City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Cloverville City Council meeting. Like to call the meeting to order at 6:02. Would everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Let the record reflect that all council members are present. Does anyone have any conflict of interest declarations tonight? Seeing none, any changes or deletions to the agenda? Uh got a request. Uh mayor, uh do request for the mayor and vice mayor selection to be done in the same process as last year. Uh the council discussion was prior to asking for a motion for each role independently. Perfect. When we get to that item, we can absolutely.

Yep. Okay. Any changes or deletions to the agenda? Seeing none, we'll move into public comments. Any person wishing to speak in person on an item not listed on the agenda may do so at this time. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the city council is not allowed to consider issues or take action on any item not listed on the agenda. Three minutes are allotted for each speaker. With uh respect for everyone here, there will probably be a lot of public comments tonight throughout the night. So, please respect the clock as we go through this process. Uh first up, Mr. Terrari. Turn. Can you turn on your microphone for me, please? Just uh there's a button down low. It's push the button. There you go.

All right. Good evening, city manager, Mr. Mayor, and honorable city council members. My name is Eric Terrari. Many of you know me through my work across the community. I serve as the chair of the Cloverdale Leadership Council, bringing together our nonprofits, service organizations, and the city to collaborate for the good of the town. I sit on the boards of the Cloverdale Arts Alliance and the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce. I'm a proud Rotarian organizing our monthly bingo. Most of you also know me for my work in real estate, but my background is actually in economics. I have a BS in environmental economics from UC Berkeley and a masters from Caltech in Pasadena. I'm currently the chair of the economic development comm community committee through the chamber of commerce. I mentioned this because I approached this project not only as a community member but as someone who deeply understands the economics.

Mr. Trey, can I stop? Is this about the Esmeralda project? It is. Can I ask you to wait for that item to come? Okay. This is for items that are not on the agenda at this time. I apologize and we will gladly listen to the whole thing again for everything else. Bore you with a repeat of the intro. I'll skip right into We all love bingo. So, thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who'd like to make a public comment on an item that is not on the agenda tonight? See someone coming down. Hello. Would you please state your name for me? Ken Scrfield, 313 West Second Street.

Thank you. I encourage you to go down to the wells that you're digging. Has anybody been there? Has anybody been looked at it? What do you It It's educational. It's interesting to see how fast you can dig a well, especially when it's in, you know, gravel or or whatever. I encourage you to go down and look. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. See Mr. Tolbert coming forward. Good evening, city council members, members of the plan commission, ladies and gentlemen of the Cloverdale Citiz. My name is Lee Tolbert. I am the managing supervisor of Palamino Lakes Water Company and I can't make comments directly about the Esmeralda project because our community is not part of Cloverdale. But

Mr. Mr. Tolbert, if this if this pertains to that item, could we hold off until that item is called? It's not pertaining to Esmeralda. Okay. Thank you.

And I believe all you guys, including the planning commission, have received a copy of my this statement. It it is known that the proposed elimination of Lake Pillsbury and the decommissioning of the PG& power station puts all water users of Russian River water from Potter Valley to Hillsburg at risk by significantly reducing summer flows in the river especially during periods of drought. The Palamino Lakes community and Palamino Lakes Mutual Water Company cannot comment directly on the Cloverdale City Council or plan commission on the Esmerald project. But we must make it abundantly clear that Cloverdale's increased demand on potable water by current and proposed expansion of residential housing and the resulting increased flow of waste water into the Russian River from Cloverdale's municipal waste treatment plant would put all users of Russian River water below Cloverdale to Hillsburg at risk. to negatively impact the quality of health water diverted by wells from the Russian River for agriculture and individual and community potable water systems. By adding tertiary treatment equipment to the Cloverdale Municipal Waste Treatment Plant, a calculated percentage of the total gallon output could be used for agriculture and landscape irrigation to offset the demand of potable water for these same uses.

Lower flows in in the summer and in drought periods exacerbates the negative impact of effluent entering the the river. An engineering engineered tertiary treatment system would need to be expanded as development loads are increased. I urge the city of Cloverdale, the plan commission, and the citizens of Cloverdale be forward thinking and find funding either by government grants or adding a conditional use fee component future residential developments for supporting dollars for that project.

Thank you, Mr. Tobert. please come forward. Hello, my name is Sally Pringle and I'm a Cloverdale resident and um my concerns are um mostly with the water but um since um I'm super um concerned about the community garden um the Cloverdale Oasis community garden which is at 205 South Cloverdale Boulevard across from where your building is. And your building is actually a perfect building for a natural food store or community market. It has a loading dock. And I also wanted to talk about how Pix is preserving the historical landmark of the roadside diner. And there's a grandfather well at 205 South Cloverdale Boulevard, which is one of the only remaining grandfather wells in downtown Cloverdale. And it's very obtrusive and um to think that anybody would ever cover that with a parking lot or a twotory or threetory building when we have all these vacant buildings around town or perhaps the car wash area or somewhere else where that they could build, but I don't even think it's necessary. So, um, my biggest concern right now is preserving the community garden, the oasis garden. Um, it has shade and trees. It gets so hot in Cloverdale in the summers where like it's just scorching heat. It's a great place for people to hang out and to bring kids and have an education center and a park and growing food and having

our food resiliency is important. And with the water crisis going on, it's very important to preserve that property for those type of things, grants to get food growing and having the community involved. So, I'm dead set against anybody building anything on that property. That property saved my life. My doctor wrote me a prescription in 2013 and said to spend as much time in the garden as possible after I had been 16 years bedridden and I got my severe anemia cured and taking iron and having lemons. I have 10 at least 10 trees planted in the back of that garden that I donated that I've never been able to taste the fruits of. So, I mean, my my grandfather's passed away, but there's at the at the front of that garden is some Mexican sage and artichokes that I planted in 2013 when I that garden saved my life. So, I'm here to save the life of that garden. And I don't know how this secret deal got put on because I was told that the city was in the process of buying that garden. And so there's something shady going on that I don't agree with. And it's probably has something to do with all this new development that somebody from out of town came up here and decided they're going to change everything in our town. And I'm not okay with it because we don't have enough water and that well needs to be be preserved. Okay. Thank you, Miss Pringle.

That's it. Please.

Good evening, mayor and honorable council people, city of Cloverdale. Excuse me. I'm a little nervous. Not good at public speaking. So, kind of consider the source. Um, I have a few things. I always try to end a negative with a positive. Um, first of all, good job on the uh Christmas lighting ceremony. I saw you the other night. Thank you.

Um, that's nice. That's nice. Um, on that note, I had kind of a uh runin with the city council person. I'm not going to name names at this time. I mean, you and I can talk offline afterwards if you want to know who it is. Um, the person was quite hostile with me about this topic. I I realize that um that person was probably passionate, but the takeaway here is that I want every single person up here to remember that you represent the city of Cloverdale. Hopefully you guys can hear me very well. Um I took an oath to serve and protect this country for 25 years when I was in the Navy. So I know times are tough right now economically and also nationally with the atmosphere that's coming down range. So, I ask people to dig down deep in their heart and understand what that oath of protecting the people of Cloverdale is all about. I mean, that's important to me. Um, I mean, we can always agree to disagree on topics, but I think if you're out in town and you're representing Cloverdale government, you have a responsibility to be mature and be polite to the pe people of this community. Um, also I talked with the lady who is managing the museum downtown. for anybody else listening, they could use some donations. They have some dry rot um and a and an arbor that's falling over. Um I'm a handyman by nature, but I'm not licensed or insured as a contractor, so I didn't feel it was my ability to do that. But they're all privately funded or excuse me, funded by donations. So if people can find it in their heart, um we're coming up on Christmas.

Um again finances economy is very difficult for everybody. So if you can help that would be greatly appreciated. Um lastly transparency on this project which I guess I can't talk about right now. Um please everybody be a little bit more transparent. I think I speak on behalf of most people of Cloverdale that a lot of us don't know what's going on here. So this is your opportunity to share. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else would like to make a public comment regarding items not on our agenda? Going once, going twice. Let me say for the record on our computer system and on the internet right now on Zoom, if you are on there, we do not take comments through Zoom or through any other internet source. So if you are listening uh through that source do not raise your hand. It will be taken down because we do not take comments only in person not over the virtual. All right. No one else will move forward into the student liaison report. Welcome. Hi. Um I'm Risa Cardinas uh for the Cloverdale High School. We have students preparing for the finals next week. Uh, winter break will be from December 20th to January 6th. The high school is having their third annual deck a door contest to spread holiday spirit. As for sports, there is a boys basketball um tournament. It's um at McMillan and it's from Thursday, December 11th to Saturday, December 13th. The girls basketball has the Sequoia Classic tournament December 10th through December 13th. Winter sports, soccer, and wrestling have begun. The boys soccer have a home game this coming Thursday and next Thursday at 5:00 p.m. And the girls soccer have a home game on Monday at 5:00 p.m. For FFA, there are several students who participated in the Sonoma section speaking contest for FFA today. And there will be an FFA meeting tomorrow as a last chance for students to gain an FFA point and they will be decorating cookies. Um the Jefferson Elementary uh Jefferson school classes are decorating Christmas trees for

Cloverdale businesses downtown. And for the Washington Middle School, Washington had their annual turkey run before Thanksgiving break. And they have their winter sports such as boys basketball, girls volleyball, and wrestling that have begun at the middle school. That is all. Great. Thank you. Questions or comments from the council? Just want to say great job giving the report, Briea. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, moving on to the consent calendar. All items under the consent calendar will be considered together by one action of the city council unless any council member or member of the public request that an item be removed and considered separately. There any item that you would like to pull? No. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to pull an item off of our consent calendar? Seeing none, we'll bring it back. Yep. Make a move to approve the consent calendar. I second that move. Perfect. We have a first and a second. All in favor say I.

I opposed. Passes 5-0. Thank you. All right, we'll move into public hearings. G1, consider adoption of the 2025 California Building Standard Codes and the 2025 Fire Code by reference and amending Title 15 buildings and construction of the Cloverdale Municipal Code.

Thanks, Mayor. Uh so tonight we're asking the council to adopt the 2025 building code standards and fire codes and update title 15 to the Cloverdale Municipal Code to comply with state requirements. Every 3 years the state updates the building code and requires all local jurisdictions to adopt that and that's what we're doing tonight. Uh there's no real big changes we're proposing. The biggest change of note would be incorporating the fire the WOOI. Remember the um California wildland urban interface code. So we do have Mark Pedroya here from the fire district. There's any specific questions about that. That's that's really the big change. Um and that's going to provide, you know, more resilient standards of construction for buildings located within that fire zone that was identified. You may remember we brought that fire map to the council a few months ago and you adopted it. Um there are some administrative updates as well. Uh the city is entitled to create uh tougher standards than the California building code but not less um stringent. So we generally don't because the California building code is pretty pretty stringent the way it is. Um and so that's pretty much it. There's no budget impact on this. So, we're asking the the council to adopt the ordinance and wave the reading and uh for the California building code update.

Perfect. Thank you. So, it is just updating us for the meet California codes. Questions or comments from the council? Yep. Open to the public. Is there anyone in the public that would like to make a comment regarding this item? This is a standard thing that we have to do. Seeing none, we'll bring it back. Is there anyone that would like to introduce the first reading?

Move to introduce by by title only a wave reading of the text of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city Cloverdale repealing and replacing Cloverdale Municipal Code Chapters 15.00 00 through5.18 and adopting by reference the 2025 California building standards code title 24 the 2025 California administrative code part one including tables 2025 California building code part two including tables and appendices C1 J N O and Q the 2025 California residential building code part 2.5 including tables and appendes BF CI and CJ J. The 2025 California Electrical Code Part 3 including tables and informative annexes. The 2025 California Mechanical Code Part 4 including tables. The 2025 California Plumbing Code Part Five including tables. The 2025 California Energy Code Part 6 including tables and appendices. The 2025 California Wildland Urban Interface Code Part 7. The 2025 California Historical Building Code Part 8, including tables. The 2025 California Fire Code Part 9. Appendices Chapter 4 B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, N, O, and P standards and NFPA standards. by reference 2025 California existing building code part 10 including tables and appendences A chapter A1 through A5 2025 California greed building standards Codes part 11 including tables and appendences A4 and A5 the 2025 California reference standards code part 12 including tables and the 2024 international property maintenance code with local amendments Second.

New record. New record for the longest and the shortest. Very nice. All right. With that, all in favor say I. I. Opposed. Passes. 5-0. Thank you. And thank you for reading that, Vice Mayor. All right. We'll move into new business. H1 consider adoption of the November 2025 water supply assessment and water supply verification for the proposed Esmeralda mixeduse development project.

Good evening, mayor, council members. Uh I'm going to give a a brief overview before uh the applicant and the applicant's consultant uh give a presentation. But um the item before you tonight is review and possible approval of the water supply assessment and water supply verification for this project. Um it's a legal requirement for a project of this size and its purpose is essentially to evaluate whether the city's water system um supplies during a normal year, during a drought year, during a multiple year drought are sufficient to meet the project's projected demand. Uh the report is required to be based off of the city's current urban water management plan which was adopted a few years ago and status quo conditions. But uh as you've read in the report, the applicant has also addressed other things that are going on and potential changes uh down the road such as the decommissioning of the Potter Valley project. Um this uh approval tonight if the council does approve uh these studies is not approval of the project. It's just approval of these technical studies. They will become a part of the the full environmental review that is done under under SQA. Um at which time through that process is when there are mitigation measures that are potentially imposed. Um this is just a technical study for the the council. Um this project there are many many discretionary approvals still to come. Um including a development agreement where the city will be negotiating with the developer on you know additional mitigation measures and potentially community benefits and things like that. in and tonight approval of lists. The council does approve lists

study does not in any way limit the council's ability to approve or deny um the project later on when those entitlements come. Um so with that, I'll turn it over to the applicant um and they have a presentation for you tonight on the details of this. Thank you, Alex. Would you like to come forward for your presentation?

Is it I think that might be a that might not be the right slide deck. Michael, do you um I can Would it be helpful for me to send it to you again or we might have sent the wrong one? Should say um water supply assessments on the attachment four. Attachment four. There you go.

That's the one. Yeah, that's perfect. Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me here. Um, my name is Devon Zoo and I am the founder and managing partner of Esmeralda Land Company and we are the applicants for the project that we're going to be talking about today. Um, the purpose of this hearing is to discuss the water supply assessment and water supply verification that has been done um, looking at the water supplies accessible for this project. Next slide. Um, I'm going to give a a brief introduction of the project uh for anyone who's not familiar with some of the background. Uh, and then I'm going to hand it off to Brad Arnold from EKI who is a specialist in this topic and was um on the team who put together this report. Um, so as a starting point, the site in question is on the southeast uh end of Cloverdale, a short 8-minute bike ride into downtown and it has already been um annexed into the site into into the city. Um, and that happened many years ago. Uh, and um, it on one side it is bordered by Asie Road and on the east side it's bordered by the Russian River. Next slide.

Um, a little bit of history of the site is that uh back in the 1950s it was small farms and o open space. Um, but then over the years it became an active lumber and woodwaste facility uh called the Louisiana Pacific Mill. Um, and that mill has since been shut down and closed and uh the the the part of the land that was impacted by the mill uh has been remediated and it is really basically a former industrial site and we are really excited to give it a new life and build a new neighborhood for Cloverdale. Next slide. Um, a little bit more history is that this site has been approved for development for over 20 years and the the city has been talking with potential development partners. Um, and much of what we are proposing has already actually been completely approved and we are now updating that plan for uh really the 21st century and what what the future holds. Um, next slide. Um this this hearing is the first step in a a series of steps that will be happening over the coming months. Um we've been working very closely with the city on an entitlements package. Um Alex Moog, the city attorney, referred to some of the pieces of that that will come in the future. And this water supply assessment is a uh is really a uh just looking at where the water is and what is currently accessible. and it is a study, not a formal approval. Um, next slide. Um, we've also been doing an extensive public process in Cloverdale over the last two years. Um, I've personally spent a huge amount of time in Cloverdale. Um, the events that you see up on the screen are just the official events that we've hosted and um, spoken at, but we've also had a number of more casual events. I've met with hundreds of Cloverdaleians. Um my

email is always open so if you want to get coffee I'm I would love to continue this process that we've been doing for the last two years. Um some of the highlights is that we've done a number of open houses where we've shared the plan um and also sought feedback which has affected that plan and we've really evolved things based off of input from the local community. Um, we one of the events we also hosted was a parks, trails, and open space workshop where we uh sought input on what people would like to see in the big public park that we are going to be building and then gifting to the city city of Cloverdale. Um, and so if anyone's curious about the the past events, um, some of them have been recorded if anyone wasn't able to be there. Um, looking around the room, I see a lot of familiar faces. So I think a lot of folks here are familiar with the details that we've been sharing over the last few years. Um but uh I've also seen some new faces. So if there's any information that you would like to have um we would love to share it with you. Um next slide. So the the last uh public meeting that we attended a month ago, we uh did anformational hearing where we went into a lot of detail about the site plan and all of the input that we've received throughout this public process. I'm just going to give a high level so that we can ground this broader conversation in the plan. Um so as I mentioned this project has been approved for development for 20 years well before our company was ever evolving approvals on the left and on the right you'll see what we are proposing to change and the most notable difference is that we are using less of the land uh because we want to be able to preserve more of the property for public open space and ultimately the big public park that we're going to be gifting to the city as well. Next slide. Um, Alex mentioned this at the top, but

I just want to underline it. Today's hearing is not an approval. Um, this is about adopting findings and looking at an analysis to ensure that there is adequate water supply both for this project and for broader Cloverdale. Um, so the, you know, the the city council has full discretion to make a decision about the future development agreement that we're currently negotiating. um as well as uh any of the other details of the plan that we have proposed. So tonight is focused on just making sure there's enough water and then all of the other questions um are going to be addressed in future hearings. Next slide. Um so now I'm excited to bring up uh Brad Arnold from EKI and he's part of a broader team that have worked really hard on creating this water supply assessment document. Um, and uh, Brad, you can come take it away. He's going to he's going to go into a lot of technical detail about the water on the site.

