worry about the markability of planning exercises.

Having more flexibility allows us to meet the current demands.

And when we bring these in, this really when we talk about pros and cons, that that really becomes the con to the parking maximum.

Uh, we will continue conversations with the development community if this is a direction of the council to better understand before we move that forward with adoption.

Um but at this time it's a bit difficult to say it may have no impact, or depending on how the market responds to the needs for parking, it may have a big impact.

And then my final question, um, again, playing devil's advocate, is from the developer side or the investor side.

I know you're you're not a banking institution, so you can't give financial projections, but the appetite or desirability to build projects with some of these um imposed on them.

Um, would that hinder the the appetite for developers to come in and do it if they can't to your point earlier?

Like if there's only so many parking spaces allowed for a certain amount of units.

In your experience, is there a an argument to be made by some of these uh developers that, like, hey, I won't be able to sell these because it would be deemed uncomfortable for potential residents.

It's possible.

You know, it's difficult to say as the generation changes the desire to own a car and drive in a car, right?

A lot of the planning exercises that we're doing are for many years out, and for people that aren't at any of these tables right now.

So understanding the dynamics and the desire for public transportation, it all factors in.

And you know, moving towards something that doesn't focus on parking as much and provides those other resources that are more walkable.

And I think that's really what TOCs attempt to do.

They put things next to rail, they provide connectivity to more regional locations, uh, and then they also encourage other amenities around that housing.

And it's very much how we envision the downtown.

So I think when you create that environment, the parking becomes less valuable.

And it's it's played out that way in many jurisdictions as they really created those walkable communities and developments can get away with not installing the parking.

I think Santa Rosa is in a unique growth pattern where it still falls back on the desire to do parking, especially when you're doing flat development.

Um, the challenge with going up is structured parking is very expensive.

And if it isn't providing a return on the rents, then it becomes challenging from a penciling standpoint uh to really understand the financials for the development.

And the market is very odd right now on how it's responding to that.

So I I think really the challenge is as we see the future go in the direction that TOCs and what we want to see with our downtown when that materializes, it it's likely less of an issue, but it's very difficult to gauge.

Um, we have not heard any direct feedback on this that this would be detrimental to those plans.

I think when we look at the North Station, we're adding more density, we're bringing other things that may help to offset that.

Uh so developers often look at the totality of the package, and it isn't necessarily one piece to understand how the regulations affect development moving forward or not.

I appreciate that.

Um those are all my questions.

I will just say that I I don't look at these um station area plans as as twins.

I think it's I think you can look at them as maybe sisters.

They're related, but they're very different.

Uh my biggest concern is for Northwest Santa Rosa, which I share part of that station area plan uh in my district with one of my colleagues.

And it is notorious for two things, being underserved and being, we'll call it not engaged with local government.

And that is my biggest concern is if we were to put something on like parking uh maximums forward, how that area would be impacted, because that area of our city does not communicate with government um effectively on a regular basis.

Thank you.

Uh my thank you to my colleagues.

They've covered most of the ground, but let me clarify a few points here, just get them clear in my head.

So we're talking about the chance to um potentially secure an extra two to four million dollars in grant funding.

Is that roughly annual?

Are the funding cycles roughly annual?

No, those funding cycles are every three to five or six years.

Um the first one was started in 2012.

Um MTC in coordination with regional agencies puts together a list of funding.

Um combines a bunch of programs uh in the in the program that is the one Bay Area Grant, and then that gets amended every quarter for the next however many years.

I mean, the first 2012 adoption is still being amended as we speak.

Um, and it's now a 200-page document.

So it depends on funding availability.

It's funnels through federal and state sources and distributes them to member agencies.

That's helpful.

So we're talking about roughly on average a million or so dollars per year to the city.

I think that slide showed 18 million dollars over 14 years.

So something like that.

Um I misread that slide.

Thanks for the clarification.

Uh and in terms of in terms of staff costs to elevate us in that in that grant competition.

Um, clearly there's there's a lot of time involved and potentially some other other funding as well.

Do we have a rough estimate into what it costs the city, what it would cost the city to pursue any or or all of these options and make ourselves more competitive?

Yeah, it's it's difficult to come up with the specific dollar amount.

What I can say is that a lot of the work was backstopped by consultants and a grant.

Um, and that's a lot of what MTC and other organizations recognize as they put forward these policies, that they have to provide technical assistance in city meeting those.

Now, with that said, uh, Ms.

Nicholson and Christian have spent a significant amount of time managing this through the process.

Uh so typically a planner will manage advanced planning initiatives to the tune of four to five on their plate at one time.

Um so when you're talking about potentially a quarter of an FTE to get these things through, um, that often is really what that looks like.

Um but then there's costs on implementing some of the programs that moves forward, and as we explore a little more in depth and we start determining the direction we're gonna go.

So, for example, if ministerial housing is the council's desire, um, then we can piece together, we would typically go through the exercise of piecing together what it would look like from a staffing standpoint, priorities.

Uh it doesn't incur additional cost because this is not backstopped by additional consultants that are not already supported by grants.

So, from a general fund standpoint, it's an existing investment that the general fund is making in advanced planning.

It's simply a reprioritization.

Um, but it does mean other things will get put on a different path and move slower, and we're happy to come back and do an analysis and better understand what that would look like.

It's very dynamic because things are moving on different tracks, and we try to get things done quicker, but the minute one thing delays for whatever reason, then all of a sudden it throws timelines off.

So that's that's typically the world.

I don't have a dollar map, but we're happy to come back with more of a detailed financial analysis if that would be helpful.

That what you the way you just summarized it is helpful.

Thank you very much.

Um, and then the slides that showed the hypothetical projects and the cost on or and the impacts on developers, those were helpful.

Are there some very rough?

I'm just I'm like I'm asking for back of the envelope uh estimates of the cost for developers.

I mean, some of those, I mean, I'm assuming when I'm reading pedestrian access upgrades, we're talking sidewalk, sidewalk work, lighting, other kinds of electrical.

Um, those costs can add up.

Do we have a do we have a rough sense of what this would cost developers doing projects in those area those areas?

Yeah, I'd wanted to say that we do have the one of the consultants here with uh two-A Linen convey.

I was hoping if Sarah, do you have any of these numbers with you?

I don't have a moment, but I did have one um one of the examples, it was roughly between six to eight thousand.

Uh it was a mixture of one time and um overtime costs.

So depending on what they pick, the one-time cost could be larger in the beginning, and then their overtime costs will trail down to a much significantly lower number, or they can flip on their decision and the one-time cost is a lot smaller in the beginning, and then it goes up and increases and can cap out at a certain area over time.

Pierre, if I can add to that, um having both written TDM programs for cities and helped developers develop programs.

The vast majority of the time that I did this with developers, these numbers were rounding airs or making sure that they got appropriate credit for things that were already in their best interests.

That's what I wanted to hear.

Thank you very much for that.

And what you can hear me poking around at a little bit here comes from my background as a grant writer, um, and often tempting to become very um very focused on obtaining the grant while forgetting what the what the um ancillary costs are either for us as a city or for the developer.

Uh but it sounds like the benefits clearly outweigh the weight weighted costs in this instance, um, and that's what that's what I was trying to clarify.

Um let's see, just a couple more questions here.

Um Gabe, can you go back to the ministerial housing um uh possibility?

I can't tell if we're if if your or if staff is in favor of that or not.

It's a bit of a mystery.

We don't know what the impacts are, but is there is there a desire to explore given the resources, or is that something that we need to put on the back burner?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

That that's a very interesting topic right now.

So from a transparency, a predictability standpoint, a staff hours in the processing of application standpoint, ministerial goes fairly quick and it is easy to manage.

Uh so it is much more of a streamlined development proposal, and we can get it through quicker.

Uh so typically what it means is that we bolster up our objective design standards.

So there's an exercise of overhauling those.

Those deal with height, placement of the house, they can deal with a variety of different things, but they basically are the governing documents that control how the development moves forward.

Uh so that's really where the heavy lift is.

And then when it moves forward, typically the development community, as we are currently seeing, because there's a number of ministerial allowances that came through under state code, they're all trying to utilize those because it just basically takes what would have been a year process and it oftentimes shrinks it down to six months.

Um now the downside is to it is that it is by right.

So we're members of the community have often had the opportunity to participate in public meetings to talk through it, to better understand the project.

Um, it very much feels like it is happening behind the scenes because it doesn't have the same level of engagement.

So, really the trick with ministerial is to balance out to understand where it really works well.

Um, is there more community concern in the downtown or some of the other districts on the outlining areas and going through engagement processes, going through education?

There's a lot of time in just getting people comfortable with that concept.

Um, but overall, it does actually, when we have requirements that are increasing as far as everything we need to do, one of the most effective efficiency measures is to shrink down the amount of time and what staff needs to do as part of the review process.

Um, and managing public meetings is very expensive.

Generally, if we're conducting a public meeting, it's roughly around 10,000 in cost to the city.

That's that's really what it takes in the preparation of the meeting, the preparation of the documents.

So just to give you a rough number.

So there's cost savings along with that.

Um so overall we support it from an efficiency standpoint, but we do understand that it needs to have the proper amount of engagement with the community so they feel comfortable with a neighborhood compatibility and a community engagement standpoint.

Thank you.

Uh all right, and my final question, and this goes back to the slide where we were talking about downtown parking, and there was a note there, if I remember correctly, a kind of a very um diplomatic note that parking infrastructure can absorb current demand but has limited supply.

Given the interest in city parking from downtown development, are we are we starting to shift from our um years old um uh feeling that we had a surplus of parking downtown, more parking than we can use, to now looking at the demand from incoming developments, we're a little bit more concerned about our long-term parking supply from the from the uh from city-owned spaces.

Yes, that's always been an interesting conversation.

I think in in a perfect world, you're using your existing parking to create an equitable balance between housing and between people coming and increasing economic vitality in the downtown.

Um, and that's really what the parking was intended to do, right?

Was economic vitality.

So when we're making these parking agreements with housing, which is great because it's supporting that.

I think when the concept first came forward, it was always the first few in the discussion of that there was a knowledge at some point that we can't continue giving housing permits because it takes away from the economic vitality.

Because we have seen more of an increase of population downtown because we're seeing housing units downtown, it is the time to analyze that and determine whether or not we need to start holding some of those spaces for just the general need to encourage people to come downtown because the city has a number of really significant and valuable assets and parking in the downtown core that is not really shared with other jurisdictions.

So, and we just need to make sure we're utilizing that properly.

So that would be a correct statement.

We are to the point where we're heavily analyzing that to make sure that we're not giving up too much.

So it hurts our economic development goals that we hope to achieve here in the achievement here in the near future.

All right, thank you.

I just wanted to make sure I was reading through the lines correctly.

Um that's it for my questions.

Uh anything else from council.

Let's open it up to public comment.

Uh let's start with uh Abby.

Santa Rosa Yemby.

Council members, I'm Abby Arnold representing Santa Rosa Yemby today.

Um this issue, I just wanted to make um a couple quick comments.

One is I wanted to can uh commend commend staff for being proactive in getting the pieces together so that you're in compliance and can qualify for this important funding for our future here in Santa Rosa.

Um I wanted to make a comment about the issue of parking maximums.

Um the staff report talked about the utility of those in reducing auto use, but I also wanted to highlight that uh parking maximums can decrease the cost of building the housing.

And um, in particular, I think most of us and pretty much all of us want to make housing more affordable to people who want to live here in Santa Rosa.

A recent study by UCLA showed that um a surface parking spot, one spot costs $52,000, and an underground spot is $73,000, and that does not include the c the cost of the land.

So decre uh actually putting a cap on uh parking will make uh potential new homes for people more affordable.

And um I I think that is something that's compelling as you're looking at the somewhat um the courageous uh position of putting a maximum number of parking spots onto uh developments in these areas.

Thank you.

Thank you, Abby.

Dwayne, hello, sir.

I'd like the traditional three minutes, which I prepared for.

Okay.

My name is Dwayne DeWood.

I'm from Roseland.

Decades ago, I began attending the MTC meetings in Oakland at the time, specifically asking for priority development areas.

I haven't been down to the San Francisco office in some times, but my neighborhood of Roseland was chosen to be priority development area.

If you want to go after extra funding, go for a South Santa Rosa station at the park and these Unity Park.

You could do a slide stop there right next to the park.

You could have that going.

You could get it going in the South Santa Rosa specific plan.

Start making that plan for SMART to get into this.

SMART treats us like second-class citizens.

This is where your development's going in.

You're plowing in thousands of housing units in South Santa Rosa.

So get that station.

Be more proactive.

Don't be bashful.

This is taxpayers' money they're using for the SMART, so go for it.

And then this idea about worrying about the ministerial housing ordinance.

Go for 25% inclusionary housing, affordable housing.

The Southwest has been able to do some of those good things, and we could absorb more affordable housing.

The Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group came forward years ago, decades ago, and said, let's get at least 20% inclusionary affordable housing.

And then also stop the conversion of the existing housing units into commercial units.

Hundreds of Santa Rosa's houses have been converted to use by business, insurance agents, dentists, attorneys, et cetera.

If you want your downtown to be more active, keep the housing downtown that's already there as housing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Fred.

Members of the city council.

Um I would like to support the ministerial ordinance.

I think that that would help the city align and comply with a for uh affirmatively furthering fairer housing law and to better integrating the city because it would help it would help take away some of the NIMBY pressure that's kept Santa Rosa neighborhoods segregated as they are.

Um and I agree that uh 20, 25 percent inclusion is doable.

Sonoma has a 25% inclusion, and that has not deterred too big developers from proposing fairly large projects there.

So uh that's that's um something to consider.

Um something that may not exactly apply to this item today, but could apply to the South Santa Rosa specific plan is the mobile home park portion of the discussion tonight, and the city has got 81 mobile home parks, thousands of spaces.

18% of the South Santa Rosa specific plan is with mobile home parks, and the city has an anti-displacement strategy to help keep people in their homes uh as a level they can afford.

So mobile home parks are or have been a part of this presentation is helping the city score to qualify for this grant, but the closure and conversion ordinance is is likely mostly aligned with this uh general state law and AB 2782 allows cities discretion to uh modify update and strengthen the closure and conversion ordinance, and so this can take away loopholes and and protect mobile home park residents as is is stated in the city's anti-displacement strategy.

So I would like the council to consider that for the South Santa Rosa Pacific Plan, and also as I uh said in my written comments that the scoring for full compatibility with the preservation on that I don't think is completely strong T, but uh if it works for the grant and maybe take some of that grant money and work on the closure and conversion ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fred.

Are there any other uh people in council chambers who wish to speak on this item?

Seeing none, then we're gonna go to our online comment, and I shouldn't have done this at the beginning.

Uh, but participants on Zoom, can you either raise your hand or dial star nine by phone to indicate you would like to speak on this item?

And I will ask our Zoom host whether anybody is raising their hand or dialing star nine.

That's a negative, Mayor.

All right, so we have no members of the public on Zoom wishing to comment.

We will close public comment and I will bring it back to uh to council for any final comments and direction to staff.

We'd like to begin.

Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

So tell me if I'm on the right track with my notes, and I'm giving you what it is that you are requesting.

So for TDM, I would like to see all priority development areas.

If we can do that, I would be more comfortable with that for parking uh maximums.

Uh I put a color, the orange category, but um partial consistency or uh limited consistency.

Um I find it very difficult for uh residents, especially when they're unable to find um parking and how that maybe impacts other uh residential areas when they don't have parking um at their complex.

And then um I'm okay with holding off for ministerial housing ordinance, but I think that it probably is something that when we do when time permits and staffing permits that we can start to look into so we can increase our our points moving in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other comments, Ms.

Fleming.

Yeah, would it be possible to put the slide up with the choices?

Um there.

Um so I want to just like step out and say, like it was sort of noted as a side note, the thing about um climate change.

The whole TOC policy was developed in order to be compliant with state requirements around climate change and in order to reduce vehicle miles traveled and to reduce parking and car infrastructure in order for to better meet um the the challenge of the moment around climate.

And so um while parking maximums might seem um to be burdensome for folks, the idea is then we could be investing in bike and pedestrian and transit infrastructure to relieve the need for people to have cars.

So um, because that's the spirit of the the um the matrix.

I I think we should go all in on parking maximums.

Um I I think that a couple of commenters talked about having high levels of inclusionary um housing, affordable housing.

I want to note that oftentimes when it gets up in those percentages that we find that developers find ways to get around actually building the housing and do the offset.

So I want to be mindful of that.

I'll leave it to your discretion.

I think Santa Rosa does a great job of building affordable housing where we can.

I think that the TDM is is a reasonable strategy moving forward.

And I think that for a city of our size, that the degree to which we can move forward in a ministerial fashion around housing is essential.

It reduces the burden on staff, and it also makes Santa Rosa poised to get to the four TOCs that and to really meet the infrastructure demands for the city of our size.

So as far as I'm concerned, whatever efforts you all feel are in your capacity, both with staff and with outside funding to pursue these ideas, I'm fine with you doing whatever menu of them is feasible.

Thank you.

Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm in alignment with Councilmember Rogers on the parking maximums, just because maybe I'm just part of that old school that I can't imagine still living in Santa Rosa without a vehicle, traveling from the east side to downtown corridor and where I would park if I was using transportation.

