City of Rohnert Park Foundation - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It's my first time on the foundation. Oh, sorry. Who is that?

Wait, no. One second. I had a moment. Just because you know we're here doesn't mean that the city clerk knows we're here.

All right.

City clerk, would you kindly call the roll for our Tuesday, August 25th foundation meeting?

Director Adams. Here. Director Dutiche.

Present.

Director Rodriguez. Here. Vice Chair Elward.

Here.

Chair Sanborn.

Here. Present. Thank you. All right. Now we can officially get started. So our first item this evening is a presentation by our very own senior analyst, Mr. Kevin King. Welcome again.

Thank you. Madam Mayor. Oh.

I apologize for interrupting. We need to go to the consent calendar and public comments. Do the .

There's an agenda there right here.

That's wise. Am I using the updated one? Here, I'll take yours. Okay. So you're wanting to do public comment first? I am actually confused, I'll be honest.

So she called the order, now we're doing presentations?

Right, and I said presentations, and then you said, wait, we've got to do public comment.

Just maybe for clarification, Chair, is the item that Mr. King is going to report on is actually an action item, and so if you just go through, we don't have any presentations for this agenda.

I get why I'm confused now. Thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you, no problem. I'm sorry.

I'm so used to it being presentation for Mr. King. Okay. So there are no presentations and there is no executive director or treasurer briefing. And that is why we were going to item four, which is public comment. If there's anybody who would like to speak on the items not listed on the agenda or any consent calendar items, now is your chance. So to be clear, then we're going to have still another comment period because someone had asked about when public comment would happen. We would have one specifically for item 6A when that time comes. So if anyone has anything.

So we're starting the comment, the one minute timing for the Zoom comments as well.

There's no attendees on Zoom. That answers that question. OK. And we will not sit here for 60 seconds and wait. OK. That said, I am going to close the public comment period, and we are going to move to the consent calendar.

Motion to approve consent calendar.

Second.

All those in favor, oh, wait.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Sorry. OK. Approval of the minutes. And then on to item 6, the reason we're all here. Item 6A, an update on our cycle for small grants program. And that now is your chance, Mr. King.