Next slide, please. And good evening, honorable council members, mayor. I'm Brad Arnold with EKI Environment and Water, or EKI for short. We're a Bay Area company where I am a senior consultant. I work primarily with clients on the sort of long-term water supply planning and projections, water rights technical support and demand forecasting, the kind of quintessential pieces that go into a water supply assessment or a WSA and a water supply verification WSV that we're going to talk about here today. Next slide, please. In the presentation, we're going to go over the requirements of a WSA and a WSV. Essentially, what goes into them? What are we required to report? what did we supplement in there? We'll go into our approach and methods, essentially what we did to try and analyze the future outlook of Cloverdale's water supplies, as well as what this project would mean to be added on top of any growth forecast or anything that way. We'll go into the city's specific water supplies because this is a really important point of why we concluded that there was sufficient water supplies to add the project in. It actually refers specifically to the unique water rights and setup that the city relies upon for its water. So, we'll get into that. And then we'll get into the specific findings and conclusions unpacking exactly what we did to understand not only the project demands but the city's present and future demands as well as the supply conditions with everything referring to water rights curtailments, Potter Valley decommissioning etc. There's a lot to unpack here obviously. Next slide please. Specifically for the WSA and WSV, these sorts of documents try and ensure that cities consider cities or water suppliers that is consider the long-term water supplies and implications of taking on a new development or project. They determine whether sufficient supplies exist for the proposed development and they essentially follow a a guidance document or a set of of almost a cookbook, if you will, of what the California Water Code requires at the state level for these documents to include. uh they are required for projects that are greater than 500

residential units for the water supply assessment components and for the water supply verification components which add on top of that for any residential subdivisions that include tentative maps and other components to them. In this case, the project satisfies both needing a WSA and WSV which is a combined document here and what it does at its core is it evaluates the supplies under normal droughtyear dry conditions over a 20-year planning horizon. that that planning horizon is specified in state law by the way in the California water code. But more importantly, this is an independent look for the development as to whether those supplies would be available going forward with what might happen in the city, what might happen with the project as it builds out, etc. And if insufficient supplies are found, then the project needs to acquire additional water and define in this WSA and WSV what it intends to do to try and meet those uh those projected uses. That is next slide please. The specific approaches and methods that we looked at here was first off per state law to rely on the city's latest urban water management plan that the city attorney pointed to. That was in 2021 by the way and I'll refer to that as the WMP or urban plan just as we go forward in here. And that contains a lot of great information. Honestly, it's developed by the city, by city staff, engineers, planners to essentially do this sort of long-term projections and analyses per state requirements itself to look at growth to understand how the city might expand by 2040 and beyond and what that means for water supplies, demands, reliability, all the same kinds of things that we are borrowing on to try and understand what it would mean for the project to layer on top of that. Uh, but I don't need to tell you all that a lot has changed since 2021. And now that we're in 2025, there's a lot of new factors to consider. Potter Valley project, what's happening there, water rights curtailments, more importantly, what it meant for the 2021 drought and the water supply for Cloverdale, and ultimately what that meant for the

residents of Cloverdale as the shortage actions were implemented by you all, you know, rightfully to deal with conditions at the time. Um, so we'll unpack what that what that means and what we discovered and where that informed what we did in this WSA and WSV, which ultimately meant that we went above and beyond state law to really investigate what this meant and to try and draw as much of a holistic and complete picture, you know, as we could, as we understand it, as is reasonable to try and assess going forward. And it really followed a three-part approach as is shown on the slide here. First is trying to estimate the project water demands itself. what what does it mean for the project with its mixeduse development having residential resort other components to it landscape irrigation as it's proposing uh to actually dive under the hood and understand piece by piece with industry demand factors with local Cloverdale data with other data along the Russian River that other cities are relying upon to essentially piece that together land use by land use and then roll that up into a total water demand for the project as it builds out you know over its phase de uh development over the next, you know, number of years. And then comparing that against its intended use of modern facilities, water use requirements that are be, as you all know, going to become more stringent over time, residential use restrictions and guidelines from the state that'll be fully applicable as this project develops out, which means that in a sense we are sort of conservatively projecting this out. We're using 2025 demand factors, conditions, Cloverdale UWMP data, others to inform what the demands will look like for the project, understanding that as we go into the future, by its nature, it's going to have to be more efficient because it's building, you know, modern, efficient, less water use consumptive um buildings and structures and facilities that way. But again, this is all for the purpose of understanding what it means for the project to be included in the Cloverdale Municipal Water Supply System. Uh the second piece is actually estimating the city supplies and

demands. Again, the urban water management plan to the credit of the city staff did a fantastic job of outlining what that means into the future through 20 240 that we can certainly borrow from from to understand what the projected uh growth in population is supposed to be. I believe the 2020 plan for instance projected out to around 13,600 people in the city of Cloverdale by 2040. Um in 2020 they had around 9200 people. Presently, I believe it's just shy of 9,000 people if I recall correctly. So whether it ultimately develops out that far is to be determined. But as you'll see in our analysis on a slide here, uh we actually included that you know forecast out to you know over 13,000 people just again for the purpose of trying to make sure we cover our bases of what it means to incorporate the project. And then ultimately it is that supply and demand comparison which is the the bulk and where the rubber hits the road for these two documents to understand what it means under normal drought conditions to really stress test those assumptions then. So again as we pull the supplies demands to to actually you know put together sideby-side comparisons of these two to understand what that means. Next slide please. stepping into the city's water supplies because this is going to be a really critical point for as we go forward uh with the conclusions and findings of the WSA and WSV. The city itself draws from what are called Russian River underflows via several shallow wells within the you know 100 ft or so underground. Uh and this is important because it's not necessarily the Russian River as you might see it walking along the surface flows. This is really that that zone if you will underneath almost a a slowmoving river uh underneath and along the Russian River that sort of follows in the Alexander Valley. So the waterhed upstream all collects as you know from the upper watershed hits the valley portions of it go subsurface and it tends to slow it down and move even

though you might see the surface water itself continue to rush downstream towards other cities. It's a really unique position quite frankly of of what the city draws from. And furthermore, they draw from some of the oldest rights in the entire watershed dating back to 1884 that they actually had the entitlements to to pull that water. And that was really fascinating cuz when we did a look at the number of senior rights holders, people who would claim seniority uh to this group, the number of folks could be counted on basically two hands. there really not many more people who have senior rights and as you all may know seniority is is paramount in water rights. You get to use your water as a more senior user before anyone junior to that gets to use a drop. So it's important that way that the city really has this put together. As far as skipping over to the watershed and aquafer, again, this it's important that the underflows collect from the entire nearly 700,000 acre whed upstream and Lake Mendescino releases of course as those come in the spring and summer months. Um, but really again, it's that entire northwestern portion. It's portions of the east fork of the Russian River near Potter Valley that all collect and flow downstream. Portions go subsurface. That's what sustains these underflow portions uh during those drier periods. It's those wet months, water collects, accumulates, hits the the underflows. That's what keeps you going through August, July, late summer, uh, when the precipitation isn't there to continue to restock it. As far as the entitlements and capacities themselves, again, in the center of the slide here, about 30% of it is above the projected future city water needs. And that's important because it's a it's the entitlement of the rights themselves as they're recognized by others for this 1884 date. uh it actually shows that there is more water under those rights that are available to the city even on paper if you will uh than what is

currently needed to satisfy demands and even going forward uh with those WMP projections and that frankly limits exposure to certain state waterboard actions because not only is there that buffer but these are some of the most senior rights in the watershed but then it ultimately provides that reliable planning buffer going forward. So again, these rights want to just state the fact that historically they have been reliable as best we could tell in our review of the conditions and water supplies for Cloverdale. Um the only known curtailment in the last 100 plus years since they were formed was in 2021 and obviously that changed a lot of how these rights are assumed and and planned going forward. But um that was frankly more on regulation of water rights in the wershed rather than any sort of physical unavailability of the water in these underflows. Next slide please. So getting into the key findings of the WSA bring this all together with what we've been talking about in the analysis. Um the WSA looked at about or we determined rather that the project when you roll up all of those demands look at the demand factors the land the land use specific line by line items you get about 76 million gallons per year at buildout that's the ultimate demand that you get into the project going forward as is shown in the graph off to the right. This can be further reduced to around 49 million gallons per year uh if they find a way to supplement uh non portable sources for the landscape irrigation which currently is a large portion of the projected demands that are were estimated for the project. So outdoor uses which have their own potential restrictions going forward and this does incorporate the city's standard distribution loss factor of about 10.4%. What that means is there's some loss in inefficiencies from the treatment plant to the end user as you would expect pipes, treatment processes, pumps, tanks that way. And it's around

10.4% which comes from city data that we estimated from water loss audits and other things that the city submits to the state. And again, the demands themselves are based on industry demand factors. So even under these conservative assumptions of what the project may utilize long term, uh these demands remain well below the city's recognized senior entitlements on paper which are shown in the orange line above. Next slide please. To really drive home this point, we we did further investigation again because understanding that there were these specific land use components that were rolled up. We then took a look at gallons per capita per day. This sort of standardized factor of the amount of gallons that are used on a daily basis per person. It actually provides a really good reference point because the city of Cloverdale has its own state objectives and targets that are required. You can get a sense of what other suppliers are doing across the state. Uh specifically for the residential components now that we're talking about. So for the proposed residences as well as what's happening in Cloverdale, what we find is that the state conservation targets, the requirements that come out from the state, the regulations are around 100 GPCD. That's what's shown off on the line here. What you see across the state is anywhere from 40 to 100 GPCD. So anywhere in that range. Some of the more difficult situations are around that 120. Um existing Cloverdale is around 63 to 70. So I point that out because quite honestly that's already good in meeting a lot of the requirements on the residential side for Cloverdale. So in many ways already meeting owing to improvements in water use efficiency use and stuff that way. Uh the Asmeralda project as we calculated again the the residential specific components for a point of reference were around 48 to 60 from what we could tell again owing to these more efficient structures and work that way that we would expect to see going forward. So actually lower than we've seen for other mixeduse uh developments of this type around the 55

plus. So again this gives a sense of scale of what we're talking about for Esmeralda for the the project as it gets built, what the state targets are, what we see for other suppliers and other developments and where honestly Cloverdale is already doing a good job at meeting its state targets. Next slide please. As far as the the city's historic demand goes, it's important to point out that when we looked at the historic data in order to project out what's happening into the future, we see that from 2005 to 2013, there was a period of much higher water use than what we saw after the 2013 to, you know, 15 drought sort of thing. Um, residents honestly just responded to that and sustained that level of decreased water use over time. It's important that average from 2014 to 2024 for instance compared to that period beforehand shows discernable improvement that reflects the type of upgrades that the city undertook customers water use efficiency. It's the reason that that prior slide shows a lower GPCD is because of what happened 2014 and beyond. If it were still in that period prior, uh obviously those numbers would be quite a bit higher. So the city has already done a remarkable job in trying to limit its water use and certainly nothing that we can tell at this point uh suggests that it's going to go back to much higher use owing to improvements and work that way. Uh the blip that is shown in orange on here is important because that's the 2021 curtailments. We recognize that that did increase the water decrease rather the water supply that was available to the city at that point. Um when it's put on an annual scale obviously it shows as a short blip but we know that during those curtailment months it was much more stressful at that point. Next slide please. And so what does this mean for supply sufficiency and dryear management? Uh in terms of the reliability of the supply and city management itself, uh the city the city's senior water rights and well system especially with what we had seen in the urban plan with the well you know the well upgrades and work that has been done to improve some of the systems

generally provides a very reliable water supply under the vast majority of conditions. I mentioned earlier that in the last 100 and some odd years since the 1884 right was founded that there's only been one curtailment action in 2021 and doesn't mean it can't happen going forward but certainly there are questions as to what the state did to enact that right as well or enact the curtailment rather as well as what that might mean for future conditions but during droughts of any kind any supply shortfalls are managed currently under the city's water shortage contingency plan. Um, and the residents currently are subject to the actions and orders specified in that water shortage plan. That's essentially my understanding in 2021 of what this the council pointed to to identify and try and basically enact uh, you know, shortage actions out of that plan. And so as far as the the project itself goes to to complement or work within that framework, which they would be subject to just like any other customer in Cloverdale being a municipal, you know, demand at that point, uh that they would essentially work to try and capture and retain storm water on site to help, you know, retain and contribute to those underflows where practicable. Uh they would send out notices to their residents and visitors that encourage conservation and water use efficiency. Uh they would restrict on-site irrigation and outdoor water uses, limit washing of surfaces, all these sorts of actions that are wholly consistent with the water shortage plan, but would be specific to where the project would basically be able to find matching reductions that fulfill whatever actions are taken by by city council. Next slide, please. So all that together, let's let's look at the reliability because this was really an important part of what we looked at at WSA because there's a lot of changes, a lot of things happening in the wershed, a lot of, you know, factors to consider post 2021 that weren't necessarily in the last urban plan that

the city adopted. Uh the 202122 curtailments did affect Cloverdale's senior water rights. Um even though they are very robust and resilient, it did affect them for about 80 days. Now, it's worth pointing out that the entire Russian River wershed was under a sort of regulatory curtailment watch, if you will, for portions of 2021 going into 2022. Many other water rights holders and users were still subject to curtailments long after the 80 days that it affected Cloverdale specific rights owing to that seniority, that unique position relative to Yukaya, Huelsburg, and others who have junior rights compared to this city. That's the special standing that the city has relative to these others and honestly what provides it a really strong foundation for having water supplies. And again, these these drought restrictions and curtailments were regulatory in in nature. They weren't due to physical shortages. The wells themselves still had water to draw on at that point. So uh there was water still available to pump and when uh the state moved into a volume cur per per capita methodology later when the rights were curtailed that was the restriction that you all recall from 2021 uh those supply allocations scale per capita with person. So naturally the more people the more water that is allowed under those uh allocations at that point when the rights curtailed. So in other words, the project's permanent population would be additive to what was granted to the city under that allocation. It wouldn't further reduce anything that was granted to the city at that point. So that's what it means for curtailments. As far as Potter Valley project decommissioning, which you know, of course, I I can't understate the impact it'll have to the economics of those cities and users along the Russian River. It's it's going to be a major change in terms of the water that's available to Lake Mendescino and to others. There's there's obviously that's what we looked at in the WSAW WSV looked at the scenario where there is no

alternative there are other water users that are looking at alternatives to those um and we fully expect that whether there's an alternative or not it will reduce or outright eliminate what comes from the EO River that supports the Russian River particularly during those dry months of late summer and stuff that way. Uh the underflows that we talked about though do buffer from that. It's important to go back to those because that's where the city draws its water from. And those are sustained in large part by natural precipitation that comes from the wershed. Those portions north and west going way up into you know mountains further and stuff from here. And that's ultimately what accumulates reaches the Alexander Valley where a portion of it goes subsurface. We did an estimate as part of a technical analysis to supplement the WSA and WSV here. We did the accounting fully of what the Potter Valley project was contributing. We did an assessment of what Lake Mendescino was contributing to flows and what we found was that the Potter Valley project there are certain months where it makes up a majority of the flows that you see in the Russian River. No doubt uh but on the whole over a year even in a dry year you can maybe talk 5 to 10% of what is accumulated over the entire year. So again it's never going to outweigh the natural precipitation that the wershed gets. That's the majority of what restocks the underflows. That's the majority of what the city gets to draw upon from its senior rights, which they would get to do before anyone junior to them does. This is why there are so many other folks who are junior to you all that are quite frankly in a worse position with Potter Valley than you all are. And again, that seniority really reduces the risk of losing that legal access even as these lake flows and others decrease. But all of this is not to say that the city is invincible in that aspect. Um, this is where the water resiliency program that we reviewed and that the city staff provided us really helped kind of bolster and and make this a a bit easier to assess in terms of understanding the long-term projections

of where water supply might go for Cloverdale. Um, the city is doing supplemental supplies, upgrading infrastructure, uh, and this is expected to improve water supply reliability long term for Cloverdale. Um, not only will the project as a municipal co uh customer, you know, through their user fees and rateayer assessments contribute to enacting the plan that, as I understand, the city is already moving forward with. Um, but certainly all of this put together suggests that this will help long-term to ensure that the city stays in an advantageous position. We know that pipes, pumps, treatment plants don't get any younger. And so doing this sort of proactive thinking to keep the city in that that good position will be important. Next slide, please. And so to pull this all together, because I've I've thrown a lot at these on these previous slides, I'm happy to go through it again. Is the WSA WSV analysis indicates that Cloverdale has sufficient and reliable water supplies to meet the projected demands, including that with the project through 2045. that that um required planning horizon under a range of hydraologic conditions, droughts, dry years, multiple dry years, normal conditions, stuff like that. And it's important to note that sufficient does not mean that there will never be curtailments again. It doesn't mean there won't be restrictions again. We know that droughts unfortunately are going to become more commonplace, more frequent over time. But again, as we pointed out here, understanding where the project fits into that dynamic, it assists with the per capita allocations that the city was granted by the state when these curtailments happened. Uh the city does rely on senior rights that have certain entitlements that are still above and beyond the forecasted plus project demands going into the future. and that these future changes with regards to Potter Valley decommissioning that certainly will affect the wershed as a whole specific to Cloverdale's rights are not as great an impact as it

certainly will be for others uh in the wershed and so beyond that any temporary or drought related imbalances will continue to be addressed through the water shortage contingency plan of which would apply equally to the project as it does to all Cloverdale customers. That's essentially how we arrive to our conclusion here. Um last slide I think next is just thank you all and happy to answer any questions, comments, concerns on anything we presented here. Thank you all. Thank you. Michael, do you want to go next or do you want us to move forward right now? Perfect. A lot of information. Let's uh go through the council, go through questions, comments, and if Michael or um Brad when questions can rise, if you guys want to be here ready to answer, be great so we can make sure this is run efficient. I'll start with you, Council Member Laskkey. Brad, thank you for your presentation. Well thought out, wellversed, uh a lot of information. Uh you pretty much touched on a lot of the uh talking points that the community has and basically with Otter Valley project potentially uh coming down that's a big concern for everybody. Uh I I see in the uh you have your 500,000galon water storage tank idea that that you guys are uh proposing. That's obviously would be a uh a positive impact for the city that uh to help uh alleviate any uh long-term water storage andor water usage issues. So with with that I'm I'm send it over to council.

Yeah. Thank you. Council member Morgan Stern. Um I have a question due to the fact that we don't know what's nobody knows what's going to happen with Potter Valley. Um, so your facts are just more of a guesstimate than say scientific facts, correct?

No, certainly not. Uh, again, we went into the process through the technical appendices going above and beyond the WSA to understand specifically how the Potter Valley project contributes to Lake Mendescino and those flows downstream. This is where we went back to the earlier comment of when we compare that side by side with natural precipitation, that is the vast majority of what contributes to the underflows from which Cloverdale relies upon. That is scientific fact as best we can tell. That's straight accounting of data that comes directly from PG& and other sources of what the project has contributed over the last, you know, number of years of its operations. Uh beyond that again there's some questions on the dynamics of you know what that means for folks downstream and others in the wershed certainly that that we'll have to resolve some of those impacts but again we feel very confident that Cloverdale specific rights and underflow resources are going to be largely buffered by those natural precipitation.

I'd like to add one other thing uh council member uh we also didn't we assumed that all water from Potter Valley is uh eliminated. there's been some discussion of a there's a nerf a nonprofit authority that's thinking of taking it over. We just assumed the worst case and I really want to bring that point home. Wherever there was a question about whether something was possible, we assumed it wasn't. Um and precisely to honestly address your concern, we're not we're not we're not assuming in any circumstance the best. We're assuming more droughts. We're assuming Potter Valley is closed completely. Of course, we hope something better can be worked out, but that may not be the case. Thank you.

Thank you, Brad and Michael. Thank you, Devin. Uh my question here looking at the um really what you guys were uh working with was our urban water management plan. Um this is from 2021. And looking at page LD3, uh it is our actual and projected population water use. Um you know, there's there's maybe we're we're not quite at the population that's estimated here. And uh you know, there's reports that maybe we're losing a small amount of population over the couple years. Uh you know, there are drastic changes. We could look at the last 20 years and maybe not see a lot of population growth. If you look at the last 30 years, you're going to find a different story. Um my concern is that this number 12,500 uh is thrown out as far as like we can maintain that population. Maybe we can maintain 14,000. Uh what is our ceiling? That's my concern is that that uh uh that's some information I've been unable to find out uh through um our urban water management plan uh this uh WSA WSV and also the water master plan of 2011 is that um I would like to know at what point do we hit a ceiling and it's it's in any scenario we're absolutely going to need a buffer. So, I'm my my worry is that u you know, I don't want to see a moratorium on some other needed housing that that we might need to maybe house young adults uh starter uh dwellings for for for young folks that's needed this community.

Uh thanks. I would I we'll both answer. I just wanted the the the I think for everyone else's benefit, it's worth reciting what the urban water management plan assumed, the urban water management plan and what we assumed on we we incorporated all those assumptions. Um the best to the best of our knowledge today based on the California Department of Finance numbers the population of Cloverdale is just around 8,800 8,800 people today. Um the plan assumes the water management plan that we incorporated assumes that Cloverdale grows up to to 13,600 people by 2040.

And then our study includes all the people that we would bring on top of that. So, so actually if you add that up, it's can't do the math necessarily, but it's about we assume about 1500 1,500 new people plus 13,600 people. So, at that point, what does that put us at? We're close to 151. Thank you. Um and 15,100 people. And so even with that um what the studies were showing is that there's a significant buffer between that demand and what the city's senior water rights are which is 910 million gallons per year.

So um you know I'll I'll leave it to Brad what that might represent an additional population. I did want to say we what we're what what's nice about this study is it assumes all that growth up to 13,600 people. I think we're getting pretty close. I mean, uh, currently we do have a lot of properties, uh, you know, in the process of being built. Uh, there are properties in town that are, uh, marketed for development. Uh, those may be, uh, can house possibly 240 residents, 120 residents, uh, each based upon 2.5 residents per unit. Um, there's other areas. is there's water districts that we might be taking on uh 6 acres uh water district um as well as South Cloverdale and Mutual Water Company. So, this is my

good I I the good news is that your plan which we embraced assumes growth. Yeah. And and I guess that's my concern is that some of this plan is is uh is just a little old. You know, I I would like to see um maybe this tabled until some of these plans are updated. Uh you know, that that's really my feeling. It's hard to make an assessment off a plan that's outdated. And I know you did some work to amend things like the Potter Valley project. The Potter Valley project personally, um I think it's more of a matter of of price, something that's going to come down. The water is going to be there, um to a degree, but it's the cost.

No, I appreciate your question and it is a good point to bring up. If I can get to go back to a prior slide on here, I think it would actually be really helpful to show exactly the point you're talking about, council member. Um, keep going back. Oh, we're starting at the beginning then. Then keep going forward. Um, uh, keep going. It's, uh, stop there. So, what we see in the graph shown off to the right hand is to Michael's point, what we're utilizing with the UWMP projections going out forward getting to around 30 13,600 people. this on top of that in the green bar is shown the project of an additional 1,500 people. Um to your point, council member, the buffer that you would then want kind of between what your right entitles the city to and what you're projecting out is really that that difference that white area that's shown between them. And as you can see, even with 1500 people in the green bar, you can stack a number of those on top of one another before you ever reach that orange bar at the top. So, a number of these types of projects could come in uh and still not reach the entitlement of what Cloverdale has available, but it's it's a good point is we don't know what the future holds for development, but at least there's buffer. Yeah, my concern is that uh we don't have a ceiling a number for what that ceiling is. I see what you know our our senior water rights entailment can provide for us, but in in any scenario, we do want to keep a buffer. So, that is my concern. said the council member, although we're not giving you tonight because the WSAW WSV does not require us to tell you the quote number,

but what's implicit and hopefully obvious at this point is it's a considerable number more people, thousands actually more. Yes. It's also worth noting and I was surprised when I looked at the city's general plan, the city's general plan assumed that today we'd be at 12,000 that Clodale will be at 12,500 people. So what we have seen a fair amount in the more recent history is projecting a lot of growth and only getting a little. That doesn't mean we can't also plan for a lot of growth. And the good news is as this bar indicates there's actually a fair amount of room for that. And my concern is that a lot of these plans are very outdated and you know we are in the process of updating them. Uh so it's it's hard to make that.

