Planning Commission, Cac & Pros - Regular Meeting

like to call the meeting to order it is 559 so would anybody like to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance great WILL THE CLERK PLEASE CALL THE ROLL?

COMMISSIONER COLORUSO? PRESENT. COMMISSIONER CULLINAN? PRESENT. COMMISSIONER DONNELLY?

PRESENT.

COMMISSIONER GREEN?

PRESENT.

COMMISSIONER HENRY?

PRESENT.

VICE CHAIR MIZURAKA? HERE. AND CHAIR TULBUR?

HERE.

THANK YOU.

So I'd like to request a motion to approve the agenda.

I move to approve the agenda.

Second.

Commissioner Calaruso.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Commissioner Henry.

Yes. Yes.

Um, vice chair Mizaraka and chair Talbert.

Yes.

Thank you. The motion passes unanimously at this time.

Members of the public may comment on any item not appearing on the agenda. We ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. Under state law, the Commission cannot discuss or act upon matters presented under this item at this time. For items appearing on the agenda, the public will be invited to comment when that item comes up for Commission consideration. Upon being acknowledged by the chair, please step to the podium and speak into the microphone. Begin by stating and spelling your name. There's nobody here to make a comment. All items on the consent calendar are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless members of the commission or staff request specific items to be removed for separate action. Public comments? I would like to ask for a motion and second from the commission.

I move to approve the consent calendar. Second.

Commissioner Colarusso? Yes. Commissioner Cullinan? Yes. Commissioner Donnelly?

Yes.

Commissioner Green?

Yes.

Commissioner Henry?

Yes.

Vice Chair Misuraka? Aye. Chair Tolbert?

Yes.

Thank you. The motion passes unanimously.

Next up is presentation and discussion of the use of e-bikes in Sonoma. I'd like to turn it over to, I think he's getting a bicycle.

Yeah, Chair Tilbert, I can give a bit of an introduction here as the chief is getting prepared. So just wanted to, this is an item that I know that the commission has had an interest in discussing and receiving information on for several months now. As we all know, the use of e-bikes is a hot topic of discussion in our region, throughout the state, throughout the country, really. And so I've asked and are grateful that Police Chief Brandon Cutting is here this evening to give us an overview, his perspective from law enforcement, what they're seeing in any information that can be shared from his perspective about the use of e-bikes. I will share we're not here to take an action this evening. This is informational for you all to receive the latest on local and state laws around the use of e-bikes and scooter laws and how that may impact and how usage may come into play in our parks, pedestrian pathways, and other public spaces. So it'll be an opportunity to receive information and ask questions. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chief Cutting.

Just as a point of information, can we validate that the demonstration is visible on the camera? I don't know if we have a way to see that. Anybody dialing in?

