City Council

>> like to ask 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 during the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zone. 2 of it looks like a cloak. You're on your cell phone or tablet locate the 3 dots captain lately and put a check mark on your preferred language. Click done to activate and begin the interpretation. Won't you join the Spanish Channel? We recommend you shut off main audio. So you only hear the Spanish interpretation interpreter. We please restate this in Spanish. >> When a star set those fema needles, No said show's think that pretty soon in a speculative buy, the start of the needed money to Seymour But then a Texas just going to be sure to win a fight in the parking for to and maybe owned a bit about that killed. She barely move, to put simply in the sequel. Are you satisfied proportion? I feel he didn't do this when this fire part of heat, medium it is for in many of mean to put to at the back. I would ask you something access was just going to be but the ones led will let that what ksat to this point those in a pipe, the superior to supplant idea. Know that checkpoint I created a post went up a lot of keys to my aboard the U.S. It will even respondents cited a look at our cute little pick in the heat and the in the spring Yard, which is going chance time a sort Thank you very much. Back to you.

>> All right. And welcome everyone to our SEPTEMBER 22nd 2024. Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 12. 0, 3, and we will be starting our meetings, seeing the core. MADAM City, MADAM Deputy City clerk MAY please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. >> Councilmember Rogers Councilmember Okrepkie Councilmember MacDonald here, Councilmember Fleming Air Councilmember, however, as present vice mayor stop here, Mayor Rogers says let the record reflect all council members are present. >> Thank you. Moving on to item 3 announcement of our closed session, we have items 3.1 through 3 point Fi 3.1 conference with legal counsel and dissipated litigation which was continue from OCTOBER 8, 2024, regular meeting item, 3.2 conference with legal counsel existing litigation. This item was also continued from the OCTOBER 8, 2024 regular meeting. Conference. 3.3 conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. This item was continued from the 10/8/2024, regular item 3.4 conference with labor negotiators. 3.5 public employee employee evaluation of at deputy city clerk MAY please facilitate public comment on this We are not taking public comments in closed session items. 3.1 through 3.5. If you are in the council chamber and would like to comment. >> But have not provided a speaker card your name. Please make your way to the podium. Mayor, I am seeing no one approached the podium for

public comment. >> All right, Ian, with that, we will now recessed into closed session. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. To our SEPTEMBER 22nd 20 is not. SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 22nd 2024. Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 2.22. And we will be resuming our meeting saying a MADAM Deputy city clerk me please call the Thank you, Mayor Councilmember Councilmember Okrepkie Councilmember MacDonald here, Councilmember Fleming Councilmember Alvarez, PRESIDENT Vice Mayor stop here. Mayor Rogers says let the record reflect all council members are present. >> Thank you. We will now proceed to item for our study session for today. >> 4.1 general fund budget reductions and I will hand it over to a full >> Thank you. Mayor Rogers, members of the council, the item before you now is the. Our study Session on budget reduction strategies. We've developed this presentation in 2 parts. The first part is talking about the General Fund budget performance as we closed our prior fiscal year. And then the second part of it will be strategies for reducing our budget. Given the where we with our fiscal situation. I have with me for Annika Connor, who is our the city's budget manager and Scott Wagner, who's the deputy director in finance. And they're going to handle the first part of the presentation and then we'll move into the second part. So with that, I will hand it over to Veronica.

>> Thanks, Allan. Good afternoon. >> So we're going to start this presentation just going over a quick history of our budget performance because this structural imbalance has been building over a number of years. So back in 21. 22, we passed a deficit budget of 11 million dollars in the general fund. This isn't the height of the pandemic. There's a lot of volatility and uncertainty. And as the year went on, what we found was that sales tax was coming in very strong to the consumer, staying home and spending stimulus funds instead of traveling, et cetera. So we came back mid year and made an adjustment to increase or revenue estimates by 9 and a half million that year at the same time, we had also settled labor negotiations. So we had to increase our expenditures to offset that into account for those cost of living increases by a 0.2 million. And fiscal year. 22 23. We were able to pass a balanced budget and in fiscal year. 23. 24, we came forward with a deficit of 2 and a half million. This was a result of sales tax starting to slow down from that pandemic spending. We had seen. There were some additional staff added at budget adoption. So we actually ended up passing a 3.3 million dollar deficit budget for fiscal year. 23. 24. So that was in JUNE of 2023. A couple months later in AUGUST of 2023, the city manager and cfo presented a status of the general fund showing that it was unstable with a widening structural deficit in the future. And then the following year and fiscal year. 24 25 in JUNE of this year, we passed a budget. We adopted a budget with a 13.3 million dollar deficit. This general fund long-range

financial forecast was shown to council back in JUNE when we passed our budget. The first column for fiscal year. 24 25 is our current year budget. We have that large deficit due to labor negotiations again being passed. We had an increase in cost of living increases. We also saw sales tax start to taper off. So has this general fund structural deficit grows. What we are seeing is that revenues are not keeping pace with expenditures. This is primarily due to cost of living increases and its personnel costs in the general fund. We always like to remind everyone that 76% of general fund expenditures are salaries and benefits. So any increase in costs? There has an exponential effect. And the main takeaway from this slide is that as we see this budget deficit increase from 13.3 million up to 36.4 million. This is nothing that any amount of reserves can sustain. This is a structural issue that needs to be corrected. So I did mention that we passed a 3.3 million dollar budget deficit for fiscal year. 23. 24, we have our preliminary results in for the year. And as of JUNE 30th, we realized an operational deficit of 3.1 million. So what this tells us is that we are not bringing in enough revenue assist us to sustain our operations. When we talk about an operational deficit, we've backed out things like project spending that have highs and lows. We've backed out grant activity one time spending, one-time revenues. So this truly shows our ongoing recurring revenue that is supposed to sustain. Our general fund operations is coming up short. Our next slide compares our adopted

budget to our actual results. So we adopted a budget of 3.3 million brought in just about 1 million dollars less in revenue than we anticipated. But we also spent a little less. So we were able to close that deficit by about $200,000, but it was not enough to come out with a flat budget or flat spending. This slide also tells us that our projections are pretty good. They're very close. We passed a budget and realized just about the same actual results. So all other things equal in the current year fiscal year. 24 25 with a 13.3 million dollar deficit. We would expect to see somewhere in that ballpark of a deficit. Spend. We do have things in place right now such as a hiring freeze, et cetera, to try to stop So I have mentioned sales tax a couple times in the last few slide and the slide just gives us a visual of what we've been looking at and finance that top green line is our sales tax trend. Sales tax is the largest revenue generator in the general fund. We rely very heavily here in Santa Rosa. Through fiscal years, 1920, 2021. 2022, we see that growth curve. Steepening that was in the pandemic when there was lots of funds being spent from home. Saw sales tax growing. It was good for the general fund and then we started to see it taper off between. 21. 22 20 to 23. And then it actually dips. And our final year that was not expected. We had our consultants and any at Cannes, amiss and outlook outside people that we rely on for insight telling us that it would taper off the growth would slow. We did not necessarily expected to drop. So looking forward in the future will be watching this one closely. The sales tax

line trend is expected to return to a positive growth trend. We're not sure when it's too early in the year to see. But when it does return to a positive growth trend, we will not see the steep growth that we saw throughout the pandemic will see maybe one percent, 2% increases year over year. So the next line down the blue line with the vertical take. Mark says other taxes. There's a lot going on in this line item. But the big things to note are this that we are seeing growth in here due primarily to business tax franchise fees occupancy tax recovering after the pandemic. There is competing factor in here of real property transfer tax which has been low in the last few years due to high interest rates and a slow housing market. But those decrease in real property transfer tax fees have not been enough to offset the positive growth in areas, which is why we see this one growing. The next the other blue line with the little star markers. That's our property tax, which has modest but sustained growth. This one's pretty predictable. And then finally, the orange Line is our charges for services in the general fund charges for services is made up primarily of recreation revenues as well as paid fees. So and 2021, we saw that line dipped when all of our recreation programs were closed over covid. It started to rebound a bit but now our pet fees are declining. So our building plan review and are planning fees and our engineering fees have started to taper off. So while recreation has recovered nicely, there's the competing

factors. Ped revenues drawing that one down. So again, the main takeaway from this slide is that top line sales tax is something we rely on heavily in. The general fund will be watching this one closely waiting for this one to rebound and help fund our operations. And I will turn it over to Scott Wagner, deputy director. >> Thank Thank you, Veronica. Good afternoon. Mayor members of the council will be spending the next few slides here talking about the General Fund reserves. Our reserves are really a critical talking point and analysis point for us here going forward, given that our structural deficit has been realized within the general fund as part of our strategy going forward. So the first thing I want to bring up is that no level of reserves can address a structural deficit within general fund. That can only be addressed through ongoing reductions. What a surplus. What would want rent reserve can do for us can give us an appropriate amount of timing to strategize to make our productions in a way sustainable for the city and can provide ongoing service for the community. When we look at our reserve calculation each year, it is frankly more complicated. Then the equation that Veronica just took you through over operational deficit or surplus. It is more complicated than a simple savings account analogy that I would love to be able to use right now. And I'm going to bring up the ways that it is each year. We come up with what our budget deficit is. And that is either realized or it's not in the prior year it

was realized additionally to that there's going to be mid-year appropriations that can happen at council. When that happens, it comes to council as part of the resolution item where was where it is called out that the city is increasing its budget and pulling from reserves explicitly for any item that does so. Throughout my career, I can't remember a year that we haven't had at least some items move forward that way. Some examples that I would bring up the pen of Valley Golf course irrigation project police intercom radio upgrade Project defeat. Graffiti abatement vacant lot programs. These are just to kind of refresh our memories maybe some recent ones that have occurred. But we I did when those to occur. It affects our reserves. And when we go to close the books as the finance Department, we catch all of those things. We are based on actuals at the end of the year, not budget. Few other things that make a sizable difference. When we look at our reserve calculation, end of the year is interest earned on the city's investment portfolio that can be again some years. That's a loss. Also something that's a little more complicated, which is the release of appropriations conferences. We go through all of the appropriations within the city to figure out how much of those appropriations have been spent. How much of those need to be carried over to the next year. Have authority, an appropriation to do so and what can be released. I'm going to talk about that at length when it comes to pg e programs here in a little bit. Next slide, please. So as I mention, structural deficits really

come from ongoing expenses expenses, not meeting ongoing revenues. That is our current situation within the general fund are what we're going to see here in a minute when we break down reserves that are reserves have been decreased significantly what's happened at the city's we've experienced, ongoing expense increases over the past few fiscal years from a multiple multitude of different areas. But at its core, the general fund provides service to the community and that service happens through employees. We've seen increased staffing and we've seen new service levels to the community. Many of those new services that have been provided have been funded with one-time funding as that one-time funding expires. We need to bring it back into the General Fund which furthers our deficit. Going forward. It's gonna be critical for the council and staff to analyze any future movements that either increase expenditures or take away from revenue. There needs to be an offset to negate those impacts the general fund and essentially make it even. Going forward. We need to be able to identify where we are taking resources away from to put into new areas or vice versa. So I want to get a little more technical about the concept of reserves because typically the way that I sure brought up is just a broad concept to reserves. So let's talk about the different types of reserves at the city. The first one I want to bring up is the council mandated reserve level. This is 15 to 17% of our annual operating expenditures. I like to consider this our baseline of

reserves and I considered peace of mind because it really is address unforeseen disasters in economic downturns that we are not accounting for. We know that this 15, 17% number is a solid number for us because it was almost exhausted during the 2017 wildfires. And it was almost exhausted during the Great Recession. That gives us some confidence to know that if we face something large that were to happen in the immediate future, we have the funds to try to maintain operation of the city through those downturn, sore disasters. I will add that at the moment we're not experiencing either of those weird or not in the middle of a disaster and we are not what we would define as a recession locally or nationally. Our next part of reserves will call an assigned reserves. And that's really any amount that's above that 17%. I don't classify or I wouldn't call this extra. Because the city's budget is not what I would call fully burdened. There's many things that are frankly missing from our budget that we don't budget for. And I'll give an example. If this building were to spring a leak in the roof, we have the appropriations to fix the leak in the roof. But do not have in our budget is the ability to replace that roof. We do not have funding for that. So this pot of money is a critical source and is a strange source for the city to address one time needs city facilities, capital projects. And that's where this gets used from. Our final bucket I want to talk about is our fiscal stability Reserve. The council as part of prior actions dedicated a portion of

the city's Pg e settlement to a fiscal stability reserve. I'm going to break that down by item in the next the next slide to talk about how that's been receive reduced, but that pot of money is essentially being used right now to address the city's budget deficit. And here's that slide. It's been the guiding principle of finance that we want to be transparent and how this balances going down. And when this is going down a line that you'll frequently hear me say around City Hall is governmental accounting standards are unforgiving. And I'm gonna break that down here. So originally 27.3 million dollars was dedicated towards this fiscal stability Reserve last year. At this time, we essentially brought that bounced down by 3.3 million for the 23. 24 deficit. We're at 24 million dollars as of this time last year. The current adopted budget for 24. 25 13.3 million dollars. We have reduced that additionally bringing us now down to 10.7. The point I want to make on this slide is that notice that were essentially a year ahead. That the 24 25 deficit is affecting our end of the year. JUNE 30 2024. Balance. That is due to governmental accounting standards. They recognize that we passed deficit that you've essentially dedicated funding towards that deficit in the next year. Next slide. This is a breakdown of our unassigned reserves, including the fiscal stability reserves. And this is a lot of numbers. But let's focus in on the couple that I

just talked about. The top line is just a total number. Total number in reserves. The next line shows the difference between the fiscal Stability Reserve from last year, JUNE 2023. To this year, JUNE to 30th 2024. Notice that that's gone down per the previous I slide from 24 million to 10.7, a significant reduction. The next line is total reserves of that. Then we go down to the 17%. Mandated reserve policy. Notice here that the amount that we have to hold to maintain our 17% reserve policy has gone up. It went from 32.6 in the prior year. Now, 35.9. That affects our total amount that is available each year as our expenditures go The amount available is going to go down. We have to hold more at the point of JUNE 30, 24, our actual expenditures from the recently passed the call was for labor groups were not included. I would anticipate that at this time next year we're going to see a much higher 17 percent managers are policy. Again. It will continue to rise and that will continue to strain our reserves. That brings us down our final why line item which we consider is what's that leftover amount of an aside reserves above the 17%. Notice that this has gone down from 20.2 to 22.3. That's a lot of numbers that I just went through. So let me just give my takeaway. Our reserves have reduced substantially in the last year. We are going to propose here the next few slides that we that we can

address that ensure that up. Gives us the ability to strategically implement the changes within the organization structurally that will need to be done. But with this slide get across, is that between both productions, we are down nearly 19 million under 16 million dollars. My on the fly. Sometimes not great that is significant. And it's something that will need to address going forward. Next slide. And I'm sorry, the next slide will be turning over to Allan. Allison, thank you. Thanks so I will. I don't know if you want to take a break. Now, if you have questions for the first part as we dive into the second part, Ali, for that, either way. If you continue, please. The following slides will walk through our methodology for addressing our budget situation. We plan on using a phased approach. And we did that with in the current year with departments identifying immediate reductions that could be made in the current year. And then we'll look at deeper reductions in subsequent years as we go through the budget planning for those periods. Ongoing cuts that we come up with will chip away at the deficit. Whereas one time reductions will boost our reserves as Scott mentioned and allow for more time to plan as we go into those deeper reductions.

