City Council
City Council
lun, 1 de mayo de 2023
Puntos de agenda
Registros de votación
Resumen del debate
Transcripción
RESUMEN DE REUNIÓNGenerado por IA
Concejo Municipal de Petaluma — 1 de mayo de 2023
Esta fue una reunión ordinaria del Concejo Municipal que se extendió más allá de las 11 p.m., lo que requirió una votación unánime para ampliar la sesión. La reunión incluyó proclamaciones, dos presentaciones sustantivas, una audiencia pública sobre la situación de personas sin hogar, y una votación importante sobre la tan esperada estación de tren de SMART en Corona Road.
Proclamaciones
El Concejo emitió tres proclamaciones: mayo de 2023 como Mes de la Vivienda Asequible (aceptada por Deb Getches de gen H y el Housing Land Trust of Sonoma County, quien destacó el papel de Petaluma durante 20 años como modelo regional para la vivienda inclusiva); el Mes Nacional de Preservación Histórica (aceptada por el Historic and Cultural Preservation Committee y la nueva directora ejecutiva de la Petaluma Museum Association, Stacia Atchley); y la Semana de los Secretarios Municipales, en honor a la Secretaria Municipal Kendall Sawyer y a la Secretaria Municipal Adjunta Kami Garcia.
Presentación: Borrador del Presupuesto para el Año Fiscal 2023–2024 (Punto 1)
El personal de finanzas presentó el borrador del presupuesto, ahora disponible en cityofpetaluma.org/city-budgets. Está programado un taller presupuestario detallado para el 8 de mayo a las 6 p.m., con primera lectura el 15 de mayo y aprobación final prevista para la reunión del 5 de junio. El Concejo no tomó ninguna acción; esta fue una presentación únicamente informativa.
Presentación: Tecnología de Medidores de Agua con Infraestructura de Medición Avanzada (AMI) (Punto 2)
El Director de Operaciones Adjunto Dan Herrera y el Ingeniero Civil Asistente Lucas Pereira presentaron la actualización integral planeada por la ciudad, que consiste en reemplazar el sistema actual de Lectura Automatizada de Medidores (AMR) por una Infraestructura de Medición Avanzada (AMI), utilizando la tecnología celular de Badger Meter. Puntos clave:
El nuevo sistema transmite datos de consumo de agua en intervalos de 15 minutos, cuatro veces al día, a través de una red celular, lo que permite la detección de fugas en tiempo casi real y un portal en línea para clientes llamado Ion Water.
La actualización reemplaza únicamente el registro/codificador y el punto final de cada medidor —no el cuerpo del medidor en sí— y no requiere cortes de agua para la mayoría de las cuentas residenciales.
La vida útil de las baterías de los nuevos puntos finales es de aproximadamente 20 años.
La ciudad implementó un programa piloto con 58 medidores a partir de enero de 2022 con resultados positivos, incluida la detección temprana de una fuga en un parque municipal.
Se ofrecerá una opción para no participar (opt-out). El personal señaló que las tasas de exclusión en agencias comparables (p. ej., North Marin Water District, con aproximadamente 19,000 cuentas) fueron extremadamente bajas —aproximadamente seis cuentas.
El proyecto está financiado al 100% con fondos de subvenciones. La implementación en toda la ciudad está prevista para el otoño de 2023, con finalización para el otoño de 2024.
El debate del Concejo abordó la seguridad de las señales (las señales son miles de veces más débiles que las emitidas por dispositivos domésticos), la privacidad de los datos (los datos de consumo de los clientes son legalmente confidenciales y nunca circulan por la internet pública), las aplicaciones de equidad de los datos agregados, la política de notificación proactiva de fugas, y la oportunidad de recopilar datos de campo adicionales (p. ej., condiciones de las aceras, coordenadas GPS) durante la instalación de los medidores. Los miembros del Concejo expresaron un fuerte apoyo. No se realizó ninguna votación; esta fue únicamente una presentación.
Calendario de Consentimiento (Puntos 3–10)
Todos los puntos del calendario de consentimiento fueron aprobados de manera unánime (6–0, con el Concejal Healy ausente) mediante una moción del Concejal Barnacle, secundada por la Concejal Postaké. El comentario público sobre el Punto 10 (reemplazo del área de juegos del Anna's Meadow Park) fue favorable: el vecino Steve Rago elogió el proyecto y la capacidad del personal para optimizar el presupuesto e incluir una estructura de sombra y mesas de picnic. La comentarista por Zoom Taryn Obaed destacó que la Comisión de Parques ahorró más de $70,000 al sustituir el caucho por astillas de madera natural como superficie, e instó a la ciudad a considerar estructuras de juego en madera natural en el futuro. Otros comentaristas se sumaron al apoyo por el uso de materiales naturales en los parques infantiles.
Los puntos incluyeron: agendas tentativas; adjudicación de un contrato de fabricación de muelle a Bellingham Marine Industries para la Petaluma Turning Basin; aceptación del Reemplazo del Puente en 1st & F Street (Fase 1); aceptación de un contrato de concreto y aceras para operaciones; autorización para solicitar fondos del MTC Transportation Development Act/State Transit Assistance para transporte público; aceptación de una subvención de planificación de $34,000 de ABAG REAP; aceptación de una subvención de $126,909 del DHS Assistance to Firefighters para equipos de comunicación (compra total de $138,100 mediante adquisición cooperativa); y el reemplazo del área de juegos y la cubierta de sombra del Anna's Meadow Park.
Votación: 6–0, unánime.
Audiencia Pública: Plan de Acción Estratégico para Poner Fin a la Situación de Personas sin Hogar — Informe de Progreso del Primer Año (Punto 11)
La funcionaria de vivienda Karen Shimizu y el consultor Andrew Henning presentaron una extensa actualización del primer año del Plan Estratégico de Servicios para Personas sin Hogar de la ciudad, adoptado en junio de 2022. Hallazgos y logros clave:
Lista nominal de referencia: Aproximadamente 120–125 personas se encuentran en situación de indigencia crónica en Petaluma (definida como situación de calle por más de un año con una condición discapacitante). El objetivo es alcanzar el "cero funcional" de indigencia crónica para finales de 2025.
People's Village: 25 unidades de albergue no congregado lanzadas en asociación con COTS, con el 100% de los derivados siendo residentes de Petaluma en situación de indigencia crónica.
Studios at Montero (proyecto Home Key): Utilizando aproximadamente $16 millones en fondos estatales de Home Key, la ciudad se asoció con COTS y Burbank Housing para adquirir y rehabilitar un motel y convertirlo en 60 unidades de vivienda permanente con apoyo. Las mudanzas comenzarían al día siguiente. El condado proporcionó 60 vales basados en el proyecto, garantizando subsidios de alquiler a largo plazo. Aproximadamente el 33% de los futuros residentes serán personas de Petaluma en situación de indigencia crónica —superando ampliamente la estimación original del 10%— gracias a los esfuerzos de acceso coordinado.
Tasa de albergue: Aumentó de aproximadamente 30% en el primer y segundo trimestre a aproximadamente 50% en el tercer trimestre, en gran medida debido a mejoras en el programa de COTS que hicieron que el Mary Isaac Center fuera más acogedor para personas en situación de calle de larga data.
Egresos: Aproximadamente la mitad de las personas que salieron de la lista nominal durante el primer año fueron ubicadas en vivienda; una cuarta parte quedó inactiva o se trasladó a otro lugar. Cuatro personas fallecieron —un recordatorio sobrio de la urgencia de la situación.
Brechas: Solo aproximadamente la mitad de las 125 personas en la lista nominal han sido evaluadas completamente en el sistema de acceso coordinado del condado, lo que significa que aún no son elegibles para derivaciones de vivienda del condado. La inversión en servicios de alcance comunitario es el siguiente paso crítico. La ciudad presentó una propuesta de financiamiento al condado por $825,000 para incorporar profesionales de salud mental con licencia en los equipos de alcance; se ha recomendado un financiamiento parcial de $300,000.
Prioridades del Segundo Año: Finalizar los protocolos de la lista nominal; lanzar un alcance comunitario basado en carga de casos con el nuevo socio Home First; ampliar la cartera de vivienda permanente con apoyo (aproximadamente 145 unidades en construcción o en cartera, hacia una meta de 200 unidades); orientar recursos de prevención hacia adultos mayores; y organizar un encuentro externo de socios el 12 de mayo para alinear los alcances de los servicios.
Los comentarios públicos fueron favorables: un miembro de la comunidad compartió su experiencia personal con la situación de calle en Petaluma y pidió protecciones más sólidas para los inquilinos y un registro de alquileres; otra persona que llamó elogió el enfoque colaborativo y advirtió sobre el consumo de alcohol y sustancias que agrava las crisis de salud mental; un representante del Petaluma Health Center señaló que la clínica atiende a más de 700 pacientes con diagnóstico relacionado con la situación de calle e instó a apoyar los programas de tratamiento por uso de sustancias.
El debate del Concejo fue sustancial. La Concejal Postaké elogió el liderazgo en el alcance comunitario sub-regional y preguntó sobre la sostenibilidad del financiamiento tras el ARPA. El Concejal Schribs expresó preocupaciones sobre la ampliación a la población más amplia en riesgo (más de 750 personas que experimentan situación de calle anualmente) y solicitó un análisis de costos por etapa y una comparación de la eficiencia en costos entre People's Village y Home Key. El Concejal Barnacle cuestionó si las metas son realistas y abogó fuertemente por las viviendas modulares pequeñas (tiny homes) como un modelo más costo-efectivo, al tiempo que preguntó sobre medidas de recaudación de ingresos (p. ej., impuestos a locales comerciales vacíos o un bono de vivienda). No se realizó ninguna votación formal; esta fue una audiencia pública y presentación informativa.
Resolución: Acuerdo para la Estación SMART Petaluma North en Corona (Punto 12)
El Fiscal de la Ciudad Eric Danley explicó que un acuerdo previo de 2020 entre la ciudad y SMART para una estación de tren en Corona Road quedó efectivamente anulado cuando los proyectos de desarrollo privado asociados (entidades Lomas) fueron rescindidos. El nuevo acuerdo independiente avanza con financiamiento confirmado:
$9.52 millones en subvenciones estatales del Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP)
$2 millones de fondos de la Measure M de la Sonoma County Transportation Authority (SCTA)
$2 millones de las tarifas de impacto de tráfico de la ciudad (confirmados como elegibles porque la estación aumenta la afluencia de pasajeros de SMART y reduce el tráfico)
Total del proyecto: $13.52 millones
El Director Ejecutivo de SMART Eddie Cummins y el Ingeniero Jefe Bill Gamlin presentaron el alcance del proyecto: una nueva plataforma para pasajeros y un estacionamiento (aproximadamente 100 espacios, 6 cargadores para vehículos eléctricos, casilleros para bicicletas), casi 3 millas de nueva vía ciclística/peatonal de Clase I desde South Point hasta Penngrove, y la reconstrucción del cruce de nivel en McDowell Boulevard con cruces peatonales mejorados. Se prevé que la construcción comience en el otoño de 2023, con la estación terminada a finales de 2024 y la finalización completa del proyecto en 2025.
El debate del Concejo fue animado. La Concejal Barnacle expresó frustración con la relación entre el estacionamiento para automóviles y la infraestructura para bicicletas, calificando los 10 casilleros para bicicletas como "totalmente inadecuados para los tiempos que corren" e inicialmente manifestó que no podía apoyar el proyecto. Varios miembros plantearon preocupaciones sobre la infraestructura solar y la capacidad de carga para vehículos eléctricos (Cater Thompson instó a instalar ductos para paneles solares futuros; Schribs pidió más cargadores para vehículos eléctricos). Los representantes de SMART se comprometieron a revisar la cantidad de casilleros para bicicletas y la infraestructura de carga eléctrica dentro de las limitaciones presupuestarias, y ofrecieron presentar un diseño más definitivo posteriormente. El Concejal Cater Thompson presentó una moción para aprobar, señalando que los espacios de estacionamiento pueden reconfigurarse con el tiempo y que la comunidad ha esperado suficiente.
Votación: 5–1, con la Concejal Barnacle votando en contra.
Puntos clave
La Estación SMART Corona avanza: Se aprobó (5–1) un acuerdo de $13.5 millones para construir la tan esperada estación Petaluma North en Corona Road, con inicio de construcción en el otoño de 2023 y finalización prevista para finales de 2024.
El plan para personas sin hogar muestra resultados concretos: Studios at Montero (60 unidades de vivienda permanente con apoyo) inició mudanzas al día siguiente, lo que podría reducir de inmediato la cantidad de personas en situación de indigencia crónica en Petaluma en aproximadamente un 15%; la ciudad lidera la adopción a nivel del condado del alcance comunitario sub-regional y la gestión de listas nominales.
Los medidores de agua AMI llegan este otoño: Una actualización integral a medidores de agua inteligentes, financiada íntegramente con subvenciones, permitirá la detección de fugas en tiempo real y el monitoreo del consumo de agua por parte de los clientes, con implementación prevista para el otoño de 2023.
Comienza el proceso presupuestario para el año fiscal 2023–24: El borrador del presupuesto ha sido presentado; un taller detallado está programado para el 8 de mayo, con aprobación esperada para el 5 de junio.
Cierre de la unidad de maternidad del Petaluma Valley Hospital: Varios miembros del Concejo expresaron profunda preocupación por el cierre de la unidad de obstetricia del PVH efectivo ese mismo día, con el temor de que la sala de emergencias pudiera ser la siguiente, lo que dejaría una brecha de 42 millas en los servicios de obstetricia.
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Qué ocurrió en esta reunión
Entrega del Borrador del Libro de Presupuesto del Año Fiscal 2023-2024
The Draft Fiscal Year 2023-2024 Budget Book was delivered as a presentation item; no discussion or public comment was noted in the minutes.
Presentación de la Tecnología de Medidores de Agua de Infraestructura de Medición Avanzada (AMI)
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Water Meter Technology Upgrades were presented; no discussion or public comment was noted in the minutes.
Agendas Tentativas para la Reunión Especial del Concejo Municipal/PCDSA del 8 de mayo de 2023 y la Reunión Regular del Concejo Municipal/PCDSA del 15 de mayo de 2023
Tentative Agendas for the City Council/PCDSA Special Meeting of May 8, 2023 and Regular Meeting of May 15, 2023 were approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.
Resolución que Autoriza la Adjudicación de Contrato para la Fabricación de Muelle en Petaluma Turning Basin, Número de Proyecto C14402010, a Bellingham Marine Industries, Inc.
Resolution authorizing award of contract for Petaluma Turning Basin Dock Fabrication to Bellingham Marine Industries, Inc. was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.
Resolución que Acepta la Finalización del Contrato para la Fase Uno del Proyecto de Reemplazo del Puente 1st & F Street, Ajusta el Presupuesto del Proyecto y Autoriza la Liberación del 10%
Resolution accepting completion of Phase One of the 1st & F Street Bridge Replacement Project was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.
Puntos de agenda (12)
General Business
1General BusinessEntrega del Borrador del Libro de Presupuesto del Año Fiscal 2023-2024
Qué ocurrió
The Draft Fiscal Year 2023-2024 Budget Book was delivered as a presentation item; no discussion or public comment was noted in the minutes.2General BusinessPresentación de la Tecnología de Medidores de Agua de Infraestructura de Medición Avanzada (AMI)
Qué ocurrió
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Water Meter Technology Upgrades were presented; no discussion or public comment was noted in the minutes.12General BusinessResolución que Rescinde y Reemplaza la Resolución No. 2020-081 N.C.S. y Aprueba un Acuerdo entre la Ciudad y SMART para la Construcción de las Mejoras de la Estación SMART Petaluma North at Corona (Proyecto), y Determina que la Aprobación del Proyecto no Está Sujeta a una Revisión Ambiental Posterior o Suplementaria porque los Impactos Ambientales del Desarrollo y Operación del Proyecto ya Fueron Evaluados en el Informe de Impacto Ambiental y la Documentación de Respaldo del Proyecto de Tránsito Ferroviario SMART, State Clearing House No. 2002112033
Qué ocurrió
City Attorney Eric Danly presented the staff report on the SMART station improvements agreement; SMART representatives provided additional information and Councilmembers asked questions; public comment was received from Duane, Esaia Gonzalez, and Sheila B; Resolution 2023-066 N.C.S. was adopted 5-1 with Councilmember Barnacle voting no.Consent Calendar
3Consent CalendarAgendas Tentativas para la Reunión Especial del Concejo Municipal/PCDSA del 8 de mayo de 2023 y la Reunión Regular del Concejo Municipal/PCDSA del 15 de mayo de 2023
Qué ocurrió
Tentative Agendas for the City Council/PCDSA Special Meeting of May 8, 2023 and Regular Meeting of May 15, 2023 were approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.4Consent CalendarResolución que Autoriza la Adjudicación de Contrato para la Fabricación de Muelle en Petaluma Turning Basin, Número de Proyecto C14402010, a Bellingham Marine Industries, Inc.
Qué ocurrió
Resolution authorizing award of contract for Petaluma Turning Basin Dock Fabrication to Bellingham Marine Industries, Inc. was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.5Consent CalendarResolución que Acepta la Finalización del Contrato para la Fase Uno del Proyecto de Reemplazo del Puente 1st & F Street, Ajusta el Presupuesto del Proyecto y Autoriza la Liberación del 10%
Qué ocurrió
Resolution accepting completion of Phase One of the 1st & F Street Bridge Replacement Project was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.6Consent CalendarResolución que Acepta la Finalización del Contrato para el Proyecto de Concreto de Operaciones que Incluye la Reparación de Aceras y la Construcción Menor de Nuevas Aceras, Ajusta el Presupuesto y Autoriza la Liberación de la Retención del 10%
Qué ocurrió
Resolution accepting completion of the Operations Concrete Project including sidewalk repair and construction was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.7Consent CalendarResolución que Autoriza la Presentación de una Solicitud ante la Metropolitan Transportation Commission para la Asignación de Fondos de la Ley de Desarrollo del Transporte/Asistencia Estatal de Tránsito para los Servicios de Tránsito de la Ciudad de Petaluma para el Año Fiscal 23/24
Qué ocurrió
Resolution authorizing filing of an application with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for TDA/STA funds for City transit services was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.8Consent CalendarResolución que Autoriza al Administrador Municipal a Aceptar una Subvención de hasta $34,000 del Programa de Subvenciones de Planificación de Acción Temprana Regional (REAP) de la Association of Bay Area Governments para la Ciudad de Petaluma
Qué ocurrió
Resolution authorizing acceptance of a $34,000 grant award from the Association of Bay Area Governments Regional Early Action Planning Grant Program was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.9Consent CalendarResolución que Autoriza a la Ciudad de Petaluma a Aceptar una Subvención 2021 de Asistencia a Bomberos (AFG) del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) de los EE. UU. para el Reemplazo de Equipos de Comunicaciones por un monto de $126,909.09 y a Adquirir dicho Equipo de Comunicaciones mediante un Acuerdo de Compra Cooperativa por un monto total de $138,100.
Qué ocurrió
Resolution authorizing acceptance of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2021 Assistance to Firefighters Grant award of $126,909.09 for communications equipment replacement was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote.10Consent CalendarResolución que Aprueba la Compra de Equipos de Reemplazo para Áreas de Juego y una Nueva Estructura de Toldo para Anna's Meadow Park
Qué ocurrió
Resolution approving purchase of playground replacement equipment and shade canopy structure for Anna's Meadow Park was approved as part of the Consent Calendar with a 6-0 vote; public comment was received from Steve Arago, Taryn Obaid, Esaia Gonzalez, and Veronica O.Public Hearing
11Public HearingPlan de Acción Estratégico de Petaluma para Poner Fin a la Falta de Vivienda--Informe de Progreso del Año 1
Qué ocurrió
Karen Shimizu, Housing Manager, presented the Year 1 Progress Report on Petaluma's Strategic Action Plan to End Homelessness; Councilmembers asked questions and public comment was received from Esaia Gonzalez, Duane, and Annie Nicol.Votos adicionales registrados en actas
Approve consent calendar
aye 6 · absent 1
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healyabsent
McDonnellaye
Nauaye
Posakayaye
Shribsaye
Extend meeting past 11 PM
aye 6 · absent 1
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healyabsent
McDonnellaye
Nauaye
Posakayaye
Shribsaye
Adopt resolution approving agreement with SMART for Petaluma North at Corona Smart Station improvements
nay 1 · aye 5 · absent 1
Barnaclenay
Cader Thompsonaye
Healyabsent
McDonnellaye
Nauaye
Posakayaye
Shribsaye
Transcripción literal disponible
187 segmentos de transcripción indexados
foreign Mr Mayor it is 6 30 are you ready to proceed we are okay let me start the meeting you'll hear the recording recording in progress ready to go thank you and good evening welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Petaluma city council and Petaluma Community Development successor Agency for Monday May 1st and we'll now invite Monica aparicio and Maria Galvez to provide information to those who wish to participate in Spanish good evening everybody buenoches the interpretation is we're ready thank you I mean we have a roll call for the evening councilmember Barnacle here cater Thompson here Healy now here post okay here shrimps here mayor McDonnell here let the record reflect council member Healy is absent all others are present thank you let's rise and have a pledge of allegiance America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and a moment of silence thank you and now moving into our agenda do we have any agenda changes tonight any deletions and not noting any we will confirm and move forward tonight two proclamations always one of my favorite Parts our first Proclamation tonight is for affordable housing month and I would like to invite Dev gotcha and Ramon maraz to the podium to receive the award let me read us forward here coming instead because it's Elise and and now thank you Elise Hemphill for uh joining us um is that the whole Board of gen H here now uh no okay uh whereas affordable housing
CITY OF PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA REGULAR MEETING OF THE CITY COUNCIL & PETALUMA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SUCCESSOR AGENCY (PCDSA) City Hall Council Chamber 11 English Street Petaluma, CA 94952 MINUTES Monday, May 01, 2023 REGULAR SESSION - 6:30 P.M.
is one of the cornerstones of democracy and our communities Thrive when all families have a place to call home and whereas each year thousands of Petaluma families struggle to find affordable home in one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation and whereas both the city of petaluma's General plan and housing element support and encourage the development of affordable housing projects and programs and the city is committed to Safe stable and affordable housing for all its residents and whereas the strength of the Petaluma community and economy depends on providing access to housing options that would allow current and future residents of all income levels and ethnicities to live where they work and whereas affordable housing near employment centers employment centers and Transit reduced traffic congestion air pollution and emissions and lowers housing and transportation costs for local workers and whereas organizations throughout Petaluma are dedicated to providing safe stable permanent and affordable housing for all members of the community and are collaboratively working to bring the need for affordable housing to the Forefront of discussion in Petaluma and whereas these organizations are encouraged to partner with local agencies and community members to recognize affordable housing months which supports the sharing of best practices opportunities and solutions to provide affordable housing that is the right of all individuals now therefore be it resolve that I
CALL TO ORDER Mayor McDonnell called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. • ROLL CALL PRESENT: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Vice Mayor Cader Thompson, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs ABSENT: Councilmember Healy • PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE • MOMENT OF SILENCE AGENDA CHANGES AND DELETIONS (TO CURRENT AGENDA ONLY) None.