When I talk about it, I'll move over to it, and it should track down on me. First off, Commission, thank you. Brandon Cutting, I'm the police chief for the city of Sonoma. I've been here a little over three years, almost three and a half years now. And e-bikes, when I began here, were not really a problem. When I started, what it was were... kids on human powered two wheel bikes that were doing wheelies around the plaza on the market nights. And that was the big problem at that time. We've moved from human power to electric and motorized at this point. So that's really what I'm here about. And I want to make sure that you, the commission, the community and mostly parents know that there are many, many laws that govern the use of these e-bikes. They are not a ignored in the vehicle code item. They are well addressed and that's what I'm going to go through first is the laws that are in place currently about these items and then our local ordinance that further regulates based on parks and trails and sidewalks in certain areas. So I'm going to start out by explaining that vehicle code 231 identifies that an electric bicycle is in fact a bicycle and subject to all laws that bicycles are. Vehicle code 312.5 parent A is the vehicle code that defines what qualifies as a legal type 1, 2, or class 1, 2, or 3 e-bike. And that's the only types of e-bikes that are lawful on the street. They're differentiated by this. Class 1 is a pedal-assisted, less than 750-watt bicycle that is powered by the pedal. So what you see on the bike in front of you, and I'm not going to step over to get the camera to track me, but you can see on the bike there is a crank on that bike. There's a pedal. Not a peg like a motorcycle, but a pedal. A Type 1, or a Class 1, 2, and 3 must have an operable pedal. A Class 1 cannot exceed 20 miles an hour, and it has to be less than 750 watts. Class 2 is the exact same as a Class 1, except that it has a throttle, a throttle being anything that the hands operate outside of the pedals. So a Class 2 could be you can accelerate with a throttle at the same time that you begin pedaling, but the throttle is what makes it go faster and forward, also not exceeding 20 miles an hour. Class 1 and Class 2 are the most legal. Anybody of any age can ride a Class 1 and a Class 2. Class 3, also pedal-assisted, also less than 750 watts of power, can travel up to 28 miles an hour. You must be 16 years of age to ride a Class 3, and you must wear a helmet, no matter what your age is. E-bikes, as I already said, are treated as bicycles. So if they are not an e-bike, they would have to have insurance and registration. But because they're considered a class one, two, or three e-bike, they are not required to have registration or insurance. And although a class three, you must be 16 years of age, you do not have to possess a driver's license. And then the vehicle code 21200, parent A, it just explains that everything that a vehicle or any other conveyance of travel on the road has to follow, all the laws they have to follow, an e-bike has to follow the same, as does a bicycle. Right of way, stop signs, speed laws, side of the road you're traveling on, signaling, everything. There is no difference in an e-bike, a bicycle, or a vehicle, as far as vehicle code goes. Are we following so far? So where can you ride a lawful class one, two, or three e-bike in California? By California law, not by city ordinance, but by California law. So class one and two can be ridden anywhere a bike can be. Sidewalks, roadways, bicycle lanes, bicycle, the bike trail or pedestrian trail, as long as it's a shared space between bicycles and humans, then you can ride them on those. It doesn't matter if it's a human powered or an electric bicycle, class one or class two, they can travel on those roads and they are independent. So if you see a sign that says no bicycles, it's no e-bikes. You don't have to have a separate sign to say no e-bikes if it says no bicycles. Class one and class two, and you'll see when I get to the city portion, there is an exemption on our bike trails for a class one and a class two because they're more bicycle-like than motorcycle-like. Class 3 is more motorcycle-like. Here's our Sonoma ordinances. 10.74 is titled Bicycles, Skateboards, and Like Vehicles. And 10.74.010 states that bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, scooters, and tricycles are lawful on public sidewalks, pedestrian paths, and bicycle paths. So when you hear someone say you can't ride your bike on the sidewalk, it is not accurate. It is not accurate for state law, and it is not accurate for Sonoma Municipal Code. Section B says it is unlawful to ride in an unsafe manner, or what puts pedestrians at safety risk. So Section B is what, when you see someone riding too fast on the sidewalk, that's what they're violating. They're not, they are allowed to be on the sidewalk, and we're gonna get to the next section, which is the exclusion of bicycles on sidewalks. And that is Section C, and that's the plaza. So you cannot ride a bicycle on the sidewalk near or across the street from the plaza. So First Street West, First Street East, Spain, and Napa Street. On either side of the road at the plaza, you may not ride a bicycle, skateboard, or any mean of conveyance across those sidewalks. You have to get off and walk in that sidewalk area around the plaza. There's a park code we'll get to in a minute that also describes the internal side of the plaza, which says the exact same thing. You may not ride a bike in the plaza. Section D, so no motorized anything on city sidewalks with the only exception being motorized conveyances designed for those with a physical disability. So an electronic wheelchair or electric wheelchair or any of the mobility scooters that you see out and about, those are lawful in the plaza and in the sidewalks around the plaza. So section 10.74.011, motor driven vehicles prohibited on the bicycle paths. So the path just down the street here, except for authorized personnel, no person shall operate any motor driven vehicle, including a motor driven bicycle, scooter, skateboard, or similar device onto or along any city bike path, except class one and class two e-bikes. So Class 3, I already said, goes up to 28 miles an hour. You may not ride a Class 3 e-bike on the bike trail. It is precluded by signage and by code. I will state that if you pull this code up, 10.74, there's some additional language in there, which I don't show under Section A, which says that they have to be less than 1,000 watts. This ordinance was written in 2014. 2017 state law was updated to be 750 or less. I'll probably have it on a pretty soon on the council agenda to modify and update the municipal code to come in line with state law. State law prevails though because it's less than and you cannot expand state law with the city ordinance. So it is 750 watts regardless of the ordinance language on the wattage. And then section B is motorized or human-powered scooter that cannot exceed 15 miles per hour on level ground. The electric scooters that you see kids riding, as long as they don't travel faster than 15 miles an hour, they are allowed to be on the bike paths, whether they're human-powered or motor-powered. That's the only place they're allowed. Section 9.12.140 talks about your parks and where bicycles and these things can be used. It is unlawful for any person to operate or drive an automobile, motorcycle, truck, trailer, wagon, motor scooter, bicycle, skateboard, or other conveyance in any public park or recreational area, including the city plaza, on other than roads or paths designated and posted for that purpose. No person shall operate or ride a bicycle, skateboard, or other conveyance propelled by human power in the city plaza, but such a conveyance may be walked or carried into or through the plaza. That's the one, and I heard someone saying before we started, saw somebody doing a wheelie across the plaza, happens a lot. They can be there, they just have to walk them across the plaza. This is the signage that most of the city has. The one on the top left is on the plaza itself. You see it's a little dinky, but below the language which says no bicycles are the codes which regulate those items, and I've just read you several of those. Some of the other ones are about climbing in trees, and I don't know if smoking's on that one. No, it's not on that one on the top, but it's on another one. And then the Montini Preserve says no bicycling. The middle sign there is on the trailhead right here on First Street West, and the lower part of it says no motorized bicycles. Just to point out that Class 1 and Class 2 are not considered motorized bicycles for the exclusion. They are included in the ability to use the bicycle trail. In the top right is the Overlook Trail. Some of you have some significance to that. And it says, no bikes on the trail. So you cannot take any bikes of any kind on Overlook Trail. The lower one is the sort of temporary signs that have been put up around the plaza. I think there's about 12 or 14 of them around the plaza. And on there, it says very tastefully, you must walk or please walk your bicycle across the plaza. If you know, if you've been to the Tuesday markets, there is the bicycle coalition does come down and they do have a safe parking for bicycles. And we encourage we tell people that they have to walk them and most people are actually very supportive of that and they actually can just get off the road at the road and hand walk their bikes in. Okay, motorized scooters. So Section 407.5 of the Vehicle Code, this is California law, defines a motorized scooter as anything with two wheels, a floorboard, or something to stand on, and powered by an electric motor. Section B says it can be powered by something other than electric motor, i.e. gas. You'll see both out on the street. We've seen them. You hear the gas one coming. You don't hear the electric one coming. These are not considered motor vehicles. A bicycle helmet is required by all riders under 18. It does require a Class C license if it's on the road. The rider is subject to all vehicle codes and driver safety laws as motor vehicles and bicycles. And it cannot be operated on roadways that have a posted speed limit over 25 miles an hour unless they are in a class two bike lane. Must be operated in the bicycle lane if one exists. You're mandatory to be there. It cannot exceed 15 miles per hour. Regardless of how fast it can go, it cannot exceed that speed. And only one person can ride it at a time. What do you call everything else other than a class one, two, or three e-bike? So those are the legal ones. Everything else is a moped, it's a motorized bicycle, or it's a motorcycle. If it has more than 750 watts, and I'll show you in a minute when I step over to the bicycle itself, if it has more than 750 watts or can exceed 28 miles per hour, It requires Department of Motor Vehicle registration, insurance, and a license to drive. And some of them require either an M1 or an M2 motorcycle endorsement through the Department of Motor Vehicles. The other side of this is the peg or pedal. So you can have a class one or a class two e-bike, lawful e-bike, and you remove those pedals from that e-bike and you put pegs in, much like a footrest for a motorcycle, and it is no longer a class one or class two lawful e-bike, it becomes a motorcycle. So if you buy a Class 1 or 2, 1, 2, or 3, technically, e-bike, and you do not put on the pedal, it is no longer an accepted Class 1 or Class 2 for the side box. And the pedal can't just be applied. And I'm going to show you how this one actually does work. But some of these come so you just stick the pedals on, or you can put a peg on. Neither actually has a function. They're just there for looks to appease law enforcement when we go by. Those are the laws. You have any questions about before I get into this particular bike, the laws that I've talked about? Anything I can address before I demonstrate on this bike? I know it's a little confusing. If you simplify it by class one or class two are the ones that kids should be on. Class three, if they're over 16, they can be on, but probably should not because they still travel faster than the safe speed for a bicycle. And anything else is an illegal bike unless it has registration. Pretty simple. Let me show you. Oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry. Is this the right time to ask? What has been the record of enforcement stop and ticket for violations of these city codes? Also, do you have any reports of injuries, both either to the bikers or to pedestrians?

