City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. From time to time, the Council uses this moment, this opportunity, to honor a member of the Petaluma community who has had an impact on the fabric of Petaluma through their efforts and their life, and who has recently passed. Tonight is such a moment of sadness. I'd like to close tonight's meeting in honor of Catherine Bobowski, For more than three decades, Catherine came to nearly every council meeting. She spoke in public comment, and she relayed concerns of injustice in the city. Alas, the issues were often not in the city's domain. Catherine's message was often direct and at times difficult to hear. Yet, she never wavered. She spoke with conviction and persistence and unwavering belief that every member of our community deserved a voice. To some, Catherine may have been a symbol of a system or culture that could not or failed to bring peace to those in pain in our community. To others, Catherine's drive and determination were an inspiration An inspiration to create community that cares for all, to treat every member of the community with dignity, and to see that shared humanity and pain in ourselves. So I want to thank Catherine tonight for giving us pause to reflect on the importance of community and how it is the bold efforts of each of us, no matter whom, that makes us a community. Thank you, Catherine. We will miss you. We're closing tonight's meeting in honor of Catherine. And that takes us to our proclamation for the evening. And this meeting, we have our National Healthcare Week, and we invite Pedro Toledo, CEO of Petaluma Health Center, and Jose Guzman, Communications and Public Affairs Manager of Aliados Health, to the podium to accept the proclamation. Which reads, Whereas National Health Center Week celebrates the theme, building innovative care where it matters most, and it recognizes the vital role of community health centers have played as cornerstone of the nation's healthcare safety net for more than 60 years, And whereas 23% of Sonoma County residents choose to receive healthcare services as a patient at one of the eight community health centers in Sonoma County, Petaluma Health Center, Santa Rosa Community Health, Sonoma Valley Community Health Center, West County Health Centers, Alexander Valley Healthcare, and Jewish Community Free Clinic, Alliance Medical Center, and Sonoma County Indian Health Project, which together provide 700,000 patient visits in 2025. So whereas collectively these eight community health centers provide comprehensive medical, dental, behavioral health, preventative, and supportive services throughout Sonoma County, including Petaluma, They improve access to care for children, families, older adults, unhoused people, and other underserved populations. And whereas community health centers are playing a vital role in helping patients navigate care and maintain access to essential health services with the impact from federal and state changes to the Medi-Cal eligibility, enrollment, and continuity of coverage, And whereas each community health center has a dedicated team, including physicians, dentists, nurse, behavioral health professionals, community health workers, and support staff, as well as volunteers and governing board members whose dedication and service improve the lives of Sonoma County residents every day. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Kevin McDonald, Mayor of Petaluma, along with all the members of the Petaluma City Council, do hereby proclaim August 2nd through 8th, 2026, as National Health Center Week in Petaluma, and recognize the outstanding contributions of Petaluma Health Center and the seven other community health centers in Sonoma County, as well as the regional consortium, Aliados Health, for their work, to expand access to high-quality, affordable health care. Thank you.

Major, members of the City Council, again, my name is Jose Guzman, Communications and Public Affairs Manager at Aliado Self, an organization representing 17 community health centers across six counties. We sincerely appreciate your support in recognizing this week as National Health Center Week. Community health centers provide high quality, affordable primary care regardless of a person's ability to pay. They provide essential services including primary care, dental care, behavioral health and preventive services. As the resolution noted, community health centers in our region provided more than 700,000 patient visits to more than 100,000 patients last year only here in Sonoma County. Demonstrating the vital role that they played in our communities. Thank you again for recognizing this week as National Health Center Week and for your continued support. We look forward to continuing our partnership to make our community here in the city of Petaluma and across the county. Thank you.

Sylvia Limas on, I'm sorry that Pedro Toledo couldn't make it this morning, but I did spend this morning at Petaluma Health Center with Pedro, and he had a visitor, Lauren Nath, from the National Association of Community Health Centers that's visiting the West Coast. She's visiting different health centers and talking to them. So in honor of National Health Center Week, I want to commend the Petaluma Health Center and the amazing work that they are doing in Sonoma County and West Marin. They are providing comprehensive services including primary care, behavioral health and dental to the residents of the area and beyond. We are fortunate for the 30 years that Petaluma Health Center has been ensuring our residents have access to high quality health care. Petaluma Health Center has the most diverse clients of all the local health centers, and they are constantly planning to best serve the community residents. Congratulations to Pedro Toledo and all of the Petaluma Health Center board and staff. Thank you.

And thank you very much. Appreciate it. Tonight we have a presentation. We have a presentation from the Marin Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District. And I'd like to invite up the Vector Control District's manager, Peter Boncrude. Boncrude, yep, that's it. To help us out with the presentation.

Great, appreciate it. Wait for those slides to go up. Again, my name is Peter Bonkert. I'm the district manager at Marin-Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control. Appreciate the mayor, council members, and staff giving me the time, and hopefully I'll keep it as brief as I can. I know you guys have a busy schedule today, but we'll go over a little bit about what we do, a little bit about 2025, and a little bit about 2026. Next slide, please. I should note that you have a representative from Petaluma, so each incorporated city is allowed to have an authorized appointee to our board, and Susan Hootkins was hoping to be here. Unfortunately, she wasn't feeling well, so she decided to stay home. All right, so let's talk a little bit So we are one of three bi-county districts in California. So we cover both Marin and Sonoma County. We cover over 2,200 square miles. So it's a lot of geographic location that we cover. And within that, we cover around 800,000 residents. And we have over 25 mosquito species that we focus on. We were formed very early on. We're actually the first mosquito district that was created in California. And if you go to the next slide. We'll talk a little bit about how. So in the early 1900s, the San Rafael Women's Improvement Club decided they wanted to start mosquito control because it was so hard to live in Marin County. And so what they did is they got an entomologist from UC Berkeley, they paid him some money and they came up with some mosquito control ideas and actually hired the first mosquito control inspector in California. And our history begins there. And so basically our district was created when the Vector Control Law was created in California, which was in 1915. We were one of the first districts to be created under the Vector Control Law. And then we continued to expand and incorporate over the next 100 plus years. And now, as I mentioned, we cover both counties completely. Marin and Sonoma, our headquarters are centered in Cotati. and we moved from what was largely impoundment work and source reduction to a very highly advanced mosquito and vector control organization that uses geospatial information, that utilizes a lot of timing, drone technology, a variety of things that we use to do our daily jobs today. Next, please. What do we do? So our mosquito and vector control largely focuses on mosquitoes, so that's the immature surveillance, finding mosquitoes while they're in the water, as well as adult mosquito control, if they've taken to wing and started to fly and could potentially transmit diseases. In addition to mosquitoes, we also work on tick surveillance, so identifying the ticks in our population and then testing those ticks for potential pathogens that they may transmit, so we can track the level of infection within our populations. We also do rodent surveillance and rodent consultation. So if somebody has an issue with rodents in and around their property, our technicians can come out and give good tips on exclusion, source reduction, reduction in harborage, things like that. Things that can make their world better in terms of rodent control, they can take that report and then do the rodent control themselves or they can hand it to a private pest control operator to do that work for them. So it's a nice little stopgap or check for them to make sure that the services they're getting from the private industry are appropriate. In addition to that, we also have a Yellow Jacket program, which has been exceedingly popular. But last year we had, I think, close to 8,000 Yellow Jacket calls throughout both counties. It was a big year. It was about 4,000 more than normal. But even still, we see those services getting utilized every day. And now we're kind of getting towards the peak of Yellow Jackets. If some of you have experienced ground nesting Yellow Jackets in the last month or so, we've definitely seen an uptick in phone calls. Next. In 2025, as I mentioned, we had record service requests, most of them falling in the Yellow Jacket world. But in addition, we took a lot of mosquito complaints. We did have one positive dead bird for West Nile virus. So far in 2026, no West Nile virus indicators in either Marin or Sonoma County, so that's fantastic news. And we hope we end the season that way. But we have some things working against us, which we'll see on a further slide.

Next slide, please.

Just district-wide trends, you can see in general, we see an uptick in our service requests in the areas where we're the most populated. I think that makes sense. But in general, we do see a lot along the 101 corridor. And you'll see an interesting mix of mosquito calls, yellow jacket calls, and ticks, kind of depending on the geography of the area. Next slide. And then looking at City of Petaluma specifically, we had over 500 service requests last year. We inspected roughly 3,000 different individual potential mosquito breeding habitats, and of those treated around 3,000. We did close to 40 rodent inspections within the city limits, and then we did almost 400 yellow jacket treatments last year.

Next.

