City Council - Special Meeting

to be here, but thank you for coming. Appreciate it that very much. Uh, besides a warm welcome, let me start by saying for the record, it appears that all five council members are present. And having said that, then I would also like to u acknowledge and welcome our um returning for the second year, our facilitator, Jen Kavanagh, former mayor of Pedmont. And then I would be remissed if I don't also acknowledge our staff here. And would like to thank everyone for being here. We have Sarah Tracy. We have C uh Chief Akre. We have Rebecca Bar, Mike Burgerer, Jennifer Gates, Dave Jans, and the man that makes me look thinner, our tech guy, Robert. Anyway, so thank you for coming. And lastly, I do have to include uh the man that is our shepherd, our city manager, David Euan.

So, I'm excited this morning or this afternoon and I look forward to the opportunities that will present themselves in 2026. I value the composition of our current council and our ability to work together. Our charge this afternoon is to listen to the public, have thoughtful deliberation, and from there establish the goals and priorities for 2026. Undoubtedly, consideration will be given to the continuation of the goals of 2025 where supported. During my formative months of serving on the council, I came up with an overarching goal of don't muck up our town. I was quickly corrected by our city manager that that was not a goal, but an aspiration. True. I reluctantly accepted the correction. However, I encourage all of us as we go forward today that we remain mindful of this aspiration. And with that, I will turn it over to our facilitator, Jan.

And climate mitigation adaptation. And within those various goals, we had some uh initial efforts um that we'll we'll go into more detail when we start talking about 2026. Um identified specific things that we wanted to accomplish um around streamlining processes on housing. How do we protect and build more affordable housing than we have? Uh look at regional partnerships and policy advocacy um to bring funding into our area. Um and then also addressing our homeless response and making sure that we're taking a regional approach to that um both on a ongoing basis but in an emergency basis as well. Um so a lot of accomplishments and movement on that over this past year. Um the on the parks, recreation, community services side, that was one that was a pretty lofty goal back but had has taken a couple years to come to fruition which is uh which meant getting a ballot measure passed um identifying the funding, creating a parks and recck department and getting that started. So, that's something that we're really proud of doing this past year. Um, uh, pedestrian safety, accessibility, and active transportation. A lot of work there, um, having to do with identifying, uh, bike boulevards, creating new bike boulevards, doing safety improvements around the plaza, around the community, um, finding new ways to get information from the public to make sure that we're addressing the areas are in most need for the community. Um, trees has been a big topic as well this past year. Um, urban forestry and the tree canopy. Um, a study that was done identified every tree in the community. Um that's going to be coming to the city council in more detail here in the next uh month I believe. Um stewarding our parks um and the plaza and our cap capital projects in our parks and plaza. Um that's we're embarking on that now. We did a a complete survey of the plaza. So we have now we know exactly what's in the plaza elevations everything. So that's a a good launching point for future projects and future improvements that we want to get done there. Um cemeteries has been a big priority for us over the past three years. Um, I've been here um turn trying to working on turning those around, making sure that they they're viable but also an asset for the community that we have the capacity, we have a place for people to to to come if they want to

stay here in Sonoma. Um, but then also generate the revenue to make themselves sustainable. So, that's made some headway on that as well. And again, the detail is in here in the packet. Um, and then supporting our nonprofit groups and community services and community programs. Uh, that's that's important. we we about $70,000 I believe this past year went to different nonprofit community groups um not just in the city but valleywide because we are all those community groups really help make us successful as a community um and it's important that we're part of those those solutions. Um and then arts and programs and partnerships that's that's been a big one too. Our our commission has been was really busy this year developing policies um finding ways to get art into our community um in more creative ways. um economic development and financial stability. Obviously, this is key. Um so, making sure that we are managing our funding uh correctly. We've did a lot on that side to be more transparent. Everything is now online. Um anybody can go online and look at our budget anytime, 24/7, and you'll get what the budget is um as of the last hour. So, um everything's available. Um that's something new I think that a lot of cities are trying to do to just be as transparent as possible. Um, we did did get the support from our voters and our community to pass an initiative, funding initiatives, which really helped shore up our finances to allow us to have some breathing room essentially to have some of these conversations about areas we want to improve such as parks and wreck. um working with our chamber um who is our partner in our economic development side on local businesses support um identifying ways to um support them business local businesses and new businesses on permitting um making sure that they have what they need hearing the issues early so we can work on figuring out how to address those like sidewalk seating and signage and other things. And I think that's been a big change and something that uh we welcomed and I appreciate the chamber helping make that happen as well. Um and then uh look at the plaza and the plaza corridor planning. That's something that we're continuing looking at. Um S Valley unification annexation. This

this goal was uh focused more more heavily focused more on coordination and collaboration with the county specifically in the springs and in the valley and how we work together. Um homelessness is a great example of that that we obviously work with the county valleywide to fund program services and staffing throughout the valley to provide that homeless support. Um it is a regional regional effort and it's been a very successful this past year um especially with two two of our nonprofits um getting new um new energy into them, new new leadership that is is allowing us to do a lot more um for our community. Um and also looking at emergency preparedness, our emergency shelter and how we coordinate with the county when we activate these shelters and being more um coordinated in that effort rather than having two separate things going on just because there's a city line. I think that was not the most efficient way to do things in the past. Um and then one of the things that we have been exploring and this was brought up last year, we brought an item to council last year, uh was a a valleywide infrastructure financing district. Uh this is essentially um redevelopment 2.0 know some people call it, but uh it's it's something that we're looking at to determine is it financially viable for the city to participate in a valleywide enhanced infrastructure financing district. And that's something that um still underway. The consult consultant working for the county is working on that and we'll be bringing that back to council for for evaluation at some point. And then on the climate mitigation adaptation side of things, uh a lot of lot of stuff has been happening there with our climate commission uh moving initiatives forward. Um uh get working on EV charging, working on policies, a lot of stuff behind the scenes to encourage and allow and and um make things more permissive um for um adopting EV and other climate initiative activities. uh working with our fire districts on um uh fire mitigation and then also doing some of the heavy lift on the uh fire flood hazard mitigation plans that are we're working countywide on. So, a lot of work there to to set

try to set us up moving into the future. Um and as part of this as well, um we're going to be planting some more trees this year. I I know for sure now that we have a parks and rec department on board. Um so, those are some of the goals and kind of some of the efforts we've been doing. I I do want to touch on the the what's coming up this year and some of the challenges. Uh obviously finances we've been we have a a slight surplus in our projected budget. Um but it is tenuous and it's tenuous and that could be shifted based on a number of things. You know cost increases keep going up and how we're working with our partners. Um, we don't we're still weighing the the impacts of HR1 and the federal federal budget, what that's going to happen coming down through the state, to the county, to us, and all the services that might be affected both from the Medicare side to healthcare to housing to homeless services. All those are at stake. Um, and some pretty big impacts that we're hearing about. And so, we're watching those very closely. Um, not that the city will be able to backfill a lot of those missing things, but there will be impacts of those that we'll the city will have to address. And so making sure that we have a healthy reserve and we have capacity to be flexible and nimble as those new issues come up I think is really important that a challenge that we're going to be um addressing as we move forward. Um so I think um with that I think I'm going to I'm probably leave on the um kind of look looking forward on the uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainty. I just don't want that to be left off the table. Um we have control a lot what's going to happen here within the city but we definitely are impacted by what's going to happen at the county, state and federal level. and I just don't want to lose sight of that as we go through this process um today. So, I think that's all I got.

Thank you. As I mentioned, I had an opportunity to speak with uh your staff leadership team, which I think are critical partners for you in the work that you get done. So, this council today will be coming together and uh reinstating and um reimagining what your priorities are, which is one of the most important things you do. and then you'll turn it over to your staff to execute throughout the year. Um I do think they provide such a valuable input to this process. So when I had a chance to talk to them, we were talking about what we were celebrating from 2025 as as well as what we learned from that. Uh what opportunities they see as they look ahead to 2026 and then any other issues or concerns that they wanted to flag that maybe just aren't on your radar. So that was how we structured our time together. And um what you'll see here is not unlike what David just said of course is you know staff is stretched very thin. So what we have up here is a whole group of folks working really diligently. But you do have a bit of a capacity crisis which is very common in small cities because every state mandate everything that comes down hits cities just small cities just as hard as big cities. So they just don't usually have the depth of um a bench to be able to lean into those projects. So so much of what happens in terms of day-to-day operations is landing on the you know the desks or the you know the offices of very a very few number of people. Um and transitions and turnover are real. Um it happens all the time. Um you're again you're not alone in that but it does create a bit of a challenge because it's hard to keep water moving through the pipes if you will metaphorically um when you have a revolving door of people in seats. So um uh the backlog that many people experience which is we've been talking about this project for a long time can create this um desire to want to say yes to things um when in fact we don't have additional capacity. So that's just sort of a push and pull um that they experience at times. Um the financial reality check is real. so appreciate voters supporting the recent um ballot measure and yet it doesn't change the fact that um as you're experiencing um

the financial crisis that we're seeing really throughout the country um if nothing else if it does not materialize it still creates a lot of uncertainty which makes it really difficult to move forward and so much of what your staff needs to do their work is often um often comes from needing additional resources. uh there is um sort of an urge to prioritize and uh what came up was sort of this this desire to finish what we started many of the things again not unlike every other city many of the things that you're uh that you're focused on are multi-year in nature we happen to come together at this time um but there's nothing special about this time so it's not as if everything got finished in December and we're ready to start a new but much of what we're trying to achieve with a very small staff is going to likely take place over a long time so um that just creates a challenge when we're wanting to do new and do more is at some point we need to finish what we started and that was their request. Uh there's also real infrastructure gaps. I mean we're sitting in this beautiful old building which is well north of 100 years old. It's a great example of the type of infrastructure that you see in a lot of old beautiful historic cities. Um there's also, you know, an ERP system that's outdated. You have um facility issues across the city that need to be addressed. Um as well as your fleet which um is literally out on the streets every day. So those are, you know, it's not about complaining. It's just about the reality of um of what's there. Um the upside I have to say is that the staff is incredibly motivated to support you. It was really lovely to see how much they cared and respected each other and we're really excited to have a full a full staff including the most recent um position that was added this last year which is really going to be a boon to the leadership of the uh of your staff. So that was amazing. Next slide please. One of the things that I love is I asked them to sort of visualize and I have these cards on the table for the council as well um to sort of put a you know a pin in but bring it to life and and in doing so what I loved is that you can really kind of see you know they do say a picture tells a thousand words but what you might see in some of these photos was you know here while it looks a little bit crazy what was amazing is

it it this this upper corner photo speaks to the complexity of what happens in delivering city services and hopefully it comes across very flawlessly and seamlessly to residents. But this is often what it looks like behind the scenes. Um, which just uh spoke to the fact that we need to not have distractions and ideally um focus as we're moving through something like that. There was al also this thought here which is that you know this wagon wheel still rolls despite having a few um broken spokes. It still moves. And so there's this recognition that we need to keep things moving forward. Um, and so let's not discount what is working, but we do need to move forward and continue to fix things. Um, and you know, as they say, fly the build the plane while you're flying it. That's often what's happening. Um, really love this idea here of thinking about with this council getting clarity so that we get all the boats moving in the same direction is what they were really hoping for there. Um and um there was a thought here about um thinking about how planning and resources will enable them to provide the services. So it's not perfect. There is a lot of uncertainty um and they're okay with that. Um but they really are looking for this group to help and recognize the importance of planning and putting the right resources against the um initiatives that we're taking on. And then lastly, I'll end with this one here, which was one of my favorites, which is thinking about the mindset, which is that we are continuing to build a strong foundation. Um, and at the same time, make sure all the voices in the community are part of that and that they're brought together with kindness. Um, which to me felt like that was a really beautiful message from your staff that they wanted to leave with you. So, that's what came from my conversations with staff. And um with that, all right, we're going to move into what I teed up earlier. Um which is a thought for you all about your legacy. Um so I love this um this quote has been brought together in a variety of different ways. And there's

actually a lot of um a lot of thought. I I rewrote I rewarded this um this quote. So now they're actually my words, but it's um the thought here is a community grows great when its leaders plant trees in whom in whose shade they shall never sit. So obviously it speaks to the longevity of the work that you're doing. It speaks to that multi-year if not multigenerational um focus which is it speaks to the effort that's sometimes required but also the benefits that will live on um potentially for your children and grandchildren potentially for the benefit of folks uh who may not even live here right now. Um so it's really thinking about what is uh what is the legacy that you would want to leave. So, I want to open this up to our council before we move into um public comment. And I invite you to just um think about I do have a a page in front of you that has this saying on it. Um you have a reflection page there. I invite you to just take a minute or two and think about from your perspective um when you think about your service on this council. Uh what lasting impact do you hope to have on Sonoma? Um I invite anyone from the audience to play along if you'd like to. Um and the trees here I mean obviously you are looking to build a to plant a lot of trees but of course the trees here are really a metaphor which is like what is the impact? Trees take a long time to grow. We can plant flowers tomorrow. Trees take a really long time. So what are those trees that uh that you're looking to plant for future generations. Um what do you want those future generations to look back on this council and thank you for? Um, and what do you want future councils who are going to be in your seats trying to make decisions, thinking about the care that you took of the city, what do you want them to thank you for as well? So, I'll give you a moment. You have a piece of paper to anywhere you want if you want to just ponder those questions or um maybe take a few notes and then if you're okay, Mr. Mayor, I'd love to just kind of turn it over to you all to share, you know, one or two minutes about uh about your thoughts on that question. And I'll pause there.

more than happy to. And the do that. Can I just give everyone just like two minutes to put their thoughts on paper? I can do that.

Okay, good. Thank you. All right, so take two minutes. I'll set a little timer. finish before one. We could stretch this conversation out or we can take a little break for public comment and just plan to come back at one to say how we said you did everything I kind of skip.

Oh, I know. Oh, yes. talking points.

I forgot to do the context for your head. like I think how we use it that's supposed to be um you can do that now or you can do that you can do that later but if you want that is oh maybe everybody started the umation we just remind

yeah so I have the talking points I can pull that up if you if you want to reference you may know that Oh, thank you, sir. There's still a few people that say good to put on before I think Thank you so much.

Um we can do that or you can do it before.

So after a couple time we'll bring it back to you and then I'll go into information for the conversations. Okay. This is what

Mr. May, how are you doing on time? I'm looking I'm still seeing a few play took a challenge. Maybe 30 more seconds or so to wrap it up. Okay. What are you doing? How are we doing for time? You good?

Okay, good. Right, Mr. Mayor, I'll turn to you. Um, I'm happy to give you the floor or we can just go around however you uh however you all would like. So, what I would love to do is hear from each of you. Thank you. Okay. My music's not in the background anymore. It's still playing.

So, um would love to give each of you the floor for a minute or two to share, you know, why this works matters when you have future generations, future councils look back on this particular body. Uh not any one person in particular, but like that was the era of that was the group of folks who did whatever. What's the legacy of this council going to be? So, one of the um benefits of being mayor, you don't have to go first. So, I will I will ask for either a volunteer or I will dictatorily appoint. Thank you.

All right. What's wrong here? So, you'll give it a minute or two and at some point I'll just I don't know. I'll give you a little Oh, this will be quick.

I have that effect on my Hello. How is this? Is that good? Yeah, there we go. Okay. So, what I wrote is uh my goal would be that we are creating the foundation for all members of our community to be safe, free of fear because that is the meaning of real democracy. Prepared for extreme events. Create fertile ground for opportunity for financial stability. Creative thinking. building trust in local community leadership and nurturing the ability to embrace change.

Oh, I love it. Okay. Can I just ask you to It sounded like you had all Can I ask you to read it one more time? I'd love to capture something.