Kevin McDonnell mayor of Petaluma along with the members of the Petaluma city council Proclaim May 2023 as affordable housing month thank you [Applause] good evening mayor McDonnell City Council Members staff especially our partner in our housing department Karen shmizu my name is Deb getches and tonight my hat is as vice president of gen H which is a policy advocacy non-profit that we established um some years ago here in Sonoma County to be the voice of housing not just affordable housing but housing across all incomes and to create all kinds of product types as well if you can put a roof over somebody's head then we should do that and we need to do that through all levels exit and entrance strategies and working together I know we can do that addressing specifically affordable housing since it is affordable housing month I also serve as the executive director of housing Land Trust of Sonoma County and our office is right here in Petaluma 20 years ago we founded this organization and I remember Bonnie gabler and Karen Shimizu there at that time as well saying write me a one pager and explain what this is and it is truly the city of Petaluma and the city council members in the last 20 years that have supported every effort that we have had in in partnership with you and the developers that we have really created so many inclusionary housing opportunities not just here but throughout Sonoma County and the City of Petaluma has been that template that prototype that's been
PRESENTATIONS 1. Delivery of the Draft Fiscal Year 2023-2024 Budget Book 2. Presentation of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Water Meter Technology Upgrades PROCLAMATIONS • Affordable Housing Month (May) • National Preservation Month (May) • 54th Annual International Municipal Clerk’s Week (May 1-6, 2023) GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT During General Public Comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council’s subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda.
Public comments are limited up to three minutes per person. Depending on the number of persons wishing to address the Council, time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than twenty minutes, subject to the Council’s discretion (Cal.
replicated so from the bottom of my heart thank you for acknowledging affordable housing week but acting and making a difference every day of the year and here's Elise and you all know who she is also on the board so thank you and I'm just quickly gonna say you know Jen H was something that um the county recognized after the fires in 2017 and um a group of us put our heads together went and learned best practices that were happening in Silicon Valley in Monterey and we're so happy and excited that gen H is thriving and continuing to advocate for housing throughout our our County and our region and I'm as one of the founders I think I'm the past president and I don't think I have a board seat on that one I just I'm just I have a board scene I have a board seat but I'm not on a not an official audit thank you thank you good evening thank you for the work you do for Petaluma and petalumens uh next for National preservation month I invite Bill Reinhardt representing the historic and cultural preservation committee and Stacia Ackley representing the Petaluma Museum to come forward National preservation month May 2023 whereas in 1973 the National Trust for historic preservation established National preservation week to promote historic Place places for the purpose of instilling national and Community Pride promoting Heritage tourism and showing the social and economic benefit of historic preservation and whereas in 2005 the National Trust extended National preservation week to
National preservation month to provide an even longer opportunity to celebrate diverse and unique heritages and petaluma's historic and cultural preservation committee and other residents groups and organizations support this event and work hard to preserve petaluma's past for future Generations and whereas the city of Petaluma has several policies programs and ordinances in place which seek to protect its historic resources including the central Petaluma specific plan the general plan and chapter 15 of the implementing zoning ordinance whose purpose is to promote public health safety and general welfare through the protection enhancement and perpetuation of historic and archaeological resources that are reminders of past eras events and individuals important to local state or national history and provide significant examples of architectural Styles which are unique and Irreplaceable by developing and maintaining appropriate settings and environments for such history and whereas the city of Petaluma has Native American and historic cultural resources sites which contribute to the unique character of Petaluma including two locally designated historic Districts The Oak Hill Brewster and the a street historic districts and one nationally designated historic district the Petaluma historic commercial District and whereas historic preservation is an effective tool for managing growth in sustainable development maintaining Community character revitalizing neighborhoods fostering
Gov’t. Code §54954.3(a), Petaluma City Council Rules, Policies and Procedures, III). Mayor McDonnell opened General Public Comment. Peter Tscherneff Katherine Bobrowski Darren Racusen Taryn Obaid Mayor McDonnell closed General Public Comment.
local pride and promoting knowledge of the living Heritage of the past now therefore be it resolved that I Kevin McDonnell mayor of Petaluma along with the members of the Petaluma city council do hereby recognize and celebrate May 2023 as National preservation month and call upon the residents of Petaluma to celebrate National preservation month by viewing historic resources throughout Petaluma and through various exhibits organized by the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum and other organizations including the Petaluma trolley that promote historic resources in the city thank you thank you Mr Mayor and council members uh on behalf of the hcpc I just want to thank you not only for this Proclamation but also for uh the support that you've given historic preservation in the past few years um and just the recent few years uh with the help of city city planning managers Andrew tripple and Heather Hines we've made some simple but significant changes that have made it easier for owners of historic properties to uh rehabilitate and and reuse their properties and um I think through the general plan process we've got further recommendations to be made and we think there's some improvement that can be done and um we recognize and acknowledge that this will take staff time and money but we we hope you agree that these are worthwhile investments in our community we're just really lucky to have the historic districts and the resources that we have they contribute so much to our City's
1 COUNCIL COMMENT Councilmember Barnacle Vice Mayor Cader Thompson Councilmember Nau Councilmember Pocekay Councilmember Shribbs Mayor McDonnell CITY MANAGER COMMENT Assistant City Manager Brian Cochran CONSENT CALENDAR 3.
Tentative Agendas for the City Council/PCDSA Special Meeting of May 8, 2023 and the City Council/PCDSA Regular Meeting of May 15, 2023 4. Resolution Authorizing Award of Contract for Petaluma Turning Basin Dock Fabrication, Project Number C14402010, to Bellingham Marine Industries, Inc.
identity and character and to our economic vitality and it's taken a lot of vision and courage for City leadership over the years to to resist you know changes that so many communities have have made that would compromise our authenticity so um I also just want to say that preservation doesn't necessarily mean that nothing can change you know um I think what makes our town so special is the fact that we have great buildings from every era of our history and we have uh wonderful examples of adaptive reuse so as a community I think our goal should be to you know encourage adaptation and reuse of the historic buildings we have and also to um to encourage new construction that's compatible and doesn't degrade the Integrity of our our districts um also want to say that towards our climate change goals and affordability goals that um it's important to remember that the the greenest buildings and the most affordable buildings are the ones that are are already built um so with that thanks again and I want to introduce our brand new executive director of Petaluma Museum Association Stacy Atchley thank you Mr Marin City Council Members all of us at the Museum are thrilled to be part of this enthusiastic recognition of preservation month along with our partner the historic cultural preservation committee and the City of Petaluma the museum is the historical heart of Petaluma and we're honored to be the caretakers of our communities Rich cultural Legacy we're also working to become a
5. Resolution Accepting Completion of Contract for Phase One of the 1st & F Street Bridge Replacement Project, Adjusting the Project Budget, and Authorizing Release of the 10% Retention 6. Resolution Accepting Completion of Contract for Operations Concrete Project Including Sidewalk Repair and Minor Construction of New Sidewalks, Adjusting the Budget, and Authorizing Release of the 10% Retention 7.
more vibrant Civic space a hub for all petalumens to explore the past to learn new things about our city and ourselves and to promote dialogue about how we will shape our shared future preservation is essential to realizing that Vision it takes all of us working together to protect the places that make Petaluma so special including our treasured Museum building I look forward to working together with all of you to keep this historical heart we are also proud of beating preservation month is a great time to visit your Museum I invite you all to stop by or join us for one of our events that celebrate petaluma's history and bring our community together thank you all so much for being champions of preservation thank you and welcome to petaluma's historical efforts thank you Mr Mayor if I could interject really quick this is your moderator just a reminder to counsel and the public that when you're speaking this is being translated so please pause between sentences so the translators can keep up thank you good tip I appreciate it um and our next Proclamation is regarding the 54th annual International Municipal clerks week and I'd like to invite our city clerk team forward foreign [Music] whereas the office of the municipal clerk a time-honored and vital part of local government exists throughout the world and whereas the office of the municipal clerk is the oldest amongst public servants and whereas the office of the municipal clerk provides the professional link between the
citizens the local governing bodies and the agencies of government at other levels and whereas Municipal clerks have pledged to be ever mindful of their neutrality and impartiality rendering equal service to all and whereas the municipal clerk serves as the information center on functions of local government and community and whereas Municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administration of the Affairs of the office of the municipal clerk through participation in educational programs seminars workshops and the annual meetings of their state provincial County and international professional organizations and whereas it is most appropriate that we recognize the accomplishments of the office of the municipal clerk now therefore be it resolved that I Kevin McDonnell mayor of Petaluma along with the members of the Petaluma City Council do you recognize May 1st through May 6 2023 as Municipal clerks week and further extend appreciation to our city clerk Kendall Sawyer and our Deputy city clerk Kami Garcia and to all Municipal clerks for their vital Services they perform and their exemplary dedication to the communities they represent thank you [Applause] McDonnell thank you council members we always appreciate the opportunity to get a little bit of recognition once a year so that the public can see who we are and can know our faces and know that we are here to serve the public and to help increase transparency and accessibility of government so I have with me today diabel
Resolution Authorizing the Filing of an Application with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for Allocation of Transportation Development Act/ State Transit Assistance Funds for City of Petaluma Transit Services for FY 23/24 8.
Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Accept a Grant Award of up to $34,000 From the Association of Bay Area Governments Regional Early Action Planning Grant Program (REAP) to the City of Petaluma 9.
fernandez-bolt our Administrative Assistant she helps with she helps coordinate with all of our Community Partners to bring these proclamations forward and uh with us today in spirit a little under the weather is Cami Garcia our Deputy city clerk also thankful and appreciative of the recognition here tonight thank you and thank you to we would not be uh as do as well as we do without the help of you two thank you um let's see next we move to presentations for the evening and leading off uh the presentations for the evening is the delivery of the draft fiscal year 2023 2024 budget book and uh Corey would you like to say a few words thank you mayor McDonnell and members of the city council I'm happy to be here this evening to deliver the fiscal year 2324 proposed budget to you and both the electronic and the hard copy of versions have been made available to you for your review we've also made it available for the community to review on the city of Petaluma website at cityofpetaluma.org forward slash City Dash budgets that's city of petaluma.org forward slash City Dash budgets we've been working on this draft budget since late October and we've created a good quality document and for you to review we'll be back next Monday May 8th at 6 PM for the budget workshop and we'll go over the budget in detail and we will then be back on May 15th with the first reading and Adoption of the ordinances and the second and final reading of the budget ordinances will be coming to council the
first meeting in June uh June 5th so thank you and feel free to reach out with any questions in the meantime otherwise we'll see you next Monday thank you very much and this this is the reference document which we'll all be reading this week thank you and uh our second presentation for the evening it is uh regarding Advanced metering infrastructure Ami water metering technology upgrades and so I'd like to invite Dan Herrera deputy director of operations to uh to get to lead off here thank you mayor see we're going to get the screen set up here looks like we're all good uh good evening mayor council City staff and members of the public I wanted to thank you all for being here and allowing us to present our Ami Advanced meter muted infrastructure project my name is Dan Herrera a deputy director of operations here for public works I'm joined by Lucas Pereira assistant City assistant civil engineer with public works and also on our Zoom panel we have members from Badger meters that might assist in any sort of technical technical questions that you might have so for the agenda today we're going to ask we're going to answer you know what is am I uh we're going to go a little bit in detail on our Ion water the customer online portal um we're going to talk about when this project is happening and provide us an Avenue for any q a for any questions that you might have after the presentation so what is Ami you're all young I might be asking yourselves essentially it's a meter technology
Resolution Authorizing the City of Petaluma to Accept a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 2021 Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) Award for the replacement of Communications Equipment in the amount of $126,909.09 and to purchase said Communications Equipment through a cooperative purchasing agreement for a total amount of $138,100 10.
it's a water meter technology all Paloma residents have water meters in front of their house you see on the right that's our meter box essentially within that box it has a meter body which measures the water that transmits through up to the property it has a register slash encoder that records the water usage that is flowing through the meter and ultimately an end point that transmits that data so that we can collect that and for billing purposes so this this slide shows really kind of two different Technologies ones that we have and one that we're looking for currently we have an AMR technology it's automated meter reading it utilizes uh the end the endpoint transmits a radio signal signal and a water customer representative collects that data through a vehicle through drive-bys it requires monthly drive-by situations it provides limited and infrequent water usage data and really it's limited access to the water data for our customers we want to go with AMI which is Advanced meter in infrastructure it's a newer technology it utilizes a cellular network to transmit that data um the water usage data is sent out automatically there's no drive by that's required water consumption is available in 15 minute intervals it's updated uploaded four times per day and really provides that online access for City staff and customers alike for that Vital Information that they need so again what is Ami it's a new kind of water meter technology it's really designed to collect information uh
Resolution Approving the Purchase of Playground Replacement Equipment and a New Shade Canopy Structure for Anna’s Meadow Park Mayor McDonnell opened public comment. Steve Arago Taryn Obaid Esaia Gonzalez Veronica O.
Mayor McDonnell closed public comment. Motion to adopt the Consent Calendar (Resolution Nos. 2023-059 N.C.S. authorizing award of contract for Petaluma Turning Basin Dock Fabrication; 2023-060 N.C.S. accepting completion of contract for phase one of 2 the 1st and F Street Bridge Replacement; 2023-061 N.C.S.
remotely and in near real time uh this this uh real-time data allows for leak detection uh early and it provides for quicker repairs and no surprise water bills for our residents uh really it empowers our community to understand to manage and optimize their water usage and it really increases water conservation for this precious resource that we have so what the Ami upgrade is actually doing is really just changing that register encoder and endpoint part of the water meter the water meter body itself doesn't need to be changed so it's minimizing uh what we're trying to do so there's going to be a couple slides on why we're actually doing Ami this is a higher level uh slide it's it provides online quick access to water usage water usage information this information can be utilized in many different ways one of those being early Leak Detection again I can send alerts to our residents to to find those early leaks it provides operational efficiencies by not requiring these drive-by situations and really ultimately it's provides for more opportunities for water conservation foreign is just one action that we're taking uh today to save water for tomorrow um really provides an Avenue that together both City staff and peloma residents can achieve greater water conservation uh it can improve the water supply reliability for the entire city of Petaluma so this slide really shows on the right side it's the whole technology Suite of of water meters we're going to be focusing on the upper
portion which is the AMR versus Ami aspects of it the communication aspects of it AMR components they need to be replaced so we started our Ami implementation in the early 2000s and these encoders and registers and endpoints are nearing their end of their useful life it's an outdated technology the parts to replace our aging infrastructure are becoming more difficult to procure and really Ami is that next step in water meter technology um as we all know data is just really important and and this real-time data and usages so important that we can utilize for our residents for water much more you know water conservation uh it's considered a best practice in our industry and really again empowers our customers and our residents to to utilize our water usage better oh sorry there we go no no we is it yeah oh that's the one okay sorry apologize we're good Okay so we've had a couple questions on our Ami signal the seller signal that we have um so am I utilized the broadcast network that it utilizes is an LTE M it's a machine to machine uh signal um it it's really useful for a better you better power efficiency um it's a better range than our standard LTE used for with cell phones it handles more data and with better bandwidth and it's much quicker and utilize in transmitting these signals it reduces power consumption so that means a longer battery life that's the endpoints utilize the signal strength was another aspect that we looked at um you can see that graphic on the right it
accepting completion of contract for Operations Concrete; 2023-062 N.C.S. authorizing the filing of an application with MTC for allocation of TDA/STA funds; 2023-063 N.C.S. accepting grant award from ABAG for REAP; 2023-064 N.C.S.
accepting U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistance to Firefighters Grant award; and 2023-065 N.C.S. approving the purchase of playground replacement equipment) made by Councilmember Barnacle, seconded by Councilmember Pocekay.
shows the relative strength of our water meter signals with uh household technology so you can see that it's like a baby monitor is 11 times more powerful a microwaves 28 more times more powerful a laptop being 74 times and ultimately these new smartphones are more than 20 000 more times powerful than our water meter signals again the signals immediate emitted four times per day it's equivalent to about a short text message and really due to the location of this meter being you know behind the sidewalk that that exposure uh to a resin is minimized so how will am I benefit you again data information access to near real-time water usage information through our eye on on Ion water online portal these provide you know alerts for leak detection and alerts the residence when there's a leak it prevents those surprise water bills enhances our water conservation and also another aspect that reduces greenhouse gas emissions so we don't need to have our city staff driving by collecting those those signals so there's less vehicles on the road so who else uses Ami so we're not the first ones on the Block city of Santa Rosa has started theirs in 2017 Valley of the Moon water district in Sonoma in 2015 North Marine water district in 2018 Alameda County Water District large cities city of Sacramento City Santa Barbara there's many other uh cities and and utilities across the state and Nationwide that utilize Ami so now I'm going to hand it off to Lucas she's going to go into detail about our
Vote: Carried 6-0 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Vice Mayor Cader Thompson, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: None Absent: Councilmember Healy Recused: None PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MATTERS FOR CONSIDERATION 11.
Ion water online portal thank you Dan good evening everyone so let's talk about this now online portal that's going to be a new feature available to all the water customers in Petaluma once we upgrade to Ami so we kind of want to touch on the biggest like benefits of this online portal and Ami and one of them that was already touched on by Dan is the data available right so right now customer has pretty much only got a bill in the mail once a month and in that build it says that total water consumption for the month that you that you're paying for so there's not much inside you can see with that number you just kind of take it for what it is and you pay the bill and then that's just how water billing works well right now with am I on this really Insight on data people can actually log in anytime they want into the app and look at their real-time consumption for the day with 15 minute data intervals so you can look back you can look at the day of and really see your consumption and essentially that is pretty much equal to power for anyone who wants to optimize their consumption in their household so it's a really really key benefit that's being brought up with AMI uh and it seems more example for improved customer service as well now when customers have a question on their bill rather than just uh before it might be potentially asking calling the city to ask the question they can now go on the app or the portal log on and see if they can maybe find the answer on the portal
themselves or they can still be looking at the portal called the city and City staff and the customer will both be looking at the same information so there's a much better communication aspect that can be provided on the customer service as well and the third key which is one of the most important ones is driving the project it's the water conservation so like Dan mentioned one of the key benefits that comes with this data inside is leak detection a simple way when someone has never a zero water consumption you have at least a minimum flat line on your consumption it's an easy indicator that you have a leak in your house because at three four a.m when there's no faucets turned on if you still have water consumption you have a leak somewhere in your backyard somewhere in your house so once people have access to that information they can then take action and stop that League which otherwise would have gone for months months until maybe you do work on your yard until you find that or you have something pulling in your backyard so again I'm not just the lake detection but also having access to that information and even if customers don't have a leak they can still see their consumption and then just optimize have a little bit of control over their usage which before maybe they wouldn't have known now a couple just technical features on the online portal it's a web-based portal so it's accessible by Android or iOS on iPhones you can also easily set up alerts via text message or
Petaluma’s Strategic Action Plan to End Homelessness--Year 1 Progress Report and Presentation Karen Shimizu, Housing Manager, presented the staff report. Councilmembers asked questions of staff. Mayor McDonnell opened public comment.
email so if someone goes on vacation or they're a landlord they actually rent their house you can still be receiving those notifications if there's a potential leak that the app detects on your phone uh very simply it's also secure a cloud-based platform and you can go down to hourly daily monthly yearly data charts which again once you have data there's a lot you can do with it uh overlays with temperature weather and precipitation and just doing comparisons week over week comparisons uh looking at last week versus this week versus you know month to month comparisons on your consumption so there's a lot of people can do once they have access to information so when is a project happening so the city started the pilot program back in January of 2022 so just over a year ago where we upgraded 58 City and City staff meters from the old technology to new technology to Ami so and for the last just about year in a couple months we've been collecting feedback on this Ami technology on the signal strength on the ion water portal and just basically trying to do an in-house pilot program before we can go ready to do a city-wide rollout and the feedback so far in this year of period has been nothing but positive where we're actually able to detect a leak in one of our city parks with one of our city meters uh we were also able to with now with City staff be able to use iron water we now are the ones controlling that water consumption in our household and it's there's no there's no
Esaia Gonzalez Duane Annie Nicol Mayor McDonnell closed public comment. 12. Resolution Rescinding and Replacing Resolution No. 2020-081 N.C.S. and Approving an Agreement Between the City and SMART for Construction of Petaluma North at Corona SMART Station Improvements (Project), and Finding That Approval of the Project is Not Subject to Subsequent or Supplemental Environmental Review Because the Environmental Impacts from Development and Operation of the Project Have Already Been Assessed in the Environmental Impact Report and Supporting Documentation for the SMART Rail Transit Project, State Clearing House No.
2002112033 Councilmember Barnacle moved, Vice Mayor Cader Thompson seconded, and the Council voted unanimously to continue the meeting past 11:00 p.m. Eric Danly, City Attorney, presented the staff report.
feedback but being control of the data and just having that information is a lot provides a lot more transparency for anyone and it just gives you that peace of mind when you don't have bully as well so it's just been very successful so far now once the pilot programming now we're pretty much ready to move out to the Citywide rollout uh right now we're working towards implementing that later this year in the fall is our Target uh and we do want to make a point that there will be an opt-out option and right now customers anyone can see any information that will be available on our website the state of petaluma.org Ami to get more information on the opt out program and also we wanted to mention that some of the AMR the older technology like Dan mentioned devices that were at the end of their life expectancy were replaced with AMI the new technology but that replaced it on a one by one basis paused and we're just focusing on the city-wide rollout for now and here just a little bigger picture on the schedule of this program like I said we started in January of last year with the pilot program and that's a little over a year of a program collecting feedback in March and April we focus on public Outreach where we had two Community workshops one was a virtual public committee and another one was coming here to present to the technology advisory committee in March as well and once we completed the public Outreach we just wanted right now to focus on the design to get ready to pretty
much advertise the installation project the contract here late in the summer and ideally award that contract for the installation in the fall of 2023 and we're looking at approximately a one-year implementation program so if we're starting the fall of 2023 hopefully we can do a city-wide upgrade by fall of 2024.
SMART representatives shared additional information detailing the station improvements. Councilmembers asked questions of staff and SMART. Mayor McDonnell opened public comment. Duane Esaia Gonzalez Sheila B Mayor McDonnell closed public comment.
and next I'll just hand it back to Dan so we can take it to the end of the presentation so thank you I guess so how do you know how will residents know that we're going to be implementing this project well um a few weeks in advance of when this meter upgrade is happening we'll be sending out a letter to these residence or an email if they have signed up um for email notification ultimately on the day that the upgrade is happening a door hanger will be placed on the door to notify the residents that this is happening this has happened it'll also provide instructions for how to sign up on Ion water so they can start monitoring their usage and using that data as immediately and also we have our City website which we'll be upgrading uh updating constantly so please utilize that website to to see the latest and greatest information on where we are with the project and and ultimately our project completion so how will the installation impact you as a city resident so water meters are typically located on a sidewalk or within a planter strip or in a driveway sometimes or front yard that is really the only location that we're going to be needing to access just that meter box itself we won't need to excavate or dig or find any sort of water lines that's really happening within that box itself so for the most part this won't be requiring any sort of water shut off but you can never say never residential we're usually just changing the encoder and the end points so that water won't need
Motion to adopt Resolution 2023-066 N.C.S. approving an agreement between the City and SMART for construction of Petaluma North at Corona SMART station improvements made by Vice Mayor Cader Thompson, seconded by Councilmember Nau.