This just kind of shows the sheer amount of variation within the Petaluma area. So the image that you're looking at on the left is all the different potential mosquito breeding habitats that we've mapped within the city of Petaluma. So pretty substantial. We inspect these regularly, typically every seven to 10 days, depending on how often or what product we've used to treat those locations in the past. But on average, every single one of those locations need to be inspected and treated every 10 days. Next. Gonna talk a little bit about something that thank goodness isn't in Marin or Sonoma County. That's their emerging threat of invasive Aedes or Aedes aegypti. So these mosquitoes came into California in 2013 and they've continued to expand. The red in that map shows all the new existing locations of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, which is another mosquito that doesn't belong in California. We saw those mosquitoes spread very quickly. So they moved from LA all the way up to Shasta and now are actually seen in Southern Oregon as well. Why do we care about this mosquito? How is it any different than the other 25 that we have in our area? Well, these transmit diseases that we don't currently have in Marin or Sonoma County and up until recently didn't have in California. So these mosquitoes transmit dengue, chikungunya, Zika virus, all things that we don't want to see transmitted in California. So the goal is to try to stop the spread of this mosquito. And there's a variety of different ways that we're working on that. but in general right now we're supporting our neighboring Bay Area districts because we don't have Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus that we've found yet, but we have them all around us. Solano, San Mateo, Alameda, not in Napa yet, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara. So they're coming, at least close, and we're trying to keep them as far away as possible. In general, we are starting to see some locally transmitted dengue cases so far. That's only been in Southern California, but it's something to be concerned about because if we start to see the increase in pathogens match what we saw in terms of the transmission of the mosquito up and down California, the assumption is that we're going to see an increase in potentially dengue, chikungunya, and Zika virus in California as locally transmitted diseases. Next slide. Just a brief slide on our financials. I'm going to keep it real short since time's a little tight. Just know that structurally our budget is sound. We are an independent special district, so we manage our own budget. We have our own governance structure. We have a 24-member board, so we have a lot of people making decisions and helping the district move the direction forward. But in general, we've been operating either at or above or at a surplus or just around a surplus every year for the last 20 years, so that's good news. Next. And then 2026 and beyond, so our focus is really on modernization, trying to implement as many efficiency builds as we can within our systems. So taking advantage of a lot of the stuff that you probably heard, the AI technologies, as well as trying to replace some of our aging equipment and infrastructure with newer infrastructure to help support a more modern district. And in fact, we're, at the end of 2026, gonna be breaking ground on an eastern wing of our facilities, adding a new admin, a new staging space for our technicians, and actually a new boardroom as well. So we haven't changed our footprint since 1997, and we're getting a little constrained, so it's time to expand a little bit. In addition to that, we're enhancing our surveillance. We're creating a new web and network of surveillance tools that are out there, new trap types, as well as looking for those mosquitoes, those invasive Aedes mosquitoes moving into our borders and hopefully getting that early warning out as quick as possible so that if we have to respond, we can respond before they really become entrenched. And then obviously looking towards climate resilience, vectors are kind of the canary in the cave in terms of we see those shifts in pathogens, we see those shifts in the way that insects can exist in places they haven't before, and so that gives us, I guess, a unique early warning system on some of the other impacts that climate change could have. Unfortunately, that means we often are dealing with them first, and one of those is actually invasive Aedes and the speed with which that typically tropical mosquito has moved across California. And then really trying to do more of what we're doing here today. So building deeper partnerships with our city partners, with our county partners, and with our NGOs in the area. Basically trying to expand our ability to know what's going on and also hopefully leverage whatever resources other agencies can help and vice versa. We can help leverage our resources for others.

Next slide.

Just real quick, I'll hit on 2026. So far, things are looking pretty good for us. We are seeing an uptick in the mosquitoes that can transmit West Nile virus, but we aren't seeing what they're seeing statewide, which is definitely above average West Nile virus numbers. So as of last year, we were at about 680 positive mosquito samples at this point in the year. They're up over 1,000 now, and so we're sort of seeing that statewide, that West Nile virus is gonna be kind of a big year for West Nile virus, at least across California. The hope is that we can mitigate that in Marin and Sonoma counties. Next. And then finally, again, we'll mention that we are running ahead of where we were in 2025, year to date. So you can see the counties on the left that are kind of outstripping all the others. It's not completely unusual. We typically do see a lot of activity in the Central Valley, and we do see a fair amount of activity in Southern California. But we are seeing that spread across Sacramento, Placer County, and even we're starting to look towards things moving towards the coast as well. So San Mateo is reporting higher numbers than average, Alameda, as well as Contra Costa.

Next.

All right, that's it. Hopefully I left any time there might be for any questions. If not, you're always welcome to give us a call. You can always go to our website as well, which is www.msmosquito.org and get a ton of good information there. And you can always call the office at 707-285-2200 if you have specific questions that you need staff to answer. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Great presentation. We really appreciate your vigilance on our behalf. And I'll look coming down the dais and see if anyone has a particular question tonight. I think you've overwhelmed us with the competency and the need for the program. And thank you very much. Appreciate you coming in and sharing the news with us.

Thank you. And I will mention that we're going to have an open house September 19th. I did give you guys all cards, and then there are some in the back where the sign-up is for any of the public that are interested. September 19th, come see our facilities before we tear them all down. There's going to be a lot of fun events, booths and takeaways, free food. It should be a really fun time. So anybody that can make it, appreciate it. You want to say?

Well, thanks. I think we do have one comment, not a question maybe, but Council Member DeCarli?

I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation. That was a lot more thorough than I thought it was going to be, and I appreciate the history slide as well. And just as a little public service announcement, any time you see stagnant water in a bucket or something like that, if you're not using it, if you're not watering animals with it, turn it over.

Yep, please. Thank you so much for that. If it's there going to be there for longer than three days, dump it out. Thank you. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you.

At this point in the agenda, I look down the dais and ask the council if anyone would like to pull an item from the, or otherwise modify the agenda, or are we adopting as written and as published? And seeing no hands rising, we're adopted by a claim for the agenda as is, which moves us into general public comment. And as per my long introduction earlier, I get to have another shot at it right here. Per our regular procedures during general public comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council's subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda. Public comments are limited to three minutes per person, but depending on the number of persons wishing to address Council, time will be allocated in equal shares no more than 20 minutes. As for our new procedures, and as a reminder, we will be now taking public comments via Zoom, and in compliance with SB 707, in-person and remote commenters will be granted equal time. So if we have more than 20 people wishing to speak, the first 10 in the room and the first 10 on Zoom would constitute equal time. And Zoom tracks the order of the hands that get raised, and so we'll work from that list. In order for Zoom and the in-person participants to know if they're the first 10, we will read out the names of the speakers. And additional comments beyond the 10 are, and this is a maximum case scenario, additional comments will be heard after the last business item on the agenda. So if there are less than 10 of each in-house and Zoom, we fill from the other pool until we have 20 speakers. And we will hear in-person comments first. I will call speakers to the podium. Once those have concluded, the city clerk will help us with the remote speakers, telling them to unmute themselves and make their comments. It's a bit of a learning process. This is only, I think, our third meeting we're doing this, and so we're getting better every meeting. Madam Clerk, I think I've got everything there. Let's lead into, did we get comments online prior?

We did, I believe we got 12. Those are posted online. And at this, we also have 15 attendees in the Zoom meeting. And at this time, I will start at 32nd o'clock. During these 30 seconds, members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to my desk if they have not already done so. And members of the public attending online should raise their virtual hand. And those attending via phone should press star 9 to raise their hand. And speaker requests received after this 30 seconds may not be accommodated.

Okay, I've been informed that we have 18 speaker cards in the room and two speakers on Zoom. That's nice when the math works out so easy. And that means the speaker clock will be set at one minute per person. And we are not pushing anybody out, so I don't have to read the names. Everyone in the list will have the opportunity. So our first speaker will be Tom Chamberlain, to be followed by Amy Taylor.

Good evening. References made to the recent article in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat... I'll start all over again. Good evening. References made to the recent article in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat petaluma fires back at the grand jury. And that article was a Thursday issued statement by our mayor four days before the council met to discuss and vote upon the city's response to the grand jury, where it clearly stated to the city, the city's position, both refuting and castigating the grand jury. I read the city charter and the municipal code, and I don't see where our mayor has his spokesperson authority. To the council, beware of overreach. To the mayor, please don't repeat this in the future. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Amy Taylor, to be followed by Joslyn Cronin.

Good evening. I'm here to give you an update that nobody asked for. I stood on this podium at the bridge extension meeting in February because I was so horrified by the pictures that were coming out of Clear Lake. I stood here with a picture of a dog that was Half dead, I think I called him. I didn't know his name at the time, but his name is Happy. Ironically, that's what his name was. So this dog was failed by so many humans. A man turned him into that shelter thinking he was doing the right thing after he was dumped out of somebody's car. Happy was shoved into a crate and was never fed again. never fed again. The collar's hanging off of his neck, he's standing in a 24 by 35 crate, in his own feces and urine, and now he's dead. And the problem is, it's not water under the bridge,

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

If you have, um, if comments are unable to be completed, we do accept them in writing and council reads all the comments. Jocelyn Cronin to be followed by Mark Kimberly.