Well, thank you, chair, vice chair, and directors of the Rauner Park Foundation. I'm not used to calling you that, so pardon me if I slip and say council members sometimes on this presentation. Thank you. Today we're going to be talking about a, basically you're going to be receiving a report talking about the prior Rauner Park Foundation small grant cycle for 2024 to 2026. Oh, there it is. Okay. So I have to pardon myself a little bit. I took over this project in April of 2026, so my job was more or less to try to land the plane here, collect the last reimbursements. I would say when I took it over in 2024, most of the reimbursements had already occurred. My whole goal is just to try to capture anybody who had outstanding balances and grab those final reports from them. So here we go. Just a quick summary of what we're going to discuss, just background, a little bit of kind of like overview of what the Small Grow Rents Program is, since it's been a few months since we've discussed it. I'm going to give you a spreadsheet of all the funding figures, and then we'll go into the individual reports. And if you have any comments and questions, we'll save that to the end. So a little bit of background on this cycle, as well as just the small grants program in general. January 2025, we awarded the 24-26 grantee cycle. In July of that same year was our first semiannual reporting period. January 2026 was the second semiannual reporting period and then last it's actually June 30th was the last was the end of the last cycle however some of our documentation that we gave to our grantees allowed for them to submit reimbursements up to July but it had to be prior to June or prior And then the next kind I just want to give you a little bit of a preview We have our 2026 2028 cycle coming up. We're kind of prepping a lot of the materials and application materials now Including the updated guidelines, which I hope to bring in front of this board next month with the opening of opening and NOFA around the same time So, just a brief overview of what the small grants program can fund. We have four general categories. These are pretty broad categories that we use to fund any of the applicants and projects. One is community beautification. One is community artwork, which is kind of a subset of beautification. It's specific to providing art in public spaces. There is education and then, of course, program support. More or less, most of them are pretty self-evident in their definition. So this is the funding for the 2024-2026 cycle. We had 19 projects. We had allocated $177,973.18. Of that allocation, $152,752.35 were spent. I use the word balance, but it actually already rolled. It's a $25,220.83. And up there, you can see how those breakouts are by category. There was no community artwork. It was beautification support and education. Roughly, I mean, in percentage-wise, program support came in at about 75%. Computification came near 100%. And then education around 86%, I want to say. Or 90%, excuse me. This is a list, these next two slides is a list of every single applicant, project type, original amount spent. Basically think of these next two slides of a summary of the individual reports that we're gonna go through next. So from there I'll go item by item or project by project. So first up was the, oh it shrunk on me, Boys and Girls Club of Sonoma County. They were allocated $10,000, of which they spent $4,418. That was used for camp supplies for summer programs. The more the cities and other grantors provide funding for Boys and Girls Club, the less they charge towards families. So that is offsetting family charge by us paying for the supplies. They did not provide a final report. I have to say when I took over in April, like I said, they had an outstanding balance of about $5,500. Reaching out, emailing, and even a couple phone calls, I could not get an answer back from the Boys and Girls Club. So I do not know where this project stands currently with them. Nexus Series, 10,000 was allocated, 10,000 was reimbursed. They finished up their project rather quickly from January 1st to November 30th of 2025. They provided a total of 125 Runner Park residents served, mostly with nutrition assistance and nutrition program assistance, both nutrition education and things of that nature. Next, the Child Parent Institute, which strategically invests to drive food insecurity by the John Reed Family Resource Center in Runner Park. So, again, $10,000 allocated, $10,000 reimbursed, so they took the full funding. And that $10,000 went to help support about a little under 1,300 families, distributed 521 diapers. and delivered resource navigation services to about 338 individuals, as well as help facilitate referrals to 275 families and provide education support 481. Continuing on Kentucky Runner Park grad night again 10,000 for 10,000 big success Grad night if you're not familiar with the grad night, it's basically