Well no I mean actually these numbers are not hard to make. So so council member that senior water rights is not a new plan. that is the city that's city's existing senior water rights. Yeah. With all respect, I think there's just one more point that I'd like to make because I think it's helpful on here that

if you notice between the 532 shown in 2025 on there around 9200 people that was projected and 2045 at 675 million gallons per year, that's 13,000. The difference between those blue bars wouldn't suggest that it's accommodating all those additional people between 9200 and 13,000. That's because projecting out to 2045, these are new efficient water use efficient structures, things that come in and utilize less water than some of the older buildings that are on site in Cloverdale. So, it's not even just a general gallons per person because that's relatively going down over time. So, that gives even more credence to the buffer between that green bar and that orange line of it could fit even more with as we get more efficient, more use

and and I appreciate it. I think you're making some great points. uh there is a lot of uh remedies that we'll have hopefully coming in the future you know with the purple pipe and um you know other things that people can adopt to lower their water use uh you know I think just not having a def definitive answer about population and um looking at our urban water management plan you know the the growth is scheduled showing on here um there is a total of of 13,000 just under 14,000 uh by 2040 But in that 10-year period previous from 2030 to 2040, it's just showing a 440% growth. And I just don't feel that that may be accurate. And you know, again, we we don't know what the future's uh holding for us, but my concern is that I don't want to lose out on some other needed housing um if if we don't have an answer for what the ceiling is. Yeah, the good news is I I that would be that's that problem is uh not an immediate one. We have a lot of years to plan.

Thank you very much,

Brad Michael. Thank you very much, Devin. Thank you for showing up. Um you know, I sat there and that great presentation 1894 water rights, senior water rights. We heard it a bunch. I think this is for the the crowd here, too, is is we had the 21 curtailment state stepped in. But I'm I'm just wondering if you know we've got the way things are going right now, those curtailments start to show up a little more often. How fragile actually for the state to come in. We're we're relying on these senior water rights. Cloverdale solid with those with the state jumped in and curtailed us right away. So with the weather and everything, Cloverdale getting hotter. You know, these droughts show up a little more often. How valid are those water rights? I understand they're senior, but when the state jumps in, that kind of wipes them out. It's a great question and actually I'm going to go back to prior to joining EKI, I used to work with a water supplier in this area that relied on pre-1914 water rights. So this question is very special to me because we were dealing with the same issue projecting going forward. And ultimately whether the state appropriately curtailed those rights is still an outstanding and legal question more importantly that I want to allow them to deal with. But beyond that, we can certainly anticipate that the state will try in the future to curtail those rights. Again, I think there was a precedent. I know there was a precedent set with the health and safety standards that were granted to the city last time that 55 GPCD. There's also some argument for precedent set by the expansion that they got after 30 days to raise that more. Again, something that scales with people, right?

Uh so again, it wasn't it wasn't a physical drought. the water was still there at the wells more more importantly, but regulatory where this will basically show up in arguments with the state board and what they're capable of doing um is going to be important going forward to stay vigilant as pre 1914 rights holders. Um but to answer your question, they're not fragile. They're very reliable and quite honestly compared to others in the wershed. I jotted down some of the other cities just for reference. Fieldsburg with 1950s water rights, Windsor in the 1990s and some of the other Sonoma water rights. Ukaya was the closest in 1914 itself, but that's still junior to what Cloverdale relies upon. So again, this is as a whole, Cloverdale would get to use utilize its water prior to any of them. So this is a position where the entire wershed's fragile, sure, but Cloverdale is in a really good standing and reliable position.

And vice mayor, if I may add something, so just for context, it was set at 55 gallons per day. Then we applied and got it raised, I think 104. The city's position at the time and still is is that the curtailment order is illegal and violates California water law. We filed documents with the state water board. We have were at the time uh considering litigation. They dropped it after 80 days and so we also dropped it rather than waste money on it. But I that has been the city's position in the past.

And council member I had one more thing. I think what it was um uh said rather quickly, the amazing thing is despite the curtailment was the rapid pace that the waterboard removed the curtailment and compared to the other other jurisdictions in the watershed it was was light speed. So the the rights meant something to the waterboard. Yeah. Thank you. Do you know how they decide to go into curtailments?

Yeah, I'm very familiar with the state water boards. It's called the water unavailability methodology. They have their hydraologic models and data essentially to optimize what's available in the wershed hydraologically compared to on a seniority working down the water rights list if you will where basically they run out of water. So the most senior get to use first and they progressively work their way down until the models say no more and that's where they draw the curtailment and they update this weekly during a drought emergency order. Um there are questions with the models. So we could get spend the entire night talking about um some of those that I have technically um but again this comes out from the state water board decisions. They release it publicly for the entire Russian River wershed. So they'll set a certain date.

Yeah. Thank you. Uh the difference between surface underflows and groundwater do surface water does surface water affect underflows? Yes, directly. That's why it's recognized under the surface water rights framework in California. So Potter Valley will directly affect our underflows.

No, not necessarily. uh because again we're talking about natural precipitation that is basically what fills and stocks those water flows during the wet season and then during the drier months you know certainly there could be a minor amount of Potter Valley Lake Menesino releases in there but that's not the majority of what's contributing to the underflows this was the technical appendix we talked about where we did the accounting of basically what was seen at USGS gauges directly upstream of Cloverdale vast majority of it over a year was natural precipitation it's a big watershed

yeah one more thing cuz I was also learning a lot during this process. Um and um didn't study hydrarology in college. But uh what's interesting is and what the what the technical appendence gets into is the the the aluvial aquifer as they call it the the body of water moving below the surface of the river moves a lot slower pretty obviously than the river itself. And so what those studies show is that the upstream precipitation that moves through the soils and the is is moving at a much lower rate. So the it it shows up in Cloverdale in August and in September. And so that's the part that I really that really made me go have my aha moment. That's why what Brad is saying is correct that even though Lake Mendescino you even though the surface of the river is almost dry at that point and will be dry more so in the future that doesn't mean that that aluvial aquifer is dry. And that was the big that that move because that water moves slow basically.

Yeah. And this is where you and I both we've had our our debates and we're both right. Uh but I I've also had other hydraologists compare this to a sponge with your underflows that you know you get water on the top of the sponge and the water can be in the sponge but the more you pull out of it slowly it pretty soon is dry and as you have less water coming uh P G is already asking for a 5 CFS variance they've applied for that through FK. you were going to have a possible no diversion period, which we know is okay. And that and I know that and and that's you've seen the Round Valley tribe said it in in their meeting that they are going to cut the water off at some point soon, right?

So, we know that we have to prepare for it and we are we have been for quite a few years now with storage uh ASR things that we're trying to do as we speak. Um, but I want to make it clear that this does affect us, but not as much as as people think. And that's what I I I I get it and I I want the point made that it does affect us. But when you guys um public asks me how do I support this project and say that Potter Valley is a bad thing at the same time. It's because they're two different water levels that we're pulling from. And the reason that we get curtailments is because the state mandates them. It's not because the water's not there. We're allowed to take a certain amount of water per person in population and they dictate that not based on how much water we have or could access. And that's where the problem was in 2021 with this project the way it's been shown to us so far. If this is a what I would call an above moderate uh uh development, second and third homes, there will be less full-time users, less impact, but they will count towards that amount of water that we can pull out of the aquifer to put into our storage for people that might not even be in Cloverdale, but they count in Cloverdale. So that is why at this point I I've been able to support this project is it's two separate things and I will fight to the death for Potter Valley because it affects your river and your environment and like Mr. Tolbert was talking about when you start dumping uh your your waste water into the rivers and things along those lines that might happen. That's where you could come up with the issues. But that doesn't affect this as much as as much as people think it does. And it took me a long time to understand that. Um, I want to go through my questions, make sure I hit

them all. Just for the record, if all this Potter Valley or or lack of water comes through, how often do you see the lake having drought condition as a hydraologist? Sorry. Uh, talking about Lake Men, it's in your report. That's why I'm bringing it up. It's not cuz I'm off topic. It's in the report.

Yeah. Yeah. No. uh Lake Menescino specifically. Again, this does not directly affect Lake Sonoma, just for people in the crowd. Um so we would expect it to mimic a lot of what we see during the droughts in terms of approaching Deadpool more often. There's quite a decrease in the amount of storage that would be available to folks who utilize that water downstream, namely Soma Water and other cities that are contra contracted with them. Um again, I would just uh generally speaking for the benefit of the public, uh treat it as though it will look the lake itself will look like drought conditions going forward. It'll at least appear that way because it doesn't have that supplemental inflow. But uh again, this does not mean the same thing as uh downstream. No, just because it was in the report, I want you said on a yearly basis. Uh yeah, I would have to look at the number. I don't have enough time, my apologies.

It's okay. And and what Brad educated me about just about two hours ago was the distinction between the state water board declaring a drought and Lake Mendescino looking like it's in a drought. Yeah. and the state water board's determinations based on precipitation in the watershed basin which obviously is partly related to the lake but actually as we know the lake you is getting water from the eel river and so there could be you could have a non-droughout condition where the lake looks really low

one of the things that Cloverdale is working on currently is purchasing water out of Lake Mesino a certain amount of acre feet to have as a supplement to our water supply uh that it basically gives us Lake Mesino is storage tank to use as we need. That is one of the things we've been doing. Um on your guys's property, if this development goes through, you have water tanks. I believe it said two 500,000galon water tanks listed on there, which if you did the math on that, that's a good week and a half if you were self-sufficient on full use, full everything on and everyone uh full population on that development. Uh that can also be something that can help supplement. Cloverdale has is in the process of doing a couple tanks. Uh we've put in wells. We're doing uh working with the state to get more water to make sure that we have adequate supply and storage here. Um but your project doesn't affect that in a negative way. It affects it in a positive by bringing over a million gallons to us. And then also, um, I know that we've had talks because none of this is negotiated until we get into the development agreement, but we've talked about things on the maps that show you might have access in an for an area, geological area for like a deeper well for an aquafer recharge setup. And I know that you had mentioned something about that in the past. Is that something you might be interested in in the future?

Yeah, a couple things. I think it's worth that the public know that the the existing develop there's an existing development agreement already just FYI everyone we're amending it and the existing development agreement obligated the project which we want to honor the building out the city's own infrastructure master plan and specifically this slide actually has a typo it's apparently two 500,000galon water tanks those are dedicated to the city actually it's a really important point it's not our water um it would the the the entire improve improvement which is going to be expensive would be dedicated to the city. I do want to emphasize that because it's the entire city's water security that's at stake not just the project. So really wanted to drive that point home. Second thing I wanted to say is the we are completely open if the city finds that it's advantageous to do water to do wells in our property. We super open to that conversation. Um and we would negotiate that as part of the development agreement. So thumbs up on that total. There are existing wells, unfortunately, they're not permitted for municipal use, just FYI. And we're not they're agriculture and most of them were associated with the old mill, so they're not active. Um, and so I just wanted to comment on those two.

Thank you. We'll go back through. Go ahead, Council Morg. I just want to make the comment that even though somebody has a house that they only use half the time, that doesn't mean it will be empty. A lot of um wealthy wealthy people rent out their homes while they're not there. The good thing about that is the city gets to control that. But just to to your point, Councilwoman, that's why we actually assumed 1,500 people because some people told us that that was too much and we believe that there might be some of what you're describing. But we are subject on that note, we are subject to the city's um short-term rental ordinance. So Oh, I'm sorry. Was that it? Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, I think that was a good point that council member Morgan Stern made and I'm just going to follow up uh about the second home idea and this is kind of a minor detail. Um, so if you have a second home and you're registered to vote, your IDs at your first home, do you get counted in a census at your second home or is does how how does that work? Any question for our city attorney? Um, I you're only counted one place. So, you would be counting that your primary

primary residence. Okay. So, just wanted to get that sorted out. Um, you know, some of this is going to go to public comment and I'm I'm very curious uh to hear uh council's thoughts, public's thoughts on the population growth issue. Uh really um I do think that you guys have been uh with with the slide showing pretty diligent uh uh with your with your water supply uh assessment and uh a lot of the things that you've bu built into your uh project do uh conserve water. I think overall like it's going to bring our average down as far as usage. um and and you're very very conscious on uh I think open to ideas as far as the uh flood plane goes. So I do want to thank you for that.

Uh thank you.

All right. With that, I'm going to open up to public comments. What I'm going to ask is everyone be respectful of the time. And I'm going to ask that if someone says the same thing you want to, please wait till the end. Make sure everyone gets a turn to say different comments. I'm not I'm not asking you not to go. I'm just asking you to go last or decide not to go and let their comments stand for you as well. If you want if you want your voice heard without saying anything, just raise your hand on this. That's I support that. Be great to know. So, with that said, please go ahead and and also remember we're trying to talk about the water assessment, not the whole project as a whole. However, you're the microphone's yours.

Thank you. Uh, Mr. Mayor, honorable city council members. Um, so I want to be clear, I have no economic stake in this project. Um, I'm speaking here as someone who loves this town and works tirelessly to make it a better place. Um, while respecting its small town character. And you know, I want I think what we learned tonight from this presentation is that there is plenty of water for the town to grow organically and to accommodate the additional growth that this project is presenting to us. Um, even if Lake Pillsbury goes away and we lose that water supply. Um I do want to speak a little bit about just in general about the fact that they are primarily working under an existing entitlement and um a lot of the opposition to this project has um been fueled by some conspiracy theories that I don't need to talk about here today. But um many of them are not grounded in fact or in law. And um this this development in fact cannot create an independent state. It's part of the city of Cloverdale. It's subject to the laws of the city of Cloverdale. And um and I think it's important to also recognize that we as citizens in this country do not have the ability to control who buys or sells property in our communities. It's private property. And just because you think someone has a political or religious affiliation with someone else, it's not grounds to oppose a project. Um I think that

the quality of this proposal is is high. Um what Devon and her team have done have actively engaged with the community, sought input, and adjusted their plans and responded to the input of this community because at least from every conversation that I've had with her or her team, she truly believes and was inspired by what Cleverdale is and wants to become part of that and enhance it. Um I think there's some significant economic and community benefits from this project going forward. So I would urge the count that includes increased uh demand for our local small businesses inc uh significant toot revenue u meaningful impact fees new jobs and more publicly accessible open space. Um so I think is it going to solve all our problems? No. Will it create no problems? I think that's unlikely. Will it improve the quality of life and strengthen our local economy? I think absolutely. So, in closing, I think that the only reasons to deny this project are from fear and conspiracy theories, and there's no place for that. I think the council members should be focused on the facts. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you. My comments are not as a uh operator of a local water system, but as a state, California state certified water treatment and distribution operator and also a certified waste treatment plant operator. I have gone to the city website where there is a link for the Cloverdale provided water source assessment. That link is broken. So there's no way I could have gone in there and compared validity between this water source assessment and the one that Cloverdale has paid for. I think this water source assessment that's currently being proposed to be accepted by the council should go under independent review before acceptance. Thank you. Yeah,

thank you.

Good evening, Daniel Frankston. The avail the available evidence suggests that the city's wells and associated underflow conditions are unlikely to experience significant adverse effects from the proposed project. the eventual PVP decommissioning or other anticipated changes in the watershed. That's the conclusion from this survey. And as Devon pointed out, you're not being asked to vote to approve of this survey. But what you are being asked to do tonight is to adopt the findings, to concur with the analysis. So if you vote to adopt these findings, then you are voting to affirm that this project will not that is unlikely to experience significant adverse effects from the proposed project, the eventual PVP decommissioning or other anticipated changes in the watershed. I've heard a lot of talk about there not being enough water and that's a primary concern of mine with regards to this project. There are other environmental concerns that I have. There's a question as to whether it's appropriate for Cloverdale, but for me it's really all about the water and I've heard a big discussion about water the past two years here and the effects of PVP. And what this survey is saying is it's no problem. You're going to be fine. So, if you vote to adopt these findings, you're basically saying the PVP decommissioning will not affect Cloverdale. Thank you. Thank you. You good?

My name is Wayne Allen. I'm here representing representing a friend. She's a resident.

Wayne Wayne Allen. Uh I have some I I have some just questions really is all I have. Has anybody looked at what this project would do to the city's ISO rating, the insurance services office that needs to be looked at now before this project goes in. You're you're insurance right now is very high due to the fire. So I I just think that is something that needs to be looked at before approval is given. Uh, these are going to be second and third homes. I heard just a few minutes ago. Well, what that entails is that that's not full-time money coming in. You're going to have to hire somebody to be on staff year round, but you're only going to be getting money from these people maybe six, three months out of the year. Uh I'm glad to see you putting storage in. Uh you know, is there going to be any uh booster pump stations to get water to those things? It's additional electric. That's add additional maintenance. Any wastewater pump stations to get the waste water back to the plant. Those are things that should not be on existing city custom. every bit of that could fall on this development. And well, okay. Uh uh after when she first asked me to look at this, the uh I went to the website and the numbers that I got was 602,000 gallons

per day wastewater flow and at roughly 160,000 gallons a day audible water sale and I'm sorry that's uh there's a roughly a 40% difference in what your website says that you're you're you're treating waste water but you're not you're you're not selling that in palletable water. So there's that difference. They're saying 10.4% 4% water loss. I did see in your system that you in the near future plan on spending I think it was $4 million on INI inflow and infiltration re remediation. That is great. That's perfect. Uh the other thing the last thing I want to say is a gentleman Mr. Arnold said that their survey was independent. Did the developers pay you for that survey? I don't see how that could be independent. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, thank you. I just want to respond to that because it's an important point and I can understand wanting it to be an independent review. And just to note how these water supply assessments, water supply verifications typically go because I I do them all over California for clients is typically there is a developer component that helps fund and move this along to get it started. City has their involvement with their staff. So it's important to note that the city has reviewed this document as it was in draft form. This process started all the way back in I believe March of this year if not earlier. We had an independent consultant on top of us, a gentleman Eddie Teasdale who showed up on there with Ludorf and Scalanini, a separate firm completely independent with us review this document and add feedback as well as a legal firm uh with Barry Epstein who's a a well-known lawyer in water rights law and water rights concepts that reviewed this as well on top of what we had done. So again, we were the independent reviewer. I take pride in the fact that a lot of went into this was my own professional judgment as a professional civil engineer and board certified water resources engineer as well as an employee of water suppliers in California and now a senior consultant for EKI. So I appreciate the clarification

and actually I'd like to add one more point. Uh the city's own civil engineer West Yost paid by the city to do the actual review. We had multiple comments and did multiple rounds of revisions only in after the city accepted Brad's report. So actually it is inaccurate to say it's not an independent report because the city had many many bites at the apple and gave us a lot of feedback including the public works director. A couple other points that are really important to make. One of the gentlemen mentioned people if people aren't here there'll be no revenue paid. Well the irony and I think I think Mayor Lans understands this. property taxes get paid and toot and um our initial fiscal impact study for this project shows a net surplus net surplus to the city's general fund of 2.6 million to 4.6 million annually after accounting for police, fire, water, all of that. And finally, a point that I think is super important to make is in addition to this project paying over $22 million of development impact fees, $22 million for public sewer, for portable water distribution, for roads, for parks, and for affordable housing. In addition to the 22 million, we would be anyone in the project would be paying regular utility fees. And what's interesting about the city's water infra infrastructure master plan is it's more affordable if it's spread out over more people. So the paradox here is actually some of the upgrades that the city has proposed, which are great, will be more affordable for the rateayer if there's more rateayers. So I appreciate the gentleman's concern about empty houses, but from a fiscal perspective, empty houses still pay property taxes. So it's a really important point to make. Thanks.