Vote: Carried 5-1 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Vice Mayor Cader Thompson, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: Councilmember Barnacle 3 Absent: Councilmember Healy Recused: None ADJOURNMENT Mayor McDonnell adjourned the meeting at 10:58 p.m.
to be shut off but if we do those typically last up to about 30 minutes if needed for commercial and Industrial and agricultural customers we're looking at utilizing or implementing a a new meter technology which actually provides more information such as pressure so we can look at that and incorporate that into our model to to better understand our system these Water Service interruptions can last up to an hour for those replacement meters to be installed ultimately what we ask for our residents is you know some clear and unobstructed access to those meter boxes you can assist us by removing debris clearing landscaping and really cleaning any obstacles for us to access that meter box so in conclusion I'll discuss on what Ami is and what it's not you know Ami really it just empowers customers to monitor their water usage in real time providing vital data um it collects that data more efficiently uh remotely so not requiring any sort of drive-by situations it can help detect leaks early and easily again providing you know saving water and conserving our precious resource allows for water conservation and potential savings through water use management uh through that data through that information on when water is actually being utilized what Ami does not do it doesn't change how your bill for water usage again it doesn't require that drive-by collect data collection that that is collected remotely and it does not transmit or monitor any personal customer information it's really
sending the same sort of signals that we're utilizing now that concludes our presentation I wanted to thank you all again and here for any questions or comments you might have thank you great presentation uh council do we have any questions start with council member Shred okay I've got a few here um first when you describe the actual equipment and when you're getting in and putting it on so it looked like you have something on top of the meter does it attach the meter does that be screwed on does it just sit there um and how does it actually read the meter movement does it read the dial that goes around does it read the water flow how does it actually work that's a good question it's Brian on um yeah Badger should be on or Davis Davis might be on so are we inviting in um yeah Brad Davis or or online they can speak better to that actual how that how that information is actually utilized I know that the meter body itself turns and but I'm not sure what exactly what the interaction to which I researched a little bit which is you can buy for 200 and actually had someone use it reduce their water use by 200 a month with a single purchase of a 200 machine so they were really happy with that and I assume that we're going to work very similarly to that um and it operates on the phone which again the water meter does have a dial that turns and actually it's magnetic and so as it's turning magnetically The Flume tube can actually read that dial as it's just moving and then it just it
just collects that information that way so just a reading a magnetic movement in that dial very sensitive um is that Davis yeah yes yeah sorry uh yeah had a little technical difficulty here yeah so the way that the the meter works is basically it's the same way that your meters work currently it's just we're just replacing the register so the way that the old uh register worked was basically if you think of it as a clock on a clock on the wall every time uh the big hand gets to like the one the two the three it sends a pulse and then the old endpoint would capture that data uh it would discount those pulses and that would represent one gallon per tick basically or a tenth of a gallon per tick now the the new uh information the the new way the registers work is basically that endpoint will go down every 15 minutes and read the meter to physically track where the dials are on the on the register itself so it doesn't actually change the way that that meter is the the technology is the media bodies in place now it's still the same um meters and everything there but it's just a new technology on how that that signal is transmitted okay um so basically as these are describing it make a little bit more clearer the dial turns on the meter doesn't change the meter at all we're just attach something to the top which detects the actual little little needle that goes around on a circle gets magnetically detected and then it gets collected as data and then transmitted out um so then you
have a battery so what is the replacement time it fits on running out of battery and collecting data and transmitting it that's still a fairly good energy use even at low how long does the battery last how often do we have to get back in there and replace these batteries and who's going to do that about 20 years if I remember yeah so the the battery life on the endpoint itself is a 20-year battery life there is no battery in the register that's still a mechanical register there so there's no battery life there so that you know that'll last life the meter but there is a 20-year life uh on the endpoint itself okay long term it's not like every two years we have to go back and replace it like watches and the light yeah very long term truck fob has to be placed every every two years for sure okay good so it's quicker than that so it's a long term that's good um then when you have opting out and you um and then you there's going to be costs because you still have to go for the drive-bys if people drop out even if it's just one in a neighborhood you still have to go by and Drive by so that's not much cost savings so if that cost is still there one person in the neighborhood um are we going to still spend the money on that or are we going to ask that one person when they opt out that well you need to compensate the city for for acquiring this um to go so so is that really going to be a savings at all if too if enough people opt out correct we're still we're still looking at that so
we're still looking at the input and the impacts of what that would be and and once we gather more information so we're probably providing that link uh to see how many what we're talking about is it one is it two is it two you know 20 uh then we can kind of further look at really what that impact is it's still we're not going to be um yeah we're not saving up the gas for those collection uh of those residents but you know we have to look at the costs that are to to have them but it's not the cost of gas so much it's the cost of the salary of the person driving the truck and the truck itself every month still yes to go collect all this data so we still have a fairly high cost to the city we need to make sure that that's when if you're opting out you have to say okay you are going to cost the city if you opt out or something so make that encourage the folks please help us out correct in a positive way yeah with that so it has to be part of the message of that but yes and that um uh there is a cost to opting out it isn't just just free uh somebody's going to pay a cost and and be helpful to us not so please get that message out yes on that um then on the um the actual information that's that's out there there's there's two ways of looking at it so there's lots of good data and I mean we get good data on our electricity we can take a look at it what's going on there look at our panels and the like same thing with our gas meter that's going on which has now gone Wi-Fi but for for
water um maybe a little bit now we're talking about some privacy issues and the amount of information that's being collected who's collecting it and then how is it going to get used by not the homeowner but by others so um if you could talk a little bit about that individuals and the privacies because I could see some folks being concerned that okay you're collecting all this data oh you know when I'm taking my shower oh you know when I'm washing my clothes oh I know that I have extra people living in my house that maybe not should be here landlords might be able to collect the information that's oh I got extra residence I didn't tell you about so there's some information going out um that who's seeing it and what happens that information and what might you do or who might do something with that information and then there might be a benefit of that which which is in the report you said that there was going to be some notifications you can set yourself up for notifications so if you're setting yourself for notifications or not will the city come back and oh by the way we see that you're overusing a little bit can we help you reduce your use will will there be a customer call if you hit over certain ranges of usage we'll be kicking in some sort of a pattern recognition and saying going back and knocking on doors will we do that because we we're doing it because to save water or we're doing it because the customer asked us first to do that so do we proactively do it or
reactively do that if a customer asks us to do that for water wise and then how that data might uh what's the constraint so that doesn't go anywhere else for that so that data security and and how it's used and how we make it a positive message out of all that right so I'll let you answer I know yeah that's that's a lot there um so as far as the data that the data is and Davis you might be able to help me out here um where that's the residence you know there's nothing that's actually more information that's what's being sent now um through those signals um the access is going to be to the owner of the account itself while the city does have I think we'll have we'll be able to see most likely the alerts the leaks that was what we were most likely focus on because that is part of our water conservation efforts is to reduce leaks and Water waste you know um throughout the city but we don't have any plans as far as being like a big brother is looking at at the status mainly the leaks that are being found and you know minimizing that aspect of it but as far as privacy goes Davis do you have any or Brad any information on that on where the status is held yeah I can I can start on that one and Davis you can come over the top um so from a privacy perspective you know again it's it's only 15 minute interval data um there is no customer proprietary information uh going through there the city owns the data and then those customers would have access to it when they set up an account um I
think a uh you know I think it was a great question that came up from a privacy or security or whatever uh let me attempt to share my screen here because the picture I think is a thousand words uh let me know and you can if you guys can see this um from a privacy or a security perspective um none of the data ever touches a public internet all right so uh we pay a premium to transmit that data to that Beacon Software and that Ion water where the customers have access to it and when you eliminate that public internet or down at that you know southern route over the public internet you eliminate virtually all the cyber security risks so um it is very very secure it's actually a uh uh we meet with the util we meet with our vendors once a quarter and this is a best practice there's nothing better right now getting that data from point A to point B this is actually modeled after uh scada security that the electric and the gas use Brad real quick just to let you know you're you're you're sharing the opposite screen right now you're sharing your presenter screen just to give you a heads up on that oh sorry about that yeah okay and staff and Council if I could just add just from a legal standpoint this approach to providing this information for um managing the utility doesn't change the fact that that under the law customer utility usage information is still confidential and not subject to disclosure as a public record unless there's indications that the customer is violating our
usage policies so there's an added layer of safeguard that applies to the information on the customer's usage thanks okay because I know for myself I had a leak in a valve and I didn't know about it for I don't know how long it could have been a whole year I had a leaky valve and I would have really appreciated it getting some earlier deduction on that because it was a slow small leak but finally I went out there and realized well how long has this been going on it was a complete mess when I when I went out there uh water all around the end of mine was behind the house where I don't usually go so I would have appreciated an earlier warning on that but will be the city take it um a proactive action so that when you do detect leaks if you see that oh there's the Zees house has a major leak going on will we actually inform the actual owner of the house or do we have to wait for the owner to contact the city to to ask will we be proactive from the city to go out there and do something well we're proactive in in our city accounts right so for City for parks for all of our facilities we look at a leaks and leak alerts um we're looking at providing that um again I think it's when there's times of drought when we're looking at water consumption and then the water shorts contingency plan that we had we were definitely looking at that aspect for the Ami to look at leaks and look at trying to reduce that as much as possible um I think we would rely for the most part as much as we can on
the state of residence to um you know utilize that data and and you know find those leaks for themselves we can definitely look at a policy that we can you know look at that data individually have those alerts set up for City staff and proactively you know um notify the residents of leaks if if that's something that we wish to implement okay good because this brings up when you have data collection on a city-wide basis and now we're talking about Equity issues and how water this data is being informing the city as to well for this section of the city this wipe may happen versus this part of the city and try to equalize it so is there ways we could use the data from a city point of view to for for any Equity issues that might arise as soon um sections of the city or increasing programs of conservation offering programs of some sort if we're seeing um discrepancies this way is a way of doing that oh I'm sorry I can't Paul you're different so certain sections of the city have high water uses and uh uh way over the top in certain neighborhoods versus other neighborhoods are are very conservative and doing well um is there a way of using that from a city point of view especially if there's Equity issues involved in the types of neighborhoods these are um I know we haven't seen analyzing the data from a city-wide perspective except individual I I haven't thought about that I don't know if we how we could Implement that on restricting certain uh sections of this I'm not yeah
analysis and thoughts as a computer person myself in the past working with data folks that accumulating data and how to use it and where we can go with it how we use it productively rather than negatively is what I'm trying to go I think we would focus on leaks and we would focus on if areas of the city as notoriously have leaks and and reducing that water loss that's how I think we would Implement that first stage of that data collection analysis um but again it's data and so we can we can uh always utilize that any way we wish thank you I'm all for it it's come to my house please do mine first uh can I ask does the city's uh enterprise Enterprise software integrate GIS with the water Billing System do we have the ability to tie all that together yes it's it's so we have right now our it's a little I think that would answer the council member's question yes about being able to yeah yeah generally each each water meter is associated with a as a a address a GPU we have a GIS location whether it's an actual physical location or an address that yes we can we can see that information other agencies have been trying to integrate those together and I've seen that actual application occur so um did we have another question down here um just wanted in addition to to council member schribs is um in terms of uh I know I've heard this before but what percentage of our total water use right now is you know attributed to leaks any estimate of that oh if I remember it was relatively low um
we usually do a water audit every year um I thought we were in the lower below like three percent five percent something like that so we were we're relatively low but I gotta check with Chelsea Thompson thanks council member now and thank you um council member schribs asked a lot of the questions I had about new you know neighbor having new and another neighbor having old um I got that but what is um the difference between a leak and maybe just over watering because sprinklers go on in the middle of the night I don't sure how pools get filled but I believe that they get to a level and then they fill back up automatically so how how do we determine it's that constant so I think Lucas alluded to it it's that over the entire night so you're looking at say midnight to 6 a.m if there's a constant that never changes that that item whether it's like a one gallon three gallons per minute that never goes away and is always there that's what we would determine to be a leak right so you'll have when you're talking about like irrigation there's spikes they come up they come down because we have this 15-minute interval data you know usually these spikes happen uh you know con irrigations happens you know 10 15 minutes but when you have hours of constant and low it's uh it's generally low small so like a drip yeah like a drip it's just a constant just you know again yeah you think of that it's it's pretty uh it's pretty noticeable we've seen those in the in the data and it's just a
constant line that you know that's that's a leak happening okay one more have we um eliminated the neighbor turning in Neighbors because now we have data that shows this neighbor's not overusing water or do you have to physically go out and look and see what their lawn looks like well well one neighbor can't tell us the other another neighbor's consumption right no but they can complain yeah the neighbors tend to like have disputes and so they complain about each other and turn and turn it into the city as a problem the data will show the usage of of the residents and um yeah we would and you're talking about the the water wise calls or the calls yeah like someone's irrigating when they shouldn't be irrigated yeah currently they if you if the water department receives a complaint from a neighbor they go to the residence that's been complained about and they view to see is it a green lawn or is there a water feature being used in the front yard you know they they look and then they leave a note and say you have been notified to the city as a com as a over water user but we don't find anything or we do find something right so would you still have to do that or would you do it all with your data that data would be available so you wouldn't have to make the residential call likely or we can determine that you know which saves time and money okay that's just what I was checking on thank you and um council member barnacle um sign me up thank you for the presentation um I'm just uh
would be curious as we get more into this um to know what the sort of Roi on this is and as we you know I'm not asking for it right now but just as we get into it to really sort of like track some metrics around um operating cost savings and I know we got a large Grant so if we can somehow put together some sort of an ROI analysis and tell the story that um because we're also doing a water rate study right now and it'd be nice to be able to say we're doing everything we can to to help keep your rates down and finding grants and saving on operating costs and things like that otherwise thank you very much and just uh I think this is just that's one of the the brighter points of this is it's 100 funded by grant funding so um yeah but we can definitely do that sort of analysis work great and and um I did have a couple questions either for yourself or the badger representative um one is is there an industry anecdotal opt out number of people who who you know because every program that implements this at every Water Agency or City utility has an opt-out exercise is there is there an industry Norm of opt out yeah we've looked at I think there's some other communities in our area um North marine or it's like 15 to 25 or something like that something similar right but what's the percentage of people I mean it's inconsequentially it's less than one percent right it was I think North Moran they had a similar number of accounts like the state of Petaluma 19 000 plus and they had six
opt-outs okay and that number tends to go down also when uh you'll actually engage that customer for maybe the original reason for why they wanted to opt out and if you can actually engage and rather than just you know keep that communication you can potentially answer concerns or questions that were regarding concerns that don't apply to the to Ami and we kind of have been learning that's the strategy if you will for how to go about the upgrade is to just talk to people about it and more than likely they will end up being seeing the benefits and what it's there for and and like that's how you kind of start to cut that number down from originally 50 down to 10 down to five and sometimes it is what it is you know thank you um the other data question was uh do we have a percentage of people anecdotally um that actually open the app and benefit from this because you know it's pretty small number two it's uh it's not like everybody opens an app right I unless we have that Davis fight I'm not sure if something bad we can speak to that yeah so you know nationally I mean the and it really all depends on the the population of the area um and you know the demographic of the area but uh historically if if you had 100 you know say you had 100 accounts um we're just using some round numbers here you know 10 of those people on average would engage and you know that's at the minimum and then we've seen in some communities where they've had a really big Outreach from the utility um we've
seen those numbers as high as 40 to 60 percent so it really all depends on on how engaging the utility is in driving that use you know through community outreach programs um they do a lot of uh you know they have Town Hall meetings where they or not some Town Hall meetings but they have these meetings where they engage the public and try to drive that number up you know but again it's it's it varies from from uh location to location location but typically we see anywhere between you know the eight to fifteen percent rate on average and then typically it goes higher or lower depending upon the area thank you I think that goes to support council member schribs's Point uh we should have a push if we notice a spike in an inappropriate time hopefully the city will be able to uh provide that out as a push and I'd love to see the policy come through or or know the policy includes that element um let's see and then um there's also um quite a cost in meter boxes I know I'm not sure whether the program includes the actual meter replacement or doesn't need to include that but so many of our meter boxes are in broken sidewalks and Antiquated meter boxes you don't have the um the work room to get inside the meter box to do the install so do we have a budget for meter box replacement and can we tie that with our sidewalk Improvement projects and get like a couple extra squares on either side of the sidewalks fixed up so we can help our walkability in town uh we so the lids the lids are
part of the project um so those house the encode the the signal encoder for a part of that that endpoint um transmitter system um where we're trying to uh fix what you're talking about is is more of our water service replacement program and so this is where we have a it's a year-to-year program where we replace you know about two million one to two million worth of water services per year and that's where we're utilizing and get uh replace the service themselves up to the meter box and then replace that meter box and then the square of concrete that usually associated with that so that's a couple hundred meter um service laterals not uh ten thousand twenty thousand this is going to be the big chance to get sidewalks fixed yeah and I've seen that to be the change order cost on these kinds of contracts too while the technology is a firm price there's change order contract coming into this but um I would assume we could get Council support for that kind of improvement to our area it's a it's it's um it's 20 000 meter boxes so we'll we'll try to do as much as we can with the money that we have um and then uh and then evaluate that you know going forward with their meter service replacement program and then with this new technology are we well coordinated with the finance department the building department it's not just the field exercise but all of our software can accommodate trans yeah that's the beauty of the system that we're utilizing it it's already incorporated into our
Billing System it's it's using the beacon system from Badger and so no changes to our our billing software or system need to be done that's great council member shred do you have a comment um yeah just following up uh no mayor McDonnell was was saying um is it for the actual install is it going to be the city staff doing that or the contractor is going to do the actual install no we're going to be contracting that out we're also going to be trying to implement a GPS so to talk to your porn earlier um about there's a I'd say there's a certain percentage not all of our meters our GPS with actually you know they're tied to lots and not the meter itself um but we are looking at hiring the contractor to install and also collect um GPS coordinates for each of our meter boxes and often photograph yes that'll be part of it yeah yeah so as uh mayor Donald was saying uh can we collect data well we have someone doing going to every single house making these exchanges is there a way of collecting data again visually on the box itself or immediately around this box if you're standing right there um whether it be the tree roots are a problem the sidewalks are problem the street is is being inundated by Roots if there's a local problem right nearby the Box could that be a check mark that as they inspect and do things that they just check off hey there there's come by and take a look at this or at least get it on the list that there's maybe a sidewalk issue here is it possible we could add
that as hopefully a little bit of a service um since someone's out there almost every single house there we're doing work um it'd be nice to collect some data while they're doing that no yeah that's something that we could definitely do like I said we're trying to get all the GPS coordinates for all of our meter boxes so that's just another line item you can actually contract because no we're going to do it like for trees we want to go inspect all the street trees and the data collector and information yeah information yeah like that okay so one of the challenges might be I'd like to give you is when this is implemented maybe put out a challenge to all the city and which neighborhood can save more water and using the cool blocks program and actually have a competition that is run and through the showing this is how we're going to use their data we're going to actually have a contest and give rewards out really nice rewards for those that neighborhood that actually saved the most water within this month it'd be nice if we could do that um push out I think with with that anything's possible right so thank you Mr Mayor and Council this is a great discussion lots of good ideas coming up but it's a presentation it's not an action item and I'm afraid I'm afraid we'd have to agendize it differently for such a robust discussion as this none of this was actually Direction tonight thank you and with any other questions no further questions thank you very much for your presentation
tonight and our next item on the agenda is our general public comment during general public comment the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the city council's subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda public comments are limited to three minutes per person depending on the number of persons wishing to address the council time will be allocated and equal shares totaling no more than 20 minutes and um may I ask our clerk if we received online comments mayor McDonnell we did not receive any general public comment prior to the meeting um give me not there was one mistakenly posted under general public comment it was on the consent calendar so I will mention that one later ah thank you very much and I'd like to ask our moderator to weigh in with the invitation to zoom thank you mayor McDonnell I am going to start a 30 second timer at the end of which we'll see how many hands we have raised um at members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to the clerk's desk if they have not already done so members of the public attending online should raise their virtual Hand by pressing the raise hand button or Star nine if they're participating by phone so speakers are reminded to be respectful in their comments and this meeting is being translated please pause between sentences for translation and there will be a countdown on the screen so that people know how much time they have left and
right now in the audience we have three hands raised thank you and we have uh two cards from those folks in the chambers and so I'd like to start with the folks in the chambers and with five or three minutes it's a three minute comment period and I'd like to I invite Peter chernov to speak first okay all right good evening I saw this postcard here with all the churches in this area and temples and such and I'd like to give a long overdue thank you to uh the kind people at St Vincent's dePaul on my behalf and that all these churches and temples and mosques Nationwide have yet to follow the ten commandments to break one breaks them all the two Commandments are still too hard for everybody but my Warriors and soldiers about to embrace the number one of the 40-day strike that makes the 10B is one I am Peter I'm a constitutionalist and a servant under Creator I am a seed sower flamethrower as Liberator as a fan of Carlos Santana's Abraxas I am commanding permission granted for all Americans to cease paying taxes American veterans did not put their lives on the line to pay bar liar lawyers of the IRS or the FED same holds true for American truckers and labor the 40-day freedom strike lays down the saber Petaluma Police auditor sounds perfect so all may get clear on law enforcement's responsibility towards politicians mocking the 13th Amendment AKA Article 13 that clearly states no one with a title of nobility AKA Esquire May participate in public office that means lawyers the IRS
and the FED criminal Enterprises are run by ruthless capitalist bar lawyers whose very existent be truly null and void thanks to Robert Kennedy Jr's children defense fund we now are clear on the vaccine dangers however now there are actively delivering vaccines with no needles by blending these vile Brews into commercial milk drinks cheese processed foods and that's a fact by inserting mRNA to ingest without your knowledge to you and your children I am sharing truth without being vague are you ready for the quarantines uh introducing the plague already spreading through encampments in seven American cities three in California as 275 four-person FEMA plastic coffins have been warehoused in the East Bay for several years just waiting my Warriors are prepared for this date tasked indeed to freeze frame greed May 8.