This was my dog Lucille. I have prepared remarks, but since I'm on a limited time, I'll tell you because I lived it. Excuse me.

I'll tell you because I lived it.

My dog got into a little altercation with my other dog, and so animal control had me quarantined at North Bay Animal Shelter for 10 days. I visited Lucille just about every day and played with her. I didn't think that I could bring her home because I had a 91-year-old mother living with me, and my husband had died. So... I had to figure out what to do, and Mark Scott suggested, and that's from North Bay Animal Shelter, suggested to me that I send him to Shannon Miranda at Miranda's Rescue because it was guaranteed that she would find a loving home, he would find a loving home for her, and not be killed or live her life out there. So that's what I was told. Now, all of this has now come to light as they're digging up Miranda's rescue and finding all of these dogs' bodies. So what I do want to read to you, because I do not ever delete anything. This is a text from 2021. Thank you very much. The minute has elapsed. I need to read this. Mark Kimberly is our next speaker. The mic.

One moment please. Mark Kimberley to be followed by Dara Childs.

I see you all made the front page again. Petaluma fires back. It's just a big word salad, more of the same excuses. But on page two of this article, There's a picture of the animal shelter. Look at that big, beautiful truck right in front. That was purchased for $36,000. DMB says it's still owned and insured by City of Petaluma. Two weeks ago I was here and I informed you that that was illegally in the possession of the same guy you fired from that animal shelter. He took the signs off it and kept it for himself. What are you going to do about that? Now, when I reported that, I thought I was helping you to recover stolen property. But just hours later, I began receiving a series of very nasty, threatening, intimidating phone calls, voicemails, and text messages from a police detective informing me that now I was the one under investigation around that truck. Not the thief who stole it, but me, the guy that reported it to you. I angered and embarrassed you so much that you felt the need to punish me by arranging for this harassment. Well, you can investigate me all you want. You're just going to find out I'm Mr. Clean, and I'm not going away. I'm going to dig deeper and work harder.

Thank you very much. Dara Childs, to be followed by Jeff Charter. We don't see time in general public comments, so I'm sorry that doesn't work. Dara Childs? To be followed by Jeff Charter.

She's giving me her time.

No, that doesn't work that way in general public comment. It works, it doesn't work in general public comment. It works on agenda items only. Last week we were in an agenda item. Dara Child's last call. Okay, thank you.

have been asking for a forensic audit of the animal shelter. Everyone wants this because of the allegations of embezzlement. They have submitted credible evidence. A forensic audit, which is radically different from any other types of audit, is the only way to prove or disprove. Only two people don't want it. The director doesn't want it because it would reveal proof of felony embezzlement. The city manager doesn't want it because it all happened on her watch. while she defended, covered for it, and lied for that criminal. This city manager told the council that we can't afford it because it would cost hundreds of thousands. I call BS. The shelter before this had done it for less than $20,000 eight years ago. Even if the price doubled since then, it would have been less than $40,000. No way is it the... No way is it... hundreds of thousands. She even told the council that make them accept a lesser audit, one that won't reveal the truth, thereby saving her booty. Justice must be done. Order the audit.

Thank you. Jeff Charter to be followed by Alexandra Charter.

Well, I came a long way tonight. The former executive director of Petaluma Animal Services Foundation functioned the animal shelter here in Petaluma for six years. Over that six years, we functioned in the black. We met all the standards of the requirements of our contract, and we put $360,000 in the bank over that process. The intervening six years after that, North Bay took over, and they functioned at a deficit every year to the tune of $350,000. And now we all know what happened since then, and no questions were asked. You had one man in control of all the finances. He wrote the checks. He did the bookkeeping. Nobody checked it on the board. Nobody checked it from the council. Nobody checked it from the CMO's office. Nobody checked anything. And now you want to tell us it's water under the bridge. That, my friends, is a cop-out.

Thank you. Alexandra Charter, to be followed by Sale White. Alexandra in the room. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Sale White, to be followed by Jennifer Moore.

I was planning to donate my time to Jeff Charter, who came here tonight, because City of Petaluma ruined a really beautiful thing that he was in charge of. A couple months ago, Ms. Cater Thompson mentioned that that was for political reasons. You did. It would be really interesting to know what those political reasons were. Petaluma had a world-class, top-notch animal shelter that was running in the black, not killing animals, on the same budget that North Bay Animal Services had. You guys handed it over to a criminal you didn't investigate for eight years, despite massive public outcry. I came into possession of an email by the former mayor, Theresa Barrett, who suggested that my emails be culled from her account. Makes me kind of wonder how transparent everything is around here. I just hope you're ashamed of yourselves.

Thank you. Jennifer Moore to be followed by Tina Yonkers.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, City staff. Youngstown senior residents saw another park-owned mobile home sold to all ages. The senior park overlay zoning requirements just this last week. In taking it a step further, evidence presented itself from a realtor that Youngstown management demanded a private seller's realtor sell to an all-age person who was a relative of a previously sold Park mobile home, also sold as all-age from the same Youngstown manager. The realtor would not comply as it would jeopardize his real estate license. On the park-owned mobile home just sold, a fellow resident stated to the buyer that Youngstown is a senior mobile park, and the response was that management stated that it is an all-age park and the residents won't accept it.

Thank you. Tina Yonkers to be followed by Marie Cuneo.

Good evening. Unlawful fraud, real estate fraud, unfair business practices, consumer affair violations, seniors have not seen enforcement on the senior park overlay in place since October 2023. Senior overlay is clear for every purchase, agreement, lease, No sign, no notable, no use of illegal all-age rules of the park owner and management must be held accountable. Defend, enforce, and strengthen. No lawsuit decisions exist that allow violations of the senior park overlay and the five senior park overlays. None of the other senior parks are selling to all ages.

Littlewoods.

Littlewood saw brand new mobile homes brought to their park owned vacant lots on the day after the press quoted that the park wasn't. Thank you.

Marie Cuneo, to be followed by Tim Porteus.

Sorry about that.

Okay. The park owner, excuse me, the park owner that they were closing and lawsuit was filed to compel closure. Still no required change of views filed with the city of Petaluma as required by the closure conversion ordinance. Last Friday, we saw the loss of Catherine Babowski, a warrior against the bad actor owner of Little Woods. She fought long before others against the violation and weaponization of arbitration. parking, overcharges, and intimidation. We remember her as one that was misunderstood and fiercely protective of her fellow neighbors. Capri still battles intimidation and weaponization of seven-day notices even after the state HCD inspector himself found no violation. How about two residents receiving four notices at each store all the same? The violation of a kiddie pool or toys outside for their toddler child.

Thank you. Tim Porteus to be followed by Susan Hussey.

The Cottages sees a notice to residents that because park owners must align with AB 2782 and no more predatory long-term financial leases, owners are putting all maintenance of park-owned trees on residents effective in September. They are suggesting the residents must pay $26,000 since they can no longer make enough money to maintain their trees themselves. This is a park whose ground rents average $2,200 with some much higher. Reduction of service because predatory long-term leases are dissolved by law. We remind all that we own our mobile homes unsubsidized and that greed has no place in our community. The false narrative that this drives the park owner out is completely ridiculous. These sophisticated investors did due diligence before purchasing, bought additional mobile parks, knowing that the RSO exists and what profit looks like and have had vacancy control since 1994, nothing new. Notably, the fact... Thank you.

Susan Hussey to be followed by Joanne Cameron.

I've been asked to read this letter for a former staff member of NDIS. She has protected her name because of fear, but you have been provided with that name. She says she worked for North Bay Animal Services and witnessed things that will haunt her to this day. She said the simple truth is Mark Scott should have never been in charge of any animals. She was forced to see animals living in conditions that were so substantial that no creature should have resided there. They reported time after time animals that needed immediate veterinary care and his response was, do the best you can. with no training, no supplies, nothing. And he kept the money that was made for that veterinary care. They watched a lot of their animals being shifted off to Miranda's and they sent emails for updates, none came. Everyone within the NBAS structure looked the other way, including Mark Scott.

Thank you. Joanna Cameron to be followed by Dana Barrett-Geiner.

Hi, I'd like to thank the few of you that I've had conversations with for your time. You've been kind, but this is business. You entered into a relationship with the animal shelter, and to say that a forensic accounting is too expensive, let me tell you, we pay it when we get divorced. It's a reasonable expectation that you'll complete the business. I've been up here. Maybe we need a new city attorney. I don't know who you're getting this advice from. You enter into contract, you have an obligation to enforce it.