Our ultimate goal, however, is to create an organization that's more efficient and fiscally sustainable at the end of this process. So our strategies for deep era for addressing the deeper cuts come from 3 areas which are administrative cuts, operational cuts and programmatic cuts. The administrative cuts focus on administrative functions within individual city departments with the goal of reducing costs associated with management planning and support services. While minimizing the impacts of service delivery to the community. And we've begun several examples are of that. We've 2 already begun that process and we are starting to look at other ones as we go forward in the coming years. But areas that are currently under review or to reduce travel and training costs. Looking at or at least analyzing the potential for salary adjustments and furloughs implementing strategic staff reductions where feasible. And conducting comprehensive reviews of administrative support roles to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and potential restructuring. Those second strategy is dealing with operational cuts and operational cuts would involve changes and day-to-day service delivery, focusing on improving efficiency and reducing overhead costs. And

the goal here is to secure long-term savings while maintaining the quality reliability that that. The community expects. These we would be looking at things like reducing fleet size, slower operation and maintenance costs wherever possible to renegotiate service contracts for more favorable, savings incorporating lean management techniques to further streamline city processes with these. There is potential for a changes in service levels in the community, including customer service delays, reduce hours of operations and a decrease in service availability. And finally, we would look at programmatic cuts and programmatic cuts are aimed at reducing or eliminating specific programs. Based strategic evaluations program, effectiveness, cost efficiency and alignment with city priorities. So we could look ensuring fiscally sustainable programs we would want to have a minimal. Minimize the impact to the community and maintain a balance that reflects both our budgetary constraints our service commitment. So as we look at any type of reductions, it's important too. Put citywide staffing in the contacts. Veronica mentioned, salary and benefits make up 76% of the general fund budget with over 57% of those costs attributed to

public safety. What this shows is we have a substantial financial commitment to maintain essential services. So as we go through this process, we must thoroughly as sound sr staffing sustainability and reviewing past and current staffing decisions and optimizing staffing structures align with fiscal realities. Again, underlying goal. Is to maintain a high quality of service. So the chart here represents our staffing from a historical contacts. It shows all all funding sources. So that's important to note that this includes not only the general fund, that the enterprise funds, internal service funds, all of them. The green columns, provide contacts for the I believe the last time we were at a high mark for for overall citywide staffing. That was right before the recession. And then fiscal year 12, 13 was I believe the first year where we didn't make reductions due to the recession. So you have a Highmark in a low mark and then the blue columns after that are just a 5 year. Look back. So there MAY be changes in department numbers that that, you know, kinda swing quite a bit. In some cases, those are largely due to organizational restructures. So really the bottom line number of total fte positions is the one that I would look

at. It. If you're looking at any type of a reasonable trend analysis. So then this chart is just a graphical representation of the chart before. And then we'll move into what we've identified in terms of the first phase of department reductions. So I note a front that these are mainly recommendations from departments departments were given a task. They came back with and and we're just presenting those merely as as recommendations of what we could do. Ed Mead year this year. So departments were asked to review their budget, review their operations and identify cats totaling 5% or 8% of their budget. And then I'll detail those on the next slides. Coming up. Overall departments identified 4.8 million dollars of ongoing reductions that could be implemented at mid-year. So 3.3 million of that would be vacant positions. And then 1.5 million dollars. That would be operating costs largely contracts and other non personnel related expenses. In addition and a 1.4 million dollar. Has been identified for reduction is part of the 25 26 budget with a million of that. And position reductions and 400,000 in operating

costs. So this is just a slide showing each of the department's what there budgets were for. 23. 24 and 24. 25 and what the 5% and 8% cuts would be. And then what the department submitted as part of their reductions. Then the following slides will be more details of that. Plus, the impacts. Go through these rather quickly Mozart before we go into the Just want to reiterate to council that these were recommendations that were put forward by departments. >> What you will see in the impact that is going to be what we consider the worst case scenario just as you go through this just give you an example, for instance, you'll see dpw has a couple of streets crews that they're wrecking recommending for elimination. While they its some point. You MAY see impacts. What we realize is that those positions for average of about 3 to 4 years have been vacant for some time. So when we looked at this, we try to look at positions that were vacant Allen will go into what we consider 0 base budgeting and how they've kind of somewhat started process internally. But what you're going to see on this is basically the worst case scenario. I want you know that when we look at this, our first priority is quality of life and essential services for our constituents. The way that I looked at this and now I don't see where we could possibly have a great impact

to the quality of services that we have now. But we can have that discussion. But I wanted to provide some context as we started to have this discussion. Thank you for that. >> Okay. So starting off with the city manager's department and the way that we have this is is will will start with positions that affected and then operating expenses in the next part of So city manager's department, there's 2 positions. One is a clean energy manager. This was a new purse position approved in the 24. 25 budget. So there's no impact to existing services by eliminating yet. And then the other one is administrative technician and this will have an impact on the response. Time for Public Records Act requests and for front counter support And I should note that that especially if they if we have the position title, listen here. That is a vacant position just to make sure that's clear. In human resources. There was there's a vacant organization, development and training manager in what we would do. Theirs shift mandatory in compliance needs only and then also move for a clue to the other. Hr analysts within the department. The fire department. Identified for firefighter paramedics, the its reduction personnel for

emergency up staffing succession planning. So there MAY be an increase in overtime with this. However, we did look and there is no potential for loss of the safer contract are safer. Grant. You reckon There's a recreation coordinator so but identified with potential reduction for of programs such our volunteer program in softball. Some want to add some context to that as well for the park and rec. The recreation coordinator. >> Those duties will be shifted to another staff member. So we will continue our volunteer programs. >> So then it we have a recreation often Sort of jump in just a quick clarification. But I hear say that there was no potential for loss of a safer ground upon further review. Correct? Thank Kids. So we have a recreation supervisor identified by reckon parts >> and what we do with there's a reduction. >> Still community center in in that we would shift most of the operations over to Finley. So again, this is a removing a a position, but just moving the operations around. Moving into tp w gear. We have a vacant administrative technician and redistributing administrative duties and through that department with the a senior administrative assistant. 80% of that is

funded by projects. So we would also redistribute work and throughout that and the admin folks within the department. So I think that's a theme where you're going to see with a lot of this and that we are doing redistributing within the organization to be able to make up the slack. So we have an electrician again, will not impact signal maintenance, but it is part of that area. There MAY be some impact in the street. Light maintenance. They have identified another position. However, that one is is that would come through attrition. They have an assistant civil engineer and 3 civil engineering technicians. These are also part of the cip teens. So there there are there funded by cip projects skews me with 20% savings to the general fund could affect pet calculations for fee recuperation, slowdown material tests on new development and cip projects. It MAY require some outsourcing in the in the future, too, make up for And I think these are the the the positions the city manager talked about, which was force, kill maintenance workers in the street area. So the debris removal team would be reassigned to other functions so again, another redistribution of of the work with other teams. Maintenance worker in facilities and again, moving that to other

members of that crew. And field an evidence tech employees reduce. This will reduce the number of on Cole technicians for crime scenes. It could impact priority one response times as police respond to service work in lieu of this field, an evidence tech. And then finally in a Siro, we eliminate one marketing outreach coordinator and again observed that workload throughout the department. So in reductions, these are these are non personnel related, although they MAY tie to the personnel changes and the previous slides. So a lot of times if you have a position and you you decrease you eliminate deposition. They're our operating expenses that are a sign that go along with that position. That would be reduced as well. City attorney's office in the Finance Department. As we looked at it and ours. And we made the reductions that we could in the operational expenditures. They are very small, as you can see, especially compared to the others. One of the challenges that we have the as administrative support departments is that we our workload, never ghost town. You know, because we're we're bringing in. Where we are responding to requests from the other departments in the case of the city attorney's office. We are. We And in the case of the finance Department as well, in other words,

people still need to be paid we still need to pair of vendors. So we went and looked to add as much as we could Kai in this year. Also should note that we did cut our budget heading into the 23, 20 or the 24 25 as well. Pad. They're looking at professional services. So right now the service delivery, the it put some inconsistency there increasing response times during permits of heavy permit volumes. What we're finding right now, though, is that we're kind of on a on a inflow. So they're taking advantage of that making reductions there. And rec and parks. There's a Pony Express This is I news since covid. So we are eliminating that at this point. There's a grounds keeper work that is has to do with the elimination of some of river or the reduction in the softball program that will have less fields to be able there will need to be maintained and therefore, you can eliminate one of the positions there. And then we have the tree removal contract for emergency tree removal. We would look at that. I would say Well. Should an emergency happened? We will find a source of funds for the emergency work to take place. So this would be one of those things where we eliminated

from a budget is an ongoing expense. And then come to you on a one-off basis to be able to fill a contract on an as needed basis. There's quite ix and House park concessions. The concession stand result and really an operating loss not in line with the healthy living values of recreation and parks. So we are proposing to eliminate doubt. Are you sports and a softball. So the eu sports is the little slugger's and little kickers. What we would look to do with that look at ways to fold it into neighborhood services and have that group take on more. The eu sports softball. As I mentioned, we would reduce 3 of the fields and 50 of the softball team. So that still keeps a softball program going. It just contracts that have that. There's still community center where we would combined the front desk operations was sent to families of essentially move that operation over into Finley, reducing still laying hours requiring the need for staffing at the same level that they currently are. Tp w we we take a look at reducing or a 10% reduction in light duty vehicles and find efficiencies among the remaining vehicles that are

there. Through that reduction. We do a 10% reduction in facilities services. So these lead to longer wait times on facility requests. It doesn't mean that the facility request Wong won't happen. It just means that it MAY take longer together. Same thing with reduce asphalt and pothole maintenance just a little bit longer. Wait time for repair, reduce street light maintenance just can't highs back to that electrician. This is the income fund in kind funding reductions, a leading to longer wait times for repair and some street lights would not be replaced. The homeless, housing community services was able to identify some contract funds through the homeless Service administration that they would eliminate and we would the water department, the small part of the water department that is general fund. There would be some storm water staffing costs that would a move to the Enterprise Fund would be appropriate to have that. There in and then in turn, there would be a reduction in assistance to pad for recommendations and technical advice. So we did identify some positions. We're not really talking about him right now, but they are through attrition. That we would look at as happening at some point in the 25 26 a budget year. So

those are identified here, but we're not we don't have a lot of detail into this. So a couple planning and economic development rec and parks police and then police would also go through a staffing, real, real organization. And finally, there would be other contract in and reductions of operational expenses, mostly rec and parks, reduction of the foot patrol for the reduction in security contract that would reduce foot patrol Luther Burbank, holding Gardens some of the bathroom locking in things like that. There would be a 0.4, temporary recreation specialists that we could reducing move that work to the other temporary staff. We we are looking at them in issues demand of the tiny House program. So we would a look at eliminating that, although maybe finding other. Programs could be done throughout the service. And I should note that there are other programs we have in the department. The deal with children of this age. So we do have other programs for just this particular program has low demand and therefore we would we would look to eliminate doubt. And then we would reduce some of the renting of historic rentals for the Church of one tree in Denver,

deter ground barn it would have a minimal reduction of services and supplies. There would still be some lease arrangements that would go with it. It would reduced down what they're actually being do more in line with their actual use. And we would look at eliminating the funding for security of non public space area at Strawberry Field. And then finally looking at moving. Pavement, maintenance out of the general fund and being funded by gas tax. Instead, there could be a reduction in gas tax cip funding as a result. But this would have an immediate impact on the general fund. So in we've we identified as departments identified a number of cuts. 6.2 million dollars worth. But we've also identified one time funds. We have a detail of that on next slide in Scott will run you through those. We've also looked our general fund pension one 15 trust and and the potential of of are making a transaction with some of the those funds to provide budget savings to the general fund. We do have a hiring freeze. It's a debt continues to be in place. Number of those positions were taken off of that list as part of the department reductions. But there is still about 2 million dollars remaining of those vacancies. What I need to point out those at some of those vacancies have to be filled are either required by

statute or they have a another critical need or they will be able where they will need to be filled. So we MAY not be able to count on the full 2 million, but that is the amount that's there. I mentioned what the department said. So if you're if you take all of those things together, which would be a a high amount, probably not a realistic amount. You're looking at about 8.2 million dollars of ongoing reductions. And 21 0.2 million dollars of one time funds. And with that all. Give voice a quick break to let Scott run through pg e programs. Thank you So in my some prior slides, we we talked about the city's need to shore up its reserves. >> In that effort, the city manager's office along with finance, asked our departments to do a full review of all appropriations. That happened this part of the one time pg e moneys programs. The list you see in front of you is the result of that review. These projects and up on the list for really want to for reasons one being that the project's complete. And this is really just leftover money that we can bring back to the general fund. To that a one time funding source happened. But in the interim, since then, the city's maybe dedicated permanent resource towards that goal. 3, the city's gay and inefficiency that we didn't quite have before meeting that. We didn't need all that money that we thought we did originally and really for is we we the efficacy of the program against the current need of the general fund I'm going to talk about

that a lot more here in the next couple of slides. >> Excuse me, I'm sorry. I didn't hear number to reiterate that. >> I'm gonna try to remember number And number 2 was the change in practice or structure at the city where we're we've dedicated a permanent resource versus this one-time funding. And I'm going to give an example good example of that. Ok, next slide. So on the list is from the City Council's translation services. The city clerk's office has had a lot of success with technologies advancing Google translate being being an obvious one. I know that I've used it a lot and some travels that works. Great. They've had a lot of success there. What counsel is also going to still is the language translation policy study session on 12, 17, 2024. But this time we would recommend the release of those funds. Within the community, engagement and human resources area since this city appropriated the original funds to address many of our dei initiatives here at the city we have brought on full-time staff through our a e t I officer deceit, implementation, prioritization plan has been completed. Certainly this work is still continuing at the city. Next slide. Fires. One that I want to be very clear on. And vegetation management is up on this slide. This reduction will not impact our current operation for education management. There will be no impact within the current year and through the city manager working along with our fire department, there will be no impact through the year 2027.