So in November of last year, we had a scooter, an electric scooter, so the stand-on handlebar two-type, two hands on the handlebar type. We had a scooter that was traveling at about 28 miles an hour, and it ran into the back of a Mini Cooper who was traveling with a right-of-way at a stop sign, and the subject put his head into the back window very quickly. What appeared to be very seriously injured ultimately ended up being a few stitches. If you've ever seen a head wound, they bleed a lot. It didn't look very pretty at the time. We were very concerned. Ultimately, he was a minor. I don't remember his exact age, a high school student, and he was treated and released from the hospital. At that time, this was in November, and I started presenting a lot at school board, through the school district, and at the school sites about the laws concerned that parents coming in Christmas time were going to start buying these items for their kids. I'll say we did not see an uptick in the number of e-bikes that we were seeing on the streets as the weather started to get nicer. And I know you see a lot of kids out and about now, but even last night at the market, just driving around and trying to identify and see how many e-bikes I see, there were not, it was not a significant, I'm not seeing an increase in those week after week as I kind of thought we would. I am seeing more kids recently on human-powered bikes, which I like to see. Kids need exercise. They don't need to sit and throttle. So as far as statistics on enforcement, I will be very honest with you when I say My job, my goal is not to cite kids. I do not want to create any issues in a young person from being able to obtain their license at 16. If I cite a 14 or 15 year old child for riding a bike out of class, that does affect their ability to get a license. What I think is the parents are more responsible for putting their kids on these e-bikes than the kid is for riding it. If you were given an e-bike at 14, you would ride an e-bike at 14. Your parents should know what you've been given and whether it meets the standard of the law. So at this point, most of our enforcement has been education. When we contact students or youth who are riding these bikes that are on illegal bikes, they don't meet class one or class two, we're contacting parents and we're having them come down. We're trying to do in-field education and explain to them that this bike is not legal and explain why, and giving them the opportunity just to take the bike and remove it. The law allows us to seize these bikes, much like the one I have here, from them, and we can keep them here at the police department until a parent comes and accepts them and does whatever they're going to do with them. The goal is that we have one contact about the lawful riding, whether it's doing wheelies, riding the bike with just pegs, or out of class, even helmet laws. We're really just trying to work on education right now because it's such a