Embrace Embrace with a smile on your face fulfilling Destiny's date I am Peter as I am always to Regale the power of Christ almighty arrive by rail on Bob Dylan's slow train coming all Shadows truly be running and let us start ten thousand new Gardens for it is time for us to embrace our spiritual Pardons and stop buying all this irradiated poison food from around this nation and the planet and grow the very best things here with greenhouses and Luther Burbank and our veterans to thank I am Peter I say it you hear it it is so it is done and thank you very much uh Catherine babowski yes my name is Kevin Rossi I live at Blue Woods Villa Mobile Park at 1821 Lakeville Ohio space 31.
this so-called manager named distiller Cruz has been having her family part illegally on the far Lanes day and night some more 24 hours a day and the police departments have been called numerous times and they keep saying they're not going to respond because they're going to keep loudness manager and her family to break the law and like you'll see she had her uh my neighbor space 12 is telling his friends at 14 they part against mimo and deal their drugs against my mobile home and the cops won't do nothing about that and I don't want to say that's probably my life and my safety endangerment that's not a legal parking area in the first place they're not supposedly dealing drugs in there in the first place and I got the picture and I always I already sent a picture a picture to my attorney also showing us that the police department is not doing their job they need to get out here stop allowing this manager be breaking the law and my neighbor's drug dealer offense 12 stopped breaking the law and also too another question the public the police department was always asking for the Public's help but when the Public's help wants to ask for the people the police department's help they don't want to help another thing I want to ask how come your Police Department doesn't have an internal affairs to investigate the police program thank you thank you that is the last speaker from in Chambers I'd like to head back to our Zoom audience Mr Monterey thank you mayor our first speaker is
Darren ratkusen followed by Taryn obeyed Darren you may unmute and begin your comments thank you Patrick I wanted to start off with giving a round of applause again to the whole public works department I was one of many citizens who had concerns about the Ami project admittedly some misunderstandings and also some ideas you know often we hear about a new project and you hear about Grant funds the gears start turning you start thinking how can we leverage these for other things we want in the city and anyway all of those ideas and concerns got thrown at the public works department and they really took all that into consideration uh even brought on consultants and really had a great public Outreach a couple weeks ago before this presentation tonight and I think really did a great job in addressing concerns communicating the effectiveness of the program and then really kind of game planning are there other things we could do with this grant money which it turns out is not really uh but but I just really appreciated them taking the time to to do that and really engage citizens and listen and be transparent and and give that thoughtful attention and the other thing I wanted to address tonight uh it's kind of been in the air with folks involved with the city and that is changes potential changes coming to commissions committees and Boards uh and I wanted to Advocate I'm a current member of the tree advisory committee and I've said a couple times over the past year that I think
expanding the scope of that committee to being more of a natural resource and open space committee is just such a rich idea in terms of increasing engagement increasing our ability to suddenly talk about things like the river like Open Space Management and would also mean that we could open the committee up to different skill sets folks who work with Wildlife or work at land trusts or work in water resources and while we already have a climate commission that does a lot of good work you know in my mind I kind of think of the climate commission as resilience and adaptation human responses to a changing environment whereas we have an opportunity to create a commensurate body that would be focused on conservation and regeneration that is understanding the natural resources that we have how to cultivate them how to enhance them and I think again many different disciplines would be represented on each committee you know with the climate commission green builders decarbonization experts whereas in the natural resource committee again you folks who are arborist Water Resource experts and I think those two committees harmonizing to address City policy and influence direction of policy would really be a powerful Duo and I think would strengthen while I think the tree committee does a lot of great work I think they would kind of do that and more I would really have a great amplifying effect so if there are any changes coming up to committees commissions and Boards I wanted to advocate
for that change thank you thank you Darren our next speaker is Taryn obade Tara you Taryn you may unmute and begin your comments hi thank I wanted to make a comment tonight regarding the budget we haven't had a chance to look at it uh closely yet because we just got it tonight I understand that I am not an accountant but what I would really love to ask the city council please when you review it over the next week if you could please please get very specific in particular regarding the parks department our parks department has been woefully understaffed for a long time and while I did just look through the budget document pardon me I see that there's some kind of language there that I find vague and I don't it doesn't put to rest my questions as to how many positions are staffed how many positions remain open there's um there are descriptors used such as recommended staff um in terms of recommended number of Staff but it's not really clear how many staff and if you could really get drilled down into that um that would be appreciated because my concern is what I witness um serving on the tree committee and what I witness attending gpac meetings and Parks Commission meetings as well as talking with the community is that the trees in this town are 100 dependent on the park stuff and if some of that salary money is actually going to overtime rather than hiring a new position as is intended that really doesn't get us anywhere we don't have sufficient staff to manage the trees and
the idea of broadening to Natural Resources is a really needed one per the gpac it's a very needed uh uh perspective and attention put against our town but um if we don't get more Park staff we're never going to be able to pull off the tree ordinance so please when you're looking through the budget document make sure we're talking about actual hires and not just shuffling funds so that we can cover people's working through lunch or people doing other overtime or just keeping positions open and remember please the artificial turf rentals those go to buying more plastic FIFA forever chemical Turf but the rentals on our parks that have natural grass that goes to the general fund so there's really some accounting that we could be paying closer attention to for greater efficiency thank you and that is the last hand that is raised the one the third one was put down so back to you Mr Mayor thank you very much and that closes public comment for the evening I'd like to bring it back to the council and and ask the council member for their report and start with council member barnacle thank you Mr Mayor um I have not had any liaison um meetings since we last met I do want to commend everybody who helped make the butter and eggs Day Parade a success I had a great time I know a lot of other people did too um I want to acknowledge that um of all the um public officials including our police chief and our fire chief our mayor our supervisor I was the one who won the cow trip contest and also
want to say happy May Day to all the people out in the labor movement thank you thank you very much council member Janice Cader Thompson thank you I the Planning Commission we had a meeting last week and it was the item was about vacation well it's a vacation resolution so there was a um an Alleyway and I guess in 79 um six of the homes opted out of being part of the alley and so six more this year decided that they wanted to be opted out but I decided to vote no on it because I felt as though the city should have really gone to the other six homeowners that still have now access to the alley that they should have all bought into this and so it would have all been done at one one time instead of bringing it back and now how many more years later we're going to bring it back again I think it was a little bit inefficient but that'll be coming to the council for final approval the other thing is on Saturday they had the chess tables on Water Street were dedicated um I played uh three games with my grandson two games with somebody else and I lost all three but I did not lose in five moves so I thought that was a success um I was before I came to this meeting I was at Petaluma Valley Hospital we were I was out with the nurses um and other staff members just protesting that our birthing center is closed as of today actually was Friday and there's real concern that the ER is going to be next on The Chopping Block um you know it's a 42 mile radius that we do not have OB in our
community and that is really unacceptable and I'm very disappointed with Providence or whatever they're called now and it's a real um it's it's really negative for a community of our size not to have OB and now be concerned that the ER might be closing and what we don't know really what's going to happen with the entire Hospital so that was disappointing and it was cold outside but I was very happy to be there supporting staff and the other thing is um last week I was at a meeting actually staff met with people from the mobile home park and it was a really good conversation I felt as though I learned a lot I just kind of sat in the corner and listened they brought up a lot of good concerns and a lot of good information for City staff to hear before we open up the mobile home park ordinance for changes that are needed and I would the Adobe Creek neighborhood they've been sending letters to us concerned about the battery storage facilities out on Adobe Road and Freitas Road and it's not just one but it's actually two facilities I don't really know enough about the facilities to know what direction I would go I don't feel as though the Neighbors in the Adobe Creek are quite concerned and I think it would be good for all of us to educate ourselves or get educated on what this really means with these battery storage facilities it's part of the county so we don't really have a lot to say but it does interface with residents in our community um I guess that's all I have to say thank
you for bringing up the PVH situation all right I understand that more babies were born at the Petaluma Providence facility than at their Santa Rosa facility it's just um unfathomable about what's going on council member now thank you mayor um since our last City councilmania along with Mr bear I attended the coffee with the Chiefs which was very insightful and it was an open communication by the fire and police chief to the audience on how safety is their number one priority and how they can make it better and it was really um nice to see how well the fire and police are working together and then on Saturday afternoon this past weekend um my neighbor's house was on fire both the fire and police were there within minutes along with Rancho Adobe and Sonoma fire and they were quickly responding to the residents needs securing the street area and fighting a stubborn structure fire which had a lot of fire material within the home and garage and attic space and I can't thank all the safety in the city employees who were all there working together to keep my neighborhood safe the Red Cross that was taking care of the residents and I'd like to also remind everybody to check on your smoke detectors check on your elderly red neighbors make sure their smoke detectors are working my neighbors had removed their smoke detectors because they were chirping and had not put them back up on the wall and so I I felt really bad that I wasn't there for my neighbors but you can't invade their
privacy um and also to the neighbor that was passing by and noticed the smoke and alerted to the residents to wake up because they were actually napping in the afternoon and it could have been fatal but everybody got out safely um the Park and Recreation meeting on April the 19th the staff presented the operational overview recommendations for prioritized Investments hence the budget for 2023 2024 for Parks projects and facilities and I think one of our Zoom callers said that the parks department deserves more in their budget and they deserve a huge thanks for providing so much on their already limited budget for parks and Facilities um the staff also presented an update on the Kenilworth revitalization project this is a huge project with lots of public involvement and the final design and permitting construction is set for 2024 and today the um trees that were decaying and dying in the park were removed so it was a huge all day procedure to remove those trees safely out of the park in Kenilworth between the park and the library and the Kenmore Center and then thank you to all that made the butter and eggs stay an antique Fair a huge success and to council member Gator Thompson I had to explain to my daughter-in-law that she would not be having her baby at Petaluma Valley in August and why that was something I had no control over but I'm very sorry to see my seventh grandchild not born at Petaluma Valley Hospital and I wish there were something more we could do but support
the staff councilmember posake thank you sir um Continuum of Care has been having a massive number of meetings recently in relation to funding decisions for many of our County homeless providers I think we're doing uh the best we can or the circumstances it kind of I think hit us by surprise because in the year and a half I've been on that Continuum we we we were interested in the funding decisions but a lot of the money streams were being continued as they were before covid as covid continued so uh we're getting some some different uh things come up now and and the one that I'm most bothered by is our recusal policy which leads to a quarter to a third of the Continuum making most of these decisions when that small group is as biased as the rest of us because it's the way the world has changed so I'm doing some research in that regard as regards to the youth Commission um there is continued reimagining of the youth commission and talk about uh you know how we can how we can better engage both the youth and the adults on that commission uh I I also ran into uh council member uh Cader Thompson at the hospital this afternoon and I just would add that our met our entire medical system is in chaos and in that regard I'm attending a county-wide all-day meeting tomorrow uh up in Santa Rosa about mental health but uh we're clearly in chaos we uh we may need to consider at this Council even for what it's worth if it can help us in any way to declare a medical uh Health Care Emergency
in in the town in the county thank you thank you council member strips okay thank you first I'd like to support uh councilman Decatur Thompson on our comment about lithium batteries I have talked to the actual um developer and just on one thing but turns out he is going to be the developer of one of those projects and then I've talked to a couple other folks and done a little research on that and then there's a lot of information and we need to be transparent there's some safety issues and Hazards but I think they can be overcome but we need to really get in front of that for our community because there is a lot of people and a lot of information currently being circulated by the citizens on this matter and I've also recommended that we may not only city council but also the um take a look at this issue but also have the um the climate commission also I've also recommended they take a look at this particular issue so that we know what we're what we're getting into here um anyways the other things I've got pretty active the last few weeks there is two groups of Educators that are worked to teach Environmental Education particularly about climate change and found out that there is now a universe a UC course like inaturalist but it's going to be the climate stewards now so there's uh so the UC system is going to be offering a class where you can take it and then become a spokesman for climate change um so that's that's just coming on this year so you can start applying to that
all right spin the butter eggs to pray it was great I had so much fun walking with the uh the council members and staff up in the front I went back to the back end and rode my bike with another safe Safe Streets group was even more fun uh back the back of the group but there was over 170 applicants um participants um going through and that's a huge number of people that participate in locally in our parade so thank you for the public for participating and thank you for everyone that showed up making that a wonderful event um and for the folks that actually organized it they do a bang-up job on it I think it's our Visitor Center that does most of that organizational work and they needed some a lot of credit for that um did participate also several council members showed up at The Haven at the groundbreaking which is a new apartment complex market rate going in I did talk to um one of their marketers and they yes they talked about a water wonderful Town Petaluma is but I said you know as wonderful as we are we need to also get you guys engaged so I suggested to the marketers they really need to get those folks involved in in the town and get engagement and maybe we can coordinate with the city and do do a volunteerism activism and engagement website so that everyone can use it and so that they're new are new but folks that come to town uh will get involved immediately in in town activities maybe in Creek Stewart's next door um there was a Earth Day just happened and so uh there
was I participated in three events for Earth Day particularly with tree planting also Arbor Day uh so I planted trees at two different schools and also in uh McNair Park we had the tree committee came out and um did some uh planet we with the staff and some other folks from the community came out and we planted Three Trees over there at McNair chess tables also there um I played a few games and uh I actually won one which was I thought after 50 years of not playing I thought I was pretty good but I lost two easily then I also went over the transhuman festival and uh run by the friends of the Panama River and all sorts of things I was able to buy locally made yarn from one of our local sheep herders everything it was really nice to see the learn all about cheap herding and how to make yarn um there was a um other moving on to North Bay Water reuse Authority which was just last week and two things came up there is a agricultural sustainability and drought plan that has now been put in place it was started by the UC extension service through Novato covering both Sonoma and Marin counties for for sustainability during drought with lots of ideas in there and turns out we're as a city connecting with our Watershed connecting with our agriculture Community we actually have done we're doing pretty good here locally um so actually in in their in this plan actually Petaluma city was thanked for the water that we were able to provide for a lot of the ranchers because we used our
groundwater and provided wind Trucking to a lot of the ranchers uh to so they could have their um uh livestock survive the drought and so we we got a really nice uh thank you in in there in this in this plan for sustainability and that we need to do more of things like that another one there was that we are providing um reused water recycled water up to our Vineyards um and there's a whole plan there we need to use more of recycled water for agriculture as well uh because they're they're under stress just as much as the city is under under drought so coordinating uh working with with agricultural The Watershed as well as our city uh needs to be in our plants not just thinking about the city because our our city water our recycled water and our groundwater could also be used in in those agricultural settings and there is plans in place that they're taking uh just like we are taking in our general plan for to go and green and saving water and saving energy there's carbon farming in there healthy soils in their water reuse reduction methods capture and storage all being promoted by the University Systems and locally here through our AG agencies it was over 19 agencies involved in this plan so that's moving forward um so that was one of the topics that came at one of the reports the major topic of the day though was sea level rise turns out our water treatment plants are all pretty much really close to sea level All Around The Bay that's where they're normally located and so
they're at most probably 10 feet above sea level right now for a lot of these plants and so there's uh concerns for for the and I'd say the not the near future but the almost near future so we need to start acting now so there's lots of plans to compensate for that and was brought up that the sfei is actually looking at our particularly water treatment plant and looking at creating some sort of a eco-tone embankment system uh so anyway that's just so make sure everyone is aware that San Francisco Estuary Institute has brought that forth as proposed that as an idea that may be moving forward another idea that I found out that San Francisco Astoria Institute also came up with a different meeting was that the um the Adobe Creek um for sedimentation management maybe we may want to turn almond Marsh at least half of it we're into a Delta area so that the sediments are actually brought in and captured and turned that more into a um a special water management sediment management and wetlands management area that way so there's another proposal that I heard from sfei scientists so just something to be aware of that coming down the line that we may look at and because it will affect us directly right there then moving on to the uh this morning um councilman Healy usually goes and is the chair of that meeting but he was absent today so I filled in so a report from this morning's meeting there is good Waters capacity we're over 100 and all of our water storage facilities right now and
we're even spilling water out for us protections and managing all that there's plans being put in place there's a huge effort by many of the engineers and planning for mitigation for water it's all moving forward there is a report that we used less than 25 of the water being used now or this less now than what we used in 2013 so 10 years basically we're using 25 Water now that we did 10 years ago across the county and most of the cities are plus or minus a little bit of that and we're very close to that here in Petaluma so um we're doing a really good job of conserving water and getting better at it there is an Eco Garden Tour on May 13th coming up on the Saturday the the 13th and we have several locations here in Petaluma that's all part of that the Sonoma County guard Eco Garden Tour but you have to register to find the exact locations there's places you can go get compost and and lots of other activities engaged with that uh we have a proactive water plan uh that has worked well that we were active and going forth we're now the Sonoma County has promoted at the state level as being exemplary in our water management and heading with water plants and so I was reminded that we were received and sort of like uh as a nice gesture and gift and that we have such good plans that we've received over 40 million dollars of Grants from California state for water conservation efforts here in the county um and there's a mitigation plan for hazards that is coming up let's go to that
sheet that's this one nope there's lots of lots of extractions going on there we go okay in the mitigations um mitigation plan is is being developed and it's for flood fire Landscapes earthquake sewage collection and the pipes and and flow rates so it's all being worked on for um in petaluma's water there's two or three water pipes and coming down to us that they're this part of the mitigation plan and looking at earthquakes flood and fire of concern so so they're looking at our water supply directly so that's a good thing there is another big topic that came up was the Russian River water form which is a new group that's being formed with a big Federal grant right now it's a multi-county Association um it's been the motivation behind forming this group was Potter Valley Project and the Water Source that's coming there um because the water the the substation the dam is pretty well all closing down no more electricity is being produced however the water's still flowing gently it's going to stop which means the water supply slows down but to compensate for that um we're going to form a larger not just for Sonoma County but Mendocino and Lake counties will be engaged with this and trying to create a an organization that will Overlook and oversee not a regulatory but just an Advisory Group basically a stakeholder group um that's get together which is going to include Indian tribes as well as governments um and so we'll work on that and that that's what's coming it'll be a brown
act body so that's something to look forward to and their first planning meeting is coming up on the 17th turns out Petaluma will have a alternate seat on this forum but it turns out because Mike Healey is also the chair of this he will be um we voted him in as being of having a seat on this forum so we will have some participation in what's going forward on this very large Regional Russian River water form okay other things um and there is a new radar system that's going to come online for detecting atmospheric Rivers as they come in so we'll have better detection ability knowing when the water is coming and be able to take action for our flood management when they do arrive okay that's up those okay okay and last uh say one more uh committed me I was at the climate action committee uh for the liaison and they have three things they wanted to present to the city council one is they they voted on artificial turf they looked at some of the research and some of the hazards along with it and they they're kind of recommending that we look at artificial turf as the proposals the ones that new ones that are coming in and maybe converting that to to a natural system so so they've asked the city council to take a closer look at that issue and see if we can do something about that at this time since we have are in the process of actually getting an artificial turf applied to the field um then another one was we there was some policies from uh relief Petaluma and Urban Chat both sent
in letters with uh with Petaluma relief it was green policies that applied with General plan and also Urban Chat sent in recommendations again looking at things for like what we do with the general plan and so they would like us just to um submit get that submitted to to the city council all these ideas I think I've seen all those ideas already in the general plan when I was participating there um but just as a reminder that that there is a large support in the community from groups from these groups for for green policy and looking at our general transportation and housing and other issues 15-minute communities and the like so that was they would like to see a little bit more support for that down the road and just if we keep the general plan moving forward that would be great so that's that's my reports the meetings I've been to thank you and um I'm glad there's so many things have been mentioned uh already but I just want to add for the chest table ceremony the uh the one of the key objectives there is to activate Water Street and bring people in there and it was nice to see certain groups tabling there the act of Transportation uh fans Safe Streets Petaluma and then also the uh Trestle Advocates private private team that wants to get the Trestle built they're all tabling and that was a great opportunity um and as mentioned also the Deer Creek Apartments and I think one of the things we notice is they'll have an impact on your access to the dog park there on Rainier be
advised but I attended the ran board meeting today the remote area network which is a sheriff's office coordination with uh um all police jurisdictions throughout the county for all their coordinated communication efforts and approve the budget for the coming year which is always an achievement I attended a library board meeting on that Advisory Board and many local events the library's a gem in our community and their key question of the city was is the library refresh project still on schedule and I uh I hope our budget discussions uh will answer that over the next two weeks um let's see um and I just want to congratulate uh some of our Council people for the county Mayors Association uh appointed Janice care Thompson to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Alternate right or a bag and also uh John schribs and myself added to the open space board so those were good appointments at at that meeting and um uh lastly cots had a big fundraiser this week and I only bring that up because it's such an imperative problem in our community to solve that uh I hope everyone is in support of that and I'm looking forward to our conversation on on that uh effort uh tonight and with that I'd like to pass it over for the city managers report thank you mayor and good evening city council Brian Cochran assistant city manager sitting in for Peggy tonight just one quick note now that it is the month of May we have opened our annual recruitment for our committees commissions and boards
so we are looking to welcome a diverse range of experience to those committees commissions on boards and encourage anybody in our community to apply applications are available on the city's website and are due 5 PM Wednesday May 31st and then appointments will be made by the city council in June for terms to begin July 1st additional information can be found on the city's website at cityofpetaluma.org ccbs city of petaluma.org ccbs so thank you great and thank you very much moving to our consent calendar here does anyone have any questions or particularly on this before we move it to public comment great let's open public comment on the consent calendar I do not have any cards in-house and do we have any submitted early yes mayor we received one public comment related to item 10 on the consent calendar which is posted online with the agenda packet wonderful thank you and let's bring it to the moderator for our Zoom audience thank you mayor at this time members of the public wishing to speak on consent calendar items only please raise your hand and zoom or press star 9 and participating by phone members of public in the council chambers if you haven't brought a card up please do so now just as a reminder um please be respectful threats of violence and anxiety or grounds for removal from this meeting and um this meeting is being translated so please take your time and pause after each sentence that our translators can keep up members of the public will be muted after their time
expires or when their comments have concluded and at this time we have one hand raised in the virtual audience and thank you and we have one in-house so three minutes will be our timer tonight and I'd like to invite Steve arago to speak first Mr Mayor members of the council my name is Steve Rago I live at 1140 Daniel drive and I'm here to speak on item number 10 tonight Otto's Meadows Park uh that Park I first moved in that neighborhood in 1989 and the park was substandard then it's been 34 years since then and it hasn't gotten any better there's less trees than there were when it was first planted the play equipment is Rusted and these needs some severe replacement and so as a neighbor I'm very happy to see that this project is before you tonight for consideration of replacing that material and uh because it's in it's big it's sorely needed and I also want to make a comment that I really want to pick kudos to park staff for being able to extend the budget because when we first heard there was probably about ninety thousand dollars to measure M money uh you know we got excited you know the neighbors got excited it's got something's going to happen here but quickly being an Xbox and Rec commissioner here in town I realized that that money goes a long ways and has to be addressed to a lot of needs throughout the town for many Park projects and so um you know we may have had some real Taj Mahal ideas but uh any needed improvements are really welcomed in this neighborhood and so
you know my hat's off to staff because they were able to find other ways to get more than just park replacement equipment they were able to get a park shade structure and some picnic tables and I'm hoping really Petaluma will plant some trees in the park and my only comment or question would be to council if there's any money in the next two or three years if you could find it in your budgets to add a couple Parks or park benches to the park that would be wonderful because the only thing that they have there is the concrete wall that's around the play structure and that's not sub that's not standard park bench material so if you can find that that'd be great I also want to pay kudos to the fella who does the maintenance at that Park he does it very well he's very cordial always talks to me whenever I go by and talk to them about what he's doing and he's very diligent about all the tasks City do so I'm here really just to support the effort to replace those structures you know because it really needs it and the neighborhood will be very happy to if you can find it in your powers to support that effort so thank you very much thank you and to our Zoom audience thank you mayor uh the hand raised is Taran obaid Taran you may unmute and begin your comments my comment is Also regarding number 10 um uh Anna's metis Park um I just really want to commend um the robust discussion at The Parks Commission meeting where um the original idea was to put in um rubber um rubber surface
underneath the playground and the park Commissioners really engaged and pursued a cost-benefit analysis and it turns out that we saved um over um seventy thousand dollars by switching out the rubber with natural wood chips at decreased maintenance cost annual maintenance costs so I really point to that as a really representing the kind of gains that we get when we take a total cost view of projects Beyond Financial cost imagine how much uh more tactilely pleasant and less carcinogenic actually it's going to be for the kids playing on a play structure that has a natural surface underneath it I would really like to encourage that in the future we further our thinking and instead of swapping out the current playground which is really in need of a replacement which is orange plastic structure instead of replacing that with the one that they're going to replace sit with which is a lime green plastic structure we really push for some Innovations such as the playgrounds that I've gone to that have been designed by Northwest playground which is NW for Northwest playground.com go and look at the kinds of uh natural wood playgrounds there that provide a unique tactile and sensory experiences for kids and as a richer play experience for kids that's what I would love to see for our children to inspire more imagination to feel more connecting with natural things like trees and um I just think an and Northwest play structures actually connects cities with grants so it looks very cost
affordable to me I just really want to thank that we've moved away from the forever chemicals and the carcinogenic rubber for this Park thank you very much for that this is a real good Milestone something really to be proud of and very happy about it and if we can please extend it for the play structures thank you if your comments thank you for your comments Taryn our next hand raised is asiah Gonzalez Messiah you may unmute and begin your comments hey everyone um I just wanted to take a moment to Echo um everything of the last commenter um as you can hear my four-year-old um caring for a two and four-year-old and currently cleaning their room but I want to say thank you to that person for having the time and the hindsight about the materials because while being in knee deep in caring for the children I don't have the time I don't have the energy to look into those so to know that there's someone years Beyond me um and who has raised children and and who has given thought to this I just want to say thank you thank you so much for your thoughtfulness thank you for for making sure that we we take into consideration where we're letting our kids play and what we're letting them play on thank you thank you for those comments we have another hand raise it's Veronica oh Veronica you may unmute and begin your comments good evening Council and Community um I just wanted to Echo taryn's comment about um reimagining our playgrounds to be climate smart playgrounds including natural
elements and to actually think of how we could also engage some of um the wonderful talent that we have in Petaluma through contests and other types of activities to get engaged on how we can reimagine our Parks not only creating trees around the playgrounds but making making natural elements part of the design to actually really look at how can how can we bring nature more into it rather than using materials such as plastic I think that would really um I know I know that there's that this has been being worked on and there's been a lot of great efforts I'm not taking away from that but just going forward to really start to think about how we're going to do our parks in a more natural way thank you thank you for that comment and that is the last hand raise so I'll turn it back to you Mr Mayor thank you I like to bring it back up to council council member barnacle just to continue on the comments for item 10.
um I appreciate staff um moving forward with that in particular adding the shade structure when that first came forward to the parks and rec commission there was just a um just a playground replacement and we had you know one of the things that over and over again we hear in all the surveys when I was on the Parks Commission I'm sure you'll see it too is um people want shade in the Parks they want seating and things like that and um it was just it's really great to see it come forward to council with a shade structure so that we make it better for the people that are watching the kids and not just the kids so thank you and with that I'll move the consent calendar thank you do we have a second councilman post okay for a second and uh may we have a roll call book Barnacle yes Cader Thompson yes now yes post okay yes shrimps yes McDonnell yes motion passes unanimously thank you very much now moving on to our public hearings and matters for consideration item 11.