This reduction does not create Current public safety issue through this reduction. The city will need to bring a more all-inclusive vegetation management philosophy in structure going forward to really address our vegetation management as a city as a whole. Within public works and planning and economic development. A couple of big projects on here that that we're all familiar with. Rebuild fire station 5 fully funded at this point. Taking a look at the original appropriations that were put into into the project. Our public works. Team felt comfortable releasing $500,000 of that at this time. It MAY be more in the future, but we felt comfortable with that number. This is not impact these scope of that project. This is not in top impact. Timing of the project delivery. The fema fire damage Fountaingrove project. So in NOVEMBER of 2021 council dedicated a portion of these pg e funds to really leave in this project as a piggy bank to use across all of our fema projects. Should any of them not receive the fema funding that we. Expected to receive. I'm happy to say that through their great work of my colleagues within the city that the city would has been very successful in recovery from fema. When we looked at the project's, essentially, we have 3.8 million dollars and is there now that can be released fountaingrove as we know is nearly complete for those of us that drive it within the community. Again, this does not impact that project delivery. That project scope and scale. It is pretty much done. This can be

released. The city's climate work certainly continues. We've had success securing some out outside funding towards our work on this important subject. One example that I would give is the electric vehicle master plan which was funded the a grant next slide. And with this all be turning it back over town. So as we move through this process as staff. We are trying to investigate every >> option we can think of. The way I would look at it is basically all things are on the table. So next few bullet points are those things that we are doing as part of our plan to get to fiscal sustainability. So the first one is sunset the general fund pension. One 15 trust you know, we we set that up 2022. With 10 million dollars. It currently has about 12 million dollars in there. It's possible that we could take either the growth portion of it or some or the entire balance over a period of time make payment up hers for are I'll and have. That is a budgetary savings. A onetime budgetary savings in in the general fund. This could would be one of those things that we would look at as the benefit

of having. That money is part of the general fund to allow more time to go through different deeper reduction programs would be more of a benefit thing, keeping it in a fund to itself. We are. We will adopt a modified 0 base budget is part of the 25. 26 budget. We're you know, exercise that departments went through pretty much started that process. If you want to look at where we are right now is we are trying 2 as every department, 2, not just look at what we've always had as a budget and build on that year over year. But actually, what do we what do we truly need to perform our core service? So that inward look is going to be part of 0 base budgeting that goes forward in our system going in many years. We are reviewing a contract services and in this case to move in House janitorial service is one that we look at of of the few that we looked at it analyze even with the labor contracts that we should be able to see some sort of savings from it on annual basis, which is a good thing. And I think one of the things that we that we discussed in front of the council was that if we have a situation where we identify a cost especially

a cost savings over time that it's something that we need to implement. This will take a a bit of a lead time to make this happen. There. We have to create the job descriptions for these types of positions. We currently don't have them and there would be a ramp-up of equipment needs. So we would probably looking at a year or so out before we could see anything like that. But these are some of the the things we've been looking at. We are Calpers offers a early retirement program. We're we are reaching out to Calpers with We need to work closely with them to have this go forward. But what it essentially would do is grant eligible employees additional years of service toward their pension we would have to work. Helpers would actually do. And actuarial study and there we need to be actually that there would need to be savings as a result of that study for Calpers even allow I allow it. So even if it's something that we wanted to do, if if Calpers didn't see the savings, it wouldn't be something that we would be allowed to We've done for lows in the past. So we would look at doing that again. We are looking at the general fund fleet can and reduction. I've already talked about that a little bit, but I think we would have a more deeper look into what type of savings we could generate

across the city, especially in the general fund. And we are also always looking for additional things that we could do that that would not only have savings but promote efficiency and to those types of things to bring our budget into sustained balance. So we have several next We are planning to do a budget adjustment at mid-year that would I get direction? Take the direction from you from this meeting and to have that in a action item that would do would make those cuts real we will begin our budget development and budget input in JANUARY. And that usually runs 3 FEBRUARY. We are looking at doing in additional study session focuses solely on budget reductions that are anticipated for the 25. 26 budget year and that leading into our normal budget study sessions in MAY and then with budget adoption in JUNE. And with that concludes our presentation. And we are available for any questions. You MAY have. >> thank Before you go. As we move forward, I want to reiterate to the council as you have your discussions. This is not exercise in cutting the low man on the totem pole. This was an exercise and looking at vacant positions and where we can strategically make the cut. I might not be popular for saying this, but let me be clear. We will not be cutting 20 grounds workers from parks.

Will not be cutting 20 streets. People from public works. We do have to get the work done. I think all too often we see the people who need to be doing the work are the ones who tend to go out the door first for you, you're going to see some management department realignments. There will be considerations on furloughs. Unfortunately, some layoffs departments will potentially be merge its going to be done strategically and it's going to be conducted in a fashion that identified some efficiencies supports our goal of minimizing the effects on public services. While we main remain physically responsible. So while you do see these positions on the list here, I just want to be clear that that that is not that's not going to be the continuing narrative as we move forward. So what you're not seeing on this slide as well as we will be myself will be doing some community engagement, all of the spending a lot of time and the community listening to our constituents and some of our business owners. So because I believe they need to be a part of this process as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you. And thank you. City manager finance team and staff doing this exercise and bring in this presentation to >> Looking to council council member MacDonald. >> I have one question and I have my comments later. And this, you know, we'll start through the city manager in this MAY go to a couple of different individuals is. Talk a little bit about any possible savings or or efficiencies we can find with performance-based contracts. Yeah, actually, can done a couple of performance-based

contracts. What you find? >> When you do performance-based contract says. Because you're actually focus on the outcome, one, you get more efficiencies, you get a better were, product is on time and it's generally under budget because it is based on performance. When you do a performance contract, you have to make certain that it is structured properly because it could actually come back not to be a positive. Our wind as well. I've done a construction, performance-based contracts where because it was under budget. The contractor does get a certain amount. But at the end of the day, you don't have a lot of contingency. It's like you have 42 Million. 42 million is what you have. You have that to get the project done and you're not worried about the 5 or 10% contingency over here that we always have And that's been because when I look at the how we've been been our contracts, we do bid contingency in it instead of just saying, hey, you have 60 million dollar goal is to get it on time under budget it's something that I think that we need to look at. We have talked about it internally. We just not moved in that direction. So that would be something I would like the council to look at and look at the city attorney's office. Okay. And city attorney, if you can maybe chime in on your perspective >> Does this cause any any more complications from a contract side or is it just? You know, instead of going right, we go left kind of a thing. >> think the art is in the drafting is city manager just said. And so certainly if we are switching you know, to that form of contract for certain types of contracts, there would probably be a

little bit more upfront work. And but I think once we have sort gotten to the place where we have successfully crafted, then there would be some efficiencies in the amount of work that come forward. So I I would look forward to partnering the city manager and figuring out how we can bring this forward to create efficiencies that there would be more work involved, upfront bases, both from the staff's perspective, non-legal staff as well in my office. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor, thank you very much for this presentation. We had that are few of us had the pleasure of hearing and long-term finance as And they be added details this time around were well worth it. >> I was wondering if you could see a little bit more about that. The long-term effect handling the pension one-fifth. You're putting a pension one, 15 trust moneys into general fund. Thank you for your question. Vice Mayor. >> We we plan to come back with a recommendation. And that recommendation is going to be balanced exactly to the I think the nexus of your question and how do we balance an ongoing problem at the city as those on the long-term financial planning on us. Maybe you have heard me say numerous times at the city's mean, budget problem is unfunded liability. And so we need to balance how we can bring forward a recommendation that. She's Gomes and walks at the same time. How do we maintain what we're trying to accomplish within our pension?

And provide some budgetary relief. I believe we're going to be able to do so but certainly as as our chief financial officer gave we want to be transparent and that what's available is every dollar of that because we brought that program to the City Council with an understanding of flexibility. We are going to give the full flexibility option and guidance from staff. Thank you for that. And I think it's I think it's excellent that it was made transparent, that those funds are potentially available. >> I remember correctly that the the the one 15 funds are invested in equity investments involve men to write an outside adviser. >> Yes. So the power of the one 15 trust is that it can be invested more probably than the city's financial general investment portfolio. We have had significant investment success within the one 15 trust. We were frankly, we were given 10 million and we've come back with 12. I think that's going to be part of that discussion. This is throwing off and I was throwing off a few $100,000 every year. >> I won't. I won't belabor the point. Now. I just want make sure we're not eating our seed corn, especially because when need those funds in the future. But it's clear that you're balancing risk reward on that. So thank you for highlighting that issue. Thank Councilmember Rogers. >> I appreciated Mayor, I don't have folksy Midwestern sayings eating our seed corn. But that was going to be my question is, well, was exactly. We've moved part of our discussion. Every time we go into budget negotiations and contract negotiations is

how are we going to provide? Not just the services right now for this or for the city, but also what we have promised to our employees previously. And how do we meet that commitment? So I was gonna ask questions about the one 15 trust as well. For me, that's the part of this. That gives me the most heartburn. I think all of the other ones, you have a really solid plan on how best either consolidate. But I just want thank you for that acknowledgment that perhaps the one 15 trust fund is a money maker for us ultimately or at least it helps us to not fall further behind in our unfunded pension obligations. Thank you for your comment, Councilmember. Certainly we agree. And certainly these comments are what's going to help us with our guidance moving forward. >> I would like to hand the floor To Councilmember MacDonald. Thank you, mayor. >> So I know some of these we went through during our long-term finance meeting. I will echo the one 15 trust the concerns over eliminating that or even partially eliminating that doesn't make sense to me if we were going to go out for a bond, if we're looking at bond ratings, keeping that long-term liability lower will help us as a city. So I'm not as interested in some of that, but I think it's helpful to know that it is there. It also is one-time funds and I'm looking at what we can change for structural deficit so that we can actually work on eliminating that. So that to me is something I'm going to be more interested in. And that's where my questions are moving to. So as we make the structural changes on the deficit and we look at what the proposed changes are right now, I think you said 8.2 million dollars is what some of the department's came back.

How does that impact our deficit for this year and change the ongoing deficit? >> Well, >> our deaf sit right now is for this year was 13 0.3 million. So we've identified actually 6.2 million dollars of ongoing cause from there. So >> we we >> have addressed a portion of it. Half of the so more work to go but then again, you have the compounding effort to comes in to that as well. So I think the way I look at it is and I'm going not use a sports analogy. So let get that out of my head. We are chipping away a bigger problem. And so that puts us in the right spot to do that. And I think we need to continue on that on that. So it gets us going in that direction. It does not solve our deficit in the year. We are not going to solve our deficit one year. It's just not feasible happen that way. But it does move us in the right spot. And I see flew to think Thank you. On all. Add underline Allen's point is I think part of our process when this began was to look at. >> How do we make cuts effectively and typically the way that that's done is a multi phased approach. It is a mid-year and coming budget adoption and then we'll see how we did year 3 to understand how much left there is to go move forward. We're

following that pattern. >> So just to go back and reiterate, so understanding what you said to me, Allen and looking at the potential cuts put forward by Steph. You said 6.2. I got on one side. It's at a point too. But looking at how that impacts ongoing deficit as opposed to compounding it, making it great how it reduces our deficit in the out years is what I think will be helpful information as we bring forward mid-year budget reductions. So that's the kind of information I would I would like to see. Right? And that's >> so. >> You know, in the Finance Committee, we we do quarterly updates on the budget. >> these are the types of things that were going in. And as Scott mentioned, we we are going to be chipping away. Keep using an analogy, chipping away the deficit. >> The and >> It's kind of a push and pull right to see. Where are we? How do we end up that that next year? And where are we and how much more do we have to solve or have we solved it? So by phasing this in over years allows you that ability to get to there. So we don't over cracked or continue to and are cracked and it was a point to if you included all of the vacant positions. But I don't think we can include all of the remaining vacant positions because I know a couple of them are required by statute. So we would have to how are those that was the difference between the 6 and the 8? The 6.2 was what the department's looked at their budgets and said this is what

I can give up right now. >> Great. Yeah. That clarification through through the chair. COUNCILWOMAN MacDonald. I think what you're seeing is on the 8 million as well. So the positions that are held vacant, what we will do normally we allow the department's to utilize that money for contractors are some other source funding that they MAY need. What we will do with the vacant positions as we will pull that funding back in the general fund as well. So during long-term finance or one of the budget study sessions, what we can do is we can bring you back the amount that we will pull back from bacon positions because we will at some point fill vacant positions, you know, will be swapping depict, you know, depending on what is needed in the department so we can bring that back to you as well and see where plan Jeopardy. Scott, did you want to hit your button? To leave a statement. >> I will Thank you. City manager. Do your question. Finance is going to come back and we're going to show how the cuts we're making impact our structural deficit. That is the task at hand. We can. We can certainly look at all options, cutting contract cost-cutting one time cause. Those are all important for us to do. But know we are trying to crack. Here is our ongoing structural deficit. When we come back, we should be able to do so and bring an updated. 5 year. Forecasts show hears the cuts being made. Here's how that now plays into the 5 year forecast. We are a comp listing. What we need to do through these cuts. Great.