Okay. So, uh we are creating the foundation for all members of our community to be safe, free of fear because that's the true meaning of democracy. Prepared for extreme events. Create fertile ground for opportunities for financial stability, creative thinking, build trust, and local community leadership and the ability and nurture the ability to embrace change. Okay, that was amazing. It was a mouthful.

I try to capture a lot of the prepare preparedness prepared. Prepare for extreme events. Thank you. Okay, let me know how I capture this here if that kind of captures the sentiment you were going for. Yeah, it's extreme events or black swans, whatever you want to call them, are black swans. We have too many of them these days. So, a lot of really great words. Um, I love the all men part. I'll just slide that out. It's just I love the inclusive the inclusivity. Um, amazing. Okay, great. Um, what?

Yes, my turn. Uh the I appreciated your quotation and also I have the similar quotation that means and what are we enjoying right now under the shade the tree was planted by our ancestor they never enjoy. So basically Sonoma is kind of very special and our four people already and the build this town starting from the general rel and each generation all these kind of the legacy and carried over generation by generation. So that is the sonoma. So what is important thing for us is whatever you have been living here for renovation should understand our great assets we are you should preserve it and maintain and that is art and the goal another thing the politically there is those kind of the infrastructures and the buildings and we shall confute and protect it and also protect the residents provide harmonous environment for them to work and live in here and they always when it's kind of a pride and to live in the snow And usually we talk a lot of the thing about child the safety and

kids education. Yes, that is also the important but what we need to and keep the more is and the art of culture that is our previously made already you know with a an emphasis on that we should I think that is all thank you again nice so this is a little bit over your shoulder if you can sort of read my writing does this feel like I captured heard the thoughts that you wanted to share. Let me know if there's something you felt like I That is what I Okay. Amazing.

Sorry here. Okay. All right. Who's next? With the mayor's permission, I'll be happy to go next. Um, let me think about Okay. Um, so 2026 is the year of later. So

um, um, so then the legacy that we thought about three years ago. um and be first directed to creative um but a lot of that legacy evolves around the plaza and um and I think what's important and what I would like to leave with legacy is a community that experiences sustainability in in all fashions u whether it's transportation whether it's parks and plaza certainly is the jewel of Soma you know, deserves appropriate attention and I know that we've got a lot of things working in that direction currently and uh and then to create the opportunity for the community to grow and accept change and to ensure the safety of the community and that involves weather issues. It involves a fire on crime but a place where people have the perception of safety. That's what it's factual safety.

When we plant trees, you got to water them. What's watering mean? Watering meetings partnership with the community listening. Second chain

and to encourage participation. Great. How do they count that?

I can do that. All right. Okay. How about this one? Okay. I did something different. Um I looked at the reverse of of the statement. So if you think about it in reverse, um a community will decline when its leaders plant trees in order to see the shade. In other words,

if you want instant gratification, if you wanted if you go into this work because you want to see something happen while you're there and for yourself, then you're going to see then you're going to have a community in decline. So, I'd like to just kind of look at it that way and then say that I think the legacy of at least this group has been that um we we really focus on the future all the time. Um we're doing a a plan for the future and that we continue to plan for the future and that we don't plan for I want to see that now. I want to you know and and push those kind of personal initiatives. So I think it's uh more about how we govern than uh the specifics of the trees. My thoughts on Yeah. All right.

Very good. So, I have three thoughts. Um, and I stated one last night, and it it really is I'd like a legacy that we protect the quality of our community that we so greatly value and cherish while facilitating the realistic and required change. My second legacy I'd like us to leave is that although the socioeconomic profile of our town has changed over the last 30 years, I'd like to uh I I hope that it will remain a welcoming comm community to all who visit and live here. And lastly, uh trees. You can't plant enough and I will be selfish. I want to see them at least grow and stay alive. Ultimately becoming heritage trees is great. So thank you.

Can I ask about your first your first point about it? So we want to interpret the community uh that we that we value greatly while facilitating the realistic and required change. Thank you.

So, uh, the trees were the metaphor. The original inspiration for the vote is stop and it didn't hurt this time. All right. So, now that you all look at these, is there anything you feel like um maybe something that sparked someone else said something that sparked something in you? anything you want to emphasize that you maybe heard that needed to say that you want to uplift open.

So I think um safety came across and you know I think also it came across in the way of the broad sense of what safety means and being safe from many different things. Um, and I do really appreciate kind of what seemed to be brought by everyone is that that idea of that we are trying to think of the future that we're trying to build a style of governing that hopefully as we pass on, you know, different members of us are no longer on this council, but creates that culture that then new people fit right into that culture. So I think that there's there's definitely um that that came across even though it wasn't said. I think that that definitely came across of trying to create that culture of so that so the public and the community feels that they are um that they have leadership. They have strong leadership both you know in city hall and at at and city elected officials. Anything anything else you wanted to pin in or something you wanted to emphasize?

Yeah, I'm the team leader microphone.

I'm the leaders and one of the job duty is how to balance long-term and the short term. I I like the plant the tree. I can see it growing and also it's kind of our achievements for our current and city council but and uh never minimize you know it's the impact for the future. So sometimes we may sacrifice a lot of thing we happen to enjoy but the other and the younger generation to come they will enjoy because we did the same thing and from what we have already because they never know. So for example in Broadway so broad at the beginning and uh people don't like him you know so why you know small town is so big and then the Vallejo and his brother-in-law insisted yeah should be this kind of wine and we enjoyed so sometimes we need always thinking keeping in our mind oh maybe we do something it's not for current for the future Anything else is coming up? So games are something that you feel like

I just want to clarify that I was speaking both metaphorically about trees but also in reality trees. Yes. Which is why very it's very Great. Post. Can we buy them already frozen?

Love it. Any great. Thank you for that. All right. So, with that um so yellow darling, now this is meant to lay the groundwork um for the work we're going to do this afternoon, which is taking what we have from 2025 and think about how do you build that? So in the spirit of building the legacy, the question is what's going to happen in 2026 that's going to continue the ball down the field that's going to continue. Thank you. What is going to help us to continue that work uh in 2026? So if we're going to take one step towards that 30 or 50 year legacy, what's the step we're going to take this year? So with that, I'm going to pause here and we invite members of the public again. We're so grateful to you for making the time for coming out um from your busy days. We know you all have families and lives and jobs to get back to. And we appreciate you making the time today and every council meeting you come to, every letter and every email. Um, as a former mayor, I can assure you they all get read. And we appreciate you especially making the time to come in person. It really makes a difference. So, with that, I'm going to turn it back over to our mayor who will facilitate our public comment.

Thank you. Uh, and actually, Ron, I just wanted I'm just doing a quick time check. I know we told the public we'd start at 1. We're a little bit before 1. I want to pause here to see if any council members want to use this to take a short bio break to refill your water or use the restroom. Otherwise, if you're okay starting a smidge early, we can start now. I'm okay with smidges. Dr. Green.

Um because this is a little bit unusual in the sense that it's not like a traditional council meeting. Uh there is no time clock because we do want to hear from you. uh but also be respectful that uh that we do want to hopefully capture what you have to say within that uh allotted hour. So with that I welcome you to the dis. I would love to hear your name and address if you feel so inclined. If you want to remain anonymous that's okay too but uh please uh share your thoughts. Is that on?

Yeah.

Great. Cool. Um, hi Mark Benhammer, Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce. And um, first of all, since we're doing tree metaphors, I just want to make sure that we all uh, remember the great 2018 GKO tree fiasco here in town. So plant trees, yes, but make sure the trees you plant don't produce a fruit that stinks later. Um so um otherwise great analogy. Um I do want to start off today just by um commending our council and staff. I love these sessions. I think that it's something that has been a really helpful addition to our process. It's not something I remember us doing uh five or six years ago. It's kind of I think developed somewhat organically, but um it's really a great thing for our community to participate in this um and be a part of it. And also just want to recognize um both the council and the staff. Um your calm, sensible leadership really uh makes a big difference in our community. Um again, going back in time, uh we had a period where there was a lot of uh transition on our city council. There was a ton of transition on city staff. I think we had like six city managers in a 2-year period before David got here. Um, and it makes a huge difference for our businesses. They they feel it. It allows them the ability to plan knowing that their stable leadership with the people up here and the people behind me. Um, the the service from our staff is always very friendly and responsive uh proactive. You guys have come to our industry cluster meetings and um the response I hear from the business community that just means a lot. just a knowing that you care, but b facilitating those. Hey, we're doing this uh process online now. It it makes a huge difference. So, thank you very much for those changes. Um in terms of looking for uh goals for next year, housing does remain our number one thing. It is uh very difficult for businesses to find people and the right people. And I want to remind you that it's not just the capital Affordable

housing, but it's all levels of housing that are needed here. We we don't need any more mansions on hilltops, but we do need places for doctors to live and managers and uh people uh families um not only just uh so that we have the inventory here, but also we want to make sure that people who are in affordable housing units now have a place to graduate up to when they have a family and grow and and uh earn more. We don't want to have just um small apartments and then huge houses. We do need that middle chunk of housing as well. Um, in terms of local economy, we are in in kind of big transitions right now. Uh, it's pretty well documented the wine industry is having some challenges. Um, we're we're fortunate here though because although we are selling less bottles of wine, we are seeing an increase in people's willingness to spend on experiences and we have such a beautiful place here. There's a lot of wine producing regions that don't have things like our plaza and our historic communities and and beautiful spaces to visit. Um other transitions we're seeing the K-shaped economy. There are a lot of extreme value shoppers here and a lot of uh well not as many not a lot but we are seeing some uh high netw worth people here but the middle class shoppers just aren't coming as much. It's hard to find them and so we're we're transitioning through those things. Also, I'll defer to Tim on this, but uh anecdotally hearing that there's uh the leisure travel is still lagging a little bit, but we are seeing a good amount of the groups and corporate meetings and things like that, events, weddings, those are actually accelerating. So, those are things to uh lean into. Other things impacting businesses, the costs are uh out of control. You guys mentioned it from a city perspective, but it's certainly hitting our businesses as well. We're hearing a lot of managers that are now they can't afford to hire as many staff members. So, they are doing uh the work that would have been done by somebody else. So, it's kind of taxing uh people in our community. Um Parks and Wreck, I think I would love to

see us continue working on that. I think as I mentioned earlier, as we're transitioning to more of an experience economy, having places like the plaza is just so essential. Uh gathering places, it's important for our community. We love having our events there, but also uh the more we can activate those spaces for economic activity um would be great. And um and lastly, I want to just uh and for this is more less of a direct goal, but long term. I think we've seen a lot of success with the transcendence in the outdoor theater. I've I've heard over time discussions of could that be uh could there be some sort of permanent outdoor uh facility? We've got the Grinet Amphitheater, but it's a little limited in in where we can use it. So, are there opportunities to create other gathering places in the community or potentially uh entertainment venues like that? Um, so anyway, thank you again for uh having these sessions and involving the community's input and we appreciate working with you. I'll let Mark uh took care of all the glass half full points of view for me. So I won't I won't uh reiterate all those good things, but um I'm Tom Conlin. I serve on the vice as vice chair of the city's climate action commission. I'm here in my individual capacity today, but um I want to present maybe the glass half empty uh perspective. And that's because I'm primarily here to discuss the climate action goals that are intended to address our declared climate emergency here in the city. And I feel like that image of the wagon wheel with the broken spokes was the one that spoke most to me about climate action progress in the city. Um the accomplishments memo on this topic

uh does not to my eye at least appear to have much of a direct nexus to the city's climate action strategy. And I understand um why that is. I think but um I come from a business background. So in that world, you know, business leaders are judged usually by the degree to which their outcome metrics match their forecasts, what they say they're going to do. They get rewarded or punished as as to whether they hit their goals. And government doesn't work the same way. We all know that. um we allow rhetoric and storytelling often to to sort of trump the the outcome metrics. Um I personally spent a lot of time looking out into the future. I recently gave a deep read to the uh tree canopy and inventory report for the city as well as now the climate or sorry the uh comprehensive transportation plan that's being drafted at the county level. And um I also recently reviewed a report by the actuaries in um the United Kingdom. These are the people who are professional risk managers. And um oh I'm sorry got too many windows open on my phone here. I wanted to read a brief section from the intro the introduction of that report. um right here and and they're they're drawing a connection between the global financial crisis and the fact that we didn't really foresee that happening globally. Most risk managers, most investment managers did not anticipate that. And their statement here is that unmitigated climate change risks planetary insolvency defined as significant societal

disruption driven by climate and nature risks. Without immediate policy action to change course, catastrophic impacts are eminently plausible. These include fires, floods, heat, and droughts. This is a national security issue as food, water, heat stresses, and rising sea levels will impact populations. If unchecked, then mass mortality, involuntary mass migration events, and severe GDP, gross domestic product contraction are likely. So, as we are engaging in our general plan process and as we are um looking out over the next 20 years and starting to think about what our legacy might be, We need to get tighter in the connection between our plans and our annual measurement of our duties. So I hope to continue on the climate action commission to support the city in tightening that linkage up. We have a list of actions that we have declared we will take and many of those have been thwarted state and federal level. I acknowledge that some of those that's some of the reasons why we haven't been able to make progress on some of those items, building code updates and whatnot. But there are many others, some that are completely within policy control of the city itself or within the city's own um uh operation of its own facilities and and fleets. We are making steps in that direction, much better, as Mark alluded to, than we were with a lot of uh changing of personnel a couple years ago. But we have a lot of work to do in front of us and I hope that council will recommmit to that as a goal for this year going forward. Thank you for consideration.

Good afternoon. And I'm It's good I'm following Tom here. Rich Hodes, 2362 Thornsbury Road. Um, last few weeks I've been thinking about the fact that I first visited Soma in 1974 as a college student. It's over 50 years ago. And I went for a wine tasting at Gunlock Buntu, which happens to be a couple hundred yards down where I've lived for the last 30 years. And so I've watched over the last half century the wine industry's had a really good run. And we're at an inflection point now. And we're going to see a lot of big changes to our economy through the wine industry and also changes to federal and state funding. So if you're familiar with the the concept of the triple bottom line particularly applied to government, right? That is one social equity, two environmental stewardship, and three economic stability, which is one of the goals you have for the for the city. And I think what I really want to encourage is that the city lean into the idea of economic stability and economic development because I really do think we're going to we're at a an inflection point here economically for this the city, the valley, and the county. And so, you know, it's a new reality. The wine industry is changing. It's going to be around, but it's not not going to be growing and supporting our economy like it has in the past. And I think wine tourism will probably affect it as well. Um, we also, well, we do have a lot of assets and some of those assets I think are ones that don't get mentioned often enough. Over on the 8th Street Carter, we have warehouse and industrial space that sits vacant and is available. We have other productive assets and open land and more open land's going to come as vineyards are ripped out and then decisions are going to have to be made about what happens with that land, whether it gets planted in houses or it get planted in some other kind of a agriculture or sits empty. We have um location, great location. We have a great climate and a

great history. So, we got a lot of assets and I think we really need to think about how those assets are going to be used to make sure that the legacy of the next 50 years is a thriving economy for the city of Sonoma and Sonoma Valley. So I think my bottom line is uh well I think one of the comments is that essentially you know if you look at the triple bottom line social equity and environmental stewardship the the balance of those things includes a strong economic stability factor and we can't ignore that. So everything we do depends on having a healthy economy. And I think as a community, we need to get a whole lot better at saying yes and saying yes quickly and acting quickly rather than saying no, can't be done. Don't change anything. Sonoma was great the way it is. It's going to stay as it is today because it can't. So thank you very much. I don't live in the city, but I certainly am very interested in the outcomes of what the city council does and happy to participate in the various things that I'm volunteering and active in to help make all this happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Richard.

