Public Safety Subcommittee - Regular Meeting

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All right, good morning. Let's go ahead and call this meeting to order at 09:01 a. M. Madam Secretary can you please take the role?

Council Member Fleming, Mayor Stapp, Here. And Chair Okrepki,

Here.

Let the record reflect that all council members are present with the exception of council member Fleming.

Alright thank you very much. We have no remote participation today. We have no staff announcements. We do have approval of the minutes to do from the February 3 meeting. Any additions to that? Seeing none, we will adopt those as submitted and move on to public comment on non agenda matters. This is your opportunity. You will have three minutes to talk about anything you want under the purview of the public safety subcommittee meeting or subcommittee. If you would that is not agendized, so if you would like to say anything, you can move towards one of the microphones. Nobody is moving so we will go ahead and close public comment on non agenda matters and move on to our new business item 6.1, illicit massage business update.

Director Osborne and Chief Kriegan when you're ready.

Great. Good morning Chair of Krebke, I'm John Kregan, our Chief of Police, and I'm joined today by our Director of Planning and Economic Development, Gabe Osborne, and we're going to go through this presentation together. It's really been a joint collaboration between the Santa Rosa Police Department with our domestic violence sexual assault team and the code enforcement team addressing this vital community issue.

Thank you Chief and good morning Chair and members of the committee. Gabe Osborne, Director of Planning and Economic Development. As we kick off today's presentation, we thought it made sense to first really just give an overview of where we are on enforcement of illicit massage. In March 2025, the council adopted an ordinance that essentially created more regulations associated around the use of massage as a business type. That regulation injected a certification process, required inspections, and quite a bit of regulation on the actual use of materials and behavior and certification inside of the business.

What we did more recently is the council adopted amendments to that ordinance to really tighten up how we handle the review process. What we actually saw as we started going through the review is that businesses that had somewhat of an evidence of illicit activity were actually going through the permitting process. So the more recent council action tightened that up and made it easier for us to deny permits. So really what we've seen and these numbers are very fluid, so they are different today than when we added the slide. So we've made a few changes on the number of denials that I'll verbalize.

So we received 83 applications and if the committee recalls when we first went down this journey of understanding the total business use, there were around 130 identified massage use within Santa Rosa. 80 feels like a more normal number for the size of our city. So that's really what we saw as we we had the cut off. My guess would be was we see more of these trickle in as businesses change over and as some of the legitimate massage uses start coming back into the picture. Out of that 83, we approved 40.

So there's 40 businesses worth certifications. What we've seen through that process is we wanted to put as many resources as possible to educating the legitimate business community on this. Really the balance with this ordinance is to ensure that we're not overly penalizing those that are attempting to operate as a small business in Santa Rosa. So through that we had six denials which is actually nine now, so we had some changes there. So really as we bolstered up that language, it made it easier for us to deny the applications. We have 37 that are pending review. What we've seen through this application process is we often identify flaws in the application which are very similar to any plan review process. The applicant is given time to address those flaws and resubmit. That would be the 37. We typically put those businesses on a clock.

They can't hold that in perpetuity so that's usually a thirty or ninety day period in which they need to respond. We do have discretion in that arena. So returned, incomplete and withdrawn are four and then it's important to note that we conducted 36 inspections. So as we complete an application, we inspect the site and I do want to point out that one of the common pieces that we catch is the neon sign. That often has been identified as an indicator of an illicit use.

It's not necessarily the case. The neon signs are one of those items that we do a correct with that inspection on a legitimate business. So I just wanted to point that out that that is not an immediate indicator of an illicit use. So that's really the summary of where we are from an ordinance standpoint. I will touch a little bit more on some of the enforcement that we're doing in that denial and some of those areas where we have not seen the certification come through, but at this point I will hand it back to the chief and he'll cover the next slide.

Thank you. So just a brief little overview of the evolution of our enforcement, and we've talked before with council about this, that we've really evolved in this instead of focusing on some of the victims who are being trafficked in these locations with illicit massage businesses, have been really focusing on the owner operators and looking at some pretty serious felony criminal charges of pimping and pandering, looking at some of the financial crimes when you often don't see taxes being reported on this illicit funds that are coming in, and really looking at some of the jurisdictions around the Bay Area and even California who really really aren't putting the resources into this and proud that the city of Santa Rosa has really joined with multiple of our departments together to make sure this is a priority in our city. Our focus that we've really been partnering with code enforcement, we're also partnering with the FBI, and a lot of different nonprofits in our city that really focus on this and nonprofits such as Verity, certainly our Family Justice Center, and who leads us from the police department as our domestic violence sexual assault team. We have our sergeant, Rick Bohum, and one of our lead detectives, Tim Raymond, here today, and they're really the face of this who are helping do this, and then working side by side with our incredible code enforcement team with it.

And they're going out there doing these joint inspections. We're gonna talk about one that we did just last week together with it really and working with code enforcement on the operation of the license, revoking places that are clearly nefarious activity going on, looking at those criminal charges, and we'll talk about one of the operations that we did. Another creative way is really focusing on the landlord. Some of them they were being rented, making the landlords aware about some of the behavior and illegal behavior occurring there, and really seeking to get these individuals moved from these locations and evicted. With that one that we did last year that we're really proud of, and it kind of was a shock and awe operation of kind of sending the message through the illicit massage business that we're not gonna tolerate this in Santa Rosa.