Petaluma strategic action plan to end homelessness our year one progress report and presentation foreign good evening Mr mayor council members and community members thank you for the opportunity to share with you this evening the year One update on our homeless Services strategic plan we're looking forward to a presentation in having a conversation just comments in insights on our work to date presenting with you or this evening is Brian o our community development director myself we also have attending virtually we have Sarah Wolfe our housing specialist Angie Moeller who is our housing consultant and we have Andrew Henning who's been instrumental in supporting the city in the development of the homeless Services strategic plan next slide our presentation outline this evening so I'll be providing just a brief kind of background as to to why the city needed a plan and how we got there and then Andrew's going to go ahead and be presenting on the development the actions we took to develop the plan and the the plan framework then he'll be sharing the year one Milestones as well as our new data dashboard to review our accomplishments he'll turn it back over to me and I'll talk a little bit about uh our year two priorities and next steps and then we look forward to having a conversation with questions and feedbacks from the council next slide I think you can go oh um sorry Andrew um so a little bit about why the city identified the need and priority to work in partnership with our
community to provide services to the most vulnerable members of our community in order to do that we took a look at the data what was what was the need what was reflected in the community so the Housing and Urban Development otherwise referred to as HUD they require an annual point in time count in the county and what that is is it's basically a snapshot every January where people go out very early in the morning and kind of do an assessment and take a get a rough count of our unsheltered community members for county-wide the numbers came in at about 2 900 in Petaluma there was about 300 people there 300 people plus or minus while this is just a statistic you know based on client serve the Petaluma Community Health anticipates the real number is much higher based on the patient patients that they work with some of the actions we did take before we developed the full plan I did want to bring those up the city was was very forward-thinking we adopted a shelter crisis declaration in September of 2021 we got started early on our people's project people's Village project which provided 25 non-congregate shelter units and we also engaged the services of Andrew Henning who is a consultant that was really instrumental in working with that the housing team in the larger city city team and really supporting the facilitation of the framework and Community engagement to ensure that we had a good plan coming forward the plan was brought forward in June of 2020 and approved by Council some
of the key items in the area of the plan this the staff report was very robust and we also attached a report of the of a full plan for you but really high level the key areas was to create a plan that was housing focused creating securing new or existing permanent Supportive Housing units improving the city role and coordinated entry that's really the system that serves as a front door to housing in the county to get our community members housed addressing root causes and prevention of homelessness and responding to and supporting the city work moving forward so without what I'd like to do is go ahead and transition the presentation over to Andrew Henning he's going to be highlighting the plan development the structure followed by the one-year milestones and data dashboard report Andrew I'll hand it over to you hey thank you so much Karen and good evening Mr Mayor and council members it's great to be here with you this evening and um I just wanted to say up front it's been about two years that I've been working with the city and it's been a really positive experience I've really enjoyed working with staff and all the local service providers and I also want to say and this is maybe a strange thing to say as a strategic planning consultant that before I I really started working with the city of Petaluma I had a lot of skepticism about the power of strategic plans as a homeless service provider in the Bay Area for over a decade at that point I'd seen a lot of plans come and go a
lot of reports come and go and they often felt like sort of costly and time-consuming processes that didn't really change anything and I've really felt like working in Petaluma that has not been the case and the plan that the council adopted last year we've worked really diligently really hard to implement what was in that plan and I'm excited to share with you tonight uh the progress that we've made so I'll walk through this very briefly but just wanted to share a couple slides from the report itself um the first just to say about the discovery process that we went through um obviously a few standard things that I think any plan would cover looking at the data past efforts interviewing stakeholders I do want to say we really put a strong emphasis on trying to gather lived experience feedback so that's feedback from people that are currently or formally experiencing homelessness in the community that was a big part of our process that I think led to a really strong and nuanced plan and then the other thing that's not here but is in the actual full presentation is that we were sort of building the plane as we were flying it so again I started working with the city about two years ago and we really um through the process of working on Project home key on launching people's Village in partnership with cots we're really learning and investing as we were going and that further helped to inform our efforts in the community um so just a couple things I just want to highlight some of
the strengths and and some of the challenges that were present in the system as of a year ago um the first is that I really think Petaluma has this really kind of great mix of having some strong institutional knowledge and providers um you could think of um Petaluma people services or cots or the Petaluma Health Center but there's also been a strong willingness to innovate so bringing in new providers like downtown streets team watching the safe program um so I think that's a really great dynamic balance to have in a community and the other thing and again I don't always say this to all of the communities where I'm working so I really mean it when I say it but I really do feel like the city of Petaluma its leadership the council itself has really made homelessness a top priority and and the process has put Financial Resources has put staff time and is really trying to do something about this rather than maybe you know pushing this to another Community or saying that someone else's challenge to solve so I think that's a really strong strength of the the current system um some of the challenges that were present when we did the plan and still to some extent are present is that you know Petaluma is removed from the Maine County service Corridor in Santa Rosa which makes it harder for local folks to engage with some of those more transformative services that are offered through the county there's also been a historic challenge of having enough landlord engagement to help Place
housing vouchers or other resources and the other thing and I really want to emphasize this because it came through the lived experience work is that there's really been this challenge historically in terms of at times kind of uncoordinated or overlapping Outreach efforts that aren't fully connecting with people I should say that when those Outreach resources do connect with people they're very profound and they're very transformational so I really want to say for outreach partners that has historically been the case is that once people are engaged in the system it's very powerful but for a lot of people they've really struggled to get into the system into the front door and that's been a real issue for the community in terms of opportunities again there's a lot here but I think that some of the big ones are that the the county itself is really through new staff and Leadership and just kind of a new philosophy and approach have become a really positive great partner um and then I see Maria's hand it's fine enough fun to pause okay maybe I'll keep going okay um and then there's also this is the moderator if Maria's hand was raised she's probably asking you to slow down a little bit because she's translating thank you oh sure okay not a problem yeah sounds good um so in addition to the the county and the work that the County's been doing I think also just to note that there's been a lot of increased funding opportunities over the past couple years that's sort of one of the the
sad and ironic Silver Linings of uh the covet pandemic so project home key um the state encampment grant program um again basically there's been a lot of new funding opportunities to help create new programs and services for people that need help in terms of threats or sort of challenges for moving forward again I think probably the number one way that I would summarize everything that's on this slide and that's in the report itself is to basically say I think a lot of communities get into a situation where they end up with a collection of programs versus an actual integrated system of care and so a lot of I think what you see here and in a lot of communities is that again they're doing a lot of things they have a lot of programs there are a lot of maybe staff working on this but all of those different parts are not connected into an integrated um effective system and so I think that's the biggest challenge for any Community including Petaluma moving forward to address homelessness is really making sure everything is connected and effectively working together so with that background uh we landed on a fairly ambitious vision statement for petaluma's Homeless Action Plan and that plan really or that statement I should say really centered around this idea of chronic homelessness so just to say briefly chronic homelessness is long-term homelessness technically it's homelessness that's lasting more than a year and it has it's accompanied by a person having a disabling condition so
that could be a health issue it could be a mental health or substance use issue or it could be um in some cases even a traumatic brain injury or something to that effect so the goal of our plan is really to work as effectively and and urgently as we can to reach what is called functional zero chronic homelessness and we set a timeline of by the end of 2025 which yes is very ambitious and the idea with functional zero is that you're able to house every person that is currently experiencing homelessness and then the system is um Dynamic enough such that any people in the future fall into the experience of chronic homelessness or fall into that kind of long-term homelessness we can rapidly resolve that homelessness by getting people uh rehoused and so the ultimate goal again here is that you're housing all people that are chronically homeless and then creating a system moving forward that ensures homelessness becomes rare and brief and one time for anyone that might fall into that experience later on and one way that we've worked to try to conceptualize this is to basically think about um in some ways the kind of quote unquote customer Journey map or the kind of typical Arc that people go through when they experience homelessness so if you think of and and the acronym that I use before this is called Step so um if you think of s as being sort of the societal factors that might lead to someone's homelessness such as the cost of housing a job loss criminal justice policies um the
availability of health care services those are all things that might increase or decrease the likelihood that someone might fall into an episode of homelessness oftentimes homelessness is in fact um triggered by some sort of Crisis that happens maybe it's a eviction notice or a domestic violence situation or or again a Health crisis and when that happens a few different things can happen one is a lot of people actually self-resolve their own homelessness they find a way to work through their own Network or some other Pathway to actually avoid homelessness so that's always one option but the other way in looking at this blue box is is that the system itself could actually prevent people from becoming homeless so that's sort of the first line of defense if that is not effective then obviously someone ends up on the street and that's where you fall into this this e engagement bucket and that would include things like coordination and administration so so who's actually kind of project managing the process it involves Outreach so that would be social workers that are going out into the community to engage folks it also includes meeting people's basic needs so that could be things like food programs or showers or other kind of basic services and there's also emergency shelter so that's that would be a temporary place for people to stay before they actually then transition to the final step of P placement and that's your your permanent housing opportunities so this is really the
pathway that we've started to Envision that we're trying to build out in Petaluma and the plan goes into a lot more detail about how to build out and what to focus on and Karen touched on this but you can see here there were eight main strategic Focus areas Each of which had three to five action items or work streams underneath of them that we've been trying to pursue in year one and then over the the next two years as well uh and certainly happy to go into more detail about what these have in uh what they were originally proposed and then I'll talk a little bit about what's actually been done um I did want to say and we talked about this internally with the staff team that it is feeling like there is a an arc forming in terms of the implementation of this plan so year one we're really kind of starting to categorize as um setting the Baseline so what were the most pressing uh Investments that we needed to make what were the most urgent policy and program changes we need to make and then again how are we actually measuring what we're doing how are we going to look back at the end of year three and know that we've made progress and things are different than they were when we started the plan year two in that sort of theme is to give enough time and space for our new Investments to actually Blossom so right so we don't want to get into a situation where we begin to change policies and programs we begin to fund new efforts and then we get impatient and don't let those things
actually take hold and have an effect so year two is really about letting those Investments actually play out refining and and doing more of what's working and less of what isn't so we're kind of calling this year the optimized year and then year three is our chance to really evaluate so by year three we'll be able to look back at our Baseline data which we're starting to collect now and then we can see hopefully if we've moved the needle which I think hopefully we are and then we'll be able to revisit our Focus areas and pivot as needed and then plan another action cycle so a little bit about year one and what we've been able to accomplish over the last 12 months um so first to just point to the the early Investments so like I said this plan was developed as we were actually working to create some new programs and services in the community uh and so just just for a second I really want you to remember this picture for a minute because we're going to return to another another image of this uh gentleman here um but you know one of the big things that was identified in the plan and it was identifying the community even before the plan was trying to create lower barrier non-congregate shelter in the community so just to kind of clarify what that is is a lot of typical shelter programs like the Mary Isaac Center as an example are congregate shelter programs meaning that they're usually beds in a large room typically bunk beds and it's a shared space where a lot of people are
living together for some folks especially folks that have been experiencing long-term homelessness and again this was something that came up in our uh lived experience work for the plan those settings are just not a place where folks want to be and there's a lot of reasons why why that that might be the case um so I'll just kind of leave it high level for now to say that uh and so a big priority was to try to create more non-congregate shelter space meaning people have their own rooms their own space you can see here the people's Village program that's exactly what we did when we launched that program last year and I think the really exciting thing about this is that not only did it lower the barriers historically to shelter it really encouraged folks for example folks that were living in encampments or other areas that come inside when maybe they were not open to that in the past and I think that was a really important way to engage folks that have been experiencing the longest episodes of homelessness in the community and work uh work towards housing um the next step and actually I my understanding is that move-ins begin tomorrow for this program but um the city team in partnership with cots and Burbank housing and and using the the project home key funding that I mentioned earlier um the city was able to leverage almost 16 million dollars in state funding to acquire a motel on the north side of town to create 60 new Supportive Housing units so the idea here is that again
this is really the the data-driven best practice for supporting people that have been outside for a long time uh people that are experiencing chronic homelessness and so again what we were seeing in the data and our lived experience work and what we're hearing from providers is that we need more facilities like this so that we can house folks who have been homeless for for a very long time in our community and what's really exciting about this and I'll talk about this in a little bit with the data is that based on the number of folks specifically from Petaluma that are going to be moving into this facility by the end of this month we could see roughly a 15 reduction in in our by name list of folks that are experiencing chronic homelessness in Petaluma really showing that connection between when you create housing it really becomes a Gateway for folks ending their homelessness the other big thing that we have done and I think Karen's going to tell you a little bit more about this um during her her next section but um again this whole focus on really trying to make the most pressing Investments that we identified in the plan the two big ones were trying to have more capacity around landlord Recruitment and then also moving to what we're calling caseload-based Outreach um so again kind of I'll show you more of the the graphics around this in a little bit but um over the past three quarters we're consistently seeing about 120 to 125 people that are experiencing chronic
homelessness in Petaluma and a lot of those folks are you know inside of people's Village which is great A hundred percent of the people that we've been referring to people's Village have been chronically homeless in Petaluma but there are a lot of people that remain unsheltered and while existing Outreach has been able to engage some folks what we're really trying to move towards is a system of accountability where all of those folks in the community have someone who is is is working with them directly is building a relationship and is moving them towards coordinated entry and those county-wide housing placements that are so critical um to actually ending homelessness so this is a really exciting effort that we started earlier this year and is moving forward to actually being a real live program in the community thanks to a new partner organization home first um the other thing I would say also because this was a big part of the plan is that um you might have heard this term sub-regionalization but basically the work that we're doing in Petaluma around having this by name list of people that are experiencing chronic homelessness bringing our partner providers together around that list to case conference and work on housing placements that is becoming a county-wide approach so rather than thinking of this as being you know Petaluma is its own Island doing its own thing the exact opposite is true we're basically trying to create a model where every kind of sub-region
throughout the county has their own by name list they're bringing Partners together to work on on trying to develop housing plans for people that are chronically homeless and then all of that is feeding into the county-wide coordinated entry system so Petaluma has been an early adopter of this we've been helping to try to advocate for this model at the county level at the COC level and so I think there's going to be more coming around this in the coming months and years but this is a really exciting way to I think have better care coordination for the most vulnerable people through throughout the entire County um so again thinking about our step model to really sort of bring this together into an integrated framework you can see here that um through this sort of prevention diversion work um we're we're including this in in the new Outreach Services the city's housing team through uh through Karen's leadership and bringing on a team of new staff and and Consulting support is really helping to um coordinate a lot of these efforts we're going to be expanding our our capacity around Outreach we also I should say launched the mobile shower program thanks to the downtown streets team providing yet another opportunity for Hygiene services for folks and in other entry point to to get access to care we launch people's Village and then of course there was the home key project and the new landlord recruitment services that are coming so you can really see we've made Investments
throughout the pathway to housing and again this can feel sort of um conceptual at times so I just want to go full circle and share the picture again and I use really wouldn't share something like this but it was a public story in The Argus so I feel like he's okay sharing this but you know this was a gentleman who had previously been experiencing homelessness and um at steamer Landing which was a large encampment in the community went into people's Village and then it's now moved on to permanent Supportive Housing and I think again just a Picture Tells a thousand words or pictures worth a thousand words and just to see this is is really powerful and I think speaks to the power of what we're trying to do with this new approach so the next kind of Step of year one is just again making sure that we know that we're actually having an impact in measuring it so we just wanted to show you tonight this is a dashboard or a prototype of a data dashboard we're working on moving into the next year hopefully this will be something that we'll be able to share with the community on a ideally quarterly basis with data also the data I'm about to show you is only coming from the by name list but there's a lot of other data that the city team is tracking around contract performance around the point in time count like Karen mentioned earlier and then also metrics around Housing Development and things of that nature but looking specifically at The Binding list and what we're able to learn from
that the first is just again that number that I referenced earlier so what we've fairly consistently seen over the past three quarters and these quarters are from when the plans started so they're from July 1 of last year so everything three months we're trying to take a snapshot of the of the the need or the numbers in the community so you can see with the exception of quarter two where there was a bit of a large uptick because of more engagement at Cedar Grove which was another large encampment in the community we've been consistently seeing about 125 people that are chronically homeless in the community so that's kind of our Baseline number that we're working on and again this is pre people moving into Studios at Montero which is the home key project in terms of shelter we're consistently seeing that about 30 percent or at least that we saw in quarters one and two about 30 percent of people on that list were sheltered um in quarter three there was a big jump uh to almost 50 percent of people on the list were sheltered and I think what's really driving this looking at this is and again a lot of um credit should go to the the team at cots is trying to work on not only the work that they've done with people's Village but also trying to work at making sure that people feel welcome and uh that Mary Isaacs is also that kind of low barrier welcoming environment that are gonna that's gonna draw people in that have been experiencing long-term chronic homelessness so a lot of this
increase in the shelter rate is primarily driven by Investments and program changes at cots that have been has been helping to draw more people in so I think that's a really positive early Trend already in this first year the other thing we wanted to share and the colors here aren't great so I apologize for that but basically we've been trying to track exits on a quarterly basis so what's interesting is that um over the first three quarters of the plan about half of the exits from the list have been because of exits to housing so that's really positive obviously we want that number to be close to 100 what is interesting though is that for about a another quarter of of people um they just become inactive so it's hard to say what exactly happened I think it speaks to that self-resolution Dynamic that I mentioned earlier where people just find a way to find another Housing Opportunity for themselves and that sometimes happens the other thing is that sometimes we also know that some people move to different communities so so there are some folks that kind of go between Petaluma and Santa Rosa for example and so that that can happen or sometimes again people relocate out of the the county entirely reconnect with family so if we know someone has relocated we've also documented that so about half of our exits are because of housing another half are because people either became inactive or we know that they relocated and of course when we're talking about chronic homelessness I don't
want to move over this but but these really are the most vulnerable people in our community and in Quarter Two we had four people pass away um and again most of the time this is because of long-term homelessness um that's often exacerbated uh chronic health issues or conditions and things of that nature so um I really don't want to gloss over that even that's a small number it's it's extremely tragic and I think what we're trying to prevent um the other Dynamic here and this is really Around The Binding list management is is to really think about this process as we're trying to move people down a um a Continuum of Engagement so to speak so if you think of these kind of five steps of being you know we don't have any engagement with someone meaning there's no relationship they're not really using Services they're only identified um that's the first step The Next Step would be that we're actually beginning to build a relationship so Outreach is working with someone or maybe they're coming to use the mobile shower program or they've joined the streets team program but they're beginning to engage in Services the green bucket is then that they've actually been fully assessed into the coordinated entry system so again like Karen said that's the the county-wide Gateway into permanent housing yellow would mean that through coordinated entry that person has received a Housing Resource that could be a voucher it could be a referral to a housing program like again Studios at Montero and
then the final step would be that that person is permanently housed so so where we are as of quarter three when we started tracking this metric is that about half of the people on the list are simply either identified or there's only initial engagement happening so that's really where we see Investments around Outreach having a bigger impact and to to really show you and again I can come back and show you these in more detail but um I think what's really important here and we've been sort of stuck here and I think this is where again the Investments around outreach are so critical is that about only half of people on the by name list are in the coordinated entry system so that means that of those 125 or so people about half of those those people are not eligible yet for County Housing referrals because they haven't been fully assessed and put into the system and and again if if someone's been chronically homeless and outside for a long time part of that is you we just need to work to build a relationship with that person and engage them and rebuild their trust in the system so that is is really why it's important to have this this caseload-based very focused proactive work to help people get back into housing and and the final thing to note here is of all the people that have been assessed for coordinated entry we're finding that as you can see here the overwhelming majority need permanent Supportive Housing so again that's the most intensive level of housing intervention
where people would have ongoing housing assistance and then also ongoing Supportive Services so for the people again that have been assessed on our list that's really what they need and it's really why our plan has called for a large investment in support of housing so with that I'm going to kick it back to Karen to talk to you a little bit more about now that you've heard about how year one has been going where we're starting to see things moving into year two so I'll turn it back to you Karen great thank you Andrew that was a very informative presentation and if all those slides weren't included in our staff report we'll make sure that the presentation is available for those that want to take another look at the data I know it's a lot to to take in all at once um so really this next area Andrew if you want to kick to the next slide here is we have accomplished and done a lot of great work but we also realize there's remaining Focus areas that we need to work on in this plan one of it is we're really working on kind of finalizing um you know our procedures for the by names list management there's been a lot of Partners at the table over the last year um Andrew was working on really kind of creating the formal policies and procedures for that so if there are changes with staff with different agency or Community Partners we're going to have kind of a standard practice in order to follow that we're also in that we're looking at um you know we did an RFP um and with that case
management Outreach you know focused Outreach we'll be linking that directly with the by names list and so we're excited to have home first be coming to the table as an additional resource to support us in that to implement those best practices really focusing on the service and system alignment not only just with the city but our county-wide efforts we're continuing to work on our permanent Supportive Housing units I think when we drafted this plan in accepted it we had a goal of 200 permanent Supportive Housing units I just recently did account today and currently um based on projects that are in construction and in the pipeline we have we will have about 145 permanent Supportive Housing units coming online big part of that is the Montero project we also recently pep just opened their River City and they have some permanent Supportive Housing units there but it's really become a best practice to work with our development Partners to make sure that those units are integrated in with our other developments so the Danko project the new Washington Commons the Burbank project it's really just become a part of the way we do business in order to make sure that we have diverse units throughout the community but also integrated in with our new developments um another area is really empowering Our Community Partners to Pilot new programs again the idea of bringing in you know her home first who is new to Petaluma but not new within the county of Sonoma they provide services in other
jurisdictions so it's great they have existing relationships but really bringing in a service provider that's going to be able you know Andrew used the word that Integrated Systems and how we work together but be working directly with cots Petaluma people Services downtown streets team to really ensure that we're we're integrating in increasing the number of rental units that are available also considering other housing types so they'll be you know in piloting new programs changing the way we're doing our street Outreach really integrated in more of a case management approach before we've been going out checking with you know folks in different locations but this will be there'll be a caseload it'll be really really focused to make sure that we're you know getting them connected with the services they need get them entered into coordinated entry and on that pathway to housing one of the other areas that were brought up is kind of thinking about that pandemic era emergency rental assistance Elise with ppsc has been great she's been involved in administering a lot of rental assistance programs throughout the county that funding is is not going to be around much longer and we really need to think about what is going to be that impact with um specifically she's brought it up with our concern for our seniors and our extremely low income households the rental assistance can vary in amounts but it can make the difference between someone putting food on the table or purchasing their