Guess what I'm here for? Um, my name is Connie Wayine. I'm a resident of the city of Sonoma for 11 years. And full disclosure, I am chair of the culture and fine arts commission. I feel this um, city council and staff and community has given our citizens some agency. Our voice is being heard. I I love the way you're doing this. As Mark said, it's organically come about, but it it really is very helpful. Um I I want to thank you for listening. Last night I attended the State of the Valley. It was excellent and um and I heard a lot of new things that I learned from. I'd like to read for you a quote from Ada Leone when we had a bench dedication thanks to our former mayor who set up a and the city staff who set up a beautiful event uh at right in front of reader books Ada shared with us this is a community that lifts up the arts whether it's painting and sculpture or dance and poetry or simply reading every book you can get your hands on. It's a community that encourages kids who stare out at trees to read about trees and to write about trees and to become not just curious but creative. I feel lucky to have grown up here, she said, and hope we can continue to make everyone who lives here feel that way,

too. I think we're talking about legacy and continuing legacy. For two years, the arts and cultural advocates in the city have been hoping to speak in support of a more modernized, more robust, more progressive 1% for the arts funding for our incredibly creative city. When you look around our city, however, you don't see much public art. Since I moved here 11 years ago, I am convinced we have never had a more capable, enlightened, and arts positive city staff, community, and city council than we have now. I've not seen it and I've not heard about it. I believe this is now the time to ask you for considering building a legacy together. Why in these stressful times, how could we possibly imagine that the arts are so important when there is so much unfulfilled need? There is so much fear. There are so many safety concerns. We know there are immediate immediate needs for affordable housing, food programs, all kinds of public safety concerns. However, the arts fold in beautifully with that, oddly enough, because when you look at Maslo's hierarchy of need, the basic needs are at the bottom, but belonging and safety are right next to it and completely integrated with us. So, our former mayor last night spoke about this city being forward-f facing, that that is what you all have been doing. You have been proactive and you've been thinking about the future.

There are no times perfect for cities to take bold moves. And this year is particularly alarming to all of us. Which is why now is the time. Now is the time to give hope, to envision a better community. And we can do it. Often fear takes over but imagination is the antidote. Imagine a great city. I was from a city that was very backwards thinking and 40 years ago it's now one of the most progressive cities I know of especially in feeling uh a unified city and also very creative and a sense of belonging and I've seen it happen and I know that we have every element here to do this this is why we exist The arts give us spirit, soul, and the creativity fuels this special place. History, all the cultural elements. We have it all. We have it all. Look at where we're sitting in the community arts center.

Why are we having it here? It gives us hope. And it it is a perfect place to make these decisions. I moved here because this place is special. I can see the potential. You know it, too. You can feel it. You can see it. You know what's here. And it and and the arts in addition to being very exciting and helpful for the economy because it will help diversify. also really uh helps us um think about safety in different ways and unification in different ways. So let's make it happen. I would like you to in the fee studies as you think about how we're moving forward reimagine the percent for the arts program in a visionary way recraft it so that it it can be expanded like other cities do. There are over 700% for the arts programs in the United States according to the data from American for the Arts. They typically allocate a very small portion, one to 2% for public art. Ours has in the past been dedicated, our 1% program for only using city building money. The city doesn't really build much if you've noticed a library. How long ago was that? So, if we open up our thinking of how to how to apply the 1% for the arts program, we could really integrate public art into a new public funding capital project program and also help our plaza and the parks expand. Thank you. Thank you, Connie.

Okay. Somebody's glasses are here at the podium and I don't know if they're mine according.

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Tim Zoner. My address is 24 East Spain Street in the historic Tuscano Hotel. Thank you. And I'm going to start with thanking the city for your partnership. I'm at the visitors bureau and working with the city and the state, we were able to move into that great new visitor center. So, thank you. I appreciate that. Um Mark alluded to some things in business, which I agree with all that there. Uh I do want to note visitation wise, uh the city's toot, as you saw in the budget slide earlier, was up 15%. So 12 months trailing compared to the previous 12 months trailing, that's the money taken at the hotels. Uh that's more a function of the rates and the occupancy. Occupancy was also up 7% and that's in the entire valley. So not just so that part's good, but the part that's not as good um day trippers and getting people to spend money. Mark alluded to what's called the K economy. So we do have some people spending money at high levels, but we also have not as many people spending money at lower levels, which you know isn't something anyone in this room directly can control, but it's something to be aware of and how we can do that. Uh they say goals should be measurable and clear and distinct. I'm not trying to take the uh person's job in charge of running this, but when I have some specific goals for the city, I'm going to lay them out. And I'm so glad that Mike Burgerer's in the room. Number one, I want to install 24 bike parking spaces around the plaza on the active businessfacing frontage. I do appreciate the ones we've put in the middle of the plaza park. Um, roughly 30 to 40% of your employees live within 1 to two miles of the plaza, which could solve part of our parking issue if we just put it there. Also, there's more than 300 bicycles at all the hotels in Soma, and every day there's people coming up to spend money. I want them to spend the money at the plaza and in our city and not get in their cars. So, let's make it very easy for them to do

that. Two, I'm requesting uh and I'm so glad Tom Conlin's here. Improved East West public transportation connection between Napa, Sonoma, and Pedaluma. You might be aware we're doing a thing called mascots. I have no idea what that acronym means, but evidently it's something to do with transportation and we're retooling it for the North Bay. We used to have a connection between Napa and Soma. We get a ton of employees coming to hospitality jobs along that corridor. There's currently no good connection. Secondly, with Pedaluma and the smart train being very successful and expanding their service, having a stop from Napa, Sonoma, Pedaluma will hope both for visitors but also for employees, including the one talking to you. Uh three, uh I would like to look at implementing an evening Sonoma shuttle that covers the major lodging and hospitality points around town. The current Sonoma shuttle is fantastic. It's through Sonoma County Transit. It ends at 4:30. This might shock you. Some people work past 4:30, so I would like something that goes from 5 to 10:00 that could be used by both visitors, but also people in the hospitality industry. It should work on about a 20-minute loop. Um, we can look about expanding it into the springs later, but maybe you start just in town there. So, those are my three measurable actual goals. I really hope you do it. Keep planting more trees. I happen to know one of you up there, waters, trees, and the springs, but he'll remain nameless. But keep up the good work, Ron. Thank you very much. Robert Demler, First Street West, Sonoma. I'm very happy that there are no lights up here today. Thank you very much. Uh I came to Sonoma uh in June of 1971. That's uh almost 55 years. I was 30

years old, so do the math. I've been I've been a resident for 28. When I arrived in town that June day of 1971, I smelled history and I decided then that I wanted to live here. And it took me until 1997 to pull it off. and I'm very happy to be here. Um, I will digress a moment. Um Mark mentioned we had some um unsettling times with the council in the past and um when Jack Ding was elected, his goal was not legacy, it was harmony and he worked on it and planted a seed and it took it was like a great tree and his legacy is the succeeding councils in my opinion And I'm at the council meetings almost every time because I like watching your expressions. It's taken and that's that seed is grown and I thank you for that and I think all of us feel very comfortable with all of you and I am happy to say I I'm a good friend to all of you and the pe the public appreciates that. Thank you. Now back to your legacy and back to history and so forth. The word legacy con conjures up in my mind history. It's the history made today that will be preserved tomorrow. And we have um a great deal of history in this town as it's been noted. It's

often said Sonoma uh wine and food and history. Wine and food have all always been in uppercase letters. History in my mind has been in lowercase letters and I get the impression that some of you on the council and a number of people in the city and I sometimes represent Sonoma League for historic preservation and sometimes sister cities today it's just Robert. Um, I hope you all will make some efforts to bring the word history and preservation to uppercase letters and and I think that's on the back of your minds all the time now and I appreciate it and thank you very much. Hi everyone, Jane Hansen, Sonoma Splash aquatics director and thank you for the opportunity today and thank you most sincerely for your continued support of Sonoma Splash Community Pool. Your investment has made a meaningful and measurable impact on our entire community. Your support helps keep our community safe, healthy, connected, and thriving from babies to seniors and everyone in between. Because of the city's support, Sonoma Splash awarded over $40,000 in 2025 in scholarships to over 200 individuals for swim lessons, swim camps, um, and and summer camps, opportunities that they might not have been otherwise able to afford. And these scholarships are not just about recreation, but they're about safety, confidence, and belonging. City funding also made it possible for us to have a series of free community days each year. So on the first Sunday of every month from April through October, we offer free community day. Uh the days bring our community together

and ensure that everyone regardless of income can share this public asset. With continued city support, Splash can expand our critical water safety programming for both youth and adults. And this investment directly reduces the risk of drownings, builds lifelong safety skills, and promotes health and wellness in the community. Sonoma Splash also plays a vital role in our youth engagement and development in in our community. We provide a safe structured environment where young people participate in swim teams, water polo camps, swim lessons, lifeguard training, and we have a lifeguard gurnie on our council and recreational programs. Uh in the summers, we employ up to 90 community members, the majority of whom are Sonoma youth, and they're helping them to gain um job skills, responsibility, and leadership experience. By investing in Splash, the city supports equity and access, strengthens community bonds, and enhances quality of life. Well-maintained community amenities like a public pool increase property values, attract families, and draw visitors to Soma. This weekend, we're hosting a big championship meet at the pool where over 300 swimmers and their families will be coming to town for a couple of days. Um, we did our first one last summer. We're hosting this championship. We're going to do another one in the summer. And um so it it's got uh the community benefits that have a ripple outward that ripple outward from this facility. So thank you again for your partnership and belief in and support of Sonoma Splash. And I just want to close by sharing a testimonial from second grade Sasserini teacher Chrissy Landini whose class was part of our pilot program for our second grade

learn to swim which we're going to expand to all six public schools this spring. And um just in writing about the swimming lessons uh she said that throughout the lessons I saw remarkable growth not only in swimming ability but also in social emotional development. Students learned to set goals, overcome fears, and encourage one another. Their confidence in the water translated into greater self asssurance in the classroom. I noticed improvement in participation, teamwork, and pride in their accomplishments. And then she goes on to say, "Free swim lessons are more than just a recreational opportunity. They are an investment in equity, safety, and the whole child development of students who deserve access to the same enriching experience as their peers. I am deeply thankful for the partnership and funding that made this experience possible and hopeful that it will continue to reach more children in our community. So, thank you.

Hi everyone, my name is Julian Mackey. I wanted to start by reiterating what Mark Robert and others have said and that I think that the legacy of this group of city council leaders is one of bringing stability and strong governance to Soma. um there was a lot of turnover, there was a lot of uncertainty and I think this group it we constantly hear from community members brought a lot of good governance and so finding ways to codify that is going to be really important as we go through some of these transitions. The three things I wanted to highlight I think have been largely covered by other people here but are things that I hear echoed from young families from seniors to small business owners as I think key issues that face a lot of people in Soma. First housing foremost. I think at the core of so many of the issues that people articulate who have had to leave this community or are looking to move here um or are living here, so much of it comes down to housing. And I think there's some fantastic opportunities for us to um explore more options of housing types while still preserving uh the legacy and feel of the town. I think there are ways for us to make it more predictable and easier for uh developers who are looking to build here while also providing meaningful and opportunistic subsidies um for certain affordable housing projects such as the uh recent Burbank project. uh given some lack of funding at the regional and state level, I think the work that you all have done to be opportunistic about these opportunities is really impactful.

The second thing I want to highlight is community activation. As we've heard from others, Sonoma has an incredible amount of wealth when it comes to not only the public assets, uh but also the social capital that's available to us. I listened this morning to a three-hour podcast on the history of Chinese Americans in Soma. And the reason why it was 3 hours was not only because it was full of so much history, but also because of passion there. People live in this community and have a shared identity around the things that uh this community holds. And so how can we continue to tap into not only the shared spaces we have but the shared stories to bring the community together. I think you know I see a stompers jersey here. Transcendence there's a number of great examples of what we can do as a city to bring people together and I think it said you know a better place to live a better place to have kids and certainly brings a lot of benefits to our small businesses as well. The third item I wanted to cover was this idea of safe and stable. So Patricia talked about the broader significance of safety. Right? I think in a lot of ways we just view it uh the word safety as you know questions of criminality and things like that. But the last year has shown us that there's a broader sense of safety that comes from uh federal uh prosecution of certain community members. uh it comes from uh certainly natural disasters and the risk of fire and it also comes from economic cert uncertainty and change. And so as we think about how we uh position Sonoma for good change in the future, an emphasis on safety and stability I think is paramount for people to have uh a predictable

foundation in which we can all thrive. Thank you. Thank you, Julian. Anyone else? I'm good. Great. You want to go first? I'm going to be scattered and probably

I'll take the be the more succinct one. The warning.

Hi, my name is Tiger. Um, I've been here since 1969. I'm fifth generation. I just want to say thank you. Um, I was at last meeting that were held down Broadway and I'm glad it's here which used to be the old boys club. Wasn't the boys and girls club, it was the boys club. So, um, you know, sweet memories at this community center I forgot. So, um I want to just say a few slightly scattered but not too but um that uh I hope that the city through you all and you all um can sort of integrate the facilitation of realistic and required change which Mayor Wellender mentioned with making history more capitalized uh as Mr. Demler said. Um, so I can appreciate that that's a hard balance and that our city needs a lot of things to come together and uh I can appreciate that. It's a challenge and I I thank you for like I say holding this forum to have that come about and have our input uh be known you know and maybe utilized. Um then the last thing that got brought up is the sense of safety. um not just globally but more on a personal level and very much nuts and bolts level is that our city has a lot a lot of dark spots on its streets. I like to walk um I I and I I'm pretty sureooted but I am getting older. It's hard to walk in the city um when the lights are out at

night. Um, also, uh, it's a safety issue because when people are trying to cross the street or I'm trying to turn into, let's say, the high school from Broadway to go to Sonoma Splash where my son has been, you know, greatly benefited from having our pool. Um, it is so hard to see people walking, people trying to cross streets. We really need, I think, to focus on getting some not only a tree, but but while you're out there, look at the traffic lights. I mean, not the traffic lights, the street lights and make sure at least the ones on the corners where people cross are functioning. And but generally,

thank you. Anybody else?

Very good. the cleanup hitter. Uh, good afternoon, Mayor Wellander, Vice Mayor Low, uh, city council staff, manager. Uh, Mike Meny, 380 Church Street. Um, my father was a career state park ranger and he moved us here in 1972. Um, and quite literally at that time there was one traffic light in the valley between Sears Point and Santa Rosa and that was at Safeway. Um, there was more than adequate parking space around the plaza even on the busiest day in the dead of summer. Oh, and I also wanted to paraphrase what Ron had to say last night was, I'm not the dancer that I once was, and I've never really been a good public speaker, period. So, excuse the wavery voice in the I'll try not to get teeyed. At any rate, today it's hard to find parking and the parking that we have is very, for lack of a better word, non-delineated. And I really would like to see the city make an effort to expand its delineation of parking spaces from just immediately around the plaza and one block off of it on Spain Street and Napa Street. Um,

first Street West. First Street West.

