City Council - Regular Meeting

at this time. So, um we are now in recess during close session. Thank you.

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Testing. Testing.

Mr. Mayor, are we ready to resume? We are. I assume that means we're right back in session.

Yes, now we're live. Now we're being recorded and and whatnot. And so uh I just uh want to welcome everybody tonight to our meeting of the Pedaluma City Council and the Pedaluma Community Development Successor Agency uh for Monday, February 2, 2026. And um as always, if you wish to provide comment tonight, there are cards in the back of the room and our clerk is here in the front of the room. fill out your name on the cards and uh we'll we'll either have you at the general public comment time as you note or on the item time if you so flag an item. Uh may we have a roll call for the evening please? Barnacle present. Kater Thompson here. D Carly here.

Now here Quint here. Shri here. McDonald here.

We do have a quorum. And I just want to uh note we um we do concurrent translations uh for this meeting in Spanish and in a variety of other languages. So to access those uh services, please uh link on the QR that's on the uh or the URL or QR on the agenda and if you're in the room, we have one on the back wall that can you can use to get concurrent translation services. Let's all rise to 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.

And now a moment of silence. Thank you. At this point, uh I uh look to have our agenda approved for the evening the way you see it on the uh flyers in the audience. Is there uh anyone in council who wishes to change the agenda as we've printed it? Wonderful. By a claim we have an approved agenda. And now I'd like to invite our city attorney to make a report out from our close session. if for any is appropriate.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There is no action to report out tonight.

Well, that that was concise. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. That moves us right through the agenda and uh takes us to uh one of the more fun uh parts of the agenda for the evening. We have a proclamation tonight. The proclamation is for Black History Month. And I'd like to invite Faith Ross, the executive director of the PedalMa Blacks for Community Development up to the podium while we read this presentation. Welcome. Whereas Black History Month provides an opportunity for the city of Paluma to honor the extraordinary and indispensable contributions made by black Americans in the United States of America and in our local community. Whereas Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development was established in 1978 by a group of engaged and civic-minded black residents with the aim of providing support for new black families moving into the area, connecting the community with black culture and history, and ensuring that the black community became a positive part of the larger Paluma community. And whereas in keeping with their mission, they have consistently provided a venue for educating the community through an annual black history program, museum exhibits, and individual member involvement in various community organizations and activities. And whereas Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development has supported our youth by providing opportunities for them to be active participants in the organization, encouraging them in their involvement in school and community activities and teaching them to value our black history. And whereas the group has continued to offer support for black families through social gatherings and reaching out to each other and becoming an essential part of our community's landscape. And whereas Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development has been an

intricral community partner to the city and we are grateful for their countless contributions over the past four decades. Now therefore, be it resolved that I, Kevin McDonald, Mayor of Paluma, along with the members of the Paluma City Council, do hereby proclaim February 2026 as Black History Month and commend Black Pedaluma Blacks for community development in their effort to support the community at large and to help our community celebrate and honor black history and culture. Thank you. Good evening. I I feel like I need my posi to come up with me. So could just please come on

Joanna. I need that. Yeah, that's it.

Okay.

To the city manager, mayor, city council members, city staff, and members of our community. on behalf of Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development and the many residents, elders, youth, and families who have carried this work forward. Thank you for this proclamation honoring Black History Month. We are truly grateful to the city of Paluma for this recognition. This year's theme, a century of black history commenerations, a future of possibility, reminds us that Black History Month did not begin as a moment, but as a movement. For more than 100 years, communities across the country have gathered to preserve stories, honor achievements, and ensure that black history is recognized, taught, and valued. Black history is a living history. It is woven into the fabric of American history and into the ongoing story of Paluma. This month invites us not only to reflect on this past but to recognize the people who generation after generation have kept this histories alive often with not acknowledgment or support. At Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development, our mission is rooted in that same commitment to honor our history, educate our community, uplift our youth youth, and create space where culture and connection can can thrive. This proclamation

affirms that this work matters and that the city of Paluma recognizes the importance of remembering and commensurating black history together. We also want to acknowledge our community partners, volunteers, artists, educators, and families whose dedication makes Black History Month possible each year. This proclamation belongs to all of us. Thank you for standing with us, for recognizing the significance of this centennial theme, and for helping ensure that black history is not only remembered, but celebrated and carried forward. We accept this proclamation with gratitude, pride, and a continued commitment to building a more informed, connected, and inclusive Paluma. Thank you. I'd like TO I'd like to introduce our president, Ted Kings, and I think he has a few words to say. brief comment again. Thank you for welcome welcoming all of us. Just a brief comment of gratitude on behalf of Pedaluma Blacks for Community Development. I want to thank the city of Paluma for this meaningful recognition as we um celebrate Black History Month. This honor reflects not just the organization's work, but the collective spirit of th of those in Paluma who believe in equity, education, and unity. At a time when our nations feels deeply divided, it's more important than ever that our community stands together, supporting one another, listening across differences, and continuing to build a city where everyone feels respected and included. Black History Month reminds us that

progress comes when work when we work side by side. Let's keep that spirit alive throughout the year right here in Paluma. Thank you for this acknowledgement and for walking with us on the path towards toward a stronger, more connected community. Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you. Now moving us to general public comment for the evening. During general public comment, the public's invited to make comment on items that are not on the uh agenda, but that are of public interest and within the council's subject matter jurisdiction. Public comments are limited to up to three minutes per person, depending on the number of persons wishing to address the council. Time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than 20 minutes. If we have more than 20 people speaking, uh, additional comment time will be allowed after the last business item of the evening. So, with that, I'm going to ask our clerk, who is also doubling as a technician tonight. Um, if we've had any public comment online and coming in,

we did. We received 18 public comments uh ahead of the meeting and those are posted online. And at this time, I will start a 30 second clock. Uh during these 30 seconds, members of the public should bring their speaker cards to my desk if they have not already done so. Speaker cards received after this time may not be accommodated. We have 15 speakers wishing to speak tonight and that would be 90 seconds is what we're setting the clock at. And um our first speaker is Tina Yoners. She'll be followed by David Yur uh Yunner. And Tina, you're first up.

Okay, I'm first up. I bought some boxes. Hopefully the permission with you guys, I can leave them today. We'll see. Um, okay. Hello. Yeah, my name is Tina Yoners and I came here tonight to talk to you about the Drug-Free World Foundation. I know it's quite a title, very ambitious, but it's a big problem that needs to be addressed. I brought these booklets with me and some booklets that I handed out so you can get for all of you so you can get a chance to read this. Um, these materials that I'm talking about are offered free of charge through the drug-free world and they're offered to any schools, any police force, any likeminded uh, groups that would like to end this plague that we do have currently on drugs. These booklets provide facts about commonly abused drugs in our society today, an educational tool that these drugs, what they do is they actually do teach you. Instead of just saying no to drugs, they tell you why you shouldn't take drugs. So, at any rate, I brought these with me and um you'll see a nice picture of this handsome man here. His name is Marshall Faulk and um he every chance he gets for the Super Bowl or whatever, he talks about this program because he's so dedicated to it. So, I'm really hoping that anybody can take this. There's a QR code on it that will tell you exactly how to get the materials. There's actually a whole kit that comes with it with a video and learning stuff. So,

thank you very much. And if you uh leave those, our clerk will pick them up for us if if you want to. in English. And our next speaker is David Youngerers and uh to be followed by Alisa Weber.

Thank you. I'm David Yunker. Uh Delachatia is where I work downtown Paluma. I've been a Sonoma County resident, well unincorporated Paluma for 34 years. I really I'm hoping that we can get the referendum on the ballot in June. I would very much like to see the um city be able to move forward with some downtown development that's smart and well thought out and I really hope that uh we are have the opportunity to vote on it so we can put that to rest and get moving with what we've all decided or what you guys have decided we need to do last year or two years ago. Thank you. That's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is uh Eliza Weber to be followed by Teddy Herszog. Mr. Mayor, uh, city council, thanks for the opportunity to, uh, speak tonight. My name is Alisa Weber, and, um, I own and operate Delatri in downtown Pedaluma. For 30 years, we've been making bread and, uh, employing our youth and serving our community, and I'm proud to be a um, a native Pedaluman. I'm also one of the founding members of Renaissance Pedaluma, a new community advocacy group um made up of uh city leaders. Um we're community leaders, business owners, newbies, and concerned citizens who um like to have a voice in the downtown government. So, I'm speaking on behalf of Renaissance Pedaluma tonight because a lot of our members are still working or have family obligations um that they can't break away from tonight. And that's part of why we we sort of uh made up Renaissance Pedaluma because a lot of people don't have the time to are busy working and they can't they don't have a voice. All these really incredible um talented visionary people um need to have a voice for them. So, Renaissance Pedalmist strongly supports the city council's vote in support of the overlay, and we would like to see that go on the June ballot and get this uh let the people vote and um find out what people really think, whether we're going to stagnate with all these vacancies or proceed forward with joy and prosperity and a strong legacy for our future generations. It's really in our hands. Thank you.

Thank you, Teddy Herszog. to be followed by Nathan Spendell. Hello everyone. Uh Teddy Herszog here with Urban Chat. Ah, super majority of you all approved the downtown zoning overlay and city staff has spent hundreds of hours working on this thing. The general public has hundreds of hours of conversations about the zoning overlay and the hotel. some for and some against. So tonight, I'm here to say now is the time. Let's put this on the ballot on the June ballot and let's let the people have their say. Let the people decide. Thank you. Thank you. Nathan Spendell to be followed by Amy Lavine. Hello, I'm Nathan Spendell, volunteer with Urban Chat. My family loves historic downtown Paluma. I work there daily and my family frequents its many restaurants and shops. My six-year-old daughter's favorite is me Pueblo. Nearly all downtown businesses support the overlay because they understand it will enhance their businesses while making downtown more vibrant and resilient. Furthermore, the overlay's potential for infill downtown housing will make Pedaluma more livable and affordable for everyone. I too encourage a June vote for the referendum. Thank you. Amy Lavine to be followed by Wayne Clark.

Hello. I'm Amy Lavine. I've uh lived in Pedaluma on the west side for 23 years. I'm a board member on Paluma Urban Chat and I'm here also to encourage you to put the referendum on the ballot. Um, my vision for Paluma is a thriving downtown and Midtown, money in the coffers of city hall, uh, to pay for infrastructure, to fix our streets and our sidewalks, to invest in our growth and our sustainability, and to pay for the services and events that make Paluma a great place to live. The long-term vacancies we have in downtown uh, and the lack of private investment to to turn those around is is undermining those goals and our ability to get there. and the overlay allows for the density that we need to to reach those goals. Um, so I'm asking to please put the referendum to a vote and let the people have a say. Thank you.

Thank you. Wayne Clark to be followed by Stephanie Adams.

Hello everyone. Boy, I want to talk about the Black History Month. You know, the bottom line is we got to not let Donald Trump whitewash black history. They're just eliminating everything. It's just it's a travesty when you think of MLK and John Lewis putting themselves on the line. And moving right along, I was at a vigil last night for Alex Pitty at the VA clinic in Santa Rosa. It was a nationwide vigil all over the place and it was pretty powerful. We played Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Minneapolis at the end and it was very very very emotional. I want to make sure that the AR the article in the Argus on the anti-ICE protest was excellent. I mean, I'm hoping they get an award for that article. And especially I want to do a shout out too to the the two ladies that uh really organized it. It was very very cool. In fact, their uh their names are Stephanie Wilkinson, which is part of Indivisible Pedaluma, and Linda Judah organized the Lucy March. And we're getting the kids out. I was out with those kids at Walnut Park. We had 150 kids. I had to keep on having them climb down from the light standard. They actually listen to me because I'm 80 years old, you know, but other than that, and another thing, okay, we've got to move out of our comfort zone. I'm telling we got to put ourselves on the line. And my time's up. Right. Right.

Good timing, though. Hey, Karen. Oh, Mike Maguire. He's going to be our next uh We are not campaigning tonight. Oh, God. Uh Stephanie Adams to be followed by uh Nancy Lamb.

Uh hello. I'm a member of Paluma Urban Chat for several years. I'm an east side resident of Pedaluma for over 30 years. And um the the overlay is an issue that concerns me as well. I'm a resident of Paluma. It doesn't just affect the people that live in the immediate downtown area. And so I'm very anxious for the city to get this um voted on by the entire city, not just those of us who are maybe retired and have the time and inclination to come to city council meetings. A lot of people don't have that ability. So, um um just because the most vocal people are able to speak up. There's a lot of people that um have different views than than the vocal minority, I think. So, anyway, I'm just um I'd like to see the city thrive, and we need to we need density in order to do that. We need to have um more people downtown. I remember when I first moved here, it was a dying downtown. And it was really um until the theater district was built, it was pretty rough and and not an inviting place to be. And u I see some signs of that happening very gradually, ever so gradually. And we need to reverse it. So thank you for listening.

Thank you very much. Uh Nancy Lamb to be followed by Jodie Johnson.

Nancy Leone. Thank you. Sorry. Good evening, city council and um Mr. Mayor. Um I'm here to mimic what has just been said to get the referendum on the ballot for June. Um, I being a business owner in downtown Paluma now for 22 years and a resident of the east side and now the west side, not only have I seen um the urgency to get our downtown and thriving and being part of a economic growth that benefits all of us sitting in this room. So, um, if you could please um, get it going for us. the long the the the the more we stall the the the hard it's going to be. So, let's just get it. And I appreciate your support and um thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jody Johnson to be followed by Tim Portius.

Good evening. Tonight we speak as Pedaluma Mobile Residents United and as GSMOL vice president zone A1 and GSMOL board members. This past week, we have fielded mobile park resident issues from four of our seven parks. This coming week, we testify about closure conversion issues throughout our entire county. In neighboring jurisdictions, public record requests showed park owners engaging with county housing officials to create secret deals in San Jose, home to 10,000 mobile home residents. Our residents feel immensely proud that our city of Paluma engages with all parties, allows for all stakeholders to be heard in public comments and through communication to the city. We are proud of our city of Paluma in that all are respected regardless of the balance of their checkbook or the power of their ownership. Obviously, our residents will not always obtain everything they seek as it comes to protection, but abuse of legal ordinances and zoning must always be enforced. A lawless ordinance or a lawless senior park overlay must always be addressed. This past week, park owner Harmony once again hit Littlewoods residents with a demand for home insurance for all and a detailed privacy form to be filled out. MRL law does not allow a demand on home insurance for a home that the park does not own. That insurance is between the resident owner and their insurance broker or mortgage lender. Parking is so much an issue that residents truly don't know how to handle this reduction of service. Stress is a hardship both physically and mentally.