medications so that's kind of on our radar and also ensuring the city has a continue the capacity to continue supporting our programs we're off to a new start the city's brought in bryno to lead Our Community Development Department but really housing building and planning divisions working closely together all in alignment with our Community Partners and while I didn't list it I wanted to bring up kind of integrating mental Wellness into the programs that we're doing we have a lot of very talented um case managers and Community Partners out there but we really need those licensed professionals to be working side by side with our Outreach teams but also be working in our current shelters so providing Services working in partnership with cots at the Mary Isaac Center and people's people's Village that's where we're really going to start getting those you know additional services that are needing the idea would be is to link those additional services with ppsc because they have the safe team and the safe team is already very well integrated into the County behavioral system so again continuing to integrate our services not just Citywide but also regionally and county-wide next slide so while we did identify you know quite a few things when we created the plan there's you know it the community continues to change so year one a lot of time invested in learning and improving communication but we also identified clear areas that we still had gaps in our services why we've we've done
an okay job at responding to extreme weather events um you know cots is doing a great job in in stepping up for extreme cold extreme hot and wet weather but we really need to work on that system and make sure it's strong and that it can be implemented and that we you know have the resources we need um another area is Target prevention resources for senior again we had a great stakeholder meeting with the residents from our mobile home parks they brought a lot of concerns um up to our attention you know funding for you know rent increases funding for meals funding for medications um so so that's on our radar we need to really be be taking that into consideration um I think the other area is really continuing to diversify funding so our team is continuing to work on that but we know it's always going to be an area we're going to need be um have to have to be paying attention to um I there's another note in there just effectively onboarding new providers and partners so there was a lot of discussion um when when we talked about kind of our Pathway to housing what are the strengths of our different organizations um and where we're maybe their gaps and services but through those really honest conversations we were able to think about well are there other organizations that if we do bring in a new partner how do we make sure that they're successful and that they're integrated in with the work that we're doing so staff will be moving forward with having an off-site with all of our
Community Partners on May 12th to really talk about what is that integrated system look like what are those you know what are the scope so proposed scopes of work is going to be for the next the next coming program year how do we work stronger together versus being more competitive in in duplicating services so next slide so I've touched on a little bit of this already this evening but really our next our next steps are you know this evening we're presenting to you our first year accomplishments in in what we're going to be focused on for um year two really that optimizing our second year strengthening the Partnerships and refining those scopes of work another area is is that we're planning on there's been a lot of um exploit options for proactive Community engagement a lot of amazing community members that want to support the organizations or the individuals that are currently unsheltered so we did have an initial meeting with Lou apologize I can't remember his last name who heads up the Petaluma community relations Council we had an initial kickoff meeting with him he's going to be coming back probably to the staff team with just kind of some ideas for maybe a framework and some ways to to um to open that up kind of identifying a plan for engagement in the way that community members can support our service providers and clients and moving the work together so it's really kind of a community um Community teams working together I talked already talked a little bit about
diversifying the The Leverage I just want to acknowledge that Angie Mohler is a key part of our team She's Been instrumental in helping us with strategies and pursuing funding applications just just want to say without her we probably wouldn't be getting the funding we are because she's really amazing and talented so um let's see the other item is is that after we have those scopes of work identified we will be coming back to city council um probably mid-june so you'll be able to take a look at the scope of works for the different service agencies and you'll also really be able to see how staff and the community partners partners have worked together to integrate those services next slide um here I just the work we do is not easy but I felt it was important to kind of show what the work stream looked like when we first started doing our um stakeholder meetings back in um in early 2022 so if you take a look at it that's what our first kind of run at the pathway to housing look like and then Andrew next slide and then as you see as as we work forward the work we do is challenging but we continue to refine we continue to have those conversations we continue to think about all the different agencies we work with what are their strengths what what what's the strength in their wheelhouse and where can they best support all the other all the agencies so next slide with that I just I just want to say thank you I I really get the opportunity to um you know present on all the great
work um but it really takes an entire community so it's a true collaboration of service agencies um the city council the city team it's not just housing it's planning legal PD fire Public Works we all really work as a team to Rally together um just to call out a few of the the city departments if I didn't name them all but also the County Housing staff are philanthropic agencies that have provided you know funding our community volunteers our health health care providers they're all essential in working together to to bring this forward and last slide and with that I just want to acknowledge we have quite a few of Our Community Partners we have a few here in person I think we have Elise good sport regular and we also have a hunter here from home first and then via Zoom we have obviously Andrew Henning Angie mola Mueller and Sarah Wolfe we also have Tatiana Moreland and Chris Richardson from our downtown streets team um we I think in addition to Hunter Scott being here in person we all also have Cali Vasquez from home first and we have Annie Nichols from the Petaluma Health Center and we have Chris cabal from cots so with that that's the end of our presentation we look forward to having a robust conversation to hear your thoughts comments and we have amazing Community Partners to answer questions for you thank you very much thank you great presentation um shows the scope of work that's going on right now to address this is phenomenal and I want to bring it up to the council
and council member posakay thanks I really appreciate all the work of everyone in housing here on on these uh initiatives and the fact that we're leading in so many areas for the county and I see that through the Continuum of Care I'm really happy to hear all the the discussion of the coordination of the Outreach you know I've had some concerns I must admit about um home first starting to do some Outreach and cots continue to do Outreach and then our new uh application for outreach funding through the uh the Continuum of Care and and measure oh but it sounds like you're addressing that I wonder if you give any if there are any more details you can give us about that coordination of Outreach perhaps that quite sure what I want anything you can give just in regard to the the collaboration between the different agencies that will be involved in it yes really it it all comes together around every Monday we have what we call our by names list meeting and that's where all those teams are going to be working we we recognize that with our different community members you know we have a lot of different styles and personalities and so really we work as a team and it's what works best for the client and so if if someone has an established relationship with a certain agency they're probably going to continue to work with them as a lead agency so it really really it's that by names list team meeting what would be home first and doing the Outreach and case management there would be an
actual care plan developed for all those community members and then the other partner agencies would be supporting and moving forward with that care plan but there'd be one care plan do you see the funding as this happens that some of the funding those still stays with cots and some say stays for the city or or does it get lumped together in future funding applications do you have any ideas about that are you talking about this upcoming program year or just for like Grant proposals uh pretty much Grant proposals because we see a lot of the grant proposals we see from the continue at the Continuum of Care are kind of still coming from folks that have had Grant proposals and they're very similar except for petalumas I must say you know I think petaluma's and I want to say that the rest of the council here Petaluma is funding requests through the COC this year I felt was uh phenomenal in addressing what we've sort of asked people to do which is to move towards sub-regional Outreach and honestly and I've only been on continuing of care for a year but you know I had no hope I hadn't talked to you about this earlier on anyway and I had no hope that anyone was going to make a stat take a stab at sub-regional Outreach as you did as we did um this soon this soon I thought it was going to take another year before for someone to do that and same with it by names list I think we're leading the discussion by my name's list and uh I thank everyone involved for their efforts as you already
have I I can just make a quick comment to that so Integrated Systems it it um we also incorporate that into our funding strategies so we actually had a few meetings with Elise from ppsc Chris cabal from cots DST home first and we and we we talked about okay where are there gaps and where do we see the need for funding and who makes sense to apply for the funding so in the past it's usually just been the non-profits that would be applying so maybe ppsc would apply for you know the um the mental Wellness piece of it right and then maybe someone else would apply for outreach but what we wanted to do is really show that we work as a team in Petaluma and the other thing is is that with our partners I mean they're they're just they're really busy so if we have the opportunity to do the lift on the grant writing and to submit the proposal and to kind of lead on it knowing that the funding that the city receives like I think in our proposals maybe 10 percent was going towards the city the rest is really passed through funding for those organization it just takes one less thing off their plate for them to have to worry about so that was kind of a quick summary of our approach on that all right that's great and I hope you get adequate opportunity to advertise that approach to the rest of the county please thank you council member Cader Thompson well I feel like I've been a spectator watching this being created and so now you know I'm sitting here and I just want to thank um you know
staff and our non-profits but also the council members that supported this um before you know I was certainly on the council I mean it was I watched it and now you're seeing the results and they're very positive I'm really glad you brought up the fact that you know senior needs recognizing those but also that the safe team needs more therapists on the team because I was just looking at San Rafael and that's what they do and I think it's um would be a real benefit and so I just want to kind of think the past Council and staff and non-profits for bringing this forward and I just want to recognize them thank you council member schribs um yeah thank you for for all this work and everyone's getting together in this looks like real team effort from everyone um so that reminds me of the team my wife worked for hospice for 25 years and this and what you're doing is very similar in in care for for the the patients um that they do um because they also have the same by name approach a team gets together every week talks about everybody uh works on it figures out what needs to be done by the team so the nurse gets in there for the caretaking versus Social Work versus volunteer work people come in and do all that so that's just another model for maybe to look at um for what a package deal looks like and and how to bring together all the bits and pieces and one of the critical parts of that is they have a computer system that actually tracks the health of and it's you do all the recording
on that so I'm hoping what you didn't talk about is the actual tracking system and how you do that in the database and it's going to be probably very similar to what's used in the uh in the hospital system in the HIPAA roles that they do so I expect to take a look at those types of tracking systems and computer wise what you might be needing to to do that properly by so that all team members can have access and work on that um then um a couple questions and concerns I have um so let's go to the uh one of the concerns is that this is a good wonderful startup where we're going so the first year maybe even second year moving forward but I'm a little concerned about third year fourth year moving forward especially with the funding that might happen because I'm looking at the numbers of what we're dealing with so we've got 300 regularly the aquatically homeless basically but another report out that says there's basically 750 that end up being homeless at some point during the year and that's within one year 750 either people or families are are homeless released for a short period of time which brings me up the the next layer up is which how many are at risk of going homeless and I know the Focus right here is is really on placing folks and getting them from homelessness into housing but um but there's this much larger group we need not to forget about that might become homeless given economics at this time and which could overwhelm the system um but going from the 300 that we
okay so you're talking about 100 people out of the 300 and so um which using a lot of resources just to get the 100 taken care of so now there's 200 today and then there's another and up to the 750 tomorrow and maybe the thousand two years from now that we need to deal with so um that's like any startup is starting up you get going and everything and all of a sudden you start hitting walls so that I'm worried about hitting that wall here year two or three coming up and how to accomplish that so just a concern uh we're gonna have to work through that and maybe the expectations are really high right now where we're going and that I'm just a little concerned about raising our expectations too high for where we're going um it'd be lovely if we can get there but it's going to take even more of a battle than I've already gone through um in the um in some of the triage area and then moving up into housing as you transition from one step to the other and so uh have you been able to look at the amount of resources the time Resource as well as the money or staff Resource as a tradition from one stage to the next stage um so looking at costs I'm not sure if you give that to me today but at some point down the line as you transition from each of these steps the s-t-e and P each step in transition numbers of people that come in and how much money and resources applied to get them moved up into that next step and successful by step rather than the whole system evaluation but a by step
evaluation is what I would like to see um and then another one is looking at costs for example a people's Village cost versus a home key cost by unit per person per time over time to see which is more cost effective a people's Village approach or a home key approach given the amount of funding if it's limited which direction should we go in down the line so doing a cost comparison of not only the physical um the the monetary monetary cost um physical number of people but also the physical and social costs for our system for that's being applied here to each of those so how much resources being applied to each individual over time as an analysis of our total system so I'd like to see at least that included as a possibility um let's see leading to um if I was just a question on so we we basically have folks leave steamer landing and they leave Cedar Grove and they went somewhere we housed a few of them but a lot of them decided not to go with the housing so that's still hundreds of people where did they actually go and did they stay in town here and do are we just creating new pockets of little pockets here and there that's a little more disorganized and hard to get to or or things or or folks possibly trying to return to these two sites at this time so I'll leave that as a question see where we're going right now would you like me go ahead and address that now yeah if that's possible yes okay all right um the challenging I guess what I could say in short is the challenging
part of providing these Services is every individual is kind of on their own Journey so I did want to comment on kind of when you're you're thinking about how long it takes to work with someone to move from one step to the other um as far as you know kind of you know in that case management you know whether they're they're living on the streets and then they're going into shelter and then going into housing it it really depends on um kind of their case management plan and the challenges that they need to address sometimes we work with folks in in you know if they need just one or two types of Support Services it can be maybe four or five months if we have some folks that have have a higher level of need we can be working with them 9 12 to 18 months it's also it's about you know respecting people and their Journey we can't push them we can support them and so in regard to the time it takes for people to move kind of from one aspect or one level of services to the next staff can definitely come back with some probably some some higher level information on that in regard to um you know our efforts in in the Outreach for um encampment cleanups that's at steamer Landing in Cedar Grove again probably some of the communities there members that were living there had the highest level of need um I think while we didn't get everybody to accept housing or shelter opportunities some of them did return back to other communities some of them went back to Roanoke Park some of them went back
to Santa Rosa some of them are still here in Petaluma um again they have to be willing to to participate and to work with us um I don't think we're creating new pockets I think one of the successes we had especially with Cedar Grove that was a long an encampment that was there for quite some time in community members really did not engage at all and so we put some incentives into place um to get people to fill out an application for shelter and to also sign up and get entered in the coordinated entry program so while for the last couple years we haven't been able to make any Headway with any of them they wouldn't talk to any of us we were actually able I think there was a total of about 20 community members that filled out applications for shelter they didn't go into shelter but with the cots was able to do the background screening so now they know that they're eligible there's nothing out there in their background report so yes it's kind of the pathway it wasn't a success as far as getting into shelter oh excuse me but we know that there's now no barriers and it's eligible so it changes the next conversation we can have with them council member Thompson Cader Thompson curious um with the how much money would well with covered money coming in that was a big impact to be able to so what does it look like for funding for the future without covet dollars when we created the plan we actually staffed we worked with the city manager's office and we did a three-year program uh
forecast for it so I think right now we're headed into year two staff is actively pursuing other opportunities we are concerned about quite a significant of amount of arpa funding was used for the capital and for to support the operations of people's Village and so we're working we're working on that with the city manager's office so Montero has three years of support service funding coming forward right and um we'd love to know what standing at people's Village will be for the next year like I said will that be in the budget that we're approving right now clearly identify what those costs are going to be that's great on Montero um you know the goal is to have a certain number of vouchers in there about um what are we are we screening People based on their ability to carry a voucher in or do they get in first and then we work on with the voucher foreign Montero is actually um that that came together really well in the partnership and working with the county um so while we did bring in a significant amount of the home key funding from the state that worked for the acquisition and the rehab of the property the county of Sonoma also came forward with 60 project-based vouchers so the value of a project-based voucher is essentially means that every residence that's living there will have an ongoing rent subsidy so they will only pay 30 percent of their adjusted gross income towards rent so it's it's a it's a significant value the project-based vouchers um you know a Burbank will
be able to charge up to a market rate rent so there's plenty of funding there that will support not just the operations and the maintenance and the security and the needs for the property but there will also be funding for the support services as well the on-site Support Services in partnership with cots it's it's a really it's a great Pro that's a great win there it is so will those vouchers will those be Petaluma homeless clients referred from our shelter referred from people's Village or um will it be a sub-regional or Regional effort how that how that works is kind of going back to our by names list and so essentially we have a list of our most vulnerable um community members that we're working with we also um um keep track up there in people's Village and there in um Mary Isaac Center but we enter them in the county-wide coordinated entry system which is basically kind of the county-wide system that tracks the data of everybody that's that's unsheltered their level of vulnerability and it it prioritizes them and so they can get into housing so with the home key project this the Burbank is mandated to use the coordinated entry process so the big difference that's been made is when we first started the project we staff anticipated maybe 10 of those units we would have Petaluma residents but with our service providers what we did is we increased the level of focus on you know getting our community members registered in coordinated entry and doing that full assessment and so
what we're seeing is that while the county has to refer to US based on level of vulnerability instead of 10 of those are community members we have about 33 percent of our community members from Petaluma that have been chronically homeless that will be transitioning to Montero for permanent housing pretty good 30 will be petalumens 30 33 uh we'll all have the numbers probably within another month so um much like the shelters they'll be the regional it'll be a regional facility so um not not strictly a Petaluma solution um so I I like that we're doing the housing out um I'm going to ask critical things but I love love what you're doing so um you know just let me ask the critical things so we're looking at um other housing options and um trying to find uh housing finders to put people into into the community and the rest of it um how how does that work in the tightest economic market and and rent Market um who who's going to snap at that opportunity to help us house folks that's um the landlord recruitment program and and I just wanted to highlight that that program is going to be work that it's going to be home first that that staff will be recommending have that contract they'll be working very closely with pbsc who administers our fair housing program we actually have either Kelly Vasquez via Zoom or Hunter Scott that can probably talk a little bit to more of the program details if you'd like some more detail on that yeah um I think I would and I think I would like to know
what's their success rate in any other community okay can we invite in our Zoom participant yeah I just promoted uh the two people that were great thank you I'm not sure if they've accepted yet though and while that's happening I'd like to make one other comment as I love the piece about prevention I think we need to focus in on on that and uh and um the not currently chronic because chronic is the most expensive condition that's why we're trying to solve for it because then it stops that high-end expense and and uh hospital room occupancies other you know all down the the chain so um I'd like to support that we do more in the prevention world do we have our home first participant is Kelly Maria on I tried to promote them but now I've just allowed them to talk so if they want to unmute they can foreign Vasquez with homefirst can you hear me okay yes we can thank you oh great sorry about that I was having a little trouble joining so the question was how we will House people in kind of the tough economic climate and housing market is that correct how you will find landlords a willing landlords sure success rate in other markets is understood so there are a lot of measures we take to recruit landlords and this is an area where our diverse staff I think is a tremendous strength of ours because we look sometimes in unconventional spaces we have advertised and sought out landlords in markets for example grocery markets we've gone to community organizations we reach out and have
gone door to door and make calls we really take the time to put in that person-to-person Outreach and make the pitch about why it's beneficial to engage with a program one of the elements of the program we're proposing is a landlord incentive fund which would provide a financial incentive for first-time landlords working with the project and offering a unit to Providers as well as other bonuses and protections like damages so if there are damages in excess of the deposit that's paid on a unit we're proposing to provide financial assistance to cover some of that overage so I think in combination with the Staffing and our Outreach offering that security to landlords is generally quite effective people want support and we offer that um in terms of success I can speak to our homelessness prevention Services where over 95 percent of our participants retain their housing and so I think we've had tremendous success in mediating with landlords supporting people and relocating as needed identifying additional landlords and then I'm hoping Maria has joined she manages our landlord tracker and can speak to how many new landlords we've brought into our services over the past year hello everyone there we go please continue can you guys hear me yes yes hi in the past year we have recruited in Santa Clara County around 60 new landlords um ranging from Mom and Pop uh in ranging from Individual owners apart from the relations that we build with low-income apartment complex foreign in we every
year at home first we do a landlord satisfaction survey where we send them out to all the landlords that have worked with home first and we ask for feedback areas of improvement what they have like so far and we try to implement all that feedback in the next year it's a service delivery and that is one of the approaches that has been successful in retaining landlords and getting new levels referred to us by existing uh landlords working with homepers thank you council member barnacle yes thank you um I have a few questions and then some comments that I'll save for after public comment um on the the tiny homes uh the people's Village um I think when we first did that we were looking at them we said that the capacity was 30 units and we were going to do a 25 unit pilot are we looking at adding five more units to that project I have not looked into that we'd probably have to do some interesting land land planning the this site is pretty impacted right now with the 25 units but there could be the potential okay um and then similarly on the I can't remember when we were here last talking about Montero um but I brought up the potential of putting um tiny homes around the edges of that property and I know the ground was broken up so I was wondering if we ran wiring to um sort of future set it up for potentially future putting tiny homes around the outside of that project no we didn't incorporate that into the program design but um apologies for that but if that's something we could
probably go back to Burbank and consider doing additional structures yeah um on the the slides where it says Timing q1 Q2 Q3 is that assuming like the start of the Strategic plan is that the timing I guess I just when I think of q1 I'm like more thinking about it the fiscal year what's the what's the like the actual date of starting from that q1 that started uh July 1 of 2022 and then Q2 and we're reporting out on Q3 great thanks um and then um funding the rental assistance is that in the budget that we receive tonight is there is there funding for that is in the proposed project plan um and then what does housing second mean housing second um staff recently we took a a tour of Homeward Bound which is a non-profit organization in in Marin County and and I asked them what do you do when you've worked with someone you've done the street Outreach you've put them in shelter and then you get them housed what happens if they're having they're not successful in their housing placement and they basically said what they have implemented is a housing second program which means if someone isn't successful in their current placement and the landlord asks them to leave instead of them going back out to the streets what they do is they have a partnership with those landlords where they reconnect with that client they immediately bring them back into shelter and the team focuses on what didn't work for the client about that housing placement and what do we need to do to to ensure that we
can place them in housing but it'll be successful so it's it's really a term a program term that Homeward Bound uses its housing second and um I think it's something that that this year the city team wants to look at because um we have seen a couple community members that have been in shelter have gone into housing and they just don't have the support in their housing unit that they need to transition to living independently and so that's where that housing second program is it's not a large amount of people but it it really um make sure people don't you know lose hope if you go through all that work you get into a housing placement and then you're evicted because of um you know Behavioral or housekeeping challenges um it it's a it's a program that can you know help people be hopeful and that there is the right Housing Opportunity for them out there it just maybe isn't the first time so got you um and then my last question is are we outside of Grants or general fund are we looking at any sort of Revenue models to support this and out into the future I don't know what you mean by that like just um so like in some some cities have done like a commercial vacancy tax um you know I've often thought that there's other Revenue models out there are we looking at anything other than just grants we have not looked at anything ideas if you have them or or models that you could refer to us for example cool thank you council member posake by the time this year trying to understand about