increasing thing and citing kids I don't know that that's the solution I think education is probably the better source do you feel like you have the manpower and or finances to enforce as far as at least stopping someone who's in violation

So manpower, yes, but so I will be very clear, I will not pursue a child on an e-bike. So if a kid on an e-bike sees us behind them and we turn on our lights and he takes off, we will likely just turn everything off and try to figure out where he ends up without chasing him. What I don't want to do is, although the child's putting themselves in that situation, I was a 15, 16-year-old kid before, and I know if I'm on something that I'm not supposed to be on and I think I can get away, I might try. So I'm not creating those environments, and I'm not... I'm not saying this to create kids to say, oh, they're not going to chase me if I run. What we're trying to do is we have, I don't know if you know Deputy Esponda, who's our community resource officer. He's on the campuses every day of these schools, both the middle school and the high school. He knows most of these kids by face. So our goal is when we see them, if we can get a photo of them and we think they're going to take off, we'll just take a picture of them. We'll show Ed. Ed can try to line it up with a person's name, and then we can get a hold of a parent and have a discussion about what their kid did. Again, enforcement of these. So there are 30,000 vehicle codes. We cannot enforce them all. There's not enough manpower with any police department to do so. We have a lot of speed related issues with cars. So to say that we're going to refocus all of our efforts to e-bikes, I would say that's not realistic. We're trying to increase our vehicular vehicle code enforcement more so right now. And this is more, we're approaching this from an educational perspective. I've spoken at board meetings. I've spoken at council meetings. Actually, I haven't spoken at a council meeting yet. I'm going to be speaking at a council meeting, and I've spoken to council members about this. And I'm hoping that education just kind of gets out that way. We put out one sheets that have the lawful restrictions about what is and is not legal to parents, so hoping that that was helpful as well. I will tell you, yesterday, as a case in point, I was driving down Broadway. There were four kids riding human-powered bicycles northbound on Broadway with their helmets on, strapped and everything. It was really odd, really surprising. They saw me, they made some comments and waved and they were very nice kids. I continued southbound and I turned at MacArthur And I hit MacArthur and 2nd Street East. And I was stopped at the stop sign. It was my turn to go. I was getting ready to go. And two older women, one on an e-bike and one on a human-powered bike, blew right through the stop sign right in front of me without stopping. Neither one had the right of way. I had absolutely the right of way. These were adults doing this. These were not kids. So not all of this situation in this problem is a kid problem. A lot of it is adult problem as well. Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes were created to get people more mobile and outdoors, to get people to exercise in a safe way. They were not created to be the only means or only bike that someone would buy. But if you needed some assistance, that's what they were created for. It's just being a little bit abused. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think one of the reasons that we had brought it up in an earlier meeting, John Donnelly and I, is that we saw the feature in the New York Times Magazine about Moran and how horrific their situation is. And so we're just concerned. There's so much in the news, and that's why we have these questions and want to make sure it's handled.