Thank you. Tim Portius to be followed by Marie Couno.

In addition, Youngstown Mobile Park management and owners have tripled down again in sales as all 12 as all age 12 Michael 29 Pamela and now 132 Pamela Court. The parade of young families with babies and toddlers is hard for neighbors to see. When the a potential buyer asked a resident why the windows had signs saying this was a senior park, the buyer was very surprised to hear that this is a senior park. In fact, they stated that management and management agents showing them the mobile home said it was an all age park and that they are allowed to sell it as an all age park since they're they are only at 7% of all ages. I lost my spot. in their cleanup of 132 Pamela Court that just now was settled in a court of law after heirs fought for the owners against unlawful seizure trash and contaminated park by park management cleanup crew. This denied pickup of trash from residents who pay for this service. Recology posted contamination and refusal to pick up until it was cleaned out. Capri continues to be given misinformation by park management and was presented with the same demand for home insurance and privacy information. Residents remain resolute that lawful business practices must always be addressed.

Thank you. Marie Kuno to be followed by Darren Ratkazen. Thank you. City Council Capri residents and all our residents are aware of another lawsuit filed by Harmony and await seeing the newest pleadings. The coming weeks will show courts of law weighing in on these important mobile park residents issues and we are hopeful that justice will prevail. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Karen Atinson to be followed by Chantel Rogers. Thank you, clerk, city council. Darren Rackinson, planning commission, tree committee, accountant. Quick level setting on the overlay. The overlay emphatically does not change residential density at all. I know folks on the dis know that. And the overlay is not what is being referended. So the referendum is actually done on a zoning text amendment that was done in parallel for that project to increase the allowable F in those zones to 6.0. So a 6.0 floor area ratio. That's the bulk and mass of non-residential buildings. That was at issue. At the time when this came forward in 2023, there was some concern of why don't we wait until the general plan process to make a change like this. General Plan 2025, which is the current general plan we're operating under, is very clear about limiting F. So to be consistent with our foundational policy documents, it seemed like a drastic change. We were told in those meetings though that look, the new general plan is coming and this will be in alignment with the new general plan. So we should pass this now and not wait for this general plan process. Time is of the essence. But now it's been a couple years of entitlements. We've had a referendum. The new general plan and zoning code overhaul is coming at the end of 26 and into early 2027. And in that draft plan, there is no 6.0 F anywhere. So now we're bringing back this item for a vote that really is not in alignment with the new general plan either. So it wasn't in the alignment with the current general plan, but now we've gone through the process of much of the draft general plan process and it's not in alignment with the current new general plan. So just want to make sure we're consistent. Thank you. Thank you, Chantel Rogers to be followed by Christine White.

Good evening. Um, so at the last city council meeting, um, you guys approved this consent calendar which included this item for tonight's agenda. Quote, introdiction introduction first reading of an ordinance and adoption of an urgency ordinance of the city council of the city of Pemaluma to amend chapter 17.09 of the Pedaluma municipal code titled all electric construction in newly constructed buildings to promote voluntary all electric construction. So when the agenda came out, that item wasn't on it. Um, but then the city of Paluma sent out an uh a nextdoor post saying, "Come on down to the city council meeting. We'll be discussing the Reineer paving project and quote, all electric building code amendment." Um, but it still didn't appear on the agenda and the city did not go back in and redact that item as a reason for people to come down and participate. um in tonight's consent calendar um for the items for the next city council meeting and for future agenda items through March. I don't see this ordinance or reading of this anywhere in that. So, I'm hoping for some clarification on how this confusion happened and when we might expect to see this item on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh Christina White.

Hi. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Christine White and I have been here attending many meetings, speak at many of them, but last meeting there was a zoning passed for residential care facilities and you heard from a lot of people that they commented on the number of parking spaces, 1.4 for c certain number of units but also here were was Gallagher who they are proposing one of the constructions and they had two parking spaces per room I happened to be sitting next to them and I asked how did you come up with that well they have 72 care facilities and they found that that's a great model two spaces per per bu per room and that allows their staff to park on site not on the streets not anywhere else it was brought up in in the meetings that several of us spoke about not enough parking. You know, we need more parking. The 1.4 or whatever the was a minimum, but I've noticed that the council seems to go for what the developers are saying. I guess one developer may pull out if it's not the minimum. But why are we striving for the minimum? Do you do you did you ask your kids to strive for the minimum? I didn't. That'd be like a C minus. Why aren't we doing better? Why aren't we telling developers what we want in Paluma as opposed to what the developers want? Gallagher has a great model. Did anyone bother to talk to them about how did you come up with that model and how does that work? And maybe that's the model that Pedaluma should take. So I just request that we we the council do better for us citizens. Thank you.

Thank you very much. That was our last uh public speaker and um I'll uh tackle that one comment about the all electric. Uh if anybody's here for the all electric, uh I apologize. Uh things um things get heard when they're when the staff report is ready and heard and so if it's not on tonight's, it's coming in the future when it's when it's ready and prepared. Sometimes that communication can be glitchy and I apologize. Um that moves us um let's see to uh council comments uh tonight and and I will uh continue to uh repeat to council that we're going to try and keep it under three minutes for every individual and I'd like to start with council member Shribs tonight. Okay, thank you. Okay, so that's all go fairly quick. Um I've attended two different workshops last Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I went to the Bay Ren workshop on heat pumps for contractors and found out how what's going on there. And by 2030, because of we want to reduce the amount of NOx NOX nitrogen oxides in the uh atmosphere, which is causing problems, we're all going to be going to heat pumps and they were working on getting that. So it's coming up will be rebates but even more than heat pumps we need weatherizing is is actually a higher uh um value bang for the buck is what they were also saying but we need to work with both the there's a enough u systems we work have to work with county and the city and the region for both rebates and also financing and there's even someone out there that was actually uh uh giving folks a way to find rebates um through an online program. So that was the uh the Bay Run program. Uh also what we were reminded is that small gas equipment is actually banned for sale right now. Um and uh you could still use what you already have. Um and you could

probably bring it in from outside, but small gas equipment for let's say lawnmowers and weed whackers. G those gas equipments are are essentially right now according to California no sales allowed. And eventually there will be a ban on use eventually but no sales allowed right now. Then at the um planning and conservation league which went on Saturday all day uh found out some of the laws mostly it's a lobby group lots of lawyers also to support the environment and um and watch out for anything problems. And a couple things came out of that one. Um one was that uh SB 375 uh which is about carbon dioxide reductions. It's a planning um regulations uh to to how do we plan and we're following that and all the cities are following it but we're not being as um the the goals are not being met so we need to work harder on that one. Another one that came out was SB131 which turned out um that SQA is going to get reduced quite a bit uh from SB13 got rewritten got passed uh taking advanced money. So we found out that there's a lot of money coming in and it's also to deal with turns out the the abundance group I'm part of the abundance network of electeds and we talk about how to streamline things like like windmills and geothermal um and get some density housing. Turns out the um uh there's a a wolf and sheep clothing um that's on the sidelines um that trying to hide but essentially they're trying to um subvert the whole process and get deregulation for themselves AI centers and pipelines and other things and for mining operations. So we have to be careful um and so that so this is what's happening. we need to make sure that we do it right uh for that abundance group. And then uh what did come up was ebike regulation. Um I actually brought that up to the whole group and got a lot of response

and uh there's a lot of work going on state level. Um a lot of legislators are hearing about it and so there is going to be some state requirements coming down the pipeline is so that's what I'm hearing about that. Did I cover it? Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah. Council member Quint. Uh thank you. No, no report tonight. Thank you very much. Uh, council member now.

Um, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Last week, our Pedalma public safety committee held a meeting where the police chief Miller shared an important statement regarding Pedalum's policies on immigration. He emphasized that the department's responsibility is to keep our entire community safe. Chief Miller also spoke about the importance of deescalation and maintaining adherence to all public safety protocols, especially in light of the recent national events. The committee also received an update on the automatic I mean automated license plate reader known as ALPR program including recent policy enhancements. The Pedalum Police Department's policies along with the PowerPoint presentation and a video recording of the meeting are available on the city's website. On Friday morning at 5:00 a.m., I participated in the Sonoma County point in time, otherwise known as PIT count, which is conducted annually this year under the direction of HUD. The PIT count provides crucial data about our unhoused population, helping us identify needs and provide better services and care. My team included two home first staff members, one C's client, and myself equipped with Pedlement area maps, flashlights. We walked through the Lynch Creek Trail, private properties along the railroad tracks, under the freeway overpass passes, the Cedar Grove area, and through westside neighborhoods. It was cold, it was wet, and sometimes unsettling, but truly eyeopening. I am both proud and humbled to serve our community in this way. Serving on the city council often means stepping out of side comfort zone, listening, learning, and seeing firsthand the diverse experiences of all members of our pedaluma community. Thank you.

Thank you. That's um actually above and beyond and fabulous. I appreciate that. I've done that pit count work before. Um, and now I'd like to pass it over to Council Member Barnacle. Yeah.

Um, I'll just say I continue to think we need to look at proactive uh measures too, um, surrounding ice coming to our city. Um, I know the state's looking at things, but I think we should, too. Um, uh, in terms of the June ballot, I know that was commented on. I know we're getting down to the wire on that. Um, I think I support it. Honestly, I I don't like it because um I think that um it helps us to have uh it helps like our cause actually, the the cause that we believe in um to have it go on a general election when they're everybody's voting um versus a smaller election. But um I also uh I don't think that um single single issue elections are healthy having just gone through one myself. And so I would like to see it get over sooner. And um if there's a chance that um it does pass and um the developer wants to bring forward the original vision um I certainly would you know support that with uh some uh you know more economic benefit to the city and to our uh downtown. So um for that reason I think I do support it going on the June ballot. Um even though I I don't think it necessarily is uh politically the best strategy for it. Thank you, Councilwoman Kater Thompson.

Uh, thank you. Um, I do support the June ballot also and would like to make sure that we have our ducks in a row because there's going to be a time frame if that's the direction the council wants to go. So, that means that our city attorney needs to work on it. Uh, but I think we need to have um a discussion if that's where we're going. Um, so I just want to also talk about ICE and I just want to make sure that our community is safe and that our police department can do what they need to do and that ICE is not in control if they come here because they could and it's quite concerning. um thrilled that kids are out marching and the people are out marching for what's h for our rights and we just need to keep doing that because it changed the Vietnam War and it will change um what's happening in our federal government which is affecting all of us and financially in cities it's affecting us across the board it's affecting everybody's household every time you buy something I just bought something that was less than $10 it cost me $29 because of those tariffs because it was from out of the country. Um the smash and grab that happened at the um jewelry store by Safeway. I went down there and talked with them today and the two um people that were working that day, they weren't there, but they're really shook up for what happened. And the police department, thank you for all that you did. Um but the good Samaritan, which I just want to shout out, thank you. But on the other hand, his adrenaline was rushing so much he jumped into this car and it was probably not the best thing to do safetywise. Um, but um, I just want to give him a shout out for being a good Samaritan. Um, and let's see. Uh, I want to give a shout out to Jod Johnson for the GSMOL vice president zone 2A. I mean zone A1,

excuse me. Um, that's like a really big deal and just kudos to you for getting that appointment. It's huge. Um, and I also want to talk about I met two um two guys that come from San Francisco. They come to Paluma twice a week to swim in the large pool because during CO they couldn't, you know, swim. So, they've been coming down here since CO. They come down to Paluma twice a week. They go to Elone. They go to Jupiter Foods and um and they they love Hal's for breakfast and it was just it's so nice to you know if you see somebody on the street and it's always good to just introduce yourself and talk with them because you learn all about people and why they come to Palum and they come here because they like it encouraging them to move here but they're going to stay in the city. Um, and then I also want to say that the Royal Oaks was sold to a hedge fund. And this is what's really scary. All these mobile home parks that are for people that, you know, here we talk about we want seniors to um, you know, sell their big house, go into something smaller, and then hedge funds are coming in and buying these parks and it's not good. And I thank you for all the work that our mobile home park people are doing and for our city attorney and the city council. We have to keep up on this because it's important housing. And I think that is uh that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Darly.

Good evening everyone. I have no liazison appointments tonight, but I will say last week I did attend the launching of the Lee Richard Barge. That was very, very cool. um happened early in the morning and um that was and it happened very fast um once that thing got rippen. So that was pretty cool to see that thing in the water finally after many many years of sitting there. Um you know it was and it was really what it was was nice to see so many people come together who love the river for so many different reasons to uh celebrate the launching of it and see a little bit of industry back on the river. And uh then lastly, I've heard some good news over at the Kavanaaugh pool and I think I'll let staff talk about it, but um I think everybody's voices were heard that came to speak about it. So, thank you.

