Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Santa Rosa City Council met on October 13, 2026, starting at 3:00 p.m. with a study session on municipal bond issuance and federal securities law responsibilities. The regular session began at 4:00 p.m. and included proclamations, presentations, a consent agenda, public comment on non-agenda matters, and two public hearings. Key actions included approval of an application for up to $3,046,056 in Permanent Local Housing Allocation (PLHA) funds, and a 6-1 vote (with one abstention) to grant an appeal and approve a Conditional Use Permit for a drive-through at Del Valle Mexican Restaurant, reversing the Planning Commission's denial. Several members of the public spoke in opposition to the city's use of Flock cameras, and Councilmember Alvarez moved to agenda a study session on automatic license plate readers before any contract renewal.
Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence interpretation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live interpretation in Spanish is available, and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. You're on your cell phone or tablet, locate the three dots, top them lightly, and put a check mark on your preferred language. Click done to activate and begin the interpretation. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish interpretation. Claudia, will you please restate this in Spanish? Yes. Thank you very much. Back to you. Welcome everyone. The time is three o'clock and we'll call this meeting to order. Madam City Click, Clerk, would you please call the role? Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Rogers. Councilmember McDonald. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Ben Wellows. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor O'Krepki. Here. Mayor Stapp. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. Thank you very much. All right, we will jump right to item 4.1, our study session on the issue issuance of municipal bonds and disclosure responsibilities under federal securities laws. It's been 13 years since we issued a general obligation bond of the city. So it's a good time to have a refresher. And you've heard from the city manager and myself that the debt strategy and structuring of the city is something that we're looking at. We're seeing throughout the city a lot of deferred maintenance needs. So we're gonna break this into two parts. We'll spend a little bit of time kind of talking about public finance or bonds one-on-one, and then we'll turn into some of the actual disclosures and obligations that you and the city will have going forward if and when any bonds are actually issued. So as Scott mentioned, uh the impetus for this is really that we've got a project coming forward that is going to need to have a substantial amount of funding that will require the issuance of bonds. The wastewater enterprise fund, and as you know, is its own business, is looking as part of the rate study to need about 35 million dollars. Uh we anticipate and have been working to draft the necessary documents, including the disclosure documents for that. Um again, this is not a general fund obligation. This is an obligation that will be on the wastewater enterprise fund. Um, as part of this, we've really looked at the whole enterprise fund obligations and considered whether or not it made sense to do any restructuring of the existing debt and/or pay down some of the debt to make the overall comprehensive debt service lower, um, benefiting obviously the ratepayers within the system. Next slide. So let's talk a little bit about what municipal finance is or what bond finance is. As Scott mentioned, it's been a while since the city's actually issued any publicly offered debt. Um, as you all know, the city has the ability to issue debt differently than how you or I would go out and get a mortgage for buying a house. Uh that the debt it has the benefit of being what's considered tax exempt. So it comes in at lower interest rates than you or I would have and in looking at something like the mortgage market. We also use them and focus on using municipal bonds to primarily fund capital projects. So this is not a budget solution strategy.