So yeah, I'm not gonna be able to ride a bicycle with my high heels on to get downtown to catch a bus.

I just I'm just I don't see myself, I think I'm too old for that.

But I I also was part of the Santa Rosa where public transportation was not really part of the culture of living here, and I feel like we have a little bit more time to invest in showing people the great um public transportation that we have available and how to connect well, and I know there's a vast amount of work that goes into that, but I would have concerns to going straight all in.

Um and I I know that Councilmember Fleming, who knows so much more about this subject, doesn't have those same fears as I do, but but I would have that, and I've heard the same feedback from people who are trying to get housing in the downtown area and don't have a place to even park one car in their family of four.

So we've seen um some of that feedback.

So I I would be cautious around that one.

Um as far as the um transportation demand management, I'm I'm fine to do that one.

It sounds like you guys are already moving forward with that in Roseland and some of the other areas that you're meeting that demand.

Um so, and that's one point.

So I'm trying to get to three, which is our minimum, and I think fairly easy for staff to accomplish in the one year time frame, if I'm hearing you correctly.

Um, and then for the ministerial housing ordinance, I have a mixed feeling about this.

I'm all for looking at it and actually moving forward to accomplish some of the things that we want to do around affordable housing and incentivizing to ensure that those things can happen in a timely fashion.

But I'm I am concerned a little bit about the lack of community engagement and what we've seen by some of the things that were state um uh ordained where they said you're just moving forward and you don't have to go through this process of outreach and and commun uh communicating to communic um community members.

I also would um want to look at our open government task force and what that would actually mean if we have these things that we've told the community we're gonna reach out, we're gonna be transparent, and we're gonna tell you what's going on, and then we pass an ordinance that actually reduces some of that open government and transparency.

So um, so those would be some of the things I would want to look at, but I would still be open to looking at that.

So if it's going to take us more time, we might not make it in this cycle, but we'd be prepared for the next cycle of funding and letting uh MTC know that we're we're moving forward in that direction.

I think that can also help you when you're looking at competitive grants.

Thank you, Miss Ben Wellos.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um see, I um I would say if um in with respect to parking, um, you know, I know in um especially when I first got elected, I was hearing a lot about like, for example, the Pullman project and uh the other one on College Avenue, I can't remember the name of it right now, uh, over by Manhattan and Safeway.

Um, okay, so that was those were really for me really good examples of folks trying to adjust to the parking minimums and really having a hard time.

However, I will say um lately, and I'm you know, I knock on whatever this is, uh haven't gotten any complaints because initially I got lots of complaints.

Um so I'm thinking um, you know, with the and I'm just kind of putting this together with the ridership with SMART going increasing.

I I know in a few in a little bit we're gonna be looking at our bus system, um, bicycles available everywhere.

I just feel like um listening to council member Fleming, I remember too when this started and it was all about climate change and trying to get people out of their cars, and I think we still need to move in that direction.

So, with that thinking with that, I think we should um I I dare I say go all out for the parking um maximums if we can.

Uh that's what I would suggest.

Um the transportation demand management, you know, it's one point.

Um if uh we have the capacity for that, that would be great.

Um and then finally with the ministerial housing ordinance.

Um I personally I would like to see more affordable housing.

Well, what I'm seeing, and I I hear what council member Fleming is saying.

We had get a we really have a hard time getting developers to invest in anything but market rate.

Um but the flip side of that when I look at uh Los Us Um how many applications they got for the all affordable, they got thousands of applications, is what Supervisor Coursey told me.

So looking at that and then seeing how the market rate housing is not filling up as quickly because it's so expensive in this economy.

So I know that's not gonna happen.

I'm thinking that's not gonna happen forever, but I personally would like to see more affordable housing.

I think if developers and this is my message to developers, not you all, you know, think about you know volume versus minimums.

If you have volume, you're going to you know make money in the long run.

And I I that's my message to them.

They say it doesn't pencil out, but that's what I would like to see because I know what people can afford.

I I'm working class and my district is working class.

So I know what what folks can afford.

Um, but with that, I'm just saying that if we can pursue the ministerial housing ordinance, even at 15%, we'd love to see more, but even at 15%, um I would love to see that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, um I'm in agreement with my colleagues on the TDM.

I think that's a fairly straightforward one.

Um I'm not all in on parking maximums, uh, just because of some of the concerns that were brought up before of um the amount of uh parking that we have versus the demand in our downtown station, and then also my concerns I said before of uh the areas in in Northwest Santa Rosa being more residential than they are commercial and how that could um negatively affect the residents there.

Um I I there's definitely gonna need to be some outreach and some some more deliberate and and outreach than we're typically used to in order to make those individuals comfortable with going forward with pack parking maximums when development comes forward.

Um then I would put um so let's split the difference and say that's the the four points and not the full eight.

All right, if we're if we're using so that's five points that gets us over the threshold, and then I'd I'd be okay with the ministerial at 15% coming back at some point um on its own to have a further discussion.

This is a lot of things to discuss at one time.

Um this is a big lift for all of us to to shift between these strategies.

So but I I I would prioritize those two and then come back with a ministerial control or um or ministerial uh ordinance um at a later time to further deep dive into it to see um uh what it would mean to our our city.

Thank you.

Uh I don't know that I have anything new to add to what my colleagues just said.

Um again, the the TDM um uh policy seems like a like a no-brainer um given uh given the feedback that we got.

With the parking maximums, my concern there is only that we that we that you that staff who are the experts here in a better sense for the impact on both the housing market and the development community um has the time to think through the unintended consequences.

Um we want all kinds of housing here, and as one example of where this theoretically could have an impact.

Um, you know, we've long talked about wanting to have market rate condominium housing, housing for purchase for our young professionals.

That's probably a consumer segment that's gonna want a decent amount of parking or at least the option to buy a parking spot.

Um and so to make sure that our policy, as we look ahead, because that's not a not a not a pressing concern right now, but as we look ahead to make sure that whatever policy we put in place are on parking maximums does not affect that or other kinds of development in the future in a negative way.

Um I'd encourage staff to take all the time that you need to think through those unintended consequences.

Likewise with the ministerial housing ordinance, um it's it sounds like there could be some benefits there, but the the trade-offs are best understood by staff right now.

I think my ultimate wish is that uh staff feels like you have the the leeway that you need to think through how all of these will piece together and both give us the best shot at bringing in additional grant money while not placing on new constraints either on your time or on future development in in the city.

Um I I you have you have clearly shown you have the the expertise and the feel for these kinds of policy questions.

I have I'm glad we've had the chance to review today, but ultimately I have a lot of faith in you being able to weigh those trade-offs and bring something back to us in all three of these areas or two or three of these areas to um to uh to complete our package.

And with that, um I'll ask I'll ask staff if you've gotten enough feedback today for the for the decisions that you're thinking through.

Thank you, Mayor.

That is incredibly helpful.

Um, just one clarifying point for the TDMs, uh, really two options that when we look at exploring TDMs, it could be very specific to the station area, or we can expand it out to the priority development areas.

Um, so I've I've heard a few touches on that, but if we can get a general sense of the council, do we want to expand that out, or we would like to constrain that program to just simply um the two uh station areas.

Uh Ms.

Fleming, question.

Yeah, can you um elaborate what that would look like?

Um, absolutely.

What we we typically run into is that when we look at the North Station plan, for example, it has a defined boundary, it develops policies and procedures that development has to adhere to, and it only applies to that boundary, and that can be very different than the downtown station area plan.

So for TOC compliance at a minimum, it has to comply to the station areas as defined by TOC.

So it only applies to the regional boundary around the station.

Um, from a climate action standpoint, from you know, basically trying to achieve our greenhouse gas goals, something like this is potentially suitable for expanding outside of that.

Um, so when we looked at the PDAs, those are much larger areas where we're essentially taking this program and we're broadening it out to other areas in Santa Rosa where we're focusing on development and then new development incorporates this.

So we think, as Mr.

Hennessy mentioned, that the it does not trigger a very high cost to the implementation.

Oftentimes it is getting credit for things already done, but it gives us puts us in a better position to encourage new development to incorporate um what we think is really good for getting you know those single occupancy vehicle trips out of the mix.

So going to the PDAs would expand it out, it would be naturally done with this process, or staff could constrain it into just the North Station in the downtown.

Ms.

McDonald.

Do we get more points for expanding it out?

We do not.

Just the the good part about doing the expansion.

Um, and it wouldn't be any heavier of a lift to do it.

Dan, you talked uh earlier about people are already putting in curbs.

I mean, we've seen it even of some of these small developments around Santa Rosa.

They're putting in curbs or putting in gutters, those types of things to make sure that there's pedestrian walking when they're doing development.

Are you saying that they already do all of those things?

But if we added it to an extended um area, they would get more credits by whom?

Who do they get the credits from?

Right now they're doing it because of other standards.

So like the things you just mentioned are part of our street design guidelines, and so they have to update their frontages.

Those updated frontages very frequently do provide pedestrian and bicycle facilities for which they would get credit in a program like this.

Um less frequently, you know, also they're sometimes required to update um bus shelters and transit stops, something else that they should get credit for through a program like this.

So this is just really an accounting of all of those different methods that are both infrastructure but also operational in terms of financial incentives for people to do something other than drive their car.

So I'm seeing a lot of heads on your side, nod yes, that this would be a good thing for us to expand just past the area, the specific plans.

The TDM, I think in particular is just easier for us to manage if it's a citywide thing rather than um just in the development areas.

Um I mean, this would be mostly a transportation and public works thing for us to manage.

We already do some of this through development review and our impact analysis guidelines.

This would just be incorporated in there and formalized in a way that complies with the MTC requirements.

But also helps with all of our gas emissions and everything else.

Absolutely consistent with your own.

Yeah, I would be comfortable then expanding it out.

I think it meets some of the other goals that we might not be able to get to as quickly through the parking minimums and maybe because we have some transitions, so hearing you talk today to me that makes more sense.

It's something that you're able to accomplish in-house.

And so I'd be I'd be comfortable doing that if if the rest of my colleagues are.

Thank you.

Ms.

Rogers.

Um, out of the options that were provided, I still agree with all priority development areas.

Thank you.

Other thoughts.

I'll just I'll add my own support for that for that notion as well.

Thank you for the clarification.

Any do you need any other direction or feedback from us?

Mayor, if I may, just so that she they hear it from four people, I am also in support of that.

Does anybody else want to add their voice of support?

We can have a unanimous vote.

I support it.

There we go.

No, thank you, Mayor.

Just to recap what I'm hearing is general support for a middle ground on parking maximums, TDM expanding out outside of the areas.

That's our minimum compliance for TOC.

And then what the staff will look at ministerial housing has been brought up as a conversation for many years.

We've we've explored topics, it is a development incentive.

It can be used as a tool to encourage affordable housing.

So we will look at an opportunity in a future study session to bring this in as a topic.

Um so we have an opportunity to have more of a detailed conversation and explore some framework and understand how that would potentially move forward in the future.

Wonderful.

Any other thoughts from council?

All right.

Thank you again.

This was a huge amount of work, but it is important to the city.

Let's bring in some extra dollars.

Thank you.

We'll move on then to item 4.2, Santa Rosa City Bus Short Range Transit Plan Udate.

Ms.

Eid, I'm assuming the show is yours.

Yeah, I'm gonna do just a bit of a preamble that I'll I'll provide while my colleagues come down.

I'll be joined by um Rachel Eid, the deputy director in transportation public works and the lead of our Santa Rosa City Bus S with Sean Sosa, uh lead finance analyst um for City Bus and Matt Wilcox, who's one of our two transit planners and is responsible for the service planning.

Um this presentation is more than just a routine update.

Um we are facing some operational challenges, we are facing some financial challenges, and we are working to position the system to be organized, um, sustainable, and serve as many people as well as we can.

Um you're our board, and we need to make sure that you're up to date on the state of the system.

Um, like the general fund and many other transit agencies in the region and in the state, we're facing budget challenges.

Umlike many of those others, we have limited ways to increase revenues.

Um, so we are being very cautious around costs right now, and our real mechanism to increase revenues is to provide better service, more reliable service, and increase ridership.

Um in the years immediately after COVID, we started doing aggressive scheduling with our service to provide as much as we could.

Um, in part we were able to do that because traffic dissipated in a way that allowed us to have very predictable travel times throughout the day.

Uh some of that traffic has returned in new patterns.

And frankly, we have also made um speeds lower on the streets, and that minute or two that I'm very happy to take from private drivers is costing these guys a lot uh in terms of a cascading effects throughout the day and the tightness of the schedule.

Um that's something that I need to own and that we need to work on, um, but it's having real impacts for a bus that makes dozens of trips every day.

Um we'll show you a slide later about what a typical bus does in a day and how little wiggle room there is and um affecting that on-time performance and that reboot reliability for riders really does impact the quality of the system.

So that's why we're here today.

That's why this plan matters.

Um, we're gonna share just a little bit about um how we're evaluating what's working, um, what options we have, how we're trying to make thoughtful adjustments to that, and again, provide as good a service as we can.

Um, this also puts us in a position that if our funding challenges get worse, we're operating from a position of strength and stability rather than from the status quo that we had from four or five years ago.

So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Rachel to talk through uh some of the financial and operational challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

Thank you, Dan, and good afternoon, Mayor Stapp and members of council.

I'm Rachel E, Deputy Director Transit.

I am joined today by Matt Wilcox, our transit planner and the project manager for the short range transit plan update, and also by Sean Sosa, our administrative analyst, who is also the grants finance and budget uh manager for the city bus system.

So just to go briefly over the agenda for this session, I'm gonna give you a very brief update uh or overview of what the short range transit plan is, and then we're gonna jump right into some context for this update, including some system performance information, financial status information that really will help to outline and and um build on some of what Dan brought forward.

And then we we want to go over with you our proposed approach to how we want to tackle this short range transit plan update and specifically some of the challenges Dan alluded to, as well as some really exciting opportunities.

It's both sides in this presentation, and then we'll follow up with next steps, and uh, we're looking forward to receiving your feedback about how we move forward with this process.

So, quick overview of what a short range transit plan is.

It is a 10-year plan for a transit system.

It covers the service plan, finances, capital program.

It is required by MTC and is responsive to MTC guidelines.

It's also used to support grant applications and funding requests, and overall, it gives you as the policymakers and us as the transit managers a roadmap for the transit system over a 10-year period.

We typically update these every four to five years because things do change.

There's uh everything changes within a few years.

We can't wait 10 years to do another plan.

So we are overdue to do this short range transit plan update.

We are actually jumping ahead of MTC.

MTC's process has been delayed until 2027, but we have some issues in the system we need to deal with right away, as well as some opportunities.

So we're just gonna jump in and take a phased approach.

So I'll talk about this a little bit more in the presentation, but what we're gonna really focus on today is the next six months, which is us really wanting to get a handle on what we need to do in the system in the immediate short term to take advantage of those opportunities and deal with some of our challenges.

And then there'll be a second phase in 2027 where we'll build out the longer range service plan.

I'll be up front that longer range service plan will include a service cut scenario just based on our fiscal realities.

We don't want to have an emergency, we want to be ready with a plan for fiscal 28 if our revenues stay where they are, and we do indeed need to cut city bus service, which again we hope to avoid at all costs.

So this will be a two-phased process.

Thanks.

So the context for this update, Dan already discussed some of these.

We we are seeing some real changes in travel patterns post-COVID.

Um, as Dan alluded to, we got away with a really tightly scheduled system during COVID and the immediate aftermath.

Um, right now we can no longer sustain that.

We need to make some changes to support the reliability of the of the service for riders.

Um, mascot's implementation provides us with a huge opportunity.

You're all aware that that system uh uh redesign for the regional service went live in April.

It's been very successful on the regional on the regional network, but now as a local operator, we have a lot of opportunities with that rationalized regional network to reorient our system to connecting people better with SMART in particular as the primary regional operators serving Sonoma County and Santa Rosa.

So that's gonna be a big part of what we discussed today.

We also are in the middle of uh an integrated planning effort with Sonoma County Transit and the other transit operators serving Sonoma County through the SCTCA SYNC Sonoma Transit SYNC Sync program.

And through that, we are really trying to look at our our short range planning from the lens of how can we work with our partner operators to make our collective resources go farther and provide the best and most service for riders.

So that's happening all around this process as well.

And then finally, as we've discussed, our fiscal cliff is in sight.

We've been hearing for the last couple years about the fiscal cliff for inner Bay Area operators like BART and MUNY, Caltrain.

They have it right in front of them.

Ours is a little farther out, but we can see it now.

We're gonna talk about when that hits and what we can do to get ahead of that.

Thanks, Matt.

So not surprisingly, from the staff side, our goals for the short range transit plan update are to address the reliability issues, really stabilize the city bus system, making sure we're providing a high quality experience for riders.

We want to take advantage of mascots and opportunities to better connect with our partner operators, and we want to adopt a service plan that is fiscally sustainable into the future and takes into account some of the challenges we have in the transit fund.

Thanks.

All right, so I will jump in with a quick overview of system performance to provide a little bit more context for these topics.

Going ahead.

So to begin with, you know, how what are we providing now?