And that isn't happening.

And it isn't happening in many arenas around the city. So look at who you have employed and why you aren't asking deeper questions. A math major making excuses for numbers should be bells and whistles for you. So I just ask that you do better and thank you.

Thank you. Dana Barrett Greiner to be followed by Betsy Richards.

from a former employee of Clear Lake Animal Shelter. I worked for Mark Scott longer than I ever wanted to. When I say that, I mean Mark wasn't someone people wanted to work for. Those of us who stayed didn't stay because of him. We stayed in spite of him. We stayed because we loved the animals under his supervision. We knew that if we left, they would suffer even more. I stayed because I witnessed problems that were reported but never addressed. I stayed because someone had to comfort the dogs. I stayed because I believed in the idea of no kill only to discover that that term was used to appease the public and the cities he had contracts with, so the public would donate to his thrift stores. The reality never matched the words no kill. What he did was manage intentional animal cruelty by legal definition. Dogs were locked into small kennels for months and in some cases years because there were not enough rescue partners willing to accept transfers. One reason repeatedly discussed among staff was that organizations wanted to work with Mark Scott. There was one notable exception, Shannon Miranda's rescue.

Thank you. Betsy Richards to be followed by Hannah Stewart.

Good evening. June 2023, after months of pleading for staff adequate supplies, timely deliveries of food and cleaning products, additional transfers to relieve overcrowding and better medical support for the animals, dogs were transferred to Miranda's Rescue. At the time, we believed those animals were finally getting the help that they needed. Instead, we never learned what ultimately happened to many of them. Staff repeatedly called and texted Miranda's Rescue seeking updates, but received no response. Conditions at NVAS continued to deteriorate. Staff concerns about animal welfare were ignored. The shelter often housed often housed two to three times the animals that it was designed to hold. Food cleaning supplies and other necessities frequently arrive late in insufficient quantities or not at all. We were sometimes told we were using too much, in quotes, and to make what we had last longer. As a result, employees often spent their own money to purchase dog food cleaning supplies and other basic necessities.

Thank you very much. Hannah Stewart to be followed by Courtney Garcia.

Good evening, Council. Our longtime resident, Catherine, passed away this week, as you already mentioned. I'm just remembering Catherine as a person who reminded me a bit of my grandmother. She was definitely a fighter, and we at Little Woods appreciate how much she did fight for us. She was involved in the third arbitration that we had and was very helpful in the positive outcome that we had for that. I just wanted to let the council and Catherine know that she and her family will be in our thoughts and prayers and to give her accommodation and let her know that that she fought a good fight and we will be continuing that fight. Since I have 12 seconds, I also wanted to just let you know that they've upped the parking fees for everyone. So I just wanted to let you guys know that if you wanted to come and look at it later.

Thank you. Courtney Garcia.

Good evening. I'll be continuing the letter of the anonymous former employee. We repeatedly told Mark Scott that the shelter was dangerously overcrowded. We warned him that too many dogs, that we had too many dogs, and that told him that the conditions were becoming unacceptable and the animals were wasting away due to lack of food. We bought dog food with every spare dollar we had and brought it to work. His response was almost always the same. We'll look into it. He never did. Nothing changed. Instead of providing resources we needed, employees were forced to spend their own money on basic necessities like dog food, laundry detergent, hoses, squeegees, and cleaning supplies just to keep the shelter operating. This isn't a one-time mistake. This wasn't a bad week. It wasn't an isolated incident. These concerns were the norm, not the exception. The public donated money believing animals were protected. Volunteers gave their time believing they were helping. Employees came to work because we cared deeply about the animals in our care.

Thank you. And that concludes our in-house, and we'll take it over to our Zoom participants.

Yes. S. Kirk's If you could please unmute yourself and make your comment.

Thank you. Susan Kirks, Petaluma. I'm commenting this evening on the same topic I commented about in your earlier August meeting, and that is the barbed wire fencing that surrounds the perimeter of the Paula Lane conserved open space property. That type of fencing should never have been installed at this property. And in addition to that, there's interior fencing and an extra gate that were installed, which also obstruct wildlife movement and prevent wildlife from accessing their habitat. That fencing needs to be removed. That was my request in early August, and I continue to receive inquiries and concerns about that. And lastly, I'd just like to say one minute for public comment. The mayor has discretion. You could expand that to 30 minutes and add some time.

Unfortunately, it is the one minute right there. We'll go to our next speaker.

Jody, if you could unmute yourself and make your comment.

Oftentimes, Catherine was misunderstood. We thank you for closing the meeting tonight in her honor and your words. But she spoke up against rule breakers. She spent a lot of time making complaints to the police department because she felt rule breakers, law breakers should be held accountable. She was a warrior who took a bus to city council to make sure all knew the actions of the park owners. We will warrior on, not just for Catherine, but for all the neighbors she fought hard for, and for all to have a voice, no matter what disabilities they have. Removal of more parking today at Little Woods is payback for residents standing up against the attack on their community and their unsubsidized home. We stand together, us mobile home residents, for the truth, not the ridiculous social media fiction.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. That was our last Zoom speaker, and that closes general public comment for the evening. I'd like to bring it back on up to the council for council comments now on activities they've been involved in for the community since our last meeting. And tonight, I'd like to start to my right with Councilmember Barnicle. I have no updates. Thank you very much. Councilmember Cater-Thompson?

I have no updates.

Summer is here. Vice Mayor DeCarli. I have some. Okay.

Hey, everybody. So at Ag and Open Space, instead of our regular held meeting, we decided to meet at Steamers Landing in Petaluma. That is the river park, so everybody knows. And, you know, Ag and Open Space has helped them. And so got a full tour of the place. They explained how it all works and how Ag and Open Space interacts with them. and then tended the ribbon-cutting opening of Blanton's Western store on the Boulevard. That was really neat. That was my first ribbon-cutting. And, you know, it's been a while, too, since there's been a Western store on the Boulevard, and so it's neat to see a new one. They did a great job with the store. You know, so go down, get some new boots, get a hat. you know, I do appreciate the animal shelter folks coming here tonight and I was kind of after the last meeting reflecting, you know, I had colleagues saying that, you know, they didn't do enough and could have all those years and then ending the meeting saying that, you know, we just want to move on. And so that was an opportunity right there to you know, kind of walk the walk. And, um, so anyway, you know, I, I was hoping to see some more accountability, but we didn't get that yet. So thank you.

Thank you. Um, council member now.

Um, thank you. Um, I did ask the city attorney again in the letter or an email about the little woods parking, um, So maybe he can give us an update, because I asked at the last meeting, because each tenant doesn't have space at their actual unit, and it is written in their contract. So that is one question. But I do want to remind everybody that tomorrow night, Tuesday, August 4th, is Petaluma Night Out. Do you want to see a helicopter or meet a police canine? Then don't miss the Petaluma Night Out at the Petaluma Fairgrounds tomorrow night, August 4th, from 4 to 7 p.m. This annual public safety festival will feature more than 30 booths hosted by public safety agencies. Non-profit organizations include... The Petaluma Fire, the Safe Team, the City Department, Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, the Red Cross, and many others. Each booth will offer activities, giveaways, and helpful community resources. This is a great family fun event, and the visitors can enjoy the city's emergency vehicles, free food, games, music, prizes, and more. This year's event will also include an animal shelter and rescue supply drive and a community blood drive, a back to school pack a patrol car supply drive. Anyone who contributes to any of these community drives will receive a raffle ticket for a chance to win more prizes. The homeless coalition meeting update that I attended via Zoom last week Staff from the Sonoma County Department of Health Services presented results from the spring point-in-time count. They were encouraged to report that the number of individuals experiencing homelessness has decreased compared to the previous count. Staff also discussed emerging drug trends. They noted concerns about an extremely potent synthetic drug that has appeared on the East Coast and would eventually spread to the West Coast. According to the presentation, the substance is significantly more potent than fentanyl, and may not respond to Narcan. Officials expressed concern that it could be mixed with other illicit drugs and because it's expensive to produce. So there's COTS volunteer opportunities. COTS is seeking volunteers to help serve meals during afternoon and evening shifts, and volunteers must be at least 16 years or older. Those interested are encouraged to visit the COTS website for additional information and volunteer opportunities. In memory of Catherine, thank you to the Mayor for adjourning the meeting in Catherine's honor. I first met Catherine more than 20 years ago after she moved to Little Woods Mobile Home Park, located in my neighborhood. We participated together in a Fight Cancer fundraising, walking the Casa Grande High School track for several hours to raise money for cancer. During that time, Catherine shared her personal journey with cancer and how She came to live in Petaluma. Over the years, I occasionally provided her transportation to and from City Hall. She was a regular presence at City Council meetings and was deeply committed to improving conditions at Little Woods. Although she was often outspoken, sometimes misunderstood, Catherine was a timeless advocate who brought attention to the concerns of the residents in our mobile home communities. May she rest in peace. I like to think that she's still watching over Petaluma, reminding us all not to park in fire lanes. If there are fire lanes in heaven, I'm sure Catherine is making sure and certain that everyone keeps them clear so emergency vehicles can go through. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Council Member Quint?