>> One question I think would be great to have is how much would one furlough day either a month or in a fiscal year impact our budget. I saw it was mentioned a few different times. I'd like to know if that's something being considered. What does that actually go out to be? Couple other things is you mentioned the management techniques could be used. I'd like more of an example on that in the future. Does that mean change orders and how we manage a cip budgeting or is it something internal site like a little bit more explanation on that. I appreciate the mention of contracts being done in-house. This is something that I know mentioned several times in long-term finances and seeing how that impacts the load of that. What we're delivering constituents. And if we don't feel the current open positions and at some of our known that already got that one. Sorry about that. That was duplicative And got through that one. Ok, the other thing that I would like to have mentioned is our current money that we're getting from for many that we've received. I think that's important to know to the community as we stop receiving that money that in response and safe parking are not funded. But are those added in as our ongoing deficit as we're continuing those programs? And I wasn't clear on on So I'd like to have information on that as you bring that back to us, what ones currently are being funded, what wins we losing and how that's impacting our deficit. So through the chair, COUNCILWOMAN MacDonald. >> You will begin receiving in Arpa update. Believe the last

meeting in DECEMBER as it relates to in response and safe parking. Both department directors, the chief and director passenger. They're working on additional funding. I'm also working with the team on how we can spend some of our opioid money as well. So right now there's there was no need to put it on this list because we are working on additional funding. And I have met with the county executive to talk about some additional funding from Israel as well. Great. Thank you. >> I do have another question on our enterprise funds. I'd like to know if all the enterprise funds are those positions are being fully funded under the enterprise funds are some of them still being backfilled by general fund and what our plan is to fix that if there's any deficits in that area. And the tiny tot go ahead. Have the answer for that. >> No, we can. We can bring back a full answer. Great. That's right. I'm just giving you like to see as we move forward and I hope that's helpful to all of you. >> And as far as the tiny tap program, you said that it isn't well-used program, although I would say eliminating any preschool program. I'm going to be hesitant to do just because of the impact on that. If we could reach out to for Cesar potentially first 5 to see if they'd like to take over that program. I'd be interested in seeing what we can do to let them use facilities because I know that that's a problem for most of preschools is they don't have a place to actually put the children. Let's >> You mentioned vegetation

management and wild land resiliency, planning and response. It was 2.2 million dollars. >> One time money that I was in clear is that not being used or >> is that something we're planning on taking away and putting back as one time resources. Those would be things I'd be concerned about based on. >> But we're still seeing and climate change and around fire resiliency. >> So I would like to address that right now because I think that's a critical point for community. Understand is that 2.2 million dollars was not the total amount that was put into that project. The project amount was over 4 million dollars. The reduction that we're making for that project will not impact our operations through the years. 2027. So there is no current operational impact from from those funds. We do need to come back with even more all-inclusive. Vegetation management, philosophy and strategy of the city that not only is addressing the areas within their but also within our park, landscaping, et cetera. That is the direction and the plan that's city manager's office along with finances, bringing forward. >> And and then as far as our investment portfolio, which understand is pretty large. I know we've talked about it in the past that some of that revenue goes back into general fund. And I'd like to have more information on that. How much is in our investment portfolio? How that goes back into general fund and how those funds are being used. And I really appreciate the presentation. You know, I

always have a lot of questions because my goal is to make sure not only I understand it deeply, but to make sure that the community understands where all of our buckets of money are coming from. I think that that's still not as transparent as I'd like to see it. How those funds are being use of something's coming from the state. If something's coming from the feds. That's coming from general fund. If it's coming from a grant in each of the department's how that money's being used or potentially what we can use that money for right now. I know sometimes things go is status quo. But when we understand better how the money comes in, we might be able to see how we can structurally change has to be more efficient. I'm looking at where we can cut red tape to make it easier for businesses to get in Use of technology, things like that so that we are more supportive of that. And so I think that's most of what I'd like convey. I really appreciate city managers entrance to we're not interested in cutting the services that are community uses and arced shared infrastructure like to echo that and seeing what we can do to make sure we're still doing what our community expects of us. But thank you for this overview. I'm glad to start the conversation. Now and I look forward to working with my colleagues on addressing Thanks. All right. Seeing no additional questions. I wanted to add to the list. Snow McCAnn also. >> Does a early childhood preschool. Education might be interested in partnering with to get that. I did have a question about debris removal

since it heavily impacts. A district. When we say it's going to take longer. What exactly does that mean? Because already sits there long enough for someone to notice that is not moving to call in. And then it does take time for us to get out there. So that's a very good question. >> get to your answer here in a second. But you're going to see couple of weeks. Some insights and some dashboards that we're going to put forward. You've heard me talk about the building dashboards since I arrived But the work of assistant city manager Dunston and the it director and Luke in my office, you'll start to see what those time frames are. I will tell you with the work of e. And dpw crews being proactive and understanding where the chronic areas are. I believe we have reduced sometimes. I think the problems that we run into is understanding where the debris a lot of our residents still don't use the mice in a row that most of the time its new all emailing me army driving around the putting request I don't know to address and the staff doesn't know to address it we know about it. So I think we probably could work on some make communication tips to the community on. Let us know where it is. I think we have to look and see. Like I said since I've been here, there have been 4 or 5 streets positions vacant. I think we have to look at the equipment they were using. How are staffed, how are using our work? Orders are work, orders being distributed efficiently

when they come into the office. I think there's a lot of things that we need to look at. I don't want to minimize the work of the streets. Crew because they do a lot of the hard work. So let me be clear about that. I think is something that we need to look at. I don't know the actual time frame, but as we bring the Santa Rosa Insights forward, the dashboards, we will be able to actually have. A timeline and average date on how long it's taken us to address those concerns. Thank you zone. Great actually, you know, is kind of along with it. I'm sorry. >> And with no additional questions, I will pass it on to MADAM Deputy City clerk to conduct a public comment on this item. Thank you, mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 4.1. If you are in the council chamber would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name. Please make your way to the podium. You'll have 3 minutes and a countdown. Timer will alert at the end of the period as you approach the podium. Please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so for step will be doing. Roseland. >> I want to thank you for all the hard work that everybody's done. I also want to thank you for the insights that there's going to be some financial difficulties in the future and we'll need to work on how to address the needs of the city and the community as best as possible. One of the things that I think could be very helpful as you do these dashboards in these insights. You also reach out to people in person in communities. It's very difficult for many of the

hard-working families to get the time 2 actually dig deeper into these topics. But I hear from people in the community when I'm talking with them that there are lots of concerns. And this last one you just mentioned about debris removal. It takes a long time. Some some people think it takes too long. This is unusual for me to ask this of you, but I hope you'll take it as a serious idea. Volunteers in the community can help you to save money. And if you do some authentic community engagement to get volunteers moving forward on the things that they feel are most important in their direct community and then how it affects the larger city of Santa Rosa. You'll probably come up with even more significant savings. Excuse me. I've been catching a bit of a cold. One of the things is the unfunded pension liabilities. That's a millstone around the neck of the city and has been for a long time. It was very nice to hear the financial team say they want to keep looking into this and get this taken care of. The opportunities that come forward from attrition from Varias. People have been at the city for a while, perhaps moving on. The vacancies that are not going to be filled could be helpful. Some workers MAY say they don't want to take on extra

work from another department, but it actually can lead to more cohesiveness in the department when people realize they have to share the load and pick up these things together rather than just sitting over to another silo, perhaps. There's an opportunity here to also get funding from state and federal organizations. The state Water board, they give funding out the Department of Toxic Substance control. They give funding out the federal government. The U.S. Epa, these are funds that you can get through grants by having people work with you to try to get more money in their communities. And it's not necessarily saying have a current staffer make the requests, just get the word out to the community that we want to have partnerships in going after funding. I know the U.S. Epa because a higher rating to community-based request for funding. Thank you. Thank you. Do any overhead? Yes, please. Okay. Please. Go ahead. Thank you very much. Let's see if we get focus here when they could. >> Be hard to Thank you very much for this presentation. My name is Eric a community activist, active now my on >> These small tax measures are not what's needed right now when the city has dumped dumpster fire at hand. I will say that my remarks not meant to be personal and I love the city and I want to see only the positive outcomes for The overspending has been years in the making. And I really lay that the fee that some your longest-serving council

members. Things like the war on us to ours created incredible financial strain on the city. Untreated, our citizens on very untimely. In fact, a lot of policy has been made over the last decade without facts. Our honesty are you good intentions. It indicates and our research that there's a number of special interests that hold our general fund hostage. I don't believe that the special interests really been a draw some this analysis and I don't necessarily believe that the impacts will not be fell onto the Suns because not only do you like to threaten but we take those threats seriously, even though you might say, oh, that's not our in time. But the fact is that this meeting did nothing to for the idea that you're going to get at the special interests that help you guys. Have I do like the idea. Performance-based contracts. I do like some of the ideas and some of the statements that were going forward. But I will say that there probably isn't unfunded liability. Here's one example from the campaign. I mean, yes, I'm hee and I Surely, you know, that we at least 5 counts of illegal campaigning by the city somebody. We think the city on behalf of their support of measures that he and I The fppc has ruled that. Governments can campaign for ballot measures. But you An attorney. He writes the opinion that underscores. Stenson versus month of says the use of public Treasury to Mount Election campaign, which attempts influence the resolution of issues which our constitution leaves to the free election. The people. Presents a serious threat to the integrity of the electoral process. Indeed it does. And the city of excuse me, the county of La was fined over a

million and a half dollars for You know, they probably had to pay several million dollars to resolve the screw-ups that we're witnessing now with government overreach in their support of measures, This is this is corrupt. Special interests out work. This is what we need to get out of our city. I hope you understand >> there anyone else wishing to speak on item? 4.1. Seeing no one else approach the podium on this item. Thank you. Bring it back to council to see if there any final comments that anyone would like to make in councilmember our >> really do have questions for you, but I do want to remind everybody of the momentum that we've we've had and the hard times that that were covid in the fires. And the strides in the changes that happened in many of our neighborhoods. And although the conversation is being had is a tough one. Talk about cuts and sources that are coming. Can go without I just want to reiterate that as a whole. We have this woman goal for us. Rosa, specifically, we've heard comments of Rosen. I'm proud of where we're at with Rosa. Not proud what are they? What is becoming? We've seen tough times before. We've seen what the lack of funding looks like. But that doesn't mean that would lose hope. That doesn't mean that that. That staff. Hart is the right place. Cuts will have to happen. Our great to I'm hoping that even though we can invest into larger cip projects that at least we reserve our funds for future leaders, programs that have to deal with with children. I'm

hoping that those do. Past the college. >> Councilmember Fleming. Thank you, Mayor. Like to echo what Councilmember Alvarez said. When I listen, dollars might my comment feedback for all of you to focus on not not cutting programs that affect children. So it in particular, the tiny tots program, if that can be rehome into another program of those families can be served a no. And MAY not be heavily subscribed, but every family that's affected by that, it will be a big deal. The other is the one 15 trust. If for making, you know, 3 to 7% year. I don't know what our return is on that. If we've gotten 20% 3 years, probably closer 5 or 6%. That's that's real money for us tonight. I hate to see us cut ourselves off at the knees to reach a short-term goal. I think that's part of how we've gotten ourselves in the situation is going for something in short term other not a long-term fashion and finalize want to know, you know, for all the employees are here and all the ones who might listen to this now or at some other point in the future. A lot of the cuts here today are being made by asking people to do additional work and to consolidate jobs and to take it. And I think the really surgical a strategic job. Well done, but it's not it's important to acknowledge that this will mean more work with fewer people. And I'm really grateful to the people who work for our organization for stepping up stepping into the future with Consumer Thank you, Madam >> In Texas, a study session

give us some direction. What they like to see come back. And this probably be through the city. Attorney and city manager is a little more detail in performance-based contracts. >> Maybe where it's worked, what changes would be required? Those kinds of things. I mean, we can talk about it in concept, actually people be great I'm looking back this past year in our goals that we set. And there's one thing in there with our work plan or goals. We can only get to what we can get You know, we have a lot of things we want to accomplish. But one thing I think that would be appropriate. As we have these discussions is the is a 360 degree organizational assessment that we talked about earlier. I think it would be prudent to have it now, especially as we tee up this APRIL study session as well as the budget development a and option in JUNE, especially if we have a 3rd party do it from outside the organization just. I know the sayings you got to, you know, spend money to make money. But in this case against spend a little bit of money to save some money to find efficiencies, deficiencies, opportunities for for a leaner, meaner city of Santa Rosa. I think it would be who was to have a 3rd party do it because I'm not that I don't think that staff can be impartial. I absolutely think that. But I think staff, you know, whether it's a subconscious bias or or even. The concept of when you're in the middle of something, you have a hard time getting that external view some opportunities that MAY exist. So I think if so, my are in agreement with me that be a direction that we could go. And then finally, you know, kind tailing off of what Councilmember Fleming said about our our workforce. You know, we're at we're using

words like incentivize retirement furloughs. Staff reductions. I think one direction that I would want to give to is looking Deliverables in court services. Doing those things. I know that we have started internally council doesn't do operations with policy. But what I would do right now is I would Presumably the 6 of us that will be here in JANUARY to to focus on those. Our workforce is going to be passed with doing more than they've ever done before going forward. And so executing as grim as best as we can. What we have on our plates and not adding more to it. Any sort of, you >> quick dry action are like a major issue. This or or whatever else, focus on what we have in the pipeline that we can deliver the core services that we promised our community you know, and to the extent that maybe we we agree to empower staff to tell us know, like, Hey Jen, we do this. No, we can't do that. Our work for we would literally have to put aside certain efforts certain tasks that we've already undertaken in order to do that. I think that we're at where we're at a point where we have to be, as I said before, lean and mean and execute to the fullest extent, full extent that we can with the with the fantastic people. We already have maybe even less than that. So I would I would give staff that direction. The greater staff that direction. It's not just the people at >> At the microphones in front of us, but also I would challenge, you know, U.S. Policymakers appear to keep that in mind as we move forward with goal setting and into the next year to at a

minimum. >> step. >> On the theme of recognizing contributions of our staff. I think one of more important statistics it was in in the the excellent presentation was the staffing history. When you compared the staffing levels that we had here in 2008, 2009 to 2023, 2024. You didn't call it But we have 5% fewer staff now than we did 15 years ago, even though the population of the city's about 30% larger. That's important context to keep in mind as we're talking about streamlining and strategy things like that, our staff are our city is doing more glass. Our staff are doing more than in past years, even though more do so we should we should absolutely recognize that thankful to my colleagues for highlighting that. I also appreciate that. A couple a few of the themes that were that were really underlined by both the city manager and our cfo and those included the fact that this is a multi-year process. This is not this is not a one and done study session. This is going to be going on for a few years. All right. It's good for the public to be aware of that. They were they were taking a very thoughtful and strategic approach. All right. We we put in place the step here to foundations necessary to give the city the runway to take that kind of thoughtful, strategic approach. Secondly, we're focusing on quality of life in Essential Services. Thank you, city manager for underlining that repeatedly. That is something that I know everyone on this on this day as its from support of we are we are prioritizing what's essential to the city.