Um, where are we in terms of service levels?

So this chart goes back to pre-COVID fiscal 19, showing that we were operating about 80,000, 88,000 hours in the city bus system.

That of course dropped precipitously during COVID.

We built back up, but we've really plateaued around 73,000 service hours, which is about 80, 83 percent of the pre-COVID service hours.

Initially, we hit that plateau because we didn't have enough operators, and then we were constrained by our fleet issues in the aftermath of the ProTera bankruptcy, and now we're constrained by our fiscal situation.

So we are not in a situation fiscally where we can increase those service hours.

And so that's just to let you know where we are, and also just to acknowledge that we've already taken a 16.5% service cut in the in the city bus system since before COVID.

We've never gotten back to where we were pre-COVID, and there's no path at this point fiscally to do that anytime soon.

Next slide, please.

The good news is uh ridership has tracked very closely with ours.

So as we restored ours post-COVID, every time we added more service back into the system, the ridership responded.

And that to me says that there is demand there, people need the service.

When we were able to add service back in or increase frequency again, the ridership came back.

So our ridership is currently at about 80% of our pre-COVID ridership, which is very similar to the hours.

We did see a little decrease in the past year.

Um I think some of that does relate to the reliability issues we're having in the system.

So that's a warning sign that this is important and we need to take action to get the system back on track.

Next slide, please.

So in transit, when we talk about system performance, we often focus on the concept of productivity.

So you can look at ridership by bus route, but uh a better indicator of the performance of a route is passengers per revenue hour.

So, how many people are we actually carrying per hour of that bus route that we put out on the street?

So, this is just a quick snapshot of average productivity across the routes in the city bus system.

The good news is we have a very productive system.

Most of our routes exceed 15 passengers per hour, and that doesn't necessarily sound that impressive, but it's important to keep in mind that includes early morning, it includes end of the day, it includes weekend service.

We have routes that are carrying 50, 60 passengers per hour in the peaks.

Um, Route 1 in the weekday peak, we could be carrying 100 passengers an hour.

That happens commonly.

So this is definitely an average snapshot.

We do have three routes you'll see here who are following well below that benchmark.

We're gonna come back to those roots later in the presentation as areas we might want to focus on in this process in terms of addressing those performance issues and potentially looking for resources to address our on-time performance issues.

So we'll come back to those roots.

So this is the biggie.

On-time performance, as you can see, has continued to decline over the past several years.

We have a very high on-time performance standard.

We want 90% or more of every single uh major bus stop to have its buses arriving within five minutes of the scheduled time.

That's a high standard, but it's one that we think it's important to meet to provide a quality service.

As you can see over the past few years, that on-time performance has dropped off pretty significantly down to 73%, and it's not showing signs of flattening out.

Um we got here because of what Dan mentioned during COVID in order to keep as much street uh and post-COVID period, in order to keep as much service on the street as possible.

We scheduled everything super tight.

We wanted to get keep as many hours out there for people in service while we had our constraints around drivers and around fleet.

That is no longer working.

We are having cascading on-time performance issues throughout primarily weekday afternoons, but sometimes beyond that as well.

So we need to re-time and get the system back on track one for the riders, but also for the the operators.

Um, no operator in the city bus system is ever going to be penalized for running late, it's safety first.

But you can imagine how stressful it is if you have a bus full of people trying to get somewhere to make a transfer and you start your trip 10 minutes behind, or you're ending your trip 10 minutes behind, it's very stressful for them because they do want to provide the best service they possibly can.

So it's affecting not only our customers but also our staff.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so I'm gonna jump into the last bit of context, but very important context for the rest of this presentation, and that's a quick overview of our financial status.

So we discussed this, touched on this in the budget process earlier this year, but I do want to go into a little bit more detail because it is important to where we go from here.

So, as you all know, the transit fund is an enterprise of the city.

We are primarily supported by federal, state, and local grants.

This pie chart gives you a sense of what that makeup looks like for fiscal 27.

Over half of our budget is TDA Transportation Development Act funds from the state.

Those are based on a quarter cent statewide sale sales tax.

We have federal formula funds in the operating budget.

We have Go Sonoma sales tax revenues.

We also have state transit assistance, which is a sales tax on diesel fuel.

Um, importantly, in fiscal 27, we're pulling about 8% of our budget from our reserves, which is not something that we want to be doing, but this is this is the first year that we really expect to dip into our reserves to cover our operating costs.

And then less than 10% of our revenue actually comes from rider fares.

So it's a very small component of our overall operating budget.

And then we do have general fund contribution of $30,000 a year for the veterans free fare program.

So as you can see, we are heavily reliant on sales tax-based revenue sources.

So there's some parallels here with the general fund.

Um, around 70% of our operating budget is based on sales tax.

So as sales tax revenues decline or plateau, it really puts the squeeze on our budget.

And that's something we've been seeing over the past couple of years, and it's projected to continue much as much as we see for the general fund.

I am gonna focus on the next couple slides on state Transportation Development Act funds because it is such a critical part of our our funding, and it also operates as our reserve.

And I do want to talk with you a little bit about what's what's projected to happen with our reserve funds over the next few years.

How our reserve works, and I'll talk a little bit more on a future slide, is we do have a balance of TDA funds that are held at MTC for us.

We have our operating reserve there, and it's also our capital fund.

So as we bank funds for bus purchases, facility improvements, it lives in that fund at MTC as our capital fund and operating reserve jointly.

So it's a little different than what you would typically see.

Next slide, please.

Again, I think there's a lot of parallels with the discussions around the general fund here.

We uh did receive COVID relief funding during the pandemic, uh, which was immensely helpful.

We did expend the last of that COVID relief in fiscal 24, so we've been on our own for a couple of years.

Um like the rest of the city, most of our expenses are related to salaries and benefits for staff, makes up about 65% of our operating budget.

We've seen a 22% increase in those costs over the past three years.

Also, as you may recall in fiscal 25, we uh awarded a new paratransit contract, as has been seen with operators throughout the Bay Area and throughout California, when you bid a new operating contract, whether it's for paratransit or fixed route service, they're coming in 20, 25% higher than the previous contract, and we saw a similar uh increase in our paratransit costs in fiscal 25.

Um, next, uh, the zero emissions bus transition that we're mandated to do, and that we have our are moving forward with um with council's support has been much more expensive than expected.

I think entering this process, um the thought throughout the state, including with the Air Resources Board and their innovative clean transit rule, was that costs would start to come down for vehicles as more agencies adopted this new technology, that is not in fact transpired.

Costs for vehicles, cost for charging infrastructure, facilities, equipment continue to go up.

So that is something we are also absorbing, not only within our capital fund, but also to some extent within our operating budget.

And then finally, at the end of the day, the transit operating grants we rely on are just not keeping up with all of these costs.

As we know, sales tax revenue are in general are not keeping up with public agency costs.

And in terms of TDA specifically, you know, if you look back since 2000 in real terms, um, there's been a 16% drop in the value of every TDA dollar.

So the purchasing power of TDA has just gotten less and less over the past 25 years.

So touching on our reserves as the last piece of the puzzle here.

Um, as I mentioned, our transit reserves are TDA dollars held at MTC.

We do maintain a 15% operating reserve.

We also have a capital fund that we bank over time for projects like bus buys.

If we go out and buy a bus, every bus is about 1.4 million dollars at this point.

So it's it takes quite a bit of banking to get to a four to six bus purchase.

Um we are experiencing a lot of pressures on those reserves right now.

We're beginning to budget reserves for operations starting in fiscal 27.

We're seeing that continuing in future years if revenue trends do not change.

And then we are not no longer banking money for that capital fund starting this year and to some extent last year.

Um that is something that that we're gonna have to deal with in the future because then money is gonna dry up to be able to do the capital projects that we need to do.

Next slide, please.

So this chart is an attempt to capture all of this in one place.

So what this chart shows is the blue line shows our annual expenses, actuals up through fiscal 25, and estimates or projections beyond fiscal 25 through fiscal 31.

This is a pretty conservative but not super conservative uh estimate of those expenses.

The green area represents our current reserve, um how many how much money we have in our reserve at MTC.

The hatched area represents where our reserve should be in the out years if we were not drawing down funds for operating and if we are appropriately banking funds for capital purchases.

So you'll see starting in fiscal 26, fiscal 27, we're beginning to deviate from where our reserve really truly should be if we are in an ideal scenario of fiscal sustainability.

We begin drawing it down.

We have a little bit of bump up in fiscal 27 because we will be returning some capital funds to our MTC fund through a rolling process that we use for our capital um capital money.

But then as we continue to draw down those resources without restoring them, by fiscal 30, end of year fiscal 30, we would anticipate running out of reserves.

We would still have the funding coming in to operate the system, but we wouldn't have anything left in terms of an operating reserve or capital fund.

There are a number of things that can alter this trajectory, but this is our best attempt to say based on where revenues are right now and where they're expected to be, and based on where our costs are going, this is a likely scenario for us.

So it's something we need to address head on in the next few years.

So we don't get to this point.

Okay, so with that, um, we're moving on to the proposed service planning approach to take all this into account.

So shifting gears a bit, want to start at a very high level.

Um we do these planning exercises.

One of the key tensions we experience in transit planning is the trade-off between focusing on coverage of the transit system or emphasizing productivity of the transit system in terms of getting the most ridership, the most people on the bus for every hour of service we put out there.

If we were a completely coverage-oriented system, we would have bus routes all over the city, which we do, but a lot of one-way loops to maximize coverage.

There would be a distribution of service throughout the city, low frequency, but it would be easy to get a bus from pretty much anywhere in the city.

That's gonna, that's a recipe for very low ridership, but it does provide the highest level of access to what is not that great a transit system, but the access is there.

If we were 100% focused on productivity, we would just be focused in the main corridors where we have a lot of trip destinations and a lot of density.

We'd be putting all the buses on those corridors, we'd have very frequent service, we would get high ridership on those corridors, but we'd be leaving out a lot of people.

So there'd be many people in the city who would not be able to easily get to a bus route to take their trips.

So City Bus is somewhere in the middle of these two.

And 10 years ago, when we did our system redesign, we moved from a system that really leaned predominantly towards coverage, more towards one that leaned a bit more towards productivity.

But we still are trying to balance the two.

I still think that is the right place for the city bus system because we are trying to meet two goals.

We want to boost ridership, we want to have strong ridership in those main corridors, but there's we don't want to leave too many people behind.

We want to provide at least basic transit access access to as much of the city as we can.

But we wanted to put this slide up just to illustrate that when we're in a resource-constrained situation like we are now, this trade-off from policy standpoint and from what we're going to be looking to you as the council for, this policy trade-off really comes into play.

It becomes the central issue.

What are we trying to emphasize in the transit system?

And it's really gonna be at the heart of this current exercise we're embarking on.

And then just one more slide about transit service design.

We haven't talked about this in a long time, but we do have city council adopted uh transit service design guidelines.

So very quickly, these are guidelines that council adopted several years ago to guide our planning to ensure we're providing the highest quality service we can.

And so they are really briefly trying to maintain frequency in the transit system.

We all recognize as transit riders or potential transit riders, frequency is key to the experience.

It allows you to make transfers, it allows the bus to be a time competitive with the car.

It allows for your whole day to work out a lot better if you're not having to wait for an hour for a bus.

Um, direct route alignments are important to reduce travel time, as is bi-directional service.

We try to have as much two-way service in our system as possible because you know, while a one-way loop allows us to cover a big area, inevitably there are gonna be riders all day long who are traveling out of their way on that loop to get where they want to go.

And we want to really provide a system that is and competitive with the automobile and as convenient for riders as possible.

Um we design routes around strong anchor points where we see a high demand for ridership, and it's best for the riders when we do that.

And then obviously, we want to avoid duplication because that's not an efficient use of resources, and we want connections to be as seamless as possible.

So those are sort of the guiding guideposts for us as we develop and alter transit service plans.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so we have three opportunities in this short-term phase that we're entering, and I want to be clear, you know.

I've sort of talked about this service cut scenario.

Right now, over the next six months, we really want to focus on these short these three short-term opportunities that will stabilize the system, position the city bus system for success into the future, and then we'll come back next year and do that longer range plan.

So the short-term opportunities are one, significantly improve on-time performance in the system.

Um, as Dan mentioned, we really need to re-time all our routes to reflect current traffic conditions.

We have routes that are can't stay on time and need about five extra minutes.

We have a couple routes that need like 15 extra minutes to stay on time, especially on weekday afternoons.

So there's a lot of investment that needs to be done in this.

There's several things we can do.

We can potentially adjust route alignment.

Sometimes we can make a twick a tweak to a route that avoids an intersection where we get hung up at rush hour.

That's one thing we can do.

We can connect routes that are tight with routes that have a little bit of extra time, and that is going to play into the strategy for sure.

Sometimes we can get minutes back by addressing sources of delay, and that's something that we'll be working with Dan and team on.

Places where if adjusting bus stop placement, if there's adjustments in single timing where we can grab some minutes back, that can make a big difference.

And we do work on that in an ongoing basis, but I think we're going to be doing it a bit more forensically going forward.

And then the last option is to add cycle time to routes, which just basically means you know a route that could have completed a round trip in 45 minutes five years ago, maybe needs a full hour, and we may need to add that 15 minutes to keep that route on time, at least at certain times of day.

That does come at a cost, which is where we're feeling pinched in this process.

Benefits are obvious.

This keeps a system reliable for riders and it prevents us from losing ridership because people can't count on us anymore.

I think we can all understand that we've all ridden transit that didn't come or ran late or you missed your connection, and there's only so many times that can happen to you before you look for another option.

And then also this would support effective transfers to the regional network.

If we're trying to meaningfully connect with Sonoma County Transit or Smart or the Golden Gate commuter trips, our system needs to be on time so that we can get people to those transfers on time.

The second major opportunity as we see it is to reinvent and reinvest in Route One, which truly is the backbone of the city bus system.

It carries by far the most ridership in the city bus system.

We pulled resources out of Route One during COVID to try to keep other service in play.

We could get away with that again because the traffic wasn't there, and we could have, for example, a 45-minute round trip instead of a 60-minute round trip.

We also pulled a bus out of Route One.

Instead of having four buses in the afternoon, so we could have 15-minute service, we pulled one bus out and went to more of a 20-minute service.

We are busting at the seams on Route One at this point, and there are times where we actually have to leave people behind on Mendocino Avenue because the buses are too full.

And that is like a cardinal sin in transit.

And so that's something we need to address.

Route one makes really strong connections to key destinations, whether it's Santa Rosa Hyde, Santa Rosa Junior College, the County Admin Center, Kaiser Hospital, and Cottingtown.

I think pretty much every ride on our system is on Route One at some point in time.

And so we really want to invest in that route.

And I'll highlight Santa Rosa Junior College as being a really, really strong partner, and we have an opportunity here to make the service work better for that partner.

The other opportunity here is as we move forward with our integrated planning with Sonoma County Transit, we have by rationalizing the Route One service and getting it back into a stable state.

It provides opportunities for how we integrate with Sonoma County transit that are potentially pretty exciting.

And so this is a first step in that process.

Next slide, please.

And then finally, getting the system back on time, options one and two, or opportunities one and two really lead to this third opportunity, which we think is really exciting.

I'm gonna show you a slide next that shows you how our buses are currently scheduled.

Every route connects to every other route in a mishmash just to maximize efficiency.

That does what that doesn't do is create opportunities for cross-town connectivity and potential increased connectivity to smart.

So we want to develop a plan for strategic interlines where we're at we're connecting all day long, a route from the east side of town to the route of the west side of town, so that people can ride through the transit mall into a smart station, for example, and do that with as many routes as we can.

Doing this will also help us to isolate any sources of delay, whereas right now they're cascading through the system and affecting all sorts of routes.

So the benefits here is that we potentially significantly pivot the city bus system to connect much, much more strongly with smart stations.

This will benefit people riding smart, but it will actually provide a lot of connectivity benefits to all riders because riders are having to cross town all the time.

And if you can just stay on the same bus to get across town as opposed to getting off the bus in the transit mall and waiting for your next bus, that's a real time benefit as well as convenience benefit.

Next slide, please.

So here's a peek under the under the hood.

Um the so this is a snapshot of our scheduling system.

Every line on this represents a bus's daily work from 6 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

As you can see, the way things are scheduled now, which we did for a lot of good reasons.

We have a six going to a one to a three to a 4B to a nine.

We've shoved as much service in as we possibly can.

This is the part that's no longer working.

But we're also missing that opportunity to maximize the connectivity for the riders.

So next slide, Matt.

So just to illustrate how an intentional or strategic interline would work.

If we were to interline Route 1 with Route 2, we would connect Mendocino Avenue to Sebastopol Road.

So if you got on at the SRJC Roseland campus, you could ride down Sebastopol Road.

Some people might get on at this at the SMART station.

Bus would travel through the downtown transit mall.

You could get off there if you wanted, but if you wanted to go to the JC or up to Kaiser or another destination, you just stay on the bus.

So for people who are, for example, going to the SRJC from SMART, instead of taking one bus downtown or walking downtown and then getting on a Route One, you just get on the bus at the SMART station and you ride through.