we used to call it midnight madness when I was young you You get locked into a space with all of your fellow seniors from sundown to sunup In this case it went from 9 p.m. To 3 a.m. It was at the epicenter up in Santa Rosa. They had, you know, students attend from Rancho Cotati, Tech High, Credo and El Camino, about 285 total, their most since 2020, since the COVID year. So big roaring success. Funding, you know, is just sort of a general funding to help pay for some of the entertainment that came along with it. This is the Katahdi Rohnert Peace Park, built up by the Rotary. This is increasing the park's visibility. That thing on the right is what you see, what was funded. Again, $10,000 granted, $10,000 spent. That money was used to help fund the ceramic tiles you see all around that thing. Students from grades 3 to 12 painted those ceramic tiles that respected the themes of peace, kindness, unity, and hope. And then all 240 of those tiles were installed right here. Yeah, it's a really cool piece. Again, continuing on, Credo, 10,000 spent, 10,000 allocated. This was a service offered to seniors at Credo, basically to take them, before they graduate, take them on a, what do you call it, not nature hike, but like an outdoor adventure. Purpose was to kind of, you know, before they graduate high school, especially the month before they graduate, reconnect them to the earth, reconnect them to nature, kind of get them out of their headspace as they're, are about to embark into college. Very positive feedback on this one, with many of the students describing the experience in one word as profound, connecting, enlightening, meaningful, beautiful, freeing, amongst many others. Cross and Crown, we allocated $5,000. I have to, this is a good time to remind, $5,000 is the minimum that we allocate, $10,000 is the maximum. Cross and Crown was allocated the minimum amount of which they spent it all. What they did, and if you're looking at the slides, more or less, they have a community garden, they needed to refurbish it, and this $5,000 gave them the funding to refurbish it. So they removed all the old boxes, put in new wood, I think a story to tell with this one is sometimes the grant is kind of that last thing to push a project over the edge. This one, as I was told, is because the foundation jumped in first, all the other kind of nonprofit and assistance came after. So we were the starter. We really ignited this project going forward. And just, you know, the community support being done here is they produce food on site and that fruit is provided back to the community in approximately, they produce about 50 pounds of fruit a week. So that's, I don't know if I can eat that much, but. Next is First Responders Resiliency, Inc. This one's a little bit of a challenging one. $10,000 was allocated of which none was spent. So First Responders provides resiliency support services for First Responders. And this one was a bit of a challenging one. Everyone had a positive view of this. Everyone's heart was in the right place with this one. but there's a little bit of a challenge is that the city already has an employee assistance program or EAP program the public safety accesses and has had that access since about 2021 and so what occurred was was fire resiliency fire responders resiliency offered their services came in and interviewed public safety and it really was already parallel to what the city was already offering in a lot of ways so It was offered. It was a positive response from public safety. It was my understanding. However, because they are already using services that they trust more for those types of programs, that they did not lean into this one. Food for thought. Again, 10,000 allocated, 10,000 granted. Perform nutritional services for about 150 Runner Park residents. I'll just go over the stats as they're on the board there. 75% of the clients who use this service reported stable or improved health. 55% of those reported stable and improved nutrition security. And 100% of the clients reported an improved understanding of nutritious food and healthy eating. My World on a Page. Again, this one's a little bit of a challenge. About $8,870 was allocated. Only a little less than $2,000 was spent. This was supposed to be for a video project for poetry lessons. And it was a mix of... ENTITIES TO BE INVOLVED, INCLUDING THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, NORCAL PUBLIC MEDIA, THE LIBRARY, AND THE SITTING ROOM, WHOSE LOGO YOU SEE THERE. AGAIN, YOU KNOW, I CAME ON THIS IN APRIL. I DID NOT GET ANY RESPONSE IN TERMS OF MY EMAILS. I'M HOPING TO REACH OUT AGAIN AND JUST KIND OF SEE, GET A STATUS REPORT IN THE FUTURE OF WHAT HAPPENED HERE AND WHERE AND WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED IN THE FUTURE. NOAA, Neighbors Organized Against Hunger, another nutrition and food support allocation, 10,000 of 10,000 spent. Purchased food with higher levels of protein, 