Thank you. Who's next? Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor Lans, Vice Mayor Wheeler, the rest of the council members, and everybody else here tonight. Uh, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Eric Sanders. I'm a local Cloverdale business owner, homeowner, and lifelong Cloverdale resident. But I'm also a water and wastewater professional, state board certified as uh treatment, distribution, collections, and everything else. Um, my my wife and I have raised our three children here in this community. I've lived here for about 50 years myself. My wife's family has been here since these water rights were initially issued. There are few families left in this town that have roots that run that deep here. And um along with that and my experience actually working in the public works department for the city of Cloverdale as well as being a planning commissioner here. Um, I understand that this particular project is uh a hot topic and I just want to point out that I have a very unique perspective on the needs of our community here. And I I prepared a I prepared a very long written statement which I'm not going to really get into, but the long and the short of it is that I have met with Miss Zoo and she's been very pleasant and forthcoming answering all the questions that I've had regarding this project and I've actually um read and reviewed these reports that were presented here tonight personally as an just an independent resident of Cloverdale. And I wholeheartedly agree with the

assessments that the water supply is secure and stable and will remain so into the future regardless if this project moves forward or not. Um, but as we all know that if a project like this doesn't go through, that property is likely to end up being another highdensity residential governmentbacked uh project that is done by a developer that's asking for concessions and holding their hand open for, you know, uh, grants or funding from Sacramento, which as we all know uh isn't exactly in the best interest of our community here. So, I wanted to express personally and vocally to everybody here tonight, all of my neighbors, that I strongly support this project and hope that the council receives and adopts these assessments and reports as they're presented. Thank you.

Thank you. THANK YOU. WHO'S NEXT? Please come forward.

Hi, my name is Elaine Rock and I'm a Cloverdale resident, but I was also the president of Mount West Estates Water Company for 10 years and that was in Windsor. I know what the state is like with their regulations and I am very concerned that the state will come in and try to regulate our water usage again, especially given the Potter Valley Dam situation. So, I just wanted to point that out. But I also have a couple of questions. Um, I I agree with the person who said they couldn't find the information on the website. For the last three days, I've been poking around with it and I'm unfortunately I couldn't attend any of the presentations, but um I support the uh the development. Um but I also have some questions. I haven't heard anything about sewer systems. Is is that included in this particular assessment or not? I'll let you guys. It's It's your assessment.

I'm sorry, ma'am. Was that Elaine? Was that your Were you done? I'm sorry. Were you complete with your questions? Yeah. I wanted to know more whether the uh No, I have one more question. Please ask before we Oh, okay. Um the other question that I have is um about the storage tanks. I don't know where they are. I I'll bet most of the population of Cloverdale has no idea what the infrastructure of our water system is like. I think that a little bit more education would be something that would be valuable to everybody. So, um anyway, um where are the storage tanks and where is this $500,000 gallon uh storage tank going to be placed? Those are my questions right now. Thank you so much.

I have a lot of other questions I have submitted. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'll I'll start with the why you haven't heard about sewer and wastewater collections here tonight at all. Again, it has to do with the specific what we assessed under the water supply assessment and verification. This is a supply study, a sort of accounting exercise, as you will to determine what supplies are available to Cloverdale, what demands are current and projected, and then the project overlaid on top of this. This doesn't really look at the back end of wastewater collections and others. Those would be separate studies and analyses that I believe the project would intend to do, but I'll let Michael answer that.

I appreciate both questions. I'm trying to remember both, but the first I just want to comment the project will be subject to the subdivision map act where one of the entitlements will be a master tenative map. Um, and so, uh, the city has already begun to review that. That requ tenative map to be approved has to have full plans for all the sewer, for all the portable water, and for all the storm water. Um, furthermore, the project is 100%, I'll repeat that, 100% responsible for all costs related to construction of sewer and water, portable water, storm water, and wastewater facilities. And then one other point I really want to mention, uh, in our development agreement, we've already been negotiating this. If the city, the city, as you many of you may know, the city's talked about having a recycled water plant. Um, we are very supportive. And for those of you that know about recycled water, one of the challenges is a chicken and egg. The city wants to get revenue from the recycled water to be able to afford to do the recycled water. Well, we are a very willing customer and are committing to having all putting per what's called purple pipe for we would like to irrigate all of we'd like, excuse me, all of our irrigation to be non-potable recycled water. We are also open to having all of our commercial uses be nonp that that can use like like flush water, for example, for the toilets. Um, obviously don't use recycled water for drinking water, but we are extreme supporters for that. And then finally, I I just want to say the city um does have an impact fee regime already in place, and we will be fully subject to all those impact fees. And then finally, we will become rateayers as well. And as rateayers, we will be contributing to the upkeep of the sewer, the portable water, and the storm water system.

Thank you. Who's next? Please come forward.

Hold on. We're still Oh, I'm sorry. Um the question about the tanks. Thank you. Um I that's a really good question. The tanks were incorporated because the city's infrastructure master plan, which was adopted in 2010, proposed tanks for this site. the tanks are right now the proposal is you guys probably see there's a hill you can see from the 101 it's the tallest hill on the property um typically these storage tanks want to be on tall hills so the current location that we're exploring is on that hill I I if I had a map in fact it might be do we have a a map of the site I think we do I could just show there's one in there

if you go in actually um go a little further I apologize Let's just keep going. Um, right there. Stop. Do you see actually in this diagram to the right, uh, if you look on it, there's a little squiggly circle down the bottom right

says water tank access road and water tank right there. Yeah. And I want to say um one of the things I want to work with the city on is that because they're rather big, 500,000galon tanks are not small. We're looking at maybe not having it at the top of the hill because that would some people may not like to see a water tank. So we're looking at just slightly downhill and hopefully hidden behind some oak trees. We're going to be working on the sighting. That location was specified by the city FYI.

Thank you. And just add to that, we're going to add a water storage presentation in 2026 to show a lot of what we have because there's multiple tanks all across the city. Please, I'm sorry. My name is Janet Green. I'm a resident of Cloverdale and I would like all of you to also consider the unknowns of climate change, the longterm droughts that we have gone through and this Powder Valley project. These are a lot of unknowns. I'm suggesting or maybe proposing that the project um reduce the number of housing being with these unknowns and also maybe instead of two hotels, one hotel. I also have a maybe a question. I just was reading today in the press democrat. I don't know if all of you read this article. Um and I just want to read these and perhaps you could address this. Um the project consultants expect to demand to hit 639 million gallons when the project is completed in 2035. By 2045, demand will be 676 million gallons. However, these projections also show that Cloverdale could struggle to meet its future demands during a dry year when supplies are not expected to exceed 600 million gallons. So, there seems to be a a kind of discrepancy here about how much water would be available. So, that's my question. I also want to add something not to do with water, but with the housing. I do hope that you consider putting housing in for our wonderful farm workers here, our local farm workers. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. And I I did see the article from the Press Democrat. I I believe the numbers you you quoted may have been the city and then the city's total along with the project. We could go back to the slide and and probably confirm that, but 600 million gallons per year is way beyond what we projected for the conservative estimates of this project. We were around recall 76 million gallons per year. Uh as far as the consideration of climate change, Potter Valley project, and others. uh there are long sections of this document where we went above and beyond the typical requirements of a WSA WSV to really get at the heart of those problems that you're talking about because we we did want to be you know take a holistic view of what this means for the city and its water supplies going forward. We wanted to be cognizant of that. Uh and that's where we talked about technical appendices where we did the hydraologic analyses to figure out you know the accounting of Potter Valley contributions downstream all of this extra work on there. And again, what we found is is there are real impacts to the Russian River wershed and to folks along the Russian River. But I I have to reiterate that because of the city's unique standing with one, it's access to underflows. Two, it's the seniority of the rights it holds, the additional conservation that and and other measures through its resiliency program that are being taken on over time to sh up some of these supplies and sources. and considering that the the project itself would potentially reduce beyond 76 million gallons per year uh by offsetting outdoor use that you know we feel pretty confident that those are not going to necessarily affect the city in an adverse way if you include the project. Um so so again we did we did reiterate some of that and would encourage to look through some of the documentation on there and we're happy to answer additional questions.

Brad, real quick before you go, you you touched on other people's areas around the Russian River. How does how does this affect surface wells since chlor like the shallow wells that chlorial relies upon? Um again this is all tapping from the underflows. We talked about this earlier of the contributions primarily coming from natural precipitation. So it doesn't affect it greatly as far as we can tell. And this is the difference between Potter Valley's effect on surface wells versus on underflow. Correct. Is people's surface water wells other people's surface water wells. Yeah. So they would have their own rights presumably if they're tapping those shallow amounts. If they're tapping true groundwater, there's a whole different schema and framework of considerations

which is most of the wells throughout the basin and the Alexander Valley basin is there 18 to 26 ft for most people that live out in River Road. So that's the difference between this water and that water and they would have all their own separate rights and frameworks and considerations. Yes.

Thank you. Who's next? Please come forward. Good evening. Um, my name is Richard Coats. Uh, and I'm a Cloverdale resident. Um my concern is more with the the legal framework with which the consultant has to to work within. If you'll consider for a moment who selects the consultant, who pays for the consultant? If you will for a moment, put yourself in the place of the consultant. You're in competition with other consulting firms and individual consultants. Your customers are project proponents. Now, what would happen to your reputation if you build a project with too much truth? I think it becomes obvious that you don't want a reputation for being too hard on your customers. Otherwise, you won't get any. You'll go out of business. The structure that we've created militates against truth. Now if you think that this is not possible simply because consultants are probably regulated by the state, I can tell you that within my own family, we had a consultant and they on a project, a major project

discovered that there was significant uh harm to the community uh and wanted to put that in the report. The consulting firm that they worked for said, "No, you need to change the results." She refused to do that. She resigned. But the consulting firm falsified the results anyway and presented it with her name on it. Now, what would you do if you were her? Would you fight it and end up getting blacklisted in the entire industry? No. The consulting firm was working for a very well-known oil company, one whose name you would know immediately. Everybody in the room would know. So, I'd like to suggest that the real problem here is not the work of the consulting firm, which I think seems to be extremely wellqualified, but the system under which they're forced to work. Thank you.

Thank you. And Kevin, do you want to respond to that? I would imagine. Sure. And we come we come across this in development. Um just so everybody knows everything that's been submitted by the applicant is peer reviewed and the consultant who does the peer review is in contract with the city. So they're not under the influence of the uh developer per se. So everything we they've submitted we have followed that procedure.

Yeah. Thank you for the clarification. And I do just want to add cuz I I understand the concerns and the potential conflicts and where you want to be cognizant of that, but just to get in the shoes of the consultant for a moment if we can. Um, prior to joining EKI a couple years ago, I worked with water suppliers, led them as manager in different parts of California. The reason I get client work is primarily to with that understanding of having reviewed WSA's on the other side of the table, if you will, doing the sort of long-term planning analyses and water rights work, leading that, working with the state, etc. So, my reputation as working on that end is what brings me to do this type of work and to support long term. And again, I take pride in doing a lot of that. We've been independently reviewed by other consulting firms, including uh the city's own as a city manager notes. So it it it certainly there can be conflicts in consulting. I won't dispute that with you all this evening. But again, in this spec specific case, I wanted to be really take an independent look that was not influenced by the developer at what it means for the city of Cloverdale to incorporate this project from a water supply perspective. Who wants to go next? Please come. Hi there. I'm Suzanne Black, a resident of Cloverdale. I feel a little bit like I'm running after a moving train because I admit that even though I've been aware of this project proposal, the first time I was able to hear Devon and Michael, I think it was, uh, do a presentation was last month at the council meeting. So, um, you guys have been at this a lot longer and I don't think I can get I have a number of questions and concerns. I'm keeping an open mind. I'm not afraid of rich people and big houses in progress. Um, but I don't think those questions can get answered in three minutes. It's a little bit going to a city council meeting like going to a 12step meeting.

I put my stuff out here in the middle of the room and you thank me. And it's not a dialogue. Um, and I I think I think Esmeralda had some like town not I don't know what you called them. Maybe they were open houses. Okay. what I would like to see because after last month it seemed like on social media all of a sudden a lot of people in town became aware of it and I know I believe that all of you individually have been talking to residents but I don't encounter you folks a whole lot so I haven't had that opportunity. Um, but that's that's something that you know, but the rest of us don't know that. And just reading social media since the last meeting. People have their panties in a bunch about all kinds of stuff. Sometimes because we're afraid of change. Sometimes because if we don't know something, we'll make it up. Allah conspiracy theories that you were referencing. There's a lot of reasons why people get anxious. And this is a big deal. So my proposal is that the city council have an open house. We don't really need Esmeralda, I don't think, because I think you guys would be able to answer our questions. Um, and and and if it needs to be more than one of them, have more than one of them because I think that you'll be a lot happier if the city, you know, the residents of Cloverdale are happier, if they have their concerns adequate um adequately answered. It seems to me like it's being fast-tracked even though when you put that thing up there June of last year was the first meeting but it still seems like it's moving really fast and that question has been asked of me. Why is it moving so fast? So that's just another thing where people get suspicious because they want to know what you're trying to pull on us, you know. So that's my request and I don't think I'm alone in asking for that. If

we if if the city council were able to and willing to take the time, citrus fair, veterans building, whatever it needs to be, and have several dialogues with whoever wants to show up, I think that would be super helpful. Thank you,

Suzanne. Thank you. Uh we really respect that. Before Before you go, Kevin or Alex, I'd like to have you maybe respond to the process that they go through with the development agreements and planning commission and us and how many what you what you foresee the future if if this moves forward and they buy the property and start going through this process. How does it work from here?

Well, let's see. So, this is the second um meeting we've had here in front of the council. I think you're on the hook. you're on the hook for at least four more maybe two planning commission and two council. Um so there is a lot more opportunity. You know as as we said in the beginning this is not to approve this project. This is just looking at the water. There's going to be a lot of chances for more conversations. um they've been very receptive to the things that we've requested as a town and uh you know I've been doing planning for 25 years and I will just say on to to their credit they really have done a lot of community outreach. Uh, I haven't seen this level of outreach really from any developer in the time I've been doing this. And not only the the open houses and the workshops, but also meeting one-on-one with uh community leaders. Um, I know it seems like it's it's fast, but uh, you know, we've, my opinion, they've really reached out a lot.

And Alex, I don't know if this is affected by the I think it's called the by rights. You could have a certain amount of meetings. Can you explain that a little bit so people can ask why we can't hold a ton more of these meetings on their behalf? For for this particular project, we we could hold more meetings if we want to because they are they're coming requesting um discretionary review. Other projects we've had uh that were already zoned and for what was being proposed like the ask the apartment complex for example, that's when there's a a strict limit on how many meetings. Thank you. Go ahead.

Appreciate the comment by I think it was Miss Miss Black. Um we are big supporters. If the community wants moreformational sessions, happy to do it. Okay. More than more than happy to do it.

Thank you. Sorry for making you wait. Good evening. Uh my name is Colton Bangs and I'm a local Sonoma County resident. Um and I'm here to express my strong support for the Esmeralda project. Um and I hope that you adopt the findings of the water supply assessment. I participated in the Edge Esmeralda Papa Village uh during both of its visits to Helsburg and I was genuinely impressed by the caliber of people it attracted. They were kind, intelligent, optimistic, and actionoriented people who care deeply about building a stronger future. What also stood out to me was the value of having multiple generations in close proximity in the same place for an extended period of time. It was heartwarming to see a model of community that felt both timeless and forward-looking. This is the kind of community that Esmeralda is designed to create. It's rare that a city gets the opportunity to support a conscientiously designed development, one rooted in human well-being, walkability, social connection, and the kind of village scale living that has served people well for centuries. Most housing developments today are corporate driven. Maximizing land coverage with cheap construction and leaving behind car dependent, isolated neighborhoods that don't give people what they actually crave, connection, beauty, and a sense of belonging. As Meralda aims to do the opposite, it represents thoughtful planning, environmental harmony, and a genuine investment in the long-term health of our region. Adopting the findings of the water supply assessment is a meaningful step toward making this vision possible. Thank you for your time and cons considering a project that has the potential to bring enormous economic and social value to Cloverdale and the surrounding communities.

Thank you.

Who's next? If we if we're going to have public conversations, we have to do it outside. Thank you. Please come forward. Hello again. Oh, my name's Jeff Shriber, by the way, in case I didn't mention that before. Um, I heard a lot of information today, Brad. Um, very cogent, articulate points. Clearly, you've done your research. I have pretty much the same concerns with a lot of people in this town. You mentioned that uh, Esmeralda would be drinking approximately 40 to 70 GSM per person. Was that correct on the average? Um, so the question you can answer is, um, I'm not sure how you came up with that figure. Um, you know, I have a little bit of experience with water droughts here. So, in my time in the United States Navy, I was on a nuclear carrier where um, we produced approximately 100,000 gallons per day based on uh, evaporation and I think some of it was del. But the beauty was we had an unlimited supply of water right next door. Um, when I hear you talking about the water supply coming from a combination of us having senior rights through the state a little bit through the Alexander or the Parter Valley Project and then natural rain. What bothers me about this and maybe you can understand is that these are projections based on modeling. So unless you're actually going out and actually sending uh tapping down and using well projects to measure this underground aquafer, it's a speculation. So now this is fine if we have more than

enough supply. But what I got from your delivery was that we don't have anything to worry about that in our worst case scenario including droughts and climate change which whether we agree with it or not it's it's here. I've gone through a drought in Sebastal. It was bad and I agree with um sorry I don't know your name. The honorable uh councilman over here. Thank you. Um that it's really important to have a margin of water um because we just don't know what the future's going to propel. We don't know about this water being used for agriculture projects. We don't know about firefighting. I haven't heard any anything about a project, maybe it's a separate topic, but projected increase for our law enforcement or firefighting to supply services for Esmeralda. So, that's something you might want to address. Um, I got so many questions. I could be here all day. Um, I mean, this is really bad. This is really bad. Um, I guess ultimately what we need to be concerned about is please just not chase the money and think, "Hey, this is great. There's going to be more money." I even heard somebody say that um there would be an increase in our average of water based on this project because now we got more people. But we also have to understand look this is about if we look at the basic numbers and dumb it down to the simplest person. This is about supply and demand and our supply is projected. Our supply is not an absolute. If we had offshore desalinization tomorrow or um a lake or something, it would be a whole different argument. But I'm really really really concerned about the future especially with the increase in population in this project. um the amount of water used for this park. Uh I mean the list goes on.

I need you to walk I need your up please. But anyhow that's what I have. So hopefully you can answer that for me Brad. Thank you. Okay.

I don't know if it's possible to go back to one of the slides we had on here where we talked about the gallons per capita per day figures just because I think it'll be able to directly address one of the gentleman's points here. I think it might be coming up next. Right there. Perfect. Uh so this is what we presented in here was that uh based on our projections of the Esmeralda project for the residential only components as it's shown in green to the upper left there, we're expecting around 48 to 60 gallons per person per day or gallons per capita per day. GPCD. Let's compare that to existing Cloverdale which is the about 8,800 people right now. Anywhere between 63 to 70. The state regulations as best we can tell with their budgets and regulations going into the the future is around 100. So city's already meeting that project is expected to be even more efficient owing to its modern structures, new developments, its own regulations on water use. Quite honestly, how we calculated that was the projected number of people for the project and then ultimately when we did that specific land use sector by sector line item demand using all the information local to Cloverdale demand factors that are provided from state government and other sources to basically combine together to estimate what the project was going to use over the number of people similar to how that data are available for Cloverdale. So that's that's how we calculated there. Uh, as far as the quotation for for desalination uh on a Navy ship, I can't pretend to be an expert on on that specific scenario. Um, but I do understand that it can be largely inefficient. And it doesn't surprise me that that number may be far greater than what you're seeing here or less. I thought you said 100,000 gallons per person per day.

Oh, okay. Well, Navy might know something I don't on that front then. Um but at any rate uh then with regards to your other questions is again when we talk about the sufficiency which is a standard we're using in the water supply analyses and water supply verification um we that doesn't mean that there will never be droughts again doesn't mean that everything's fine and there won't be future curtailments or things that impact the city's supply certainly there will be um but what it does mean is that the project itself is not going to cause additional harm on top of that given the values the efficiency that way um and that As best we can tell, this is still fairly reliable on the long-term projection given that the vast majority of years uh do not see those types of droughts similar to the last 150 plus years that it's only happened one time. Thank you.

Who's next?