I think this this benefits a lot of customers in our system and provides some connections that we just don't have today that aren't quality enough for people to use.

So this would just be one example, a conceptual example of how this interline program would work.

Next slide, please.

So just to touch on the constraints.

We've discussed this quite a bit, but we can't add any additional buses to the system right now without increasing operating costs.

And we're attempting to be very fiscally prudent and cautious about doing anything to increase operating costs when the lookout a few years is pretty dire.

For that reason, we're not pushing expansion, geographic expansion of the system or expansion of the span of service of the system, much as we'd like to provide longer operating hours, and we know that's needed by riders.

In order to improve on time performance without adding operating costs, we will have to reallocate hours within the system.

So that, while it's not a system-wide service cut, it does mean that some parts of our system would have to be reduced in order to take advantage of these needs and opportunities in other parts of the system.

We think the approach we've laid out will benefit all riders because we will have a system that's working well and is on time, but there will be some people who will have to give up maybe closer access or maybe a trip that they used to rely on.

So it's, you know, it's not a simple process.

I did want to highlight that there's always interest in alternative service models, whether that be microtransit, deviated fixed route.

Throughout this SRTP process, that's all on the table.

Um but it's just not a major cost savings.

The biggest cost of any transit service is the operator's time.

And so any uh mode that has an operator is still gonna um come at a similar cost to a fixed route bus.

Uh, next slide, please.

So I wanted to get back to the three routes that um we uh pointed out in the productivity slide, because um in transit, you know, the best practice when you're in a situation like this, you look at the places in your system that have the lowest productivity, and you say, how can we improve this productivity, or is there a better use for these resources?

And so we are not proposing specific changes to any routes today, but we do want to make you aware and make the public aware that there are those three routes that we're gonna look at first.

May not be the only routes we look at, but they are a place we feel responsible for looking to see if there's a better way to allocate resources.

So the first is the Route 10, the North City Connector, which travels between the downtown transit mall and Cottingtown via Cleveland and then continues on up through Coffee Park, across Hopper, and up to Round Barn.

Um the northern part of this route, excuse me, operates really well, has high ridership, relatively high ridership.

The southern segment between the downtown and Cottingtown has a lot less ridership.

And so that's an area we want to look at, understand if riders have other options because there are other routes that are near that segment of Route 10.

But that is an area we'd like to look at to see if those hours could potentially be reprogrammed to help with some of these other issues in the system.

Um, Matt.

The second route is the Oakmont deviated fixed route service.

This one is a little special because it is not a fixed route service.

It is a deviated fixed route service where riders can call and have the bus come to their door.

The service also provides daily shopping trips out to some of the local shopping centers for Oakmont residents.

Um two things are happening.

One, ridership has really really declined on this service over the past several years by a pretty by like 74%.

It's a pretty significant extent.

Our longtime partner in funding this service, the Oakmont Village Association has reached out to us and said they are interested in potentially considering other options for their investment.

And that could be looking at a different type of transportation service or contracting directly with another service or using those resources for other needs in the community.

So we're in a conversation with the OVA regarding this service and what could evolve in terms of the Oakmont service.

Oakmont is served by Sonoma County Transit Route 30, which does deviate through Oakmont between going between Sonoma and downtown Santa Rosa.

It's also served by para transit, and there is also a volunteer driver program.

So there are a number of options there.

And it seems that potentially this service design is no longer really meeting the needs of the community.

So we are in a conversation with OVA around what comes next for this route.

And it it could look like something different that doesn't involve city bus potentially.

Next slide.

And then finally, um the other route that we showed on that productivity chart is our Route 18 East Circular.

This circulator, this is a low ridership route overall, but as you can see, it covers a lot of destinations in Southeast Santa Rosa, including the fairgrounds, Farmers Lane Plaza, connecting up to Montgomery Village.

Most of the boardings, aside from Montgomery Village and the transit mall, happen right at the area around Farmers Lane Plaza, the Bennett Valley, Farmers Lane, Neo Thomas area, including a handful of folks at the vintage Bennett Valley Senior Housing every day.

So there are some ridership pockets on this route for sure, but there are a lot of stops on this route that get hardly any ridership at all.

So this is a route we also want to look at in this process to see what opportunities we have.

In terms of next steps, we are we're looking forward to incorporating your feedback from the study session.

Following that, we're gonna launch into some public engagement and some really focused targeted outreach to routes that we're looking at for potential changes as well as you know, system wide.

We'll use a variety of public engagement methods for that.

Um our goal is to return to council in the early fall with some recommendations that are backed up by data and outreach, and and we're able to provide a proposal to you for discussion and consideration.

Um the goal would be then to come back for adoption of a final service plan with the goal of uh making initial service changes in January.

Um, because this on-time performance issue is so urgent, we really wanna uh try to solve that problem within the next six months.

Um, then we would come back through the MTC process in 2027 and work on that longer range um transit service plan and the 10% service cut scenario that um that I've been discussing.

If we did have to uh uh cut service, we would be doing that in fiscal 28.

Um, so that's not an immediate uh plan for service reductions.

We're really hoping next year when the fund estimates come in in uh January, February 27 to see something better.

Um, but if we don't, then we're gonna need to move forward with that planning process.

Uh so I think that's it.

So uh yeah, with that, I'd be happy to answer your questions and take any feedback you may have.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Uh and of course, for looking ahead to the future uh with particular reference to budget and funding.

Uh I'll bring it back to council.

Questions?

Can you see?

Let's start with you, Miss Woman.

Yeah, I um I had a qu question about um going back to the idea around banking funds in order to buy additional buses.

I'm just curious like how how much money on an average year is sitting there and what is being done with that, those funds.

Yeah, so the goal in order to stay on track with bus replacement, we should be banking about a million dollars a year.

That said, we do win competitive grants, we can make adjustments if we have big awards.

Um the other hand, when we do get those big grants, we have to have local match.

So, to give you a point of reference, um the the federal loan o grant that we won is about a 10 million dollar grant.

We need to bring forward about $2 million in matching funds for that.

So that is built into our um our capital fund reserve planning so that we have that match when it's time to buy those buses.

Um I'm not sure if this is answering your question, but I I think the a question that we have is well, at what point do we make changes to the capital program in order to avoid impacting operations?

Um I'm not sure if that's what you were interested in.

I think, yeah, what I'm trying to understand is it's a little bit like it's related to the scope of this, but I think it's really interesting is like what's happening with those funds while we're waiting.

Um I assume they're invested and managed by our they're just they're not even getting bond revenue.

No, they just sit in a caving with inflation.

They sit at MTC.

Yikes.

They sit at MTC.

They don't sit with us.

They sit with MTC depreciating at MTC.

Oh, that's really I did not know that.

That's fascinating.

What I would have my next question if we had them would have been do transit managers talk about pooling funds, like similarly to how we would do parks or art projects to you know just get dollars out the door so that there's buses somewhere.

And you know, um, but but um that'll be a question that'll ask at MTC how they're investing and managing those funds so we don't experience too much depreciation.

Um, and then I just ask, you know, this this conversation in my mind seems so relevant to the last one we just had about parking maximums.

Like I think that it's incumbent upon the council to invest both in strategy and finance to make the system workable so that we can then justify our our parking um changes going forward, and the work that you're doing is is really essential to that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Ben Willis.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Um let's see.

So it seems like you have um two issues, or I know many more, but um essentially the on-time issue.

Um and I understand I uh um as we've come out of COVID, and I know I feel it as I drive home from Sonoma State, um how impacted the traffic is.

It takes me like less than 20 minutes to get to work, and it takes me an hour to get home, no matter which way I go, and I go every way.

So I know that it's really impacted at those those peak hours, those peak business hours.

So I'm just wondering.

Um, so there's that issue and how that affects the financial part of the bus system, you know, how that connects.

Because if you've if you feel like what I think something that you said about um if folks find that this isn't working for them, they're not making their connections or they're not getting to their final destination on time, uh, they're gonna look for other alternatives.

And so I'm so that interested in that piece.

Um, and then you know, I guess specifically to Route 10, which runs to part of my district.

Um, I just wondered, because you had mentioned that you're not gonna make any speci uh specific changes in routes uh until 27-28.

So we would be looking to make changes uh in January 2027.

Oh, okay.

Uh, in order to reinvest the resources and getting the system back on time.

That would be sort of phase one, and then phase two would be potentially um other longer-term changes planning for that, which could include the system-wide service cut.

But yeah, that thing, the the opportunities I was discussing today were really driving towards January, if possible.

Okay.

If we need longer, we need longer.

Okay, that's the goal.

Okay.

All right.

And I know I realize, I mean, first of all, let me say I just really appreciate the complexity of designing these routes.

Oh my gosh.

Just especially that one that one uh uh slide 22.

I'm just like, oh my god, it's overwhelming.

So I take my hat off to you and your staff.

It's amazing uh the work that you do.

Um so I'm just wondering, it there's probably more than one way on many of these routes to get to Cottingtown, to get to Kaiser, to get to um the round uh fountain grove, so to speak.

Um that there if there's a way to keep, and this is just my my own thing, because I didn't even know I'm I'm embarrassed to say that there was a bus on Cleveland.

I've looked.

People have asked me, and I I didn't even know a bus went down Cleveland.

So I I was really happy to hear that.

All and because Cleveland, there's a lot of things we can say about Cleveland, particularly between college and Guernville Road.

Oh, you know, um, how impacted it gets again at those peak hours.

Um, you can't even really go down that street, you know, um, in my opinion.

Um so to know that there's a bus there, I think uh really I I would like love to see that that we had a route that continued to go down there, but I understand that maybe it needs to be worked into a different route in the future.

And I I guess that's for our constituents to think about.

So again, thank you for all your work, and I I just like to take my hat off to you for the complexity of it all, and really um thank you for everything.

It's I it's very important.

Those of us who use the bus when we need to, and those of us that use the bus all the time.

So thank you.

Councilmember Van Willows, if I can just respond to a portion of that.

I think one of the things that we're really hoping for from you as our board is that you know, Rachel did a good job of highlighting the challenge between coverage and productivity, and we're really hoping that collectively we can think about this as a system and not uh collection of individual routes.

Um, we can't frankly, we can't afford to be overly provincial right now.

Because that's what's easy.

We need to make the service productive in order to keep it viable.

Um that that is the challenge that we face, and that will come with change that you know is necessary to get to that level of productivity.

So I appreciate the challenge and the fact that all seven of you represent geographic areas that are going to want something, and change might mean losing something for the sake of something else.

Rachel and Matt and I are responsible for the system, and that puts us in a position of potential conflict that we're gonna have to work through, and just I'm saying that out loud so that we can acknowledge that that everybody has different avenues at which they're approaching this conversation.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation.

What's interesting is when school bus systems were cut, um, they continued to serve the outer areas for equity to ensure that children could get to school in time, and those that were sort of in the center who were able to walk to school or have closer proximity or ride their bike potentially.

Um, those were the ones that they reduce service to.

So as I look at some of the routes that you're proposing, it sounds more like some of these outer routes just have low ridership.

So I want to be cautious about that because of who it serves, um, sort of in the outskirts of the community in three different areas that you um mention.

And I am going to be a little bit selfish here, Mr.

Hennessy, and talk about Route 16 because it has to do with Oakmont.

Um, when Oakmont comes in, they go typically to shopping centers, and it's my understanding, and that's where they spend their money, and that's tax dollars that we generate specifically from those riders that are staying right here in the city of Santa Rosa, which I love so much.

But I wondered if we had looked, and maybe you could tell me this, Rachel, on potentially cutting some of the routes.

So, right now, if you're going out there seven days a week, you roughly have six riders a day, so that's 42 based on a week.

But have you looked at we can do this route two days a week so that we work with OVA on giving them a schedule so that they know we're coming out every Tuesday and Friday to get into town to do your shopping.

So it's more of a scheduled and maybe potentially working with the um uh Montgomery Village area and and out there and having that route so that we're still able to meet the majority of your bus routes to get to these other transit areas, but then also looking at how do we serve the other parts of our community.

Um, so that would be one suggestion I have to just take a look at as you look over the next six months to see if there's any viability in that and working with OVA.

Um, I did speak with OVA and they told me all the programs you mentioned they're looking into.

There's also one called GoGo Grandparent that sort of acts like an Uber and they are able to contract with them because OVA currently um contracts with the city and pays a fairly large amount to keep this route.

So I'm happy to know that you're working.

I talked to Kristal um Anton, who is their executive director.

No one will be left behind in Oakmont.

They have a great volunteer program.

But I I would like us to look at our part to know that the general funds contributing, I think you said about $30,000 a year towards our transit.

Um, I would like to know how much would it be to add just a couple routes, and would that be something that council should consider as we're talking about the previous item and this item and the necessity to ensure connectivity and equity amongst most of our community.

And I think that that's pretty much my question around it's mostly comments.

I'll be honest.

Um, but I I'm wondering if you had anything around looking at routes or or cutting some routes so that we can still serve an area.

Yeah, with all of these um propos, like right now we're just showing you areas that are an obvious first places to look for resources based on performance.

Um, in all of these routes, we're looking at options and talk, and that'll be part of the public engagement is to understand what are the impacts for different service scenarios from you know, reduct reduction, elimination, whatever it might be, or changing routing.

We're gonna want to know from the riders how that will affect them and how we can leave the fewest people behind with any changes we propose.

Um, certainly um working with OVA, I mean, we've talked with them about the idea of shopping trips.

Um it might be cheaper for them to contract directly with a contractor for that.

Cut out the middleman.

You know, there's some things, you know, there's some things we're discussing where you know Spring Lake Village does that, they contract directly with MV transportation for shopping trips.

So not saying that the city's trying to get out of it, but it's possible that it's in their interest financially.

And so I think that's that's the conversation we're in, but certainly from the standpoint of understanding what the needs are and how how do we um help evolve to uh you know a a new service that continues to meet the most important needs.

So absolutely we'll we'll be having all those discussions for sure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um I guess just my my one quick question is we're not alone in having some of these difficulties among uh other municipal buses.

Can you can you comment on that a little bit?

No, for sure.

Um thank you for that question.

Yeah, it I think it I meant to put that in context for council.

Um we are not alone, and we are in better shape than many of our um partner agencies around um the Bay Area and around California.

Uh Petaluma Transit is cutting 29% of their transit service in August.

Um Tri-Delta Transit in the East Bay is cutting 25% of their service in August.

Many others are planning service cuts for this coming fiscal year, or like us preparing for potential cuts in fiscal 28 if revenues continue to be down.

Um this is really a statewide issue.

And so uh, you know, our statewide industry association is spinning up uh a transit funding task force to try to work with the state on some of our state funding um and and look at other opportunities to provide some relief because throughout the entire state, these are um issues.

I don't think I've talked to a transit manager recently who isn't looking at reductions within the next couple years.

Thank you.

Um just and just a couple from me.

What is the cost of a daily route or for one of the route lines?

What's it what's an estimated cost?

Well, we estimate our operating cost at um removing the fixed costs.

So just the variable cost, which is you know, the operator salary, fuel maintenance, anything that's variable with service levels.

I'll just round it to about 150 dollars an hour.

And um our typical route, if there's one bus on a route all day, that's 14 hours.

So I'm not gonna do that math in my head because I'll embarrass myself.

But that's about the math that we're working with.

Now that said, um Matt can do the math if he wants.

Um he's doing the math.

Um that said, some routes have two buses on them.

You know, if there's 30 minute service on um a route that um takes an hour to complete, that's two buses that we need all day long.

So you multiply that 150 bucks times 14 hours times two.

So the the more frequent the service, obviously, the more buses, the more cost.

So it really depends on the level of service on that bus route.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um, and I just wanted to uh signal my support for your idea that we shake up the status quo a little bit.

When we uh when I first opened this item when it when the packet came out, I was crossing my fingers that Route 8 wouldn't be on there.

I'm uh you know, I love our Route 8, and I'm glad they were staying above our our our our goal line.

Um but I I do like your approach to to uh maximizing both convenience and and accessibility.

Uh and so even uh the one of the lines is in is in my district, I'd wholeheartedly support the idea that we figure out how we can how we can re-rangle the line.

Um and I guess I'll save the rest of my thoughts for my for my comments.

Any other questions from council?

Ms.

Fleming.

Yeah, um, I was just wondering if you could put up the slide that you had one more time that shows the adjustments to the lines.

Which one?

I'm sorry.

I stepped out for a moment and um just as you were talking about l adjustments to the lines, and I'm wondering if you have that slide or a slide that shows the proposed adjustments.

Um or if we're not there yet.

I think those are that's still under discussion.

They're linear.

I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss it.

Correct.

All right, thanks.

Is that I think I think we're good.

Yeah, that there's more fact-finding they'll come back in the future.

Any other any other questions from council?

All right, let's open up the public comment.

Let me see if I can do this correctly this time because we're gonna do both uh in-person and zoom comment.

So if you are in council chambers, make your way to make your way to the speaker podium.

Uh, and if you are online on Zoom, raise your hand or dial star nine by phone to indicate you'd like you to speak you would like to speak.

We're gonna start with in-chamber questions, then we'll go online.

Uh Fred, why don't we start with you?

Thank you.

Um I'm gonna uh cut get up here and flap my jaw a little bit since I've only had two minutes for two and a half hours.