Thank you. That was a great video, the Lee Richards barge. Um so uh this week I attended the uh Sonoma County Mayors and Police Chiefs meeting that convened by uh Congressman Thompson and I was uh with our chief Chief Miller in that about being prepared for an increased ICE mobilization in our cities. Are we what should we be doing? Uh first speaker up were um the actually some of the the uh police who were talking about how different it is from our community policing and how important it is for the community to understand that we have community policing and whatever ICE is is is not that. Um one of the other things that was um really highlighted is that uh there's a number of groups that are ready uh and helping and putting programs in place. One of them, Secure Family Network, um is is making the rounds and and advising people on what they can, uh do and and um then there was also presentation from the Department of Emergency Services, county department services talking about, you know, what happens uh in the county with a larger mobilization and and what happens when cops are asked to our police are asked to stand between ICE and and protesters and and how does how does that actually go down and what can we do to not have that situation occur? So, I I thank all the police departments in the county and and Congressman Thompson. Uh I do want to thank the uh Pedalummit Chamber of Commerce. They're hosting a seminar for the rights and responsibilities or immigration in the workplace. I think suddenly everybody's attention is is on on this topic. Uh communication is so important in this in this time. separately. Uh this week the grand jury checked in um on their report to the city regarding the North Bay Animal Services performance. We recalled that from last year. Uh it was a city uh it

was a countywide critique, but it had a couple of pedaluma specific uh recommendations and the city relayed the progress it's been uh making uh on a new city RFP, a request for proposals for animal services in the new year. uh and that we've made $150,000 of improvement already at the shelter, animal shelter. And that brings me to I am very worried about next year's city budget with all the reduced revenues we're seeing and and we're going to put serious investment into animal services appropriately, but where does money come from? Um and um with that um I I I do want to express uh my support for the idea of a June ballot um for the referendum of the overlay. Um but to address the audience's request us uh what can be done to make that happen? Um I I think for what we need to do is ask two questions. Uh first question is the staff can it actually be done and the second question is it the council's will to have a discussion about that uh you know shall we place it on an agenda in the future? So let me ask staff first um is it even feasible to have it on the June ballot?

Uh thank you Mr. Mayor for that question. Uh the short answer um even though I'm not known necessarily for short answers in this forum is yes. It is it is possible. Um if the council wants to have the option of putting the um the and and I I want to clarify what it would be um putting before onto the ballot. It would just be the general plan amendment increasing the FAR from 2.0 to six. That's the only thing that was successfully um referended and for which sufficient signatures were gathered. The overlay zoning amendment which really contains all the other provisions that um define the council's overlay policies about promoting housing and economic development in the downtown in the twob block area of the overlay that's on the books. It's not subject to challenge. It's good law. Um, so the only thing that um would be coming for the council if that's the council's wish would be just the overlay general plan amendment which only addressed a far increase from 2.0 to 6.0. Um, we would need to bring those items um at the March 2nd city council meeting because the deadline um for the June election we taking that action by March 6. So it's tight but doable. um and and and we have the capacity to um get get those materials ready for the council if that's our direction.

So I think I think um the council has three options. It has a June election, the next natural general election um or or no action and concede the um the referendum. Um right anytime we would. So, if the council wants it by the March 2nd, you'd have the option of um repealing the overlay or putting it before the voters or waiting and and and weighing the same choices um in the November election, but you would have to do it by the next August in time for the November election. Thank you. So the best way to notify the public if we did want to proceed this way is to put it in a tenative agenda for our next meeting for discussion at a future meeting. So I I'm going to kind of look up and down the council and see whether there's support or comment on whether to follow that path of adding it to the next tenative agenda um or or just letting it ride to a a future time uncertain. Any uh comment from the council? So, council member Shrebs.

Um, yes. So, um, we were, uh, there's enough uh, petitions put out that yes, we were in a situation where basically we're forced to and asked to put together a referendum and at the same time uh, for timing. I think uh council member Brian Barnacle was saying about uh we don't want to end up in the same situation of a a single issue on the elections in November because if we delay too long that will become the single uh issue for the whole election and there's a lot more involved in the city than that. Um so I think this needs to be resolved as soon as early as possible either way. Um, so I would go with putting it on the referendum in u earlier in um and and let let at least the majority of folks that want to participate and vote and have a say to come in and have a say on it

and that's the path of putting it on the next tenative agenda for for put it on June and let's get it over and done with and if if it goes one way the other then then we can change the general plan and everything else coming up and and modify accordingly. But I think I'd like to have the whole people speak and and uh uh referendums we've been asked to do it. We've been forced to do it. So, let's do it. Let's put it on as early as possible. Okay. Council member, now

um yes. First, I would like to know the cost. What's the cost of putting it on the June ballot and the cost putting it on the November ballot? And we know we're still going to have a single issue election campaign because this is going to be the hot topic in June to November is not very long. So, if if I could, I I think what we're trying to do is get it agendaized so we can have that conversation about that increased cost. But to make a decision, I would need to know the costs to the taxpayers and to the city. Okay? And I'm sure that'll be in the March 2nd uh write up if we get if we get it agendaized, that would come up in there. Okay.

We have that information if Caitlyn wants to give that range. Uh we did receive estimates from the county um last year on this topic. And so for a November election, it would be approximately uh $1.50 to 250 per voter on top of our regular elections cost. So that would be 68,000 to 115,000 on top of a regular election costs. uh for a June or a special election, the estimate would be 3 to9 dollars per voter or 120,000 roughly to 365,000. Okay. Council member Quinn.

Uh I just wanted to express my support for agendaizing it so we can have the conversation.

Thank you. Any other comment then? Um, this is just ad advice to staff to it's not a it's not a vote vote. It's uh how we get things on the agenda for the next one. So, um I can um do this by a claim or strop pole and I I think I'm hearing support. Can I can I ask that to show support for adding it to the agenda? Um can I ask is there any technical element to doing that is direction from what you see head nodding here enough? No, I think that's if the council has consensus, that's fine, Mr. Mayor. Um it's it's even though this conversation has it wasn't placed on tonight's agenda. Um council comment is and that is an appropriate time in accordance with the Brown Act for the council to identify issues for future agendas that come back on the notice agenda for the public to be able to participate in based on the agenda notice, etc. So that's that's enough for us unless the council has. Well, um, thank you. And that, um, that gets us through council com, I just want to note as we're going over to city manager, um, uh, I guess, um, there is the issue of the pool. There's that was teased up as good news. And then, of course, there's our committee and commission appointments, if you could say a a little something something. Uh, and then, um, do I have it right? You just passed your seventh anniversary here at the uh, city. And so, congratulations tonight.

Thank you. It's an honor. It is an honor. It's an honor that I enjoy every day. Um, I just want to mention we do have CCB or our commission and committee recruitments still open. Um, we're recruiting to fill se several vacancies on climate action commission, historic and cultural preservation committee, public safety advisory committee, senior advisory committee, and the Sonoma County Library Commission. Um, we welcome a diverse range of experience and encourage all to apply. Applications are available on the city website and are due 5 p.m. on Thursday, February 19th. Appointments will be made by the city council on March 3rd, and additional information can be found on the city website um by just putting in CCBs in the in the search box or by contacting the city clerk's office. Um, also, uh, we are looking forward to welcoming our Kavanaaugh pool patrons back on Wednesday, February 18th, starting with self-guided classes three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the traditional 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. slot. We've had a number of pool recruitments open, including lifeguarding as well as swim and class instructors. So, whether you're certified or interested in getting certified, we'd love to hear from you. Um, to apply, you can go to the city website. Um, just I think you type in lifeguard and that'll come up in the search box. Over the next couple of weeks, staff are refreshing the facility, replacing signage, lots of repainting, and doing a deep cleaning and and much needed maintenance. And we do appreciate the community members who have taken us up on interim programming at the swim center. Um, we've had a healthy cont um, uh, group of folks today taking advantage of the warmer weather and we appreciate your patience while we're making the most of the temporary closure. And anyone interested

in receiving regular updates to uh, the opening of the Kavanaaugh pool, uh, please uh, email us at aquatics aquatics city of pedaluma.org to be added to our list. And the um only thing I'd like to add is that the chief of police and I we are working on contingency plans for ICE presence um increased ICE presence in our community. Um and we are working with Pedaluma City Schools this week to talk about that planning, but uh there's probably not a day that's not gone by that we haven't talked about that. So we are we are working on that. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. That brings us to our consent calendar and I'd like to ask the council if there's anyone who want needs to remove an item. Not seeing that. Um any uh question on these four items? They're pretty it's a good good agenda today. And I'd like to ask the clerk then to uh please uh fill us in on public comment. Open the public comment. We did not receive any public comments on the consent calendar and I have not received any cards, but this is the moment to bring your card to my desk if you would like to make a comment.

So, public comment is open and seeing no one moving towards the clerk with a card for public comment. Public comment is uh now closed and um that brings it back to council. Uh do I have a comment or a motion? Make the motion. We have a motion by by Kater Thompson and a second by now. And no further comment. We'd like to have a roll call vote on the consent calendar. Barnacle. I. Gator Thompson. Yes. D Carly. Yes. Now, yes. Quint, yes. Shri, yes. McDonald, yes.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Um now, uh that brings us to our first public hearing matter for consideration, which is resolution recommending appointments to the mayors and councils association to fill certain vacancies on regional bodies. And for that, I'd like to have our clerk uh walk us through.

Thank you very much. Uh good evening, mayor and councel. Um, the mayor and council members association of Sonoma County uh, fills vacancies on various local or regional boards or commissions when terms expire or upon resignations. Uh, there are currently two vacant seats uh, on the Charles M. Schultz Sonoma County Aviation Commission. Both of those are four-year terms starting in February. Uh, there's also one vacant seat on the Childcare Planning Council that is a three-year term starting also in February. Uh applicants submitted letters of interest for these positions to the MCA clerk last month. Uh those are all included in your agenda packet. Tonight we are asking council to recommend appointments for those vacancies which Mary McDonald or his designate will vote on at the upcoming February 12th MCA meeting. Uh so following council questions and public comment, I can share a voting slide for these seats so that council can discuss and make selections.

Fabulous. Thank you so much. Any questions from the council before we go to public comment? Good. Um, let's go to public comment. I did not receive any public comments ahead of the meeting and I have not yet received any cards, but this is the moment if anyone would like to make a comment. All right. Uh, well, um, not seeing anyone moving towards uh the clerk's desk. That will close public comment on this item and, uh, that brings it back up to the, uh, council dis. And, um, any any comment or a nomination? Let's see. I'll turn it back to the clerk cuz she has an orderly manner as opposed to where I was headed.

Yes. So, uh, I thought we would, uh, take these one at a time. We have the Charles M. Schultz Sonoma County Aviation Commission. We did have three applicants for that. David Haggel from Heelsburg, Tanya Potter from Windsor, and Mark Stap from Santa Rosa. We do have two seats available here. So, if any of you if you would like to have a discussion first, or we can go straight to the discussion first. Would uh anyone like to say something in favor of one of the candidates and council member Kater Thompson? Well, I'm looking at um staff and Potter and because they're most impacted by the airport. Santa Rosa is and Windsor would be. Okay.

And that's my determination because um David's great, too. I mean, they're all great candidates. Council member Barnacles. Yeah. I'm um I've never served with David, but I serve with Tan uh um Potter and staff on Snowoma Clean Power, and both of them are super professional. They show up uh really prepared and um offer great comments, so I'll be supporting them. Any other uh comment? We good. Then uh let's proceed to voting on the on these. Okay. So, please, as is when I say your name, please vote for two. Uh, Barnacle. Uh, Potter and Stap. Peter Thompson. Potter and Stap.

D Carly. Potter and Stap. Now, Potter and Stap. Quint. Potter and Stap. Shrimps. Well, let's make it unanimous. Okay. Kind of an assumption. Yeah. Yeah. It's making unanimous. Thank you. Potter and staff. Okay. All right. Moving to the the next position. The next one is childcare planning council and we have three applicants. Our own Karen now from Pedaluma, Samantha Rodriguez from Roner Park and Steven Zulman from Sebastapole. And uh council member Barnacle

with the greatest amount of respect for all the other applicants. I'm going to be supporting council member now um for um all the amazing reasons including her tenure and working with children and um clear uh concern for the future of our county. And I'll second that. All right. Well, we're not quite at that part yet, but uh if there's no other comments, then uh will you just read names across, please? Sure. Barnacle, no. Kater Thompson, no. D Carly, no. Now, yes. Me. Quint. No. Shri, I suspect. Let's make it unanimous again.

Make it so. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. But we will have a motion now for all three of these appointments. So, what we did is we we uh put names into the the resolution that we're we're going to be adopting on an actual vote. And um and I think we all remember who we voted for. Um so I would like to have the clerk uh do a roll call vote on I just need a motion and a second on the resolution. I'll make the motion. We have a motion from Kater Thompson. Second. And a second from Barnacle. Thank you. Uh Barnacle I. Kater Thompson. Yes. Darly. Yes. Now. Yes. And thank you to my council member, the mayor. Quint. Yes.

Shribs. Yes. McDonald. Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Um and that moves us to our uh item six, a resolution awarding contract for the Reneer Avenue Pavement Restoration Project. And um to help us out with that, we have um Jan Greenberg, our transportation planner, and Jeff Studsman, deputy director of public work. Uh thank you, gentlemen. Actually, I have a comment first. Uh sorry. Okay. I'm recusing myself because I live within 500 ft. Okay. So, I'm going to go home and I my bet was 7:30. Well, it's 7:15. Okay. We will miss you and we will um uh see you in again in a couple weeks.

Thank you.