16% in persons obtained food assistance in the past 18 months, and funding for the program helped increase food donations. Rancho Catania athletic boosters again ten thousand of ten thousand it funded what they call the huddle system so the huddle system is a software program that helps them kind of basically game plan as well as then flip that over and and use create highlight videos for for athletics departments to then send to college recruiters it also has an extra element to it where you can stream high school games live so people who can't attend the games in person can watch them at home Roanoke Park Piranhas, 10,000 of 10,000, supported a learn to swim program, enabled the club to reduce barriers to participation while providing a safe, welcoming environment, and helped them expand some of their programs. Total learn to swim lessons sessions was 18, with total participants 265. So help people to swim, that's great. Roanoke Park Coral, this one's very short. We bought chairs. Which sounds, they spent nearly all of their allocations, save for about 20 bucks. It sounds silly to say we bought chairs. But on the flip side, that's the community benefit there. And the way it helps this coral program is now it's a more welcoming environment. I don't know about you, but I like to sit in a nice chair, and I imagine they want their audience to sit in nice chairs, especially as they are both, I'm assuming they're all doing that gratis, so. Sonoma Bach, here's a musical education program that we provide $10,000 for. They spent, they reimbursed it all, mostly for, I wanna make sure I check my notes here, just so I give them more. They just provide musical education as their main thing, specifically those entering, considering entering kind of like symphony or classical music, not just teaching the folks, not just teaching the kids how to play instruments, but also the history of that musical instrumentation as well. And this helps support a variety of programs that they put on each year. Sozo Center, $10,000 was granted, $8,870 was allocated. Mostly facility improvements is what I would call this. Purchased a refrigerator you see on the right, refilled the pool table. We replaced an ice machine, partially paid for a bill. This is a great center for, and it's right near the high school, so it's a great place for kids to hang out. So this is definitely one of those places where, it sounds silly, just like the chairs, but kids want to be in a nice place too, and they want cold drinks too. So we want to make sure that we are providing those services and assisting where we can. A few more here, Tech High Robotics Program, $5,202 was reimbursed of a 5,900 reallocation. Mostly that was used to provide support by paying for like tools and parts for the robotics program, which is a great program. It helps kids to kind of like, it's an intermix of like engineering, coding, as well as destruction of metal, metallic robots. Titans booster athletic support. We purchased tennis ball collectors and a swing trainer. This is a great little thing. Again, $10,000 of $10,000 allocated and spent. Obviously, the ice machine was great for you to continue training during hotter months as well as to help with the injury there. But we also purchased a tennis ball collector and swing trainer. Again, it's a small thing to provide someone with better equipment. or assist with that. It helps, you know, you had the tennis club here earlier. Those folks had, you know, they started when they were young and that's a community that gets built young and over time. And so it's great to be a part of that, assist in any way we can to pay for some of that stuff. And then finally, Universally Elementary at La Fiesta. This was a, so those, that top left picture is what the grounds look like. Basically they had a pathway and an area where a lot of the students gathered. Those are classrooms, that building. And along, you can't see it in the bottom picture, but along the right it's several buildings. PATHWAY WAS KIND OF MANGLED, NEEDED TO BE UPDATED, BUT THEY NEEDED TO HIRE SOMEONE WHO COULD HANDLE THE DRAINAGE PROPERLY IN THAT AREA. AND AT THE MEANTIME, THEY WOULD ALSO, IN THAT BOTTOM PICTURE AS YOU SEE, USE A LOT OF RECLAIM WOOD AND JUST CREATE A NICER SPACE FOR THE CHILDREN TO ACTUALLY LEARN AND VISIT OUTSIDE. AND THAT IS IT. THAT'S THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT. DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, COMMENTS? Anything for me on this?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Kevin, for that great presentation. So before I ask my question, I just want to express gratitude to the Federated Indians of Great Rancheria for this investment in our community and certainly all of these projects spoke to the intent of the donor and so we're very appreciative and and grateful to that so my My question is we've got $25,000 left over is that going to be included in the next NOFA?