Good evening. Steve Nurse, Pine Mountain, Cloverdale. Um, I've been in Cloverdale for 25 years and I've seen plans and projects come and go. Um, started off many years ago with a project planning a casino out close to this land, which um, which was fun fighting that. But that's that was that was then and this is this is now. And in my 25 years in Cloverdale, I've always wanted Cloverdale to be a little better than what it is. I've never wanted it to be like Hillsburg, but I wanted it to be a little better than what it is. This project represents the best thing that's happened to this town since I've been here, in my opinion. Now, one of the concerns clearly, the same as everybody else in this room, is the water. I'm a little skeptical of the um assumption that um water falling in the waterhed north of Cloverdale is going to keep the aquifer going. But I'll bow to your judgment as an expert on that. It seems to me in drought years everything dries up even probably 100 ft below the ground. I don't know. As I say, I'll bow to your judgment. I just wanted to give my support to this project and say once again that it's I think it's the best thing uh potentially that's going to happen to Clovertown in 25 years. I urge people to get away from social media um because social media isn't social media is a forum for a lot of people to spread rumors and nonsense that really have no bearing on this project. I know the people that are running this project. They're very open. They will communicate with you. If you've got a question, you've got a concern. Talk to them directly. Don't bring up nonsense on on the internet and try and stir things up because it doesn't make any sense. And I would just urge the city council also, I mean, I

don't know this legally, but I'm pretty sure your job as a city council is to look at the the um project as a whole and whether you believe it's going to be a benefit to Cloverdale. Who's funding it and how it's funding it, I don't think is any of my business and I don't think it's any of your business. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Before we go to the ne hold on one second, please before we go to the next public comments, it's getting late for our student council member or so I would like to ask you your thoughts. I'm going to put you on the hot seat before you have to go since it's a school night.

Um well, I don't know whether I'm leaning towards Esmerald Emerald Esmeralda or not. Um I think there's just for me there's not enough information. I haven't learned enough. But I like for me for in the future I would just hope that there would be enough water supply for all of Cloverdale even for the school because um I've been hearing stuff like oh we can't do another um car wash fundraiser like we don't have enough water um to do it. It's a lot of money. So I would just hope that we would have enough water supply in the future for all of Cloverdale. Great. Thank you so much and thank you for being here. Please come forward.

Hi, my name is Rachel Rodrigz and I'm a resident of Cloverdale and I have more of a statement than anything else. Um, talking about groundwater aquifers and what flows into the Russian River. I live on Big Sulfur Creek off a river road and it's literally my backyard. It's a very small lane. Um, not a lot of houses. In 2021, nine people on our street had their wells go dry. Um, that's a lot in a small area. So, we are one of the streams that feeds into the Russian River. We are part of the ground aquifer. Just a statement. Something future. If we can do that with that small number of people can happen. And I think discussion about the underground aquifer and what can come from upstream and feed that aquifer is well and good, but it's just a giant question mark.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Justinta Goring and I have two points I'd like to make, hopefully short. Um, uh, as somebody who is living in uh, the Clearwater community that was afflicted with arsenic uh, in the last year for many years. And the people who bought this land got it from a man who sold it to them. And under real estate laws, all that was covered was is there water? I think in any discussion of water, we should be discussing the quality of the water and um there have been some people talking about droughts and other factors that can also play into the abundance of supply of but quality would be very important. Um you could have all the water in the world and it's not portable, right? So, it's just very important to somehow put that into the conversation and and that's all I want to say on that one. The other thing I'd like to say uh is just I was a retired I am a retired occupational therapy assistant and accessibility here is not really good for somebody in a wheelchair. So maybe somebody needs to I'd gladly help advise on that of what to do every time you meet to help keep it dignified and accessible for somebody who is in a wheelchair or any gradation leading up to that. I'm one of those people. Um, I was noticing a lot of people came up and just had to stand here and it would have been nice to have a chair and it would rush things along better too, not having to come out of your seat, but taking the next position,

it might facilitate getting out of here earlier, that kind of helped. Great. Thank you. I was excited to hear that we got Clear Water hooked up to our city water last week. So, I'm glad we got that resolved. You're welcome. Who's next? Thank you. Hi. Hi.

Um, my name is Jennifer Sullivan. I've got Parkinson's. If Michael J. Fox can do it, so can I. Um, so I I do live in Cloverdale and I'm here to oppose Project Emeralda. I wonder how many people would actually support it if they knew of its toxic history. and I feel like it's just being glossed over. This is from I submitted this document. It's about the site closure of Masonite, which is actually was there before Louisiana Pacific. PCP is one of the most dangerous dangerous chemicals that that man has ever made because it doesn't go away. This is a graph that shows that there is still PCP on that property. It is not clean. Yes, it's been by they've done a lot of reme remediation, but it doesn't mean that it's PCP free. What this trend line shows though too is that it's decreased. Um, which is great, but it's still not it's still not safe for humans and excuse me.

You're you're great, Jennifer.

Thank you. It's not safe for humans. And the deed restrictions that have existed on this property have actually helped this go down. If you go in there and stir that stuff up, it is like an ecological Pandora's box. Okay, I just want to read some of the deed restrictions. She says that it's been, you know, open for development for 20 years, like infallow with flowers growing on it. And that's not the case. This is from a um I believe an agreement between one one of the owners and it was restrictions on development of the site. No residents for human habitation shall be permitted on the burdened property. No hospitals shall be permitted on the burdened property. No schools for persons under 21. No daycare centers. No owners of or occupants of the burden property shall conduct any permit of excavation on the burden property. This is from 2013. Then we go to 2016 and we get this letter. It's an email exchange. Okay. It's an email exchange between Robert Dickerson, who's on the water board, and Thomas Neely. Thomas Neely wanted to do like a motel or hotel. Would you do me a favor? Would you read

this letter or this email? Just right there. Good afternoon, Tom. I got my glasses. Would you like me to read it? Yes. There you go. Go ahead. Thank you. Just from the top.

Okay. Good afternoon, Tom. I reviewed your question with my council regarding whether a hotel use or time share units are included in the definition of residence for human habitation and whether such development and use would be permitted on the burden property. The answer is no because this use is not specifically discussed in the covenant and these are residences although temporary. However, the covenant can be re rewritten to include this use. In order to support this change, the responsibil responsible party will need to demonstrate that use of the property for hotel use or time share units in the restricted area will not impact human health and safety or the environment. This could be accomplished by a sight specific risk assessment that accounts for the proposed use, local conditions, and other pertinent information. Please contact me with any question. Thanks. Rob Robert B. Dickerson, engineering geologist. 707-5762802

because this site is toxic. It's polluted. And if you go in there and start digging it up, PCP I mean like this graph happy to give to you. And you should see this report. This is from January of 1991 all the way to January of 2024. This is just last year. There is still PCP on that property. And this was conducted in just a con PCP concentrations for shallow shallow wells that they've been monitoring. You don't sit there and monitor a site for 30 years because it's okay. There's some serious stuff going on in here. And when you dig this stuff up, it's it's really dangerous. It's airborne. It travels. It's in the water beneath the site if you don't know that. There's a plume of it that they've been monitoring. And I just don't know how people can support this and say that they'd raised their family on this property. And that's all I got to say.

Thank you, Jennifer. WE APPRECIATE YOU. WE APPRECIATE THE CONCERN and comments of the last speaker. Um, I didn't catch her name. Um, couple things that are really important to emphasize. Um we as a fiduciary, someone who raises money, uh have it is completely contrary to our interest to purchase a property that is toxic or dangerous. So this is where our our interests are aligned with the public's interest because if we are closing on a property that is not suitable for human habitation, we're closing on a property that is worthless. So first of all, I just need to say that. Second of all, the records that the um that the previous presenter was referring to, the the deed restrictions actually do apply to a very small sub area of the property. There are two deed restrictions. One is limiting um turning soil or groundwater or tapping groundwater and the second one is for groundwater. And our plan, the plan that we showed you previously excludes all of those uses that um that the that the previous speaker u suggested from that small actually rather small area on the site. Um we're I know this is about the WSAWSV, but I just felt like it was appropriate to respond. Um, and furthermore, I think what's really important for everyone to know is the the regulatory agency that has complete independent overview of all of this is called the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and that entity which has been monitoring the remediation of this site since the closure of Louis Louisiana Pacific Mill in 1993 to present day recently recommended full closure of all open cases on the site. What does that mean? means that the state this state entity has has actually been monitoring for

years that is correct and determined that there's no more risk on the site so long as those um covenants are respected. So it's so I just want to be clear um um the homes we're proposing are not on any of the areas that the state identified as being restricted in covenants and um we would have an economic interest against doing that anyway. Um, so just wanted to reassure the speaker that we are keenly aware of the past history of the site.

Uh, let let's see how many more speakers we have first, Jennifer. Okay. Is there anyone else would like to make any public comments? My name's Angela Cordova. I'm not even really sure why we're having this meeting. Devon's already publicly said on her videos multiple times that she is building here. It seems that the city has already agreed trying to appease the public by having a meeting. Potter Valley opposition, you were strongly against it, but yet here you are supporting this, saying there's no impact to Cloverdale, but your previous statements contradict what you said about Potter Valley. So now you factually know what impacts Cloverdale, but nobody else seems to know that. That's brilliant. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. If you take it to the ballot like Slano County did, they shot it down. You support Esmeralda's second and third homeowners. But we have community members who struggle. They struggle to pay rent. They struggle to buy their first home. They struggle to find a low-income apartment. We do have lowincome apartments, but they are for farm workers only. two apartment complexes, one of which you city council, not this one, but the previous screwed up and didn't read the fine print and you allowed it to be built and you all of our community was excited. You had lowincome single parents applying to be shot down and then to find out afterwards that city council screwed it up and even their own

attorney didn't read the fine print. So, I ask you, who's reading the fine print here? Because if you guys weren't not meeting you personally, city in general was not competent enough to do it for that project. How do we know that you're competent enough to do it for this project? We have another low-income housing apartment being built that's going to 83 units, I believe, migrant workers only, but yet we have young adults, older people, waiting list three, four, five years long. What are any of you doing to look at that? Nothing. We need affordable low-income housing. Yes, they're going to have their homes. They're going to make millions dollars, you know, selling them. Whatever the case might be, the home's value might be. It doesn't matter. Those residents, whether they're full-time or part-time, are not going to spend their money in Cloverdale. They're going to be down in Hielsburg. Why they didn't build it in Hilsburg? I question that because, you know, they did all their little popup stuff. They're not going to be here. And I don't think you realize that. And then I'm being told, "Oh, our city will go bankrupt without them. We haven't been bankrupt yet." I don't understand what why you would even think that. If if we're going to go bankrupt and we have financial issues, what does that say about our leadership?

Thank you. Please.

My name is Betty Landry and I'm going to call uh talk about water. Um I don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't know how much rain we're going to get, the droughts, whatever. But we went through one and I know my lawn died with all the restrictions. We were saving water in the shower to water plants but you know couldn't wash the car taking decided to take a shower every four days. It's kind of every day. So we know what happened in 20 was it 2020 2021. Okay. So what would it have been like? I know I my lawn died. Lots of people let their lawns die. We spent money to rellandscape so we didn't have lawn anymore to save water. What would have happened then if we had it as moralda? How many more lawns had to die? What what else would have happened? I so I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I know what happened then. So you tell me like if we had an esmeralda with that many more usage, what would happen? We wouldn't get to shower at all for a month. We couldn't water anything. What?

He he'd like to answer. When you're done, I'll let him answer that question. And I can as well. I mean, that's the thing. We've been through one. We know what happened then. And if we had all this extra, what would have been like cuz I can't imagine it being much worse than it was then.

Thank you. You know, I I don't want to underplay what happened in 2021. Of course, it meant a lot and and impacted a lot of residents, their livelihoods in Cloverdale. the curtailments really they hurt and we can expect that this sort of thing probably will at least be attempted again by the state water board. But it's important to recall that when it did happen that that 55 gallons per person per day, the GPCD metric I talked about was applied across the entire city. That's what limited you to your certain uses and and and kudos to you for for trying to also stretch the water you had to make it go further. That's that's honestly the type of thing you should do and water use efficient and stressful situations like that. Uh if Esmeralda were there, we we mentioned earlier that since this is a per person allocation from the state, given they have additional people with the project, you would have actually seen an additional total allocation for the town. The people in the project would have contributed to the total amount of water received by the city during that time. Furthermore, after the first 30 days of this, the city to their full credit was successful in petitioning to the state board and raising that from 55 GPCD up to over 100, recognizing the seniority of the rights, the fact that this wasn't a physical drought, it was a regulatory drought, and that could play into precedent in the future going forward. So again, the city on a per person basis being more efficient as we've, you know, shown here in a number of demand estimates and work that way actually means potentially more water for the current residents in the city. Not a lot more. A drought's a drought regulatory or not, but certainly will not hurt the situation. Thank you. Does that make sense? So basically I I'll I'll just

at at my level because that's where I understand is about a third grade myself. I would I everybody gets the same 55 gallons whether it's 8,000 people or 12,000 people. Everybody gets 55 gallons a day under that curtailment. So it wouldn't have affected the it would not have affected the amount of water that you personally could use. The water was there. Correct. So my lung died for because the state said it had to that didn't make any sense. We actually ma'am can you come to the podium? Hold on one second. I' I've given you your time and I got to I have to stop you just so I'm respectful for everyone else that I've told No. I'm just saying that it was definitely a drought.

We understand. So at the ma'am ma'am ma'am we the state's the one that that told us we could only use that amount. It's not that the water wasn't there and we actually as a city turned off a couple of our wells because we were only allowed to pump a certain amount of water per day to fill our tanks. When you hear me talk about the uh the Potter Valley not having enough water to put out two houses at one time. This is part of that that we can only pump so much water into those tanks per day that we're allowed to do. And so when when we go into curtailments more frequently because the lakes are drier, because the state says we have to, then what's going to happen is we're not going to be able to fill those tanks up just like we had. And that's why you can't put those fires out. Okay. Does that make sense now a little bit more? And we can talk about it more later.

Look up my email. I'll I'll come meet you. Is there anyone else with it? Please. No, I have to ask you to Oh, you already you already came up. Is there anything? One second. If we are gonna take questions, we got to go through everyone first before we try to do a second round. Okay. Please come up.

Hello, I'm Dana Star, local resident, and I guess I have two comments. Um, one is I'm hearing a lot about senior rights. And I like to be a good neighbor. And I, you know, this whole thing about, well, we get to keep more because we have senior rights feels awful inside because I have neighbors, friends down river. And the thought that I get to keep it and not allow it to go other friends, family down river who deserve it just as much because they're younger is painful. Um and and this is not only happening as a possibility here, it's happening around the world in other countries down much larger rivers. Uh second point is just to comment that um like Similar to what others have said, I'd like to see Overdale grow, improve, become more fully itself. Um, but the reason I'm here and a lot of the people I know that are here is because we don't want to be in Hillsburg. So if this creates more Hillsburg flavor, I want people who care about my community the way I do and the people who are my neighbors do and participate in my city and are here checking on our neighbors and what's happening for each other. I don't want more people who aren't really here or interacting with the rest of us. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else, please.

Hi, my name is Tasha Hart and I'm a resident of Cloverdale, like someone to my love. Um, I wanted to ask first of all, if this was so important for you to do this in Cloverdale, why wasn't your popup in Cloverdale? You did it in Hillsburg and you got a lot of um acceptance to that, but this is not Hillsburg. This is Cloverdale. Um, also when it comes to water, I hear a lot of ideology from people who sit behind desks and don't actually do the work. I know what the work entails because that's what part of my job. So, you know, it all sounds great and dandy until you actually have to do it. I deal with an MBR on a daily basis and the amount of work that goes into recycled water is absolutely insane. So, you know, to think like it's just easy to do recycled water, storm water, drinking water, it's not it's not an easy project. A lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of people that are working on it. Um, in regards to the project itself, you know, unless Ray turns into Olivers or Whole Foods, those are the type of people that are coming in and those are the kind of stores that they're going to expect. These people, we do not have the infrastructure in Cloverdale set up to have these kinds of stores. We're starting to, but it isn't there yet. um they're not going to bring their money to raise when they can go to Whole Foods or Oliver. So that means tax revenue is going to go to those cities, not to our city. So please think about that. Also, I think we need an independent assessment.

They said they got an independent assessment, but that independent person who did that assessment isn't here to tell us about their assessment. um where you know road access safety biological impacts here was a lady talking about that oh well we're not going to use that space you know stuff moves dirt moves water moves dirt all of that stuff is going to be impacted if that certain area is not inhabitable is there an archaeological study noise what about waste water I haven't heard your plan on how you're going to reduce water except oh we're just going to have purple pipes It's not just that. Um, are you going to plant things that are, you know, uh, plants and trees that are native to our area to make sure that the water impact is lower? Are you not going to have those things so that you don't have to water it? Um, also, you know, you talk about gifting us a park. Okay. Did the city do an assessment of how much that is going to cost to maintain? Have you thought about that? Have you done one a cost of what that's going to cost us, the people that are going to pay it?

Or you're going to have now a population. Have you done an assessment of what it's cost to have police maintain that area? So, there's a lot that's going on here that we have not heard. It's not just water. And that's it. Thank you for my time. Thank you.

Please.

I do think it's worth mentioning um uh we'd be delighted to have a deep conversation um with the previous speaker on all of those topics. I think you know that tonight's topic was the WSAW WSV. We have exhausted presentations. We've been hosting multiple open houses. And by the way, for those of you that are interested in all of those environmental topics that were mentioned, there is a enormous SQA environmental impact report covering all those topics. So if members of the public think anything hasn't been thought through, the only reason one would think that is they haven't spent time with us. So I would encourage either the speaker to reach out directly to us. I will spend tons of quality time walking through all of those issues in detail, including our maintenance and operations estimate, including the exhaustive studies on natural habitat. I could go down an endless list, but the point I really want to make to you commissioners, excuse me, council members, tonight is you're here for the WSA, WSV. So, it's a little challenging for us because we would love to have that dialogue, but that's not the point of this meeting. Um, one thing I'll add is that Michael mentioned that we have a maintenance and operations budget. Um, I want to highlight that we will be paying for that maintenance and operations. We are not expecting the city to pay for it. Um, and it's going to be covered by the HOA from this uh, new neighborhood that we're building. Um, and so while we are gifting it to the city, it's going to be open to the public. The entire neighborhood will be open to the public. Um, we will be paying for the operations and maintenance. The one other piece that I wanted to touch on was really good question about why did we host the popup um centered in Heelsburg and we originally wanted to host it in Cloverdale, but when it when you have a thousand people who come to an event and need to a place to stay, there just aren't enough hotel rooms in Helsburg in in Cloverdale just yet. And Helsburg currently has a lot of hotel rooms. And so one of the things that we are proposing in this project is to build a beautiful flagship hotel that Cloverdale

will be proud of. Um, and we really look forward to transplanting this and bringing it back to Cloverdale where it belongs once that hotel exists. So I appreciate the question and it's something that is very high priority for us. Thank you. All right. Who's next? I was a batting man. I wouldn't go for that one.

My name is Dale Winterford, resident of Cloverdale. Um, I was hoping that you would vote no tonight specifically because in recent years, it wasn't the droughts that we had. It was the emergency, the water emergencies that we declared. We declared water emergencies here because our infrastructure wasn't good enough, right? We had very shallow wells and uh we only have one plant, Russian River. We don't have Lake Sonoma and the Purple Pipes that everyone's talking about, that's millions of dollars, I believe. And we're already uh not at that point, right? We're having we're having problems and that's not even one of those problems. So anyway, uh thank you again. Just wanted to say that. Hope you vote no. Thank you.

Thank you. Rick Blackman, 260 view. Wow. Got a few uh issues up here. Uh I had a question with all the numbers with I guess Brad over there with the numbers on the water issue. What did you do to calc in for irrigation? Um that's one question. The other question I have for the project is there any parks and wrecks? I would like to see more ball fields for the kids. What are we doing for the kids? And so you know down the drought was uh I got several warnings back when the drought was happening from the city. Um, it was sad to drive around the city of Cloverdale High School, see all the lawns dad was the water drought. Yes, the city may not had over, but I was too damn honory to let my stuff die at my place is one, it was going to cost me a lot of money. Two, was a fire danger where I live up there. It was risk versus gain finances. is going to be better off for me to keep everything green just because of the fire protection up there. So with the numbers and this and that if there are fields out there, you know, I know the high school, Todd, you were very instrumental in getting the funds for that astro. I think looking at Kaiser's Park at the little park by the high school, it looks a lot better when it's not looking like a desert. So, just some things I know that the city been very active working on saving our dam because of the water supply, but uh it' be nice if there's ball fields for the kids. This project goes I like the green grass. I know it's expensive because of the water and I know our community looks better with people with nice landscape and it's

better off with fire protection, too, when things are green. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Rick, just just let you know there is talks about that. They are very interested in putting in ball fields as part of that project, but obviously with no agreements or anything going forward yet that that's just part of the talk. Uh the planning commissioner Carney has also brought it to their attention and uh everyone's on board and positive about doing more of that in the future if this happens. I'm gonna let you go real quick and then we're going to take a fivem minute recess after you.

Yeah, sounds good. I can quickly answer the gentleman's question. Out of the 76 million gallons per year that we estimated for the total project demands, landscape irrigation was 27 million gallons, about a third roughly, just for easy figuring. Uh, note that even though we included it in the demands, uh, going forward, the project would need to use non-potable sources for that, which is where they're talking about these alternative supplies. Thank you. All right, we'll take a fivem minute recess, and I mean five minutes. We need to get this going. Thank you, guys. 852. We'll start again.