I apologize uh mayor and council members when we got up here realized didn't have my typical Zoom panelist invite ready. So, just bear with me one second while I try to get myself into the meeting and can share my screen. Thank you. Okay, ready to go. I'm going to need to mute that. All right, testing. There we go. All right, thank you for bearing with me. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Bjorn Gryenberg, transportation planner. I'm excited tonight to bring to you uh for your consideration our award of contract for the Reineer Avenue pavement restoration project. Tonight we will go through a brief project overview. Um uh provide some context around the city policies and plans that guide our work and and really how we approach street design projects. Um we'll talk about our pilot project out on Reineer Avenue. uh what we implemented, what we learned, um what we heard, and then we will uh walk through

the proposed design for the paving project, our bid results, anticipated construction schedule if if uh this contract is awarded tonight, and our staff recommendation. So, this map shows the various upgrades to Reineer Avenue uh that began last year and and are ongoing through uh through 2026. As is typical, we address utility needs prior to paving projects in order to avoid having to trench new pavement. So, in 2025, we replaced water services, that's the dash blue line, between North McDall Boulevard and Snow Mountain Parkway. Uh at the same time, we also uh installed a new extension of our recycled water system from Maria Drive down to the uh and actually through the North Mcdow Boulevard intersection. And uh what's before you tonight is consideration of our paving project which covers the the full limits from North Mcdow up to Snow Mountain Parkway. Paving projects represent crucial once in 20 plus year opportunities to make significant design changes to our streets in order to improve safety, accessibility, and traffic flow. And so the next several slides will help shed some light on how we approach these uh these paving projects and how we approach the street design process and determine what changes uh we ultimately recommend. So, first and foremost, the city's complete streets policy adopted in 2016 calls for all transportation improvements, including paving projects, to be designed to support safe and convenient access for all road users. Complete streets policies became commonplace throughout the country uh in the 2000s in recognition that our cities have largely been designed solely around the movement of cars, often at the expense of people who are interested in

or have to use other modes to get around. In 2022, council adopted a resolution endors endorsing vision zero, which aims to eliminate severe and fatal traffic collisions by 2030. Since 2013, we've averaged about 10 of these life-ending or altering collisions each year. And speed is almost always the most speed is the most important factor really when it comes to both reducing the frequency and severity of collisions. And this graphic demonstrates the importance of reducing vehicle speeds to accomplish vision zero. Uh so you can see here that when struck by a driver traveling 40 miles hour just two in 10 people will survive. At 20 miles an hour nine in 10 people survive. We also use street design to make walking and biking uh more safe and appealing for those willing and interested in doing so, thereby improving mobility options and reducing car dependency. Transportation is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in Paluma, accounting for twothirds of our emissions. And walking and biking have great potential to reduce traffic and the associated miss emissions with over twothirds of all trips made in the city being under two miles, a distance that can be covered by bike in less than 10 minutes. And then lastly, uh active transportation and safe streets have been highlighted as council priorities annually in the recent uh in recent years in in your uh goal setting exercises. And um also want to highlight the active transportation plan that council adopted in September of last year with an aim to make Pedaluma a worldclass active living city where people of all ages and abilities enjoy using active transportation. And and

that plan really emphasized uh the importance of a of a safe and seamless network of uh safe walking and biking routes throughout the city. So then moving into some of the factors that influence how we create the staff recommended design. Uh we obviously have the the the amount of space available on the street. Um so the technical constraints or the road width uh city plans and policies of several of which I just referenced. We have we we hear a lot of uh input from both the broader community, the community at large and also from residents. And those two um the inputs from the community at large and and residents of the street often defer. We have have to uh grapple with engineering best practices, design requirements and of course professional judgment and then uh lastly budget availability and uh and other cost considerations. So moving into Rainineer Avenue, uh it's classified as an arterial roadway. our our street classification system has arterials, collectors, connectors, and local streets with arterials being at the the top of that pyramid. Um, serving the uh the the broadest uh segment of our community. Reineer carries about 4,300 vehicles on an average weekday. It's a designated bike route in our active transportation plan. Uh connects students and families with several nearby schools, parks, and of course, the community center. It's currently served by Sonoma County Transit Route 44 and there is potential for uh if Pedalma Transit were to expand, it may be a logical corridor to serve. And looking at collision history uh between in the 10 years between 2012 and 2022, we had six reported injury collisions over that time frame.

So, back in 2021 2022, recognizing that there would soon be a paving project on Reineer Avenue, um staff working closely with the community and our pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee began discussing the potential for a pilot project as an opportunity to test a four to three lane conversion. Uh so replacing one uh going down from two to one two lanes in each direction to one in each direction with the addition of a new dedicated left turn lane. And so that was developed uh over the course of 2022 and and installed in August of 2022 from North Mcdow to Maria only. So, you may hear me refer to the pilot section, that's everything west of Maria, and then the non-pilot section being everything east of Maria, which was left uh in its original configuration. So, the benefits of these lane reductions or lane conversion projects, they are strongly recommended by the Federal Highway Administration on any road carrying less than 18 to 20,000 vehicles per day. So, we are obviously well well below that threshold here on Rainineer at just around 4,000 vehicles a day. They eliminate weaving and unsafe driving behavior. They take people they take away the passing opportunities for for aggressive drivers. They slow traffic because now you've got to drive the speed of the vehicle in front of you. They reduce the frequency and severity of collisions through all of the above. And they also eliminate the multi-threat. And this is really key for pedestrian safety. You can see in this diagram um I mean this applies to anyone trying to cross a multi-lane street whether by foot, bike or car. But you can see here for pedestrians the importance where you sometimes on these multi-lane roads uh encounter a situation where a car in one lane may stop but the car in the next lane over is unaware of a pedestrian trying to step out into the crosswalk. And and we've actually had some severe

collisions associated with that uh here in Paluma. Another design principle just wanted to touch on uh the idea of all ages and abilities bikeways. This should be familiar uh if you think back to our active transportation plan. Um and and the idea of all ages and abilities bikeways. This has really been a shift in the way bikeways are designed uh at a national level. Uh the thinking is that as traffic speed and volume increase, so does the need for separation from traffic to create a safer, more inviting bike facility. So, uh the national guidance is for on streets with 6,000 more than 6,000 vehicles a day or speeds exceeding 25 miles per hour or with multiple lanes in each direction, they re they strongly recommend protected bike lanes. and and on Reineer really the the key factor uh is is the speed. So uh hence our emphasis on protected bike lanes here. This uh the next couple graphics show uh how the pilot project was designed some of the different um design components. And I can if I can find my cursor I can there we go. Um, so you can see here we moved the uh we flipped the parking and the bike lane in the westbound direction. Moved the parking out away from the curb, provided that physical separation for the bike lane. Uh, we defined parking areas between all the driveways. We also um uh added that left turn lane which didn't exist before. So that's a a rear end uh you know increases the likelihood of rear ends in the previous condition where you know if someone's trying to turn left into a driver uh they've got to hope that the person behind them stops and and doesn't slam into uh doesn't rear end them and uh and then in the eastbound direction uh we removed parking and uh installed a

buffered bike lane. Couple of uh adjustments that were made to the design as well uh in consultation with uh Reineer residents. Uh areas were defined for uh garbage pickup and also for mail trucks. And then um also these these no parking areas uh which it those those uh coincide with these no parking areas on either side of the driveways. And the hope there was to help provide a little bit more visibility as people are uh exiting their driveways. And I think that's about it as far as what I need to cover on these. So then just uh showing the transition from what was there before to the pilot project design and then we go into some of the data from the pilot project. So we did collect data uh three separate in three separate instances where we took speed uh speed surveys on both the pilot and non-pilot section and in all three surveys the pilot section outperformed the non-pilot section uh with a lot more drivers complying with the 35 mph speed limit and reductions in speed uh just generally speaking. Uh so in a a two-day survey, we had close to 10% more drivers complying with the 35 mph speed limit. And then in shorter uh 30-inut surveys, we had 24% more drivers and 48% more drivers complying with the 35 mph speed limit. And there was there were some other figures provided in the staff report as well. Then when we go to collisions, uh based on the the previous 10 years, uh prior to the pilot project installation, um we had an average of just under we had a we had a collision approximately every two and a half years uh in the previous 10 years. And so since the pilot project

was installed, we have not had any injury collisions in that section. It's now been over three years. And over the same time frame, we have had one injury collision at Acadia Drive, which was in the non-pilot section. Our observations and uh from what we've seen and and heard, um the parking supply does appear to be adequate. I know there are some challenges with overflow parking from the Parkplace Apartments and and we'll we'll touch on that in a second. Um, we've had no negative impacts of traffic congestion observed or report or reported with the lane conversion or lane reduction. And after an initial adjustment period, we really haven't heard any reports of uh any inappropriate use of the on street parking or bike lanes. People seem to have figured it out very quickly and and made the adjustment. some of the feedback that we've received over the pilot project. Uh we did hear about challenges seeing oncoming traffic when pulling out of driveways. We've heard complaints about difficulty entering and exiting parked cars on the driver's side due to the proximity of the vehicle lane uh and just people feeling that with their cars being off the curb that they feel like they're closer to traffic. um from folks who responded to uh an online survey that the city had up during early in the pilot. Um the it was generally unpopular with drivers who responded. We heard opposition to the lane reduction, unfamiliarity, you know, kind of concerns or questions about why the parking was floating off the curb and uh and some confusion at the transition to the pilot section where the road transitioned from two to one lane uh in the westbound direction. And uh generally it's popular from folks we heard from who uh who bike on the corridor. So we're going to go into the proposed design now. Um and I just want to show

some of the highlight some of the the changes that have been made um to the to the cross-section uh compared to the pilot project uh taking some of that feedback into account. So you will see um we are now able to up here I'll I'll start at the top in the pilot project. We provided a pretty generous buffer between the parked car the passenger side of the parked car and the bike lane. And the reason for this is that at this time we needed to allow full-size sweepers to be able to get into this space. Um that that was the hope at least that Recology would bring their sweepers into this area. Um, however, since uh the pilot project was implemented, we now have a small bike lane sweeper that we can actually get into smaller spaces. So, we were able to actually shrink that buffer area down to the minimum requirement, which is 3 ft between the bike lane and passenger side. So, we've shaved off 2 feet there and then we've added those two feet over to the driver side of the parked cars to provide more of a buffer between driver's side and uh and traffic. And then the other change that we have made is the addition of an asphalt curb in the eastbound direction so that that bike lane is now fully buffered, fully protected from traffic, physically protected. And that asphalt curb uh we're excited about that. A very cost-effective way of creating a parking protect or a protected bike lane, excuse me. um and and obviously less of a maintenance requirement for us compared to using say delineators. So I do want to touch on that parking buffer just to um just highlight that a little bit a little bit more. So, and I and the key thing to call out here is that even though we did move the parked cars off the curb in the pilot project, um we really didn't move those parked cars any closer to the travel lane. Uh

if you look at the section east of Maria uh in the original configuration, we have about a 12 foot combined width between the parking lane uh parking and bike lane, which leaves about 4 ft between the driver's side of those cars and uh and the closest vehicle lane. So again, exceeding that with our our new proposed configuration. The other modification we've made, we did look really closely at site distance at all of the driveways. And so we have increased the um no parking areas on the east sides of driveways. The the side we're really concerned about, we want drivers to be able to see uh especially see traffic coming in the in the westbound direction um where that's the the first potential conflict point obviously as people are pulling out of their driveways. And with this design, we also want to emphasize that we encourage people to leave their driveways in three stages. First, stop at the edge of your driveway short of the of the sidewalk. Make sure the sidewalk's clear. Then, you can edge out a little bit further, take a look at the bike lane, and then at that point, you can edge out to the to the uh to the parking lane and um and ensure that's clear. And at each step of the way, you're going to gain more sight distance, more visibility looking down the street. So, we also had some good feedback about crosswalks and uh with this project, we are proposing to uh not only add some new crosswalks uh at Prince Albert's Court and at uh Acadia Drive. Uh and then at the crosswalks, we will also be moving the flashing beacons out into the buffer area so that the beacons are more visible to oncoming traffic. And then of course uh major uh design proposal here or design change to add a roundabout at the currently uh what's

currently an all-way stop at the Maria Drive intersection. So I'll go into this a little bit. Um as we were working through the design process, we kept looking at the size of this intersection and uh and also the the opportunity. So, the opportunity that that size affords us, um, and also just a real nice opportunity to make a more efficient and safer intersection from our point of view. Roundabouts really are in in traffic engineering, they kind of are the silver bullet that that accomplishes that. There's really very few downsides, if any. Um, and and they're just they are great at improving safety and efficiency. So some of the benefits uh of roundabouts you can see they significantly reduce the number of conflict points as different road users are navigating the intersection. There are 32 different uh ways in which drivers can crash into each other in a traditional intersection and there are only eight of those conflict points of 1/4 in a roundabout. They completely eliminate head-on collisions um and sign and and and t-bone collisions. Um and when crashes do happen, they are generally happening at uh more of a glancing angle and often at much slower speeds because roundabouts really do require you to slow down significantly. So they with all of that uh and that pro improved efficiency, they reduce congestion, they reduce noise, they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Um, so obviously lots to like about roundabouts. So why here? Um, I mentioned the the size of the intersection. That's you can see that in this image. You can also see that because of the size, uh, we frequently have people spinning donuts in that intersection. Um, in the peak hours, we understand Reineer can be a pretty quiet intersection at times of the day, but there all are also times of

the day, especially in the morning and and PM peak hours where it gets busy as people are um commuting to work and school or coming home from work and school. We do have over 400 vehicles uh per hour in those peak hours. We know that it's heavily used by students and families traveling to nearby schools and parks. So, obviously safety uh is a is a heightened concern. we see an opportunity to reduce pedestrian crossing exposure. Um you can see there it's a it's a pretty long crosswalk especially across Rainineer Avenue. So, with a roundabout, you're reducing that exposure significantly, and people are able to cross just one lane of traffic in each direction, and there's a a refuge island in the middle where they can pause. And uh and then obviously, as I mentioned before, just the opportunity to reduce the likelihood of severe and fatal crashes. And we've been fortunate at this location. I think there's only been one injury collision at this intersection in in recent history involved uh someone on a bike getting hit by a driver. Um but when we look at the speed data, we have seen excessive speeding on on Reineer Avenue. Our our two-day survey uh we logged a couple drivers going over 70 mph. And so our concern on a street like Reineer is that if one of those speeding drivers going 40, 50, 60 miles an hour runs the stop sign while someone is in that intersection, that will be fatal. And and the likelihood of uh of that obviously significantly decreases with the introduction of a roundabout. Looking at the design features, um obviously we have several roundabouts here in town. This is probably most similar in size and appearance to the Corona Road Snow Mountain Parkway roundabout shown there on the top. Just um looking at the kind of the inner uh landscape diameter and then the outer um mountable uh apron. The center of this will be landscaped