Um this I'm I moved to Tucson when I was 20 years old, and my whole life bus ridership and service has been an intractable public policy conflict.

And so I don't want to envy the staff report here because I've seen this same thing for years and years.

And so I don't envy the staff report here because I've seen this same thing for years and years, and so uh it's kind of the uh in let's make the best of a bad situation department here with the with what um Santa Rosa's doing.

And so in big sprawling western cities with people who are used to having cars, the United States with individual prerogative.

When I got to Tucson, I swore I would never take the bus again.

It was so bad, and I had to wait around.

And so by but then I moved to Chicago and it was great, and I had a three-year unbroken chain of CTA passes.

So when you're in a big city and mass transit really works, that's great, but in big sprawling western cities, it just doesn't seem to work that well.

And uh, so that's unfortunate, and I don't really see um a way out of this and intractable public policy conflict that uh it's it's just gonna go on.

You guys are on the decision makers rat wheel of a 50 year problem that I'm aware of.

So uh good luck.

Thanks for the support, Fred.

Over to Gregory and then to Abby.

Is this on?

Mayor Stabb, my name is Gregory Farron.

I want to I want to riff off a little uh of councilman um uh Fleming's comments about parking and transit.

Fort two years ago when I was student money president of College of Marin, I asked Peter Baer, the senator for this area if we could try to use parking fees and parking permit costs or revenue to subsidize public transit for students.

And he said, Well, it isn't legal yet, but I'll help you pass a law.

I did that, it became law, and we had uh a very good arrangement down at College and Rand for a few years, which was based on the assumption that everybody who took the bus made space in the parking lots.

I think you ought to be having the same sort of uh ability to try to imagine that those of us who are taking the bus, those of us who are trying to use their public transit are making space for those who are driving their cars and needing your parking lots.

And so whether or not it's legal, whether or not it's just it it ought to be obvious that the two are linked, and you need to work as a city to try to make both of them whole.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gregory, Abby, and then Dwayne.

I um hadn't planned on speaking on this issue, but uh listening to this discussion, I felt really compelled, particularly contrasting it to the previous discussion, which focused so much on parking and cars and traffic.

Um for the last two years, I have uh experienced um uh a week without driving to try to get a sense of what it's like to have to be dependent on non uh non-car uh travel.

And one of the things I've learned is that about 30 percent of the population does not drive.

It may be because they are too old to drive, or they're too young to drive, or they don't have the money to buy a car and support the car and buy insurance and all the costs associated with that.

They may have had uh um a DUI or some other thing that prevented them from driving.

They may have a disability, um, not being able to see well enough, or uh not having enough limbs to be able to operate a vehicle.

So for many, many reasons, 30 percent of our population, and it I would bet it might be higher in Santa Rosa with the number of seniors that we have, are unable to drive.

So this is uh this uh bus service is extremely important to many, many people who don't have the privilege of being here this afternoon at four o'clock in the afternoon on a work day, um, or may have shame about the reasons that they're not able to drive.

Um, and so this is a time for where you can really step up with equity and support the staff in making transit accessible to everybody and making uh all of us able to get to the places that we need to get to um for uh our basic needs for our medical needs and for our entertainment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Abby.

Dwayne.

Hello, my name is Dwayne.

I'm from Roseland.

Almost 20 years ago, I was a part of the Roseland community-based transit plan that was funded.

And one of the things that happens, you rarely ask the bus riders.

Everything that goes down here is pretty much about what staff says, and then occasionally someone who rides the bus will get a chance to tell you about.

So I ride bus 12, I ride bus one.

I definitely want you to keep them going.

I ride bus two and B2B.

The whole approach could actually get more federal support by pointing out that Title Six of the Federal Government Acts require you to have equity, require you to do some positive stuff.

Ms.

McDonald's idea about having separate days for Oakmont, cutting back on services in certain places where the seniors don't have to perhaps use it every day.

Like a worker might or a student might.

So then the key word from Mr.

Hennessy was productive.

We have to make this productive.

So one of the things to do is constantly look for other people's money.

That's what it's about.

Get that funding from the state, get that funding from the federal government, and find ways to work with homeowners associations, guarantee certain routes at certain times.

Also, you can cut the size of the buses.

You can use smaller buses on less used routes.

Then you can also do something called wait a minute.

And you think, what?

Wait a minute, we're in a hurry.

Well, actually, have the drivers at the transit route transfer points, such as the west side and the south side, actually wait there for a minute to catch all the riders.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Is anybody else in Council Chambers interested in speaking?

Seeing none, we'll go online.

Uh Lauren, does anybody online have their hand raised?

No, Mayor, no brave souls.

All right.

Then we will close public comment.

Uh bring it back to council for final comments.

Ms.

Rogers.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I have the utmost confidence in your staff and what you've done thus far.

So I will say that I am okay with productivity.

I think that it's very important that when we do something, we try to do it well instead of doing a lot and not doing it well.

Um, but I do realize that people rely on public transportation, and right now that's not necessarily our strong point.

So I would like to get it so it is our strong point.

Um, I know that you guys are creative, you're innovative, and you'll find a way to provide or to give people alternatives for other means of transportation or other ways of getting somewhere.

I would just ask that if we do have to cut lines that we do so in a manner where people have time and the opportunity to find alternative routes to get to where they need to go because Mr.

DeWitt is right.

Some people use it to go shopping, but there are people that use it to feed their families and to really support themselves to get back and forth to work.

So thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Fleming.

Yeah, thank you.

I I support your approach to this.

I think it's really well thought out, and I would just add to that that in this process that if it comes to the the um unfortunate point of having to cut service, that um that we not just keep in mind uh transit-dependent folks, but we also try to maintain and upgrade services for choice riders in such a way that preserves um interest and competence in the system, and so that in the long range the council can achieve our goals around reducing vehicle miles traveled and meeting our climate change goals.

I think that bringing in folks who have a choice is really essential, whether it has to do with housing or transit or any other kind of shared infrastructure.

Um, we need people who who have a choice to want to put their tax dollars behind something as well.

I think that's essential to upgrading and and more popularizing the system.

Thank you, Ms.

McDonald.

Thank you.

Thank you again for the presentation.

Something I didn't mention, but I know I spoke to you about it, Rachel, was to work with the county on their bus routes.

I know Route 30, as you suggested, um, goes into Oakmont, but if that is potentially something that we're looking to either reduce or far reduce, um, that we work with the county on doing maybe some additional stops in Oakmont so that they can make sure that they are able to use that to the maximum and reaching out to our supervisors to see if they have plans on those outer um outer liars to be able to pull them onto their transportation system.

I appreciate the work you're doing right now with OVA before there's a cut to make sure as um council member Fleming and Councilmember Rogers said that we have a plan in place prior to making any sustain you know changes uh warranted for those, but I still will always make sure I'm putting in a plug for what I consider is a vulnerable part of our community that when they do come in and do shopping, it's not just for shoes, but it's for food and for the essentials of everyday living.

And so um I want to make sure that that's always considered from all all the members of our community.

But thanks for bringing it to us early so that there's time to have community discussions.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr.

McGrupke.

Thank you, thank you for the presentation.

Um I don't think I have to be going out on a limb uh when I say if you look at slide 22 and the behind the curtain of scheduling that you know more about this than I do.

Um so much like my colleague Ms.

Rogers, I have full confidence.

I I actually went on a ride along with Ms.

Rogers on the bus system uh not too long ago.

I have full confidence in your analysis of this.

However, I will take my privilege to uh to pitch um uh Route 10.

Um I just want to point out that it's furthest north point is two miles away from a smart station, and we have not a single single linear foot of smart path in that entire area.

Um no photo smart and all the issues that have gone that have gone on.

Councilmember Fleming has educated me um on on what's going on, but I think it's an important note that we can't even take a smart path like a lot of the other areas in the city can to get to smart stations.

Um so that is my that is my pitch, but I I leave it in your very capable hands.

Uh thank you and I've already I've already made my my position clear here.

I I thank you for the work that you've done.

I certainly support looking for ways to uh to uh adjust our status quo and and reach more people and do so more efficiently.

Um I will I do think that as we talk about equity and we as we talk about climate change that we also just talk about the impacts on city culture the public transportation has.

I was glad that Fred mentioned CTA.

I think I still have my C ETA card.

Um I took the bus in San Francisco for 10 years.

Uh I stood in the rain as buses on it's the one California line passed me by time after time.

So I'm I'm sympathetic to the folks on Mendocino.

Um, but there's something, there's something um enlivening about a great public transportation system in addition to the other great effects that it has on people's quality of life and on the on the um the economy.

So some way somehow we've got to find a way to to grow and improve our public transportation system.

The what you're proposing here is a good step forward right now, especially in light of the constraints.

Uh so thank you very much for all the work, and we'll look forward as a council to you coming back with more with more specifics in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

We have been at it now for two hours and forty-five minutes.

Let's take a 15-minute break and reconvene reconvene at 5 05.

Thank you, everyone, thank you for your patience, everyone.

The time is 5.06 and we will reconvene into open session.

Madam City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Yes, Mayor.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember McDonald.

Here.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows?

Here.

Councilmember Alvarez is absent.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke?

Here.

Mayor Stopp.

Here.

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

Thank you very much.

All right, we're running a little behind, but we are going to catch up.

And we're going to jump around the agenda a little bit.

We're going to do our first public comment on non-agenda matters.

Then we are going to go to our public hearing on vegetation management.

And then we are going to get to our main item for the evening, which is the ballot tax measure.

So for those of you who are looking to make comments on any one of those items, we are going to quickly move through them.

Let's start with uh item 14, our public comment on non-agenda matters.

This is the chance for the public to make comment on any items not listed on the agenda.

We'll start with folks who are here in person, but if you are online, please raise your hand on Zoom or press star nine so that we know you wish to make comment.

Uh and let's kick it off with Fred and then Dwayne.

Um, I want to make a general comment apropos of affordable housing, not of previous agenda items and and uh from a detailed demographic studies that I've done of Santa Rosa from the the 2023 American community survey census.

Approximately 40 percent of Santa Rosa residents qualify as disadvantaged community, which means they make eighty percent or less of state median household income.

And so that's 40 or near 40 percent of Santa Rosa's constituents are cost burdened and primarily concerned with cost of living issues, and so what I would like to see personally from members of the council it was more attention to that 40 percent of the people who live in Santa Rosa when the affordable housing conversations come up because those are the people who really need it, and I'd just like to hear their uh interest voiced by the council a little bit more.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fred.

Dwayne.

I'd like to use the overhead projector, please.

Hello, are you ready?

Kick off.

My name's Duane DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I have before you on this overhead a document from the approved urban stormwater management plan for the city of Santa Rosa.

It calls out Roseland Creek.

We call it the Roseland neighborhood.

If you'll see right here, this is the neighborhood.

These are those nice beautiful trees we fought for 32 years to save.

And along with that, this plan shows a way that you could perhaps get more money.

We know that productivity to you is about more money.

We can get it from the state, the Department of Natural Resources, State Department of Water, we can get it from the federal government.

It comes down to having a coordinated effort with the community who call this area Pomo Park and Preserve now, because they believe in that land acknowledgement, and do it in such a way that we bring the funds forward and we work together with the volunteers in the community to get this done.

It could happen.

And you know, we've asked a lot of organizations over the years to help out there, people such as the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, Sonoma Land Trust, all kinds of organizations we've asked.

Not a one of them has ever stepped up and given us a penny.

Not a one of them has ever helped us.

So we're out there looking for ways to bring the money in for you, and it could happen.

You've approved this.

Let's get moving forward.

We'll make good things happen by working together.

And we'll get the place renamed too if we do it right within your guidelines now.

With the Roseland neighborhood, nothing but a good time.

Thank you, Duane.

Is there anybody else in Council Chambers who wishes to speak?

Seeing none, we'll go online.

Lauren, does anybody on Zoom have their hands raised?

Alas, no mayor, no speakers.

All right.

I like I like the bit, Lauren.

We will then close public comment uh and we will move on to our public hearing.

I have 16.1.

Uh our public hearing uh on the Santa Rosa Fire Department annual wheat abatement program report.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Welcome.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members.

Uh my name is Jared McDaniel.

I'm with the assistant fire marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department, and we're here to give you a kind of a brief annual update on our weed abatement program and present you the tax lien roles for this year.

Uh so to give you a quick uh overview of the weed abatement program.

Uh, we every year annually do approximately over 9,000 weed abatement inspections throughout the city.

And this is all upon the declaration of our local fire season, which uh this year I believe was uh June 7th, if I'm not mistaken, uh, and that's to ensure compliance with ordinance 3681.

And after the compliance date uh is initiated, parcels are inspected by fire department personnel uh on a regular basis throughout the whole duration of fire season.

Uh if a property is inspected and out of compliance, a notice to comply will be sent out to the parcel.

Uh owner advising them that the ordinance uh and the date for the next re-inspection.

A second inspection or as we call it, a first reinspection is conducted.

And if the parcels found to still be out of compliance, a violation notice will be sent to the parcel owner with a date for the next inspection.

If then a property owner remains out of compliance following the abatement violation notice, the we are authorized then to use an approved contractor to actually abate the property, and then all costs associated with that are recoverable by the city.

Uh so that's kind of a brief overview of how the process works and the amount of inspections we that are entailed in our program.

Uh and the general recommendation is that the fire department recommends that the council by resolution confirm the itemized report of the fire department of the cost of weed and rubbish abatement as provided in section 9-08.020 and the other Santa Rosa city codes, uh, and it has no current fiscal uh budget impact.

And if there's any questions or comments, um, we're happy to answer them.

Thank you very much.

That was incredibly succinct.

That's right.

We appreciate it.

Bringing it back to council for questions.

Any questions from council?

Mr.

O'Krepki.

So do we get emails about somebody's neighbor's yard?

Do we email them to you then?

Yeah, you can.

Okay.

Yes.

Um, interesting question to have on the record.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions from council?

All right, let's go to public comment.

We'll start in chambers, and but if you are online, please raise your hand on Zoom or press star nine.

Mr.

DeWitt.

Mayor, do you want to foreignly open the public hearing?

Oh, yes, I do.

Thank you very much, Madam City Clerk.

All right, we're gonna officially open the public clearing hearing.

So we'll start with those here in council chambers.

Mr.

DeWitt.

Hello, my name is Dwayne D.

Wood.

I'm from Roseland.

I'd like you to look at that graphic that I just handed out to you.

That's city property, and there is a neighborhood there, and there are many weeds.

There are many fire hazards there.

We'd like for you to regularly abate the fire hazards.

That means getting all the weeds out at the bottom of the trees, all the way up to head height, because people start fires in there when they do their camping.

They come in there with butane and they make fires to cook their food as they camp next to the trees in the meadow and in the neighborhood and next to the creek on the south side of the creek.

There's been a lot of campers that even go down into the creek banks.

So this is land that you own, you can take care of, you can abate the problem.

As a volunteer, I do my best.

Creek volunteers, we're there.

We're trying to help, but you know, transient vagrants don't care.

They don't look at us as if we're doing something positive.

We're just bothering their lifestyle.

When someone shows up in a uniform, when someone shows up and says, hey, this is the city abating this problem, then they're paying attention.

It works.

And recently there were people out there from parks picking up some of the debris that they leave behind.

And it's a lot.

All right.

So we're trying to help you save money and avoid the calls to the Burbank Avenue Fire Station, which they have a number on record for fires started in there by transient vagrants starting fires.

This is the crux to this whole issue.

We abatement is to avoid fires.

You folks can do it.

You can be the leaders of this whole thing by having those nice fire and police work together, come down there and get that neighborhood safe.

That's what we're looking for.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

DeWitt.

Before we go on in public comment, Mr.

Lowenthal, did you want to talk about some of the city's remarkable and very photogenic work with on weed abatement?

Thank you, Mayor Paul Lowenthal Division Chief Fire Marshal with the Fire Department.

So a couple quick comments.

Uh with several uh elements with the weed of payment vegetation management that work very well for the city.

Uh it's important to note that the Roseland Creek Park uh is actually over five acres in size, so technically it's only required to have a 30-foot break around the perimeter of it, but the city has opted to invest a lot of time, energy and money into going well above and beyond the actual requirements for the property, which have mitigated a lot of the fire risks and actually help uh our triple E or Cameron Enforcement team uh with their enforcement activities in there.

But it's also important to highlight that we also have grazing that does a lot of good work throughout the city, and then really more importantly to note is the Wheat Abin program is working.

In fact, a number of the fires that we announced arrests for uh this lack this last week uh were actually kept small specifically because of weed abatement activities.

So um arrests are happening, fires are occurring, but they are kept being being kept small because of the weed abatement program.

Thank you for underlining that last point.

That wasn't that was a good headline today.

Thank you also, Chief Kriegan and SRPD.

Uh all right, are there other people in council chamber who wish to speak uh as part of the public hearing?

Seeing none, let's go online.

Lauren, is there anybody online who wishes to speak?

No hands, Mayor.

Thank you very much.

All right, we're gonna close this public hearing.

I'm gonna bring it back to council for a motion, any final discussion.

Uh, I think it's Ms.

McDonald.