Thank you. So I want to thank staff and the mayor for coming out to Adobe Creek this past week and meeting with the neighborhood homeowners association. Many of you know the Adobe Creek neighborhood suffers from a dilapidated golf course and clubhouse. It's something that's just been deteriorating for for years, and it's a real nuisance for the homeowners association and the residents that live there. And so, you know, staff went with open ears, listened, answered questions, and has committed to trying to figure out ways to support the residents in addressing those issues. So I just want to say thank you for that. I'm looking forward to National Night Out. Hopefully I'll win a prize. And I just want to say this Wednesday's PBAC meeting has two important agenda items. One is the Howard Street project, and one is the wayfinding project for the active transportation plan. So this is just one of the public's opportunities to come and see the presentation on those projects and provide public input. So again, it's just another opportunity for our public process, and I would encourage you to come if you are interested. And that's what I got. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Shribbs?

Okay, thank you. First, I did attend the fairgrounds. There was a music festival for the schools, which looked like it was very successful. Three bands were rotating around and interchanging music all day long. I was able to volunteer out the recycles and trash. We were able to educate a lot of folks on where to put things and even get the vendors to maybe nudge them to put more effort into figuring out all recyclable materials. So that was pretty successful. I was able to talk the Ag and Open Space meeting to be held at our river park instead of anywhere else in Sonoma County. And so we had over 30 people show up. A lot of the leaders here, a couple leaders in town showed up, along with the folks of Friends of Petaluma River. And so a really nice display of what we're trying to do at the river park there. So it was a really enjoyable time there. I did attend a ACWIS community 2.0, like an initial fundraising engagement type meeting. And this is where John Crowley has been taking the lead, but also now led by Val Richardman. And they are going to try and increase engagement of community throughout town, particularly on the east side right now. So anyway, there's a new movement in town here. So please look it up. And it's a new movement that's going to be expanding. Then I met with some homeowners around the Kenilworth Junior High School, and there has been a lot of painting on the road there to increase the safety, especially drop-off and pick-up times, and students riding their bikes up there, lots of concerns about the teenagers and e-moto bikes type things. But there's a whole new set of stripes, and it's all designed for safety, but there are so much more striping that if it's your first time going up there, there may be Okay, you may kind of get lost to where everything is because it's changed. So anytime there's a change. So I'm going to recommend if you have a student at either Corona or Kenilworth, please go visit before school starts and actually check out the new striping and where to go. And you're going to be reducing your speed now at both schools. It's 15 miles an hour, by the way, passing by either of those schools, including for the bikes. We attended the ribbon cutting at Blanton's, and that's a new hat and boot store that is more of a high end. I've spent some time in Texas doing some line dancing, and when folks went out to line dance, they wore some really nice boots and hats. And we have a nice line dancing here occurring at several places now. So if you're into that, that's a nice place to go. The ribbon cutting was just this last week. Also, if you go by another school, which is the Loma Vista and the Boys and Girls Club on Maria Drive, there's a whole new set of paint on the road. They use the mascot bear for the school and for the Boys and Girls Club. And so the intent is to not only slow folks down, make awareness that it's a youth area, and it's also for safety. So it was a really wonderful event that a lot of students and parents are out there doing the painting on the ground. Then there's a Friends of the Petaluma River fundraiser coming up shortly. So it's a gathering, it's a really spirited event with lots of music also, really fun event. So that's coming up if you wanna look that one up. Also from last meeting, I know there was some discussions about AI centers and the like, and I wanted to make sure I was clear about what I was advocating. I wasn't sure it came out clear, but we do have a technology businesses in town, lots of them, and I'm fully supportive of all these businesses. It was Telecom Valley for a while with AFC that was here. So I'm fully supportive of all these businesses, the technology businesses, but I just was looking for drawing the line between them and

the big the really big uh the data centers there but i want to make sure i'm clear on supporting them that's here and that's my report for this time thank you very much um just want to note it's a real treat for petaluma to have two members on the county advice ag and open space advisory board no other city has a rep on it we have two on it so thank you both for that participation and um Then I'd like to note that we do hear folks who are coming in and talking about the animal system. And I think there's still work to be done. There's still reports that we need to be transparent on. We talked about financial and other information that needs to come out. And this will be on our agenda, I think, again in September. And we'll be able to... inform on what we know at that time, both from outside of our system, Miranda, et cetera, and from inside what our plan is for getting us to a permanent new contractor at the facility. So I don't think we're at the end of the road yet on a lot of the issues. And we are taking it very seriously. And I think all of us feel the pain from it. So I wanted to address that to you all. And then there's been a number of community meetings that I've been to over the recent time. The only one probably not mentioned so far is KPSCA. The people doing the video tonight and whatnot also have a radio channel, streaming channel. But they're our public access channel. And they're growing right now. They're moving into emergency support. They're moving into all kinds. But they'll also train up. folks who want to run their own podcast or who want to do radio broadcast. So they're real community service right now, getting different voices heard in the community. I also want to announce that later this month, right here at the Poly Class Center, there'll be a movie shown by Generation Housing that's called Fault Lines. And it's a documentary on why it's so hard to build affordable housing and what the hurdles are to building affordable housing and why we still have a housing crisis. There'll be a panel discussion afterwards, and they've asked me to be on the panel at that time, so I can share the Petaluma side of that story. And that's my report, and I'd like to pass it over to our city manager.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Nowt, for mentioning National Night Out, because I was going to mention that, and I'm going to ask that our city attorney talk about mobile homes and parking.

Thank you city manager. Thank you council members. We are looking at a great number of things regarding the direction the council has given us to make sure to continue to uphold and where possible strengthen the city's mobile home regulation protections for mobile home residents that are also intended to ensure the long-term sustainability of mobile home park housing in Petaluma. That is where almost 900 households reside in the community. including looking at what appear to be efforts by the park owners to reduce services, including in the form of reduced parking. We currently have 11 active lawsuits. Regarding these matters, we're scheduled to be with the council on the 14th of September to discuss those in an overview kind of way, which I think is important because there's a lot of effort there to, as I said, protect the housing. I don't have... What I want to say is we're looking at a number of things related to the parking issues and we continue to appreciate when the residents send us notices they're receiving about these things because we need that specificity to assess and our emphasis in all these things. are not symbolic efforts. They're efforts that actually impact and protect the housing. So we're very thoughtful about what's going to be the most likely way to accomplish that. We continue to be pleased with the results we're having in the litigation. And it's not surprising because what's being litigated are things that the courts have already established. that for some reason are being relitigated now. So I think that's, and like with respect to issues like the parking, we have to consider carefully what's, you know, as I said, what's the best way to accomplish protecting the standard of living for our residents, including with parking on site. So we'll have more to discuss with the council about that and are continuing to look at best avenues for that. And I really encourage the residents to keep us informed by sending us documents. That's the most helpful way. Also photos of residents. developments that they may have concerns about and calling is fine too. So that's, I think that's probably the best update for me and if council members have individual questions, please let me know and I'll be glad to address them. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that very much. That moves us to our consent calendar for the evening and I guess looking up and down the dice, any questions on the consent calendar? Any items to be pulled and treated separately? Vice Mayor? I would like to pull item three, please. Okay. Thank you very much. And then let's go over to public comment now. Again, the similar narrative as to earlier for public comment on the consent calendar and we're taking the consent calendar public comment in its entirety and then we'll come back and treat the calendar as requested. So the public is invited to make comments on items listed on the consent calendar and our procedure on agenda items will follow the process that I spoke of earlier, and except that the number of speakers is not limited. That was the distinction between, that was made about the last animal control opportunity. Public comments are limited to three minutes per person. However, the time per speaker may be reduced depending on the number of speakers. We will hear in-person comments first. I will call speakers the podium when those are concluded the city clerk will call the remote speakers to unmute themselves to so I'm absolute city clerk have we any public comment on the consent calendar.

Sorry, I lost my notes on that. I don't believe so, not on the consent calendar. But we do have 15 attendees in the meeting. And at this time, I will start a 30-second clock for the public comment. And during these 30 seconds, members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to my desk. Members of the public attending online should raise their virtual hand. And those attending via phone should press star 9 to raise their hand. Speaker requests received after this time may not be accommodated.