and irrigated with recycled water. We're currently working with a local landscape architect on a plan and that would be implemented uh shortly after the completion of the construction project. And uh this roundabout will be first of its kind in a way for Pedaluma. We're looking at uh we're always looking for ways to improve bike circulation at roundabouts. And I and I don't truly think we've gotten it right with a lot of the current roundabouts, but um we're we're getting closer and and this is something this is a kind of a common throughout the country with um cities that have implemented roundabouts. The the approach to getting bikes around and through roundabouts has really evolved. And so, um, this one will feature protected bike lanes that follow the perimeter of the roundabout and allow people on bikes, uh, to cross using the crosswalks. And so, uh, that's an option. Obviously, for folks who are a little bit less comfortable merging into traffic and taking the lane, but for your more com more confident cyclist, they always will have that option too to take the lane at the roundabout. And at least, you know, at that point, traffic's moving slowly, you're in a very visible location. Um so uh couple ways to do it but um happy to provide that opportunity for people who are less confident. And then we also have some green infrastructure in this project. Uh we did work with a hydraologist to identify locations with the greatest benefit to reducing storm water pollution. And so we have an 800 square f foot bio retention planner proposed uh in the landscaped area near uh or just east of Aadia, the Acadia Drive intersection. And so these these bio swailes uh reduce storm water pollution because they intercept trash, tire particles, oil, and um allow it to filter allow the water to filter through the soil before it then enters our storm water system. Um, and so some of that water obviously

also is is going into our groundwater and enhancing groundwater recharge. Uh, but anything that doesn't absorb into the ground goes into our storm water system and eventually ends up in in uh creeks and our river. Moving on to the budget. So, there is a discussion of this in the staff report. Um, we are going to be bringing this project forward for consideration of a mid-year budget adjustment. uh and we have an updated estimate that reflects our more advanced design and understanding of project needs. And so the construction award aligns with those updated cost assumptions and the mid-year budget adjustment. Uh the new total project budget is in the neighborhood of $3.6 million. That includes everything uh from our design overhead uh a $300,000 contingency and our proposed construction contract. And so we did have a a competitive uh bid for this project. We had um six different companies bid on this project. Our engineers estimate was about $3 million for the construction. And and you can see a lot of these were uh pretty close. And so we tonight we are recommending award to Argonaut constructors at uh just shy of $2.9 million. Once we assuming this project is awarded, uh we're hoping to get this into construction in mid-March and anticipate anticipate completion in late summer or early fall of 2026. Uh as always, we will provide notification to residents and email subscribers and you can sign up for those email updates at city of pedaluma.org/raineerpaving. And then we'll also have ongoing construction updates via all of the um city communications challenges. So our recommended action tonight is to adopt a resolution awarding a

construction contract for the Rainineer Avenue Pavement Restoration Project to Argonaut Constructors, Inc. in the amount of 2,884,000 uh $884,048. And I do want to note, I believe we have um an addition that is needed to the resolution. I'll pass it over to our city attorney to cover that.

Um thank you, Borne. Um and council, what we'd like to to recommend that we do concerning the resolution is add a new recital as a new second recital and the resolution that's in your packet. Um, and I can I can read that now or when the council gets ready to act on the resolution, whichever you prefer. The purpose of the addition is to make sure we take advantage of um design immunity and government code section 830.6 um for the design that's prepar been prepared based on facts that are included in a um in a memo that addresses the design that staff um have prepared. um to also be added to the package tonight. It is an exhibit to the resolution and that they've been that they have provided the clerk um for that purpose. So um when when it's when it's time, I'll be glad to to read that so that can go into the record if that's if the council is supportive of taking that action in addition to what's been presented tonight. Thank you.

Right. Um, I don't think I was perfectly clear on what that was. And I'm wondering if we were able to present a red line on screen. And while that um operation is going on in the background, let me bring it back up to council and thank you very much for the presentation here. And um any questions about the presentation? Council member Shripps.

Um yes. So uh in the actual dollars amounts for each of these bids um there are the differences between like two or three of them is much much less than 1% and much much less than any change order that might actually happen. So from a significant point of view from being a statistics person uh they're not significantly different uh based on possible changes that might be coming up. So, um, even though the dollar amounts is the least for the Argonaut, I just wanted to just do a check-in. Uh, so that there's other factors such as possible change orders that might happen and who might be most cooperative, who would be the most responsible, and who has the best history of construction with us. So, we know that we're um, so I would consider the the the two or three lowest pretty much equal financially. Um, is there other factors that we should be considering before giving it to one company or the other? We've worked with both we've worked with all those contractors and they've all all been great. Um the top two team Gelati Argonaut we we've worked with them and again they've been great great contractors to work with and when our CIP team kind of reviewed the bids they kind of look through um that kind of that scope to see if there's anything missed or if they maybe adjusted their numbers to maybe look for change order opportunities. Um I can say at least for the low bidder, we've worked them on the Maria project, the first phase of it. So from Snowa Mountain to this obviously to um the tree we're talking about tonight. Um and they did a great job. So I'm confident that they will be able to bring this project forward. They've worked on a similar project for us doing kind of full depth reclamation, complete streets, um and been very successful with it.

Okay, good. And uh for this contract, is this just for the road work above uh or is it also including all of the pipes underground also that are being done? And then also the landscaping at the end. Is it just for the road work or is it more what more just for the road work? The utility project was completed prior to this. So they've already installed the recycle water man and um water services. This project does include one or two recycle water connections that they'll do, but for the most part it's just the road work of the ground.

Good. And I think there was some um answers uh I asked some questions and um they are listed I think in the agendas um or at least the notes that from from the meeting. So thank you for answering those questions because you just got them like yesterday or even this morning. Um but there was a couple in there that the recycled water it will have the capacity to go under the freeway even if uh as with in the future at some point in time. So that was like one of them and another one was about the parking at that corner. There was some concerns about those corners and there's two homes that are that are located there and there was parking issues. Uh the concerns is getting in and out of driveways in your answers there. Uh you want to reiterate those just so we get uh because I think it'd be worthwhile reiterating um those issues and and the solutions that you've come up with.

Yeah. So we did um we have looked at that those two corners really closely um for the rest of the council. This is the these are the the two uh corners of the west I'll call the the north or west leg of um of Maria at Reineer. Um so if you're driving eastbound out away from downtown on your left, we have a tilted axis that makes things challenging. Uh we did look really closely at those two corners because we we really wanted to minimize impacts to those two homes. Um if we were to leave the intersection as is today, we would be red curbing the first 20 feet in front of the crosswalk um for this daylighting laws, state daylighting laws. Uh with the roundabout, uh we did everything we could to try to retain uh the additional parking space that exists between where that red curb would be and their driveway. And unfortunately, just were not able to uh make that work. So there will be an additional parking spot on each side of the street. um that would be removed for uh to make way for the the roundabout. We will not be doing a uh a raised middle island on the Maria approaches. It'll just be striped. So, there will still be they they will still have the ability um to get in and out of their driveways. Um uh in some whereas on the Reineer approaches, we have raised uh concrete islands at the at the approaches.

Okay, good. Thank you. So, I just wanted to make sure we we covered the safety concerns there. And um looked like those streets, there's still plenty of parking uh just like within a few feet for both those homes, everything. So, um not that much walking for them to park a little bit ways. Is that correct? Yeah, I know. I mean, um obviously all the homes in that area have driveways and then there is um the other street park, not really any other street parking um constraints. uh just kind of the typical uh conditions you would find um on a on a residential street like that.

Okay, good. And we already have the I think one of the questions I asked uh was about the the landscaping and uh is that going to be a separate contract and do we have that already in place? Do we have the money allocated? Yeah. So, we we have uh right now we have a a landscape architect working on uh a very reasonable landscape design. Um and uh for I think the I think the price was $6,000 for the landscape design. And then our plan was to issue a uh minor construction contract after the completion of the paving project for to install that landscaping plan. And from our experience, um that's that's just a more cost-effective way. Sometimes with these uh bigger projects, you end up with um the the landscaping items can can add up. And so we felt confident with that approach,

right? And the landscaping is just for basically the sounds like the roundabout and the B. Is there anything about uh along Reer? There's still landscape on either side where trees and shrubbery could be put in. Is that going to be part of this project or is that going to be an add-on later? Depending on where the trees are, it's going to be an add-on later. We have identified locations along Reineer. Um I think I mentioned in the council questions closer to North Mcdow at where our crews removed some trees that were kind of dying and dead. So there's opportunities to add more. So we are working with relief to be able to come up with a game plan for public for streets within the rideway to be able to strategically get those placed like we did on Snow Mountain Parkway.

Good. And then then getting to the bio is just one that's only 800 square foot. Um what uh this Tesla bet the volume of water that that will hold or how much of the street surface like a one inch if we get a half inch of rain even uh how much of the street will be just for practicality purposes what percentage of the water how can you tell us a little bit about how effective it's going to be given it's a very long street and it's only one little bio swell. Yeah. So, when Bejorn mentioned it, we had a hydraologist um come in and help us identify all the locations along Reineer that would be possible locations for bioells. We typically have not been doing them with our bigger streets because we just haven't had a lot of big street projects. So, this is kind of one of the one of the first and we use this as kind of a a trial to find a solution that we can utilize here and drop into all our next projects. as we're designing Howard Street right now. We're using that similar design to be able to kind of incorporate it into bullouts. So, this is something new to us but not new to everybody else, but again, it's going to be coming on more projects. So, as we laid these out along Reineer, um several occasions were identified. um some of them kind of in the streets in the painted bulbout areas they were they didn't the drainage area to them wasn't very much and the cost to build kind of retaining walls within the road to kind of protect the road were very costly. So we kind of went through a cost benefit analysis to determine which ones benefited had the most benefit. So, this 800 foot one was kind of a a lowhanging fruit for us to be able to get something in there very cost-effective, get some greenery on on the road, um, and still have a large drain shed. I don't have the exact numbers of what that area exactly is, but as you mentioned, it is a very long stretch. So, typically when you do bios, I believe you treat for like 10% of the hundred-year storm. So, it's not designed to handle a normal huge storm.

It's kind of designed those smaller storms. So like if in a big in a case where we have a big storm, it'll fill up and then it'll overflow. It'll go back into the storm drain. So there's a redundancy built into these to be able to carry the water away if it can't handle infiltration.

Right. And so is it uh from the design I couldn't quite see how close it was to the actual roundabout because I think when you have all that structure there getting the water to move away from the roundabout and drain so you don't end up with puddles and anywhere around the roundabout that that's pretty difficult because you have to grade everything. So is the bio going to really help remove water from the roundabout uh so it flows out any better? So is that a possibility? Is that what's happening or is it just for retention? It's for retention. I mean, all the water is going to go into, we have storm drains at all the intersections. So, when it rains, the water is going to make it into storm drain. This is just taking that flow that would be normally go into the storm drain and treating it. As we already mentioned, some of it's going to be treated, some of it's going to absorb in and get back into the aquaores. Some of it once it's fully kind of concentrated, it's going to overflow into a system. So, it's it's a way of kind of reutilizing some of that resource as well as if it's going to make it back into the rivers, treating it before it goes or treating it with if it has oils or fuels in it, a way to treat it so it doesn't get back into the creeks.

Right. We just make sure that that all that curb, there's a lot of curb structure that's going into there. Just make sure we have water flow and oil movement all kind of moves way to make keep it safe. Okay. Thank you.

Um, thank you. Um thank you for the primer on um bio swales and first uh first storms. There's there's a complex issue where it's it's a it's a mitigation for pollution and trash not a detention an attempted detention. Um were there council member Quint? Thank you. Um just a uh a few I hopefully these are really quick questions. Um, and I know you touched on some of this, but I I think there are helpful points. Just to reiterate, will a fourlane to threelane conversion on Reineer make the road safer?

Yes, absolutely. All the data points to uh one lane, single lane in each direction uh and turn lanes being far safer than multi-lane roads. Thank you. Uh will a fourlane to three lane conversion cost more or less in the long run to maintain? Um, I would slightly less because you're going to have less pavement exposed to the high volume of vehicle traffic. Thank you. Will a fourlane to three-lane conversion create congestion?

No, not from what we've seen um given the the recom so t FHWA tells us around 20,000 vehicles a day is where you might start seeing congestion impacts, but like I said, we're at closer to 4,000 vehicles a day. So, about 1/5if of that. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, same questions about the roundabout. Will a roundabout make the intersection safer? Yes, from our perspective. Yeah. Will a roundabout cost more or less in the long run to maintain? Uh, that's an interesting question. I don't know if we've done the math on uh maintaining pavement versus maintaining landscaping. Do you have any thoughts, Jeff?

The hardest thing about a roundabout when it comes to maintenance is just the fact that it's a it's a roundabout. It's very hard to maintain traffic. We had to replace all the street lights at the Corona one. Um, so it it was challenging. It wasn't impossible. It just kind of you got to get creative with traffic control and making it. So there are some difficulties that come with roundabouts, but the overall benefit of it is is much better. But there's nothing in the data right now to suggest that it's going to cost a lot more money to maintain. No. Thank you. Uh, will a roundabout create congestion? No. Okay. Thank you. Council member now. Um,

thank you for those questions, um, Council Member Quinn. Those were really helpful. Um, replacing the ballards on McDow. There's quite a few missing. Is that our responsibility or is that part of the grant and we have a warehouse full of ballers to replace them with?

Th Yeah, those are city-owned and maintained. Um, and I think I think with those, you know, the the question would be uh replacement versus just sort of letting them take their uh take their licks. Um, and and possibly in some areas you have increased spacing. But that's one of the we did look at those for Reineer and and that's why we're excited to move to the asphalt curb because it will not require that ongoing maintenance. Well, um because the ones that were put on Rainineer, they they

they were lost immediately. I mean, within a couple of months. So, your cement wall barrier that keeps the cars out. The um concrete gets broken and then it's very sharp. We know that at Baywood and McDow. It's an older roundabout. How are we going to keep drivers from hitting that concrete wall and making it unsafe? I

Yeah. So, I know the the inner uh or the the diameter the perimeter of the roundabout is um it has kind of a a mountable apron so that that won't be an issue. Um I don't know if you want the splitter islands if you've got any.