Yes. And First Street West. There's absolutely no delineated parking on First Street West north of the plaza or First Street East for that matter. Um, and we all know all it takes is one person that doesn't know or doesn't care to park inappropriately and he's essentially taken up an essential space for a second car and and we need to be able to accommodate that a little bit better. um parking. Uh secondly would be standardization and consistency. It seems like over the last 15 years, and not that it's anybody's fault, if I sound too um critical today, that's certainly not my uh take. Um it seems like there's been kind of a shotgun approach to traffic safety. There there is a myriad of traffic paint on the ground, different sorts of warning lights. We've got flashing red stop signs. We've got flashing red pedestrian crossings. We've got flashing yellow pedestrian crossing signs. Um if we could standardize that somehow and have yellow flashing pedestrian crossing signs. I know that the the red lights at St. Francis Church. Like with a school bus, when the school bus red lights are flashing, you're supposed to stop even if nobody's getting on or off the bus, right? If law enforcement Oh, my go-to is not here. If law enforcement sees you skirted around the bus and the red lights are still on, you're either going to get a warning or a ticket. There's a lot of discussion and confusion around the red lights at that crossing. Somebody pushes the button. It takes 30 seconds to activate. In that 30 seconds,

traffic's cleared up and the pedestrian is crossed. There's literally no one standing at the corner, but traffic on Napa Street backs up and backs up and backs up and people honk. You start to get a little bit of road rage, which is part of the speeding, I think, in town. Um, there's that. Thirdly, and totally off topic, I thought I was part of the firefighting crew that fought the Mission Hardware Fire in 1991, and there was great conversation amongst the city council members at that time, that oh my god, all of fire hydrants around the plaza, except for one, which is directly across the street from the cheese factory, are all on the business side of the street. the hydrant in right directly in front of Mission Hardware was covered in 4T of brick and um if the building hadn't collapsed on it but it was a blowing fire and the first engine pulled up and there was flames licking blowing down the front windows they couldn't have connected to that hydrant whereas if it was across the street on the plaza side um that wouldn't have been a big deal or as much so of I would like to see the city council try to get fire hydrants to the park side of the of the street surrounding the plaza cuz we're due for an earthquake someday and that day is getting closer and there are a lot of uh masonry buildings around the plaza that will probably collapse and it would be nice to have accessibility to our hydrant system if the water supply is intact. Um what am I on fifthly or sixthly? I really want the city council to to respect and try to maintain a little bit of open space in town. That's part of the draw and the

attraction to this town is its greenery and um tree getting back to the trees. It's nice to have trees in a park-like setting and not in an urban not an urban forest. Although there is something to be said about that as well. My father uh in conjunction with Robert Canard saved the two fields in front of Lao's home in the early 70s. The state was going through some severe budget deficits then and they were entertaining selling those two lots to developers for two and threetory condominiums. Think of what this town would be if that had gone through. Um, I know we can't stop growth, but we we really need to put our forward thinking looking glasses on and control what we do. Um, anyway, uh, uh, thank you again, staff, you thank you all for being here, and thank you for listening to my ramble.

Thank you, Mike. Please recognize the opportunity to ramble with no time limits doesn't come often. So do not hesitate if you are so inclined. Excuse me. All right. I'll take it back to our facilitator who I believe has some good news. Yes. And just a big thank you. Um want to reiterate uh our mayor's feedback. Yes.

Thank you. Wanted to reiterate um the mayor's feedback. Really appreciate seeing you all. Some of you who were here last year as well. Thank you for coming back. With that, we will adjourn for a 15 minute break and we'll come back at 2 pm. We received several letters from the public sharing their comments and they're relatively brief and so to the benefit of both the public as well as staff as well as council. Uh I have taken up the recommendation from my fellow council member that we that I would read them so we know what else is being expressed. please.

So, um, but before I do, let me put my glasses on.

This, um, letter comes from Sonoma Ecology Center, and it reads as follows. We'd like to see Sonoma's hillside backdrop protected from future development and stewarded for ecological benefits. The city could buy the remainder of the Montiti property and protect the Shoenstein property, for example, by buying by buying options, obtaining a right of first refusal, or buying out remaining development rights. Second, create more walkable and bikable connections between the places people need to go uh through places that are green, beautiful, and provide habitat. create a public map of existing and potential future locations of open space, nature, waterways, and trails. Pedaluma has done this. The ecology center has a draft of this map, and they will sell it to us for water with focused attention outside of city limits to find solutions to the city's chronic problems of flood risk and groundwater decline. Four, incentivize and streamline infill housing development and redevelopment of all sizes. If we increase the number of local workers who live locally and do not have to commute, this is an ecological win. And lastly, changes to the city's tree related policies are an important way that we Sonoma can do our part to counteract the global crash in biodiversity by by prioritizing native tree species that provide food for the struggling native birds and insects. Second uh letter to us very short and brief from Judith Freriedman. Eliminate invasive species which are destroying native habitats.

Third letter from Dan Bell. I often take the bus from the plaza and I have to constantly walk in the muddy or wet grass or walk in the driveway which can be dangerous. Please include this project in the city's priorities to encourage transit use. Uh regards and lastly uh from uh Cheryl Shimmeck I cannot attend today's meeting but have a couple of thoughts for your consideration. Change the way the 1% for the arts is calculated. Expand the policy to include more than just what the city builds as there has not been much built recently. So no arts funding allocation I assume has been created. I support the recommendation that Sonoma adopt a program slash policy that includes allocation of at least 1% for all commercial buildings, if not all buildings. These funds could then go to enhancing our city with a public art collection, projects, temporary and permanent art, as well as events, all of which supports tourism and local business. And that concludes the additional comments from the community.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you bringing in those additional voices into today's important meeting. With that, let me uh tee up where we're headed next. So, we are moving into uh a discussion about your goals and priorities for um the year ahead. um really appreciated. One of um one of you all mentioned to me how great it is to have such continuity of leadership among your council that you're really becoming kind of this finely tuned machine in terms of how you work um bringing your distinct perspectives but really finding out how you work well together going forward. So what we're going to do having um reviewed our 2025 goals, we are going to use that as a starting point. I did have an opportunity to meet with each of you before today. So, I'll share some common themes that came up in our broader discussions as a starting point and then where we're headed, we'll give you actually uh the details behind each of your goals and give you a little bit of time to sit with that. And then we're going to literally come back up here, show the details live for your past goals and just think about this is really just a starting point. It's not the end point. How do we want to use what we have, keep what we love, modify, change, and then think about how we want to move it forward and refresh it for 2026, including anything new that you might want to add. So, that's where we are today, and this is your opportunity to chew on it together. Anything where you feel like, I'm not sure we can agree to that. Not sure really what's there. We might have to put some things in the parking lot. If you have that amazing idea, but today is not the day or the time, but we want to make sure we capture it. We do have a place for that. So, we welcome those ideas. And again, as I said, to the extent we're getting into problem solving and doing the work today, we might table something, put that back to staff and ask staff to come back to you with um additional information if that's needed. And then where we're headed after today is that um your city administrator with the input of staff will bring all of your thoughts together and bring it back to you at a council meeting in early March like we did last year. Will you be able to rightsize your goal with the input

from staff on resources and constraints to make sure that what we thought about is realistic. Great. Okay. Looking around for head nods. Great. So that's where we are. And so with that, I will uh turn it over to our city administrator again for some context.

Thank you. And and just as a reminder for um this is on reminder for the council and the staff um and I'm sorry, the public uh the use of this information we use obviously for right sizing our workforce, our um alignment of what we're going to be doing in terms of coming up next in terms of our budget uh aligning with our budget process. Um but last what we did last year as well is aligned it with our boards and commissions which um each board and commission took your council goals and then established their work plans based off of those goals. And so I think that's critical that we continue that as you heard from some of the public comment today. Um that is going to evolve and roll into more of a council goal setting uh boards and commissions strategic goal setting budget process and then find a full loop of of pro of how we put those resources to move these goals forward. So um this is really important for us. Um it does provide that direction and alignment um across the board staff, boards, commissions, council and ourselves. Um I do want to say that um we we are um in the process right now of of trying trying to get um everyone we have all of our staff here to listen to this to to all you talk today. Um because what we are going to be doing is as Jen Jen mentioned bringing back to you in March how we can pull this off, how we can address your goals and if we do have to change anything, we'll bring that back at that time and be be honest with you about the resources we have and ability we have and make any adjustments at that time. And so we do want to hear from you. We want to we'll be listening. We'll be taking notes um and providing that feedback today if possible. If not, we'll come back to you in March and provide more detail. Um, but just want to make sure that you know we're here listening and and here for res as a resource for you as well. Thank you.

So, I want to share some themes that I heard um these universal themes that I've called them are themes that I heard um pretty consistently and this is again echoed not surprisingly from your community and that you all are a great bridge to the community. Um it's really clear that in Soma and consistently honestly throughout the state housing remains a critical priority. um all of you agreed that that was um your top priority and that although we're doing some planning, we clearly haven't achieved our goals. So there's lots of frustration around that and you know there is a desire to move towards units built which is you know what housing really matters. Plans are plans but housing actually matters. So there is an agreement that that continues to be um a focus and a recognition that policies are sometimes what's required and that cities aren't necessarily the developers. So there is some tension around that of course. Um the next a lot of excitement around the uh our parks and recreation department including the staffing we have um you know the department doesn't exist without the people to do the work. So that is a major step forward. And of course again a thanks to the community for voting for um the general fund um tax measure that supports that which really went to both public safety and this um parks and recreation department. So there's definitely a lot of energy from building the department which um needs to happen but also moving on to now executing the work of providing the services that can come from um a robust parks and recck department and then also recognizing that right now we have a department of one. So you know to the extent that we have in the past gotten by with a lot of support from the community and recognizing the value of those partnerships that'll have to continue of course and we value that. The next one, uh, economic development and, um, tourism. That was also reiterated from our public comments. So, we appreciate that sentiment. Um, really wanted to focus on making Sonoma a destination. Of course, supporting our local businesses to make sure they're thriving as a vital part of our economy, and then, of course, just an acknowledgement of, you know, city finances being so closely tied to um, our being an economic and

tourist base. So, I want to just um, note the integration of those. um appreciate the financial stability that was achieved and I just want to put a point looking at cities more broadly certainly in the region but throughout the state it's not trivial to say that a city has a balanced budget right now and given the economic uncertainty that we're seeing whether that's sales tax in a community that's based on tourism connected to the wine industry we don't take that for granted um that that will remain um we do um leverage um our reserves when we need to but also know that that's not an endless wealth Well, so there was just an acknowledgement that there's a lot of great work uh that's been done to achieve this financial stability, but certainly that's a short-term um opportunity and you know the goal is to get greater financial stability in the long term and that's not trivial. The strong uh council staff dynamics again really really important. I can't tell you how much I see in other cities where that is not the case. Um, you've seen that in your city and now you're starting to see the benefits of what it takes when you have a highly functioning council that works really hard to work well together and work well with staff, recognizes what their role is, what staff's role is, works really hard to stay in their lane. And today, this is about the council's lane. So, really appreciate that. And I know staff is in the back listening, really tuned in to the things that you all care about, but also looking for places where there is council consensus to move forward. Um, not looking for pet projects, not looking for things that one person cares about because staff can't work that way. Your challenge is how to figure out how to get the stuff done that you want to get done that you think are important for your city, but doing that by speaking with one voice. And that's what today is about. So some other themes that came up um which again was reiterated by the public which is climate adapt adaptation um fire hazard disaster mitigation um the new state fire hazard maps that were

created certainly are creating challenges. It's really important work but it also trickles down into literally the trees, the housing, the infrastructure we have on the ground and what's required um to be prepared for natural disasters when they come. So um the federal funding may or may not be there that funding is not trivial. Um and to the extent that any of the funding is uncertain that makes it really difficult to do this work because this is really what the federal government should be helping us at the local level to do. Um and then of course the proactivity and planning you know the more we do the we're better prepared when it comes to disasters based on how well we've planned. So there's definitely a recognition among your council about that. Um plaza plaza maintenance and beautifification. And so both thinking about how do we maintain it so it looks beautiful but also how do we think about the development of the plaza and how it could be a destination um both from a tourism perspective from residents being able to enjoy it as well as being a hub of business. And then of course um thinking about um some of the things that were mentioned earlier about activating that space um you know leveraging the amazing climate we have to be able to be outdoors as well as tying that into the historical character that that plaza represents is really important. Um and then the last point, excuse me, had to do with renter protections and thinking about how that um population is the most vulnerable, particularly folks who are in mobile home parks are in an urgent crisis um but potentially an opportunity for broader um protections in uh in place. Also what was mentioned the um you know the opportunity to think about diversity and social equity um that's inherent in this goal. So those were uh the things. So I'm looking for sort of head nods. Um these were the thing there were definitely other things that were brought up. I don't want to dismiss those things but these were the things that were sort of brought up. Um the first page the kind of things that were really pretty universal and then these were within the areas where we had multiple people who who shared that perspective.

So um that's where we are and then where we're headed is we are now going to move into bringing back to you the 2025 goals that we had in each goal area and we're going to do a deep dive into each segment. So, you have five broad goal areas and we're going to try to take maybe no more than we'll call it 15 to 20 minutes just to sort of think about our time today to do a deep dive into those. And before we do that, we are going to turn over to you and give you a little bit of time to reflect on the goals that you have because we're going to bring those up one at a time and move through essentially kind of a word smmithing process to change what's there close enough for today to reflect the input you want to have. And then David and his team will take that back and bring something that's more fully polished and that is tied in with resource and capacity constraints to make sure that it's realistic. That's what we'll come back to you in early March. Okay. So what you what council members have in front of you is um one page on each of these goals from 2025. So this is a starting point and the ask is for you to think about the areas you care the most about going through page by page. We'll give you sort of seven to 10 minutes to work on that and and then we'll come back and we'll kind of go through them one at a time and we'll as I said we'll take 15 to 20 minutes to talk about each page um respectively. Patricia, you have a question.

We're going to take seven I'm that was very confusing those instructions. Okay, got it. Are you going through the whole thing in seven minutes or each one at a time? We're going to give you time to just pause and reflect and just put some notes on paper yourself for 7 to 10 minutes by yourselves individually to just they they're all all the goals. That's the question. I have a specific one. Yes. Every single not one. Okay. All right.

So, you're going to go through all of them. I mean, we could do that one at a time if you want if that's your preference, but my my thought was that you just go through them, make some notes on the things that you want to change, add, improve, things you feel like don't serve us anymore. So really kind of do just get some notes on paper for folks who like to reflect on their own before they start speaking. Um that's the goal and then once you've had a chance to do that we'll come back and then you can share your input collectively so we can get to sort of one final version today. Yes. So we're doing this on the 2025 goals. is anticipation to design the 2020. I want to know how what the linkage is.

Yes, the the linkage and this was actually pretty consistent with the feedback that I had when I talked to each of you that many of you sort of looked at that and said, "We're not done with that. That's a multi-year goal. We're going to have to keep working on that. Maybe I'd tweak it." But honestly, what I heard, and you can tell me if I'm different. Actually, the first question I should will ask once I come back to you is like, is there something missing from any of these big buckets that we want to flag or add or talk about, we certainly can do that. What I'd heard from my conversations with you with each of you was like, this feels pretty good and we need to continue that these will continue to be our priorities for 2026. And the question is, if that's true, what do we want to take from 2025 that is still in progress that we need to keep doing? We're going to keep that there. What do we want to add or what? And so what you'll see behind that that you have in front of you is one page for each of these. So the goal is to take 20,

but I also we've had community input

and which we did not have when we had those conversations with you and I and I'm always um respectful of what I hear and what I have been submitted and um so I think there should be at least um an opportunity um you know to to weigh what we've heard as well that may not be on these pages um to to somehow say you know there should be like a subcategory for example under parks and recreation I heard you know like I heard a lot of things about parking bikes and things like I mean there may be a a spot for it there um but I don't want to lose you know because I don't want people who submitted things and have testified and so forth to say oh well they already met. You know, we weren't there and they came up with those and you know what the hell. So, um I just want to be mindful of that of what I

Yeah. You know, I I I hear what you're saying about about that. In fact, I have the same thoughts, but it it looks to me as as we look at it next year.

Oh, sorry. Hello. Okay. Um, as we look at housing, for instance, somebody brought up hillside preservation, and if that's important to us, then there's a way to incorporate that into the housing goal that would roll over for total cities. So, we're enhancing these um because I think these are relatively solid um and and we can build on these and expand them and create a 26 plan. That's my sense of it. Okay.