858. Who's next? Anyone else want to make a public comment on this? Wow. Awesome. Okay, we'll bring it back to the DIA and we'll work our way through. Council member Laskkey,

I'll reserve all my comments uh for the overall project. Uh based just for tonight's uh use, the uh there was a lot of questions uh being asked uh remediation. I'm sure the the property's been remediated to a certain extent and that's on the developer. Uh, everybody's talking about obviously we're here to talk about water and uh, personally I don't think we have a water problem in the state of California. We have a storage problem. Once we address storage issues, we won't have a water problem. If you study the last time a reservoir was built in the state of California, you'll have to do some digging. However, if you look at the uh a proposed the next proposed reservoir in the state of California, you'll uh you'll you'll see if you check the residencies of the past governor, he is securing his water rights with the site's reservoir. So, that's the only reservoir being built. So we talk about uh dams being removed. Uh once again I think that we should have instead of removing storage, we should have infrastructure in place before government officials above us start making decisions that affect our community. Uh and the one lady was talking about water rights. uh Cloverdale has water rights down and her family and friends have uh places and her family's down river. Uh once again, that goes back to the uh alleged Potter Valley project being

removed. Now, if you if you do your research on why that why they want to do that and it you know our our Cloverdale's water rights are supersedes everybody else. But if you go back just to the genesis of the public utilities commission as it relates to PG& and they and they say I'm in construction so I I have a little history with PG& on maintenance. They do and as we all know they do deferred maintenance. They'd rather go back to a problem and fix it than maintain it. So they when they say that the uh the powerhouse isn't making power, what they're telling you is we haven't maintained this facility in 20 years. It's no longer useless for us. We're taking it away. That's you have to dig through the weeds when P Gen tells you something. So, uh, long and short of it, I I appreciate, uh, Brad, Mike, Devin coming tonight for your, uh, like I said, we're here for the WSA and the WSV, and we're taking that as, uh, as presented. A lot of people have reservations that, you know, how can an independent uh, water consultant be independent if they're getting paid? But, uh, you would be doing your customer a disservice if you provided false information just to get paid. I'm sure there there's got to be some kind of errors and emissions laws that back what you do professionally for a living, and I I don't think you would want to uh go against any of that. So, with that, I'll yield.

Um what concerns me is there's so many variables. Um we don't know really what's coming down the pike. Nobody knows um what kind of droughts we may encounter or earthquake or what. So the unknown variables concern me.

Uh thank you. Um, so really, uh, you know, looking at this project, uh, I want to just kind of reiterate what Eric Sanders said about, uh, this land being open. There's so many different opportunities that have come down the pike. Uh, this project does lend well to help our city out with our water problems. Um, there's additional money that would go into off- project uh, infrastructure. uh dealing with the Potter Valley project. You know, what we need is resiliency solutions. Uh this project will help with those. We do need help. We haven't really gotten much in the way of uh bolstering our resiliency. So, there's benefits to approving this project. Uh the WSA overall looks great. Uh I think uh I would like to see our urban water management plan updated. I'd like to see our uh you know our water uh water uh assessment uh excuse me um our water master plan from 2011 updated. So um I'm I'm glad that they've taken all that into account. Uh one thing we have here is we do have a situation with our community sort of being on two ends of this. Uh I certainly think there is issues with the system that there are factors that do come into play uh as far as um independence goes. So certainly I think an independent uh review would be a good idea to uh further people's uh consensus on what's going on here. So, I really think that would be a positive thing for our community to sort of get people on the same page. And I think that's what we

need. Uh I don't really want to keep moving forward with everyone sort of being on two sides of this issue. So, if if if that's what we need to move this forward as a community, then I think we should have that. Um if if we have to table this, let me know what the rush is to approve this today. Absolutely. if you want to.

Hey, uh, Council Member Marquez, thank you for your comments. Um, we completely agree that an independent, uh, third party review makes sense and actually we did do that, uh, for exactly that reason. Um Eddie Teasdale is an expert in water supply assessments and he did a thorough third-party independent review in addition to the review that the city did with its own um engineers to look at it and they were not paid by us in any way. So

I I understand that and and I'd really got to say that this is my concern about the system because there there is a factor that you know when when you are working for the city you're going to lean a certain way. If if somebody's paid by you they're going to lean a certain way. That is just a fact of the matter. We can say that all this this is legal, but our community wants some other independent review. And so I might agree with a lot of the positive things about this project, but I do speak for all of our residents. And so I think taking people's concerns seriously is what we're up here to do. And so that that's why I would say if we can get an independent review and I don't know how we're going to pay for it because if we pay for it or you pay for it, it's not exactly independent, right? So, um, how does that how how how would that be done? I I I don't know. But if we can kind of figure that out, uh, I think we can really bring people together and come to a consensus that we do need moving forward because we can't just keep going with with our community divided about this. So, I I understand that this is about you guys asking me questions, but if you don't mind, I have one for you. Um, which is what would it look like to do an independent review on top of what we've already done?

I I think this might be a town hall issue that, you know, we can have a talk with our community because we I I see about 50/50. You know, our our rooms divided here. And this is kind of one of those things that town halls are are for is really to bring the community together, have the talk, have a consensus, see what works for half of our population here where they can come and be satisfied with this independent review and we figure out how that's done and then I think we can move forward unified. That's that's really what I want. I don't want to pick a side because I I do speak for all of the residents here. And so regardless of how I feel, that is what I'm up here to do. And and I think that could be a good solution.

Thank you for your comments,

Devin Brad. Everybody, thank you again, you know, for going through this tonight. Uh we heard a lot tonight and it all came up to Esmeralda. We sat here and tried to veer it back towards this uh this assessment right here is what we're here to talk about tonight. You know what I mean? So, um, I think it's important and I want to give props also to Mr. Eric Sanders also who has a lot of experience this and I trust him and a lot of the stuff during during the drought I don't think it was due to flows or underflow. I think the stuff was there. It was due to uh our and the capacity. It's our plant doesn't have the the ability to handle it. And I think what this project would do would bring enough revenue in so we could handle and work on some of the infrastructure to handle that and and bolster our plant down here for the future. So, I'm sticking to this water assessment, which is what this whole meeting was about. I appreciate everybody's comment, but I do think that uh I'm on board with this. I uh I really like this idea. I think it's got uh it's got a lot of good things for Cloverdale and um Brad, you have a lot of knowledge with this and I really appreciate that and I think I'm going to go with that assessment. I believe it. I trust you and I think this is going to be a good thing for

Sorry, I got a lot of notes going on here. Obviously, we, you know, I feel like I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with this in a way because, you know, we talk about watershed and we have five different independent assessments that have been done. They all agree to say that there is sufficient water for what they have to show at this point and that it would be sufficient up to over 15,000 people for population in our town even under a dry year before we and curtailments are controlled by the state. They're nothing that we can control. Um but the other part of this is what they call the arena. And I know it's not something that we discussed tonight but it's part of this process. The RENA is a statemandated housing assessment and the state tells you how many houses you have to build in a certain amount of time at a certain level of income. And we're one of the only cities in the entire state that has the low income covered and has more than adequate lower income housing compared to everyone else in the rest of the state. And what we're missing is our higher income. The difference of what it does is your tax base, your affordable housing that you see going in, that's statemandated that we can't control. We don't even get to say anything on design. And we know that for a fact because they've threatened to sue us twice when we said something about their projects. The governor and uh Rob Bont both threatened to sue Cloverdale. What they also do is they are a negative impact on your general fund. So you have to have the other side of the coin here where you have your low income that's a negative on on your general fund. So you have to have the

higher end bring in a higher tax base to break you even. We are short um where hold on where's my notes? 161 homes of the high end at least. That is the what they mandate we have to put in and right now we are hundreds over on the low and so with that we will always continue to go down as inflation goes up. So unfortunately growth is a necessity to maintain your budget and growth has to be done in a fair way for everyone. If we don't do it this way, we will fail. And I'm not saying that we're going to go bankrupt or anything like that. I'm not trying to uh, you know, say the sky is falling here. I'm just saying that it it doesn't get any better. It continues to get worse. So, if you're going to do the population growth, you're going to want to do it with something that's going to make you money instead of keep costing more. And if we don't put something else in, then the properties have to stay open to be able to have development done to it. and someone else can come in and take this property and build whatever they choose. And the high density, you don't get to have these conversations you're having now. That by ride I talked about, that's what they get. They get less parking spots, they get taller buildings, they get less space for each person, and you can't say anything about it. And neither can we. And so the fact that we can sit here 14 meetings in and discuss this the way we are, I think is is a privilege. And the fact that I need you guys to be quiet back there, please. Thank you. And the fact that we're having these discussions right now is is a good thing because we want our community to to grow and grow

responsibly. uh you know if you really want to talk about it let's all raise our hand and see who was here in 1990 when we had these same conversations as the freeway is coming through or in around 95 when Ferber and when Christopherson and Sonoma family homes came in or all the people that complained in here and the guess what Dell Webb yeah that wasn't from here and that changed our de demographic fundamentally voting base everything so if you want to talk about changing Cloverdale or anything along those lines We've done it multiple times and this doesn't have the population to do that. We had 2500 people when they put in Dell web and Ferber and uh Sonoma family homes in that area and that tripled our population. So your voting base changed. So you want to talk about demographic change? There it is. This isn't going to do it. It's not about the techies. It's not about money coming in other than the fact that they can help us with our general fund and stuff like that. The problem is is this is all about water assessments and I can't I'm not smart enough to go against five different independent assessments that tell me that this will work. I don't believe every bit of it fighting fighting with Potter Valley and understanding how water works when we have a drought. It's not coming down the hills through that 690,000 acres and the water that does gets stopped in the vineyards because there's hundreds of thousands of acres of grapes in this area and they're going to suck it all up. And when you get to your wells out in River Road like people were talking about, this is what I was trying to make the difference with is your wells are 18 ft deep, you're 20t deep. Some of them I've seen at six feet deep. I'm a contractor. I see this stuff. Guess what? Your wells are going to go dry. Not because of this project, because of your Potter Valley. They don't affect the same, but they will in long droughts. So absolutely, that's where I don't believe the full assessment. However, I'm not the smart guy in the room. So, I support this because the the smart people are telling me that it's right. The people that I know that

have done this for a living for the last 30 years that I trust with my life tell me it's right. So, I this isn't the end all to make this project go in, but this is the step forward to say, hey, look, it they say they have adequate water. Now, we're going to work on water storage, putting in more tanks, putting in like they talk about the purple pipe using gray water on their own property. uh the what we talked about a deep well which the deep well does aquafer recharge and what that means is during the winter time we pump water hundreds of feet deep into the ground so that when we're in drought we can pull that water back out and use it for ourselves when we have none. So there's little things that they're going to they're going to work with the city because we are going to negotiate with them as we go forward to make sure that not only does the money not come out of your pocket, you get more money in your pocket and you get more water in the long run. And that is my goal. And I haven't lived here for 50 years to say that I'm not going to be part of Cloverdale. I'm here and I'm here to support Cloverdale. So anybody that says anything different is wrong. I'll go through you guys one more time. Good. Just want to make additional comment. Thank you, mayor. Um I do personally believe that this uh WSA and the WSV is accurate for the most part. I think there is sufficient water uh for this project. Um and so this opportunity that we have today in this approval is not the only opportunity to condition this project. Um I also at the end of the meeting for future agenda items do want to recommend that we do have a town hall and I think that's really about community trust and coming to a consensus. Um, so I think we can have an independent review following this approval uh with the opportunity to condition this project as it moves along. So today I

feel like I I will be in support of the uh WSA and the WSV for the information that it presents.

With that, do you want to make a motion at all? I'll make a motion to approve or adopt uh the November 2025 water supply assessment WSA and water supply verification WSV for the proposed Esmeralda mixeduse development project. And just to clarify, it's a resolution of the council adopting the water supply assessment and water supply verification for the proposed ESL the mixeduse development project in accordance with California water code section 10910B and government code section 6647.3783 and 66473.7B1. So moved.

Second. With this, I want a roll call vote, please. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Laskkey, I. Council member Morgan Stern, no. Council member Marquez, I. Vice Mayor Wheeler, I. Mayor Lance,

I passes 41. Thank you. And I look forward to working further on this project and more town halls. So, just let us we'll we'll discuss that and set them up with the community. And thank you everyone here for your comments and your concerns. You you're definitely heard and we want to make sure that we can go through this with everybody to make this project successful. All right, we'll move on. And my iPad's at 10%. Just letting you know. Thank you. Die, I need a written copy. Yeah. H2. Review and appoint the updated city council 2026 subcommittee joint committee and regional boards committee appointments.

Thanks, Mayor. uh every year at the end of the year we look at the current subcommittee assignments and the regional boards and we uh determine who's interested in going forward the following year. Um we've kind of streamlined the process this year. Um well Mike we have a just a really quick PowerPoint. Uh so we want to talk about the subcommittees in general but also your assignments. One option is you could we can just remain on the same assignments if anyone wants to trade or now would be the time to do that because we'll come back in January with a resolution. Um, one easy way to do it would be if you know again if I as soon as Mike gets the list up, you'll see who everyone where everyone's assigned. Um, again, if if some of those aren't working for you, uh, that's that's hard to read. Um,

let us know. So Andrew can run through it.

Just go back one one slide, Mike. So in the staff report, there's been some discussion of the subcommittees, their usefulness, their necess necessity. We've put up some options here for you to consider. We did reduce the number last year. We we folded the planning and sustainability into the uh admin subcommittee. So we did reduce the number, but here's some options. We can continue going forward as we as we've done regularly basis, regular calendar. We can maintain all the subcommittees as we have them now and just schedule them as needed or we can eliminate them entirely. Um so we want to get direction on that. And then again, if you want to change any of the your assignments and a fellow council member would like to take that from you or any recommendations, we'll start on this end.

Can I make one note really quick? What's that? Just wanted to note that um part of the governance manual that you will be that you already reviewed in the consent calendar so now is in effect um did remove the two-touch rule. So we just want you to be aware of that while making your consideration. Um we removed the two-touch rule prior the previous governance manual um often required or at least attempted to require for council members and items to go to the subcommittee first get subcommittee recommendation then for an item to go to the council. But the governance manual updates um you guys changed that so it's not mandatory anymore. I just wanted that to be understood for your consideration here that you no longer are required to have things go to a sub.

Council member Lowkey. I'd like to well maintain all existing subcommittees but meet only as so number two. Okay. Council member Morgan Stern. Um number two. I think the subcommittees are important and I think they're a good learning experience as well. Okay. Thank you.

Uh I'm leaning into number three to eliminate subcommittees entirely. Uh reasoning being would like to involve the entire council on critical matters. Um you know even non-critical matters. I think it's very important that we all know as a council all five of us are participating in in budget and infrastructure. Uh I really feel that uh a lot of these items may not receive the eyes that are needed to bring infrastructure like streets to Cloverdale, fixing our roads, uh to balance our budget. We've been uh in deficit for many years. Uh so really I think uh this isn't a practice that really many cities I don't know any other city that really has uh or subcommittees or had previously adopted a a two-touch rule. So uh I I think it's not common practice and I don't think it's been effective. Uh so that's why I would like to go with number three. I think we should all consider that.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh number two, maintain all existing subcommittees. Meet only as needed. Okay. Um, I think subcommittees are necessary because you'll have meetings that are this long every single time if we're not careful with small minuscule items that can be solved um with a couple of our council members. When it comes to things like budget and infrastructure, all of those main discussions are had in the council and by the council and voted on here. So, I would also go with number two. So, then that's a four to one for number two. So I would move forward looking at our subcommittee list if we could and see if there's changes that we want to make and these meetings will only be as needed. So we will be making those decisions as needed from this dis. Can

you go to the next send stuff to that? Mike, can you send it over? Thank you. Sorry it's so small. I didn't realize. So hopefully you guys can read.

There's anyone that wants to give something up before we start talking about what we want. Is there anyone that wants to remove themselves from one of these subcommittees? I've been asked uh by council member Marquez for the rancheria. He wants to be the regular and so I agreed to that and council member Laski asked me if he could be the alternate instead of myself and I said that's fine by me as well. Um so I would like to switch that one. We can all discuss that. Absolutely. But that's where it's at right now. And so if anybody else wants it, I'm removing myself from that to allow these pardon me that opportunity. May

mayor because currently your primary for Cloverdale Rancheria. Can we do just that one? Right now we're removing me. So the alternate is currently one person that wants to be the the head is council. Anyone else want to be the head of the ranch? Yeah. I uh during the proclamations I introduced myself to the Maria and forget her name escapes right now but they're actually my neighbors. I went over there and talked to them and I uh they would love to have me as their uh they their leazison. So I would throw my name in the hat for the uh for that.

Okay. Also after our last meeting and talking to Vicki and all that along with that the uh Rancha tribal council liaison I would like to jump in and be the alter that it's out now I didn't expect this pardon me mayor just had a comment that u there is a subcommittee and then also regional boards so I don't you know I don't would we just go for subcommittees first and then do the regional boards or we kind of mixing it all up the regional boards are not right now regional boards or I'm excuse there's regional board appointments that that have listed as this list put out by our city

the four the four that we're required to have us those aren't up right now so those I did they're in a staff report but just to mention usually on election year so everyone's appointment is still current if someone wants to get off of one of those and someone wants to pick it up I think that would be okay but um let's let's focus on this one right now. I think if we can uh maybe update this list and we can always pull up that staff report and take a look at it after. So I can only pull up one report at a time. So Trevor, we have method you'd like to go.

We're asking Council Marquez both want to the lead and we have one vice mayor that wants to be the alternate. Is there anyone here that wants to negotiate these so we don't have to

um you know I would just kind of go to my record of liaisoning that I've attended all my meetings and been a liaison for every committee that I've served on in this last year and I think that's not the case with council member Laskkey. Uh that's fine. I mean, my schedule uh does not always allow me to be present at these meetings as I work primarily in the Bay Area. So, my time is valuable and I try to split my city council responsibilities with my civilian life, per se. So, I I do I don't know where you're getting your information. I don't that I don't make subcommittee meetings.

I don't. The the information is public. of you you've missed six out of nine of your uh Sonoma Clean Power meetings and they were without notice. So, um it's all public information. Those are those are excused absences. I I'm not without notice. It's on the agenda. We're not going to sit here and try to throw mud at each other. We're going to be respectful. Let's just tell the truth.

Like I said, be respectful. We can have that kind of conversation off of this dis So with that, we still have two people that want to be the lead. I have a question here for the the chamber of commerce liaison and my thought on that is I know every single council person here goes in and talks to the do we need to have that as one of our leaison? Do we need to have a representative there officially? And I guess my point is we've got myself, mayor, council member Marquez, everybody is stopping in there almost daily. And I've mentioned that, you know, the director over there, hey, if you need anything, one of us will be there. We need to have somebody.

It becomes a serial meeting if you don't. So the answer to that would be okay. Yes. I mean, we could do away with it, but what will happen is we might end up in the spot like Hillsburg was where attorney steps in and says, "You guys are running everything through the chamber." I would like to keep that in there. Okay. So, with this, is there anyone that wants to suggest someone or back someone else on this? I guess we do. I mean, at this point, we're going to have to vote if no one's willing to negotiate with each other. We are talking about the comments. Absolutely.

Um I think it's it would only be fair if we let um council man Marquez actually be the lead because we're all on different subcommittees, you know, as chairs or whatever. He hasn't really had the opportunity to have something so far, you know, like he's got like the library lays on or he's got the senior center. That's this would be something to give him a share of the five, you know, different parts. What are we talking about here? Rancheria. I I do I Yes, I I I would like it.

We have We have We have movement. That's three done. Council member Marquez is now the lead for Rancheria. Who do we want for the alternate? We have council member Vice Mayor Wheeler and then that would leave Mark Laskkey if you want to join that group. Okay. So, we will have council member Laskkey as the alternate. I appreciate it. This is nothing personal against council member Laski. Um, you know, I have tried to reach out to you personally with no luck. So, I'm don't mean to be harsh up here on the dis, but there was no other way to communicate. Well, like I said, I I texted you in return. So, you know, my my public life is different. Yes, you're you told me you were too busy.

In fairness of time here, we need to keep moving because there's a lot of these and that one took way too long. All right, let's just go right down the list. Admin subcommittee. I would like to stay on it. I would like to stay on it. However, there's going to be a different mayor appointment hopefully, fingers crossed, in one of these items coming up. So, I would gladly give it up to whoever sits in that mayor seat when the time comes as the primary on that because that's necessary. Would everyone agree with that? Something's fair. Okay. So, then let's let's arm wrestle over the alternate. I would like to be the alternate.