So our detectives worked with the FBI, our code enforcement, and all went, and we're able to serve multiple search warrants at three different residences, three different businesses here in Santa Rosa, and it resulted in felony charges being placed against three different suspects for pimping and pandering, and pimping being getting the illicit funds off of the sex behavior. Pandering is procuring the victims, basically, who are involving in this behavior. Wage theft of their many times are exploiting these victims. Here, money laundering, tax evasion, so many things. Through that, we can also look at asset forfeiture funds as we've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash being generated from these locations.

What we're really proud of at the end of the day, six victims were rescued during these operations and with the work of Verity were given the safe and secure placement, And also we were able to shut down five of these illicit massage businesses that day and really show the rest of the community who's participating in this behavior that more is going to be coming and that's what we were able to see again last week with some more operations occurring in Santa Rosa. With it, and that one is last week on April 15, code enforcement and our DVSA detects those joined forces. They visited six locations and saw multiple code violations. With I'll have Director Osborne give a little bit more detail on that and talk about some of the substantial fines that were going to be secured.

Thank you Chief and I think it's important to note of the six, four of those received a denial and two of those were businesses that did not have a certification that were on our radar. So from a priority standpoint, are focusing on the denials, but we're also focusing on those areas in the community where the individual businesses did not obtain the certification and we're either hearing from community members or there's other evidence of of activities that are on the illicit side occurring. So we're mixing those into the enforcement and really what we're finding is that often when it's an illicit use that there are a number of violations. So if a business does not have a certificate, that's immediate cease and desist. And how that works is a cease and desist alone triggers fines and those fines take the form of a first, a second, a third, and then daily and that violation alone can produce up to a daily fine of $500 per day.

What we have seen in many of these operations is they also have violations for other activities that are occurring and since we wanted to basically take the maximum approach from a fine standpoint allowable by law, those fines occur per violation. So we had one business that had a neutral fine of $8,400 for an illicit use. So that provides an example of some of the financial impacts. This can go back on the property owner through the administrative hearing process. Some of the cost recovery mechanisms that we can put into place come through that.

So this can really add up to a pretty significant amount. So that's really what happens because a lot of the questions that float out is once the cease and desist is placed on the property, what happens if the property keeps operating. It is identified in the code as a misdemeanor but we also had to have a pretty hefty fine structure that is coming into play. So out of the six, they were all served a cease and desist order and we are going down that road of determining the fines and as we go through the permitting process we will be doing these in batching but as I mentioned and I also want to continue to stress it's not just what we know it's what we don't know because there are uses out there that did not go through the certification process and we're trying to give those the same level of priority and work those into the inspections. Once we get through the certification process and we're done with that, the next phase of proactive enforcement is to look at potentially whatever the difference is between our permitting and the 130 that we initially identified and then go after those through a proactive approach.

But hopefully this highlights a bit on what our tactic is, some of the fine structures, and how we're really batching these. And it's been successful thus far and I think as the Chief mentioned we had the five, now we have the six, and we're going to keep chipping away as this progress.

And that's one thing that we really want to drive home the point, because I frequently hear, and I'm sure council does as well, is hey we're still seeing locations with the neon signs. We're still seeing some that look suspicious. So I want to let you know that this has been a a a significant amount of work between both departments that are going into this, but we're seeing progress with it. And we're gonna continue the cadence of doing these inspections, going out there. We're working really closely with the California Massage Therapy Council too on the certification of those working at these places to make sure that we're legitimizing the ones that are here in our community because we have many, obviously, vast majority are legitimate businesses that are thriving in Santa Rosa.

We're just working on those few problem locations with it. And really, another point that we wanna drive home today is how you can report this and make sure that we're aware of it. And you see right on here through the code enforcement request form that you can go right online with it. There's a PDF form that you can send a code at s r city dot org. I don't know if director Osborne if you want to add more to that on ways that we can be getting these complaints sent to the city and getting it on our radar.

Thank you chief and I think it is important to note that code often leverages heavily the eyes and the ears in the community. We do know a lot about these uses but if there's certain activity that is concerning and the community members do not feel like we're giving it the level of attention it deserves, the code complaint will allow us that communication channel. In many ways, we are. As I mentioned, oftentimes the community sees the signs and thinks it's a legal operation, So there's education that sometimes goes along with that that activity, but I think it's really important for the community to understand there still is a way even though this is more of a proactive program and it's moving forward, there still is a complaint based process. We still respond to those complaints and sometimes if there's really significant activity that's concerning in a neighborhood, we can prioritize based on that.

So that is the channel for that and I do encourage members of the community that are concerned and if they feel like something is not happening, please communicate through those channels.

And we'll turn it back over to the council for any questions.

Alright. Thank you very much for that presentation. Any questions?

Just three quick ones. Director Osborne, can you remind me what the city policy is for LED signs in particular? I did hear from one legitimate business owner who had an LED sign advertising her business and was surprised that we indicated that wasn't allowable. Can you remind me what our border policy is with LEDs?

They are generally not allowed. There are certain circumstances where they are, but for a typical business such as a massage parlor, those electronic signs are not allowed under the current ordinance.

Alright, perfect. Thank you. And then you answered this to some extent in your presentation, but in terms of the trends that we're seeing with our with having gone through the process of putting the ordinance in place and now that we're doing some court enforcement, are there some larger city trends that we can speak to in terms of is the policy having the effect we hoped?