Okay. No cards? And no hands on cards and no cans and so then that closes public comment on the consent calendar and I'll bring it back up the dice let's treat the items one 2 and 4 first and then move to item 3 as a separate item and so on one 2 and 4 any concerns comments. And I do have one comment I'm going to make. Okay, go ahead. Okay. I sensed a motion coming. Did I have that right? Yeah. So before that, the tentative agenda, item two, has an attachment that's called significant items for the future. And I was hoping for our September meeting that could include the ICE out. I don't think I saw our response to – that petition from the public and I'd like to let the public know that we have a plan for addressing that public concern. So I think that's just a direction, a suggestion to staff based on past public participation. So, Council Member Quint.

I'd like to make a motion to move items one, two, and four.

Thank you. Thank you very much. A motion by Quint. A second by now. And back to the city clerk for a roll call vote.

Barnacle.

Hi.

Cater Thompson. Yes. DeCarly.

Yes.

Now. Yes. Quint.

Yes. Shrives. Yes.

McDonald.

Yes.

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you very, very much. And now for item three, the resolution for purchase of five battery buses. Vice Mayor, you asked that I be pulled. What are your thoughts?

I did. I don't have any questions on it, but I realize that city policy wants to replace the existing fleet. But my concern is less policy and more logic. We had a transit meeting yesterday. This year where, you know, we've lost over a million dollars in funding, some of the routes are low, some of the routes were canceled, rerouted. So, you know, transit has shrunk, and it's not quite as widely used. And so I don't think it's fiscally responsible or it makes sense to then also be purchasing new buses. And so, you know, there's just no reason. We have several buses now. There's just no reason. And so I'm not going to be supporting this. And in addition, I think it's $5.5 million on new buses, and I realize that's grant money, but it's still taxpayer dollars at the end of the day. So I don't think that's appropriate to do.

Thank you very much. All right, I'll move the item and I'll just say that since mid-24 when diesel in California was around $4.90, right, it peaked this year in May at $7.35 a gallon. Right now it's $6.30. I think it's prudent for us to be moving toward electric where we can actually generate electricity locally and be fixing our electricity prices wherever we can. So I'm happy to move the item. Thank you. We have a motion.

I'll second. And I'll say that we just upgraded our bus so they could go electric.

The fleet yard.

The terminal. The terminal? Yep.

Terminal.

Terminal. Thank you. I can talk.

Thank you very much. Council Member Schribbs?

I'm just adding a comment. I will support this. And it's not just buying the new equipment, but also we can, if we have more buses that we need, we can sell some of the gas guzzling buses and get them to where they need to be because there's other places that actually need those because they can't afford the electric ones at all.

Thank you very much. Yeah, and I just want to add, too, that in 2020, we declared ourselves climate ready and declared a framework that all decisions would be viewed with that lens. And, you know, sometimes the issues go off the front page and they're not that important or you don't remember. So I think climate is one of those things we have to keep repeating to ourselves and keep saying, oh, those fires that we're not fond of, that are blowing smoke over town, the other battles in the Middle East, everything. Electrification has so many positives to the community that I'd be in support of this. So we had a motion from Barnacle and a second from now. I'd like to have a roll call vote, please.

Barnacle?

Aye.

Cater Thompson? Yes. DeCarli?

No.

Now? Yes. Quint?

Yes.

Shrives?

Yes.

McDonald?

Yes.

Motion carries with one no vote.

Thank you very much. That moves us to public hearings, matters for consideration, and this is an introduction to first reading of an ordinance of the city council for a zoning text amendment to amend the Scott Ranch planned unit district development standards to rescind section 5.3, prohibiting swimming pools, and add table 5.1, land uses, residential districts, swimming pool, hot tub, and spa as permitted accessory units uses subject to specific use standards under implementing zoning ordinance section 7.080. And to help us with this tonight, we have Mike Janicek, our senior planner. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor McDonnell and members of City Council. My name is Mike Januszak and here to present the staff report for the Scott Ranch PUD amendment. An overview of my presentation this evening. I will go through project background, describe the scope of work, and provide staff's analysis and recommendation. The project is located west of D Street along Windsor Drive. This PUD amendment pertains solely to the residential component. That's the 12 acres in the northwest of the PUD. That consists of the 28 residential lots. You'll see in the inset map, there's also a 47-acre public parks and open space conservation easement. That's also part of the PUD amendment. are also part of the Scott Ranch PUD. The amendment does not include that portion of the PUD. The existing conditions, about half of the homes have been constructed. This PUD amendment pertains to swimming pools and would only affect the private fenced-in rear yards. The general plan land use designation for the site is very low density residential. The PUD amendment proposed this evening would not affect project density. That was previously approved with the vesting tentative subdivision map. It was .6 dwelling units per acre, which is the lowest allowable density for the site. And the zoning was switched from R1 to PUD with that suite of approvals. which as you can see on your screen, city council adopted the vesting time subdivision map, the certified EIR and the PUD in early 2023. And in 2025, there was a subsequent site plan and architectural review for more detailed architecture and landscaping. It's also noteworthy, the origin of the prohibition on swimming pools within the PUD was first brought forward to the Planning Commission public hearing in August of 2022, which was required before going to City Council in 2023. This was the same period in time where there was a moratorium on new pool permits and the stage four water shortage contingency plan was in effect and adopted by council in the same time, August, 2022. The requested amendment before this evening is to remove Section 5.3, which prohibits swimming pools as an accessory use and structure, and then to add swimming pool, hot tub, and spa as an allowed permitted accessory use. And that would take place on Table 5.1 within the PUD development standards. Going back, there's a couple other points I wanted to make. The request is applicant-initiated. It is pursuant to the procedure in IZO Section 19-042 , which requires City Council approval. The draft ordinance is an attachment one in your packet this evening, and it was forwarded and recommended for approval by Planning Commission by a vote of four to one, with one recusal and one absence. that executed resolutions and attachment two. And the purpose of the requested amendment is to bring the PUD development standards into alignment with citywide regulations for pools. And those citywide regulations include the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan, as well as the Water Conservation Ordinance.

All that came after the EIR was done. So when we think about this project, it truly is You know, if it wasn't a developer here and there was three families that were out there who wanted to put pools in and there was kids there, would we tell them no? Or, you know, senior citizens who wanted to put in a lap pool or someone who just wants a hot tub. You can't even install a hot tub. I think if it was residents we were looking at and not the developers acting on behalf of the project, the answer would be overwhelmingly yes. It's silly that you can't put a hot tub in your backyard. So I'll be supporting it.

Thank you.

Council Member Cater-Thompson?

I, too, will be supporting this. And there are a lot of homes around these new homes. So it's not like it's a blank slate. I mean, you're forgetting to look at the homes that are there and how many swimming pools are there. And I appreciate Council Member Quint. Do we want to do a ban on swimming pools? Well, if that's what you want to do, then get two people to sign and we can have that conversation. But that's not where I want to go. I do not want to ban swimming for some areas and allow for other areas in our town.

Thank you. So I do want to thank Susan Kirch for calling in and mentioning the mountain lions. That's a renowned area for mountain lion spotting. All the neighbors in Victoria know to keep their small animals in and things because it is known for mountain lions. On the project, I am a little concerned that no party can give us the documentation for how that condition got into the documents. You know, I'm not planning, not the developer, not those who don't want them. I mean, like, that's kind of an unusual circumstance where nobody has the smoking gun on why a specific thing occurs. And it gives me pause that situation. It's not well thought out. It was, you know, something just put on the table in the moment. I pulled back up the presentation screen that shows where the housing is and the park borders a road. which then borders the driveways, which then borders the houses, and then the pools next to the main thoroughfare, Windsor. So I'm confident that the, any access to the pools is quite a urban distance from the park. And so I don't feel like the park is, is right on top of these pools as if it would be back fenced to park. So, I feel confident in that regard. And I really like seeing in the council questions, are the pools covered, you know, and are the pools well fenced and things like that. That all persuades me that, you know, good thought was given to this. Also, I really like the WELO numbers are still accurate in the water efficiency landscape ordinance numbers. because, you know, we do have to keep an eye on our water consumption. And, you know, first perception is pool's a big water hog, and yet the wheeler numbers show that that's not true. And so with that, I'll be supporting this tonight. So, Council Member DeCarli.

So I would like to say that homeowners can always go and apply for a pool because everybody's right, they're not banned. But if we want to make things more affordable in Petaluma, we wouldn't want to grant this to a developer to then go ahead and sell homes for more just for the potential to have a swimming pool. And, you know, because maybe new homeowners don't want a pool. Maybe they do. You know, if they do, they can go apply for one. And, you know, we're working on our permitting process right now to streamline that, make it more easy. And it should be easy. And so if people do want them, they can go get it. But otherwise, this is really just an opportunity to sell homes for more money. And that's not making things more affordable in Petaluma.