Thirdly, we're looking creative restructuring, we are we are not doing across the board. Cuts were not doing this in in in an creative way. We're going to in the city will be smaller, but the city will be better. We're making ourselves more efficient organization. And lastly, thank you, city manager for for highlighting the fact that we're going reaching out to the community business leaders to help to help provide important during this process. They've certainly been helpful already in recent months of discussion and to know that they're going to be reaching out to them in in the in the months and years to come. It is reassuring. So with that, just say thank you again for an excellent presentation and looking forward to that to the ones to come. Thank you. Vice Mayor. >> I would just like to say speaking of youth there is that the Youth Council on there that I have been patiently waiting for for a long time, but it is going to be cut. MAY be looking at seeing if there's an organization in the community that wants to leave the eu council. I think it's really important that we invest in Chinese, but that we also continue to invest in get input from those that are older our youth. And then also I wanted to thank the city manager for making the comment, which is near and dear to me about not only looking at the people that actually do the work day in and day out like that are on the streets in doing that. But also looking at top management because I always hear when organizations do cuts. Are

they do furloughs or anything that they become top heavy is what they say. They become top heavy and I don't want to be one of those organizations that only look at the people that are out on the street doing the work are people that people feel are their positions are disposable because they're not that to look at it in totality. And so and I know you guys are doing that. I just wanted to thank you for bringing that up because I think that it is important and with no further comments, I would like to thank you again for your presentation and for King continuing to work on it. So I think we have direction and that direction to come back. >> They're couple of things recommendations I would like approve on if we could just hold a couple of positions. So here, tiny tots. Well, we'll find somewhere for the kids to go. I would like to maybe hold before we bring this in a row, the insights forward and we can look at the data on how we addressing issues and the timeframe we're taking, maybe just hold 2 of those killed maintenance workers back. And if we need to bring those forward some point, we will. So maybe just maybe eliminate who and hold the other 2. I would like to maybe hold the facilities, maintenance workers well, and the maintenance worker. Only because we know the condition of of our buildings. And I do want work with dpw to understand the time it takes for a response for us too. Fix some of our issues. So with your direction, if I could move forward with maybe

holding those few positions. Thank you for looking at the one 15 trust. Thank you, Scott, for making that recommendation. We did want to bring it forward because it is revenue and we want to be transparent. We also make a recommendation to start bringing our investment portfolio forward to the Finance subcommittee so we can start having that discussion. I think with both the council will to understand your finances and your investments and how we're moving. Forward. So with those recommendations, I would like to hold some of those positions and I don't know staff if you need additional direction. Do I think I think we're fine with the direction that we have >> Alright council so city manager looks like that's fine. No one is disagreeing. Thank you very much for the presentation. I know it 4 o'clock. But if we can take like a quick 6 minute break. Be back at 4.15, that would be great see you guys at 4.15. Thanks. All right. Welcome back. >> welcome everyone to our OCTOBER 22nd 2024. Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now for 18 and we will be starting our meetings a qorum. >> MADAM Deputy City clerk me please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor Councilmember Rogers Councilmember Okrepkie here Councilmember MacDonald. >> Councilmember Fleming here, Councilmember Avarice PRESIDENT Vice mayor stopped here. Mayor Rogers. Let the record reflect all council members are present. Thank you very much. Moving on to item 6. >> Our report on our closed session and study session.

MADAM City thank you. MADAM You just how days study session and direction was given to staff. >> Prior to that, we had 4 closed session items and I do have a report out from closed session unanimous vote of the City Council. The council decided to opt out of the 2 class action settlements with Tyco Fire Products lp. And be asf Corp. The decision was based on the city council's concern that the city not prematurely settled until the city can better understand its potential claims as technology continues to evolve. Other than that, there was no reportable action from the closed sessions. That's the end of my report. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> MADAM Deputy City clerk, can you please facilitate? Public comment? We are not taking public comments item 6. If you're in the council chamber would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name. Please make your way to the podium. Mayor, >> you wishing to speak on item 6? Seeing no one approached the podium on this item. Thank you very much. Moving on to item 7.2 are proclamations for this afternoon. >> In the first proclamation will be read by Councilmember Alber >> Thank you. MADAM Mayor. I don't know of. The party is ready to go right now. I think expect will be at 5 o'clock. Was that closer to? MADAM Mayor to hold off this proclamation. And so 5 o'clock, if that's ok with you. >> I cannot give you a specific time. The level do the proclamation, but we to it

are the problem. >> All right. Moving on to item 7.2, which is personnel proclamation for today. Count Vice Mayor step. Thank you, MADAM Mayor. >> As Rotary is a global network of neighbors, friends, leaders and problem solvers to take action to create lasting change across the globe. And whereas Rotary in 1985, watched polio class. And in 1988, helped establish the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which today includes the World have health organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unicef and the Gates Foundation and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance to immunize the children of the world against polio. And whereas polio cases have dropped by 99.9% since 1988 and the world stands on threshold of eradicating the disease. And whereas to date, Rotary has contributed more more than 2.8 billion dollars and countless volunteer hours to protecting more than 3 billion children in 100. And 22 countries. And whereas rotary is working to raise an additional 50 million dollars per year, which would be leveraged by an additional 100 million dollars annually from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And whereas there are over 1.4 million rotary members in more than 45,000 clubs throughout the world. That sponsor service projects in their local communities and abroad. And whereas there are 4 rotary clubs based in Santa Rosa that are continuing to support the effects the efforts of Rotary International to eradicate polo and encourage all citizens to join Rotary International in the fight for Opel polio, free World. Now, therefore MAY be resolved. The Natalie Rogers, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of entire city council and recognition of our community does hereby proclaim OCTOBER

24th 2024 to be World Polio >> I would to invite whoever is accepting this proclamation. You can use that microphone right there. So You can sit. Yeah, sorry. I mean, if they like that. And then turn the mic on. How's that? Purple? Bring it closer, but Thank to my name is Jim o'Grady. >> And the district governor for the rotary's clubs in Northern California, which also represents the club's here. The 4 clubs you mentioned in Santa Rosa. So it's wonderful to be here and I appreciate it. >> Thank you for being here. You can stay right there. And as MADAM Deputy city clerk if she completes facilitate public comment on this proclamation. Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 7.2, if you're in the council chamber and would like to comment but have not provided a speaker your name, please make your way to the podium. We'll have 3 minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of the period as you approach the podium please your name for the record if you choose to do so. On one moment. Please. Go ahead. Thank you very much. This is their Fraser, a Santa Rosa. >> And find my heart for a tournament. My dad was a district governor and district 6.38. International District Michigan and Ontario, Canada. And he spent months traveling the world behalf of Rotary International. >> Fighting polio, as well as the other projects, very worthwhile projects at Rotary Rotarians support. Like, for instance, the ability to simulate. >> ufa leaders into civics and into the international

environment and with their youth development programs. That might be there might be a spark their Rotarians to come forward with framework can replace the Council that Mayor Roger spoke of that MAY be eliminated and recent threat budget reductions, but Rotary International to my dad really approached it like a religion. I have to say he was such a dedicated part to My join to. During that, your eyes were Rotary International was able to integrate women into their operation, not just to spouses are not just to sit at the other table. People. The people that went to become presidents of local rotary clubs. I can help. Also slight to the but with the service clubs. It is interesting to see them grow older and grayer. And I wonder what type of relationship there is to recruit civic affairs its clubs like Rotary International. I think help move forward to underscore the importance of civic duty. And I know my dad really have that I think everybody on the ds understand I have the threw that civic service a search for justice and fairness and good health and rising quality of life. The things that you

guys talk about back there. We'll see if you deliver. But I know authoritarian style Have a good find. So hats off to Thanks so much. Thank you. Please go ahead. When you're ready. >> Hello, my name is Dwayne to would've Roseland. Many people here in Santa Rosa don't know that the Rotary Club has helped with our sister city to causing organization for many, many years and the the city city church Cossey. Has basically been able to improve the lives of many people with the help of the Rotarians who got over there and the people from Santa Rosa who've been involved, they have set up a woman center in truck on scene in the past. They've done a lot of things have been quite helpful. And I do believe that it's very good that the use of this community know, joining a group like Rotary can help them to see the world. Also that there's more goes on here in Santa Rosa. Here we have a display case that has to from 2 causing Ukraine and its really a very good thing to see that they've been able to help so much with polio. I've worked as a respiratory therapist for many decades and we used to bring medical equipment over to too costly. I do hope that in the future we'll be able do even more once peace returns to those areas. So thank you very much. Rotarians and thank you for the council for recognizing >> Thank Seeing no additional speakers at the podium. Thank you very much. In can we invite you down to take a

picture with the council and accept the proclamation? Now, Jeff, you have to come to you it. You know, both of you coming. >> Moving on to item 8. We have no staff briefings for today. Item 9 city manager and city attorneys report MADAM City manager, thank you, mayor. So on Election Day, let the public transport turns it be your right to vote. So Sonoma County voters can take advantage of free public transit on Election Day NOVEMBER. The 5th. So thanks to the collaboration between the Santa Rosa City bus Petaluma transit in Sonoma County Transit. We're offering individuals who would like place their vote. A free ride you can go to Sr City Dot org, slash. Your right to vote on a repeat that our city dot org. Slash your right to vote to get your schedules, some routes and the voter Center locations. And we'll be sure to post it on our website as well to make it easy for people to fine. Thank you. MADAM City, Attorney. Thank you, MADAM I do have a report of settlements in active litigation. >> Which as you know is is done once a month. There was one settlement previously authorized by the city Council in closed session that was finalized in SEPTEMBER. People of the state of California by and through the city attorney for the city of Santa Rosa. >> This a case in this case, the city a plane the city

filed this lawsuit for public nuisance. >> Civil conspiracy, willful misconduct in violation have a provision of the fish and game code against 13 young adults to be that who are alleged to be organizers of a side show event in Santa Rosa the city has now settled with 12 of the 13 defendants. The settlement requires each of the 12 defendants, 2, 1, pay the city $500 for property damage to participate in a 20 hour program with restored resources and 3 complete volunteer work with restored of resources within 12 months with any of the settling defendants fails to meet these requirements that defendant must pay the city $15,000 in additional damages. A stipulation to continue the trial as to the remaining one remaining defendant has been submitted to the court for approval. Beyond that, our caseload remains fairly constant approximately 35 litigation matters. As of the end of SEPTEMBER, many of our cases are in the discovery phase. Most do have trial dates. And as always, do try to resolve smaller cases at little or no cost to the city. And with that, that's the end of my reports. >> Thank you, MADAM Deputy City Clerk, me please facility public comment on this item. Thank you, mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 9. If you're in the council chamber would like to comment, but if not provided provided a speaker card or your name, please make your way to the podium. Mary. And seeing no one approached the podium for

public comment. Thank you. Item number 10 statements of abstention by council members looking see if there any abstentions from council members. >> Councilmember >> Thank you, MADAM Mayor items abstaining from item 16.1 due to being involved. The cannabis industry and the potential of this I don't involving cannabis. >> Thank you. Moving on mayor and council member reports. Councilmember >> Thank you so much, mayor, as want to say thank you and great work to our city team that had a community meeting with the Pearson Street neighbors just last week. So Dan and Jason and the whole team that came out for folks who don't know Pearson Street as well as some of that area and the West and was part of the annexation agreement to come into the city when next Roseland and many of the issues that continue to persist in Rosen also are very relevant to that street right there. So with some of the proposed road work that's happening, we had a chance to meet with neighbors to talk about parking, to talk about potholes, drainage issues, speeding on the street. I can just tell you from talking with some of the neighbors after the fact the city's efforts were well received and in particular, they mention how much they appreciated meeting many of the staff members who are involved. Just want to say thank you, everybody who's involved and help plan that. >> Thank you. Council member of >> Yeah, I just want to mention that yesterday. My with the was in board and there are ever so appreciative of the efforts and the support

that the city of Santa Rosa has lent to them in the past activities. And although our for the year passes, you guys are welcome to the to fall festivities of tomorrow. So be sure keep those who says they That's each of the door. I think it was credit as of So of the >> Moving on to Councilmember Okrepkie. Thank On OCTOBER 10th and 11th. Myself as well as the city of Santa Rosa and was invited to end up being myself a rtp w director Dan Hennessy and >> our Transportation Planet Arena Wilson that were invited to the department. Transportation, thriving communities convening in Washington, D.C., at the Department transportation headquarters. It's a great opportunity we're there with connected community connected neighborhoods, portion of it, which is our efforts to get the future Southeast Greenway connected to the rest of the city of Santa Rosa. So it's not just Southeast Santa Rosa amenity. It's a it's accessible to everybody as a good opportunity to meet with department station staff as well as here's what they're doing that to see Secretary Buttigieg give a speech about for me to Councilmember Alvarez, which is pretty cool as well as meet with individuals from varying parts of the the United States, whether it 10,000 person, town of Fairfield, Alabama, to an island community in Alaska. And hear about the the the issues that undergoing regard to transportation and connecting their communities. I think it's safe to say that

when we talk about our issues here with transportation in the city of Santa Rosa, we have a what I would call first world transportation problems. There are communities throughout the United States that are much worse off than we are. So while we do have problems, we should be blessed to have those kinds of problems so it was great. It was a great opportunity. I should note, as we just talked about budget that the department station footing the entire bill for this. So the city of Santa Rosa did not pay for it. So we were fiscally responsible and attending this event. Secondarily, we also I it ended cta, our cpa meeting last week not to get too technical, but basically the major crux of the meeting was discussion on how to pay for the alignment of city bus at of us. County transportation and Golden Gate transit so that it doesn't take a full day to go from Cloverdale to Moran. It you know your layover so to speak would be 25 30 minutes instead of hours so I I believe one of my colleagues on ntc MAY see that proposal coming MAY not agree that but we made our vote and I think it was the appropriate one. The next day was the Public Safety subcommittee meeting. We saw 3 different items. There was a massage business item which we directed staff to continue developing the code and an enforcement the biggest takeaway from that is we're already seeing a results. I think some of us read the paper about some of issues

that we're faced by. Routine ix is a code enforcement inspections. I think the one thing the subcommittee pointed out that we we all agreed on is that we should be a leader in this. And so instead of just pushing this out of Santa Rosa, we should we should address also in the county in so the sharing of information with the code that we're developing with police are doing to cut off these human trafficking operations through the lens of a size. Businesses should be county wide. And Sharon freely share that information. We also saw violent crime visitation from the chief. Almost all violent crime is down over the last few years, which phenomenal. And here in the city of Santa Rosa, the only thing that has gone up is the seizure of guns and the seizure of those guns. Combination of both more accessibility, especially with ghost guns, as well as the efforts of our fantastic police force to take on take that on. They're doing a great job. And then we saw preliminary implementation of the planner, the preliminary draft of the strategic plan for Measure h implementation, which we'll I believe in the spring or early winter of next year. We'll see it as a full council. But yes, we saw subcommittee meeting and also last week. I'm sure everybody most of us on this desert talk about visiting Cal Cities. So I'll leave that to somebody else take up enough time already. >> Thank you. Councilmember MacDonald. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a few things to report out. One I want to say thank you to the violence Prevention partnership for their extremely successful seminar that they held.