Yeah. So the for like the Splur Islands, everything was designed with very round corners, so sweeping turns in to avoid that. We have the protected bike lane coming through the roundabout as well, but instead of doing a full AC curb going through, we did somewhat of a mountable one. So it's it's able for larger trucks or fire engines who are making that turn to still go over it. So pretty confident that we won't have um curbs that are become kind of sharp objects for flat tires. Um, we designed it in a way that every I mean for a roundabout everything's round. So, it's um there's there's a benefit to that

and it's and it's designed with those larger vehicle turning movements in mind. So, obviously for someone driving a private just a a you know typical car um they're going to be able to make it make those maneuver it with much more ease than someone driving operating a larger vehicle and and should be able to stay away from those curbs. Can it have reflectors placed on it or painting that reflects because um it's foggy in that area and very dark and I am sure that that is used quite often coming off of McDall or coming off of um Snow Mount Parkway and the drivers are aware of the new configuration.

Yeah. So, we will have uh you know the there's the the thermoplastic striping uh will will be on either side of the island. So, um that's a a reflective that's the reflective roadway paint. Um and that'll be it's usually what about 6 in off the off the curb. So, that should provide a pretty clear visual indication of of where that curb is for drivers. And and additionally, the the thermoplastic will have pavement markers. So, they're reflective markers that you see on the ground. They're usually every 20 or so feet, and they they're visible when your headlights hit it, you get it back. Um the bullnosses on the corners are all going to be painted. So, everything's going to be visible and not blend in with the surrounding.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions from council? Council member Carly,

thank you for the presentation. Um, I was wondering with the, you know, we have a finite amount of roads that we can pave every year in the city. How was it that Reneer got selected over other roads that see uh higher volumes of traffic, speeds, um, injuries, fatalities where Reneer is overall a pretty safe road. So I know the all of our paving projects are we do our best to coordinate between utility and paving paving needs um is one of the the primary factors uh when we see that there's an upcoming like I said with Rainineer we had the need to replace all the water services uh that uh folks in the in the quad lots on Rainineer um that's how they get their water and then also we had uh some grant funding to get the recycled water man in under uh to extend the system from Maria to down to North Mcdow. So just the opportunity with all of that trenching going on obviously um if you go out there right now um you know you're hitting speed bumps um and so uh so that's that's you know we've obviously compromised the pavement surface and then the paving itself is is old. It's um it's failed. I think when we were initially looking at this project, we were anticipating it would be a a grind and overlay um and now it's a full depth recl reclamation because the the roadway has uh failed in in many areas. So those are two factor the the pavement quality utility coordination and then just the the role of Rainineer as a street that um serves so many nearby uh schools and parks um uh helped elevate it. Um, and this was done, I believe Rainineer was identified possibly prior to the 5-year paving plan. I know since uh since then we have uh created even more um applied

some some really uh quantitative uh criteria to identify all the upcoming paving projects. And then um excuse me, I saw the data for for cars that travel the road, but do we have any for for the number of bicycles that use it? I don't believe so. I don't think we've gotten any taken any bike counts out there. Okay. Um, does the This is just I'm just wondering does the city receive grant money? Are we incentivized in some way to make street design changes that would constrain vehicle traffic and promote alternative forms?

Uh, no. This project is locally funded. So, uh there's no grant uh criteria or uh requirements that we are um compliant with here.

Okay. And so, you know, you mentioned like fatality citywide on road and obviously vision zero is something that's important, but we we haven't had any on reneer. So, you know, again, why why would we kind of focus on that when there's other roads that maybe need to be made safer? Yeah, I think it goes back to applying the that complete streets policy, applying all of the the various adopted uh policies and plans uh and putting those into action and and essentially uh anytime we're we're touching a street um and especially for a paving project, that's a really good opportunity to make um pretty large scale changes uh enhancements to a street. So, um, that's that's our practice. I mean, I think if you look at any of our recent paving projects, especially, um, on Pedmont Boulevard South or or North Mcdal, um, these bigger streets kind of kind of similar to Rainineer in the sense that they are just large arterial streets. Um, there's a lot of opportunity. Uh we you know these streets were designed in at a time when frankly traffic engineers and and civil engineers were not really thinking about much other than vehicle throughput. And so now um you know that's where best practices are. That's where policy is. It's you know let's create a system of streets that people can drive, people can walk, people can bike. They're safe. They're accessible. They're inviting for uh all ages and abilities. And uh and that's uh I think kind of the the the mandate we've been given to to design a a a really complete seamless network of uh of those types of streets.

And then um you know since since the staff are here tonight, I kind of want to ask a broader question about um how come we didn't see any other roads repaved in the last year until now? It's been multiple factors. Um I think a lot of the projects we have, they're large large projects. So we have um we just finished up the Maria section, we had this one in design, we have Howard, we have D Street. Um the main thing is Howard was supposed to go sooner than it was. Um we had challenges with the consultant. um their their idea of what the design should have been was different than ours. Um so we decided to bring that inhouse. Um but then we had a shortage in engineer. So it was just kind of worst case scenario. Um so we went back out to get a consultant to hire for that that project and it came in two three times higher than we ever thought it was. So we kind of had to go back to the drawing boards. It's currently in design right now for Howard Street and we're about 50%. Um, so it's moving much faster now. It just we had we hit a speed bump. Um, and we had to kind of stop, gather all our stuff, and kind of come up with a new game plan. Um, we have a five-year plan, which is, um, since I've been here, one of the best things we did to be able to have a plan that we can kind of rely on, um, know what we're doing yeartoear. Um, and I think now we're starting to settle into that five-year plan and have a kind of a clear direction of where we're going with it.

Right. Well, and that's important because that's a commitment the city made. Um, and I, you know, the ATP was mentioned a lot tonight and so I didn't know if maybe any of the delays in in repaving things had had to do with that the the passage of that. No, not at all. No. Okay. It's all my questions.

Thank you. And uh with that uh we'll go to uh public comment. I'll ask the clerk if we've had anyone weigh in online. We did receive comments ahead of the meeting. We received 38 and those are posted to the website. Uh, and I see I have a few cards coming in. All right, our first speaker tonight is Stephanie Adams to be followed by Bruce Hagen.

Hello. Uh me again. Uh this is in my neighborhood. I've lived in this area for 30 years and I live I would walk my dog through this intersection. My parents had a park place unit that was in your photo like it was right on Reneer. I used to park on Reneer. Um so I just want to say I'm really uh happy to see measures being taken to slow down traffic. There's chunks of the day where no cars are going down that road hardly at all. But when it's peak time, they fly down there. Um, and in more recent years when I'm walking, uh, crossing that intersection, um, crossing Reneer from Maria, uh, it's only two lanes, but there's two lanes plus parking on either side, so it's wide and people are flying from Sonoma Mountain. They really are. And there's a curve um, coming down from North Mcdall. So anyway, I'm grateful that measures are being taken to slow it down um so that I'm not feeling like I'm taking my life in my hands when I'm just trying to cross the road. So that that really resonated with me is bringing down the the pain points from 32 down to eight. Um and I also wanted to say if they're going to plant something in the middle of that roundabout, I think that'll help a lot. I think Bayiew gets into trouble because there's nothing there. And if people aren't paying attention, they're not paying attention and boom, they're on it. You know, I know that there was a fatality there about a decade ago. Poor guy taking out his trash bins right there. Like, oh my god. So, I think having a visual like there's something in front of you, pay attention, I think is going to help a lot because you, like you said, you have more space. Anyway, I'm just really grateful to have this project going forward and the forethought that has gone into it. It was so difficult when it was first um painted in the Ballards and you were like, "Oh my god, what?" Um and I can see why they all got taken out in the beginning, but people got used to it. I got used to it. Um it makes sense now, but it's a new thing. It's a different

way of looking at it and we get used to it. So anyway, I think it's great. Thanks for your work. Thank you. Bruce Hagen to be followed by Sandra Martinez. Major water spill. Hello everybody. Pardon?

I'm Bruce Hagen, a volunteer for Safe Streets Pedaluma and my message is stand by your plan and I'm talking about the active transportation plan. Uh, another thing I wanted to say was basically what Bejorn just said because that's the best summary of all the reasons why we want to go forward in the next two, three, four years and build more of this stuff everywhere. There's so many good reasons for it and to be able to fit it into the city's existing plans for underground utility maintenance and just fixing the bumpy streets is brilliant and let's keep going with that. Um, we were formed four years ago to help Safe Streets Paluma to help create uh a citywide transportation network that is safe, healthy, and affordable for everyone whether you walk or drive or roll or take transit. and that is now in this plan. So what we want to move forward with is seeing these projects now starting get getting queued up smartly designed very carefully funded and built and celebrated. Um the u the plan for reneer is everything I've seen here is more than what I actually expected in a good way. Uh so nothing to comment on that. I think that the uh public perception of what's going to happen when there's this strange thing called a roundabout or barrier protected bike lanes uh that everywhere else that we've studied or heard about is that after the construction is over, people realize what this stuff actually is and isn't. Then the opposition melts away and you have a lot of supporters, a lot more supporters. So, I think one of the things we could do perhaps as this is getting built, uh, or maybe when it's launched is to have some sort of big party around there and talk to people about how to drive through a roundabout. It's not that complicated. And maybe maybe they already know and they're just being grumpy, but I think this is something that we want to make sure that

doesn't get in the way of our progress. Um, so I think last of all I just had to quote Tammy Wette here and say stand by your plan. Thank you very much. Thank you Sandra Martinez to be followed by Darren Rakasen.

Hey, good evening. Um, I live on Marian Reineer. Um, tonight I'm asking you to make some serious and thoughtful consideration for the people who live on Marian Reineer and not just how traffic moves through our neighborhood, but how we use it every day. For those of us, um, the ability to access our driveways, park in front of our homes, um, is not a convenience, but it's a daily necessity. Removing that access would permanently change how we use our homes. I respectfully ask that you do not approve any design that removes that parking or eliminates the ability to temporarily block our driveways. Um asking that the crosswalk remain as close as possible to the current location because of the 20ft clearance law. Moving the crosswalk or creating a designated bike lane will directly eliminate residential parking and access. This balance has already been achieved at Magnolia and Elm. Safety improvements were made without permanently altering how residents access or use that street. Council has the ability to make a meaningful impact here without overengineering the solution or creating long-term consequences for the people who live closest to this project. I'm asking you to prioritize residential need and avoid the designs that restrict um access to our homes. Please remember this is not just a traffic project but this is where people live, where we raise our families and where daily access to our homes is necessity. Um I also ask that you ask construction to finish at least by 4:00. They ran really late past 7:00 when they were doing the water man and um takes them a really long time to clean up their equipment. It's really loud. Um and to please continue to ask questions. You guys have asked really good questions to the city staff. Um, and I would like you

to also ask them how changing the bike lane would change this roundabout and how we on Maria access our homes. Um, I have a feeling and I've talked to Bejorn before that if that bike lane were to move back on the side where the cars are that it would change everything there in that roundabout belt. So, um, please continue to do a good job in asking those questions and thank you for your time. Thank you, Darren Racken to be followed by Eda Enzor.

Thank you, Caitlyn. Thank you, council. Uh, I just have three points to raise mostly centered around the final table in the staff report, the budgeting table for pavement me restoration. And this kind of follows a theme we saw last week with the project to retrofit the firehouse as well. And it's that first line item, design, administration, and overhead nearly tripled for the project. It's one thing for Argonaut to come in higher because obviously inflation things change. The administrative fees and some of those staff fees are things the city controls and this is something that again I said last time is we want to try to make sure we're we're scoping those accurately at the start, controlling them as best we can. so these projects actually get across the finish line and we're not adding administrative costs. And something that was mentioned at that meeting by one of the public works staff was something to the effect of, well, we've changed some of how we bill out some of our administrative hours and assign them to projects. Now, to me, I instantly start thinking, okay, are we billing out some hours that may have classically been overhead in one of these departments? It gets assigned to a project. That can happen a couple of ways. That can either be through like better time card tracking and job costing. So now someone who might have been booked their full week to overhead, split out some hours on this project. We get a more accurate sense of what the staff budget is. There's also a methodology to take a percentage of overhead uh and then aggregate it over different projects to spread that overhead over different projects as kind of a percent estimate. I'm less of a fan of that strategy. Um, but I I'm just curious if that is like a financial change and then the implications as we bring more projects forward, are we going to keep running into this? Like, hey, finance within the last 6 months, a year, whenever the change ever happened from Jessica G to now Corey coming back in, has there been a change in job costing that we're going to see as every SIP project comes forward where we should anticipate a big admin spike because of how we're billing out hours

and overhead versus project. So, that's a big one I want to flag as kind of a trend. And then the other piece of this was the um how the where the money is going to come from the funding sources. It looked like there was a big drop in the street maintenance or highway users tax with an increase in infrastructure bonds. Just wondering the reason for that. Usually the taxes are pretty predictable. It'd be kind of a lot for it to change is a you know the amount we anticipate getting from a tax to decrease by 600k. That seems to have other drastic implications. So I'm curious about that funding source. And then all of this is in the context of the mid-year budget update which was referenced by staff. The resolution does not say though that the awarding of this contract to Argonaut is dependent on approving a mid-year budget update. Now maybe that's implied somehow in that language. Sometimes the whereas statements can get confusing, but it didn't look like so if we approve Argonaut to blow out the current budget and say, "Well, we'll come back and approve the mid-year budget." Well, we've already signed a contract, so we're going to have to. So just order of operations and approving that mid-year budget and then some of these things like this project like the firehouse, how do we try to bring those after we've approved the budget? Thanks.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Ed Anzor to be followed by Eth Weaver.

Good evening C. Good evening council and mayor. You know, uh, in March of 2020, the city did a survey on Rainineer commissioned by your city, 35 miles an hour. I also requested all the data on the surveys since the changeover. I got six days of comprehensive surveys, not 30 minute blips. It's 24 hours a day. Every hour, how many cars went through what intersection at what time. So, the busiest hour in the six day survey, 24 hours a day, was 204 cars. That's only three and a half cars a minute. So, I don't know where this traffic congestion or traffic issue is with three cars a minute at the busiest day. When it comes to roundabouts, they always tell you it reduces fatalities and serious accidents by 90%. You had zero fatalities in 25 years. That's data the city sent to me. Not 12 years of accidents. 25 years. That's a bigger sample size. You had seven cars and three bicycles. Unless you have the accident report. You don't know what caused it. It's just a raw number. I I heard him mention that the there was a car doing 65. You don't know what kind of car that is. Was it a police car going to a call for service? It's just a raw number. Another thing with the speed in the six day survey 24 hours a day, the average speed was anywhere from 33 to 37. Did you slow traffic down with the new change? Absolutely not. And sir, and I'm not trying to call you out. You cannot definitively say a road will be safer. It's all depends on driver habit. Has nothing to do with the roadway. I investigated accidents for 20 years. I'm certified by the state of California.