I'll just I'll just add to that. I agree. I think what we talked about was providing a a place to start and build off of. So, rather than a blank blank sheet, we thought we'd start with what we had before, knowing that we you're going to hear stuff, you have new ideas. So we'll be able to cross things off, add things, modify things, add subcategories. And that's what we're hoping to do over this next five to seven minutes. Just kind of think about that a little bit and then we'll go around, we'll go one by one and say we can take that off. We're done with that. Let's add a subcategory because we heard this from the public. But this is that chance today. Okay. So if I can just follow up on on my comments that So what we're doing is not just looking at these, but adding things as well. This is where you were last year. So where do you want to change?

I just want to be clear about Okay. I agree with that. I would also add if there's something um very specific again your staff is here. So if someone said you know I really want you to change the hours for the library or we should change the hours for community hall to have that might be an administrative thing or that might be the you know library services director which you don't have but like that might be something that that department head would be vigorously taking notes on like let us look and figure out if we could do that or not. If we're like hey parking is terrible and we just need to paint West Street better. I'm hoping you have a public works person who is sort of taking notes on like, let me go look at West Street and figure out how I get that into my public works plan for next year. That wouldn't have to be a council goal. That would be something that public works is like, you're right. Let me thank you. Let me go figure that out and I'll figure out when I have money for paint. So, not to say anything's going to get lost here, but it may not show up here specifically if it's something that can be handled at a detailed level. Okay, off you go. So, we'll take um you know, maybe sevenish minutes and I'll look around for when your pens are down. feel free to get more refreshments or hit the bathroom again and then we'll come back together and if you need more time we can do that. Um and then we'll kind of take these in order starting with like is there any big bucket that's missing? That's your biggest question that I got was that we're actually really doing well and we're really on track and we need to keep doing more of what we're doing and it's not perfect. So now is our time to continue to tweak to make sure that the direction we give to staff is more clear and is grounded in today's current reality. The environment's changed a lot in the last year and some things haven't changed. So what we were proposing is that we take a look at what we have and use that as our starting point. From there we'll figure out what we're going to keep, which might just be the things that we don't they're still there. We're not we don't even have to talk about them. Check. We need to keep that around. What do we want to eliminate? Like maybe it just doesn't serve us. Maybe we check that box, we've already done it. Uh maybe the

landscape has changed and it's not a priority anymore of what we have up there. What do we maybe need need to tweak it or modify it? And then lastly, what do we want to add to this big bucket? So I also before we dive into those, I want to just um go back to these. What I heard from you is that these are still your priorities. And I want to pause here to say is there something major that we should be doing instead as a priority that isn't captured here? I I'm not talking minutia in the weeds, but is there like a whole big bucket we're missing or something that you think should be replacing that? That's not what I heard when we talked, but I'd like to know now after everything you've heard.

Yeah. So, I did mention this when we spoke and so this is something that I don't know if its own bucket or it needs to be something within each of the priorities that is prioritized. And I think that we are in a very a period of time when there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of issues that potentially will arise that could uh come upon us very quickly. Uh and when I think of emergencies, I'm not thinking of just climate although that certainly is one, but financial emergencies. There's there's healthc care emergencies. all of those emergencies that we're facing because of the you know the the cutting in federal in federal funding and the changing in many policies you know um fortunately we're in the state of California where some of those other policies are going to still be withheld but so is there the idea of how are we thinking of ahead and be looking and being prepared for risk mitigation so that we're we're looking at the things we want to do but at the same time we're saying what are the things that could potentially come down that the black and I'm they're really black swan events and that was mentioned earlier about the financial crisis. That's what they were. It was a black swan event. it happens one in a thousand times, but we're seeing one in a thousand um weather events happening, you know. So, how how do we integrate that across this um or is it a separate bucket? But I would rather, you know, see that that's kind of a priority in each area to be thinking about that. With housing, it has to do with how you're building the housing, right? was going to play a really important role of how that's going to be climate safe.

So that's that was my one comment around all of it. Thoughts on that? A different you want are you responding to that or do you have a different thought? Great.

Part of I was thinking um so in the fourth bucket of unification annexation there's there is uh in there continuous disaster preparedness with a regional approach. So because I was thinking along those lines, but I was thinking that perhaps we want to retitle this particular section to Sonoma Valleywide impact something. I I don't know. I you you guys will think of some jazzy term for it, but in there could could be about all of the things that affect us regionally. sort of a regional bucket that doesn't necessarily have to be tied to any sort of unification or policy connectiveness, but it, you know, it could be in there as bullets, you know, but I heard like 8 Street East brought up. I mean, so that's part of the annexation, you know, consideration or whatever. I heard about shuttles going east and west. I mean, so I I just feel like that particular um bullet um would be better served this time, not losing anything because I think everything there's good.

Yeah. But it's a place that we could put some of Patricia's concerns because we're not going to be able it when these kind of cataclysmic events happen, whether they're political events or fiscal events or whatever they are, they're going to be regional. You know, they're not going to be confined to the the little city of Soma. So, um, anyway, I think if we sort of retitle that in some way and put some of those issues in there, there would that would be a place, okay, for that.

So, it sounds like there's a few opportunities. So, the the financial piece you mentioned or the housing piece might might be something that we want to capture in a specific bullet under housing with that lens. There also something here to the extent we're talking about regional as a small city both geographically, staff-wise, budget-wise, and otherwise. um being a great regional partner is really essential. Obviously, climate is not doesn't know city boundaries. So, thinking about that from a regional lens also makes sense. So, we can talk about that when we get there in terms of what what this bucket really is and if there's a way to reframe that to be more inclusive of the things you all care about. Okay. Other thoughts?

Yes. Um, I think that's a great idea and I I'm just wondering if that can't be a kind of an overarching filter that comes down in all the categories because it really gets down to forward thinking. You know, we we we do live in the bubble, but we should keep our focus in a bubble and that we need to be mindful of things that could impact us and our neighbors. And um I I I love that idea because one of the things we heard from the audience is that we are at least in some areas forward thinking and I think that should be something that we continue to try to uh challenge ourselves with uh within reason and um uh again thank you for adding that. So perhaps a l a lens or a perspective we want to take as we think about goals is being forward thinking and you also mentioned sort of uh risk mitigation and

also on this relaxation maybe an aid community development because when springs area always something like

Mhm. We are we should continue work with them especially right now immigrant issue and a lot of people just have some parts doesn't mean they don't have issue meaning closely with the nonprofits like loose and so and And you know not necessarily the people official organization but we are the need when you improve our service together let the community get stronger.

Thank you for that. So um so what we're doing here what you're starting to see that we're starting to do here is we're starting to tweak and modify this. So I'm going to propose if it's okay that we um we hold off until we come back and really see what's in this bucket and then revisit this at the end to say did we really address that? Is it its own thing? Did it does it really show up where it needs to be in these appropriate places? But this is something for now maybe we'll just leave that as an idea and then when we get to that topic we can think about what what is this bucket really and is it worthy of a renaming or a rebranding or or is it something else? Okay. Anything else in terms of like we just don't have the buckets right? There's something massive missing. If not we're going to move then into we'll just pick our first bucket here and start our deep dive. And again, and this is we have time together and this is not meant to rush you and also not meant to say this is the last time like speak now or forever hold your peace. That's not the intention either.

Excuse me. Yes.

Can I just add one thing and it's really kind of a broad stroke. Um, I would like to suggest that as we go through the goals and the priorities and uh the the various sub goals that I just would like to remind us of our the filters that we currently have and that is recognizing our three revenue buckets and we only have three and I'm not envisioning anything significantly more and if so please tell me. But as we're thinking about these goals, what's the impact of total? What could be the property tax? And not to say that we have to check all three by any means. It's just that I would like us to be kind of mindful recognizing that we we realistically don't have significant other buckets. And so in so doing, are some of these goals going to continue to protect and or enhance or at least sustain the buckets we or the the buckets we have? So

Okay, great. So we can't divorce ourselves from the funding sources of the things that we do. So keeping in mind this is this is how the city funds the amazing services that you all provide. Okay, great. So where we are is um these um council members, you have these words in front of you and um is that in here for the community roughly kind of?

Okay. Yes. Okay. So, um, so the goal here, what I want to do is my thought is we, you know, if you love it, we probably don't have to belabor it because it's important. We're going to keep it. So, you know, I want you to obviously start with what are we keeping? But what I'd love to know, is there anything that we can do to eliminate this for whatever reason? It's done. We finished it. It's evolved. So, I would love to know what you think we can eliminate from this. And then from there, we'll move to how is something here just not quite right anymore? We now we we're thinking about it differently. So, anything obvious that you think we've done and we can take off the list? Yeah,

I'm not against a housing summit. I But, um, if we're going to do another one, I mean, there's there's several of them. I'm I'm involved in in housing in my day job. So, um, there's a lot of housing summits that are coming up. So, I would change that to participate or send people to some of the housing summits that are happening. There's there's several that are happening um that we could do. And I think that we'd probably get more ideas being in a bigger pool with a lot more people than conducting something ourselves and turnurning around the ideas that we already have.

Okay. So, there's a thought that we could say perhaps this would be participate in regional housing summits. Okay. I think we are planning one here and one is in the works. Is that correct? I could talk to that real quickly. Uh we are working with supervisor Hermes's office um to set up a housing summit, but we talked to her about coordinating with other resources for the community, especially immigrant resources and um so we're working on that now. So I think what you're suggesting works well with that and would support that participating in those regional efforts then doing our own thing. Okay. So, does this language capture it or do we need to tweak that in some way so that we capture what what you all just nodded? Okay. I just didn't want to limit it to

Okay. I think the first sentence it is not necessary this one. Yeah. Implementing the housing element. Uhhuh. Do you think the you know and this is too general because this is

okay so there's a question you know we need to implement the housing element which is sort of always happening so it's a legal require irement for us to do that and um and it sounds really broad in that there's a whole lot I mean I my community our housing element is 500 pages or something there's a lot to it so it could be that it's acknowledging it's a lot of work and that we're going to continue to be implementing it but it also could be maybe not that helpful is that what you're saying yes it doesn't matter it's not always going to happen yes okay any other thoughts on that why

I personally think it needs to stay and the only reason why it One of the the significant components of the housing element is of course the mandate to achieve our arena numbers and uh I really uh think that we need to be cognizant if we don't continue to respond to Sacramento and you guys know I don't particularly like Sacramento. Uh I I think that that needs to stay up there because everything that we do subsequent to that kind of take back to say okay is this is this concurrent with our housing element or are we deviating or what? And if we're deviating is it for good reason. So I just see it as a bullet reminder that our goal is to keep Sacramento out of our town.

Okay. Other thoughts on that or other ideas? Okay. Um so we're we're sort of in the uh both eliminate or change. So, anything else we want to change in terms of word choice that where we could be more precise, uh, more in keeping with what we're actually doing, acknowledging the work we've already done. Anything else? Yes, I think I saw a hand over here. I think we haven't heard from John actually. Okay.

Well, thank you. Um but the explore partnership with school district and private land owners um for housing options well specifically to the school district we've had two opportunities that I can think of um to try to develop a housing opportunity there and neither of those have happened. Um I'm not sure that it will happen because the school is still using these properties and they just announced Presswood's going to be the charter school. So I you know I don't think and David maybe you know is the school district interested in working with us to provide affordable housing for teachers. Yeah.

Dell Harrison is still available. Um there's minimal use on that site and there could be some potential. I I wouldn't want to take it off because there's still quite they own a lot lot of property, you know, south of the high school. Then I would suggest that should be more of a

I'm going to turn to staff. To the extent that we're giving direction to staff, is there something specific that staff would do if we were to either take this off or tweak it or change it in some way? I think having it on there just uh is is sufficient for what we need. Um we are talking to the school districts and with other private land owners like the hospital and others about what their desires are and then identifying what we need to do to fix that like the church site and changing the general plan doing affordable housing overlays. So having that as a priority just helps focus us on that as well. Okay, great. Thank you for the clarification. Um anything else on here that we want to eliminate or change? Yes. Yes. And there was a few and I know Patricia, you had a hand as well. Okay, great. Love that.

Um, we heard last night about the housing bond if we hadn't heard about it before, but I'd like to somehow flag that that there could be a potential h statewide housing bond. Um, and it sort of goes to Ron's three buckets of money. It could be bucket number four. So, um, so would that involve us supporting? Um, yes, obviously we can't. That would be something we can't is not agendaized and we can't discuss, but I think we should at least flag the fact that there's potential in a housing bond going forward. And um the other thing is as far as renter protections, that's not

Sorry, can I pause you there one second? I just want to make sure we capture that. So what you what I heard you say was that it's potentially a statewide housing bond. Yes. And if it is, it's not something that we're going to take action on here other than to potentially if we think it's a good idea for us, we could decide to write a letter. There's there's things we could do to support it. We have to do that at a public meeting and agenda. I say, "Yeah." Yes. Um Yes. But but the request is to say that we want to acknowledge that that might be happening statewide that could have an opportunity for us here in Exactly. We should stay in the loop about what it's about, make sure that we're we're in it. So stay informed and participate in any state housing funding that might benefit Sonoma. Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. Your second one had to do with rental.

Yeah. just I just wanted to um you know a lot of people see that and they immediately jump to um you know rent control which it could be but also we've heard um that there are uh rental units that don't have air conditioning or heating or appliances and that I just want to make sure that in renter protections that we're also um looking at potential policies that might uh also benefit renters in other ways other than the rent.

So what I hear you saying there is potentially for renter protections to involve their ability to stay in their home. So affordability um maybe access and quality of life or something around the quality of of what's yes with livability. There's probably a word that someone could tell us here that I don't have top of mind, but something that speaks to the quality of what is available for renters that hits a minimum level. I think okay, I think everything on compliance is basically the language that people are using when they're looking at things that need to to be available. I mean, I know

I don't want it to say, you know, a pingpong or something. You know, when you say quality of life, it could be, you know, sauna. I mean I'm talking about you know it's not basic okay essential service something okay and also and here one project maybe we can follow and also it's kind of good in the partnership from uh with the hospital in the health district because last year is that on is that on this one in terms of one of examples of a private land ownership or something else and a partnership. Yeah. A local partnership

to uh because you know state treasurer Fiona Ma visited here and we talk about affordable housing issue. Of course, this is our city's most urgent issue and she agreed and also her office could provide some of money and special funding and also we visited a site parking lot next to across the street of the hospital.

Mhm. And then the also I did some the research with uh the city manager and uh Jennifer Gates and what is the uh zoning and we got a feedback but later and uh formal pre uh former executive director John uh after that I'm not sure she followed up or not followed up. I hope we can follow this. Okay.

You know a lot of the opportunities we just make for full use of it and the they they have this kind of desire to help us you know it because that is uh is that maybe is is is um is her office potentially uh does that potentially it's not a housing bond per se but really so statewide funding. Yeah, it's not a state fund that is the under the treasury offices they have the special you know smallness size and funding for remote for the remote areas.

Okay. Yeah, because here and they treat us as a remote because and her office and give us $6 million during the past three and a low interest and a non-interest bonding. So they want to build up this kind of relationship. Okay, great. So okay, anything else here in terms of either Yes. Thank you. Uh,

this is going to be kind of a a a general comment, but I want to share it because I want to not mislead the public. Um, I don't discount that h housing is an absolute priority. But I have uh failed miserably in my three years to figure out part of my campaign platform and that is how to develop workforce housing. And I think given the harsh realities of where we live, both on the positive side and the negative side, we can't do it. And I don't want to suggest to the public that we can. So what I would like to say is I definitely want to continue to focus on affordable housing, but that really is affordable housing with a capital A that gets incentives and and and and state support. Plus, we have our inclusionary uh we have our inclusionary requirements that will continue to add to the affordable everything else. Even though you'll hear architects where they're flowery words, this says it's affordable by design, uh in this area given labor, materials, price of land, uh entitlements, it doesn't add up to workforce housing. So what I would like to do is make sure that we continue a big push for affordable housing. But the reality is it's affordable housing market rate workforce I think uh is a dream that is just that it's a dream and I don't see it being realized.