I would like to be the alternate because I I mean the vice chair because that's what I was and I'd like Stern and anyone else want to put their name in on that. What if you're the mayor? Oh, okay. I doubt I doubt I'll be the mayor. But mayor, but I did win the time contest, so I think that does make me

So, um I will I I'll just for myself, I've put in a lot of time. I've done four years, nine months as the mayor and vice mayor and worked very hard on this committee to make sure that our budget is in the black. It rides a fine line there because of certain reasons that we won't discuss in open session. However, the budget that we have now is better than it's ever been. It is in the black. We've got a lot more things that we've completed and uh we are what they say is GSD. We're getting stuff done and it's been very successful and and and very positive and I would like to continue doing it. Now we have to look for is anyone support that or support council member Morgan so we can move this one on. You can you can voice and we can it's just direction at this point.

So merit on our consent calendar next time. Is this something maybe we want to revisit after this election for mayor? Can we come back to this because it's maybe that's a deciding factor in in choosing this. That's fine. Infrastructure Wheeler and Laskkey at this point. Anybody want infrastructure? I'm willing to give infrastructure up. I'd take it with you. Um, I would really like the opportunity to work with Council Member Laskkey. I think we have an opportunity to work on a relationship, work together. I've been wanting to work together with you and I think this would be a good opportunity. Is this something that one of you wants to say I want to be the chair and one wants to be the vice chair? I'm happy to chair. I do have previous chair experience.

Sure, Mr. Mayor. As a point of order, if we are um depending on the selection of mayor, you could potentially if either of you become mayor, for example, you'd have them on both of us. Just want Yep. You're going to be you want to be the chair and you want to be the vice chair. Sure. Okay. City and school council Morgan Stern, you're the chair. Um, I'll say chair. Okay. Anyone else want to fight for that one? Council Marquez, you're on that subcommittee. I wouldn't mind being on that subcommittee as the vice chair. I can swap with you.

Yep. Perfect. That was easy. Anyone else want that vice chair swap? Which Which one was that? School. School. I'm the vice chair on that one. And the chair is me saying the same. Oh, perfect. Okay. Thank you. You're getting all this right, Mike. But I'm double checking.

All right. Next one is the planning commission. Um we don't meet um we probably meet six or eight times a year. So that's that's the level of commitment. Um Councilwoman Marasi, you are the chair. Do you want to chair on that? Yeah, I'll stay chair on that. Perfect. Anyone want the alternate spot? I don't mind sticking with the alternate. I would definitely appreciate if there's some communication. If a meeting can't be made, I would be happy to fill in.

Perfect. C uh Cl Regional Library. Council Marquez, you are the current chair. Yep. Just a liazison to uh the lab meetings and I'm happy to Does anyone want that? I did it for a couple years. I've done my time on the library advisory board. Vice Mayor Wheeler, you are the alternate. You want to remain? Yep. League of California cities. We'll leave that because it's usually your mayor and vice mayor. Uh, that's not us. And the last one is Russian River Wershed. Uh, it's Council Member Morgan Stern. I'll stay. Okay. Alternate is your Vice Mayor Wheeler. Do you want to keep it

as prior conversation? Did you want that one? Um, I would like to be the alternate. Anyone else want this one? Perfect. You can have that one. Which one is that? River. And that is primary and which one? No, primary is Morgan Stern. Alternate is Martz. Thank you. We're going to move on and we'll come back to this item. We'll table it for now. come back to the side real quick. The regarding the Redwood Empire Division, League of Cities, uh we're seeking direction if you want to change to the North Bay Division and you don't have to answer that now. But about that when we come back to that one.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. You know, it's it's not a rush. I mean, for sure. We don't do any we can give direction tonight probably. We'll see how it goes. We might have to take a find out. Okay. Any Let's let me see where we at. Sorry, it's getting late. Annual adoption of city proclamation calendar. That's the same calendar from last year. Are there any changes or deletions that anyone wants to do? There are some changes that were proposed. Mayor, please explain them to us. Pull it up one moment.

PowerPoints work differently. All right. So, um we are looking at approval for the 2026 proclamation list. Um you forgot the line for

thing only lets me pull up so many documents at a time before it gets confused. One second. Okay, you can see that list I which listed on the first May because it's for the home.

So on the amended agenda, it is as stated with um the a few of these were recommended by council members. Um you can see uh November 11th we would be now including November or National Veterans and Military Families Month. Um and November 13th there was a few that were um previously omitted off of the approved list. Um which was Older Americans Month. Um, we previously have had as a proclamation here Jewish Heritage Month and I'm trying to and week. No, that was Anyway, this list is as stated, you guys can read it a little bit better than I can. Um, one of the goals of council was to have no more than two proclamations per meeting. Knowing that we also have the new recognitions that council gives out that could be potentially three or more. Um, just wanted you to be aware of that. There were a few requested um over the last year from the members of the public which um were also health and wellness. um can't see it on there, but one of them is it was a cancer survivors month and an autism awareness um month as well. Um this I broke it out to where there's about two, potentially three depending on the month. It looks like May would be a little busy.

I have a Yes. Okay. Um, regarding uh Jewish Heritage Month, number one, I'd like to move the line to there. And the Jewish Heritage Month, I am 85% Jewish, but in my mind, I don't think we have to celebrate every heritage. Like, if we're going to do the Jewish Heritage Month, then are we going to do like Armenian Heritage Month? You know what I mean? To me it's like I agree that that is definitely something that we brought up um probably what a year plus ago when we were last looking at this because the same thing could be said for the different herit like you know Latino heritage. We don't do ones for Asian-Americans. So it's up to the council and this is something that the council has

as a Jewish person I don't mind if we eliminate that because we don't have room to do heritage for every nationality or religion or

this is council whatever. I may speak. I think it kind of one of these issues kind of comes down to traditionally marginalized. Um you know I I certainly am very proud to see Hispanic Heritage Month as a proclamation. So um you know it's hard for me to speak to um another nationality that I'm I'm not a part of. Uh um you can we have the conversation is this a traditionally marginalized group? I maybe think it's not currently. Um, so I don't think maybe it's it's necessary as well. And again, this is a list that's been in the last um we look back three years because that's when the last time the list was

and we cut it back pretty good last time as well. Oh, there was even more than this. So you the council could also consider did anyone show up when you did these pro? No. So like then maybe it's not important. They didn't. So let's remove that and if someone requests it then we which one it get in the Jewish heritage heritage and can we move Lyme disease to the first meeting in May because it's in its position definitely sorry I might have read your email wrong I thought you wanted it in the second week you want the first week the first uh agenda okay yeah I mean that's yeah anyone wants to add or change on this

um I just had the question this is to um council and staff is if if there's been any other requests I'm just kind of curious to know um people have mentioned anything. No. Okay. Quest. Okay. Then I'm I'm good with this list.

And one note on here, it does say um since we hadn't memorialized it, and this isn't a resolution or anything. It's at the council's direction, but in the staff report, it mentions that any requests that we receive um would go through that application that we have online because we haven't memorialized that, but they would submit the application. Um, previously it did go to um, subcommittees at one point. We never really quite had full direction. So on here it has referred to the mayor and city manager for consideration and potential placement on a future agenda. But that is also something that we're looking for direction on as far as what the review would be for a request. It's easiest to do it the way we are because it it becomes a long drawn out process and you end up missing the month,

right? So, it's easier for the city manager and and the the mayor to make the decision if someone does come in with one. And I don't I don't I mean, unless it's a hate speech, I don't see any reason why anything would be denied. But I it's not me. That's not always me. Uh now, uh with this this is an approval by motion. I'd like to make a motion to approve the city proclamation for calendar 2026 with the amendment to remove uh Jewish Heritage Month. I second that. All in favor say I. I opposed. Passes 5-0. Thank you. All right. Oh, sorry. Skipped one.

All right. The next one's pretty similar. Yep. Citizen AD recognition program calendar. I'm going to pull that up. Next. Sorry, I have to drag these kind of toky way to get up here. Do we have to do this right now on this one or is this something that we can just request we fill in? What uh when you when you when you created the program, we did say that. Let's go. Let's go fast. Who wants Who wants the one in January? Last year out, you already did one. I may need uh maybe this I would I take the one after January. I'm willing to commit to uh I'll take the January February I'll take the March. I'll take April. It's May or June.

Yeah, it's a two-month increment. Okay. Who wants July, August? Take it. Council Lowkey, September, October. September, October. Perfect. You get all that? I did. Beautiful. Noting that. Um, make a motion to approve with the changes. Anyone motion to approve changes uh to the Cloverdale recognition uh program? Second. All in favor say I.

I opposed. Passes 5-0. Thank you for making that easy. Now comes the fun one. Council reorganization annual selection of mayor and vice mayor. Every year we have a we have a request to do mayor and vice mayor together by council member Marquez. What do you guys think of that first? I was requesting them to be separate but separate. Kind of kind of the same way that you did last year. Same procedure where uh we're allowed to make comments before a motion is made. Perfect. Yeah. I I apologize. I thought you had said it different. I like the way you did it last year.

Okay. Council member Marquez, you want to go first? Um, well, I'm in favor of nominating Vice Mayor Brian Wheeler for the position of mayor. Uh, in his role, he's been available to meet to discuss meeting with me to discuss issues. He's engaged with the community quite a bit. Uh, you can find him out on the boulevard quite often. Um, I think it's somebody that's just been really positive and supportive of a new council member. So, uh, I'm would be happy to, uh, support Brian Wheeler. Morgan sir. Um, no support from me.

Mark, council member.

I support Council Vice Mayor Wheeler as the uh, mayor. Vice Mayor has worked his butt off over the last two years as my partner and uh has taken a lot of time and done a lot of hard work to make himself ready and a leader for our city. And I want to nominate I would like to nominate Vice Mayor Wheeler as newest mayor. Um, roll call second with

I second that. Would you like the official? Made me a little nervous all of a sudden. Do you want the official motion to be You said you favored a motion. Everybody supported it. I'm just curious. Was there a motion on the table? I made a motion. Motion for him. Perfect. Seconded by Laski. Correct. Do a roll call, please. Council We'll hold you guys off since you're part. Council member Marquez. I. Mayor Lance. Hi. Council member Morgan Stern. No. Council member Laskkey. Hi. Vice Mayor Wheeler. Hi. 41. Congratulations, Mayor. The meeting is yours.

Congratulations. Love the blazer. Looking good. Okay, now we move on to the uh we still have to do the selection of the vice mayor here. So uh we need a motion for our we would have a discussion for the the nominations for the vice mayor.

Thank you mayor. Uh before we move into nominations, one area where I believe that we can continue to improve is ensuring that our leadership roles mayor and vice mayor reflect the diversity and lived experiences within our community. In recent years, we've had several qualified women on this council who, for various reasons, did not move into the leadership rotation. Regardless of intent, that pattern has had an impact. At the same time, our community has also experienced tragedies this past year. Two incidents in which women in Cloverdale lost their lives to violence committed by men. These events have deeply affected many residents and have underscored how important it is for women's voices, perspectives, and leadership to be visible in our public institutions. Today, we have an opportunity to reaffirm predictable, fair, and equitable rotation in our leadership. Council member Morgan Stern is next in line based on this long-standing practice. Honoring that rotation strengthens public trust, reduces division, and shows our community that leadership is grounded in principle and consistency. Council member Morgan Stern has chaired two subcommittees, the homeless committee uh advisory subcommittee and the joint city UCSD subcommittee. She was also elected by her fellow Sonoma County Council members and mayors to serve on the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District Citizens Advisory Committee. A testament to the trust and respect she has earned beyond our city as well. And really, our choices today come down to three paths. We can follow the predictable fair rotation system we've relied on for years. We can treat this opportunity as a popularity contest, choosing whoever is most personally aligned with us. Or three, we can set a rotation aside, engage in a full discussion about who we believe is the most qualified overall.

If we are going to abandon rotation, then we owe it to the community to have that conversation openly and be transparent. My hope is that we make a decision which reflects the values of unity and integrity. supporting our fellow council member Marjgerie Morgan Stern for vice mayor aligns with those values that that's my comment. So let's move down the dis here and vice mayori are we allowed to have a discussion I think before we make a mo motion right

mayor can you turn your microphone a little towards you got hear

I'd like to thank um Councilman Marquez that's part of my comment and the other part of my comment is a lot of small cities like ours rotate and the fact that we don't rotate I think it turns into a pal thing and a popularity contest between the people that are in power and I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's inclusive and I we Cloverdale used to rotate and they stopped and I think I would like to see uh Cloverdale rotate again and I think it's a learning experience. We're not just up here as a popularity contest. We're up here to learn. We're up here to give back to our community and we're up here to all be leaders. And when it turns into a popularity contest, um it's not inclusive. It's it's um just it's not fair.

Anything?

I'd like to throw my name in the hat for uh Vice Mayor. Uh, I understand the um and appreciate Council Member Marquez's statements and I uh wholeheartedly agree with uh Marjorie your statements for uh rotation. However, I believe the overall transparency and reflection of what we stand for in Cloverdale has to be on integrity. So when we have certain council members that will u engage in social media that is detrimental to the city's u uh visions andor we have other council members that will go outside of the box and uh do things that would harm the city in a good light. I I I can't support uh Council Member Morgan or Vice Mayor.

Um you're the same person that sat at a dinner and talked bad about a trans person at the table. I can confirm that. Hey guys, let's keep it integrity. You council member Morgan Stern, keep it respectful up here. and you you're the one who did the ribbon cutting and couldn't even include everybody that showed up. So, if I can if I could just add a comment

if I if if I may just uh just a just just comment and this is civil. Um so, yes. Uh I questions to uh council member Laski is kind of maybe to be specific about some of the accusations you're throwing out. you're throwing out blanket accusations and um that doesn't make sense unless you're specific about it. Um I really would uh voice my concerns regarding the appointment of council member Mark Laskkey as vice mayor. Um the vice mayor role requires consistent availability, collaboration with council colleagues, reliable fulfillment of our assigned responsibilities. At this time I do not believe those expectations have been met. Council member Mark Laskkey has mix missed six of his nine Sonoma Clean Power Board meetings without notice, leaving Cloverdale without representation on important regional issues. We have also not received regular leaison reports from planning commission limiting our ability to stay informed on critical land use matters. In addition, I have experienced difficulty reaching council member Laskkey for city business, which makes collaboration challenging. These are not minor issues. They reflect a clear lack of effort in the basic responsibilities already assigned. Based on this record, I do not have confidence that he is prepared or willing to grow into the increased demands of the vice mayor position. This is not personal. It's about performance. The vice mayor role carries significant responsibility and the city deserves someone who consistently shows up, communicates and fulfills their duties. For these reasons, I firmly appoint I firmly oppose the consideration of council member Mark Laskkey for vice mayor. And if we want to talk about qualifications, let's have that conversation. This is a very important

role. We should have that conversation. I would also be interested in in the role of vice mayor and I'm I can uh say it's uh it's you know as the new newest member of this council appointed in February 2025 in this short time I've worked hard to make an immediate and meaningful impact. I've m maintained 100% attendance on our regional boards, provided timely and thorough council reports, secured $10,000 in funding for the Cloverdale Food Pantry. I've helped lead major community initiatives, including the student career fair and the repair fair, and several volunteer projects that I've led, such as the home of the Eagles mural at Washington Gym and significant improvements to the Graange Hall. I also supported the successful acquisition of $75,000 in funding for those improvements approved just yesterday by the board of supervisors. I bring additional leadership experience as board chair and president of the Cloverdale Kuanas Club. I make it a priority to be present in the community both at a wide variety of local events and online. Regionally, I remain active through the Russian River Confluence Steering Committee as liaison to the Russian River Property Owners Association and their proposed Alexander Valley Water District and through regular engagement with organizations such as the Economic Development Collaborative, Sonoma County Tourism and LOEN. While I deeply respect our traditions and the strong working relationships on this council, I believe that the role of vice mayor requires dedication, initiative, and demonstrated results. In my time on this council, I've shown that I can deliver, collaborate effectively, and represent Cloverdale at every level. I would be honored to serve as vice mayor and continue advancing the best interests of our city. In saying that, I am throwing my hat in the ring, but I really think that we should go with council member Morgan Stern as far as bringing some

peace and some unity to this council. You could see the division that's happening with this group. It it it hasn't gotten better over this year. So, I think this is one way that we can all be adults. Let's go with the the right thing to do and that's to to uh go with council member Morgan Stern in in the traditional rotation. Council member Lance, you know, I'm I'm offended and I'm really disappointed in this council.

Sit here and say that this is a popularity contest when I put in 40hour weeks for this city when we've gained dog parks, open spaces, black uh ins uh budgets. Um how many I don't know how much more we have done all of this stuff we have we have several things are here because of the work that I do you want to talk about putting in the time let's really lay that out all I I'll do that to you and I will outdo everybody here 5 to one I put in the time more than anybody knows and I've also created teamwork within the city when you look at the city we we rebuilt and reorganized the entire team And we are so successful right now. And our city staff is so positive because of what we've done because we came in the office and said, "Let's do the hard work." As a leader, you build the team around you. You know, if you're if you look at a coach, you look at a CEO, you look at a a quarterback, you you look at a mayor, they build a team around them to make it successful. And it's not about that person. I personally tell everyone I surround myself with people that are smarter than me and better than me because they do their job. But I'll be damned if I must have failed a little bit somewhere right now. You look at our city and we have pulled ourselves up and we're the only city in Sonoma County that is that is positive right now and pushing forward. Everyone else is deficit. Everyone else is falling apart and here we are five minutes into this and people will just go right into the right into the mud.

Can I say no? It's my turn. All right, keep going.

The other part of this is as a leader, you have to be effective. When you choose sides, when you eliminate people, when you talk about people behind their backs, when you go against the the and and do things that are to the detriment of the city for your own behalf, that is not what is best for the community. Over the past year, that is what I have seen. And it bothers me. That is why I worked harder to make sure that this city didn't fail because we had to pick up the slack and hide some of this bad stuff. I was I'm trying to keep my my words right here. I had a mayor at a meeting a couple months ago tell me she puts in two to three hours a week and doesn't understand why I'm self-inflicted doing 40 hours. And I said that's because I care about every single person in my community and that's the way it should be. a real mayor doing his job, a real vice mayor doing their job. It's 40 hours a week. It's 2 in the morning, you're awake wondering why why somebody called you a name or what you can do to help them for that person that emailed you that needs help. It's it's 5 in the morning, you're returning emails. It's it's 10:00 at night when someone knocks on your door, you talk to them. When they want to meet for coffee, you go. It's it's it's it's all of the community. When I came into this, I had a Republican uh marking by my name and I had never thought about it from the age 18 until now that you know first off I'm not second off it offends people I'm not here for one group I was never here for a party I was here for everybody so I'm a no party preference because I don't care how you vote and to sit here and listen to people complain and and point fingers and try

to build cases that just tear this this council apart part. It's just when when you use this position to benefit yourself, you're doing it wrong. You use this position to benefit your community. And I I'm saddened to see people not doing it that way. And I'm really bothered that I I'm sitting here having to have this conversation at 10 o'clock at night and my iPad's dead because we raned out of energy. This is just this is ridiculous that we're at this point. And so I don't even know what to say. But I will tell you, I know two people I will not support flat out for vice mayor just because of the fact that they don't support the entire community. They do not get along with most of the city staff. They do not support the decisions made on the dis and they have negative attitudes towards the rest of the council and that is not how it works.

I think you just made a false statement and I resent it and I think it's part of the good old boy club that happens between you. He misstated resemble resent

and I'm tired of the good old boy club and the city manager is part of that club and he won't even give me and Andreas information when we sit in front of him and ask him what's new. Well, I mean, I I I appreciate council member. I can speak for myself and just to reiterate, um, Council Member Lans, um, my comments were not directed at you. You know, I think that we've done a a good job at building a relationship over this year, and I'm proud of that. My comments were not directed at you. Uh, really, those comments are directed at the possible appointment of Council Member Lask, who I just feel is not up for this role. and and and everything you said I agree with that you know this the these roles do demand a lot from us and so that's why I'm making that those statements and and it's not personal. I'm happy that me and Council Member Laskkey are going to work on the uh infrastructure subcommittee together. I hope that we can build our relationship as well. That's my goal. I've been having trouble doing that this year reaching out but moving forward that's that's my hope. Mayor, I don't know what you want me to do. Do you want me to make a suggestion or do you want me just to let you go around the

suggestion? I would like to suggest that we do a retreat and that we all do it with our hearts open and that we do it instead of just acting like this is something horrible that we have to waste the half a day on that we do it with open because I think we really need a retreat about So, what I'd suggest is maybe if someone wants to make a motion and a vote on this and then council member Morgan, if you want to bring that up as a future agenda item for the council to discuss.