Thank you very much. And I actually see sort of the opposite. I feel that if someone moved into the home and then had an ordinance that said you can't build a pool, they wouldn't come in as a one. They would know how hard it is to get through planning and how hard it is to get a text amendment for an individual, whereas for an aggregate, I think it's more efficient and I think it's more egalitarian to have it for all.

But nobody's asking for a ban, though.

It is in there that they can't. What we're doing, the action tonight, is that they can. So I think we've all had our say on this. So who would like to make the motion on this? I'll move approval.

I'll second.

Council Member Barnicle motioned, and Council Member Now for a second, and the city clerk for a roll call vote. Thank you.

Barnicle?

Aye.

Cater Thompson? Yes. DeCarli?

No.

Now? Yes. Quint? No.

Yes trips note McDonald yes and motion carries with 2 no votes thank you very much and thank you for the presentation staff and and from and we move to item 6 which is to receive review and adopt a resolution approving fiscal year 2526 Annual Military Equipment Use Report pursuant to Chapter 8.03 of the Petaluma Municipal Code and the California Government Code 70707075, that's AB 481, which also approves The continued use of Petaluma Police Department Policy 709, military equipment funding, acquisition and use. Also Policy 613, unmanned aerial systems and unmanned ground vehicles. All is required by Assembly Bill 481. And to help with us tonight, we have our Lieutenant Garrett Gaviano, and appreciate you being here. Take it away.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, community members, Mayor, council members, and city staff. This evening's presentation is intended to be a review of the fiscal year 26 Military Equipment Use Report, while seeking renewal of the related ordinance and department policies. Next slide, please. In September of 2021, the California legislature passed AB41. The bill was an effort to increase transparency, accountability, and oversight on the acquisition and use of military equipment. The bill also sought to provide safeguards to protect the public's welfare, safety, civil rights, and liberties due to the misuse of this equipment. Among the bill's requirements was a publicly available annual report to the governing body, which is to include how the equipment was used, the use, maintenance, storage, and training costs, information about policy violations and related equipment, and the intention to acquire additional equipment in the coming year. Next slide, please. The department has been committed to displaying, hosting community meetings, and providing information regarding its use of the equipment. In addition to tonight's presentation, on June 24th, this report was presented to the Public Safety Advisory Committee. And on July 15th, the department held a military equipment display event. The community is also invited to join us tomorrow evening at the previously mentioned Pelham One Night Out, where some of this equipment will be on display. Next slide, please. The department has established a webpage located on the department's website in the transparency portal section titled specialized equipment. The page discusses AB41 and the qualifying equipment, contains historical documents related to the proceedings since the adoption of AB41 and the annual report. The department has a dedicated email address for community members who wish to provide comments, concerns, and complaints regarding the department's use of the military equipment. Next slide, please. It is important to highlight that the Petaluma Police Department only possesses two pieces of equipment that were designed for and obtained from the Department of Defense. Those are the two armored personnel carriers. While the department is not often called upon to use much of this equipment, our duty as a law enforcement agency is to ensure our officers are properly trained and equipped to deal with the dangers they and our community members may face. And our country's tragic history of critical incidents provides a window into the potential complex tactical problems officers may one day be confronted with. So while we recognize the responsibility to only use this equipment when necessary, we believe the equipment we possess and the related training is an essential part of our preparedness.

Next slide, please.

The equipment used most by the department in fiscal year 26 was our unmanned aerial systems or drones. The department's drone team currently consists of four officers and a sergeant, all of whom possess a Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 remote pilot certificate. The department currently owns eight drones. The two models on the left are commercially available. The drone on the right is a purpose-built tactical indoor drone, is not commercially available. All these drones are relatively small, weighing less than five pounds, and none of our drones are weaponized.

Next slide, please.

During fiscal year 26, the department deployed drones 45 times. The most common usage was to maintain a visual perimeter and enhance situational awareness during active criminal investigations where officers were approaching a scene with a known suspect or attempting to locate suspects who had fled from officers. As our use of the drones has more than doubled from last year to this year, we believe we will continue to see an increased number of deployments. due to an understanding that there are greater permissible uses within the confines of our current policy. Two enforcement areas we'll be experimenting with are the use of drones for both fireworks enforcement and to combat dangerous driving behavior. Next slide, please. There were no policy violations found or complaints related to deployment or use of the equipment. And other than the replenishment of consumable equipment, the department is not seeking to purchase new equipment. Next slide, please. The Department is asking City Council to make a finding that the military equipment listed in the policy is necessary because there is no cost-effective, reasonable alternative that can achieve the same objective of community and officer safety, and that the proposed military equipment use policy will safeguard the public's welfare, safety, civil rights, and civil liberties. The department is seeking city council review and approval for the continued funding, acquisition, and use of all previously authorized military equipment and related policies 709 and 613. Next slide, please. And with that, we'd gladly accept any questions or comments you might have.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the report. the lack of need for deployment and usage of this equipment. Any questions of staff? Council Member Schroes?

Yeah, and John, I'm very supportive of everything you guys are doing. It's really great work, and you show up every time using community orientation on everything. The one question that did come up from a citizen, I just want to get a review of possible thoughts. And that's dealing with the large equipment, the big pieces. Because we've heard from various folks from parking reform that a parking space is valued at over $50,000 because it's taking up what could have been a building, but instead it's a parking space. And so that's the current value of a parking space versus parking versus building. And so these are going to be housed at our new facility. And I think you've got about four pretty large vehicles and taking up a fair amount of space. So is it cost-effective, is the question, for safety that we need all of these vehicles? Can we get by with eliminating at least one? Maybe creating more space for other equipment that we might need, such as the smaller drones, because there is cost to every vehicle, maintenance, training, and such. So is there a viewpoint that, yeah, we really need to hold onto these given our tighter parking that we may have down the road here in the new space, or can we actually have a discussion about do we need all of it, or can we get rid of one of the large pieces?

Yeah, I think, you know, throughout the years, we've accumulated this equipment, feeling that it's all necessary for the mission that we're trying to accomplish. I think we can look at a known metric and say, yes, it costs this much to park the vehicle, but we can't really quantify as the hidden metric of what that may – what it may cost a community member's life, an officer's life, if we don't, in fact, have it. So I think what we have now is all necessary equipment, and it balances out the need to be able to park those at the new facility, which I believe we're accounted for in the design of that building.

Right. So the two larger armored vehicles, they're a very different purpose, and you see them as an absolute need here in the near future. That's correct. Okay, I just thought I'd get that answered. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Quint. Thank you.

Yeah, just really more out of curiosity, did you use drones this year for fireworks patrol? And did you find it to be useful?

Yeah, so we, the reporting period for this report ends obviously June 30th, so I didn't report on the drone usage, but we did in fact use drones, or attempted to use drones for fireworks enforcement. I think we had three deployments. We didn't really find it effective. It was something we were experimenting with, and we are tweaking the way that we're going to approach that in the coming year.

Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Barnicle?

Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about dangerous driving and how you plan to use it for that?

So in thinking about how we could use this technology to combat issues that the community faces, we think of situations such as the intersections of North McDowell, East Washington, where you have a high traffic volume. It's difficult to do enforcement there because of the number of vehicles and the speeds of the vehicle, having officers exit the various spots that are around that intersection. So the thought would be potentially having a drone up with an officer observer that could potentially spot violations, communicate with officers that are in spots that are easier to get out of to potentially stop violators. So that would be one example of potentially combating dangerous driving behavior.

Thank you. I'll save my comments. Thanks.

Vice Mayor?

Is there any comparison between before drones and with drones as far as, you know, I guess the performance? You know, and either, you know, did they prevent deaths? Did they find, you know, were we not finding people before that we were looking for, you know, children or runaway cars or whatever? I mean, is there any comparison to really show the effectiveness of them?

Yeah, I think it would be all anecdotally, but there is comparisons. There's been times where we've had people flee from us, and many times, given the amount of time in which the officer last saw the suspect and they fled, it can become very difficult to find those people because an officer on foot can only cover so much ground. Officers responding to the scene in vehicles, it takes them a greater amount of time to get there. So having the drone be able to immediately fly, depending on where the drone operator is, attributes to being able to capture those suspects in a greater, with more efficiency. There's also been times when we're searching for missing persons, and we have a lot of open spaces in between towns, so in between residences like the Lynch Creek Trail, some open spaces near the factory outlets, where it's it's more efficient to put the drone up and search those large areas as opposed to sending officers on foot or maybe using our dual-purpose or electric bicycles to put them in that area. So we have found that there are greater efficiencies in using the technology. There's similarities to situations which we would call the Sheriff's Department's helicopter, which we do rely upon from time to time, but those efficiencies are vetted out in both circumstances.

Thank you. Thank you. And that was my question. Does our helicopter policy cross over with our drone policy and reduce our helicopter use now? I believe so. Yes. Great. Thank you. The other question I had is that for the military equipment we have, it provides regional response, correct? That's correct. So what region do we cover or will we cover all county if need be?