It's always the driver. It's not the road. When it comes to roundabouts, if you have zero fatalities, you're not going to reduce it by any. In the accidents, there were seven. You don't even know if the intersection was the cause of the accident unless you see the report. It could be many v. It could be down the block is how it's written. So, you got to read the report itself. When it comes to emissions, emissions, that's a fallacy. If you read the studies on roundabouts, it talks about large intersections. And I'll give you the example. East Washington and McDow at 5:00. All the four lanes from the freeway to McDow are stopped. There's about a hundred cars sitting there idling. Not at Rainer and McDall or McDall. Berea and McD Rineer. You get three cars a minute. Cars are not idling. And I'll end with this. I just got stuck in traffic in Hawaii. It's caused by a roundabout. Anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you, Eeris Weaver. To be followed by Nick Harris.

Hi. Thank you. Eris Weaver, executive director of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition. And um we are very um happy to support moving forward with this project on Reineer. um as well as pleased how how well the city has done with doing um pilots ahead of time and then incorporating feedback on what worked and didn't work to change the driveway access and u make that easier for people. Um I personally love roundabouts. I love them so much that when I'm bicycling through one, I sometimes go around a couple extra times just for fun. Um, and I was involved with the city of Katadyat uh campaign a year or two ago to uh eliminate or undo Katad's ban on on roundabouts. Um, I want to respond to something that one of the other uh speakers said because it's something that comes up anytime we have any of these conversations about changing a road in a way that might remove parking or um you know uh folks who reside on a street care about you know what's happening on their street but we don't own the street we live on. The streets belong to the city. The streets belong to everyone. And I don't think I'm the one who has more say over what happens on the street in front of my house than anybody else does. That we have to make design for streets for the good of the whole community and not just the folks who happen to live on it. Thank you.

Thank you. Nick Harris to be followed by Chantel Rogers. And I see Nick has a card here to um seated from Moren Gotcha. Moren in the house. That's okay. There we go. Thank you. Uh good evening, council, mayor, staff. Um this is going to be uh kind of a difficult uh comment because it's really around accountability. Um and I want to put uh what we're talking about tonight in into context. Starting with the 5-year paving program approved about a year and a half ago. This Rainineer project was a $2.4 million projected budget project out of 22 million in road rehab projects for this fiscal year and the previous fiscal year. Reneer is the only project that is moving that that has moved forward. Um that's really worrisome to me because we spent a lot of time. I want to also comment on uh what what's happening tonight. Um as this is a agenda item to make a contract award and a lot of the conversation is about new design and design changes and uh priorities around that. I find it odd. I'm commenting tonight on agenda item six, the Reineer Avenue Pavement Restoration Project Contract Award. I'm asking you to tighten oversight and accountability tonight. Not because road repairs aren't needed, but because the way this item is structured repeats a pattern that weakens transparency, invites budget inflation, contributes to continued slippage in capital project timelines. Both the staff report and the

resolution state that an upgraded updated project budget quote will be brought forward as part of the city's upcoming mid-year budget update. They also say sufficient funding is included in that updated budget, but only quote subject to city council approval of the mid-year budget adjustments. From the public's point of view, that's a contradiction. You're being asked to award a contract today based on a funding and appropriations decision that will occur later on an unknown date. The packet repeatedly references an upcoming mid-year budget update, but does not identify when that appropriation item will occur. And as of right now, the midyear budget update does not appear on tenative agendas or on the published list of significant upcoming items. This matters because the resolution directs staff to issue the notice to proceed to the once the contractor submits required documents that converts a future mid-year budget vote into a pressured practical formality. Council previously approved a 2.6 million total project budget. The staff report now states the project total has been updated to almost 3.6 million. That is a material change. The sources table shows a major funding shift from steep street maintenance and highway tax uh drops 75% and bonds increase by more than double. That kind of change should not be treated as routine even if it's technically permissible. It changes what other projects can be delivered and creates the appearance of budget stretching to absorb bond capacity. attach public records uh uh emails include internal communication explicitly focus on spend spending down remaining payment bond proceeds that's of the 20 million measure U bond and concern that quote not much has been spent that's speaking to this fiscal

year with the preference that remaining proceeds be spent by June 30th of this calendar year that context makes the jump in bond reliance in this staff report especially important to discuss transparency not buried as a table change. I also want to flag something I find alarming and disappointing based on council's discussion at the last meeting. In response to questions about increased CIP overhead, public works staff said they were directed to use a percentage amount to account for overhead, and that was essentially the only explanation offered. If finance is directing public works to load more overhead into CIP projects as a matter of percentagebased policy, that is not a harmless accounting choice, especially when many of these CIP projects are being financed with interest over 30-year bond terms. Every additional dollar costed into a bondf funed project can become a long-term cost to taxpayers once it is financed and amvertised. Major part of the public's frustration is not just money. It's a continued slipping of CIP capital project timelines and explanations that don't add up. The city's internal communications show that as of September 2025, staff reported approximately 4.2 million of payment bond proceeds remained unspent and that the city has already passed four years since issuance of those bond. Meaning we've been paying debt service while the public receives no corresponding benefit. At the same time, delays are getting more expensive. The producer price index series for net inputs to highway and streets rose 35%. 35% increase in cost from January 2021 to December 2025. Project slippage isn't neutral. It actively destroys purchasing power. Every year we wait, fewer feet of pavement get delivered for the same dollars. I've appreciated the mayor's prior questions, comments, and concerns in this regard, especially during budget workshops last year. In fact, Mayor McDonald specifically asked public works if additional headcount could speed up projects to which staff replied no. I am

dismayed to observe a full service city with more headcount than ever before encounter slippage to this extent. In that context, I want to put on the record that last Monday I emailed the city manager and management team and did not receive a response. The question goes directly to oversight and the credibility of project planning. Dear management team, in a meeting last year, it was disclosed that pavement reconstruction projects originally slated for this fiscal year were delayed approximately two years due to quote utilities funding shortfall. According to the this fiscal year capital budget, Howard Street Pavement Reconstruction was fully funded. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh Chantel uh Rogers is our next speaker to be followed by Nathan Spendell. Hi. Um, I just had a question about the added um, cement barrier for the um, bike, which I understand is a is a very recent addition to the project based on feedback um, from users and certainly a uh, a viable consideration. Um, but being that it's an add-on, I assume that it was not part and parcel considered in the engineering of the project. And so I'm wondering about drainage um because I imagine that the um the engineering anticipated that, you know, during a heavy downpour, the water would flow all the way over to the curb and out to wherever it goes. And by putting up a cement barrier and only having one lane, what what is the likelihood of of puddling? Is are there it looked like the cement barrier was continuous, you know, all the way down the street? Um, are there are there breaks in that so that water can can exit and is this possibly an unintended consequence of a of an add-on which is uh which is valuable but which needs to be we need to make sure that um that that we have um drainage and that that it it uh coincides with engineering for the rest of of the project. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nathan Spendell. To be followed by our last speaker of the evening, John Hania. This new design for Reineer Avenue is a great enhancement. The project improves the safety of Reineer with new crosswalks, protected bike lanes, and a roundabout. These elements are proven to

make streets significantly safer for all users. As a driver, pedestrian, cyclist, and young parent, I'm a fan of the existing six roundabouts in Paluma. They work well, move cars efficiently, and lower speeds, which significantly reduces the chance of severe injuries or fatalities. I live close to Pedaluma's newest roundabout on D Street in Windsor, and I can confirm it is significantly slows drivers, including myself, and it also improves safety and eases crossing for pedestrians. Given the significant speeding on Reineer, adding a roundabout at Maria makes a lot of sense. It will reduce vehicle speeds and collisions, making it safer for everyone. If and when collisions do occur, they'll happen at much slower speeds, hopefully avoiding tragedy. Reineer is an important and busy corridor in Paluma. It connects homes, schools, parks, sports fields, shopping, and medical offices. I'm glad the city is prioritizing safety on this corridor. In the last week, I've chatted with 10 friends who live on and near Rineer A about this new design. All but one of them currently have young children and they frequently walk and bike to Lucasy Park. They were all very supportive of the new design, especially the roundabout. They weren't able to participate tonight, and they wanted me to echo their support as well. Thanks. Thank you, John Hania. And John, I I know your carton came in late and so I accepted it so I could say that this was not the president, but that this was the chance for me to say that folks that know when the cards are needed to come in need to get the cards in by that time or they will not be added. I can understand someone's first time at council. They might have missed it or slow to the pickup, but this is not our precedent to have people submit cards late. So, you may continue with your

comments, but in terms of clarifying policy, which you've asked for previously, there's some clarity. Thank you. Your clock may start. Well, I'll touch base on that next time. Um, change. Some people like change, some people don't like change. Some people can deal with it, some people can't deal with it. But I have to disagree with your staff when they talk about the safety. How many of you, if any of you, and I will say none of you have done, go sit on Baywood and McDow. Council member, now tease me because of my zigzag, because I avoid the roundabout. Can any of you tell me how many people died at the roundabout in Baywood? How many accident? How many big trucks flipped over? You guys, yeah, Karen, you can tell me. I know that because you and I talked about this. Okay. So, the roundabout, it's only safe, as some of the speakers have said, driver habits. I avoid a driving down Baywood to go the runabout because you have to sit there forever in order to cross Mcdow because people zipping through at very high speed. Okay, I don't you know and you can't afford to say to the community, okay, we're going to send a police officer to sit there and monitor. Okay. How many of you have seen the white car with the orange and blue paint on it? Calrant sitting on the side the freeway observing. You guys sit up there, make a decision,

and once your decision is done, you don't follow through for the safety. So, I'll challenge any of you to sit there at Baywood with me and you could see it your own eyes. Then you can ask your staff, where's the safety? How many of you have asked a police department to have a police officer there? You can't. Why? Because we're underst staffed. Why? Because you're overspending every all the money elsewhere. One of the one of the speakers raised a very good issue. Why is Reineer was chosen? Okay, I have a good idea, but you're not going to like it. Okay. Um, the street I live on 50 years it hasn't been touched. You can It's safer for you to walk on a cheese grater or a knife than to walk in my court. It ruined my brand new shoes. I asked your city manager to pay for it. She laughed. So, I don't understand your decisions. You sit there, you make it sound like you're doing a great job. And as long as somebody's tapping you in the back, turning you're doing a great job, it's fine. But once Oh, my time's up. Thank you. Um, that closes public comment for the evening and uh I think there's a lot of public comment that uh resonates. Um, I certainly wish my street had been paved in the last 50 years. I'm pretty sure that's common sentiment to everybody in the city. uh and that's why the city's doing so much to trying to get streets paved. Now, I'd like to start with asking u just one of the questions from the public. Uh how do you make sure that the uh curb work on the bike lane is not a drainage problem?

Yeah. So, we have a a 20 foot maximum run of those sections of asphalt curb. So, there will be breaks at least every 20 feet. So, it's not one continuous curb. Correct. Y. Okay. And then um um and then I'm going to bring it back up to council for any other comments before I jump in. Council member Darly,

I'm curious. Do we know how much money gets sets gets set aside every year to repave roads? What what our approximate budget is? I can't tell you the exact number without going back and and looking at it. I mean, I think it it varies um between what the five-year plan was for bonding, what we get from SD1, which was around $2 million a year. Um and then we have payment fees and sewer fees um that go in and that added up to around like three million. So I would say rough probably probably three million a year plus um the bond measure.

So is this the only road we're going to pave this year? No. We finished last year we finished the slurry seals. Um I know most people say it's painting the roads black, but that is a critical piece to keep the good roads good. We are currently working on this current current fiscal year's worth of slurry seals too. Um so we're we're doing Braineer right now. we have slurry seals and then next year we're coming in with Howard and Caulfield.

And can I add out of the $20 million bond that we issued and we have $4 million remaining after this project that we'll have maybe a million dollars but we've paved Maria Garfield McDow some of the major you know arteries in our city. Okay. And those roads you mentioned that's for next year. Yeah, we've got next year will be um Howard from A Street to West Street uh along with a sewer and water man replacement and then we've got uh grant funding to pave Cfield Lane from Payan to Garfield. Okay. And um what else is on the docket for this year?

The uh so the only road reconstruction for uh this calendar year 2026 is uh is this project of Reineer. Okay. Yeah. I mean that that kind of makes me go back to it's not that Reneer doesn't need to get paved, but you know, looking at priority and I understand we're trying to time it with infrastructure upgrades and repairs. Um I understand that. That was always a frustration of mine was seeing a brand new street cut up that was just paved. But um I mean we have we have so many heavily trafficked roads in Paluma and again to try to get closer to vision zero. I think there's others that are more deserving. Um, you know, it it it seems like I mean, repaving it seems like a great idea. It's just there's so many other roads in this town and and we're known for bad roads. So, I I think there's a lot of other options that that could be considered. And if this is all we're going to pave for this year, I I don't know that that's the right road.

Okay. Um I I I think I do want to note that I uh that u some of the public comment about my sentiment regarding uh success of CIP is well quoted. Um and I want to note that on this one I think I was on um or I was on the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee back in about 20 when this debate went on. Um, this one of course has the added challenge as does D Street of having pilot programs and being responsive to the public. Um, uh, and so I understand why this one took this amount of time. I, uh, I concur with you that I wish that we had more paving done and I think that's the sentiment of the community and something that the city as a whole ought to be um, uh, more have more achievement on. So, uh, Council Member Barnacle, did I see questions coming from your end? Sure.

Uh comments at this point.