the voucher system and uh and just during this talk I I I I know I've misinterpreted something because I I thought of Hit Upon a voucher gold mine okay so tell me three or four steps here and tell me where I'm wrong so the first thing is we have these project-based vouchers my understanding is that if they stay there a year they can move out and be and have preference for a housing Choice voucher or a voucher like that and how sure is that that they would get that housing Choice voucher by saying they've got a place to go outside is it 100 50 any idea the county team is pretty good at at working um with our landlords and with our service providers and making sure that there's options it's really not about someone just moving in and saying I want to move somewhere else it's kind of like what I was just highlighting you know we could have community members that move into Montero and it's just not the right fit for a few different reasons they do have to you know those project-based vouchers means that for those 60 units there will always be 60 Project based vouchers right and that will stay there that's even when the person leaves and I'm not saying to push people out but I'm saying that if we helped cots and and share develop more shared housing situations that could help us as much eventually as I don't know a second home key project am I wrong about that I can't believe I've never read that anywhere of that well I think it's you know when you move someone out when there's
like a housing Choice voucher they might be moving into a Housing Opportunity where they're not going to have that on-site support service I understand that they have to have that so but but if if community members are are to a point where they're ready for that next you know a different type of housing I'm sure that the case managers and support services would be you know helping them find other opportunities okay thanks yeah just one more this is absolutely the last no what have we gotten have we been received any funds or grants from uh you mentioned philanthropic foundations have we have we been able to um obtain funding from such a place the city has not received any funding but Burbank was successful in bringing in funding from St Joseph's Health Care System a significant amount to support the project thanks I think it's in our our funding plan I think the city team is planning on talking to them about supporting kind of that integrated system and how we're all working together in identifying very clearly where there are gaps in funding and kind of you know full transparency here's where we are here's our investment here's the momentum how do we how do we keep going so council member now thank you and thanks for all the work that um you put into this the um agenda item is called Petaluma strategic action plan to end homelessness year one progress report and then we go to a template for more connected system of care and I am worried about this step tea triage and it's
the mental health of a lot of these individuals that are causing them to be homeless and it's the mental health that's not being addressed and I feel like there's this gray area that they're they're falling through the cracks because they they don't know how to fit into the society that we know and they might not want to be in a dormitory living situation they have been living outside in a camp situation and that's what they prefer and so how do we solve the how do we solve that because then we do if they do move on they they interrupt their neighbors they're disruptive the police get called and then we're just in this vicious circle so I'm like trying to figure out how we can put more money in the budget for prevention I I'm not sure how we can end it before it moves on it was also pointed out that a landlord cannot also be a mental health provider so how can we fix that yeah go ahead Elise and then Andrew might have kind of some some comments on that as well thank you so hi Elise from Petaluma people Services Center I know everybody knows and talks about the safe team because that's the newest thing but what most people in this community don't realize is we ppsc runs probably the largest Behavioral Health mental health clinic in the county now and so we have the ability if we have the additional funding to provide additional treatment for anybody who wants those Services one of the most successful programs that we had with prevention and intervention prop 63 money was a
wake-up session every morning at the Mary Isaac Center run by Petaluma people Services licensed clinical staff at the Mary Isaac Center those individuals who are using and staying at the Marriott Isaac Center felt protected and connected to their therapists in a way that still is a huge positive for them and most of them were able to find success with that to your point about prevention and intervention one of the things the safe team is doing is unfortunately when you're unhoused and you have your mental health break you're having it on the corner of Petaluma Boulevard and Washington and everybody in the community is able to see that and the safe team will respond to those calls de-escalate it and then the goal is to make referrals to ongoing counseling support or mental Wellness programs that will provide additional Services the health center serves as a medical home but they're you know their clinical staff is not as large as and and as comprehensive and so weak at ppsc are able to leverage our ability and provide group counseling and individual counseling Alcohol and Other Drug counseling those Services can be provided here in their Community where they feel safe and will welcome those Services because they already know us through our safe teamwork or through our rental assistance programs or even through our food access programs so they already know Petaluma people services and are able to connect to those services in a more organic way that happens in other parts of the
of the county just because we are that hub for that Mental Health thank you Elise now how do we get you more finances how do we get you that do we get grants what do we go after government money so so leveraging medical money um leveraging fee for services um we can tell now take the Cal win um program for mental health services but that's kind of brief and strategic you know it's it's a whole whole variety of different funding sources like to Karen's Point having the county submit the grant for the COC was huge for us because we just don't have the time or capacity we're providing services that means I have to write the grant at two o'clock in the morning after I leave the City Council meetings and so so being able to be able to leverage all of the resources we have you know again it's finding the philanthropy also to invest in this I think we um at the city of Petaluma with the work that that we're doing on this plan and to to the point made earlier this is a very active plan this is a model that larger philanthropists will want to invest in to see how they can measure the outcomes and I think that's where the key is also the other piece of it is is pplc always uses evidence-based evidence-informed programming especially when it comes to mental health and Behavioral Health and partnering with some of those program providers that we're using to help draw down additional dollars is one of the resources so yes we always need money I I joke as I count the pennies while I'm on
the phone because you know Petaluma Grocery Outlet has dropped your change and so once a week they bring us about I don't know 85 dollars but that 85 dollars is a whole lot of counseling sessions at Petaluma people Services Center for our unsheltered residents so it doesn't take that much money to provide those services thank you um thank you council member or just to make a quick Point um so one of the we'll find out Wednesday um and councilman uh postike here um alluded to this earlier um there is a direct request into the county um through the leadership of Karen uh working with our non-profits we've submitted a budget proposal for an annual budget of 825 000 and it would fund directly fund um uh mental health professionals to be part of the Outreach and so that is sort of the direct response what we've identified as the Gap as the need um and just one one way as councilman shribs had opened up earlier um his comments um the need is is wide it's it's wide-ranging um but from what we see from the success that we've seen the gaps that we've seen in year one um this is the one opportunity here that we have with the the measure o funds and so we should hear back um you know it's been partially funded there's a recommendation to fund three hundred thousand of that with one pot of County funds I think that's one of the challenges is as Karen likes to tell me all the time it's it's this alphabet soup that we get when we try to support our unsheltered and so we'll look at that pot
we'll look at other opportunities whether it's philanthropy or not County council member Cader Thompson just quickly at the Montero the um the space provided what is in the space like I know the tiny homes it's just much smaller so is there like kitchen or can people cook in the cook for themselves is this at Montero or the Montero oh at Montero um all those units are um considered like studio apartments and so they actually have a small kitchenette in there so a little um electric stove top and microwave in a fridge unit is in all the units but Burbank also will be since they're partnered with cots cots will be bringing meals over there and distributing to the community members and they do have kind of a small community room that's been incorporated into the project okay so then there possibly could be an opportunity for tiny homes there that if there were tiny homes basically they would be in the parking area correct um I think the the only thing just off the top of my head we'd have to look at is clearance for fire vehicles because the fire lane all the way around but that's probably something I could easily talk to the fire marshal will be out there with her this week probably and I just wanted to make sure that they had Services for food okay yeah Cox is providing the on-site support services and cots has Mary's Kitchen and so food will definitely be there okay thanks you're welcome councilmember barnacle whoa do we have um actually I'll hold I'll hold it I'll just hold
my stuff and let's take this over to public comment and and uh open up public comment um I have uh no cards in-house uh clerk have we had uh comments on this item prior McDonnell no comments received prior to this prior to the meeting tonight thank you very much let's uh have our Zoom participation thank you mayor members of the public wishing to speak on this item Petaluma strategic action plan to end homelessness year one progress report and presentation please raise your hand and zoom or dial dial Star nine if you're participating by phone you have three minutes in which to give your comments at the end of which will be muted speakers are reminded to be respectful in their comments and that this meeting is being translated so please pause between sentences for translation threats of violence and obscenity are grounds for removal from this meeting and there will be a countdown for your convenience right now we have two hands raised so I will start with the Gonzalez followed by Dwayne asiah you may oops I need to share my screen say you may unmute and begin your comments everyone I am so excited and so grateful for this topic um I just want to say thank you thank you so much to every single service provider every single housing coordinator um I'm gonna try to slow down for the translator um just thank you guys uh I can be completely honest and say that growing up I've lived at six different rental addresses in Petaluma I've experienced homelessness here um and I wish I wish
that these sort of services had existed 10 years ago when I experienced it in high school um I wish I mean I don't wish because you guys are already working on Outreach but um having been displaced recently uh from November to February we went to Santa Rosa for resources um when I looked for resources in Petaluma everything that I came across said that the lists were full that funding was out um I had no idea that these Services existed baby I love you so much I really got to get this point across because it's a limited time thing um I do want to say that having known a family who was recently evicted um they had the same notion that I felt a few months ago at the idea of going to cots with young children um that the system isn't prepared for families um I think that the gaps that we see here um leave us with so much room to address the issues that lead us to where we are um so how do we make room for uh how we attack people for the way that they live and how that ends them up on the streets if we're gonna consider the Cannabis ordinance in town how do we protect patients and make sure that they're able to access these resources as well as their medicine um making sure that there are career Pathways into cannabis because that opens up the door to stem careers it's how we uplift people and make them feel right and righteous for how they want to be um I'm excited that we're talking about Mental Health bye I'm gonna go ahead and tend to my own kids but there's just so much
potential here and I'm so excited oh yeah and this is why tenants need protections this is where we get um the data from a Housing Registry uh sorry from a rental registry and and we see the numbers move and we figure out who's able to stay and who needs help where um thank you guys thank you our next commenter is Dwayne followed by Annie Nichol Dwayne you may unmute and begin your comments um yes good evening [Music] um thanks for the great presentation and for the great program and uh for all the work that the city council is arranging to do in support of this I am I would point out that people of Sacramento tend to point towards city government as being the cause of the housing crisis and therefore some homelessness and I I want to say something that uh would be the opposite direction and that is the Federal Reserve is the primary responsible for the um homelessness or a crash of 2008 in the current situation and I would really like to see a candidate running for president who would agree to a point one or more people to the Federal Reserve who has experienced homelessness and possibly we get a whole different attitude about how we uh how we deal with inflation not by causing um uh lack of Housing and homelessness but that's just that one person's opinion thank you very much thank you for that our next speaker is Annie nickel any you may unmute and begin your comments Annie are you there foreign I've been working with unhealth populations for over 20 years and started a
community health center or Cloud clinic at Mary Isaac in 2004 I think it was so um definitely um really appreciate all of the the work that Andrew and the City of Petaluma has done with this particular issue um I I wanted to mention that we have about 700 plus people with a diagnosis of homelessness at our health center so that's including some people from Santa Rosa and something in the club and a lot of people from Petaluma so I think that we are not really documenting all the people that have fun being a narcissist you know that we've assessed in the system with the Outreach um my concern is number one is drugs and alcohol and mental health in the volatile combination of all of those and I know that we talked about mental health that is really being fueled and off Often by drugs so they unfortunately just expedite a disaster and the the lack of of programs for for drugs in alcohol in our in our County and we have been floating you know turning point which was a place we frequently accessed in the past has been having all sorts of woes with continuing their um their per their program which was you know actually people stayed there for anywhere from 30 days to New Haven days um and it's really disappointing so I'm hoping when we look at some of these funding streams we think about supporting those programs because people sometimes really just need to get away from wherever they are and what's happening and find a new group of support and you know developing some more skills
so for living environments right thank you for that comment and that is the last hand raised so I will turn it back to you Mr Mayor thank you and that closes a public comment on the item I think we've given quite a bit of feedback tonight and really appreciate the presentation maybe a couple of closing concise comments so uh council member shrim um just just uh two two things um maybe questions or comments um we do have uh at the edge of the economy of course we have the uh migrants coming in we have new migrant program up in Santa Rosa uh for immigrants and how to help that whole population Farm Workers and the like and I was wondering if there's any tie-ins possibly with our program here finding housing for folks who are in transition or just arriving who might be homeless or might become homeless very easily and I'd like to see some tie-ins there there's this see if there's some connectivity maybe some funding possibility uh through through that program that's just arriving here in Santa Rosa and then just um I just want to just as a check um we mentioned that the TPA the tenant protection act and I just want to double check with you guys make sure we're okay that that uh we didn't put a huge burden on you per uh on your programs by by our attendant protection so I just hope that uh because when you from day one they enter into Montero they'll become a tenant are you impacted or not thank you councilmember proposal came I just want to thank the whole staff once more one
more time and to say that you know just go through a one of uh a Haitian Refugee family that I've been involved in helping with a bunch of other folks for about five years now family of six who uh had their first stayed with one of uh our fan our what do we call accompaniment folks they stayed with them for a few weeks they eventually got into the cots family shelter where they were for I believe six months and after that I don't remember we were pretty depressed at that point in time but then suddenly they were accepted into Burbank Vita Nueva Burbank facility in Rohnert Park and now pretty much their only worry is is their income going to get too high for them to stay there so thank you all for taking part council member now I'll just take this opportunity to say thank you and thank you to Elise and to all the other groups that provide um the solutions and from mental health to the housing and thank you so much I know we're a leaders in Petaluma and we should all be very proud of that thank you councilmember Cader Thompson anything and councilmember Barnacle yes um so I agree thank you very much for all your hard work I know this is um hard work and it's also emotional work so thank you and thank you to all the people who do this work um my comments are um I think I'm not convinced that we have the right goal post I'm not convinced that we're going to get two more rounds of home key and even if we do that we're going to actually um end functional homelessness with that I
have a B in my Bonnet for tiny homes because um well if if my math serves me right like the three years of tiny homes came out for 25 of them it was about eighty thousand dollars a unit for three years with the services that went with it um and Montero was 261 thousand dollars per per unit um and I just I would say I I'm not going to call myself homeless definitely not chronic homeless I did live in my car for a while by choice um but all I really needed was a roof over my head and some place to lock my stuff for the Peace of Mind of knowing that I wasn't going to get stabbed at night and that my stuff wasn't going to get stolen during the day it allowed me to be a productive member of society and also be homeless um I really think that we need to look hard at that and seeing like maximizing the space at people's Village to get extra units in there adding units to Montero things like that I think are like no regrets Solutions and they're um gonna almost certainly be lower cost than anything else right I mean Mid Penn brought forward a project that was like 750 000 per unit and the tiny homes we got at people's Village for like thirteen thousand dollars a unit I know they don't have kitchens but like so I mean I don't I think our we got to move the goal post if we actually want to put roofs over people's heads um not everybody needs their own kitchen not everybody needs their own bathroom but everybody needs a roof and they can be a functioning member of society so that is my
like if there's one like criticism is that I just feel like we don't have the right goal post right now [Music] um and I'd love to see as we as we have Montero come forward and we see that um you know like these are just back of the envelope numbers here but I'd like to see a lot more in terms of like what are we getting for what are we getting type analysis so that we can make informed decisions um because I think right now we're all kind of just saying like yes housing yes housing and um I'd like to feel like there's some assessment of what is the most cost effective way to put people put a roof over people's head and let us make a political decision of if they need a bathroom or if we want to put more roofs over people's heads um I'd love to see more look at a revenue measure something whether it's something that goes on the ballot you know I brought up Emeryville last council meeting and um you know they had a 50 million dollar housing Bond and they're the only city like one of the only cities that's actually achieving their Arena numbers um I don't know whether it'll pass but I'd love to um like dig into those sorts of things and see if we can actually solve the problems we've got a lot of wealth in this community and I think we can um we can ask the community to support it um I'd love to see it if it was a like empty lot commercial vacancy tax type of measure so that we actually are promoting people to get off their butt and move some of this old money into more
productive use um and then final comment is I'd love to just see the slides like this before the meeting because there was a lot of really good information and I just couldn't soak it all in but otherwise um yeah I just again I know I was laid some criticisms out there but I really do appreciate all the work you all do um so thank you thank you so so much good working a great presentation I sure appreciate it um I do want to acknowledge the Petaluma has just opened up the immigration Assistance Center up in North North McDowell Boulevard um and um a shout out to Annie nickel um lifetime achievement in uh in these kinds of matters um concerned that we've lost our sober Circle connection and uh that's down and that's a prevention and effective program but that requires Regional effort so I hope it's this is more than just petaluma's program and when Caritas and Catholic Charities opened up their their facilities and they listed off their donors in the million dollar range was Bezos money and so it can come to our County it's just a connection of having the right project and the right connections and so we should continue to achieve the way we do I do think one of our bigger remaining challenges is the communication with the public and with the engagement that is is noted in your report I really appreciate that and working with the pcrc is a great step forward I think they might have the best community here but certainly there are others too so let's get the word about how we
succeed in this Arena and with that thank you very much for your presentation tonight we'll close this item and move to our next item I'll give you a minute to uh for musical chairs here or I will in the meantime read up poet number 12 is and um and then uh we might take one other bit of action I think at this point it would be good to have a uh quick vote on extending the meeting into the evening and so if I can get a motion from someone to um extend the meeting yes we do and we have one item left they've been so patient regrettably I'll make a motion to go past 11.
and I will regrettably second that thank you may we have a roll combo Barnacle yes Cader Thompson yes now yes postike yeah shrubs yes McDonnell's yes motion passes unanimously thank you so much no I think um so thank you very much item 12 resolution rescinding and replacing resolution number 20 20081 uh NCS in approving an agreement between the city and smart for construction of Petaluma North at Corona Smart Station improvements and finding that approval of the project is not subject to subsequent or supplemental environmental review because the environmental impacts from development and operation of the project have already been assessed in the environmental impact report and supporting documentation for the smart rail Transit project State Clearinghouse number 2002112033 and um City attorney Eric Danley thank you Mr Mayor um uh and council members members of the public um and and I want to note we've got two of our colleagues at smart Eddie Cummins the executive director and Bill Gamlin very patiently waiting in the very sparsely attended Chambers now and and if if it's all right what I'd like to do is kind of go quickly and succinctly through some of the key parts of the staff report um one of the really great things about tonight in this action is it's a little bit anti-climactic it's been very complicated and heavy lifts in the past and it's it's not that tonight I think that's a really good thing and I think that um after my brief remarks the smart colleagues have some
slides to share which are the more exciting part of this item to see what they have planned both for the station and some some other improvements in the area so if that's all right I'm going to launch right in um the reason we're referring to this action as a rescission and an approval is because the council and the Smart Board too have already approved previously an agreement between the city and smart for stationed in this location however um and I'm going to skip over some of the details in the staff report which which is pretty detailed however that at that time the project was bound up with uh private private development projects of the Lomas entities at the coronal location and also on the downtown smart property adjacent to the current station in Depot [Music] and when those prod Pro those project approvals were ultimately rescinded at the applicant's request to settle um some legal challenges brought against them that pretty much pretty much made the the smart and the council approvals moot um and so there they've SAT but but now um um with this funding smart is obtained um and the really nice partnership dialogue we've we've had with them about bringing this agreement before you um a really positive meeting with the smart team here we are in a much more straightforward sort of Standalone Arrangement um and so there's there were two important steps that the city took previously for for that approval that the council gave back in June of 2020 the first was to provide
for a mechanism for the city to contribute funding the project which was done by many the city's traffic impact fees to provide up to approximately 2.3 million dollars originally that was targeted toward parking improvements be it became clear that in that funding needed to be more versatile um and and to be really usable for for any of the costs of the design or construction of the project so we consulted with Will Dan who did the updated traffic fees to provide that funding in the first place who confirmed that um any of the station costs were eligible because they meant the Nexus of providing increased smart ridership and the traffic relief that that brings so so that's been confirmed and that's addressed in this package the second important step was making sure that a commitment to the station an agreement was smart was compliant with SQL requirements and so back in June of 2020 we did a quite a thorough review um and we didn't unfortunately it didn't all get into your package initially it's there now to show those those same findings that were part of the approvals in 2020 the facts have not changed the project has not changed they're still pertinent inadequate to confirm that um the the ear and mitigation monitoring plan that smart did um back when they were planning the whole the the rail system including this station um addressed the environmental impacts of the project so um so what smart has um established and and our agreement a proposed agreement before the
council tonight that we're recommending the council adopt by adoption of the resolution in the package is based on a total allocation of 13 million 521 187 dollars to the project which is made up of 9521 and 100 I'm sorry nine million 521 187 dollars in um Transit and inner city rail Capital program or tircp Grant funds 2 million from scta Sonoma County transportation agency measure M funds two million dollars from the city's traffic impact fee proceeds that I already mentioned and so that's the funding makeup the the proposed agreement as you hopefully saw in your package is quite straightforward and I think that's a reflection of the of the the partnership approach that I mentioned um IT addresses legal compliance invoicing record keeping the other boilerplate terms termination indemnities Etc um this marks estimates for the work is that it can be begin as soon as the fall of this year and be completed approximately one year later um so so that those are the high points I wanted to cover in introducing this side I'm happy to address any Council questions and I know um there's a few slides that our smart colleagues would like to share with us and some nice Graphics about what they have planned so I'll stop there and be happy to answer any questions shall we invite the smart team up and they sure for the slides that's what they've been waiting for sure and we very much appreciate your perseverance patience Etc thank you okay am I on CE oh great so I'm going to leave these
slides to Bill Gamlin it's he's a Smart's chief engineer I just really wanted to take a moment to introduce myself there's a few of you that I've worked with a little bit here and there but I'm Eddie Cummins I am the smart general manager and really I just wanted to say how much I appreciate our partnership with the city we've worked together on a lot of different things this being one of them and everything's just been very smooth City staff is so great so anyway just wanted to say thank you very much and with that I'll turn it over to Bill Gamlin to uh share some slides on this great project bill thanks Eddie good evening Mr mayor council members I've got a few quick slides to walk you through the scope of work for all the improvements in and around Corona and McDowell his first one kind of outlines the the three main improvements there which of course is anchored with a new passenger rail station at Corona Road in addition to that we're doing some great bicycle and pedestrian improvements though one of which is the extension of the existing pathway from South Point to Main Street in Penngrove nearly a three mile stretch this will all be constructed with the station itself and then some improvements right around the McDowell grade crossing which involves reconstructing that and in some crosswalk improvements there next slide if you would foreign so this is uh the station layout with um the proposed Housing Development it's getting tired too yeah uh so this is has the major
station elements uh on this slide um just to orient everybody on the bottom there is McDowell Boulevard on the left hand side of the graphic is Corona Road the smart alignment or right-of-way is on the top of the graphic in the middle of that is the track above that is the new pathway alignment that will be heading towards Penngrove just below the track is the new station platform and then of course the station parking as part of the corona development next slide so to drill into that a little bit again you can see the pathway on the top of the slide the platform itself will have a plaza area with kind of a drop off area we'll have bike lockers bike parking in that area the parking lot can be about a hundred spots and we'll have six uh electric vehicle charging stations and then we're putting in infrastructure planning for future solar at the site as well next slide uh this one's a little dense but really it's showing the pathway alignment so to orient everybody downtown Petaluma is on the bottom of the graphic Pen Grove is on the top of the graphic the yellow horizontal line there is Highway 101 going across the the city and the blue will be that pathway alignment extending from South Point up to Main Street and Penngrove so running right through the the future station at Corona Road so it made sense to bundle all that together build it all at once next slide so when we're done we will have this continuous pathway all the way from Lakeville Street in Petaluma all the way to
Penngrove and then a short Gap and then pathway all the way from katati up to Southern Santa Rosa next slide and finally the McDowell improvements um you can see the green outline there is going to be the new pathway as it comes to the McDowell grade crossing it will lead to a new signalized crosswalk at Petaluma States and then head across the tracks and then North to pengrove we will be reconstructing the track this is an area we did not touch when we rebuilt the railroad back in 2012.