>> And on OCTOBER, 10th and we Jackson the 3rd. That was our keynote speaker. Very powerful speaker talking about his company that he founded Inside Circle, ensuring sharing his stories about his time in New Folsom Prison and how the criminal justice system and rehabilitation around this program works and the rate recidivism and how has stopped folks from going back into prison. So he had incredible stories about inmates that he shared with But really the impact of what he was doing to impact children and youth at risk. So I just want to say thank you to him thank you to the team for a full day of information shared in our community. And thank you. Most of all, to all the community members that it ended. It was another sold-out All of them are doing great work to impact our children especially our most at-risk youth our community. So thank you to them. Along with Councilmember Okrepkie and several other of my colleagues, I attended the League of California Cities Conference in Long Beach and just one highlight had one workshop that they went to those called economic development and public finance, new BFFs and one of the things that it went over was how to tackle vacant malls, how to tackle office buildings that have been vacant in the downtown area as well as how fda's can support economic growth in specific districts. So I I thought that class was very Believe that mayor was in it with me. And then I just want to say thank

you to do to the community advisory born team. We met yesterday and thank you to an end for facilitating those conversations that we have two-way conversations with our team members and telling us what's been going on and into the areas and what we can do to outreach more to our communities. So that's concludes my report. Thank you. Vice Mayor. >> Thank you, mayor. Just to report on OCTOBER 10th, the Santa Rosa Plain groundwater sustainability agency directors board of directors met. Reviewed the financial budget. We approve the work plan for for a voluntary flow metering. We put the work plan for voluntary flow. Metering, which is going to allow groundwater users in the basement basin to track real-time usage and provide us better data about groundwater usage in the in the center of plane. I guess there was one other item. We have the long-term Finance committee meeting that that afternoon as well. But I'll let report out on that on that meeting. All right. I'll take the long-term lot Irvine as well. And actually, there's not much new to report for those of you are here for. Alright, our Budget study session here at 02:00pm. You sign extended version of that. The long-term Finance Committee got a got a preview on OCTOBER 10th. We made a few suggestions staff and the city manager very helpful incorporated. And again, everyone, everyone knows what the score is for the city over the next few years. Thank you. >> And looking at council to see if there any additional reports seeing none. MADAM Deputy City clerk, MAY you please facilitate public comment? Thank you. We are now

taking public comment on item 11.1. You are in the council would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name. >> Please make your way to the podium. You'll have 3 minutes and a countdown. Timer will alert at the end of the period. Mayor I'm hold on one moment. Please go ahead. >> Yes, thank you, Eric Frazier. Again, I appreciate your patients. So here we have the council members coming forward with their report. And I think it is important to decode a little bit of this. So when they say they take a chunk, a trip somewhere, Washington, D.C., Year on beach or whatever, and then they say, oh, don't worry, didn't cost the city money. I will question that, actually. I think like why don't know for sure to research threat, only 2 homes. Some of the that look at the Department of Transportation, but cost that MAY be for travel or meals or something or hotels or whatever. But what about the staff time? And when we talk about the staff, I think this is a very important I know during the budget meeting that was just held, there was elimination of full time employee positions are tracking what's empty and on and so forth. But I question what the staff doing really surely we have staff. We have one about a half a billion dollars combined in our budget every year. Of course, a lot of that prescribed spending. Slowing leaves a couple 100 Million. The general fund. And you ask yourself, why things be achieved with that

amount of money. Why is this discussion about euro the services that are offered to residents? Absolutely makes no sense. And I would say that the devil is in the details of money is spent on staff what assignments they're given to if their son and Johnson talk it out of town and still pay their salary for research that could have been done online. During these times of stark economic reality for mismanaged I think you guys need to get the message that things need to change here. You need to be responsible for how you're spending the people's money. You need to be responsible for the questions you asked for more money when it's not necessary and there's cuts to be made everywhere around everywhere around as researchers. When I look at that budget strategically, whether it's the general fund, our larger share of that, the prescribed spending. I see Rent-seeking taking an enormous, enormous amount, an enormous amount of money and the tens of millions of dollars rent-seeking. If you're not familiar with that term when individuals and organizations who use government money for their self-enrichment with little returns to the government. That's what our city has become a to machine forensic It's a political machine that extends not just in the city council, but throughout the machine politics that have

eroded faith in government have eroded our treasuries introduced load of rent-seeking and it seems to be true when we hear back from the city council member. So thank you very much for that. Appreciate your time. And thank you. Post 2 Think you. And ice one moment. >> Please >> go ahead. Hello. My name is Dwayne De would Roseland. I want to thank you for the reports that were just given. I specifically glad that you went to prison street. I grew up with friends that live there and it's in the Rose and school district back in the day. The problem is it hasn't changed much and all those years. It still needs sidewalks, curbs and gutters. It needs a lot Tender, loving care. Might be the best term for it. And I hope we were going to get that and more areas, especially now that we have had somebody go out to talk to the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C., and remind them that Senator Rosa is a growing place. I'm very glad that the teen, especially to Rita Wilson, active transportation plan or was able to go to those talks out there and Washington, D.C., her other team member Alexander Osa Guerra. His uncle actually grew up Santa Rosa and went to school. His name Diosa gear. A basketball legend be used to say anyway, long story short on all of when you're out there, I hope you also talked

about the Southwest Greenway. He talked about southeast remain with them. But we've been working on this effort to try to get the Southwest Greenway along Rosen Creek in place for over 20 years. So I hope you'll be continuing to work with the active transportation plan. People and getting good things going. And now I should say we should let all these pomo dancers get on and get going. Thank you. Thank you. >> I'm seeing no one else approach the podium to speak on this item. Thank you. Moving on to item 2011.1, a request for agenda item regarding the 10% in place transfer rate increase in city code 6 Dash 6, 6, >> Period. 0, 5, 0, b, a background on OCTOBER, 8th 2024. City Council meeting Councilor MacDonald requested a future agenda item to discuss the 10% in place transfer rent increase in city code. I already said it. Councilmember Alvarez concurred with the requests. So at this time Council will vote to see if we will move forward with having that has a future agenda item. Councilmember MacDonald's, you have any thing additional to No marriages clarification. Joining to move item 2011.1 for consideration of the council. >> Yes, correct. You're ready. I there any questions council members. >> And with that, we'll have public comment on that item. >> Seeing no one in the public moving towards the podium. >> Councilor MacDonald mayor, thank you for this. I'd like

to move item 2011.1 and requests for the agenda to be. >> Regarded to at the 10% in place. Transfer rent increase to the city code 6 Dash 6, 6, 0, 5, 0, >> Are you still going to check it? >> I want to see if theres join the party. Do say that. >> I have a motion made by Councilmember McConnell in a second by a councilmember Alvarez. And with that, MADAM Deputy City clerk, me, please call >> Thank you. Councilmember Rogers. Councilmember Okrepkie. I Councilmember MacDonald. I councilmember Fleming. Yes, Councilmember Alvarez. Vice mayor staff. I Mayor Rogers the motion passes with 7 affirmative votes. >> Thank you. Moving back up the agenda to item 7.1, which our second proclamation this evening and all handed over to council member of >> Thank you, MADAM Mayor. >> I like introduce a proclamation honoring the poll. And while people and it reads as follows. Whereas the Pomona Walk on the original people other ancestral land occupied by the city of Santa Rosa. And whereas education one of the center of community about the and Whopper tribal history's cultural contemporary issues and the contributions of the pommel. And while people to Sonoma County is vital to the understanding of our origins and rich heritage. And whereas the and while people maintain a harmonious relationship with a college of this area, including knowledgeable and

respectful, harvesting of animals, plants and mineral resources. And whereas the traditional cultural and ecological knowledge of the and waffle people hold important values for our community. And whereas the Santa Rosa community will benefit from the more active and visible input of the Pomona and waffle people. Therefore be it resolved. Their mayor. Now the Rogers of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council and recognition of our community hereby proclaim that the month of OCTOBER Shelby annual Como. And while pull, people aren't month. >> I would like pass coup ever is accepting this proclamation. If you would like to come to one of the lectern and Following his comments, MADAM Deputy City Clerk, me please facilitate public comment. >> know my name is Joe subpoenaed. The 3rd and my mission will walk on is little, but Also an enrolled member that Manchester band of Pomo Indians. And I would like to thank the city of Santa Rosa for acknowledging my ancestors. My relatives, those past present and those to come. >> a. Thank >> hello, my name is Pollard. I am the CHAIRMAN Of the Progress of Tribal alliance. Like to say thank you for having us here today. Having this opportunity to speak. Too often, the native communities on represented here in our community. But then counting and having this opportunity to always wire stakeholders and building his relationship between our native and are not native communities. It's greatly appreciated. Look forward to working with you in the future. We're going do public comment for everyone is

going to have the MADAM Deputy city clerk announce the the public comment and then everyone can speak okay. Thank you. We are not taking public comment and item 7.1, if you are in the council chamber would like to comment. >> Please make your way to the podium. We'll have 3 minutes and a countdown. Timer will alert at the end of the period as you approach the podium. Please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so first step will be doing. >> Hello. My name is Dwayne. Do it Rosen. And I grew throughout all my youth in Roseland and in 2010, I never was put We're talking about designing a park along Rosalynn Creek to have a poll interpreted village be a part of that project and the people in the community have always wanted. Unfortunately, city said that it might be too difficult to do and that they've reached out to. >> One or 2 tries and one tried to said they might not want that. I do believe that all of the that I know want to have something their and our city COUNCILMAN. Andy Alvarez pointed out that the name Pomona Park and Preserve would be a good recognition for that park along Rosalynn Creek, Madonna feather crews, the appointee of MISTER Alvarez on the Board of Community Services has also been advocating to get that name Como Park and preserve. Put in there. It's just been a real bureaucratic slaughter all this time. And there's a

Milwaukee park in Novato. I hope haven't been there. Go there and see it and realize how it's a great way for the community to learn about the heritage of where we live and the people who were here first. So to all of those nice folks from the Pomona waffle and we walk tribes, >> thank you. So anyone else wishing to speak, please make your way to the podium. Thank Please. Go ahead. >> Hello, Good Evening. City Council. My name is Donald. I am a retired parks, recreation director currently serves as the public relations director for the Progressive Tribal Alliance. I just want to say thank you for your recognition. And just last night in the city of Healdsburg, they just named Hills Park after a Native American by the name of Laura Fish. Summer And we're looking at opportunities to go beyond land acknowledgement providing resources for local cities providing resources to our native communities. In addition, the town of Windsor and made it native arts festival and also renamed one of their parks after David spent. This morning we had a goal that resolution. Read by the county Board of Supervisors. So far we've had Healdsburg Sebastopol Cotati and Rohnert Park. Read it proclamations and coming up in the month of NOVEMBER, we have city of Petaluma City of Sonoma and the town of Windsor City of Cloverdale and the winds are unified. School district will also be reading a proclamation. So we are on a

path of providing more support all around to build better communities. Thank you. >> We having anyone else wishing to >> We have the government. >> Hi, my name is Jack Nash and where the Tri County, Dancers. >> Everyone Big Valley and Marshall me Walk and WaPo. >> I'm Marisa pause from around When tuna in Nova like >> My name is Khan I'm great and Travel member Cosmi lot from Sebastopol. Thank you. Is there any additional public comment? So I'm going to ask >> If someone is going to do only an acknowledgment that that be right now. And then while that is being done, if council wants to go that way, so we can actually see the dancing. Then that would. >> going to go that way because I want to see the dancing. So if you can give us a second to transition that way, so we can see the beautiful dancers. Thank >> We have such a small room girls. You could line up on that side. And we've got some girls on this side would be nice. 2, 2, 2, Yeah, we go. Thank Will not come of the are coming >> I Thank you. >> So I know that you guys just went back up there. But if you can, please come down and take a picture with the council, we would love it. >> All >> right. We will now proceed to item. >> which is approval for the

minutes. We have one set of minutes, 10/8/2024, which was a regular meeting. Counselor there any corrections to the minutes. Seeing none. MADAM Deputy City clerk, a new please facilitate public comment. We're now taking public comment item 12.1. If you're in the council chamber like to comment, please make your way to the podium. Seeing no one approached the podium for public comment. Thank you. The minutes from OCTOBER 8, 2024 will be adopted as presented. Moving on to item 13. Our consent items. MADAM Deputy City clerk, can you please read consent items? Thank you, Mayor item 13.1 is a motion reject all bids low impact development Municipal Services Center North. Item 13.2 is a motion transit mall road bed Rehabilitation, contingency action item. 13.3 is a resolution. Adoption has mitigated negative declaration and mitigation mitigation monitoring and reporting program for the Samuel l Jones Hall homeless shelter. Phase 2 improvements. 13.4 is a resolution approval of one additional tow vendor to the end or friend Chazy list for police generated operations. 13.5 is a resolution approval in issuance of a purchase order for the purchase of 2 rescue ambulances utilizing the pricing from the Houston Galveston Area Council Hg ac Co-operative agreement am 10 dash. 23 with Republic EVs contract. 13.6 is a resolution approval of 6th Amendment to General Services agreement for

citywide security guard and 13.7 is a resolution extension. A proclamation of local homeless emergency. Thank you very much. Bringing it back to council to see if there any questions on any of the items. Seeing none. MADAM Deputy City clerk, MAY you please facilitate public comment? Are taking public comment on consent items. 13.1 through 13.7. If you are in the council chamber and would like to comment, please make way due to the podium. You have 3 minutes and a countdown. Timer will alert at the end of the period as you approach. Please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so first step will be doing. I like updates. Waiting for the screen there. Change. >> Hold on. Just one moment. I was just noticing people are curious I was so quiet. >> Yeah, because it doesn't happen very often doing so. We have >> Hello. My name is Dwayne Do it. I'm from Rose and I want to thank you for extending the proclamation of local homeless emergency. Unfortunately, Roseland has been undated with a number of transient vagrants who are not from the area. They basically found in a spot where they could come. And get a bit of Unfortunately, it's wrecking havoc upon what we call the Roseland neighborhood. There are numerous people there and dry as we MAY to get them to help us to keep the place nice, trying keep it clean. They don't. And we go through there and do cleanups frequently and still have to do it again. So I'm hoping you're working with Catholic Charities and the

Saint Vincent DePaul, folks to make sure and get outreach to these folks that are there and get them in to some sort of. Shelter before the rains because when the rains come, gets really difficult. And we've had people who are living under the bridge at Burbank Avenue. On Rosen Creek. And when the first rain came about 8 weeks scummy 8 days ago, some were flushed man. It's really a sad thing to see. I know it was Voltaire who said that the riches well as the poor can live underneath the bridge. But I don't believe we should have any of that going on here. And we could do better by these poor folks who really struggling. It's something that. I think response team could be more proactive and go out there and talk to some of these people because they seem to be. Not just emotionally distressed, but under such stress. They're not able to get things together. So please help them as best you can with this extended proclamation. >> Thank you. Are we having anyone additional wishing to speak? Thank Seeing no additional speakers on this item. Thank you. Bring it back to council saying no comment. I will hand it over to Vice Mayor Stapp. >> Thank you. Move to approve item. I move to approve consent items. 13.1 through 13.7 and wait for the reading the text >> have a motion made by Vice mayor step in a second by Councilmember MacDonald. With that MADAM Deputy City clerk.