I'll add to this and then hand it over to the chief to see what he's seeing. I know one of our fears were as we really start clamping down on this and we are in the process of doing that, that this type of use can be very profitable and this type of use can move to another jurisdiction that has less regulation. So are we really pushing it out of Santa Rosa into our partnering communities around Santa Rosa? What I have seen is it is pushing out. As we go through the denial process, we actually have a due diligence where with a denial letter a business has a ten day appeal period.

I have seen businesses that we have identified as illicit try to go through the appeal process and give up and then move on and decide they're not going to operate anymore because of the regulations. So I think one of the points was is that when you move it out, you know, it's just creating a bigger problem in the community, so how do we really share this information with partnering organizations, do something a little more county wide so we have consistent regulations, and I know the Chief has had some conversations with his partners in other areas and I'll let him talk about that briefly.

That's an absolute fear is that there's, as we talked about, hundreds of thousands of the millions of dollars annually can be made from these businesses. So we really worked and we presented our ordinance as really leading the way for the North Bay. We presented our ordinance to all the Sonoma County Chiefs and actually sent out to the five counties adjoining, to Marin, Lake, Sonoma with the counties as well with that of our ordinance with it because our fear is exactly that, that we're gonna see this push to Marin, Napa, Lake, Mindo, the surrounding counties with it too. Director Osborne and I also met with our local mayors and city manager group with it, really kinda warning them like, hey, get this on your radar with it too. And so we were really continuing to work.

Our domestic violence sexual assault detectives have access to some of the illicit web pages where these are rated and that you can see where there's clear ads about the behavior. So we're getting those ads. We're sharing those with the jurisdictions and our surrounding communities, and then we're working with code enforcement, and that's really our pinpoint about where are some of the locations in our city that are behaving with some of this illicit behavior. So it's gonna be a continued fight, quite honestly, with it too, that we need to continue to show that it's a priority in our city, continue to put the resources from both code enforcement and our domestic violence sexual assault team, but also acknowledging that both these teams have a mass amount of other responsibilities, on their plate for other city activities and investigations with it. So that's why we're trying to balance that about how we continue.

Our teams are meeting regularly, discussing, and making sure that we get in this regular cadence that we show the illicit businesses here in Santa Rosa that we're gonna be doing the enforcement, and then also continue to really lead with what can we do to partner with the Family Justice Center, Verity, and our other groups to help those victims who are in these. And and we've talked about before, there's so many barriers toward accepting some of the help that we need, and one of the first operations dozens of people were offered and only a handful accepted our services. So that's still a challenge for us too to help these victims who are in these really tough spots to be able to get them out of this life and get them in a safe place in recovery.

Thank you for highlighting what we are trying to do for the victims. And thank you also for indicating that that at least Santa Rosa is seeing a decrease and now now the the action is partnering with the other cities in the county. That's a that's a good thing for our mayor mayor and and council member association to keep in mind. Final question from me. Chief, did I hear you mention mention asset forfeiture in your remarks in terms of us the city confiscating some of the cash these businesses are generating?

And that's a yeah. That's a process. Our detective Tim Raymond is leading that right now. So for the ones that we can be able to do so there there are different processes both to the state and through the feds, that's something that we're gonna continue to look for as an option in these. And and there's many complexities in the law about when these funds can be seized to better show that they're the profit of these illegal businesses, but that's a a one more investigative tool and enforcement strategy that we're gonna be able to use to be able to bring these down.

And quite frankly, was talking to one of the detectives that we've seen where we're doing the landlord letters like this about one of the places, And because they had so much cash, they paid cash and just bought the building. And that just shows the mass amount of profits that's being made in these things with it. So that's why we're really gonna be able to continue to look at that and work with our federal partners to see if we can use that as another enforcement strategy.

It's great to know it's great it's great to know about its uses as an enforcement strategy. If those funds are determined to come from legal operations and they are seized, does the do the feds maintained control? Do those come back to the city? What happens to those those funds?

There's our our detective Tim Raymond who could probably answer with more clarity than me for the narcotic asset forfeiture, which is much more often what we do. The feds take a percentage of it with it, and then we get the rest and it goes toward but there are strict guidelines about what can be used for. It can't, like, go to city general funds. It goes back toward enforcement of these efforts, equipment training toward these efforts with it too. There's a little bit more complexities when you're talking about the illicit prostitution and and these things with it too, that's something that will continue to work and that's why we have an incredible expert in our domestic violence sexual assault team and out of the Family Justice Center they work with dedicated prosecutors from our Sonoma County district attorney who have the expertise to navigate this.

Alright. Thank you. That's it for my question. Just, again, a a word of thanks for Curtis and to all of the all the community members who spent so much time on on this issue. It the California Massage Therapy Council is coming to town, coming to Santa Rosa to hold their their statewide conference this spring. So we're they've certainly been pleased with our effort and Chief, you highlighted the fact that we've got kind of we're kind of the leaders in the North Bay right now, which fantastic. So with that, I'll turn it back to the chair. Thank you both.

Alright. Thank you. Three quick questions. As far as the neon signs, there's a lot of other uses that allow neon signs. Have you got any pushback from the legitimate businesses or is it kind of not a big deal?