Do you have the motion on this one?

Yes.

I move the adoption uh that the resolution is presented by staff.

Second.

We have a motion and we have a second by Mr.

O'Krepke.

Any final discussion?

Madam City Clerk, we can call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Yes.

Councilmember Ben Welluth.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez is absent.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke?

Yes.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this pass the sixth affirmative votes.

All right, Jared Paul, Adam, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, we're gonna go up to item 15.1, for which many of you have been waiting, and which has been frankly a the culmination of a three-year journey here on at the city.

Uh it's item 15.1, our report on the transaction and use tax ballot measure.

I believe we have Mr.

Wagner and Ms.

Wood who are leading the conversation.

Welcome to you both, once again, good evening, Mayor Stopp and members of the council.

My name is Scott Wagner, Chief Financial Officer here at the City of Santa Rosa.

Along with me here for this presentation is Misty Wood, who is the communications and intergovernmental relations officer of the city.

We're very pleased to present this item as the mayor mentioned as a culmination of a three-year process that we'll be going into details on.

That is the transaction and use tallit back measure.

Um, report for this evening, transaction and use tax is a way of saying sales tax.

Um that is just the technical term.

So with that, I will next slide.

Today's presentation is gonna give a brief budget overview of how we have come to this point over the last three years.

We'll give some historical context on actions that the city has taken and overall why we are uh proposing this next action be taken by council.

At that point, I'll turn the presentation over to Missy, who will run through the community robust community engagement that's been occurring over the past six months to a year uh to get community feedback on really the services and that we provide here at the city.

Finally, I'll end on a conversation with running over the ballot proposed ballot measure uh language and mechanics that we'll move forward in the process uh that we're proposing to council.

So we'll start today's conversation around the general fund and what services are covered within the city's general fund.

The city has over 128 funds, with the largest one being the general fund.

This houses many of the city's services that are core, including the police department, fire department, public works, planning and economic development, city manager's office, city attorney's office, the finance department, parks, recreation, and human resources.

It's important to note that at this time, the allocation towards our public safety departments, police and fire are at the highest levels that we can see from a historical perspective of the city.

This is really a result of the council along with community feedback to focus the allocation of resources to these two key areas of the general fund.

Next slide.

Overall, though, the city's general fund is at a structural imbalance, even after significant actions that have taken that we've taken over the past three years.

I would characterize those actions really two ways in that the city has tightened its belt and the city has sharpened its pencil.

Those are the frequent feedback that we receive from members of the community as far as addressing our issues.

Specifically when it comes to tightening our belt, we've made significant reductions in expenditures over the past three years.

That really can be illustrated best with our reduction of employees.

We have overall reduced employees by roughly 80 employees within the general fund.

For context, we now sit on an employee level at the same level we did at the bottom of the Great Recession.

We are 20% lower on an FTE count than we were at the city's high.

Over this same period, though, population has grown and the services that we've provided to the city have those expectations and counts have grown as well, whether that is calls for service or our needs overall as a community.

We've additionally sharpened our pencil.

We've taken big swings here at the city to address some of our largest financial issues.

One example would be the city's unfunded liability with CalPers, which is a 482 million dollar debt.

Throughout the actions of this council, we've been able to take a proactive approach at paying off this liability quicker.

We will pay off this debt six years earlier, given the implementation of the plan that we've done, along with saving 28 million dollars over the next five years.

Again, coming back to the sharpening the pencil and doing things more effective and efficient, we have lost entire departments over the past three years.

We no longer have a recreation and barks department.

We no longer have a communications and intergovernmental relations department.

Those functions at the city still certainly exist, but they have been incorporated into existing departments elsewhere to gain efficiencies.

Next slide.

Today's discussion around sales tax is really that next step on looking at our largest sources of revenue, which is sales tax.

Before you is the city's five-year financial forecast, and this is really what we do to gauge how well the city is looking on a projection basis on the out years of the next five years.

I will add that the city, in an effort of transparency and doing again, sharpening our pencil, we've had an outside uh expert come in to look at our practices, and they were deemed best practice.

Our forecasts have been extremely accurate over the past three years coming out of COVID once our numbers started to normalize a little bit better.

And what we see in these numbers overall are those big red numbers at the bottom.

We overall have an ongoing structural deficit at the city at this point of around 14 million dollars on our out years.

What you'll note though is that in 2031, with the expiration of our current general sales tax measure queue, it bumps up.

So it goes to 23 million.

I think what's most important to understand in this slide though is that uh sorry about that, is that these numbers represent our budget reality of the moment.

This represents the budgets that have been passed.

But what it also represents, though, is that it is lacking and has holes of what the community's expectations are for the services that we deliver.

This is not what I would describe as a fully burdened budget.

There's holes here.

There's areas that we are not funding within these numbers.

One example would be our neighborhood streets.

The city currently has no funding source available to maintain and revive and reconstruct the city's neighborhood streets.

That's just one example.

There's many other examples of how we could be investing in better tools for our employees to provide better service, et cetera.

This is what I'm what I'm saying is that these numbers really are less than they should be.

They should be much, much higher.

Got it.

Thank you.

Next slide.

I want to take a moment to get into a slight governmental accounting discussion around how funds are separated at the city.

This is a very common misunderstanding that we can get from the community given how complex government funding is here at the city level.

We operate many different types of funds, like I mentioned earlier, and some of those are enterprise funds.

And what that means is they live on their own.

Our basic biggest example of an enterprise fund is the water fund.

The water fund and our ratepayers' revenue into that water fund can't go to subsidized general fund activities.

We cannot take a dollar that was paid for on a water bill and then fund the police or fire department.

There's other enterprise funds.

We had our transit division give a discussion on their financial reality tonight as well.

We cannot take bus money and move it into the general fund.

These things are legally separated here at the city.

There's additionally CIP funds, which are funded through special revenue accounts.

The biggest one here is gas tax.

And while you'll see many projects happening within the city, some of those around pedestrian efforts and pedestrian projects around bicycles, et cetera, I would add that none of those dollars have come from the general fund.

Those have been related to gas tax primarily.

This is important to understand because again, we we are restricted in many of these areas, specifically with gas tax, not on direction of this council, but really of the state on how those funds can and should be used.

Overall, that leaves us with the general fund, which incorporated all those departments that I mentioned earlier, which we can be discretionary on.

Ultimately, that is that the guidance of council on how we allocate those dollars going forward.

Next slide.

Why is this happening?

And at its core, um, we have a structural issue with the revenue at the city.

And that has been true for a very long time, but we see that structural issue growing over changes in the way that the market is working around our two primary revenue sources.

And I want to add some context around property taxes and sales tax in the next slide.

But from a big picture perspective, property taxes are ultimately set in stone through the proposition 13, which passed in the 1970s, locking us in to only receive 11.7% of every dollar spent on property taxes in the city of Santa Rosa.

That has been constant, but what has not been constant is the volatility around sales tax.

And overall, one key statistics that I can share tonight is that in the fiscal year 2025, which is our last audited fiscal year, we collected 2.1 million dollars less than we did three years earlier.

Sales tax is our largest revenue source, and us, just like any other industry, our primary revenue source when it's not only growing, but it's either stagnant or decreasing, it's just not keeping up with our uncontrollable expenses that we have here at the city.

The city's finances ultimately act a lot like our own personal finances, and as we all know, we've seen our expenses grow significantly over the past three to four years.

Next slide.

This next slide gives a graphic to really show these these contrasts.

First are the cities are the services that the city provides, police, fire, the maintaining of roads, economic development.

But what you'll see here is that on our revenue basis for our main revenue sources, we get funded last.

What comes prior to us is the county and the state.

So for example, and the school districts.

So again, coming back to that property tax dollar, we only retain 11.7% of our property taxes here in Santa Rosa.

An important understanding though of why we have this structural problem is that not all agencies are at 11.7%.

We have agencies within this Sonoma County that retain almost 20%.

These percentages created when Prop 13 passed, it ultimately created winners and losers on where you landed as an agency on your property tax base on wherever it was at the moment where it passed.

At that moment, when Prop 13 passed, Santa Rosa was known as a low property tax district.

That was an ability to attract housing growth, to attract businesses, et cetera.

But I think the the impact of that decision we're feeling here today in the structural problem.

Additionally, we bring up sales tax.

This is a common misunderstanding when it is well, the the this what is the sales tax for the city of Santa Rosa?

The city of Santa Rosa's sales tax is 1.75% or 1.75 cents out of the dime worth of sales tax.

The rest of it goes to Sonoma County and ultimately the state, which retains six cents and two and a quarter cents accordingly.

Next slide.

I want to give a brief overview of where we sit on a sales tax base basis throughout the county.

And what you'll note there is on that very first column to the left is that we have right now what I would describe as one general services transaction and use tax in the city.

That is measured Q, that is at a half percent.

All of the jurisdictions above us, including Cloverdale, Petaluma, Katati, Sonoma, and Sebastopol have at least one percent as their general sales, general services sales tax.

So we are behind these other agencies on a funding mix basis towards providing these services to the city.

Our overall sales tax rate at the current moment is 10%, which ranks us around the middle of the county.

I should add that this is a reflection of this moment in time.

We will not be the only jurisdiction in this area looking at increasing these amounts.

It is not only Santa Rosa that is facing these stark realities around our revenue mix, it will be other agencies as well.

And I expect that this uh chart on the left-hand side is going to look different after November to many of these agencies.

And with that, I will pass it to Missy to go through some community engagement that the city's been involved with.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council.

Um, as you know, we've been conducting significant community engagement over the past year surrounding budgeting education and getting input input on service priorities.

Um, this started in August with formation of the city managers budget working group who've served as a sounding board and a resource.

We have two of those members present with us today, Sahana Seti and Bob Gamble, and we really want to thank that entire group for spending their time with us and really being a resource for staff as we're trying to work through our budget crisis.

In January, we conducted initial resident survey to get an initial sense of what the service priorities are for residents of Santa Rosa.

In March, we launched the Let's Talk Santa Rosa campaign, and this was a bilingual community engagement campaign designed to broaden our reach, broaden our feedback, and broaden our education.

We had over 2,400 community members respond to that survey.

These are all people who live in Santa Rosa, own businesses in Santa Rosa, andor work here in Santa Rosa.

We've also completed 14 presentations with community groups and stakeholders, and additional outreach is ongoing.

We are not done yet.

And finally, we conducted a follow-up survey just last month to determine whether our community service priorities had changed as this the public has learned more about the city's budget situation.

I do want to say before I dive into the results, um, how appreciative I am, and I know that staff is as well, of all of the community members who have participated in the process.

We've had people welcome us into their community groups.

We've had very candid, robust conversations.

We appreciate everybody who's taken time to be part of the process over the last several months.

Starting with the June survey, the survey reinforced what we've heard throughout this process, which is that residents place the highest value on maintaining core city services.

This survey showed that residents maintain uh value maintaining fire and emergency medical response, police response services, particularly to violent crime, and maintaining streets and public spaces.

These results are consistent with what we've heard through the feedback throughout the Let's Talk Santa Rosa Initiative, and through with what we heard during our January survey as well.

Um, two things to note during the uh Let's Talk Santa Rosa initiative, homelessness and addressing homelessness did rise to the top as kind of a secondary priority.

And I did want to call your attention to the last line on this slide.

Um, maintaining the city's financial stability ranked higher in June than it did in January.

80% of the respondents ranked that as extremely important or very important in June.

Um that number was 70% six months ago.

This survey also revealed that 53% of respondents believe the city has a great need or some need for additional funding.

35% believe that the city has a little need or no real need, and 12%, which are shown in gray on this slide, are undecided.

Residents were asked how likely they are to support a sales tax reauthorization, as we are discussing this evening.

Over half of the respondents, 55%, uh, indicated support for a measure, saying that they definitely or probably would vote yes.

That support increases to 62% when including those leaning towards yes.

And these results that you see on your screen have an approximate margin of error of 4.9%.

Uh the challenge that we are facing, as we are all painfully aware, is that our budget reality makes it difficult to meet our public's expectations.

We recently reduced budgets for fire and police and other city services, and without action, more cuts are coming.

In June of uh sorry, summer of 2027, which is about a year into the future, we're looking at losing approximately 42 more positions.

The impact of that loss looks like fire station closures, elimination of police violent crimes teams, reduced maintenance of streets, parks, and street lights, elimination of recreation programs, and other city services.

I want to be really clear crystal clear tonight.

Without additional revenue, the city will not be able to meet our community's expectations when it comes to services.

What we have heard consistently in service it in surveys and in meetings is that our community values maintaining fire and emergency response services, maintaining police services, especially response to violent crimes, and maintaining our streets in public spaces.

So as we talk about revenue generation, as we talk about a ballot measure, it's not just a conversation about money.

It's a combination, it's a conversation about how to maintain the city services that our community members have said are most important to them.

And with that, I will pass it back to CFO Wagner.

Thank you, Misty.

So for the next few slides, I will go through some mechanics on the proposed sales tax measure.

Um, what's proposed is a reauthorization of the existing voter-approved measure Q sales tax at a one cent rate until ended by voters.

Voter-approved reauthorization of measure Q at one cent rate will allow the city to maintain core service.

It will address the city's budget deficit and maintain the city services community members have said are important, the most important.

Um, is a common way that it's been framed.

It is really to address our existing deficit and the existing gaps that we know are within there that need funding.

Um key message from the community that staff has heard very loudly, and also shares.

We we have a need to maintain what we currently have.

Next slide.

A hundred percent of this sales tax would stay in Santa Rosa, would not depend on a countywide allocation or would not depend on the state granting uh funds via a grant or anywhere else.

This would remain within our community for the city to use and prioritize as the community expects.

The majority of the stocks would come from brick and mortar sales transactions, and the remainder from online sales.

We would we estimate at this time that the total reauthorization of the measure will generate 46 million dollars annually.

That is 23 million additional to what it is currently generating today.

Next slide.

A simple majority would be required to pass the measure.

This is a general services measure that would be a 50% plus one as we describe it to pass.

The measure also includes strict accountability provisions and fiscal safeguards requiring independent audits and public disclosure of all spending.

Every penny must be used for Santa Rosa.

And with that, um I take pride in not reading slides, but for the sake of public record, I will be reading the next two.

So the proposed ballot language is the city of Santa Rosa community safety financial stability measure.

Shall the measure maintaining Santa Rosa's quality of life, 911 emergency medical, police response to violent crimes, keeping all fire stations open, and public spaces places safe, clean, fixing streets, repairing potholes, addressing homeless encampments, maintaining police fire protection, other services by reauthorizing the existing voter-approved sales tax at an updated one cent rate, providing approximately 46 million annually until ended by voters, requiring audits, public disclosure, local control be adopted.

Next slide.

So the recommendation, the city manager's office recommends the city council one introduce an ordinance amending chapter 3.30 of the city round city of Santa Rosa of the Santa Rosa City Code to replace the existing city's existing voter-approved one-half cent transaction and use sales tax with a one cent tax until ended by voters and adopt a resolution ordering the submission of ballot measure to qualified electors of the city of Santa Rosa at the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election and directing related actions.

And with that, we would welcome any feedback and questions from the council at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Excellent summary.

Looking to council for questions.

This has been a long conversation for everyone here in the city, and especially at the Dais.

So I'll understand if there aren't any, but but are there some follow-ups?

Ms.

McDonald.

I think it's really important, and I know you touched on it tonight, Misty.

We've said it over and over and over that this increase is not going to increase the budget to increase services, but to just ensure that the services we have now with the response times we have now are to remain here.

And I want to make sure that that's not, you know, only clear to the community, but to everyone who works even for the city of Santa Rosa, that to just maintain what we have now is this is critical for us to be able to do that.

And I just want to make sure that I've heard everything correctly and read everything correctly, and that's that's what you're trying to convey to us tonight.

Thank you for your for your question, Councilman McDonald.

And I and I'll share a few ways to a couple ways to characterize this, and I think the first is most important in that the where the funny where the funds will ultimately have to go is to an existing deficit.

The deficit is existing.

It is not something that is just in the out years is what we're experiencing now.

Furthermore, that conversation, these are the valuable moments where we receive a lot of feedback from our community.

The community has made it very clear that they expect maintaining services, maintaining existing city infrastructure.

That's what we have the ability to accomplish through this proposed tax measure.

I will add that this council has had to make the very difficult budget decisions that have been needed over the past few years.

This council has had to become municipal finance experts.

Um, and they have, given the really the accomplishments that have been made, not just cutting staff, but doing things better, setting the city up to be a more successful and better city.

I think that both of those areas really put us in a unique position to deliver on this promise to the voters.

Thank you.

Thanks for driving that home.

I appreciate it.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I think it's really important to focus on um on what we've done leading up to this point, right?

If you're if we're going out to ask for something, we've got to show that we've done our side of it, right?

Um, and we've made some some significant cut significant cuts and um also done some other things.

So one of the things that you'll we you generally hear as a council member is you know, there's too much fat, there needs to be, you know, um, you know, trim from the top, and um you always say there's a budget issue, and um, you know, we just passed EEE and FF.

Could you address some of those concerns that some naysayers may have a yeah, thank you.

And and yes, this is the feedback that we receive as well.