Okay. So there's so what if I what I hear you saying is that uh that although this is up here it's not something that we should probably focus on which is not to say we can't do these other things but putting it up here might not

I nobody's been able to tell me on fronts how we can do it both professional and and and government agencies just can't tell me how we we create it in this community given the attractiveness we have and that we can't restrict it's hard to restrict other than uh the affordable capital pay to to say, "Well, you make just that. You can buy this at market rate housing or or and then somebody else comes along and and says, "No, I want to I I I make more. I should be able to buy it." So, again, I just want to be transparent with the community to think that we're not chasing down some rabbit hole that we just can't um

conquer. So, we've heard the need. We heard that earlier from the public. What I'm hearing is that, you know, it may be a bridge too far. We're not clear how to do it, but it sounds like the need is there. Other others have thoughts on that.

I I understand what Ron is saying, and if I remember correctly, the collaborative that put together their their housing roadmap did prioritize workforce housing. Um, I'm trying to remember exactly. You were uh our city manager, David Guu, was there on that panel and they had developers here and both for-profit and nonprofit. I I would not take it off because I think it's such a priority. Although I appreciate us being realistic with people about what we're up against.

So I would having not been to that seminar or that conference, I would suspect that when they're talking about workforce housing, they're talking about the hospitality workers. are talking about uh those that are are you know at a certain economic level which we've already are when we talk about inclusionary housing and so on. It's it's tied in with a median average uh income. the workforce housing that I've always interpreted with that phrase was the teachers, the firefighters, the uh the landscape architects, those that uh make more money and they don't qualify for the uh those various categories, low, very low, whatever. And and so my initial thought to that, and this isn't I'm not going to die on this hill, but my initial thought to that workforce is well, we've all talked about our Mark Bodenhammer has brought it up a number of times about the fact that our businesses can't get workers. Well, these are the workers that have to drive in from Blay or wherever.

So, I'm going to sorry, I'm going to interject. I'm going to use my facilitator uh prerogative for just a quick moment. uh only because I think the question I' I've heard two different things which is I've heard that this is important and I've heard that it's both really hard. Um I don't know if we're going to solve it here. So I haven't heard that there isn't a need but I haven't heard that we have an idea of how to do it. And I so appreciate we don't want to mislead the public on that. I don't know if we're going to solve that here. I might recommend we put this back to staff to figure out whether this language is helpful or not or if there's a way to rephrase that in terms of what we're trying to do because I have heard you all say that that's important and we don't have a clear path. But if that's okay, I'm going to put a pin in that just for the sake of time to move us forward and I appreciate you giving me that privilege. Um, I want to move us into anything else you want to change. Uh, or if there's anything you think is just missing that we should add. Uh we have a few more minutes on this one and I want to move us into the next category if you don't mind.

So this is an addition and this is actually um I think council member Gurnie thought maybe the he hillside protection. I don't know if that goes here or in parks and wrecks. So my thought was maybe it's that's part of parks and wrecks versus part of housing. I see how it affects housing that we're saying we don't want development there. Uh so it is kind of um looking at although many of these areas are outside they're in our sphere of influence and outside of our UGB. So I'm just not sure where it fits. If it fits here I think it's a good thing to put here. If not, I think it it maybe is under kind of more I think the process is more of a park and wreck process of you know what type you know is there are we going to um do something with the land so there's a conservation easement or something. I see that kind of more in that bucket but just wanted to bring it up here just to make sure we put in the right place.

Okay. I'm seeing a head knot here. So perhaps we bring it up there and if we decide we're wrong we can always come back. So, we'll put we'll put a pin in that and actually um make a note of that. Okay. Um I see a questioning questioning look have a policy on hillside protection now. I and I don't speaking and I think David can concur that if you look at our zoning we have very very little hillside development. And I think there was the big debacle there at B Brazil and and Fourth Street East that we have like three or four lots and that was it. Beyond that, even though we have a very definitive hillside development section, that's it based upon current.

Okay. So, I'm going to ask I'm going to just I'm going to ask us to put a pin in this for two reasons. One, we're going to talk about this when we get to park and wreck and then we're also not going to solve it here. So, we may just agree to put it on there in the words that you all think make sense and then we can have staff go back and chew on that. Thank you for bringing that up. Great clarifying question. Anything else on this slide?

Uh I have another question regarding creating funding plan and the policy for use of the housing trust fund. Uh I would like to add an option how to use not only the policy policies last year this year we can studed how we can use it for example it's the possible we can purchase a piece of the land and putting up there instead of the running out money sitting there sitting there that means losing all the okay so what I heard you say is that we have the policy already so can we don't not yet

this I think what I point you're asking for is there's the policy for how to use the yeah how to use okay okay we have no well we have it on screen for use we we do have a policy for we have language on the housing trust fund how it could be used but what this this goal was was to reevaluate that look at that have a discussion about how we want to update that policy for other creative ways to use a housing trust trust fund because as you remember we did use that for the protection of the affordable housing units and that was explicitly listed in that policy for that housing trust that that's allowable use but the thought was to reopen that reevaluate it and that's what this is that we haven't done yet. All right.

Okay. Great. We we shall continue. Yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So, I'm going to I'm going to recommend we move on. And if you're like, "Wow, I forgot something we need to come back." We can. But for the sake of time, I'm going to move us forward. Um Okay. Next slide. No, all good. Okay, so we're back to uh parks, recreation, and community services. So, we're going to keep everything here uh unless you decide otherwise. So, the first question is, is there anything here we can eliminate? And then we'll move into what do we want to tweak or reward or change? Well, it seems like we have a a parks and reccks department,

so we can uh eliminate that as a plan for a dedicated one. We have a dedicated one. I'm Could we celebrate that for just a quick moment? Celebrate that. Yes. Amazing. Take a bow. Okay. Amazing. Great. Okay. What else? Yes. Are we on the part to add? Um, not yet. If you're okay, if you're okay to hold that for one quick moment. Anything else? Anything else you want to change that we can eliminate, further eliminate, make it tighter, more concise, or reward? Yes. But to eliminate development of a park on the west side of town. Just joking.

Them's fighting words. Yes. So, can I years I've waited?

So, I would I I'd like to comment on that one. As a landscape architect who loves parks, I would I fully support the idea of developing the concept and the vision. But again, I want to uh be a little bit more cautious on uh adding to the plate of parks and wreck maintenance anything more until they've had a chance to kind of catch up and and uh be able to to lift the the level of maintenance in our current acreage. Again, I'm not saying no by any means because I'd be foolish as a landscape architect to say nothing. But I'm just simply saying let's develop the vision. Let's get excited about it, but let's take a pause and give the our newly formed department an opportunity to uh lift the tide.

Okay. So, it sounds like there's a level of maintenance that we're looking for and funding that goes with that for all of our parks. Okay. Got it. Yes.

Absolutely understood. which is why I and I'm expressed this last time um the green links is is something that I have a I have a similar concern um the difference being that you know there the development and park on the west side is for people who could be um that aren't that mobile who can't amble through town or don't drive to the plaza. That's why that park is there is to serve a population primarily seniors in mobile home communities who do not have access to a park. So that's why it's priority and yes I will die on that hill. Um so the green links though I have nothing against it that would involve a bit of revenue and it's creating something new. It's lovely, but you know, again, I'm not advocating to take it off, but I am mindful also of the cost of something like that. Um, which could also involve um, you know, purchasing property. We would like to create a link, but we don't own the land there. So, I think in everything we do, we have to be mindful of of the cost. So,

okay. I'm but and that's not the only that I'm just pointing out. It's not the only thing. Okay. So, I'm just gonna call out that I'm seeing both of these on here as consideration of the establishment progress in the development. So, we're not saying no, it needs to be right sized relative to the resources and constraints that we have. Um, so these feel like things that we want to continue to keep on our radar that are important to this community and our progress on that might be delayed or slowed based on the reality of what it takes to get the work done. Okay. Uh, anything else?

I'll just make a quick comment on the green links. I think that there are I mean it's utilizing there's community organizations that are doing work on and doing some of the work that's costly or resource intensive of creating the map that has they have done that and I think that there is the understanding that it's not like you create this map and tomorrow it exists. It's like yes as priorities within that you identify the lowhanging fruit and go forward and working with our our local organizations like the land trust so that those those many of those costs are taken on or funds are raised by other organizations besides the city but having the support from the city where the city can't support and not necessarily you know financial course resources are a financial cost but not like laying out money to buy land between an area where you well we got to buy this property. I don't think that that's the concept. The concept is to look and understand where there would be gaps and what can be done. And then the only other thing I would say about the green links I think that there's and also about the you know more parks is there is increased as we age we're looking at a current aging population and how they function in the world and the future aging population will function differently than our current aging population because that that population is going to be utilizing more mobility efforts uh that are available than the current population. It's, you know, a more mobile population already. And so think and if we're thinking from a future, let's think of what the future populations, how they get around, you know, they may be using many more capabilities that are not, you know, walking, but they need they don't want to be on a road. They'd rather be on a pathway, right? And they're in a mobile a mobile transportation

vehicle of some sort. So just so that we're thinking, you know, it's not just for today's population, right? So I just want to re strengthen the idea. I think that the idea of green links is legitimate. It's just unfortunately a little bit vague as far as fully understanding how that can be accomplished. I think it warrants staying there, but it just is something as um the vice mayor has mentioned is just we need to be cognizant of of as we support what does it look like costwise and what are we gaining? What's the return on investment? But I I love that idea. I do have a comment down on the cemeteries. Mhm.

I I'm excited about what we've done, but I'm um I'm I'm pressing for the development of Friends of the Cemetery, which is a subcategory that you guys can ignore. But I think the other thing that I want to do besides self- sustaining is I think we need to celebrate. We need to celebrate the history and in what it's offered because I just think that down through the years it's been kind of this under underrecognized and part of celebrating it may also contribute to the self- sustaining um coming up with some means of of uh making some money in an appropriate way, not abusive. So, okay. Oh, one last one.

Yes, please. Uh, I I loved some of the comments and I've had this discussion and I I I'd like to think that it's still on the table. Um, I really would like us to put u money where our mouth is relative to the love for the arts program and I still would love to see a a study for what it would look like for a a 1 to 2% not just on certainly buildings that the city builds because you're right, we're never going to get a public art fund and not just necessary commercial buildings. I'd like to see what it would look like for everything that gets built in Sonoma because uh we talk about the importance of art. We are such an incredible place to put public art, but it doesn't come cheap. So, I I know we're doing a nexus study on the fees and impacts and what we need to be careful for, but I I don't want to lose sight of that. And I do want to try to see if we can't push the envelope so we could truly make uh generate some money to see some exciting things happen. Okay. So we have funding sources potentially tied to our arts programs and partnerships other um other changes and then we can also move on to add well so I think we're identifying that the 1% for the arts and looking at you know we haven't said I mean looking at well if it's not 1% what can we do right but we want to broaden it how do we get the money you know it's kind of like what will get the most money the other thing is I think within that is looking within parks and wrecks is cultural exchange change with our sister city in Mexico and also there's potentially other sister city relationships in Mexico that may be happening on a regional basis and that that cultural exchange could benefit our cemeteries. I mean we could broaden our dios uh celebrations to really bring in because that's what you do. You honor the history of those that are dead. And so I think there's ways for us to look at how are we linking and that we have

people from our sister cities that are coming here to Sonoma to look at where they could be on the plaza potentially to have uh some stories where there would be cultural exchange with with arts from that region. Most of the the the uh Latinos in the valley are from Mishwa or Haliscoco and the then Pas Pascoro is where in Mishwakan and we're also talking to other cities in His Heliscoco. So that could be, you know, like how do we make this cultural exchange also be an economic driver for the city and then during the holidays you're playing Coco all the time and so then you get everybody from Japan that comes to Sonoma to celebrate Coco and dress up for Day of the Dead and you make lots of money. Anyway, sorry. I support the idea of the friends of the history you know that is the history really is a great asset for us and also I want to this here

yes and also I here I will take this opportunity to update a little bit about another project so so I'm going to interrupt for just one moment because I don't think we actually captured your point there so so what so what would that what would that look like up here in terms I heard a little bit about um thinking about cultural development partnerships within the partnerships, let me just say including our our our sister cities. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. We could just that'll make it simple and people can go where they want with it. We won't go down a rabbit hole.

And the other thing I want to say just to remind you all is that this is meant to be consensus. So when I when I don't hear an objection that says I don't love that, I'm assuming that you're like, "Oh, that is a great idea. I'm not going to ask you to vote on these individually." But just know that if there's a disagreement that one person putting it up here at the end, you know, the assumption is that you're all kind of consenting as you go. May not be your favorite idea, but you're like, I can live with it. So, I'm looking for like head nods that I can live with it or I support it. And if you don't, I would love you to speak up. So, that's sort of how we're the assumption I'm making. Okay, great. And yes, you want uh you wanted to add something. Uh yes uh this is a great idea and also and we have working on an project Chinese piper already more than 10 years so tired and recently and the situ city finally and raised enough money and hopefully in this year when groundbreaking that is hopefully still have lot of

this is a pavilion you said yes okay yes in the park yeah okay that It's the previous city council and approved and also in the year of the 2020 got a construction permit already. But during the pandemic waste a lot of the time. Okay. It's difficult to raise the money. It will be as a gift to the city. So the city and later will closely work with the sister city nonprofit. Okay. And see how we can you know move forward. really needed a lot of the help. It's group just only several the people projects.

Okay. Okay. Okay. I think keep your ears open. His list is getting longer and longer. Is also uh thinking looking at all of depot park.

What's you know park? looking at all of depot park because when we are are thinking for when I think about development plaza maintenance plan or we look at work around the plaza all of the work I want that to extend to the whole depot park area too we have a building there that's not being used there's a lot of potential there that could be happening um you know how do we that it's that that maybe we're changing a little bit of the plaza it's it's the maintenance and kind of I don't know where we I don't want to put it there if that's separate. But

no, I think it it should be a separate. I mean, there's been uh a lot of talk about projects on the depot, which I think is great. Um and it's kind of already in the works and we just need to continue to push it forward, but I think it's kind of two separate, but I fully support the idea of continuing to enhance, uh develop, uh protect, whatever you want to call it, as far as part of our ongoing green space. Yeah, under economic development we have just to clarify is that a separate are you moving on to a separate point or you agree you're adding on to that one?

Well, I'm adding on under economic development we have initiate steps for a comprehensive plaza corridor master plan which my understanding is in depot park. Okay, thank you for that clarification. And then I would like to go down I'm sorry. I'd like to go back down to the new one. I'd like to just change the wording on that and just say consider moving forward on the TING project. Okay. Okay. So, consider So, it sounds like it's it's none of these are slam dunks. So, it sounds like we want to

something needs to be revisited. It although it was approved many several councilmans ago, dynamics have changed, times have changed, and I I by no means am I not supporting it. I'm just saying that I like that wording better. Okay. Okay. So, I'm hearing we need to do a little more thinking on this one to flesh out what that really is before we know how to move forward on it. Is that what I'm hearing? That would be my comment. Okay. Okay. So, we consider moving forward on that.