We have had concerns about electronic signs which is generally referred to as a neon sign. It's more of the LED style signs. Some of the discussion in the economic subcommittee economic development subcommittee excuse me has been associated with our sign ordinance and modernizing some of that. Our sign ordinance is not that old. That was early two thousands, but obviously technology has changed.

There's been a desire to use different material types. That is one of the ordinances that we've identified could use some freshening up to better track with that. Much of the reasoning behind discouraging neon signs is is really some of that visual clutter that signage can create especially when it's electronic. So specifically, chair, to answer your question, I do hear from it time to time. I don't receive major pushback on it. There are quite a few other sign options that businesses can implement that and quite honestly are the same price or less expensive.

Alright, thank you. In terms of community reporting, is it available on the My Santa Rosa app or is it too nuanced of an issue to use My Santa Rosa app?

You know, I don't know particularly if it's a drop down, it might be something that we can add to that. There are miscellaneous categories on the My Santa Rosa app, that's a great point we can look into and see if we can get that more specifically added.

Alright, great, thank you. And then has there been any unexpected outcomes of this? Maybe it's identifying more than you thought or one that you thought was legitimate that ended up being illegitimate, anything that has happened that was outside of what you thought was going to be an outcome? I

think that there was a few use types that as we really dove into massage, really understanding sort of the medical benefits of massage, the importance of in home care, the importance of mobile care. That was a lot of times people assume it's a brick and mortar and people go to it. I know our hours of operation we reduced because illicit massages were operating later. Some of what we heard from members of the community that work odd hours and it's the only time they can get the medical assistance is they need that after hour care. So really understanding the nuances and the dynamic nature of the massage community in general, I think, was a bit unanticipated because we usually, for a use type, don't do a deep dive.

I think for the illicit, it was the prevalence of it. There there is a lot of it, and as we see it go through the permitting process, which is shutting it down, it's more than I would have hoped. You you want to assume that the problem's a little smaller but we have a good solution to address it. But I think those are really the two areas and I think I do want to point out for we have an administrative process that allows us to make modifications for those unique types of legitimate businesses. So I think the ordinance was very successful in creating a very hard line and a very aggressive enforcement strategy but also creating flexibility for those legitimate business types and that was really the art that we wanted to put into it because I believe there's a lot of our small business community that unfairly get brought into this and they actually most of them support it because it legitimizes their business.

It creates a better business model for them. So where we got a lot of pushback, I started getting a lot of support even when we were having to hand people through the process. So I always say any ordinance, any new ordinance is a learning lesson and as you evolve it, there there's a lot you learn in that initial stage and I think in this particular case, there were things that were unexpected and there were a lot of positive things that we pulled out of it and I think it's a very effective way to legitimize business in the community but to also address the other concerns which are on the illicit side.

Alright, thank you. That's it for my question. So we'll move on to public comment on this item. This is your opportunity to have three minutes to say what you want about this item. We have two people signed up, but if you haven't signed up you can make your way to one of the microphones after that. First we will have Lauren followed by Curtis, and then if anybody else would like to speak just go ahead and queue up behind one of the podiums.

Hello, good morning. Oh, thank you. I just wanted to really thank you from a very sincere place. I'm raising my family here. I really love Santa Rosa as a community, and I wanted to thank you personally and from a very heartfelt place. Thank you council members. Thank you police chief. Thank you code enforcement. Thank you, Curtis. Apparently, you guys are following a process that's very well thought out.

It's very educated. And I do understand that there's already a lot of really beneficial changes and and that there's still time and there's still a process to conduct and to lean into. I think after just thanking you, a question that I have is, is there any transparency in terms of this review process about which businesses are pending and maybe the outcomes on some of the other businesses that are still operating? I'm so happy to say that I've noticed that some places are shuttered now. I mean like the signs are down, there's vacancies, and that's that's been relieving.

There still seems to be this activity and I'm just wondering is there a way for the public to check status, so to speak. But again, thank you so much. The the community spoke and you guys rapidly and very strongly responded.

Thank you. Next up is Curtis, and then if there's anybody else go ahead and queue up behind one of the microphones.

Mayor Stapp and council member Okerebke, Chief Cregan and the entire SRPD, Detective Raymond, director Osburn and all the code import enforcement professionals, Daniela, Debaca, and many others that I failed to mention. Thank you so much. It seems like it's been a long journey, but I realize the good things take time, and so I'm just here to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. I'm grateful I moved to Santa Rosa, and I'm witnessing such great governance. So that's all I have to say. If I forgot to thank anybody, I'm sorry, but you're all wonderful. That's it. Thank you.

Yeah, I agree with the mayor. More public comments like that would be much welcome in this room. Moving on, we will go over here to the East Side and then come back to the West Side when you're ready.

Yeah, good morning. My name is David Bloomer, I'm the campus manager of National Holistic Institute, a massage therapy school here in Santa Rosa and I first want to lead off by acknowledging Curtis for blasting the trumpet. That first meeting in the library was quite something to witness and behold. And just when you mentioned other benefits or other things that are happening, so we represent obviously legitimate massage therapists and we're doing our best to train and put those out in the field. We work with CAMTC so that all of our graduates become certified which gives CAMTC ability to do things like revoke for any off behavior.