So the action that was taken by the board is, you know, we allocate up to $300,000 and any funding that's remaining basically goes back into the fund balance. It doesn't increase the allocation. And we repurpose it or we reallocate it or rebudget it during the budget process for the foundation.

So with an action of this board, we could change that?

If you want to increase the amount allocated for projects under the small grants program, yes, we would have to bring it back to the foundation board. Is that correct? Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Hi. I just want to speak to the new chairs at Burton Avenue Rec Center. I, along with a city manager, happened to go to a concert there. And let me tell you something. It's no small thing that there are new chairs there. In addition to the music being absolutely beautiful, I mean, just really stunning, it was comfortable to listen to. And before, I'll tell you what, they've gone beyond just replacing chairs. They painted the inside of that building. I notice a lot of these funds are going to do things that the city... know with unlimited funds could be able to do but to be able to find a group that's using that space and then improve it for them for their use i think is a great use of our funds so i i'm with you i don't think it's silly at all it's it's it's a great thing we're able to do here with the help of the federated indians of the great rancheria any questions on your own vice mayor no you could okay um is there anybody from the public who would like

This is so exciting. We have people to speak. Public comment period is officially open for Mr. Steve Keith. Thank you. And I do have another public comment card, too. But go ahead. It's OK. Go ahead.

Yes. Really quick. I apologize for stepping up. I didn't know there was another card. Two things. I REALLY ENJOY LIVING IN A TOWN THAT'S POPULATED BY FOLKS WHO ENJOY LIVING IN THIS TOWN. AND GRANT PROGRAMS SUCH AS THIS AND THE TYPES OF PROGRAMS THAT THEY FUND REALLY BENEFIT THAT. SO I REALLY APPRECIATE THAT. WHEN IT COMES TO THE BALANCE, I UNDERSTAND THERE'S A PROCESS AND THINGS NEED TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. I LIVE IN A HOUSEHOLD WITH ONE ACCOUNT, AND IT JUST ROLLS OVER. WE DON'T HAVE TO TAKE ANY ACTION. I WOULD HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT THE BOARD CONSIDER CHANGING HOW THAT'S DONE TO WHERE IT SOUNDS LIKE TO ME THE 25 GRAND JUST GOES BACK INTO WHAT'S GOING TO BE THE USUAL CAPT AMOUNT. And I feel like well if it's saved one year next year gets it That kind of a thing, but I I would like to see that come back and have the board discuss Perhaps changing how they deal with balances Thanks Thank You mr. Keith, and then we have a public comment card from one of our grantees miss Sandra night

Thank you. I'm here representing University Elementary La Fiesta's garden program. The facilitator for our grant was School Garden Network, who supports all of the school gardens in Sonoma County. So we were fortunate to receive that grant from the foundation, and I just wanted to share a little Update, you saw the pictures. I have a little bit of numbers too to share. I was actually texting my entomologist friend to ask her, how do I estimate how many more insects are in my garden now? So we're working on that. But let me share what I can. So the University Elementary Outdoor Classroom Habitat Expansion was a beautification project that benefits our community as well as the planet. Big thing for us environmental educators. So for five years now, university elementary students have been working to create this additional habitat garden space behind their classrooms, affectionately known as their classroom backyards. So as part of the Roanoke Park Foundation small grant program, we had 17 drainage pipes installed and a gravel path roadway done. We wanted to do that professionally because we wanted to just protect our school buildings and ensure we weren't doing anything to create drainage back into the buildings and so forth. So the drainage pipes, that was a student idea when we were discussing how we can get irrigation to our habitat. plants, because although California natives don't need a lot of water, they need a little, especially when they're first established. But irrigation is expensive. So this was a student idea that we have now seen to fruition. To date, this project has directly impacted over 425 students and their families, as well as over 50 staff members. Community visitors are uncounted since they may use this space during times when school staff aren't present. sorry I added a sentence here out of my typing so as just one example of how the space has been used since we had the improvements done during the 25-26 school year I used it with my fourth and fifth grade classes we had a multi-week program where we did an erosion project so where the drainage pipes were installed they dug sort of a ditch to direct it to where we were going to be planting things. And the highlight of the erosion project was to drop a little bit of water, and then a little more water, and then to full blast the hose to see how the erosion would work on the soil. So they collected data. They got to practice the scientific method a variety of times during this iterative process. So that's just one example of how we're using the space. Let's see. We added, oh, was that my time?

Okay.

Correct. All right. That is the time. Thank you very much. We appreciate the support and look forward to applying in the future.

Look forward to seeing more applications. You said there was someone on Zoom. Is there anyone that wanted to provide public comment? There is not. Oh, there is not someone on Zoom. Okay. Well, there we go then. If anybody else would like to speak, now's your chance. Otherwise, we will close public comment. Back to the council for final thoughts on this. Yep.

Just when we get to item seven.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for the presentation on this, Kevin. It is an exciting part of what we're able to do here. Okay. Then I have item seven, which is our communications from or for the board.

So I would like to add an item to a future agenda that we discussed, the surplus funds from the grants. I think, yeah, I'll just leave it there.

Fantastic. We will make that happen. Okay.

Does that need a second?

Anything else before we get to item eight?

Is there a second for a second?

I was just taking his suggestion at face value. Yes, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor of bringing the Oh, okay. It's the end of the night, I'm done. Okay, if nothing else, let's adjourn. Thank you all.