All right. So, I'm going to I'm going to take over from here and there's a lot to digest here on this one and uh I'm going to agree with the uh with council member Lans on this. There has been countless countless hours, time spent, meetings, uh, trying to communicate with, uh, council members and not getting anything back. Um, and so it's it's it's ridiculous. If we're going to be an effective council, if we're going to support Cloverdale as a community, we are all going to work together. We are all going to be able to wake up in the morning and if you have to call the police, you call the police. if you have to. That's a leadership role. By texting somebody and saying they don't listen to me is not effective as a council member. You should be able to handle that. You should be able to move past that or should be able to sit down and have a meeting with whoever you don't think is treating you well and resolve that issue. And right now we're not doing that. We have uh council members here that are just I mean people are vying for position up here and it's getting rid ridiculous. People are like look what I did. I did more and hey check this out. I did more. No, that's not how this works, man. Work as a team. I spend countless hours and and council member Lans here spends countless hours and it's not a good old boy. It's a hey, we've got a project to take care of. What do you think of this? As the vice mayor, mayor, you work as a team. you work together and you discuss things and then you bring it to council. So, as far as the good old boy, that is not something that's out there right now. This is hard-fought fights going on right now to make Cloverdale and Cloverdale only a better spot to be. Uh the work we've done is I I'm going to reiterate is it it wasn't a somebody made a decision. It was we sat down and had numerous hours of meetings with the

city manager to hey, let's reorganize and let's rebuild this team for the city. Is it effective right now? Absolutely. This city right now is on fire. Everybody has high morale. Everybody's working. Everybody's positioned where they need to be. Mayor at the time, Mayor Lans had projects going on. I ramrottrotted OIT and I pushed that through and pushed it and pushed it and it went on for a year and a half until I finally got that at both plants. And now you know what? That's the kind of stuff I need. I don't need somebody, you know, complaining that, you know, when we go do an event that I don't give them a big group hug and there's a picture and we get to have our self, you know, I'm not here to get my picture in the paper, nor do I care about having my picture and paper. I'm here to for success. I'm here to say Cloverdale's got something. the kids have a new park. Everything's great. So, right now, you know, I I sit back right now and I'm like, "Okay, who would I not who's going to be that partner that I could call?" And here's the key and trust them to do something. If I say, "Hey, it's 2:00 in the morning and let's go. We've got something going down on the river. Are they going to jump in their car and head down or am I going to hear a whole pile of excuses?" That's what I don't want to hear. I want somebody that's going to hit the ground running and know who to call, when to call, and how to call them. So, right now, I had I had this going on and uh and I I just sit back and listen to this. I'm taking into account a lot of stuff council member uh Marquez said, things that Council Member Laski said, that Council Member Morgan Stern said, but it comes down to trust. Somebody that can hit the ground running, somebody that can do this and and and is willing to put in the work. So, you know, I mean, this is going to be off the wall here, but you know who I'm going to nominate for vice mayor is council member Lance. I want somebody that's going to come through and continue to do what we're doing. Right now, I don't see anybody on this council that can step up and say, "I got the

ball. I'll run with it." We're stepping back then. I want somebody that can step forward into this, keep our budget going, be there when we have a budget question, and not have some random excuse. So my nomination right now and my support is going to be for vice mayor is council member Lance. Anybody on the dis let's bring it to the dis for comments.

I think you guys have had a good experience working together but I think it's time to rotate and let other people work together. Um part of being on this whole thing is learning leadership and I don't see why we can't rotate. And I I appreciate your comments, uh, Mayor Wheeler. U really, because that that's the discussion I'm asking for is that, uh, you know, if we're going to go with, uh, qualifications that we have that discussion. Um, you know, if I I I and I do appreciate that cuz I I I really didn't want there to be a pick based upon anything else. It was for me it was either rotation or qualifications. Uh, you you shared your thoughts about who's the most qualified, and that's absolutely valid. Um, I my opposition to that I I think Todd's done a good job. My opposition is just I would like like to see us go in the rotation and and it's one of those things about um just bringing some understanding. I think doing what's fair again. I think you know women have gotten a bad shot over the last many many years. And so I think that's a real important issue, you know, and so uh um I certainly think that uh I just don't want to drive any more division within this council and I think that might lead to that.

And and I agree with you on that, Council Member Marquez, and thanks for your comments. But I need, like I said, there's got to be when it we could do a rotation and and get people in here. But if we've if we get people in here that aren't willing, like I said, to I mean, get after it, you know, and that's what I'm looking for. And I think that's what Cloverdale deserves. That's what the residents deserve is somebody that's going to say, "I got this. Let's go." You know what I mean? And uh I think I demonstrated that over this last year. You know, I've been available for anybody who's reached out to me.

Um you know, anything that I can do, you know, I take it on. You know, I was given a lot of roles that were kind of just the leftover roles. I took them and I ran with it and I accomplished something and I got a lot of things done this year that I can show for it. So, I I think I'm a very viable candidate.

You you you did get that done. My only problem with that and like you said is I'm going to say nothing personal about this but there has been a lot of it comes to our attention from uh you know telling people that the mayor isn't you know he's not he's not he's lying to people he's doing this he doesn't know what's going on with the Potter Valley project he's being cut out of that hits pretty hard with me when I know the amount of work that goes into it And I think by having that attitude right there is like I said vying for position. You know what I mean? And am I all about a rotation? I'm not trying to hold down women. I'm not trying to hold down anything. I'm going for right now. The momentum Cloverdale has the momentum that the city deserves. And the projects that are going on right now need 100% focus on it. And that's where we're at right now. And and uh I'm going to stick with my nomination. I appreciate that you threw your name in there. I'm not discounting everything that you've done to respond to the accusation.

Go ahead. So, um, you know, my comments that I've made about other folks and specifically our mayor's u approach with the Potter Valley project have been in public. These are in publics. I I've met with the mayor personally on a couple occasions. Um, I think that didn't go well that you know the the mayor both times threw a tantrum and ran away. So, it's been very difficult. That's the truth of the matter. And you know, my neighbors who live on my street have also told me that the mayor comes to my street and tells my neighbors that he hates me. He's told also council member who's the mayor of uh former mayor Roner Park, he told Gerard Judiche that he hates me. Thank you for coming.

So if you want to be transparent and you want to say those things, let's be transparent. Okay? And I will be I will be very transparent. I don't know. I mean, I will be very transparent and yeah, I don't know what goes on and and I don't Okay, if that got said, I wasn't privy to that information. That's fine. I don't know. I know Gerard. I know all these other people and I'm just saying right now that when it comes I'm going to stick with the qualifications on this. I know you you're I've looked past that. I've looked past that to build a positive relationship, right,

with council member Lans because it's like, you know, hey, if people have fears about the new guy, so be it. I understand that. I empathize with that. But we got a job to do as council members. So, I I let that stuff slide. We're all grown adults and and I'm I'm I want to work past that. I want to get some work done for this city. That's what that's about. So, I'm those accusations. I want to address them. Let's be transparent about who's saying what. But, you know what? I have the intention to work with my fellow council members and I always have and I have that track record. I've never turned down a meeting with anyone. Okay. But now think of it like this also. You've got a relationship built where everything's going vice mayor, mayor, and then are we going to take a step back when we have to spend half the year building a relationship back

with um with either any council member? I have no problem. I'm happy with you. You know, we we've been cool. I see that as stepping back. Stepping back. Stepping back. If we're not hitting the ground running, I'm ready to hit the hit the ground running because I don't take any of that personal to be honest. And I' and I've never and I never have. U I I do this job on behalf of the citizens of this city. And so any fears that other council members have of me, any ways that they've treated me, I don't take it personal and I always take the high road and I always have and that's always been my record. So, and nobody can say other than that. All right. I'd like to make a com bring it back up to the dis and move down the dis council member Laskkey.

I appreciate all the comments and uh yes I council member Marquez you're doing a great job for your first term. Yes you have hit the ground running. You you've taken a lot of uh a lot of stuff and yeah the city appreciates your yours. Yeah there's no doubt about that. You have uh you know basic pretty much gone above and beyond appreciate that what's called for on a council member. So, uh, uh, yeah. Uh, and like I like you said, there's no, uh, you know, take the high road. We're all adults here. I mean, we're just having a civil discourse, which basically what it is, and we're moving forward. So, we're all here to do the work of the city, and then that's that's our should be our main focus.

Council member Morister.

Um, I'd like to make a comment. Every single one of us has made comments behind other people sitting up here on the dasis back. Every single one of us. And we all know that. So to start accusing one person of that and then for him to start purposely trying to, you know, drag my name through the mud, it's just getting to a negative dirty thing. It's not like we're all working together. There's a nice synergy between all of us. Um, you know, for you to act like, oh well, somebody, you know, doesn't want to call the police. Well, you've told me yourself that, you know, you've called the police station and have gotten rudeness and no help. So, for you to lay that on me, I don't appreciate it. And I think we need to stop invalidating each other and just like work together as adults and I think it would be a much more positive thing and a more positive way to nominate advice.

Thank you. Any other comments? Yeah, I'd like to make it. Okay. Um there's a riff between you and me as you know about I don't didn't know there was but anyway no you know definitely Brian that you used to call me every day like twice a day now you and you know you're coming up with negative stuff behind my back so you know we could start there fixing that rift I think it'd be important especially if you're mayor now all right so moving forward here um you have no comment on that I don't have comment on that Um, we need to get this vice mayor taken care of. So, we're having a riff here and so we need

you for another nomination. I'd like to move to just make a motion. I move to nominate council member Marquez as vice mayor. I'd like to nominate myself. Have a second. Wait, one just point of order. What's the motion? nomination of we have a second. I see no second. Okay. We have a motion for nomination. I'd like to nominate myself. Okay. Do we have a second? No second. We have a motion for

I'll make a motion for uh Vice Mayor uh Todd Lance. We have a second. I guess point. Do you do you accept the nomination? I'll second it. Okay. So, I'm done with this. Yeah. The adult. So, So we have a motion and a second to nomination of vice mayor or of council member Todd Lance to the vice mayor position. A roll call. Council member Laskkey. I council member Morgan Stern. No. Council member Marquez. No.

Mayor Lance. Mayor Wheeler. I. Council member Lance. I. Motion passes three to two. Vice Mayor Lance. Now you have to go back. Don't forget subcommittee item H2. Let's go back, Mike. Back to H2.

Got it. So, um, just to review, we have 1018. We're bringing item H2 back for consideration. Currently, we have Cloverdale Rentry, a tribal council leazison. Primary being council member Marquez. Alternate council member Laski. Administrative subcommittee would be the chair is the mayor. So that would be now Mayor Wheeler. the vice chair um previously had council member Lance now vice mayor Lance and stop me at any point if you want to discuss it over infrastructure subcommittee chair council member Marquez vice chair council member Laski joint city school would be chair council member Morgan Stern vice chair council vice mayor lands league of California cities primary is the mayor alternate vice Vice Mayor Russian River wershed primary is council member Morgan Stern alternate is council member Marquez. Those are the alterations that were made previously. So unless other unless there are any other updates you'd like to make. We just need a is that by motion motion to approve the subcommittees.

Does that one need to be by motion or is that just direction to staff consent? Oh that's correct. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to uh council member reports item J. Any council member reports?

Thank you, mayor. Uh written report. Uh Tuesday, November 18th was the uh library advisory board uh meeting. Uh and just want to inform the city and the rest of the council that the library coming up will be having a book club with middle school and high school students. puzzle swap monthly monthly Friday movie for teens. Uh the teens will also volunteer to read at Jefferson School and they will have a monthly Vine Ridge reading. Uh on Thursday, November 20th, uh I did attend the zero waste uh Soma board meeting and staff and the board worked to develop a model ordinance to ban or place a moratorium on artificial turf. Uh this was um just something that the cities can use and as as an example to adopt if they like. Uh I had a conversation with a couple of the coaches in town about um our high school turf and u you know they've kind of mentioned that uh artificial turf does um cause some turf burn turf burn. There's uh pieces of the turf that do make its way out into the environment. So, um this ordinance, the the model ordinance that we're that we're uh creating uh does not apply to schools though in that situation, but it might be something that's coming our way soon uh that we could look at and consider. We don't have any other artificial turfs within our city and if we don't plan to, it'd be good to adopt that. Uh on Monday, November 24th was the uh Mendescino County Inland Water and Power Commission workshop up in Yukaya. Some of the things that were discussed were uh storage options within Potter Valley. The idea of a dam on the south side of the valley was presented. There was three different levels that that dam would uh would possibly be at. This is all kind of conceptual as well as um you know installing groundwater uh wells all over the valley. And these are all kind of things that it's good for us to learn from and and see the other jurisdictions

that are sort of advancing their water resiliency options. Uh they also explain some of the pros and cons of the decommissioning choices such as uh possible litigation and funding scenarios that you would face uh with the older infrastructure compared to some new infrastructure. Uh coming up also on Thursday, December 5th that had passed uh I did a wastewater facility visit. Uh got him uh hang out with Jay Robinson and Cole Timmer. Uh they're doing a really good job down at the wastewater plant. uh learned about uh some of the things that they're doing down there uh and how they kind of feel about groundwater recharge uh purple pipe and and storm water. was kind of one of the things I learned that you know our storm water just kind of goes right into the Russian River and um you know different from waste water which is an all all year supply that uh you know by our purple pipes that we you know that's something that we can reclaim but storm water is one of those things that you kind of have to figure out a way to store it or pump it into um channel it into uh um some some type of groundwater recharge options. So some something to look at. Uh Sunday, December 7th, uh I joined the Russian River Cleanup Team for their monthly river trash cleanup uh down there on the First Street Bridge. And just want to give a shout out to Bob Cox who's been working with them for a very very long time. Uh it's it was fun to kind of run around the river. You kind of see what kind of trash accumulates in just a month's time. Uh and and good good volunteer opportunity. Thank you,

Council Member. Council report. Uh yeah. As as I stated in the uh my November uh report, Slowan Power is reducing customer rates for the next year. If anybody's on has Snow Clean Power, you're please go to the website and uh they've got a six to uh 6% decrease in rates over the next year. So, you're a Snow Soma Clean Power customer, I urge you to go uh view their website and check out what's coming uh as a positive to your checkbook. Morgan's turn.

Um I was supposed to have a a and open space advisory board meeting this month that I was looking forward to, but they couldn't get enough participants, so they had to cancel the meeting.

I'll be brief. I I attended the same Menino Inland Water Power meeting. Uh I did it via Zoom. Uh after the meeting, I had a a good meeting with PG&E. And from that, we have started or I shouldn't say start, we've started collaborating with some state and federal leaders that I can't name. And we are trying to find ways to work together to make things happen. I I will just leave it at that for now for that. But just know there's the solutions that were given at that town hall. They're not feasible and they wouldn't work. They're not sufficient. Uh when they talk about drilling 125 wells through the Potter Valley Basin on people's properties and things like that, it just it doesn't work and everyone's seeing it. And so uh there's a lot going on behind the scenes and I'm hoping over the next few months we can uh speak freely about it. I also attended our Sonoma County Transit and Climate Authority meeting. It's the SCTCA. Uh two of the discussions, the first one was the carpool hours that have changed uh in Sonoma County that was done by Calrans and they did it to make it the same as Marin County and through the Bay Area, not taking into consideration how it affects us. And so we as a group sent them a letter and explained our position and why it should be moved back to the three-hour window that we had before and they are taking it into consideration and bringing it to their next meeting. So hopefully in the next few months your car poolool hours through Sonoma County will change back to what they used to be. And then they also did what they called a VMT mitigation. It's a it's a vehicle miles traveled. It's a way to do uh instead of the gas tax for your electric cars and things along those lines. It was a survey done and an assessment throughout Sonoma County to see if it was feasible and at this point it is not supported by the Sonoma County

residents and so it is just uh going to be left as an open option but not further uh um looked into until something changes with the amount of of uh electric cars and the depleting gas tax. And that is all I'm going to speak about. We did not have any regional boards. Um uh we're kind of on a hiatus here till uh probably the new year with the uh Northern Soma County Airborne. Nothing to report out. One thing I do want to report out on is the uh attended the uh winter festival down here in Cloverdale. And uh from what everybody said, people I talked to down there, it's the best winter festival they've ever seen. They've never seen the town look better. They were impressed with the lighting. And uh the other thing I want to give a big shout out to the chamber and everybody involved in that. It was extremely organized this year. And I heard uh one of the one of the um numbers we had was over 5,000 people down there. So it was incredible. They did a good job and I hope it continues on. Uh other than that, I have nothing to report out. Um city manager attorney reports manager. Really quick, we did get three applicants for the oversight committee for the DD and the UUT. We'll be bringing that in January. That's it.

Mayor, I forgot one thing. Can I add it to the reports really quick?

On December 19th, there is a a light parade and judging contest for Christmas lights in Cloverdale. That's something that I started four years ago. Has really grown. It started out with seven people on a trailer. Last year, I think we had two decorated trailers, uh, police cars, fire engines, ambulance, everybody in line and make it a good time. There's a lot of applicants that have applied this year. It's really grown. We now have three people asking to put trailers in to uh, follow along with us. So, if there is anyone on this council that wants to go since this is not something that we get to vote on, which is awesome. You are all welcome to join. There will always be a seat for you and uh, and would love to have you. So, it' be we leave from the front of the police station. I think it's right around 6:00. Uh, but if anything changes other than 600, I will let you know December 19th. It is a really good time. Yep. We'll be out there cheering you on. You do come down my block and it's always good to see the parade come down.

Okay. Uh, council direction on any future agenda items. Um, yes. Appreciate that, mayor. Um I do want to suggest that we have a town hall or make an attempt to facilitate um some type of community meeting that we can discuss the idea of an independent review for the water study. And again, it's not so much that about my personal feelings. I just think it would be something that would um derive consensus for for our community. I think uh I'm just don't want to continue seeing our community split that way. So I think it's something that for for that reason I think would be beneficial.

Now the only thing I see and I know a lot of people talked about the independent review but these reviews have been done and I'm just wondering if we decide to do or bring that up for future agenda. um make it going to need to that's a very expensive thing to Can I make a suggestion to this is I would ask the the city manager and city attorney to make a list of all the different reviews who did them and how they affect us and then maybe you can meet with council member Marquez and if there's still further that that needs to be explained or thinks needs to be done maybe you bring it back to us again and and and again it's I'm not the mayor I'm just trying to

No I I appreciate your comments and this is kind of one of those things it's it's not so much about me, you know, but and I could say with the process, it's it's it's it's the trust of the community and that a lot of people don't trust the process. So, it's something really that it's it's not like um it's going to change um the situation of the the established assessments, but if if we can get an independent assessment, I think that people can feel um maybe differently or have a better understanding or a little bit more confidence in us. And and I think surely after this meeting it's needed

and that's why I suggest maybe he he brings the proof of what we've done and been part of before we make the decision because if you do you're talking a six figure number uh 6 to9 month process most likely and going to cost them probably a seven figure number for delay and and my thoughts it might not be a like somebody just going out and doing a whole WSA or an urban water management plan but it might be having an independent party just review what's there and and so maybe you can meet with the city manager and see if that fits and then we can bring it forward and and as a report and and and I'll go ahead and reach out to some of the people that made public comments. Their information is there and I think those are the people that have that concern. So I'll take care of that.

I'm doing the same too. Okay. Any other council questions? Okay. Are we on future agenda? Oh, we are. Okay. I would like to suggest a retreat and I think it would be really important and I think instead of us all going in there like this is stupid in Kumbaya, we actually went in there with open mind.

I support that. You know the other cities they do that. I really am saddened the fact that it had to come to a future agenda item. these things that were talked about behind the scenes for a very long time and other cities their city manager can enact these things they to where they don't get to this point. Unfortunately, we're at this point and so I think this is something that is very much needed. Are we suggesting Talia come back? It it's not something I would have acted on without direction from the council.

Yeah. So, but I I'm happy to to work on it. I I was just uh some of these in transparent full transparency, you know, things happen behind the scenes and I've talked to other city managers and other cities to try to find a solution that we could do without bringing this public. Um I know that other cities do the city managers can initiate these things without it having to come to this point where council members actually have to ask for it in public. So what I it sounds like this should be put on a future agenda so you can all if there's three who want to put it on a future agenda so you can discuss whether you want it, who you'd want, what you want to take, and how much you're willing to spend. They have their two look into it. Yeah. Okay.

And city that discussion that we discussed like maybe you know even after we were all dead like you know it be a yearly thing because I think what happened is we didn't have one when we needed to have one and things just well I I'll I mean he has the future agenda item for the discussion and this is something we should have there. But I will just say from the past, we did have two of them and it was because of these issues when I first got on the council and the people that were the naysayers refused to participate and so we spent tens of thousands of dollars and had a lot of donuts left over

and the people that we needed to learn to work with refused to even show up. So I I if these are positive and everyone wants to participate, I'm a huge supporter of it. Well, and last time remember we all showed up but the city staff was there too and we decided next time we city staff so we can focus more on and that's something to Yeah. Uh we can discuss this all at the the future agenda. Future agenda. Yep. Okay. That's it. Let's go ahead at meeting adjourned at 10:34. Thank you.