But we've lived in this world as massage therapists where it's murky because the word massage can be used in so many other instances. And I know it's a hard and long process and it feels like slogging through. And I just feel compelled to acknowledge city of Santa Rosa for taking such a bold stance and being willing to not just make a superfluous move into making a difference, but really being committed to ongoing. And it makes me proud to manage a massage school in this community. And it feels like it's a safer environment for our massage therapists to enter into with their legitimate businesses.

Because when we have illicit massage businesses in our area it creates this potential of misunderstandings with clients of what is allowed and what is acceptable in the field of massage therapy. So for those massage therapists who are working on their own, they're alone in their space with their client, those protective measures are vital. And so just from the bottom of my heart, deep acknowledgement for all the work that you all are doing. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Please when you're ready.

Yeah, thank you. My name is David Cerenni and I just want to say thank you for leading the charge, Curtis, to our friend and neighbor at Valentine's Day in the library, and as a physical therapist for thirty three years, and my wife Lisa in the audience there as a public health nurse for over thirty years. Sonoma County health care professionals, we appreciate, maybe in a different way, but all the effort that's been put in. We live on Talbot Avenue along with Curtis. And so we've been here since 'ninety six, and we really saw a change in our neighborhood with these different businesses popping up just about on every corner over the time we've lived there, and just seeing the data today on what's been accomplished and the plan for going forward and learning how the public can also fill out the forms and report and submit when we see things that we don't think are right.

It's encouraging and heartening, and I just want to say thank you to all of you the work that you've put into it. I know this is no small task and it takes time, but I just wanted to come down today to give our heartfelt appreciation, so thank you.

Thank you very much. Over to the East Side when you're ready.

My name is Michelle Recken and I did just want to thank you very much for what you've done, what's been done, and what will be done. And it's encouraging, it brings hope, and I'm just thankful for that. As a community, I've been gathering people to pray over this too, so that's encouraging to see that that's made a difference in this walk through, getting this all breaking free from this illicit massage parlor thing. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anybody else? Seeing none we will close public comment and come back for final thoughts. Any final thoughts?

Just thanks again to the community. Yes Curtis, that will be a Valentine's Day that lives in our memory for many years. My wife still remembers that. So no, again this was community driven. We were happy to respond. You guys made the city better, we're glad that it's showing good effects, so again thanks to all the community members who leaned in on this.

I would agree to the mayor and chief Krieger and just bookmark this public comment so if it ever does come up again about that Valentine's Day just play this. But yeah I think one of the coolest things about this entire process has been the collaboration from the public through planning, public safety, non profits and ultimately into a much smaller point, the council, all working in unison and working together to get something like this done. I think it's the epitome of what can be done at the local level with local governance and to really make a difference. So thank you all for the presentation, thank you all for what you're doing, thank you to the entire community for pushing this and all of you that are here and those who can't make it. Understand it's 9AM on a Tuesday so tell your neighbors who couldn't make it and friends who couldn't make it, thank you as well.

With that we will close this item and move on to item seven, seven point one which is the Police Department Update. Excuse me, item seven is matters held in committee which there are none. Item eight is department reports and 8.1 is police.

Thank you very much Chair Okepke, we'll go through this quickly. We'll just go through some quick updates from the police One, we always like this to do a hiring update and we have some good news to report in that. We currently have seven police officers in the police academy. It's two different classes. One graduates in May and one graduates in August and we'll quickly be getting them into our internal field training program.

That leaves us with its three police officer vacancies right now which is good news for us as we continue to work through some of the hiring with it too and we hope to have all those positions filled with the upcoming July academy that starts and then they'll be graduating in December with it too. Same with our civilian positions. We have just two civilian positions not filled right now, but with a lot in training. Three of our dispatchers in training, two of our police technicians with it too, and we have two that are gonna be frozen right now, those as we navigate the upcoming budget cycle with it. But overall great news for us.

Our biggest thing at the police department that impacts us is officer injuries right now. So we have a 175 officer positions right now. Twenty one officers have been injured on duty and are not deployable with it. Four are out on FMLA leave or baby leave with it, so that's 25 officers plus you put the seven in the academy in the three vacancies, so that's 35 officer positions that are deployable for us. So that's our biggest struggle right now as we continue to navigate that and we're really working toward ways that we could reduce injuries on duty, but some of it is just the complexities of this job and the positions that they're fighting every day.

With it quickly looking at some of the violence reduction efforts, twenty twenty five was a busy year for the city of Santa Rosa with 12 homicides and nine of those involving a firearm, 321 firearm legal firearms seized, a 107 ghost guns, but we're seeing some progress in this. So far in 2026 we have not had a homicide in the city of Santa Rosa at this time. Last year we had three homicides and then quickly sped up throughout the rest of the year with it too. What we are though is continuing to see the uptick in firearms, and if you look in the bottom here, I won't go through each one of those with it, that you see like so far just through the March with us, so not even counting anything in April, 255 illegal firearms used off the streets of Santa Rosa, a 189 of those being ghost guns or privately manufactured firearms. Now what does, throw up those stats so as much as we had one large ghost gun lab where there was a 160 ghost gun seized, from a lab with three different three d printers with it, so that really drove those numbers up.

But still consistently seeing those, and so we're really working with our partners at the Bioness Venture Partnership and really working with our state legislators about some of the clear loopholes that are making it so accessible to build these ghost guns on our streets, to sell these ghost guns with quite frankly little legal consequences with it. So that's still a work in progress with it too. But at least excited to see that we've overall seen a reduction. You see the shootings are down 33 so far this year with the two and will continue. And and we know there'll be more shootings and there will be homicides this year, but slowly making progress in this area and we're proud of the citywide partnership on that.