And I think when we've had those conversations and been able to um really show the reductions, and the most straightforward way to show it again, as I mentioned earlier, is the reduction of staff.

In that the reduction of staff has been pointed in the direction of what the community has asked for be uh cut first.

It has come from administration.

It has come from other areas that are doing much more with less.

Um, we are bone on bone at this point of the cuts that are making to quote our fire chief.

At the end of the day, the stark reality is that we have the same level of staffing that we did at the bottom of the Great Recession.

We've made the cuts.

And to add to your to your question, Vice Mayor, there are agencies that move forward with an action like this prior to making the cuts and trying to avoid those very difficult cuts that have happened.

We have not done that.

We have made the cuts first before coming to this action.

We have gone out and looked at business license tax.

We have gone out and increased it.

We have looked at TOT.

We have increased it.

We did not come to sales tax as an action.

We made the significant cuts we did.

We enhanced other areas of revenue.

We now have ultimately landed on the end of a runway where this is the next step.

It is not the final step.

Without this measure passing, ultimately, it is going to look like the cuts that uh Ms.

Wood mentioned earlier.

Um that is what the community ultimately needs to decide, not us, is the service that we are going to provide as a community and the impacts that that is going to have, and especially facing all of the positive things that have been happening here in the city over the past three or five years.

And if I could also chime in, uh Vice Mayor, uh the council, the council brought uh to the city for six-month period and interim city manager with a very strong financial background, and that was the intent of getting her into this role.

Uh, as you may recall when she gave her final comments during our budget deliberation, I just want to remind uh council and the public.

Her comment was I came in thinking I was gonna find something productive that you haven't attempted to look at, you haven't addressed, or you haven't done yet.

And her statement went further to say, I looked at Scott, I went through all of the documents, and there was nothing further that I could recommend that was different, new, or innovative that you haven't already thought about, and really praised this uh the chief financial officer on the effort that he and his predecessor and her predecessor put in place and set in motion to get us to this point.

So uh we had an independent uh CFO come in and look at this and basically explain that this really we are at this point.

We've done everything we possibly can.

We've made every effort to try to get uh across the finish line with other means and methods, and uh this is this is really the the place that we find ourselves in.

Thank you.

Other questions from council.

All right.

Well, before we go to public comment, I just want to emphasize what both Ms.

Wood uh and Mr.

Wagner did, and that is that this is the community's choice.

And one of the things that the community has done, or that the city rather has done really well over the past two plus years at least, and especially over the last six months, is we have been out in the community nonstop, whether it's by mailing brochures, whether it's online, whether it is meeting after meeting, face to face with with residents of Santa Rosa to make sure that everybody understands the choice that is before us as a community.

The community is gonna have a choice of is going to decide which direction we go.

And we just want to make sure everyone is informed.

So thank you to all of those who came today to make comment here.

There are going to be no more opportunities in the future, all the way up through November, um, as we make sure that everybody in this community is informed and leaning in on this particular issue.

So, with that, let's open up public comment.

Uh, I'm gonna call up names here.

Let's use both podiums to be efficient.

Abby Arnold, Bob Gandal, Bob Gamble, rather, and Mark Beauchamp.

Abby, Bob, and Mark.

Abby, you have the floor.

Good evening, council.

Um, I am representing Santa Rosa Yimby.

We have over 450 members here in Santa Rosa, and we voted at our last meeting to support the trans uh the transaction and use tax measure.

Um during our discussion, we uh aligned behind the tax measure for three reasons.

First, we want uh to curtail or prevent any cuts to public health and safety, which would hurt everybody in our community, such as having to cut back and close fire to fire stations.

Secondly, we um are very supportive of the ability of this tax to deal with some of the deferred maintenance to our streets, such as uh street major street repair and pedestrian repair that make our streets safe for all of us as we go through our days here in Santa Rosa, um, particularly in the downtown area, which is where so much of our sales tax revenue is generated.

And thirdly, we feel that this can be an interim step toward um saving uh saving money while we move toward some of the other revenue enhancement, property tax enhancement opportunities that we may have with the steps forward that you all have taken in terms of um upzoning and allowing accessory dwelling units and other ways of boosting affordability so that more housing can be created that will generate additional property tax revenue in the future outside of Prop 13.

I am I remember when Prop 13 was passed, and I never thought I would be dealing with it at this point in my life.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Abby, and thank you, Santa Rosa Yemby.

Bob.

Uh my name is Bob Gamble.

Uh, and I'm here tonight representing the city's community budget advisory committee.

We strongly support moving the sales tax measure before you tonight forward for voter consideration.

We were appointed last year by the city manager to assist in the analysis of budget alternatives focused on creating fiscal sustainability for the city.

Our members have substantial experience in both public and private finance.

The city is highly dependent on sales tax, much more so than other cities of similar size.

While it is important to further diversify the city's revenues in the future, in the short term, it is essential to maximize sales tax revenues.

We have spent the last year working with city staff to gain a clear understanding of the city's financial position and how that may change going forward.

It has become clear to us that the city's current financial position is extremely difficult and will become more so unless a number of changes are made.

Quite simply, the cost of maintaining current levels of service is outstripping growth in revenues.

Without significant change, the city will be forced to make increasingly draconian cuts to services, including police and fire.

These cuts will not be small, they will affect the everyday lives of our residents.

This problem requires multiple solutions.

The approval of the sales tax increase before you tonight is one of the most foundational of these solutions.

This measure will provide a financial bridge until other solutions can be undertaken.

Again, we strongly support the measure.

We urge the council to move it forward tonight and to support it with enthusiasm as it is considered by the voters.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bob.

All right, Mark, then Sarah Rogers Roberts rather, and Dwayne DeWitt.

Uh hello, everybody.

My name is Mark Beauchamp.

I am a business agent with the operating engineers local three.

I'm also a delegate on the North Bay Labor Council.

I represent units three, thirteen, and sixteen.

That's the maintenance mechanics and the USOs.

We're here in support of the tax measure.

We're going to be all hands on deck.

Not saying that generally, I'll be one of the many that will be making the phone calls, knocking on doors.

We're going to do everything we can to get this passed.

I want to show uh also share appreciation.

Um I've represented uh throughout the Bay Area until I came up to the North Bay, and this is one of the first times uh I've seen where um we're facing a real issue.

And labor was brought in early on, not just to be part of conversation, but to be part of the solution.

And it's uh garnered uh nothing but respect.

We have been heard, we went through all the possible scenarios.

I want to thank Scott, Jason.

I think I see Goldbu over there.

Um we may not agree on issues from here, you know, time to time, but uh there is a mutual respect that's been building and uh mutual trust.

And uh we're all hands on deck, and we're gonna do everything we can to uh support this and get this passed.

Mark, thank you for that.

Sarah, then Dwayne.

Hi, Sarah Roberts from Team Series 856, uh former city employee, actually.

Um, and Team Series 856 supports this measure as it supports Teamster positions that keep the city maintained safe and enjoyable for its residents.

I represent 532 members who are not sworn personnel, but they do fulfill many of the tasks the public interfaces with on a daily basis, such as permits for building, special event planning, use of recreation services, and calling for street lights being out, water leaks, water service issues, among many others.

And I'm here to say that we will support this tax measure, and we ask the council to support it and the public to support it so it supports our members.

Thank you.

Sarah, thank you very much.

Mr.

DeWitt.

Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

This is a current listing of the city's salaries.

And with that, I wanted to point out that the city has currently 80 job categories that start at the six-figure number over a hundred thousand dollars.

And there's others who've gone higher.

The reason I bring that up is because if you notice in life, sales taxes are regressive.

They hurt those who are low income the most.

But out of the 180,000 residents of the city, 2400 survey responses.

That comes to about 1.5% of the residents were able to chime in on that.

These different meetings you've had, I asked around, and no one from the Sonoma County Taxpayers Association was invited to anything.

No one who could speak for the poor was invited to anything to look at how they're going to be affected by this sales tax.

Read the press Democrat letters to the editor.

Just don't talk to your echo chamber folks.

There's a lot of people writing in saying they don't support this situation.

Thank you, Duane.

Mr.

Del Porto.

Yeah, uh, thank you, Council.

Good evening.

Uh Stephen Del Porto, Santa Rosa Firefighters, Local 1401.

Um felt it was important to come here and publicly support this tax measure.

Uh we've had a lot of difficult discussions over the last couple years uh with everybody from council and staff about where the city's at.

Um, but I could confidently say we've made all the cuts we can without drastically impacting the services of the city.

Um I would be very scared to come back next uh fiscal year with the cuts we'd have to make.

Uh the cuts that the chief would have to put on the table and the council would have to decide on which districts aren't worth covering at that point.

We would lose a fire station, we would lose people, and with that, already being bare bones as we are, it would put people at risk.

Um, it's very concerning.

Uh, and that's why we're in full support of this tax measure as well.

Um, we'll do everything we can to get it passed.

Uh, we'll work with the city as much as we can.

And like I said, I appreciate the work that's been done so far to get us to this point to make the cuts so that we could bring it to the public with in good conscience that we're not asking for something without really needing it.

Uh so just want to come up here again, like I said, we very much support this.

Uh, we'll do what we can uh to get behind it and pass it, and and hopefully we get there.

So thank you very much.

Stephen, thank you, and thank you to firefighters 1401.

Are is anybody else here in chamber wishing to make wishing to make comment?

Seeing none, I'm gonna uh repeat the the invitation online.

Uh, if you are on Zoom and wish to raise your hand or press star nine to let us know when you wish to make comment online, please do so now.

Uh, and I'll ask Lauren if she's seeing anybody online who wishes to speak.

That's a negative, Mayor.

No hands.

No hands online.

We will close public comment and bring it back to the bring it back to the to council for any final comment.

Let's let's let's have a motion and people can think about their comments.

I think we have two motions.

Is that correct, Ms.

Rogers?

Yeah.

Uh I I did want to say really quickly.

Um I I understand that this may be a burden on people that are lower socioeconomic, but I would also like to say that I had the opportunity of doing a ride-along with police.

Um last week, I believe it was.

And many of the calls that I received were from low-income housing complexes.

And so whether you're rich or you're poor, when you call 911, when you need an emergency, when there's an emergency, when you've been violated, um, regardless how you've been violated, if that's someone coming in your house uninvited, whether that's by uh a domestic partner, whatever the case, you want a response and you want it in a timely manner, and you want it taken care of because that helps us to feel safe in the city that we call home.

And that helps people that come visit us that also bring tax dollars to feel safe in the city that we call home.

So I know there's some controversy, and I know that we we do pay our I hope we pay our employees well because we want them to stay here because they have expertise because they in fact run the city and they do a very, very good job at what they do.

So we want them to be here and we want to retain them.

We want them to stay here.

We don't want this to be a ground for for training.

So all of the staff in the audience and for those that are listening, we appreciate you.

We want to keep you here.

We do want to pay you a living wage because we feel like you should be able to live, you should be able to thrive, and you should be able to take a vacation on the days that you get off.

It should not be, oh, I don't have money to take a vacation.

It's a staycation.

So those are things that we've all been working on.

And if that means that we need to propose this and bring this to the voters to make the decision, then I am supporting it wholeheartedly because that's what we need to do to make Santa Rosa and to keep Santa Rosa where we want it to be.

So I'll get up my soapbox.

But that did that kind of rubbed me the wrong way with the um one of the comments that was made.

I like to make a motion to introduce an ordinance entitled Ordnance of the City of Santa Rosa, amending Title III, chapter 3-30 of the Santa Rosa Municipal Code to adjust and extend the city's 2020 transactions and use general tax.

And way further reading.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and we have a second by Miss McDonald.

Any final discussion?

Madam City Clerk, if you could call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellos.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez is absent.

Vice Mayor O'Krepki.

Aye.

Mayor Stapp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes.

Thank you.

I'd also like to make a motion for a resolution of this uh council of the city of Santa Rosa calling a municipal election on November 3rd, 2026 to submit a measure to the registered voters of the city on the reauthorization of a general sales tax and requesting a consolidation of such election with other elections being held on the same date as amended by staff and way further.

Second.

We have a motion and a second again by Miss McDonald.

Any final discussion?

Madam City Clerk, we can call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Willows.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez is absent.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Staff.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms.

Wood, Mr.

Wagner.

Again, this has been a long journey and it's not over yet, but thank you for getting us to this point.

Thank you to all the community members that came tonight to speak.

We really appreciate the fact your words to support and the fact that you're leaning in.

We're gonna be talking more in the months to come.

And please do talk to you, do talk to your friends, neighbors, and fellow members.

And with that, we'll leave this item behind.

But again, thank you.

Thank you for all the work that you've done on this.

All right, folks.

We are gonna go back a little bit to I believe it is item nine.

It's kind of anticlimactic at this point.

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

Um, Madam City Manager, I'm sorry, excuse me, Jason, our city manager.

I'm as it so happens, while we were talking about this item, and as Jason was mentioning Lori Ann Farrell, our previous city manager, Lori Ann texted me.

She's hanging out with Karen Bass down in LA, not realizing what we're doing right now.

So that's all I had Lorian on my mind, Jason, please, if you have a report.

Thank you, Mayor.

I do have a fairly brief report.

Uh we're excited to share that the latest block blast from our neighborhood services program will be available in the afternoon in the afternoon this Thursday, July 30th.

Uh, in it, you'll find a variety of low cost and free activities for underserved youth and families in Santa Rosa through recreation and parks and the violence prevention partnership.

We offer programs that help strengthen our community by giving young people safe and fun places to learn, play, and grow.

If your family qualifies, you can sign up for after school sports and uh after school sports and recreation programs and events.

These activities are designed to support families to help our kids thrive.

Visit SRCity.org forward slash neighborhood services to learn more and view the block blast.

Registration opens at 7 a.m.

on Thursday, July 30th for programs in the fall and winter activity guide from Santa Rosa Recreation and Parks.

Whether you want to stay active, learn a new skill, spend time with family or connect with your community.

The guide is packed with programs and activities for all ages and is available in English and Spanish.

Visit us rcity.org forward slash register or call 707-543-3737.

The city has released project maps and daily work schedules for this year's pavement preventative maintenance project, which will treat approximately 14 miles of streets in the Bennett Valley area of Southeast Santa Rosa.

Residents can now view maps, find their streets, and stay informed about upcoming work in their neighborhoods.

This annual maintenance helps extend the life of our roadways and is one of the most cost-effective ways to preserve the condition of our streets for years to come.

Slurry C application is expected to take place between August 24th and September the 3rd.

To feed the to view the maps and schedules, visit srcity.org/slash slurry seal.

And lastly, uh construction is scheduled to begin later this week on the Fulton Road Sewer Maintenance Replacement Project between West Third and Santa Rosa Creek.

The project will replace approximately 650 feet of aging sewer infrastructure to improve system reliability and help protect Santa Rosa Creek from potential impacts associated with deteriorating sewer facilities.

During construction, one southbound lane of Fulton Road will be closed with traffic controls in place, and the work is expected to be completed in December of this year.

For additional information on this critical infrastructure project, visit srcity.org forward slash Fulton Road Sewer Maine.

And Mayor, that's all of my reports for today.

Thank you very much.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a report on settlements and active litigation.

I have one case to report, which is a federal civil rights matter that was adjudicated by way of civil judgment in plaintiff's favor.

The matter is John Paul Johnson versus City of Santa Rosa, which was filed in May 2023 and asserted six claims against the city and four individual SRPD officers relating to an elbow injury plaintiff sustained during a lawful arrest in March of 2022.

Two of those officers as well as two of the as well as two of the plaintiffs' claims were dismissed in their entirety before trial.

In January 2026, the case proceeded to trial on the balance of plaintiff's claims.

At the trial, the plaintiff sought 400,000 to 700,000 in general damages and an unspecified amount in punitive damages.

The jury returned a verdict, clearing one officer.

As to the other officer, the jury assigned partial liability but found no intentional, reckless, or malicious conduct on the part of the officer.

The jury awarded plaintiff 10,000 in general damages and no punitive damages.

Following the outcome at trial, the plaintiff sought attorney's fees and costs totaling approximately 357,000 on the basis provided by the city's opposition.

The court awarded approximately 113,000 in fees and costs.

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

We have the litigation log attached to the agenda materials, and I want to thank my team for all of their ongoing and wonderful work, and several of them are here this evening.

And if you do have any questions, uh the litigation team is present.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We'll open up to public comment.

If you're online, please do raise your hand or press star nine.

If you're in chamber, make your way to the to the podiums.

Dwayne.

Yes.

The clock, the most important thing.

My name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland and I appreciate the two reports just given, both by the interim city manager and the city attorney.

It's always good to hear that we're having pavement preservation program activity.

People in Roseland have been concerned about how the $6 million the county directed towards the city for pavement activity.

How's that been going?

We need to get a final report on that because it's been nine years since the annexation.

As we get to 10 years, we'd like to hear what got fixed, because our roads still look pretty bad out there.

I really want to thank the city attorney for that nice discussion about the case with John Paul Johnson, person I've never met.

I'd like to congratulate you for being able to negotiate the legal fees down from what they were to a third of that and save the city money there.

And also point out that it's a good thing you've got a legal team that's on it.

Keep being those legal beagles.

Keep saving that money every chance you can everywhere you can.