MAY you please call the vote? >> Councilmember Rogers, Councilmember Okrepkie. I Councilmember MacDonald. I councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Alvarez. I spare stop. I. Councilmember Rogers. Mayor Rogers, I the motion passes up with 6 affirmative votes with Councilmember Alvarez. Absent. >> Thank you. Will now move on to item 14, which will be our first public comment on non agenda matters for this evening. And I will hand it back over to MADAM Deputy City Clerk. Thank you. We are now taking palm public comment on item 14 non agenda matters this time when any address the council on matters not listed on the agenda, but with which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. If you're in the chamber would like to comment but have not provided your name. Please make your way to the podium. You'll have 3 minutes and a countdown. Timer will alert at the end of the period. We'll take 12 speakers under item 14 if we have more than 12 public comments, remaining speakers will be afforded an opportunity speak on item 18 non agenda matters. As you approach the podium, please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so. First step is Dwayne followed by Edina. >> And trying to make that you can see it. Well. Yes, there go. >> Hello, my name is doing to it on from Rosen. And I thought I would bring you an article from 25 years ago and this is about how the builders were hammering away at Santa Rosa Homes. And if you can see this picture, this young woman

who is drumming, it's so perfect as almost an alliteration of like a wood was going on. Lots of homes were being built. One of the things to keep in mind is that homes were always being built from that time forward to now, even though we've had affordable housing crisis, they weren't building the homes for affordability. I thought I'd show another fun. One. This one is 203. It's about the crosstown shortcut over there. We're now is going to be the Southeast Freeway. And they have to change up the land, obviously to do that Greenway. And there was a study done. >> With the uc Berkeley Design, studio class. >> And which they put forward recommendations stating there should be more housing. >> Along the Southeast Greenway for safety, for eyes on the prize, if you will. And it's really an important time to be doing these types of things. Now that you're going to get some funding to help on that last but not least what I wanted to show you Pinar. All of that school district school district excuse me back in 2002. Had these modular is that were there ready for them to be using for the school? One of the things about these modular says they can be utilized for housing. Also and the Bellevue School district has a number of them empty right now. I was hoping that the city council could work with the liaisons to school districts and get some sort of approach where you could be utilizing the excess. Building such as this that they don't

use and help that with the vagrants that are having so many problems last but not least this year's from 8 years ago. This is a South Santa Rosa area and the building projects that were coming in. If you'll notice here in the SROs and area, there weren't many of the time. But now 3 have been built. And Burbank avenues been heavily impacted by the traffic. There's no infrastructure before they put these buildings in. It's making it difficult for the people to live there to have safety. Notice all these down here be built right now. We're not getting the parks that we need out there. Supposed to be more than one park coming in many parks for supposed to coming forward according to what was once said and the Southwest area plan and the 2016 rose a specific plan. So please use your measure money that comes forward from the county tax measure to acquire land for parks, not improvements. Thank you. >> Thank you. Is the Dean that here coming Okay. Hold on. Just one moment. Good evening Council. I am majorly concerned because many residents have brought forward this flyer in support of enough of that house. The city's logo on it and >> directly links to your website a fire like this that is printed on card Also couple $100,000. But you guys have no record of who approved this fire. And so I did find out that long Peterson who headed the legislative

Intergovernmental Affairs Office recently terminated or resigned. I'm not sure, that brought. So I'm just wondering why we cannot seem to get any answers about who funded this particular fire. That being said, the committee for e and f f is concerning because >> to date they have not reported any expenditures. The only contribution was $10,000 from their sponsor. The Petaluma there's I don't put on tour of the police officers association. And so I was concerned because if MISTER Joffe who is leading the association happens to be married to Ms Carmi Woods, she was employed at George Peterson Insurance from 2017 to 2023 and Alcock is One would presume they know each other. The other thing that's concerning with the committee is the committee is the one of the lead executives that se Owens and she is the treasure. Also for a California emerge Victoria Fleming is the Northern California director of California It seems like you guys are middle Manning deals using our top Stoller to fund tax measures and then there's no record of you know, who's paying for these particular documents. And so I'm very concerned by MR. Fraser's done exceptional job of summarizing are fine means I did. I was pulled aside by Mary Rogers last meeting in JUNE for me that there's no relationship with the press Democrat as far as them being your propaganda arm, but MR. Fraser any concerns that we'd like to discuss in my has not been addressed for the last 13 days or so. So I would like for those to be addressed. Furthermore, I would like to give some positive comments to

the council and staff I I bring forward a lot of concerns because I am always researching these matters. And the same patterns can be found in every city. That being said when I brought forward my concerns with community advisory board, I saw all year city manager there. So your city attorney there and they are modifying the current options and I've seen a lot of improvement. So kudos to them and about is all for today. Thank you. And GOD bless. >> Thank you. One moment, please. >> You cannot use the overhead projector, And thank you very much. >> Eric Frazier on the nff Committee CHAIRMAN To Deana's comment Avocadoes to people that are doing the good thing. First, I'd like to honor the drums. I just heard the drum circle bringing that power of >> Justice to mind. I don't mean to step on their But look at something has to draw meant through your That what you're doing is not acceptable. Here is a mailing Edina referenced. It clearly comes from the city of Santa Rosa. This is the union Mark. This is a political mailer doesn't address of to registered voters. This is propaganda. Propaganda propaganda, propaganda, propaganda ploy needs is more city resources. Builing really special web pages on their Web site. But

look at that's just one of the violations that we are seeing in the city's campaign of. Yes. And he and I-5, it's outrageous here we have a tax fund or mailer. 30% of the space was used for the pro. Ian arguments. The court in the city charter. This was reserved for people that were candidates that agreed to fund the limits. The city knew no boundary. They know no law. What you're doing to citizens here is unfair. Illegal, outrageous. >> Outrageous. >> It doesn't stop there. We have 5, 5 actionable can come before the fppc or attorneys. It will cost you millions. Doesn't anybody care? Doesn't anybody really think this through? It's outrageous. One of our campaign slogans for our campaign is disrupt this option, disrupt that. As I said before, when all you guys want huge like one of the biggest things is to fight human. The motion human and tension for self Service and here are budget as Ron Amaka special interests. And you want the council there. Some worldview that need app's see complaints filed against 2 for resolution. The conflicts that you carry for the inaccurate forms that illegal funding of campaigns out ranges. I hope the voters, Kerry this indignation to the ballot box. You deserve every bit of it. Thank you. >> Mayor, I'm seeing no

additional speakers approach the podium for this item. Thank you. Moving on. To item 15, which are reported items. MADAM City Item Amendment 2 let me start over. Kind 15.1. And then mid 2 council manual procedures and protocols regarding absences for meetings. MADAM City attorney, we're ready when you Thank you, MADAM Mayor, Vice Mayor Councilmembers Teresa Stricker City attorney. >> and this item I is coming with a recommendation to make amendment to the Council Manual of Procedures and Protocols with respect to your rule that governs councilmember absences for meetings all right. Your current rule I have under the manual of Procedures and protocol sets forth a 30 day meeting, absence rule for council members go ahead and read that role under that rule. Council members are expected to attend all meetings of the city council. If a council member is absent without counsel permission from all regular city council meetings for the 30 consecutive days from the last regular meeting, the council member at 10's, he's a her office becomes vacant and shall be filled any other vacancy. When that rule was adopted in 1999 of the city Council routinely held 3 regular meetings a month since Mid 2022, the council has generally held to regular meetings each month to regular meetings is what your city charter does require in terms of regular meetings from the city Council as a result there and now times that if a

council member is absent from a single regular meeting, the council member could be in violation of that 30 day meeting. Absence rule unless the city council unless city council permission is obtained before that 30th Day. Artem attic forfeiture of an elected official's based on a single meeting. Absence is it goes without saying an extremely harsh penalty and that MAY operate to frustrate the will of the voters. And there is no indication that the city council intended that result when the rule was adopted in 1999. Additionally under charter section any penalties the city Council adopts to compel councilmember attendance at meetings must be adopted by ordinance. The 30 day meeting role which is set forth in your your rules and procedures was not adopted by ordinance. It was adopted by resolution. And the difference between an ordinance and a resolution MAY sound hyper technical, but it actually fairly substantial. And the reason is, is that an ordinance does require 2 separate votes of the city council at 2 separate regular meetings. So there's more process there. Additionally, an ordinance, unlike the type of resolution that is used to adopt Council rules. An ordinance is subject to the right of referendum of the people. And so for those 2 reasons that the charter distinction between an ordinance and a resolution or some other way of adopting a

rule is is is actually quite substantial as a result of that rule. I 7 is not enforceable so that your 30 day rule is not enforceable because it wasn't adopted in accordance with your charter. So what is the role of the well, the current rule under your charter, if you don't have a rule that the city council has otherwise adopted, then we default to state law and under state law government Code, Section 3, 6, 5, 1, there is a rule that governs councilmember absences. That rule is identical to the word. Obviously the the rule in your rules and protocols was probably directly from the government code role. It is identical except that rather than being a 30 day rule. It is a 60 day role because we don't have a properly adopted rule. To the contrary here that 60 day rule is really the rule that currently governs city council absences. And so because of that, my recommendation is for you all to go ahead and amend rule. I have to reflect the actual rule that currently governs city council absences, which would be that 60 day rules set forth in the government code. So that the recommended action the action that I'm recommending is that you go ahead by resolution change rule. I af to read. As it does on this slide and your rule would then reflect back that you're simply incorporating the government code section that currently applies. So that begs the question of what if we want a different role. The city council is free to

adopt a different role. And if that is the direction that the council wants to take. My recommendation is that you go ahead this evening and amend rule. I have to reflect the 60 day rule that is currently in in a fax that there is no confusion and that you provide me with some direction about what the rule you would like to see. And then I would bring that back at a future council meeting. And at that point we would be bringing forward an ordinance as well as a further amendment to rule. I have to change the role that you adopt this evening. So with that, that's the end of my presentation. I'm happy to address any questions that the council MAY have. Thank you very much for that presentation in catching that. Looking council council member >> Thank >> you, MADAM So I mean, a little bit of clarification from you're not clear if occasionally did little education said, no, all the difference is between general law charter cities. My presumption is that the 60 day meeting absence rule by the state is for maybe smaller agencies that meet once a month or have periods where they go dark or something like that not intended one size fits all organization like would be correct in that assumption. >> Well, actually, in the government 3, 6, 5, 1, 3, And if the clerk can help me, I can But this section up with the government Actually so if we take a look at it, I actually don't have that on the slide. My apologies. There are other provisions to that code that govern very small agencies that have more

infrequent less than once a month or just once a month meetings. But this rule, this 3, 6, 5, 1, 3, governs essentially all city councils that are general law, general law cities, unlike charter cities have to follow. They don't have an option. But to follow the state law and this would cover them no matter what their size. And again, unless their meeting so infrequently in which case the government code sets forth, different role even the 60 day APRIL. Here are your charter has a provision charter section. 51 that clearly states that unless you adopted a different rule that the general laws of the state do fill in. And so you have the ability to change the rule. You have the ability to adopt whatever rule that that you think is a reasonable one to govern. Councilmember absences, we would just need to do it by ordinance. And then my recommendation is to have your rules and procedures the set forth the rule again and refer back to the ordinance so that this rule doesn't sneak up on any council member who's trying to understand what those rules are I would recommend that that a 30 day rule feels to me and I, you know, have seen other cities of varying sizes to be a very onerous rule. And the way that both your rule that you currently have on the books that a 30 day is a 30 day rule and the government code role. It triggers back from the last meeting. The council member did it and so it doesn't really mean that

you have been absent for 30 or 60 days. It means that if you have, for example, if you think councilmember is here this evening. And then you're next, regular meeting is 3 weeks from now. Am I deputy clerk is 3 weeks from now. If a council member word and missed that meeting. And then so one meeting this and then attend the next regular meeting. They would I believe be and risk of violating the 30 day rule. And last we get to you all the habit excused. If it's a planned absence and planned well in advance, then we can get it on the agenda to have you excuse in advance. If you want to excuse your colleagues, the difficulty comes when you have. Family emergency. When you have a council member who's sick, you could have been I knock on wood and hope this never happens. Councilmember get into a car accident on the way to the city Council meeting and have to MISS You MAY have someone's partner unexpectedly go into labor and MISS, a meeting that you otherwise plant to be there for. And and so all of you, as diligent as you are and as much as you MAY intend to be at every council meeting, life does happen there are limitations ability of a council member to participate remotely where it's not planted advance. And and so that is not always a fix for the problem. And so a 30 day rule really does require advance planning and in order for you all to excuse the absence, we need to get a quorum of you to be able to come to a special meeting and it we MAY have very little notice of the problem very short window to fix the problem and if you think about the time and effort that goes