Here's a picture of just a 160 ghost gun lowers that were seized from that ghost gun lab, and so this is one individual who's printing these at their home and then selling them online between $500 and $800 apiece, and they're being used disproportionately in crimes in our community. Traffic safety is another huge priority for us. We are seeing some impacts. Last budget cycle we lost nine police officers with it and it's had an impact on some of the availability for traffic enforcement. You see our traffic are down and our citations are down eighteen and twenty two percent there with it too, and you're seeing what always occurs with that.

When you have less traffic enforcement, you see collisions go up. So we saw our our injury collisions are up 31% this year with it. We've only had one fatal collision this year with it two so far at this point last year. So we'll continue to work, and my job as chief is to be able to use the resources we have and be able to deploy them as efficiently as we can and really working to be able to drive up some more of that traffic enforcement that we're seeing without our city and try to reduce some of the traffic injury collisions. We have seen an increase in our DUI enforcement, that forty one percent up in DUIs collisions with it too, so we're going to continue to make that a priority with it.

The lastly is our community engagement. That's so important to me as chief about our officers getting out of the cars, connecting with our community, not just through special events, but just through our everyday operations. But we have a lot of events that we'll be putting out to our community and to council. We're just now we're finalizing the date. We're gonna do another Tacos With A Cop on Apple Valley at the community center, and that was a really great one that we did two years ago. It was more than just with the tacos with a cop. We set up used the community building there and brought a lot of resources to the community. So we're finalizing a date coming up in the May for that. Coffees with a cop. I'm gonna be out this year stealing out of former council member Roger's playbook of chat with the chief, and we're gonna do that at the Wednesday night markets with it too.

We'll be setting up a police booth, and I'm gonna try to be there for every Wednesday night market to hear from our community about things that are going well and things that aren't going so well with the police department and how we can make improvement improvements and just connect with our community. We're in the midst of our community police experience right now, so we have 28 community members and our eight week community police experience with it too, and we're planning our youth one that will happen this July and a Spanish speaking community police experience that will happen in the fall with it. So excited to continue on that and we'll continue those events. Another one we're going to do at Bear Park is churros with the chief and working with a local vendor here, so we have a lot of those and we'll be getting those out to the community, but also making sure that we're just visible throughout the week with our officers and really focusing on building that trust in the community with it. And that's just a quick highlight about some of the progress that's going on in the Police Department.

I'll turn it back over to our chair.

Thank you, any questions?

At a tangent from the large drug and gun seizures that you reported, and thank you very much for that work, or thanks to SRPD for that work, how many times has our K-nine officer Ghost been on the front page of the PD?

He is our one of our most popular members of the Santa Rosa Police Department and his handler, officer Aaron Gonzalez, is incredible too. So our whole K, we have three dedicated canines but Ghost certainly leads the way of getting out there finding these guns with the two I'm really proud of and continues to be

very popular on Facebook. Agreed. We should be tracking that stat as well. But no, thank thank you thank you for the work and thank you also for noting that that last year was a hard year for the for the city, and so it's nice to see some of these trends heading in the other direction.

Thank you very much. I'm a personally I'm a big fan of Oso myself, but let's see. My one question, can we revisit the staffing levels real quick? Can you speak to juxtapose those with historical figures and not just with how many sworn but how many we can actually deploy versus how many we we've had historically at other times?

Yeah, our historical that we had was actually a 190 officers, and we peaked there in 2006 with a 190 officers. With it now, we have a 175 sworn. The alarming part that I talk about regularly in the community about that is that that's less officers than we had with a 175 than we did in 1999, and we look at, like, how much has Santa Rosa grown since 1999 with a population increase of over 30,000, the annexation of Roseland, thousands of residential and apartment units built in our city with it, and quite frankly the job has just got more complex with it. There's more things that our officer with every officer wearing a body worn camera, our fleet cameras, much more scrutiny of the work of our officers with it. So the job's gotten more complex and more laborious since 1999, but the resources have gone down.

So what we're really doing is working as a command staff team about how do we more strategically deploy our resources in the community to still meet our needs. But quite frankly at the same time that we have to acknowledge some services are going to have to be decreased. And we've seen some things like not going, we no longer send an officer to a non injury collision, vehicle collision with it. Those aren't things that we have the availability to do with it in some other lower level crimes that now we just send those straight to a counter report or an online report. That can frustrate the community sometimes with it, but what I'm really focusing in our operational objectives of violence reduction, traffic safety and enforcement, with it the quality of life and mental health support in our teams with it too, and then community engagement.

And those are the four prongs that we say out of all the things that we're going to operationally focus on these areas continue to move the needle as much as we can with the resources that we have.

Alright, thank you very much. We'll move to public comment on this item. Is there anybody that would like to take this opportunity to comment on the Police Department update? Seeing none we will close public comment. Come back, any final thoughts? No final thoughts. Thank you Chief, keep up the good work. And with that we will close out item 8.1 and move on to 8.2, the fire department update. Chief Westrop when you're ready.

Morning, Chair O'Krebke, Mayor Stapp. Scott Westrow, Fire Chief of the City Of Santa Rosa. I will get through our update as quickly as possible here. As usual, I'll try to highlight sort of the three main things that run the organization the people, the apparatus, and the facilities. So talking about our staffing, our position control list is 174 FTE that we have approved.