And you know, if you ever heard of a military thing called the Judge Advocate General, the way they work it is no matter how few staff they have, they take on what they have to do.

It's one of those things where you don't get a replacement until somebody farther up the food chain says, okay, somebody's gonna get assigned to that law group.

So your law group may not be able to grow.

Ask them all to just do really well at kicking that plaintiff's butt to make sure we don't have to spend extra dough.

I really thank you on that.

Thank you, Mr.

DeWitt.

Is there anybody else in chambers who wishes to speak?

Seeing none, Madam Zoom host, anybody online.

Mayor, I'm seeing no one on Zoom with their hands raised.

No one on Zoom with their hand raised.

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

Any statements of abstention or recusal this evening?

I suppose that's true.

That's a good point.

Yeah, that was we've that ship has sailed.

Yeah, we'll assume the answer is no.

Uh uh Mayor and Council members' reports.

Are there any reports this evening?

All right.

Uh, Miss McDonald, kick us off.

Yes, I just want to do a brief report.

I had the opportunity to go on the 11th annual oyster run out to Bodega Bay.

Um, that was an event that was done by the Chicano Style Motorcycle Club.

There was over 300 motorcycles that got to participate.

We went out to Bodega Bay and the event ended in Doyle Park, and it was a really great family event um with barbecue and lots of fun activities for kids and adults to be um to participate in.

And I just want to say thank you to them for their inclusiveness, and um I appreciated the opportunity to be part of such a fun event.

So thanks to the Chicano Style Motorcycle Club for that opportunity.

Thank you.

Mr.

Krupke, did you have anything?

Uh the only thing I had I wanted to report was I was able to attend on the 22nd, the um North Bay Division General Membership meeting for the California League of Cities.

Uh President Rogers presided over it, and we were able to see an awesome presentation from one of our uh stars of today, uh our CFO Scott Wagner presented uh his strategy for how he addressed the CalPers unfunded liability to uh various other uh municipalities of North Bay and did a great job in doing so.

Thank you.

I just have a few quick items.

Uh we did have the uh Sonoma County Mayors and Council Members Association legislative meeting a week ago uh where we went through um pending legislation at the state level.

Um, nothing that jumps off the page.

Uh the general theme was uh uh loss of local control and more unfunded mandates for cities.

That is the general update.

Uh there was also a zero waste uh board meeting, and then the big item there was an update on the hazardous waste facility that's being built built in Windsor.

Uh and then I did have a chance uh to participate in the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery uh cleanup day last last Saturday.

Uh they have such great volunteers there that keep that make that cemetery a remarkable park.

Um we had members of our parks and rec crew here earlier, uh, and they were being showered with praise by the volunteers for the work that the city has done in the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery.

Um so thank you to all the team members that participated there.

Um, and then also the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery volunteers did it did ask that the city remember Jim Butler, who passed away this month.

Um, he was part of what's known as the Tombstone Trio, which is a really dedicated segment of volunteers that are just at the park every week.

Uh Jim also volunteered at the Prince Memorial Greenway.

Um, so it was just a regular both at the cemetery and at the Greenway.

Sadly, he passed away in July.

Um, he is survived by his wife Robin.

Uh and on behalf of the city, we thank Jim and Robin for all the work that they did uh at at those parks and for the city in general.

Thank you, Jim.

Any public comment on any of the reports?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Miss Rogers, sorry.

Um, sorry.

Uh really quick.

So I I did want to give a shout out to CFO Wagner and thank him for giving the presentation.

I know he just slipped out.

Um, but he said when I we asked him to do it that that part brought him joy.

And so I really wanted to thank him for doing that.

On the 16th, I was able to um attend a tour of the geysers with water staff and uh Calpine staff gave us a tour, so that was really great.

On the 17th, I had the opportunity to do a ride along with Officer Riley Howard of SRPD.

Um, I wanted to thank him for providing an informative, exciting, and at times humorous um ride along.

And on the 20th, I was able to hang out with park maintenance.

Um I cleaned fountain, I cleaned a fountain.

Um I trimmed and hauled broken branches off the Prince Memorial Greenway.

I removed a sectional couch off the greenway.

I don't even know how they got it on the greenway, but probably the same way we removed it off the greenway.

Um what I cleaned up trash, I got to scrub graffiti.

Um I have a new dislike for graffiti.

I used to always go, oh, it's art.

I have a very strong dislike for graffiti now that doesn't belong in places.

Um I was so lucky I got to clean two bathrooms.

So that was great.

Um, but it also gave me an appreciation for not only what I do, but for what my fellow council members do, because I know that we're all in different parts and maybe we don't all attend the same events and activities, but people ask us like what does it mean to be on council?

And I think that we are uh a great example of what it means to be on council and how we sit up here and we make decisions, but we're also in the community and we're doing the hard work.

And if we ask our staff to do it, we get out there and we do it too.

So um I couldn't sit with uh a better council.

But thank you to John, who is a senior maintenance worker at Parks Maintenance for allowing me to do the ride along with him.

Um also since I missed the gym that day to allow me to do some heavy lifting, so he really did allow me to lift very heavy branches and pull them uh down the greenway.

So I am thankful for that.

But it was I was very tired uh when I went home.

And thank you to Victor for providing insight about his job, um, why he came here from Ronett Park, which is great, um, and why he made the decision to come work for our city.

So that definitely warmed my heart and uh allowed me to know that we are uh doing right and we're headed in the right direction.

Um so that concludes my report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Uh, and thank you for bringing your mom tonight, by the way.

I'm glad I didn't, I'm glad I didn't skip you.

Uh, mama, thank you for sitting during the whole meeting.

I thought I was gonna have to get you an Uber, but thank you for sitting during the whole meeting.

Welcome.

I'm I'm bringing my mom next week.

It's part of a bring bring your bring your parents to council tradition.

We're starting here.

Uh all right.

Any now we can go to public comment.

Any any members of the public wish to comment on any of those reports?

Seeing none, we'll close.

Uh well, I guess I have to go online too.

Um, Madam Zoom host has anybody raised their hands online.

If you are online, uh raise your hand or press star nine.

Any online comment?

No hands, Mayor.

Lauren, thank you very much.

All right, we're gonna move on then to our board, commission, and committee appointment.

Item 11.2.1, our appointment to fill a vacancy on the design review and preservation board.

We've received one application of Vincenzo Signoretti to uh review proposition of archaeologist, architectural historian, or historian.

I'm gonna call for public comment at this time.

Would any members of the public like to comment on this item?

And again, if you're on Zoom, raise your hand or press star nine.

Seeing no members of the public in chambers who wish to comment, I'll go to Lauren.

Lauren, is anybody raising their hand online?

Still no, Mayor.

Still no, still no hands online.

Okay, we'll close public comment and I will look to Miss Banwelos for a motion to appoint uh Mr.

Signoretti to the board.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I move to appoint Vincenzo Zenaretti to review for position of um archaeologist, architectural historian, or his historian position on the design review and preservation board.

Second.

We have a motion and we have a second by Ms.

Rogers.

Any final comment?

Madam City Clerk, we can call the vote.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye, Councilmember McDonald.

Hi, Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellows?

Yes.

Councilmember Alfrez is absent.

Vice Mayor O'Krepke.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes.

Thank you very much.

Move on to item 12.1, our approval of minutes.

Were there any edits to the minutes?

Is there any public comment on the minutes either from in chamber or online?

Seeing no public comment in chambers.

Lauren, any public comment online?

No hands, Mayor.

All right, we'll close public comment and we will approve the minutes as submitted.

Which brings us to consent.

Item 13.

We have items 13.1 through 13.6.

Are there any questions around any of these items?

I'm gonna question one if I could.

Is Mr.

Hennessy still online?

I hate to bring him.

If he's not here, I'm not gonna make a big deal of this.

Thank you.

Dan, if you all all I'm requesting is uh for item 13.1, our resolution for the Sonoma Land Trust donation.

Um could you just talk again about what the land trust and what private philanthropy has done for the city in general and for the Southeast Greenway project in particular?

Boy, um trying to keep this to 60 seconds.

I mean, they have to be even just the dollar amount, just the scale of the philanthropy.

750,000 dollar contribution through the land trust from private donors to make this master planning effort possible, in addition to all the support that they've given to be stewards of the land, help with the transfer to the city to make this a park, um, and continued commitments.

They've got donors lined up and ready when we understand what we want to build to help us do it.

So this is gonna be a long partnership, and we're very grateful for their efforts.

Indeed.

How much how much time did this save the city and the community uh because of the way because of their their the philanthropy they brought to the table?

At least a year, uh just getting us kick started faster, um advancing the entire process more quickly, and again, just very appreciative for their efforts and their uh generosity.

All right, and Roberta, are you the only are you the only member tonight?

You want you want to show your t-shirt?

There we go.

Thank you to all of our Greenway volunteers.

Thanks for coming out tonight.

That was my only question.

Thank you.

Thank you to all the volunteers.

And thank you, Dan.

Um, all right.

Are there any other any any other questions on the on the consent items?

Ms.

Ben Wellos.

Well, since you since we are asked asking questions, I I was wondering about um 13.6.

And I just wondered.

Oh, I see, I think Megan is still here.

Um I wonder if if Megan uh if you wouldn't mind just talking about it a little bit for um really for the purposes of the public.

Uh I and anyone else who's involved.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council, and thank you very much.

Um, with me is Rebecca Lane, program specialist, and she is handling this application, and we'll give you a brief overview.

Thank you very much.

Uh uh Councilmember Ben Willis for your question.

Um the CARTAS phase two uh is the final stage of the entire Caritas uh village development, which council is uh likely familiar with.

So the uh final building is another 64 unit apartment um dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, and we are hoping to uh receive Home Key Plus support from the state.

Uh Home Key.

We do have other home key projects here in the city, um, and HomeKey Plus is a slightly revised uh uh funding source uh with largely the same target population.

Uh so we'll be uh submitting an application to the state for up to 30 million dollars to support the um CARITAS phase two.

So this particular project was already slated to happen eventually, right?

I I think I remember um it was like the next the final phase, like you said.

So is um the place the uh the application that you're submitting is that's the new part right now is that you're finally moving forward with it.

Correct, yes.

Um and that will be in addition to other uh funding sources, but that will be the first uh major infusion uh if if the application is successful and should be the catalyst to the final funding as well.

And I'm sorry, and the clientele that it's going to um serve, that was the clientele that was always slated to be served.

Is that correct?

Correct.

There is in the home key plus there's a also a veterans population.

So we'll have uh we're planning on putting 10 units uh for veterans in this part of the project.

And if I can just add on to that is that Burbank Housing has been pursuing funding opportunities since this project was initially approved, I believe in 2019 or 20.

So this is the latest inherition iteration of funding that they are pursuing in order to complete this project.

And the housing authority has committed several million dollars to help advance this project as well.

Great, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, we'll open up the public comment and we have uh we have a bit of a lineup here.

Um, Abby, Duane, and then Gregory.

And if other members of the public wish to speak, just make your way to a podium.

If you're online, raise your hand online or press star nine.

Abby, go ahead.

Good evening once again, Abby Arnold representing Santa Rosa, Yimby, yes, in my backyard.

We are very enthusiastic about this project.

Um, very grateful to the city for being a partner with Burbank Housing to bring some of the state money that's been generated back to Santa Rosa and uh creating homes for some of the most needed, needy people in our community, um, moving some of them from homelessness into permanent housing.

So thank you for considering this.

Thank you.

Abby, Duane.

Clock, the most important thing in these meetings.

All right, my name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

Congratulations for the new streetlight that'll come at 13.3.

Also, congratulations for the solicitation of the funds that came for the Sonoma Land Trust donation to the Southeast Greenway.

And congratulations for Caritas for this project that'll be moving forward and will be helping people, especially 10 veterans.

I would like to add a couple of things here right now that you folks could do to be even more helpful to our community.

It's been projected that this will be a very wet winter.

We may have what's called the El Nino.

We may have even more suffering by the people that are out there who need a place to be, and that one vacant lot at the Caritas situation.

That could be a spot for them to stay in some sort of a shelter.

There could be tents out there, there could be something to help those people instead of having them lay on the cement under the overpasses during the heavy rains that are going to occur.

This is really important, not a laughing matter.

It's the kind of thing where actually people are going to be suffering this winter, and that land that's vacant at the Caritas site could be utilized.

Go look at it.

It's a nice city block size.

It's the kind of thing that you could solicit them to do more.

They don't listen to the homeless that much.

They just go and try to get funds to help them.

And then on this last one, 13.4.

The solicitation of the Sonoma Land Trust.

This would be something that could happen in other areas of the city.

They basically have some funds.

And so does the Sonoma County Foundation.

If you folks would reach out and say, hey, these well-to-do organizations, they could help some of these smaller projects.

We've been trying for decades to get more help at the Roseland Creek Project.

Anybody that we asked for help, they couldn't do it.

But they would always come back and ask for us to make a donation to their group.

Never helped us a bit, but always asked for money from us.

Solicit them to help Roseland.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Gregory.

Mayor Stapp and members of the city council.

My name is Gregory Farron.

Yesterday, my colleagues and I on your housing authority authorized the extension and subordination of long-term loans made on your behalf to allow community providers of low cost housing to continue or transfer program operations for properties in Santa Rosa used to house autistic and homeless individuals and families.

It was particularly satisfying to me because I headed the agencies when the loans were first initiated.

But much has changed in America for those of us dedicated to providing low-cost housing.

Rental prices for nonprofit housing are dependent on the cost of loans we need to take to build the housing.

The fewer and cheaper our loans, the lower the rents can be, and the more we can put into maintenance.

Yesterday's actions by the housing authority ensured you'll have 30 more years of low rents and healthy facilities.

Housing built with state grants, which don't require repayment, as in agenda item 13.6.

Allow us to provide homes for even the lowest individuals.

But it takes more than a facility to ease someone back inside whose life has been destroyed by the streets.

And those, but no expectation of success can ever be counted on unless the addition of mental health and substance use disorder services are provided.

Over the past 40 years, I can tell you that nothing more has been nothing clearer has been made.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gregory.

Anyone else in Council Chambers wishing to speak?

Please go ahead.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Jocelyn Lynn.

I'm the Chief Real Estate Development Officer for Burbank Housing.

And I want to thank you for your support of our Caritas phase two project.

Um and I want to address an earlier question.

Um, Caritas phase two is the final phase of this CARITAS redevelopment um site in downtown Santa Rosa, and uh Caritas 2 phase two will be a replica of phase one that was already built and completed in 2023.

And as we originally attended, this uh phase two will be um for permanent supportive housing.

And the difference here now with the home key um program is that we will add 10 additional uh homeless veterans units.

So that's the only difference from the prior origination of what we were thinking for this project.

And I do want to say that this project is a collaboration with many partners.

So we're obviously partnering with the city for funding, but we're also partnering with the county, um specifically county behavioral behavioral health.

So we will be coordinating with them, and we will be looking at possible um operating subsidies from them as well as services.

The service provider for this uh project will be Catholic charities, who we partnered with previously in phase one, and they will stay as the lead uh service provider, and they will be providing case management to address substance abuse and um mental health.

So those services will be provided on this project.

So I just want to um thank you again for your support, and I'm available to answer any further questions.

Thank you.

Jocelyn, thanks to both you and Burbank.

Roberta.

Thank you.

Go back to uh the item about the Sonoma Land Trust and the misimpression that they are a well-to-do organization.

There is a lot of money that is passing through their hands.

It's true, but it's only because they work very hard to seek out grant funding, and because they are a nonprofit, anyone who's donates to any of their projects, that money is tax deductible, and it otherwise would not be.

And I can tell you, as you mentioned, they saved the city a lot of money in the acquisition of the Greenway, which I care very deeply about.

That will continue because they're gonna continue, even though they can't be our um fiscal agent anymore.

They're going to help us form our own nonprofit.

So additional monies that are donated for the planning and development of this absolutely gorgeous park will be tax deductible to the donors.

That's that's gonna mean a lot more money than would otherwise be available to us.

Thank you very much.

Who says nothing ever happens during the consent calendar?

This was a this is a lively discussion.

All right, we have items 13.1 through 13.6.

Uh, Vice Mayor, is there a motion?

I'll move items 13.1 through 13.6 as submitted by staff.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second by Ms.

Rogers.

Madam City Clerk, you can call Oh, wait before we do that.

I didn't check for online comment.

Please tell me somebody online wanted to make a comment on the consent calendar as well.

I can't do that, Mayor.

No hand.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lauren.

All right, Madam City Clerk, we can call the vote.

Thank you, Mayor.

Excuse me.

Uh Councilmember Rogers.

Hi.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Welluth.

Yes.

Councilmember Alvarez is absent.

Vice Mayor Krepke.

I.

Councilmember Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes.

All right.

We're almost done, but we have one more public comment on non-agenda matters.

So if you did not get a chance to speak earlier on any items not listed on the agenda, this is your time, either in person or online.

Make your way to the podium or raise your hand online.

I'm seeing none in chamber.

Lauren, how about online?

Our streak remains, Mayor.

No hand.

Thank you, Lauren.

All right.

We've got a few support letters that are listed.

Otherwise, we are adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.