Yeah, so it would depend on the request and depending on the type of incident that we're responding to. If it's a critical incident or emergency, we could go anywhere that we can get our vehicles to. We've responded historically to San Rafael or up north, Santa Rosa in the Esso jurisdiction. If it's like a statewide emergency, we would get a request through... Alameda County and our sheriff's representative to potentially deploy somewhere else. Thank you. Wide-ranging.

Appreciate that. Councilman Barnicle?

Yeah, I think one of the things that I recall about when we were talking about drones a few years ago was trying to avoid chases and things like that. And have we seen that actually materialize too and that we're able to avoid high-speed chases and sort of intense incidents and things like that?

Yeah, our current drone technology doesn't allow for us to chase or follow vehicles, given the range and size of the drones. Yeah. All right. Thanks.

Thank you. And with that, we'll go to public comment on the matter, and I'll invite our clerk to take over here.

We did receive one public comment ahead of the meeting, and that's been posted online. At this, we have 14 participants online. At this time, I will start a 30-second clock. And during these 30 seconds, thank you, members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to the clerk's desk. Members attending online should raise their virtual hand. Those attending via phone should press star 9 to raise their hand. Speaker requests received after this time may not be accommodated.

So we have two in-person cards, no Zoom. So Nina Zita would be our first speaker, to be followed by John Hanania.

Oh, thank you very much, Council, Petaluma PD staffers, everybody else. You know, I rather feel with this whole drone thing that we're letting the camel's nose into the tent, and we're going down a direction which I'm hearing some very innovative ideas for. making optimum use of staff time, but I'm not sure traffic citations are the appropriate use of this. Did I misunderstand? Is that the direction of travel? I hope I'm mistaken.

Thank you very much. To be followed by John Hanania.

Good evening. In response to Mr. Shrips' question, It doesn't matter how much space it's gonna take. What matters is the safety of the community, the safety of member of the community, and the safety of police officers. Now, I'll remind you of three things. The bank robbery in L.A. where they were outpowered, outgunned, and that's when they changed the rules to how much the police department can have in firearm. Second thing, the tank that was stolen in L.A., and nobody could stop it. The only reason we're able to stop it is when he went over the middle divider in the freeway. The third thing, which is I mentioned here many times, and I will continue to mention, if any of you haven't seen it, Google killdozer that took place in Colorado, where somebody was very upset with the city. where he built his bulldozer like a tank. And Kevin, I hate to tell you this, the first thing he took out, the mayor's house. And he flattened out the city. They weren't able to stop it. So my recommendation with the military surplus, if you can obtain something bigger than what you have, you should. Because what are you gonna do if you have a disaster? What are you going to do? We don't know. The society we live in now, you don't know when somebody's going to flip, when somebody's going to go do something crazy. You need to be prepared for that. You don't need to worry about how much space it's going to take.

That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. That closes public comments. Bring it back up to council for comments on the item. And Councilmember Quinge?

Yeah, I just want to say thank you again to our police department. I feel very fortunate in Petaluma that we have a police department that shares the same values as our community and You know, honestly, it would be, you know, we could easily be living in a different story at a different, you know, in a different place where, you know, we're dealing with public safety officers who are less than respectful to our community. And I feel very fortunate that that's not the case here. We have great leadership and I have no problem trusting our police department with this equipment. I think they've shown excellent leadership and training and restraint, and those are all great qualities. So, thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Now?

Thank you. Well, this is the second time I have the opportunity to hear this presentation because They were at our Public Safety Committee a month ago. And I can't thank our Petaluma Police Department staff and all the officers for their professionalism, the leadership, and the mentoring they do to our youth. We cannot put a price on that. So thank you so much. And I support everything. Thank you.

Thank you. And any other comments to this side? Councillor Barnicle?

Yeah. I'm just going to just sort of riff. One of my concerns with us like trying to crack down on illegal e-bike usage, especially with youth, is just sort of like the urge to like flee. And so... the potential to like look around high schools when people are leaving and see you know where this stuff is happening and trying to intercept it rather than chase it is something that I'm interested in mostly because we need to do something about it and also I'm really concerned about having You know, a police vehicle, you know, following a 13 year old without a helmet on and thinking that that's going to end well. So that's one one use case that I think potentially could help us to, you know, enforce some of the address, some of the safety issues we're dealing with without having to. create more safety hazards. So that's it.

If I can comment back on that real quickly, we have discussed utilizing drones for identification and driver behavior on e-mobility. What it would do is allow us to not pursue and potentially identify and follow up with later. Now, given that a lot of the offenders are juveniles, identification can become more difficult just by virtue of they don't have driver's license, they're not regular you know, in our communities. But we have looked at and discussed what opportunities there are there. And as Lieutenant Glaviano said, we're evaluating the effectiveness of the drones in these different use models. So stay tuned. That is one of the areas that we do plan to evaluate. Thank you.

I apologize for not introducing the Assistant Chief McGowan and now Chief Miller to the podium.

Yeah. And just briefly before we get off that, and I wanted to interject, but not actually on military equipment, but with school starting next week, we are working with the schools. We'll be out in the school zones. And I think more importantly than our military equipment, but we've been talking with the schools and the administrators about potentially doing bike corral audits. And so this is kind of more of a shameless plug on if you have an illegal E-motorcycle, don't bring it to school. Or if you're a parent of a youth with a potentially prohibited E-motorcycle, keep it in the garage or give it to an adult who can legally ride it. We'll be trying to educate the stool staff and the educators and the school campus security officers on what is permissible. To exactly your point, we don't want to have a youth rider make a life-altering decision And we've been in those those kind of moments where we recently had a 12 year old that we didn't know was a juvenile flee from an officer. And we later found they were on a dirt bike or a gas powered motorcycle, went down Lakeville the wrong direction and ended up being a 12 year old. had no business being on that. That was 4th of July in the middle of the day in traffic. And so those are the exact circumstances we wanna avoid. So we're looking for those alternatives, like the deputy chief talked about. We'll evaluate if drones can be in there, but we're trying to find those ways to not even be putting the juvenile in that situation and put herself in that situation. So thank you.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay. Councilor DeCarlo.

What does that look like in using drones for basically monitoring traffic at intersections or tougher spots for police officers to reach? I mean, is that going to be the police department selecting certain intersections or areas and just posting drones there for full shifts or however long?

No, it would be more of a targeted operation where our traffic team, where they go out and do OTS enforcement or officer traffic and safety enforcement operation days or hours would be more along those lines. So it would be a limited period of time. Officers would be assigned to it. It wouldn't just be strictly just monitoring or surveilling. It would be a targeted enforcement operation.

Okay. Because I can appreciate using drones in situations where you're trying to have an eye in the sky sort of a thing so that officers don't get hurt or other people. But I kind of wonder if there's this slippery slope of kind of crossing a line in surveillance and you know, using it to either monitor traffic or chase down children. I don't really like that. And so I think we should be careful in how we use them and what we do with it. So, you know, I mean, I support what you guys do and all this, and I know you guys do your best every day. I just don't want to see us start to cross the line on, again, what is a slippery slope here.

Thank you. And for my part, I want to support that public speaker who mentioned being outgunned, I guess, not having the equipment needed at the right time. And I'd recommend the book Norco, which it documents Southern California case, probably one of the first ones in California where that occurred and was tragic on many levels, but it's a compelling read. And then I appreciate Lieutenant's take on this equipment. The military equipment is necessary equipment. This is not equipment that we argue over the cost of parking on. It's that when the day comes, we need the right equipment. And I do think about what the state of policing is, what it both is in Petaluma and in other areas and where the technology is leading policing to go. And some of it is really beneficial, preventing harm, and others of it delves into certain privacy issues that need considerations. Reading up on some of this, I understand some drones have the capacity to get cell phone, telephone fingerprint, and you then can, the drone can follow, and there's no chase. But the phone is then the pedestrian, the on-foot person, and still the policing is solved. But before we move into any area like that, I really want the public consideration, so I'm happy we have a public safety committee. And I love the fact that we have an annual report. And we bring all this together for the public to weigh in on policy. We should do more annual reports, more policy decisions. But it really brings in front of the public what's going on. And so I appreciate you all being here tonight. And with that, I'm looking for a motion.

I'll make the motion.

Thank you. We have a motion by now and a second from?

second cater Thompson and with that let's have a roll call vote article I cater Thompson yes to Carly yes now yes quit yes trips yes McDonald yes motion carries unanimously.

Thank you very much. And that concludes our business for the evening. Thank you very much for the presentation. See you again next year. And as noted earlier, we are closing tonight's meeting in honor of Catherine Grabowski. Good evening. We are adjourned.