and then we've been coordinating closely with City staff to take some of the paving work that's part of the current project put it into this great Crossing reconstruction so we're not doing things twice and tearing up some of the new roadway and lastly we have a schedule right now we're working on design we're preparing construction documents we'll be going out to bid in the third quarter of 2023 this year looking to award a contract to a contractor in the September time frame hopefully getting construction going in October lasting into 2025 we are targeting the station for completion in late 2024 and we do have that kind of um line item on there just to highlight the challenges with getting long lead items one of the challenges with this project is we are cutting into our terrain control and signaling system to insert the station so it's complicated work it's got a lot of electronics in it a lot of lead timeline materials and equipment finally I'd just like to thank Christopher bolt and the team at Public Works they've been great to work with we've been coordinating all these projects they've been very engaged in all the details and the collaboration has been great so thanks thank you let's bring it to the council for any questions council member schribs okay the um first question just to make sure that so the parking lot is going to be um part of the smart and not part of the city correct correct okay now in the parking you said there's going to be of the hundred stations
only about six we're going to have electric charging units right that's what's planned right uh because the new cars that are being purchased now over 25 percent now are electric um compared to episode if that's the trend and it should be growing to 50 and eventually 100 over the next uh um 10 15 years so if that's our new cars are going to be over within 10 years going to be over 50 percent electric by that time should we not have a lot more electric charging capacity or at least the lines in so that we can structure the just the top portion of it because we have that embedded earlier rather than later yeah we can certainly look at that I think the guidelines we've been following are the the California building code and the current requirements for that um you reach a point where you're getting an awful lot of electrical capacity built into a project to accommodate a lot more but we can certainly look got it okay and then I notice if you go back to the uh um the slide that had the bike path in it um just a little there's a little portion in there I just thought I'd ask a question about it's on the southern side of that picture it's probably about slide four so yeah there it is okay it's the um not that one it's the keep going oh right at the cross maybe it's up it's for the the close-in shot or the actual railroad that's probably the following couple slides yeah there that one there uh okay on that one on um I see how it's working just if you could describe because you've
got on the north side of that as it's going around South McDowell and coming back in um and then on that looks doable um even though you have to come backwards and go back up again so it's a little bit convoluted be nice it was a smooth but this is what you have to do but on the other southern part there's um there's a y there it's actually cut off and changes and um so I know there's a path that comes up but but I see there's two paths on the south side where does those two paths actually end up going yeah so at the far right of the slide the green lines there the pathway that's going parallel to the track is the class one or the dedicated bicycle pedestrian path heading to South Point and then towards downtown towards Lakeville that little Junction that goes off will connect to the sidewalk that exists on McDowell today and the reason it's a little awkward like that is it was really important to get a perpendicular crossing of the track and we will have Gates there for pedestrians and safety features for Train control okay so that a drug is that going to be a lighted yeah it will be a gated Crossing for pedestrians so a gate will come down when the Train's approaching okay and then you have this a new non-motorized pathway when you say non-motorize just to make sure are you talking about a four-wheeled vehicle cars are we talking about e-bikes it's really a bicycle pedestrian pathway so e-bikes are okay it's it's motorized type vehicles uh right cars and as as motorcycles
I'm sure everyone's aware that that um e-bikes are growing in size and shape turning into almost motorcycles at this point in time so at what point is there uh have you really talked about a cut off with the bicompet committee as to where you cut off what motorized means smart doesn't have a policy on what size or at what point you become a a motorcycle or an electric motorcycle and who's is there in the regulations is it uh who's going to actually regulate that motor the state does the state is probably going to be the vehicle code and it's probably playing catch up still right yeah so it's one of our local police are going to be doing that the highway department or a smart uh awful officials going to be regulating who's on this path it'll probably be actually the state legislature in the vehicle code and then and then yeah then the regulation will be done locally yeah but this is a mess for for all bicycle paths what's happening and what vehicles are going to be allowed at what speed to go on these non-roads as Vehicles get put more bicycles get more powerful so just something to be cautionary about heading toward the future those are the only questions I had right now thank you uh council member cater Thompson so I just want to follow up on the um the Chargers I mean I don't I don't feel like six is going to be enough for the long term so if it can just be Plum for more I think that's really important um and then the solar that you're talking about are you going to have
like structures so cars park under them and the solar is going to be on top of the structure uh we're putting the infrastructure in the ground so we could add solar in the future it's not in the budget right now but the idea is that it would be overhead structure probably along the lines of like Casa Grande High School or Petaluma High okay and then the other thing is um when you're on Corona Road there are a lot of postal trucks taking you know cutting to the left just before the rail tracks have you talked with the Postal Service to redirect how their trucks go in and out uh we have not we've been working closely with the city's traffic department to do sort of the vehicular coordination on that um but yeah it's a tight area space is limited and it's a very busy road yeah I mean I've been harping on this for years about all the trucks getting off at Washington Street going to the post office and then having to take that right turn and then left in to um the postal office it's just darn dangerous and when they could stay on the freeway and and they can actually have a route that goes in and come out on Corona and I think that's something that I would certainly like support from this Council on so we can start looking at that which is a truck route which um I think we need to look at truck routes for the entire town not just one section of the town and the other thing is the Corona overcrossing um you know we've talked about a possible well during the election let's put a
cantilever on it so you're separating the bike likes from the pedestrians and I know that's not what you're talking about but I'm giving my Spiel now and that I really would like support from the council to start moving forward on Corona so we can get some designs or find out where we're at to do a cantilever that separates the bikes and pedestrians from the traffic and you can go up to Covello over Crossing in Davis this is exactly what they did it was a newer overcrossing but they ended up it's completely separated so councilmember I just want to caution that that discussion is not agendized for tonight my voice out there right just because people don't want to miss out on your remarks when they're actually being taken up by the council that's that's all thanks but um I think this all ties into the Smart Station and I'm really glad that we're finally moving forward with the spart station at Corona um and but I want safety for first and that has to do with traffic around there thank you Mr Barnacle thank you Mr Mayor and thank you for spending the time with us this evening um just to first class three bikes are not allowed on multi-purpose paths in California unless it's authorized by local ordinance so unless we say that class 3 bikes are allowed on our multi-purpose pass they're not allowed class two goes up to 20 miles class 3 goes up to 28.
so those like ones that go really fast are actually not allowed on multi-purpose paths just for everybody here um the my questions are um I agree the the number of chargers um probably is you know at least Plum level one Chargers probably if people are going to be parking there for a long time or probably ample and you can get you know like four level one for every level two and they're cheaper so um you can do a lot more there and then how many bike lockers are you planning it says bike lockers but how many I want to say about 10 maybe a dozen something like that at least as much as in downtown Petaluma oh it's gonna need a lot more than that um like like am I are we approving a project here tonight with 10 10 bike lockers for like a Futures train station is that what we're doing like is um you know I think it's just the funding agreement but yeah yeah but I mean this is the last time we're going to see it right yeah probably yeah um can we like increase the number of bike lockers by like a factor of three um but we can see what space we have to work with and you know we can look at the budget and go from there but um you know we can always add them in the future too there's yeah I just see a hundred parking spaces and and 10 bike parking spaces and that's not like the type of future that we're trying to promote here in in Petaluma and so um I appreciate the the good work that our Public Works team has done with y'all but like um I don't think that that's aligned with where
we're going as a city and um you know we can like if we cut you know five parking spaces out of there and put in a whole bunch more bike lockers I'd be excited to support this tonight I want to see this move forward like you know really bad um but like I'm not gonna support something with where you know a project like this at a Transit Hub that has 10 times more car parking spaces than bike parking spaces that's just not the type of future that I want and I want to see you know better land use and transportation planning from our entire County one question I have for the smart team this is still in design still right it's not even design it's not final but correct we're well into design at this point so I'm wondering might there be an opportunity hearing some of the feedback from the council to come back with with more final design about whether and the extent to which you can address because they're they're funding constraints you saw that the allocation is already done so it's a little bit Zero Sum and there's a also um the the land for the parking itself isn't even in hand yet that's related to the what happens with the Denco project and and how that plays out and that timing so I'm just trying to recognizing that we're partnering in a great way and there are constraints and timing sensitivities and you're also trying to get more done than just this to to maximize the um connectivity for pedestrians and and Riders and stuff so um and and it's before the council tonight so
I'm just trying to think whether it's possible to report back on some of those things in in the same sort of spirit of partnership so that this keeps moving forward absolutely we're always open to feedback we'll take a look at some of these things obviously we have to look at the at the footprint see what it can do we got to look at the cost those types of things but uh definitely we'll take this feedback into consideration absolutely and we can come back at a later time with some more uh finalized design okay thank you um and yes so if we approve this funding agreement tonight contingent on like what what is the what is the the lever that we have to bring this back and actually um comment on the overabundance of car parking and under abundance of uh bike parking like I appreciate good partnership but also like I'm up here and I'm accountable to the Future I've had Aluma and that's what you know I'm thinking about foreign the offer from smart to go ahead and bring the design back to to show it when it's in a more final form and at that point we could um talk about if there are opportunities to add additional bike parking uh if the space will allow it if the budget will allow it Etc I think and I'm just throwing this out there even if there isn't the budget to allow it um at least I'm betting that the engineers could show where it could go if in the future there was budget allocated in the future where the next stages of bike parking would be on the site and again that's just
a brainstorm on my part I'm not sure that the council has a final design approval on this project so it is really a partnership in terms of making sure that all of our needs are met that's that's my my point is that we don't have a final design approval on this project this is our one ability to actually influence the project and I um like this is like you know it's our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions it's our largest source of people getting killed I mean vehicle you know like we want to discourage vehicles and they're over building you know 10 times more parking than um for vehicles than for bikes like this is um grossly inappropriate for the Times we're in okay and then um some of us run back far enough with this project and to know that Petaluma has always scored better with smart amenities than in most other cities uh partially because we had downtown specific plan going on the locker count that we have is higher than in most other cities and uh and that was Grant funded into kind of independently as an ad packet to the smart process so um I'm pleased with Smart's past performance at being responsive to petaluma's biking Community um and and that's one I um I also think well and then as a second one um will this station have the Bike Share program is that Grant still alive that you know we've worked on the grand is still alive that is being managed through a CTA and Tam right as a combination um the challenge that they had they were ready to uh sign a deal and
the company unfortunately went out of business so they're back to square one it's still fundings available but I I think I need to address the Bike Locker situation this is something we monitor all the time if the bike lockers are filled up and people are calling us telling us that they're having a problem we find a way to add more I just put in our budget for this year to add some additional bike lockers at stations and some bigger ones to accommodate the bigger bikes so this is something that we look at and we monitor all the time if there's a situation there's a problem then we would find a way to uh to add additional lockers I appreciate that and as a frequent SMART Train Rider um um my experience is the problem is not the bike parking at the station because no one wants to leave their bike at the station they all need it for Last Mile so it's more that There's a constraint on the train uh the other day I'm trying to Rack my bike and there's a scooter and it's not up in the Ada slash big bike area it's in the racked area and the Scooter's a beastly thing and it takes up both of the rack bike spaces there um the challenge for smart is going to be how do we get that last mile coordination with the right number of um bike opportunities especially as bikes get bigger on on the train and we just removed some of our flip seats yeah they're on the side to accommodate more bike parking so again I was looking at some stats this morning we've had more bike ridership to date this
fiscal year than ever we've already already beat 2019 2018 more bicycle ridership already this year so it's huge all right I'm trying to express how much we pay attention to the bicycle community and how much uh you know because we look at like I said we look at the bike lockers a lot of times they're not used the utilization they're not 100 full if you go to the stations they're not 100 full not everybody's using a bike locker but this the areas that we do have that are using them a lot we add more and I appreciate that that's in your monthly report not only ridership but bike and ridership absolutely so it's transparent to anyone else wants to see how much biking is um but uh and I'm super glad that I'm excited this day's comes we're glad you found the funding to push this forward my real only question is the path alignment because first round on the path alignment and I think what our community saw several times it was west of the tracks shall we call it to the McDowell side of the tracks and uh that allowed for continuous ridership on path into the the station the alternative that's now in place takes you up to Corona and then you gotta come back on Corona back up into the station it's a little inconvenient but this um this Dutch gentleman I met um he said he has a business there like an edus and he'd really rather there was an access way in the back there and since they're a concert venue and these other things um is there still a possibility of that effort that was you
know first seen we would love to have it on the west side of the tracks actually through there for a lot of those reasons the challenge is that there is a freight spur there for Willowbrook feed and getting across it it just doesn't really work where's Willowbrook feed uh comes off Eli and then South about halfway through the curve almost up to Lagunitas it does go that far yeah because they take they take train loads in don't they yeah thank you um and um um so the the schedule showed out um the station improvements did the McDowell Crossing Improvement was it within that timeline within that schedule yeah so all the work I showed is all packaged into a single contract um you know some of the scheduling will be up to the contractors how they see fit to make the work work but it's all in the same contract correct thanks and um I'd like to take it to public comment now and so um I have no cards here for the public comment I'll check with our Clerk mayor we did not receive any comments on this prior to the meeting and I'd like to bring it back to the moderator to read our Zoom announcement thank you mayor members of the public wishing to speak on this item please raise your hand and zoom and you'll be called on in turn we have three hands raised so we'll start with Dwayne followed by Isaiah Dwayne you may unmute and begin your comments um thank you um first of all the information I haven't seen uh discussed anywhere here is the possibly the largest single user of of the train
there at Chrono will be the junior college and their survey they did several years ago was came up with I believe 50 students and 50 staff members uh but I could have it wrong it could be just 50 between the two uh but we're looking forward to using the train and I think a majority of those would probably prefer a bus pick them up right there on Corona and transport them uh to the junior college although I'm sure a number of the students will be uh writing bicycles and but I would like to see that as part of the design I have not seen any uh presentation at any of the spark meetings that relate to this design or any hearings among the public of as requested by the grand jury that they they have hearings more public input I haven't seen anything uh possibly we will get an opportunity to discuss the design at a public hearing Bill conducted by the smart um I I would also um suggest that the one of the things not mentioned is that the um the smart already owns a 40 by 220 foot piece of property right there that the old station was right at Corona and that would seem to me would be a good place to be placing the the parking um anybody who wants to um for bike parking um it'd be right there that I would like to see the ramp come as close to um grown as possible instead of um where it appeared to be in that view of the um map and so as to allow people to walk up Corona to get on this train or walks West on Corona from the uh Community there I think most of your customers will be
coming by busts and I would like to see the bus stop on Corona as close as possible to the off ramp and I think that would facilitate most of the writers in the eastern part of Petaluma using bus to get to the train at this point there were many years ago there was a survey of people who want to ride their cars and they came up with 45 on the east side wanting to use the train station and so they should be easily able to exceed that number if you properly use bus for collecting on the east side uh I hope to see you both again on this topic thank you very much thank you Dwayne our next speaker is Isaiah Gonzalez followed by Sheila b asiah you may unmute and begin your comments good evening might be a bit neat um but I ride a cargo bike that is not motorized but it is uh a bit it's on the lengthy side and it's kind of heavy so for that Crossing um some of those turns look a bit sharp um just for any other parent who's riding a cargo bike that's a bit on the longer side or perhaps has uh like a child attachment on the back um if there's a way to round out those turns so they're not so sharp um I'd really appreciate that and and maybe widening um The Crossing uh because the gates put up at the other Smart Station um to cross the tracks uh sometimes when you're going at a speed that you need to go at trying to slow down for that turn gets a bit difficult um thank you for those comments our next speaker is Sheila b you may unmute and begin your comments thank you Shewa Baker here
thank you so much I appreciate this uh conversation about bicycling and the train a lot and council member um Barnacle you rock you you are infinitesimally terrific that means it um you are you I really deeply appreciate your comments and I think that they just really hit the hit the nose for me and I appreciate your advocacy for you know what what we really need in this planet and I also appreciate the previous speakers comments and that is we have talked about this in Petaluma and it is a problem those uh for cargo bikes getting through those places so anyway thank you so so much thank you so much and that's all from me thanks thank you Sheila and that is the last hand raise so I'll turn it back to you mayor thank you very much that closes public comment for the evening back to council for final comments more thoughts on this council member barnacle yeah um I'm really torn about this because um I because back in 2008 I campaigned like hell for smart I called The Marin County Bicycle Coalition entire list like twice I tabled at farmers markets all summer because I believed in it now because I Love Trains but because I believed in walkable communities and um like I want smart to succeed so much in putting 100 parking spaces at this train station makes my skin crawl because it's literally um the thing that I didn't want to see happen I wanted to see smart bring about Economic Development and walkable communities and all of this great stuff that I was studying in school at the
time and um you know like the 10 10 biking 10 bike um lockers is just not enough um more and more people are biking you said it um we know if we build the infrastructure the rest will follow that goes for you know if we build the infrastructure for cars that'll happen and if we build the infrastructure for bikes that'll happen right now we're rebuilding our streets on there for to promote more active Transportation um I totally agree with Dwayne that you know the city needs to get its bus game together and be serving that area and that's that's on us um but y'all got to make a station that like actually suits us into the future and that you know you're not adding it because there's demand for it but you're driving demand for it and you can do that and we can help that's like the partnership that we should be pushing for um and I just don't think I can support this tonight as much as that pains me because I want to see the station really bad um but I also want to see a lot more inspiration I don't see any Street trees in the drawings I know you're still in the design stage but um you know if you're going to put solar there you know I guess maybe that's the reason for it but this is just it's really an uninspiring you know station in our our cities waited a long time for this in part because of me but I think we I think we need more I think we need more pushing Us in the direction we want to be going as a city because um we don't I don't want to see a hundred cars parked there
every day I want to see 100 bikes there every day and that's um not going to happen if we don't if we don't start thinking that way uh councilman now um when this smart first came to the community 15 years ago I'm trying to remember maybe 20.
and the downtown station was considered what you call a kiss and ride where um a commuter is going to be dropped off and kiss goodbye they get on the train and there's no parking needed because we all said why isn't there parking downtown when I want to go to the Giants game or I want to go on the train I don't need to commute so it's recreational I'm gonna find another place to park I'm going to be in the parking garages or I'm going to be on a residential street that doesn't have block parking so I understand why we need a hundred parking places at the corona station because it's going to alleviate the downtown need for parking in our parking garages when you're just recreational bet you're gone all day and I understand what the mayor says the bicycles are on the train to to finish the rest of their trip they'll last mile or they need him in their commute they need them when they get to wherever they're going to commute to wherever they're going so I understand that you're also going by a building code from the state am I correct so [Music] can also remember Barnacle I understand and I know we need a need in the future but I hear these gentlemen saying they're going with what they're financially able to do and what the code is right now and I'm looking at the parking spaces to alleviate parking of people taking the Smart Train that are using that parking spaces downtown right now so that is just my pitch for smart and for the recreational writers that are right now not
finding parking places in our downtown location so I'm just going to be the Devil's Advocate there yeah right now we've been receiving some complaints about no parking at Petaluma downtown um I was there on Tuesday and Thursday of last week and there was not a single parking spot in the parking lot so we are currently out doing an RFP to look at what it would cost us to expand the parking open up the fence uh install another fence and allow some additional parking at Petaluma downtown so that's something we're looking at right now because I've received numerous calls about people who weren't able to park and catch their train that's great news because when I go to the art center or the the visitors program there is not any parking and I said why isn't there any parking where are all these cars they're they're not in this building and I was told that their commuters or smart train riders that are parking in those areas that are supposed to be only for them for the art center and The Visitor Center I received an email uh Friday from a lady that got a ticket she was parked in front of the art center and riding the train and somebody saw her do it and wrote her a ticket so I I parked in the parking garage or walk so got it okay council member Gator Thompson what I'm hearing is well I do agree that I think 100 spaces is a lot but I want to move this project and I'll make the motion to move it because we've been waiting for a long time parking spaces can be removed so we can have
more spaces for bike and I think we can just augment it as time goes on but I'm not support this if they fill up we'll add more guaranteed thank you and um so I'll make a motion thank you motion and uh second by now and um I just want to note that originally um as can see the original smart plans call for more uh vehicle parking at this location and actually were dialed back here we're doing the right thing about dialing back the amount of car parking at this and uh I do trust that our partners are hearing us and and uh the items we're looking for are minor in the grand scheme of uh their ability to retrofit and and adjust to Market so um I'm I'm in support of proceeding with this and certainly don't want to wait any longer to have our station uh delivered council member strips okay I I agree with that Mary McDonnell on this um uh I believe that the biking uh we definitely want to look at that expansion but I believe um turning five parking spaces into bicycles is is a very cheap and easy thing to do in the future so um if the need is there and what I'm hearing and what I've heard about what the the you as a manager and operator of smart is is more flexible and willing to change and modify to what your needs are and what the public wants and needs so as it happens the space is flexible so I'm going to go and trust you to um to build out as needed for both the cars and bicycles as things change you're already building in for the possible solar panels which I believe grant
money is coming just like we got for I was at pedal ma Casa Grande High School when those Pals actually went in I got a grant for putting in two charge stations on top of that so I know the grants are coming for that and we can get those solar panels out I know the city is looking at putting them up in several locations also so the solar panels I know and they're actually going to take up probably a couple locations a few trees in order to put the solar panels which is a higher priority which I agree with even though I'm I'm a tree planner here in town I've planted several hundreds of trees this year uh um but I do I would request on the outskirts on the outside fence line and on the street I know that our Engineers are uh we've been we've beaten down a little bit uh to get more trees on the McDowell plan and they're they're getting tree spots in there and eventually we'll get some purple pipe water to that area eventually so um having that in the plants for some flexibility to use to at least along Corona so to beautify that area a little bit and so that the entrance is Pleasant rather than just a a fence a Cyclone Fence that you're staring at from the sidewalk if um there could be some landscaping that's put along the fence line all around the edges with even some small trees at least some some buffers some visual buffers for traffic and the like I know you're totally focused on transporting people but you also have to give them some something to look at and feel and fresh
air and the light so again I think we need to move this forward but I think you've heard us talk about more bicycling more EV stations solar panels added to the parking lot and and trees around the edges and on the sidewalks the city needs to work with you on the sidewalk area in the curb area to get those engineered I know our city Engineers are are going to push hard in that direction because we know the Public's pushing hard in that direction right here so I would say I would I'm going to go for it and trust you to to add that into your final designs at least the flexibility to do all these things and to do the best you can to make that happen um but I'd like to see it move forward at this point because you guys need it at this point we need the station I have a motion in a second maybe we have a roll call vote Barnacle no no yes shrubs yes McDonnell yes motion passes five to one with council member Barnacle voting now and thank you very much for being here at such a late hour we appreciate your participation in this and with that we are adjourned for the evening thank you