Yes. So, sorry. I'm looking for There was a tweak there. I'm just again I'm looking for like as we I'm still looking for head nods that folks are like, "Okay, that works for me." Okay, great. Yes. So on the um the the green links, I'd like to include in that to have better um walking paths on the existing um roads. Um because to me is before we start, you know, green linking around town, there's there's a you know, one gentleman who wrote to us that he's having to walk in the mud every time he gets off the bus. So, um I and then you know my usual rant which is West Napa Street

benches and trees benches and trees. It's so hot that in the summer you can't walk on that side of the road. So I would like to include in that green links establishment of green links through town and just enhancing walkability and also at night. We heard from Aaron talking about the lighting at night and so forth. I just think that in the existing places where people do walk, we should make it as safe and as comfortable as possible. It's it's pedestrian safety, but it's also Yeah, maybe. It's kind of existing. Yeah.

But it Yeah, it but it's also like part I, you know, it's like part of the green links thing. It's like before we go there, can we at least make sure we can walk down Napa Street? Okay. Is there something we need to change here or does that does this does this capture it or is there is there different language we want? And I think that was the intent is we the let's focus on the existing and then tree can be mentioned and then green leaves.

Okay, great. Yes. And I'm going to I'm going to and then we're soon we're going to move on from this one. need to go back to the team. Consider moving forward. If this is a goal, I considered this when we talked about it. That's it's not really an action. Um how about this eventually? So maybe the thing is it's to bring the team project back to the

So to me, yes. So to me, that's what this would be, which is to say this becomes a staff item to bring it back with a recommendation that says we decide to put it on hold because we don't have money. We decide we're just going to put on a shelf. We decide to move forward. We decide we're going to do phase one. Here's the timetable, whatever that is. But that this becomes a staff item to make a decision at some point. Okay. So, good call. Great. Okay. Good. So, if folks are okay, for the sake of time, I'm going to move us forward again. We can always come back. Yes.

Title. Oops, sorry. Uh, on the title, um, would it be appropriate to add parks, recreation, arts, and community services? I'm just trying to elevate I mean, arts program is a bullet down there and it really from from what we're hearing and we're talking about a 1% budget and public art that I think it deserves to be part of the title. Thank you. I'm hearing seeing some head nods on that. Okay, with that, I'm going to pause on this one. You've been elevated to a title. Congratulations. Okay.

All right. So, with that, I'm going to recommend we move forward for the sake of time and we and again, we can always come back. So, we'll show you these at the end and you can decide love it or something's missing. Um, okay. So, economic development, financial. So, we're on three of five. So, just in terms of where we are. Um, what's here again? Anything you want to eliminate or change before we start adding? Yes, I'm seeing motion. ways to support local businesses. Um I I think bicycle parking we should be talking about that a lot, but that's an element that can support local businesses and and um whether to add it in there um specifically or is that part of the bigger plan?

Also want to say this out loud. I have been approached about parks and that still seems to be something that's of interest for some of the businesses. Is that something that we want to look at? Again, okay. So, there's a question about whether we explore better placement of bike racks and or parklets. I might suggest we look at that the same way we're going to look at the TING. Bring it back for a discussion point to the council before we put it on as a goal.

Okay. And and I'll just say honestly that that is essentially what happens with all of our goals because as staff brings it back they bring it with a recommendation that says here's the thing and sometimes it doesn't come forward because they can't recommend it because we don't have the money. So that's often why some of these things sit here because not that we don't love it and we can't figure it out. We just don't have the funds. Um but that all of these generally will come back to you as a council agenda item for you to decide do I love it and do I love it in this way and on this timing and then can we afford it. Good reminder. Thank you. I'm sorry. Just one last thing along these same lines and it's really kind of perfect way to collectively support local businesses, but um we've talked about possibly closing some of the streets um at a particular time to create more pedestrian friendly environment activities.

Okay. So, we're hearing more about making it more walkable. Not and not just walkable because I'm getting my exercise, but walkable specifically in the support of I'm heading down to my local business to do the thing I would do there. Okay. What else is coming up for you in terms of things you want to uh eliminate or change? I think we can strategically take off strategically implement new sales tax measures. Thank you, Con Councilwoman Low. that no long we we we achieved that. Nicely done. That's not trivial.

I'm looking for those achievements. Um, so one of the things that I is, uh, under economic development, I think one of the things that we're going to have to really stay on top of is the train the changing uh, landscape of the wine industry and the effect that that's going to have on land use and development. Um also, so that's one of the things I think we want to stay ahead of the game on. Uh there's some work beginning on this now, not much, but some Sonoma ecology center is doing some work on that. Davis is doing some work on that. Um but the other thing is um there's also between I I hope I don't sound like a broken record, but I did go to Mexico. Uh so and I do love Mexico. Uh is but there's Mexico and our region. And so the region of Mishwakana, Haliscoco are exhibiting some of the same climate issues. Uh they grow berries, we grow wine. Some people here are transitioning to berries. Some people in Mexico are transitioning to wine. Having some kind of economic exchange and this would be so would be part of but but we could support a regional exchange of economic development. I think also it helps support some of the work that needs to be done in bringing immigrant populations here to work the land. Um there's some of that work already going on but would help reinforce that and help support that. But it's kind of it's not specific to our city except in the region. It is so important to us the wine industry and what's happening how our agricultural lands are going to be used. So I think that there's that we're it's a time we really need to be very very innovative in thinking about what's going to happen. How do we do this? How do we look at other people, you know,

how are we doing that regionally? And I think especially with some of our partners that we could develop in regions in Mexico. So there I don't know what you would think you don't have to add the Mexico part but I can I think that that being part of regional discussions about the changing um land land use um upcoming changing land use uh issues that are going to be affecting us u economically and how we can get ahead of that to turn those into economic opportunities before they become um economic make you know risks.

Thank you for that. I had Oh, sorry. I didn't see you.

Oh, uh revenue and the budget management because right now there are a lot of the uncertainties. So if the possible uh when we prepare the budget and in the long term we could increase of the reserve fund if we have additional money because right now I think is 17% um right right now is we are on the 17%. if for the possible we increase in certain amount and uh prepare for you know bad weather movement. So there's a question about when when we have extra reserves that we sack those away essentially for rainy days or climate disasters or other other things we might be struggling in terms of risk management for example increased reserves might be a way to do that. Other thoughts on that?

I think what we're talking about really is looking at the criteria. I think this is what you mentioned. If we look at the criteria we currently have for our reserves and see if we need to adjust them because we actually have our reserves are beyond what we're required to have. But we want to look at like is do we want to increase change that criteria so that we have more in reserves. And then also one of the things is look at how do we look at when there when there are because we're recognizing there could be a lot of things that could happen. We want to make sure that we have criteria ready for how we're going to make the decisions about when we go to those reserve funds. What's the prioritization of reserve funds? So it's policies around our reserve fund I think is what we're looking for. And this all goes under finding ways to diversify the um the financial the economic development financial stability which I think is really critical. We heard it a lot from um the commenters earlier. We should include that um efforts to find um uh less for the vacant write aid building for example. That's a huge piece of property that in the city um and and any other u vacant um facilities trying to whatever way we can make it easier for people to move in or put put something in there that and I also heard from you know from Mark and from Tim that and I don't know if this goes in this particular section or I had it written in the next one um to help accommodate uh transportation for workers. Um although we're of course going to try to have housing here you know we know that you know families one

may work in St. Molina and one works in Soma and so they live in Napa and how do they get here um that to look at transportation for um for workers and I don't know if that goes into the regional thing which is the next one or this one but it it does have um you know there's parts of each one so I just want to bring that up because that I think that's critical but there were times here and there still are where their signs on the door were closed today because we no one could work. You know, we've all seen that. So,

okay. So, we think we're sort of like maybe we put it in the next one if we'll think about bringing it back here. Okay, great. Um any in the sake of time, anything else on this one? Yeah, Dr. Yes.

on by comments. So, I think we need to continue to be creative and trying to figure out how to incentivize business to fun, how to incentivize business to fill empty spaces. And I think that's that's incredibly important. Um, and oops, sorry. And it's now on. And then the last one just on the initial initiate steps, the comprehensive plaza corridor master plan. Um, I love seeing it still on there. Uh, I'm my my commentary is just it's a long large expensive project. The longer we take to initiate it, the longer we're ever going to realize any face of it. So, I would love to see that prioritized.

Yes. Okay. I'll be quick. So one thing sorry on the recreation that we didn't include is uh uh activities more activities for youth in the city to part you know places to go to anyway just that would be good to have that as a one of our priorities is youth activities especially in the evening

like there's not a lot of things for kids to do so that the reason I thought about that because in that also I support Tim's request in regards to having an evening loop of the bus for people that goes later in the evening. It also can be used for more people coming into the plaza and young people that have no way. And that's certainly just within the city and doesn't go to the valley yet, but that could be a start for that. And then the the other thing is I think in looking at identify ways to diversify our business sector, we are in a sense creating a cultural center for people to come and visit. And so I think we should be looking at u the creative economy and uh how we support the creative economy. I am actually on the vestment committee for a foundation or a nonprofit that that's what they do is build support for creative economies. And that may be something also that we could be looking at how do we go into looking at what does that mean? And it's you know how do we drive more creatives here as an economic driver. So,

okay.

Okay. With that, I'm going to recommend we pause. Maybe that's part of diversifying the business sector and and again, we can do continue to word smith this and when staff takes this back, but we want to make sure that we're getting head nods and we got the general idea here. So, we're finishing up our third. If if you're good, we're going to move on to the next one. Okay. So, this one we said this one maybe could evolve and maybe it's not just about annexation, unification. We talked about this having a regional focus in terms of thinking about uh disaster preparedness, thinking about risk mitigation. We're a small town. We can't live like an island. Uh we talked about transportation um opportunities that might go here. Um so we can either start with the guts and then rename it or we can say what is this category really and then we could talk about what should be in it. Anyone have thoughts? I'm going to put you on the spot. Go for it. If we put what we think should be in it here, it might help us define the title.

Yes, agreed. And I will start um I'm going to throw this one out there. It's kind of the elephant in the room, but I believe that we should look at uh reconsidering our uniform growth boundary. Okay. So, what an output. Okay. So, we should think about reconsidering it. Okay. Um other thoughts?

Um I think we also need um because one of the things I think we're moving away from and I could be wrong. There's not a lot of work being on being done on the annexation issue. The work is on the unification and services. Um I I think we should maybe still keep it there. I mean the EIFD is kind of another way to approach that. It doesn't seem like there's a support from the county side for for annexation. Um but I would say that then maybe because one of the things there's a lot of things we're talking about to broaden how we work together. How do we ensure one of the issues would be so that people that live in the valley have more of a voice in the decisions that are made in the city because they do affect people in the valley. and um maybe encouraging, you know, more opportunities for forums for for city around city and and um valley discussions uh connection including that.

Is that a change on this one? Yeah, because I don't think we've really I don't see that we've really I think we've done it around specific topics, but have we brought it the publican? Um I know we do that at Sonoma Valley CAC that's just around land use. Um this could be about you know how are we doing other not and maybe not creating another commission we have plenty of them I don't know some form but continuing to identify ways I think we just need to think of how we're implementing that so it it becomes a real thing because it it I think many of these other things we're we're we're working on.

Okay. Okay. So, I'm hearing that we've got maybe we've got the words, maybe these are the words, but the question is like what really is this and what what more can we do to actually do that? Yeah. Is that fair? I would say that I think it happens. I know we had people here today that weren't necessarily from the city. Um y general plan meetings. I know we have people that are incorporated that us get that word. So maybe it's this intention here that we have is that when we do those type of meetings, we're we're intentional about making sure that we are bringing broad broadcasting that why people feel like we are to those types of meetings. I mean I think in addition to including on the boards and conditions and that we already do.

Okay. Anything else here in terms of eliminate change and we can open it up to anything you want to add here. I do have a question and I could be wrong. Has not the county produced that uh disaster preparedness report and we have it or I mean it's available and is it comprehensive or is this something as you see uh that there's a value in continuing um the evaluate I mean the study of it. What that was a hazard mitigation uh report that was done in conjunction with all the cities in the county. Um this is just disaster parents which we meet weekly on identifying

right and and I believe in the meeting that I attended yesterday that the Jeff no it's who's the county emergency Jeff um Duff Dval Dval he I thought he had mentioned he's completed a report and it's about to be circulated I don't know which one he's might be talking about there's a lot of them coming out um but I but I I think this one is ongoing this one definitely not a not a specific that's what I just needed to get confirmed that It's ongoing. That's fine. Thank you. This is something we have to continue to work with the county on and involve in.

Okay. Other thoughts on um what this category could be? And now might be a good time is as you look at it to think about what are we really calling this in terms of like what is our city priority as we think about having a regional lens to our work.

Yeah. And to add one thing um that there's a real concern about the current um immigration and anti-immigration um efforts that's in the valley and I think we need to put it on there because there's concerns from businesses several of them if you looking at um social media today um there several of our uh businesses are um noting it and dedicating a portion if not all of their proceeds today to immigrant immigrant services. They know they're noticing it in their their workers um and the families um and we don't know how it's going to impact when we start coming into harvest and so forth. So um I don't think we can ignore it. It is a regional concern and it could be you know a regional real big problem. So, I think it could be part of our preparedness, but I think that um we have a lot of migrant workers in Sonoma Valley and they're concerned and we need to reflect that. Well, I suggest that we uh

might I suggest that we maybe uh frame that by simply saying im immigration support because what I think is valuable is beyond the most recent or the the current concern about what's happening that hopefully that's going to die and go away and that but the need and the want to continue to support the immigrant population I think is a valid um uh Yes. Yes. So I mean I mean two points of information that are good. Sonoma County is seen as the model for emergency immigration support. So not but we haven't had the issue has been not showed up here a lot yet yet.

One of the things I mean that that uh Rebecca Mercio our supervisor brought up last night was someone being taken from one of the county offices and education for the county staff. I think it would be good for the city staff to be educated. We've been looking at that for a while. I think it's time for us to actually do that. Uh the other thing is I think that we really want to be I would like to see that specifically on here. We it it we did give support last year to the overall coordination of emergency services around this. We did a small amount, but I think that it opens of it up for us to be able to do more support. Um, so yeah, I think naming it is gonna because I know the other piece of information is important for us to know when I talked with Leonardo Levado last night is and um there's families that we know that have are doing this too. Many families are deciding to leave and those families that are deciding to leave work in our you know wine industry and our restaurant industry and our economic drivers of this community. So I think um and that's I guess where I like this kind of building regional support between countries. Anyway, I just think that there's there's a way that we can be supporting um working, you know, certainly with the county, but 20% of the population, 19 or I think it's n actually around 19, but say 20 in the city of Sonoma are Latino. And so it's not just our immigrant population, it's actually immigrant and Latino because many of the folks, many Latino folks, their family members may be immigrants. And so the whole family moves, not just the immigrant member of the family. So

I want to make sure that we're clear that, you know, obviously the predominant immigrant population is Latino in in this area, but it's also Asian is the second most popular um most prominent. And there there is some efforts that are being done obviously against Asian populations as well. And I just think again we should name it, we should put it up there and we should be mindful of it and take care of our residents however they came here. And certainly our Nepalese population uh potentially lost their uh protective status. Yeah. So I want to I want to think about how we capture this first.

Yes. I was going to suggest that we use the reference immigrant support. Yes. Yes. And then we drop annexation off the title just to know about regional. Okay. So, so two things. So, one of our details here would be about immigrant support.

So, what one recommendation I could have is coordinate with the county. I think this one probably needs to be revised, but just coordinate with the county on valleywide issues, including immigration support. Um, because I think that's going to that's what I'm hearing is that we want to work closely with the county, especially in the valley, on these issues. Um, so I could be call it out like you said, be explicit about the immigration issues. Um, and then we can rename the title as well regionally.

Okay. All right. We'll capture those words. If you don't love them, we can change them, but let's start with that. Uh, so one is we want to make sure we capture im immigration support uh here and we noted obviously the countyy's doing a lot. So coordination there would make sense. Um and and then there's a question about annexation, whether that belongs in the title or belongs anywhere. So there was a thought that we eliminate annexation from the title. Will that give everyone heartburn at all or is any thoughts on that?