And one of the things I try to highlight here is outside of the general fund, we really work hard to try to find alternative funding methods to staff the fire department and grow the fire department. We currently have 12 employees that are assigned via the SAFR grant, which is a federal funding grant that staff our squads, our ALS squads. We have currently 14 employees assigned to County Measure H, with another six that were deferred to this upcoming fiscal year, which we'll talk about in the budget study session in May. And then we have 10.25 employees that are assigned to PSAP or the old City Measure O. So that's been our way of growing the fire department is through outside of the general fund.

In operations currently, we start excuse me. We started an Academy of Five yesterday. So we have five new faces that began their career with Santa Rosa yesterday. And in response, we have three vacancies that are being held that we'll talk more about on the fifth and sixth as well. In fire prevention, we just have one vacancy which is a community outreach specialist.

All the positions that are out doing inspections and investigations and whatnot, those are all full. And our small admin staff is completely full. In some adjustments to our staffing, I've talked about this a little bit, but I just want to dive in a little bit more here. Our adjustments to staffing based on last year's reductions to personnel, We had to reorganize a little bit with the loss of the deputy chief and loss of the deputy emergency manager. So we reorganized and gave some new assignments and that's all available online if anybody's interested in it.

But we kept our span of control and delegation of authority appropriate there. And then one of the big things is when we lost our redundancy in emergency management, now that we just have the one emergency manager, had we to make sure we had that redundancy so our emergency manager Neil Bregman could take a vacation and be out of town. And so we have that alert and warning redundancy in place with members of our command staff. So we're now being trained on how to do that and working through that process. On fire stations, as we all know, fire station five is open and operating.

It's a fantastic facility. Fire station eight, the new fire station in Roseland. Ground is actually broken. This week might be slowing things down a little bit, which we didn't really see coming. But still with all of this, we are planning on completing Fire Station 8 in June 2027.

Fire Station nine, which I'll talk about a little bit more in a minute, we have we're in escrow and we're working on the completion of purchasing the old Manasini Sleep World on Santa Rosa Avenue and Court Street for retrofit and remodel. This was a big priority for us to buy an existing commercial building. In looking at buying bare ground that we have to go through CEQUA and the whole process to break ground on a fire station versus buying an existing building that had good bones, that just needed the retrofit and remodel. Know, Assistant City Manager Nat and I with the real estate team, we really think that we saved probably five years and probably between 5 and $10,000,000 in the process of doing this. So, we're still working through the entirety of the process but that's the initial estimate on what we were able to save in in buying this building and working with the Mancini family on this purchase.

So I'll talk a little bit more about the actual benefit of Fire Station nine here in a second. And then just touching again on Fire Station 11. This has been a priority since 2007 when we built the temporary Fire Station 11 as a five year temporary building. And so obviously we've surpassed the five year existence of that temporary building by a bunch. But we have opened a CIP account and we're funding that with the debt service falling off on the old Fire Station 5.

And so we're now funding that account. So we're hoping to, after a year of funding that, get into do we have a major leak behind me? I'm hearing a waterfall.

We're trying to figure that out. Okay. Chief Krieger, duties as otherwise assigned, if you please.

I'm seeing distracted faces and hearing water.

Thank you, chief. Great. Okay.

And then just a quick fleet update here. I've been talking about this for a long time, but I'm happy to report that the five type one fire engines that we've on order for a little over two years are actually arriving in Sacramento from Wisconsin this week. They'll spend a couple weeks in Sacramento going through their next phase of inspection, and we'll send crews over to go through another phase of inspections and repairs and things like that and then they'll be delivered here. We will be putting them in service in June for purchase out of the general fund fleet replacement program and one through PSAP. So we'll be excited to get those over here, and it really does bolster our fleet, and almost all of our type ones will be of a new generation, which is a big, big bonus for us.

And then lastly, I just want to spend a few seconds talking about Fire Station nine and talk about this publicly. I know we've talked about this in certain circles, but I just want to highlight this for the community and for this group and the importance of Fire Station nine. We have records going back to that we can find and they're scanned that have been photocopied and photocopied. But we have records going back to 1996 showing the need for a Fire Station nine in the Southeast. We've owned property, the city's owned property that was donated since 1998 for a Fire Station nine.

So this just goes through and shows the history of the call for a need for Fire Station I in the Southeast area of Santa Rosa. And so I'm just highlighting this because it's been thirty years of work and Measure H has made this possible for the community and serving an underserved part of the community finally. And I just want to call out that this council made it possible. All of the entities that got Measure H on the ballot and got it passed, including Local fourteen oh one, the Fire Service Working Group as part of the Sonoma County Fire Chiefs Association, all the other local elected officials, and everybody who is part of Measure H, and then the community who voted for Measure H, this is what it finally landed is. Thirty years of a need for this fire station is finally in front of us.

And so I just want to highlight that I always like to end this presentation with something positive. I think it's very positive that we finally got it done. And so we're really excited about it and we're really excited about the opportunity to shorten the time span to get it in service and lower the cost of getting it in service and putting it in a really good position right on Santa Rosa Avenue. We provide outstanding service to the lower part of the avenue, to South Park, and to Taylor Mountain. That's I just wanted to highlight that for everybody out publicly for really the first time. With that, I'll turn it over to you for any questions or comments.