Sure. Um I'm happy to support it. Um I appreciate the design features. I appreciate walking through it. Um Council Member Quint asked my question. Safety, maintenance, and congestion all seem to check the boxes. Um I think there's some things that are being thrown around and conflated right now around um we say we want to use the bond and then we're saying we don't want to actually pave any roads this year. So like it's not like we can just like not use it and then uh you know not use the money, not pave this street and then pave some other street. We would have to go through the design process and then we're sitting on that bond revenue again and not delivering the benefits to the community. Um in terms of why we would change the revenues, I would imagine that we would change the revenues from uh highway tax to to the bond because we thought we were going to be doing Howard and Howard now is pushed back. So, we're using the bond so that we can deliver the value to the community with the bond. That's me thinking about what it is, but that's why we would change the revenue sources for this. Um, uh, I don't know why the the planning and and overhead is increasing. It does that's a good flag, Darren. would um appreciate some clarification if that's like a way that we're um you know some new sort of internal policy or if that's because you know we went through multiple rounds of piloting something and you know public engagement costs a lot of money I don't know but um I would like some clarification from staff on that um but I think the the larger thing is is this uh you know the project is a notable improvement over what's currently there Um the the roundabout is going to make things safer. The bike lane is, you know, unquestionably going to make it safer for bikers. Um and crossing uh one lane of traffic is significantly safer than crossing four. So um I hope we don't have to debate this until the we

hours in the morning and we can um actually mobilize money and pave roads. Thank you, Council Member Shreds.

Okay. A few comments. Um, first just about the uh the one on on Baywood and McDow. Uh, if you notice there's plants in that roundabout. I designed it. I helped plant it and I helped maintain it by the way. Uh, so I've been out there often enough and my friend actually did most of the work has been maintaining it for 10 years watering. So he's been out there the whole time, 10 years straight. His wife was one of the ones first on the scene at that accident. Uh, she was a nurse tried to revive them. So I have a little bit of experience out there at Baywood. Um, and I've been out there and it does really help. The traffic does slow down. It does work. U most the accidents have happened there. It's DUIs uh is one of the main issues of these accidents that are happening. Um, so this on Baywood um yes, it has a curb there and I I have hit it with with my truck trying to get around. Uh but once you learn, you learn and get by. Uh but it can be run over. Um you can get even buses have gone through. I actually worked with the school and asked the school buses, can they get through? And yes, they can get through. So, that's about Baywood um on there. The other roundabout's good. Um another one on um uh just getting down there. Uh because I live near Reineer and that's actually in my district. Uh part of it, at least half of it is. Then um I ride my bike and I drive down Reneer all the time. So, um, when I'm going down there, especially if I'm taking Maria, Maria now is having been paved is a wonderful street to ride a bike back and forth, but there's a I've run into real issues on riding on Maria going past Reineer, having the cars uh stop for me on on a bicycle going through that and also the cars, they decide who goes next. So, I've I've had run into personal difficulties at that intersection. Um, who who's going to go next? And especially those cars coming on Maria, do they go or does the Reineer go? And usually folks on Maria have to stop and wait because the folks on Reineer are going no matter what for the most part. So I've had lots of experience at that intersection like that and a roundabout

is going to make it safer for me personally. The other thing I'm looking forward to is with the ATP plan, my expectation is down the road, maybe take 20 years. I don't know how long it's going to take, but we're going to take my bike underneath Moner underneath the freeway into the greenway area and then either under the railroad cuz we go under the railroad or directly across the river and then again under the railroad get on the uh pathways there and I can get to pay and across town on my bicycle saving me 10 minutes at least uh doing that um coming down the road. So, I'm going to be saving a huge amount of time and using a lot more. And then we have a lot more students now taking their bike safe streets. That's one of our safe routes is is through that intersection. So, we really need to make it safe for the students so that they're comfortable riding bike because they're not doing it now. And so, that safety has to come through. Um, and on RIA, it's a real concern for um talking to the residents there. U the speeding there, uh, the road got fixed and now it's a wonderful road. You go really fast without going into bumps. So, there's an increase in speeding. The other thing I've noticed is uh past history about uh the car speeds and the like doesn't apply currently. Uh I've noticed amount of increase in agitation, anxiety. Um I've now been being passed even on residential streets. I'm going down at 30 35 miles an hour down a nice street and folks are passing me at 50. They won't wait for me. They're trying to pass me. And that's happened in this last year. My wife and I, we've counted like four or five times now. Uh we're going down various roads and people are so anxious now trying to get to where they're going. They're going 20 to 30 miles over the speed limit to get around me on residential roads and on arterials. So um we're getting more uh chaos is happening out there and more speeding, more anxiety, more stress. So we really need to slow this all down. Um so I'm really looking forward to make this happen. Um I think it's really good for our future. Um uh yeah, according to

current data today, yeah. Well, it might be best to but 20 years from now, we'll be very thankful that it's there. A lot more traffic is going to be going through there. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Now, um thank you. Um can city staff respond to the questions asked by the public comment or speaker regarding the bond and midyear budget dilemmas, especially where this project is. Do you want to do that now or do you want to wait? Okay.

Yeah, I think I can try to address most of that. So, and I also wanted to respond on the the question about the uh admin and overhead charges as well. So, to just hopefully clear the air on this, there has been no change in practice or policy about how we charge projects administrative and overhead charges. However, it is true that uh costs have gone up uh with inflation, with doing more public outreach on projects and a variety of other factors. So, what we were finding is that when we go to close out a project, uh the budgets for administration and overhead were very low and the actuals that were getting charged to projects for that project specific expenses were above the budgets. So the the change that was mentioned last week and that was pointed out uh last week and this week is that we went through a process to better estimate what the actuals are going to come in at so that we aren't having this kind of swing in the co actual cost versus the uh the budget. So you're seeing some of those budget changes to hopefully get a better predictor of what where the actuals are going to land at the end of the project. Uh and then the other piece that uh I wanted to address is this question about the midyear budget adjustments. And I I just wanted to say that this is a longstanding practice of the city where we do not bring a budget amendment or a budget adjustment every time a a project or a new program or something uh necessitates a change to the budget. We have a practice that we've been doing for many years of bringing a sort of batch of budget adjustments to the council four times a year. Uh I think one of the reasons for that very simply is that budget adjustments in Paluma require an ordinance of the city

council. So it is more complicated. It takes a first reading, a second reading, a 30-day referendum period in order to even get the change implemented. So to do one of those every single time an adjustment was needed would just be very unwieldy. Um and so we do we do kind of package all those up and bring them at specific points during the year. What you'll also find on the mid-year adjustments that will be coming to council soon is that we do take this opportunity at midyear to adjust uh lots of projects because we work with our project managers and the finance department to kind of true up where do we think projects are actually going to land at by year end and then we tweak budgets up and down to to rightsize the project budgets. So that tells us how much we're going to spend in the current year and then how much we'll have to carry forward into the next year. So that is a process that we we go through and you'll see some of those uh changes to project budgets in those mid-year adjustments coming up.

Thank you for that explanation. Um, I just wanted to clear because I didn't have time to ask that question ahead of time or um anyway um on roundabouts the photographs that you showed in your presentation shows amazing there's tire marks from when vehicles are using that intersection at probably at night to do donuts to do very dangerous driving. I know this happens in my district in the Cfield St. Francis or the Baywood in St. Francis and you know it it's not it's it's very dangerous because they can lose control and they can actually hit those homes and cars on the corners. So, um the um parking on Maria that's being taken away, 20 ft is for the daylighting, the new law. So, we're really only eliminating one parking space on either side of that street in front of those homes for those residents. Yeah.

The rest were taken by daylighting. Correct. So, uh, if the inter with the intersection, leaving it as is, we would red curb 20 ft. Um, but with the roundabout, uh, requires an additional approximately, I think it's approximately 16 ft, uh, which is the remaining space, uh, back to the driveway to the edge of of the driveway. And then the parking is being removed from Maria to Snow Mountain Parkway, the back side of those park lane condos, apartments. Um, from Maria to Snow Mountain Parkway. Correct. It's just a fence line. Uh there's no there are no adjacent properties on that stretch on the eastbound side of Reineer.

And there has been a lot of vehicles parked in that area. And I've gotten a lot of complaints that are work vehicles and trailers, um RVs that are parked over the 72-hour time period. So, just want to let the residents know that I have talked to many residents who are grateful that they're not going to have these trailers and other vehicles um there for over the 72 hours. Um and they're not really used for the residents. Um, I saw and used many roundabouts on my trip to Europe and it really does help the flow of traffic and helps pedestrians, especially when you're a foreigner in another c from another country trying to cross the street and and um, Americans just need to slow down and make sure that they let those pedestrians and bicyclists through an intersection. And I'm a little selfish because I have grandchildren who attend school on Maria and I use it a lot to pick them up, take them to school, drop them off and also Lucasy Park and I use Reineer a lot and a lot of times I'm babysitting until we hours of the night and I see these crazy drivers who are taking those corners way too fast and so that just makes me a little nervous and having more um reflectors and paint and any signage you can do to slow people down because everybody seems to be in a hurry. Doesn't matter what time of the day or night. The stop and go traffic of an intersection does produce more greenhouse gases and is not healthy for our community. So, I just I'm I just had to put that out

there. Um, I do have safety safety concerns and I just got to make a plug for my McDow and Baywood roundabout. It's old. It's about 20 years old. There's a lot of broken concrete. There's not enough reflectors to slow down traffic. I would even like to see some flashing lights. Um, it just needs some upgrades. I don't know if we can afford them. Um, but anyway, trucks don't like roundabouts. I've heard all about the truck route on D Street and the hat trucks not being able to maneuver that new roundabout on D Street. Is Rainineer a truck route?

No, it is not. Um although we have heard, I think reports of of trucks using it and so hopefully the roundabout will discourage some of that activity. So hopefully it will distur discourage some of those trucks which I know makes a lot of vibrations and the homeowners don't like that. Um, I think that is all I have, but um, I will be supporting this because I've weighed the pros and cons and I do have those special little grandkids that use it for bikes and walking to and from the park and the farmers market and grandma's driving lots of special cargo.

Thank you. Um, and um, I too will be supporting this no matter where I go in the city. People's number one concern that they raise with me is not climate. It is not other things that we think of going on. It's about speeding. It's about running stop signs. And that's cuz everyone has a visceral fear for their safety. And that is just an over overarching pattern through maybe America, but our city for certain. Sure. And in regards to the lane reduction here, and there's a nice graphic that was in the presentation there where they showed uh the risk of one of the middle lanes in the in when you're a pedestrian crossing, but I think Bejorn and I know uh a young man who was in the slow he was in front of Vulpies. He'd cross four lanes of traffic with the beacons going and it's the curb lane where he got very very badly hurt and uh and nearly died. And he um it's necessary to have that many lanes on Washington. It is not necessary to have that many lanes on Reneer and it's not necessary to speed on Reneer. So these improvements seem very common sense to me. I worry when we talk about the ballards that are missing in a certain area or that I think that's a cyclist that got hit. That's a pedestrian. If a car can't keep in the lane and and we're not saying these are narrow, we're not narrowing the lanes in these projects, those are wide lanes and you're hitting obstacles with your car, you know, uh maybe the thought ought to be on how do we improve driving in in town because that's where a lot of the safety risk comes from, bad driving. So, uh with that, I um looking for other comments from Vice Mayor. Well, I'll just say it now instead of during the vote, but you know, again, like I appreciate staff's work on this and the

advocacy for it, and you know, I would like to support repaving this road, but you know, kind of given the the amount of roads that we can pave in a year or fiscal year, um it doesn't seem responsible to choose this roads over others. Um also given its its safety record, too. Um, you know, I think we should be looking at making uh roads with higher speed limits safer and and uh you know, with more traffic through town. So, you know, kind of for those reasons, I I don't I don't want to support this. Um, and uh, yeah,

I think I think you do make a very good point that we'd all like to be uh, getting more roads po uh, paved and uh, we're looking to staff to give us advice on how we can help you get more uh, roads paved so so we can get to there. Now, there was one other item we were talking about amending the resolution, I believe it was, and do we have that available to us at this time?

We do, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And uh madame clerk, if you could display it for us. And Mr. Mayor, I don't know if you want me to read that. I think we'll need to zoom it up a little bit if you can. And I'm happy to read it or let So you can see what we've got there is um a new introductory paragraph in the second recital position. Um and then some intented text that follows it, still part of that recital. Um and what this does is um allows us to take advantage of the fact that we have all the information and analysis necessary for the city to take advantage of um of design immunity in this um approval action by the council. Um and this this will provide that information in the record so that we have that benefit from this action. Um and this would also provide for making u Mr. Khell's memo that staff have prepared for him um with those facts the the facts that satisfy the design immunity requirements are in those in those insetted those are

you anticipating this to be a typical for design projects in the future? Yes. Um it we have done this previously. We um we failed to have that in in the the package. It looks familiar to me. I think we've seen this before on you. You definitely have and we have and you know we're citing to the municipal code too where we're implementing this practice. So it's very helpful in terms of protecting public funds um while we we do these safety improvement projects. So um our my recommendation is that when the council takes action on this item that it include this amendment um to the resolution. If if you'd like me to read it into record, I will.

No, I think I'd rather ask any of the council if anyone has any uh questions on the text they see in front of them. I appreciate everyone's getting it up on the screens for all to see. And if there are no questions, thank you very much for introducing this. Any further comment? We good? We're good.

We're fine. Um the assistant city manager was just, you know, willing to flag the fact that we're adding Mr. Kosel's memo pursuant to this um this recital if the council adds it. And you can see that in the first paragraph. So just so that's not lost on anyone. Thank you. Thank you. At this point, I think we're looking for a motion. I'd like to make a motion to approve the or the ordinance. Second as as amended. as amended. We have a motion for to approve the ordinance as amended from council member Quint and our second came from second from council member Barnacle. Uh may we have the roll call vote? Barnacle.

Hi. Gator Thompson is recused. Darly no. Now yes. Quint. Yes. Shri. Yes. McDonald. Yes. Motion carries with council member Kater Thompson recused and vice mayor Darly voting no. Thank you very much. And uh with that that is the end of our agenda and this meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much.

So you got the info for