The only other possibility would be to say regional unification and annexation because in reality we're talking about annexing some corners of our current city uh in the sphere of influence etc. So, it's it's not that the annexation concept is just to the valley. In reality, it we're going to have to be annexing portions of uh Napa Road at Fifth Street East. If we pursue that, there's the potential there. Um maybe somewhere along Levoni Road. So I think the idea of regional partnerships, unific I love the idea of unification. I love the idea of just uh regional annexation because that is kind of a broad term that uh I could get behind.

Okay. So there's a thought about regional partnerships uh and unification. Does annexation fit under unification or we want to call annexation on its own? There was a thought we don't need annexation. It sounds like there is maybe some annexation happening that is that a bullet point or is it in the title is my question. Put it in the title. Unification, annexation and immigration because I really do like that that immigration goes up to the title. I think because it is so potentially of I mean when we get to climate I can expand there but one of you know a real risk that that is a real risk to to us and our economic viability. So and it's something we have to do regionally. not something we're going to do as a city alone. So I like that.

Okay. I would suggest, you know, to keep unification and uh, you know, delete annexation because annexation was too big of a word. Too vague. Yeah. Sorry, you said too it's too big or too vague. Too big. It's too big of a word. Okay. So my question was, is annexation does it fall as a bullet point under unification as something you could do? I'm just questioning or does it is it still front and center at the top? Your call. Uhhuh.

I I would like to I mean I I don't think it hurts to have it up there. I agree with Ron that, you know, potentially these could be very small annexations, but um they're still significant and they're still going to raise the hackles of the people that are going to be annexed or not. Um there's there's still a road right there's several little spots like right in the middle of the city. I mean, Harrington Drive, I mean, there's lots of places that are potential um there. So, who knows? I mean, okay, people in Harrington, don't don't be mad at me. I'm just naming it. Okay. So, I'm hearing thoughts that this is the words we're landing on. Any thoughts? Have no one thought.

Okay. All right. We're good with that. I'm hearing I can I'm hearing I could I don't love it, but I can live with it. Okay. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that that was what I heard. Okay. So, um we may pause here and perhaps move on to our last one again, knowing we're going to come back to all these at the end. Here we go. Okay. Okay. Great. We're going to move on. We have one more. Okay. Okay, so climate mitigation and adaptation. So, um, anything was such a good example of how well we work together. Nice. Nicely done. Thank you for calling that out. I love that. Um, and anything on here we can eliminate or change. Yes. And that is our goal. I don't have to be like that jumping up and down, but I can live with it. That's what we're going for. Yes.

Well, we can eliminate the second from the bottom, I think. I guess. Yeah, we can celebrate the elimination. Yes, we can celebrate that. Nicely done. Staffing is how this work gets done. So, uh that's amazing. Okay, where we are on now to go by. I've been glad to believe that within our city limits. We have no vulnerable populations and not to say that I'm not concerned, but to me it kind of kicks back up to some of the u the support. We're giving regional support in that previous goal and that we're not turning a blind eye that we want to get involved. I thought I was told that we have no vulnerable populations within our 10,730 people. That's not true.

Is that not true? Okay. When I think of vulnerable populations, certainly I think that we have low-income people in the community. We have seniors in our community in city of Soma. We certainly have LGBTQ plus folks. We have um you know, so we have vulnerable populations. So I think it's that broader sense of vulnerable populations and then so as you're doing climate work you're prioritizing. So you know seniors are more affected by heat than young people are affected by heat.

I was back to earlier conversations about when we were looking at economic feasibility whatever that is EF the EFD that we technically didn't have. So, but I agree with you as far as the broader session and you've cl provided clarity. I said go ahead and Jennifer just remind me it's the disciples community which drives me. So that's different than

and the reason we don't qualify is how they do the data because they do the data by census and not by block. If they did it by block in Soma we would have we would have ducks you know disadvantaged communities. Quack. Thanks for clarifying. Okay. So, other thoughts in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation? Anything that we want to eliminate or change here? Yes,

we had a long discussion of this and I was I was partially out of the picture, but um I just want to make sure the the priority I don't know where this goes, but um I think we need some clarity on the warming centers and cooling centers. Um just more specifics in terms of when we can anticipate them. um you know we have it was a great presentation and but it it rose there were a lot of questions and so I'd like to continue to work on that develop a policy that is more we can anticipate better is that under vulnerable populations potentially as an option I'm asking as well yeah and we we also don't have to solve it today either if staff figures out where goes maybe later but

just to Yeah. Yeah. Just a little I felt like we need a better clarity as to so that not so much we could ant well we need to anticipate it to staff it but people need to anticipate is it going to be open you know that kind of thing. So, um I I just I just like to bring and see if we can fine-tune our policy on that. I think I think it's part of this, right? This, you know, could be for sure. You know, it's part of this including warming. Yeah. Including warming and cooling centers, I think. Yeah. Okay.

Yes. Um I just have a question really for the other council folks. Um, we don't talk about water here at all. Um, other than flood, but um, it seems to me that forward thinking would say we should be talking about water still today. Yeah, I think we can add it to continue to prioritize fire and flood resiliency. I was going to add in there and groundwater, you know, we can or we could just do water water supply water supply and quality. Yeah. Mhm. And because I think where we're having the biggest issue is my understanding is in the groundwater area.

I would agree, but I think it's also prudent because we get 80 85% of our our water from Lake Sonoma or the Russian River. That's still vulnerable. We have a dam supposedly going down or whatnot. So we want to keep focus on what I think is that broader issue of quality water supply, quality of water and you're right the the depletion the subsidance that may be happening certainly in other parts of the state is critical. So I think that's good.

Yeah, we have we have to rely on river water if possible and we can diversify our own water resource also. This is and the long-term research project and some of the possibilities. Yeah, maybe we can. And regarding the water and also and the waste and the management also is important. Okay. Yeah, please add it. Okay. So, so both our source of clean water as well as how we process our drinking or waste water. uh is not a waste water waste the garbage treatment zero waste.

Ah okay okay.

So one other area that I just want to have a brief discussion that may or may not justify any additional words but um the uh working continuing prioritizing fire hardening. We all know and it was mentioned that we have now these new Cal Fire fire hazard maps that are driving me absolutely unequivocally crazy. And I would love to have some sort of a re uh agreement of continuing to work with our local agencies to to uh to continue to uh harden our community. I'll say within reason, but uh I know that's a a subjective word, but uh I know that there are still discussions. that's still in Sacramento debating on how these are going to be implemented. We fortunately or fortunately have like three different zones within our city. Some of them are uh very impactful. Some of them it doesn't have any impact on it. But I'd like to keep the dialogue and the communication open with fire chief, fire marshall, and anybody that will listen. So this speaks to how we implement the new fire maps or not.

Yes. Okay. We plan on having a community meeting on the private gardening showing up. So, do we want to put that as a It doesn't No, no, you can just put that down in something else that's for I just think it we need to be continue to partner with the civilian fire. Okay.

Okay, great. Yeah, there's some work being done to work with private land owners uh in regards to helping them do restorations on their lands in regards to fire hardening, you know, I mean, so a lot of it is the peripheral in. So, um the one um I would like to address this in, um looking at our inventory, tree inventory, addressing the native plant issue and whether or not that we only have native plants on our tree inventory. But we designate on our tree inventory where what are which which trees are native plants and encourage you know people to be able to know where to get native plants because it it the bees and insects are important to us. But uh

I I would yeah I I would love to in use the word encourage but I would not support the idea of mandating.

Yeah. And encourage was the word I was thinking of. The other thing is I think it's just why I think it going forward we're going to be focusing more on the m I we've got to continue to mitigate but adaptation I mean all of the information that's coming out I was just in a meeting with Bill McKibben who did 350.org or that follows all of the climate issues and we're really not going to meet the, you know, climate goals that people want to meet to avoid some of the weather disasters that we're going to be facing. It we're it's not possible anymore. We're going to be able to maybe potentially stay where we are. uh you know there still will be increased weather events but but you know I think we have to be in that mind frame that we're constantly need to be in this state of we still haven't seen what the weather is going to be like but we we have gone beyond the ability to change global warming we're we're we're not going to be able to bring that not in any of our lifetimes so we have to start really thinking about adaptation not to be and one of the things I try to do. I would like us to be more connected with our plan, our our our commissions, our climate commissions. Now that we have someone that's dedicated, I think that we can have them working with the climate commission of like what are the key priorities that we want to achieve so that we can start tracking them in a way that is, you know, realistic of what we can achieve and what what is what is being done. So I would like to see because I think what I learned what's really important I've learned over the years is and I just did it when you talk about the externalities people shut down because nobody wants to know that we're in the midst of a climate disaster right um so we have to celebrate what we're doing well so we have to have that eye

towards adaptation at the same time what encourages people to do more is when you show them that we've done something well and celebrate that you know So continue to talk about what we're doing well, but really understand kind of the position we're in and start tracking that better because I agree we didn't I didn't take the time to look at did all the we report out did it really match with all of our you know because that piece of of work from the commission is very long and so you know help us kind of prioritize so that they have like these are the things we really want to see come through this year. So I think coordination, you know, better coordination with our climate commission so that we're really, you know, setting realistic, you know, and stretch goals, but for what can be done,

one word that um I think has always been applicable and some something that's always been that's driven me for the last 50 years is the word steward. It'd be nice to be better stewards. And I don't know if that's too vague or whatever, but that certainly brings a consciousness to my mind when I I think of the word steward and and that can be interpreted a little bit differently. But again, um that's I think our earthly responsibilities are to good be good stewards.

Thank you. Anything else here that you want to change or add? Okay. So, with that, if you're uh if you're good, I'm going to invite us to go back to the first page. Just give it a once over. Not going to be final. We're not going to keep word smithing here. Where we're headed with this is that Do you want to do you want me to hand that over to you in terms of where we're headed? Okay. So, where where what staff will do with this?

Well, we'll be taking this back. Uh we will try to wordsmith this a little bit based on what we heard. I think everybody back there has heard heard you as well. um we'll try to make make sense of it and then bring it back to you and make it um report out any changes we make to the language that's up here. Uh but if you're okay or you give us direction to move forward with this, we'll come you'll see some version of this come back to you. Okay. And timing early March, roughly mid-March, something like that maybe. I think early March. Okay.

Okay. Great. So, we're just going to go through these. We'll just pause. I'll be quiet. We'll just go through them one at a time. Just raise a flag if you're like I can't really live with that. Um, but I'll pause and let you read through what we have here. Give me a thumbs up if you're like, I can live with that and then I'll know we can flip the page. All right, I've got two.

One comment to share with my fellow council woman. Um, the word that I think that I I think workforce is is something that's akin to the affordable housing. What I think uh the expression that we've heard so often times is is the nut that we can't crack is what is called the missing middle. Um and and so I'm I'm fine with keeping workforce there. Okay. So I have two and this one. Yeah. Okay. You can live with this. All right. You can live with it. Okay. Good. Next. Thank you sir. Parks, recreation, arts, and community services.

Love it. I can live with it. Okay.

Uh this one maybe that is a technical task agreeing the tune project to a console for action and like musician. uh that project was agreed you know without and uh the contract with the city with the with the city with administration staff it's just an updated uh codings and uh any construction code with the state and and updated because and the fundraising you know advantage just appear little is slow on the city decision. If without the city decision, no this project at all. So the that is the Yes.

I hear what you're saying. I agree with you. Um I just think that there so much time has gone by. If for no other reason, let's tell the public. Let's you know, it can be a celebration of the fact that you've raised the money. you know this has been approved but I don't think people know about it because so much time is gone and there we could you could find out there more people want to give money to it or more people want to help it or you know I I think it could only get better by bringing it forward you know

so I don't think it'll hurt you're right it's past we're not going to undo it but it's let's share it let's see how it how it goes forward Uh, okay. So, what this, so this line item, staff is going to bring it back with an update and a recommendation on what needs to happen moving forward. It could just be a discussion item or anformational item if there's not action to be taken, but that will be up to the council to decide. But it sounds like at some point this should come back to council in some way is the hope. So that you all can then decide if there's if we need to do a change of course or what needs to happen, if anything. If not, it becomes an information item. That's what I'm hearing.

Yeah. So my only one quick thought is I think since we're doing the the plaza looking at the plaza which my understanding extends to depot park a whole master plan. No the current master plan is just the plaza but the the large project goes from the overlook right all the way through. So it didn't now when you clean the plaza but I'm hoping that the kind of work we're going to be doing on the plaza is not hinged upon this bigger much longer term plan.

Got it. But the longer term so what so my sense is I think it's hard when we have we compartmentalize and we have all of these different little projects and need to look at everything in the full context of what's possible to happen. So that's the only thing I would want to see around this is how this fits into overall planning that we're thinking of doing which includes to me a lot that could be happening in the depot park area that we want to have that planning first before you know so it's a part you know it's it's part of that overall project versus a project of its own as I

how it fits in

as I understand it that Um the the in essence there was an old gazebo in depot park that fell apart and people were sleeping there and became an eyesore. And I think the original proposal which made sense was just simply this proposed uh uh structure was going to just go where the existing gazebo was. And uh I what I again I think that it would it would because we're talking about a a project this this larger I called it the 2035 vision project that I would not necessarily want to delay the TING project if that's the support of the council till once we get that project going. I don't see how that would become an impediment from a design standpoint or that all of a sudden these changes are we're going to have to uh the tail is going to wag the dog so to speak on the design. So in this particular case, I think it it it made sense what they had proposed and approved that the reality is that what was permitted was a structure that was totally based upon drawings that were done by a local architect and since then uh the the project has continued and getting into the weeds and I see that hand but uh anyway keep what we got.

Okay. So what I'm hearing is it's not as straightforward. We have this project that's moving forward. It sounds like it's g and I don't know your city as well as I wish I did, but it sounds like it's geographically in an area where there's other things happening. It sounds like staff needs to noodle this over and think about the best way to bring this back to council in what form. Uh so that but it sounds like there's an opportunity for staff to bring this back to you so that you can just say we love it. Let's keep going or we need to think about it in a broader context or whatever this current council thinks needs to happen next. I would just like to wait to hear from the recreation director and city manager on best way to proceed.

Great. So, we're going to put this over to staff on how to proceed on this topic and whether it's a standalone topic or if it's related to other topics and we'll have staff uh work that out and come back to you all with the proposal. Great. Okay. So, next one. Love it. Can live with it. Not there yet. I hear you. Great. Next.

Sonoma Valley Regional Partnerships, Unification, Immigration, and Annexations. Can live with it, love it. Not there yet. Good enough. I can live with it. Okay, great. Next. Climate mitigation and adaptation. Can live with it, love it. Okay, great. All right, we're there. We are there. I'm going to propose a Yes. Not yet. Not yet. Yes. Speak now. Final words. So I mean I hope for the number one captures that idea that networking what they are you know what they're proposing happens and what we're doing and so that we can see why something is so that we're more reflective of what their goals are and I think that that's the first one you know.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, it looks like we got it across the finish line. Okay, so where we're headed next is uh next for this body of work. Staff has been copiously taking notes in the areas that this uh impacts the and there's so much that happens in a small city that becomes crossunctional. So they've all been paying attention, heard your input, have talked to you about these before. We captured the notes here and we'll take this then uh back and it'll come back to you in the early March time frame in a cleaned up form that like it did last time so that this can live on for the next year to guide the work that staff's going to do to bring this to life. Um with that um we're going to move into transitioning. I would recommend if you all are amendable, it's been a minute since we've been in these seats, we take a fivem minute bio break, do a last refill and we'll come back and wrap up. And my goal is to get you out of here before 5. Hut.