into running for election and and having really educating the voters about the candidates and then the voters, the expense of an election and the efforts of the voters to really go to the polls and make their voice be heard. Each of you are seated here with after a tremendous amount of effort and resources on the part of the community, public funds as well as your own efforts and to risk having one of you have your seat automatically vacated because of one absence. That is consequence that I have not seen before in my years of practice. So I would urge that either you go ahead and just make your rule reflect that rule that actually governs what you're doing here for now. If you don't have a thought about a rule, you would like to adopt. You are certainly free to adopt 30 day rule. We would just need to bring forth an ordinance to do it. But it is not my recommendation that you do that. Any additional questions. >> city attorney. All right, seeing none. I will now turn it over to MADAM Deputy City clerk to facilitate public comment. We are now taking public comment on item 15.1. If you are in the council chamber would like to comment. Please make your way to the podium. You will have 3 minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. And seeing no one approached the podium for public comment. Thank no comments, no comments. I will hand it over to >> Thank you, Mayor. I will make a motion to approve the resolution of the Council of the city of Santa Rosa

amending City Council Manual of Procedures Protocols Rule I f attendance to reflect the requirements of government code. Section 3, 6, 5, 1, 3 subsection, a and waive further reading of the text. >> I have a motion made by Councilmember Rogers in a second by Councilmember Fleming. And with that deputy city clerk. Can you please call Councilmember Rogers. I councilmember Okrepkie. Councilmember MacDonald. I Councilmember Fleming. I Councilmember Alvarez. Vice mayor. Stop Mayor Rogers. I the motion passes the 7 affirmative votes. Thank you very much. MADAM City, Attorney. City manager. Can you cut this off or 15.2, please. Item 15 point to her and community have phase one contract award. >> Budget amendments, sequel, findings and adoptions delegation of authority. >> Meeting Mayor Vice mayor counseled Aniseed director Transportation public works here tonight to bring forward the resolution awarding the contract for the her and community have typically this is done through a consent agenda given importance of this project to the community and the eyes that will be on it. Wanted to briefly explain how we got to where we got to. Again, just as a reminder, I think back 2 and a half years ago or so that this was authorized to move forward. >> To establish community hub, prioritizing a fire station and a public library and a multi cultural center. We've had a large project management team get us to this point. I want to specifically thank catch-all who's been the project manager, our consulting project manager for

this for creating a pretty innovative design. Build approach to this. Puts us in a position that we would not be in without them. I'm sorry that they can be here to hear that they encourage men from But we're in a better place having hired We've also had a really strong partnership with Sonoma County Library and the fire Department helping us work through different issues. Different possibilities, configurations to get to this point and their support for helping fund. This project has been crucial. Over the last couple years. We've talked to thousands of residents to further refine this and get input about what exactly should be Throughout 2022. 2023 we've done online surveys, community in-person kiosks at farmers, markets and other places throughout the community. So really feel like this incorporates a lot of feedback that results showed in plans that we got was started with 10 design, build firms who submitted. We whittled that list down to 3 earlier this year and they went all the way to the same point. And when we conducted interviews last month, essentially presenting a somewhat pretty design. Build option for us that included a fire station and library for both fire department and Sonoma County Library to review as well as members of the planning and economic development department to the water Department and Transportation of Public works. So what you have before you is the plan view of the team that we're recommending the word go to showing a fire

station, fronting Herndon Avenue and a library behind it with a recreation center in phase 2 behind it. The extension of Dunn Avenue would be funded to the library access point with additional roadway. I'm not built quite a city standard, but functional enough to for space for the library. Things like food trucks and a little cut out that you see there in the pink on page, north side of the road adjacent to the library. Here. A couple renderings of the fire station from the corner of Herndon Avenue and Benton again, this fire station, the of the 3 teams. This one was a little bit different and appealed to the fire station in terms of its configuration for firefighters for not just emergencies and kind of circulation responding to. Emergencies and coming back from emergencies, but also to their kinda day-to-day operation within the fire station. Here's some images of the library showing configurations from the north. The parking lot side again, a slightly different configuration than the other 2 teams allowing 4 different options as we continue to work through as a library has input on the interiors monks, this is unanimous amongst all the panelists that this was the team that best served. Our that also coincided with the community survey that we did asking for public feedback about this. This was the option that the public picked as well. So the city manager ran a very long title for this item because there are a number of things that have to happen. The most significant of which is awarding the contract to builders space in Sacramento and their their team. The amount of 31 million dollars with a 2 million

Dollar contingency. Things that you see below. There are items that have long been part of the project plan, but now is the time to execute them. So that as we award this contractor able to move through. So this includes some environmental clearance, some appropriations adoption of agreement with the librarian authorization for the city manager to continue to work through any potential changes that need to be made to that agreement with the library, including accepting funds has laid out in the agreement between the city and the library as currently proposed. Try to do that but I'm happy to answer any questions about where we're at right now. Just want to let you know that I think you're Looking to council see if there any questions. >> Seeing none now hand it over to MADAM Deputy City clerk to facilitate public comment. Thank you, Mayor. We are not taking public comment on item. 15.2 if you're in the council chamber. >> I would like to comment but have not provided speaker card your name. Please make your way to the podium. You have 3 minutes. An account on will alert at the end of the period. Please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so. Hold on one moment. Use the overhead. Okay. >> Hello. My name is doing to it on from Rose I served on a committee with the county when they were discussing the destruction of the Roseland Village Shopping Center, 7 acres that they had purchased and they destroyed the bowling alley and all the buildings on

that site rather than adaptive reuse at the time we worked together to pick a project. They came forward from a group called Mid Penn Housing and they promised that there would be a library at that site. There had been a library in the old Dollar Tree store, before that was a Ben Franklin store. It was really nice place for a lot of people in that community. I put this map up here so you can better understand why a guy from Roseland. We'll continue to push on the idea that the Roseland Library upon Sebastopol Road is the one that's the most helpful to the Roseland residents. You're coming down here to Herndon Avenue and the Bellevue District right here actually. And in the Bellevue District. This will be helpful for your new building. We understand that planning to put lots of new housing down in Bellevue. All this has been going in right now. Is from 8 years ago. And we understand that it's more about the future. Then the current state of Roseland. Roseland has been the most disadvantaged and underserved area on purpose by both city and county. And we need to make sure we somehow get this library of here now on West Avenue, which isn't shown here. You have on debt right there. You do have the coroner library that's working right now very well. And one of the things that really

important that all of you understand and no way, shape or form. Are we trying to say that any staff members from any of the organizations that are working on this are somehow not doing this right. It's mid Penn who misled us in the first place and still has people out there as they prepare to build. And they say they're going to put a community building, a community gathering place in their projects. Still, they also say there will be a one acre green space. And then when you going to talk to people, it turns out to be less. We MAY not get this library up here. Now and we MAY not get a full one acre green space as was agreed to. So please indulge me in this to many people in the community. It feels like bait and switch not by you, but by others. At Mid Penn and the county, not by any employees of the library. They're just going where the money is. So please help us to keep one library branch open up here on Sebastopol Road. Also. >> Thank you. Please go ahead. >> Hi, everyone. MADAM Mayor, City Council members, everyone knots on zoom in here, present today. My name is Ana Diaz and I am from Roselyn as well. This library has been a conversation for many years now. And I'm finally excited that it's now coming to that to its groundbreaking. The buildings are the old housing that used to be there are not now knocked over. So you Pat passed by her on avenue right across the street from raised market, buildings that the housing that used to be there

are no longer there. So were steps closer to finally getting this project up and running. I do want to give a special appreciation towards Erica. Our director for Seminole County Libraries and to re who are also here present today. They have been pushing and they have been advocating for this library because they understand that Roseland just as MISTER Dewitte mentioned, we have always been neglected and we have always been put to side for many years and doing is right by the city and by the county. Maybe not today. Thanks to Councilmember Alvarez and the council members that we have today. Chris Rogers, thank you for mentioning Roselyn. I seen that you have advocated for Roselyn during your time here. So you are going to be missed I just want to push an advocate more towards the advantage that we do have that we are. As Twain had mention, Moreland will be in the in the futures of the city of Santa Rosa. Soon. So this will be benefiting, not just rose and residents Orland residents as well. So I my time. Thank you guys for your your time. Thank you. >> Thank Seeing no additional speakers approach the podium. Thank you. Bringing it back to council to see if there any questions or comments. >> Councilmember out >> hard to sit here and he nor the fact that historically. The speakers are correct. We have been ignored. We have

been underrepresented. But as I here today, I look at my colleagues no longer the case. We stepped forward each and every single one of and those aren't our here with thing. Tom around John Sawyer. They stepped up for Rosen. And it's true. We were promised a lot of things. But now we're asking for things ourselves for the future. Residents. And the truth of the matters. I just spoke to something. Rows of residents are looking out for more than residents. We're looking after each other. And I think that's that goes a long way. Erica. Your efforts. Priceless. And greatly appreciated. But I see this continue forward. Let's demand the story be told by us now. Let the next book that goes into that library. History of Rosen of 2024 and forward. Because we can't. Dwell on the past when the future look so bright. Who asked to serve on the board of of Rose Library alongside myself. Absent and all those names that I do not mention today. An impact couldn't so many names. So many Councilmember >> Do you mind giving us a I'd be honored thank you. To Lord. >> resolution of his council of the City of Santa Rosa. Funding. Pursuant to states equal guidelines Section 1, 5, 1, 6, 8, and 1, 5, 1, 6, 2, that they're her and community health project is one of the scope of the previously

certified 2016 program. Ei are for the roads in area. So Basabe Road and Rosen area annexation projects, specific plan and that no further environmental review is required as documented in the sequel checklist, awarding Design Build contract. C 0, 2, 4, 1, 2, current community have phase one project in the mount of 31 million dollars to the best value design, build entity, swimmer Team incorporated. Builders of Sacramento, California approve a 6.4 contingency in them out 2 million dollars for total contract amount 33 million dollars and authorize the city manager or designee to negotiate and execute the design, build contract with this winter 10 incorporated and any amendments. They're 2 and any related agreements pertinent to additive enhancements, volunteering winds and additive alternates. Many in the fiscal year 2024, 25 budget to increase appropriations in the amount of 3 million dollars from the public safety and prevention, which is also known as a psa fire fund reserves and approving agreement for development and construction. A regional library Branson Southwest Santa Rosa with the Sonoma County Library and authorize the city manager to execute such agreement to negotiate and execute all related agreements, documents and any amendments that are there too, with the Sonoma County Library required to receive any additional funding

from the Sonoma County Library and to increase appropriations for revenue transfers and expenses related to such findings and way reading of the text that I >> The motion made by Councilmember Alvarez in a second by Councilmember MacDonald. And with that, MADAM Deputy City clerk me please call the vote. Councilmember Rogers by Councilmember Okrepkie. I Councilmember MacDonald. I Councilmember Fleming. I Councilmember Alvarez. I vice mayor staff. I Mayor Rogers, I'm the motion passes with 7 affirmative votes. Thank Moving on to item 16, which was continued to NOVEMBER, told 2024 regular meeting. There are no written communications. Item 18 will be our final public comment on non agenda matters. And I'll hand it over to MADAM Deputy City clerk. Thank you, mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 18 non agenda matters. This is a time when any person who has not previously address the council under public comment, 14 MAY address the council on matters not listed on this agenda, but which within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. If you are in the chamber would like to comment. Please make your way to the podium. You will have 3 minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of the period as you approach the podium. Please state your name for the record. If you choose to do so. And one minute, please. Okay, please. Go ahead when you're You want to make

sure that podium is up near I'd like to have Dwayne Go first. Go ahead. Just get really close to that microphone. >> Okay. Can you hear me? Thank you. Yes. I am Peter. I am the brother with the Keys, California law enforcement. He's being chopped off at the knees. I am set the well, the cracked Liberty Bell as our U.S. Constitution now released out of Leonard Peltier, prison cell. Coming now. No more need to search as bp Harris marks issue, aka Jesus in a Christian church sparked a fire to flame lit the fuse that ends their game. The new Jerusalem, the promise land. It's beneath our My warriors seal the deal. Having made a real by my 40 day Freedom Strike command. As my warriors from all tribes presently abound. Without a sound. The deuce around already oppressing receivers. For they could never heist the power of Christ forever awaiting in True Warriors. Hearts the truest believers. You have seen what's been sent and floods and Burns Cherokee Nation now returns. We've seen the fires. We've seen the Raines who resides in the valley could be walking the plane's the good cheer. Be free of all fear. The path narrow the road to be widened. Those stray from the path engulfed by the wrath as oppressors collide.

Kind a little boy kept Buffalo woman with Jaguars, rainbow connected with powerful clarity to never be rejected. After all, as we've he did this call look about the great hall in the 40 day system stall. Clearly, truly, we've been selected for the Cherokee Nation truly return through trials. We've learned by spirit discern that is walk a letter. Pell tears, prophecy. That brings us into the Promised Land as brother's been waiting for 48 years as the whole world. That was a true Tears. I am Peter. I'm in California. The world's most powerful state, commanding for all warriors from all the tribes. Come forward and embrace with all your strength and love supported from beyond and above and ceasing every aspect of this economy of corruption for 40 nights, 40 days shutting down the ports, the freeways and all the schools. Because I am not here to abide by lawyers. Rules and neither of the brothers that have been in prison all this time. I said it is so it is mean a whole. >> Thank you. Seeing no one else approach the podium for public comment. Thank you very much. And before we get to our adjournment, I was just like say that Linda Pru. Was a founding member of the Southeast Greenway Campaign in a very active member of our community. She passed away just as the city officially took possession of the Southeast Greenway for which Linda and her fellow volunteers have fought so hard for Linda is leaving a rich legacy in the city of Santa Rosa. Generations of Santa

Rosa residents will enjoy our new open space. We thank Linda for everything she contributed to our city, sending our love and thoughts to her family and friends rest in peace. One day you will be missed in the meeting is adjourned. Thank