Thank you Chief, any questions? I think my only question would be can you take a second, I know you touched on fleet, can you give a little bit more detail on the engines in the trucks and the bottleneck that we face when ordering those?

Yeah, absolutely. So it was really typically I'll go back in history. And typically what we saw when we ordered fire engines or ladder trucks is it typically took about a year for them to be delivered. And there was a multitude of companies that we could order from and we'd go out to bid and we would pick the best price for what we needed and we would be very detailed on what we needed. And it would take a year.

Now what we've seen is throughout The United States that those companies have been bought up by private equity firms, particularly one private equity firm. And so they've started to go through and close a lot of manufacturing facilities and have monopolized the market. What we've seen is a significant increase, almost 100% increase in the cost of fire engines and almost a quadruple time frame on the delivery of fire engines. So fire engines were about 7 and $50,000 to purchase, dollars 7 and 50,000 to 850,000 Now they're $1.2 to $1,500,000 for a fire engine. Ladder trucks were $1,200,000 Now they're $2,500,000 in a four to five year build time.

This was really highlighted coming out of the fires in LA. When you saw the pictures on the front page of the LA Times and New York Times of their fleet of apparatus sitting in a yard that were unusable. And so it's really put a hindrance on the fire service in The United States and particularly in California on getting frontline fleet available to us in a timely manner. What we found out recently is that LA County and San Diego County are entering a lawsuit. Well, let me go back a little bit.

After a New York Times article, the private equity firms were being called in front of Congress to answer questions about their actions and what it's doing to the fire service in The United States. Since then, LA County and San Diego County are the first two fire departments that are now suing the private equity firms over their monopolization of the fire apparatus industry and what it's doing to fire departments throughout the state of California. So, I wouldn't be surprised if that comes before us through our lobbying firms. But it certainly is a major problem both on cost and delivery times. And we're also seeing quite frankly, you know, that the engines that we used to order would last for fifteen or twenty years without problem, but the materials that they're being built with now are just not holding up and they're much more electronic and the electronics don't hold up and the aluminum and steel don't hold up.

So we had to shorten the time frame that we could hold on to engines and that they would last. So all those things kind of came to a head at the same time. And so we're not the only fire department facing the same problem. And you look at very small departments that surround us like a Sebastopol Fire Volunteer Fire Department. They're not volunteer anymore.

You know, they don't they don't have the means that we do and really creates problems for the the departments that surround us or you look at LA, you know, LA City and LA County that have to buy hundreds of fire engines at the same time and and the problems it creates for them. So and we're kind of in the middle. So it is a it's a major problem and and we're but we're facing it together. That's the that's the nice thing is that the California Fire Chiefs Association, certainly CPF and IFF are facing the same thing. All the lobbying teams are on the same page that we need to face this together, and obviously our local, state, and federal officials are taking this problem on as well.

Alright, thank you Chief. We will go to public comment on this item. If there is anybody that would like to take three minutes to speak on the fire department update, now is your opportunity. When you're ready.

Hey, good morning. Thank you very much. Thank you chief for the presentation. Steve Del Porto, Local fourteen oh one. The only real quick thing I want to bring up is just our staffing I know chief briefly talked about it. You know, we have 12 openings in the fire department right now on the line. And the only reason I wanna bring that up is because I know our overtime budget is always a big topic, and it's gonna be a big topic later today. Those are positions with our minimum staffing that we have to fill, right, with our three on the engine and four on the truck. And the only thing I wanna butt in your guys' ear is that's 12 salaries and benefits that the city is not paying for. Right?

So there is a savings. Albeit it might not be a lot. There's a savings there when you're not paying that salary and benefits into those positions and paying the overtime. I felt like I'd be remiss if I didn't bring it up now before the big budget meeting this afternoon that, yes, our overtime budget went up, but it's also because we're short staffed and we're having hiring issues to get a lot. I know Chief did a lot of work to get these five in the academy now, which is gonna be great. But that's really all I want to get out, that our overtime is a cost, but there's also the savings when we're not filling those positions. You.

Alright, thank you very much. Is there anybody else that would like to speak on this item? Alright, none we will close public comment. Any final thoughts?

No, just thank you as always chief, and Steve we do hear you. I'm sure we'll hear you again this afternoon, but thanks for staying in our ear. But thank you for the good news in terms of the new fire stations. We we were all there at the at the either the groundbreakings or the ribbon cuttings, and it's nice to see us making progress in some of that infrastructure. So thank you for highlighting that, and thank you for all the work during a difficult budget climate.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think you can always get money back, you can't get time back, that five years that saved us is huge. That's really exciting, so good work to the entire team on that. And then I think the only thing, don't know if now would be appropriate or not, but I would like to hear more about this LA County and San Diego County lawsuit considering how much we have in the pipeline as well as it could affect mutual aid with our partner agencies responding on things. Not right now, but like at a future time, I'd like to hear more about that.

So yeah, just came up recently at Sonoma County Fire Chiefs Association meeting. It's the first I heard of it. And so I think it's still in its infancy, but as it grows, I'll work with our state lobbyists on it, and through Cal Chiefs, I'll get more information and bring it back to this committee.

That'd be great. And with that, I am done. So that moves us on to item nine, adjournment. We will adjourn at 09:58. Thank you.