Some counties, there's two counties in the state that wrote assembly bills that passed so that they can regulate this in a way. I don't know that, and I spent a good time today with some students from the high school who are gonna be taking this presentation and doing a mock council meeting tomorrow with it. And a lot of it from them was, well, the discussion we had was, is creating more regulation really stopping the problem? Or are you creating more regulation that you can't really enforce? So I've already explained several laws that are out there. This very voluminous document here is about 240 laws that apply to e-bikes and bicycles. I can't enforce all of these. So adding any more laws to it, any more restrictions to it, it does make an almost impossible situation to cure. I still say, if kids are on them, the responsibility goes back to the house when somebody purchased these. This particular bike in front of you is about $1,200. So for a kid to spend $1,200 on a bike, you know that's probably coming from parents. And that is not an easy expense for anybody. This needs to be done with a little more eyes open in education and what the laws allow. It's safely for kids. And what I was also very clear with those students this morning, the laws aren't there to prosecute or to punish these kids. They're there to keep them safe. And that's really our goal in enforcement. It's not to punish the kids or discipline the kids. It's to provide a safe community, not only for the kids on the bikes, but for you as a driver, the person who got their car hit from the e-scooter, very traumatizing for them, very traumatizing.

Quick question. First of all, yes, all of us who lived through our teens and are still here probably made some poor choices at some point. No comment on that. But I also agree with your overall theme that education is probably better at solving the problem than an attempt at enforcement. The ultimate goal is to encourage different behavior. That's the way to go. My question is, are there any other tools, or is there either something promoted by a bicycle manufacturer's industry or the state or anyone who has put together a video, a training video, anything like that that you can use? Maybe you go and tell the parents, look, I'm not going to do anything now, but please have your child watch this, and you watch it with them, And then we'll then we'll go forward. I don't know if there's any tool like that that you have at your disposal.

Yeah, I don't know if you if you read my mind, but yes, there is. So California, there was an assembly bill that passed last 2023 that required CHP to come up with a certification video. And there is actually an online through CHP's traffic safety web page and I will make sure that Dave gets a copy of it and he can forward it along to you guys. But it is a video that kids can watch. It actually has most of the vehicle code laws that they need to know when they're riding a bike. Right hand side of the road, what a bike lane is and is not, stop signs, what they mean. Also has the classifications of these e-bikes and what are lawful. Parents can watch it too. At the end of it, there's a test. If a kid wants to get a certification for it, they can do so. There is some insurance capabilities through that so that a kid could, our family could potentially insure one of these items. On top of that, if we cite a juvenile for not wearing a helmet on their bike, They can void all of the points, all the issues with their license and all the fees simply by taking the certification class and proving that they took that course. And then all the fees are waived and that citation goes away. So yes. And then the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition also has a lot of information on their website related to the types of bikes that are lawful.

have a question have you gone out to the parent teachers associations and because I walk the bike path every day and I know about some of these bicycles they're quiet you know they did they don't have like artificial noise coming out of them so they come up behind you and there's a lot of older people walking on the bike path and they're not really, they're giving no notice that they're coming up and to your point, they don't know the,

rules of the road so um they don't know where they're supposed to be so i i would say the parent teachers associations or yes i so i haven't been to a parent teacher association meeting um i have i do speak at the school board meetings and i've spoken since november the the november meeting was the first one i actually talked about this and i've spoken at three separate meetings at the end of i have a A report that I provide at every school board meeting and at the end of my report I've said during three separate occasions about these and then we've placed handouts at the school sites and at the district office.

My suggestion would be parent teachers. The school board, people that go to the school board are looking at management issues, not so much their kid. Yeah, I'll reach out to them.

I'm not opposed to anything. Education is my goal with this. So any group that wants to hear from me, I'm happy to speak to.

Can I send you pictures of kids with bags instead of pedals?

Yeah. I mean, there's nothing we can do after the fact legally. But it is, you know, I see it communities across even here on next door every now and then someone will post a picture of a kid on an e-scooter and say, whose kid is this? And they were doing wheelies down my street. I understand. I also urge people to use a little, just be calm about your reaction to these things, because remember, these are kids. And if you give a 16-year-old a car that has minimal power, they're going to make it have more power. If you give a 18-year-old kid a truck with tires on it, they're going to put bigger tires on it. If you give a kid an e-bike, they're going to ride it. They may know the laws, but they're going to push those, just like adults do. We have stop signs that don't seem to matter to many community members who know the stop sign exists, and yet they continuously violate it, as the speed laws. So I don't think this is any different than every other rule that people do ignore from time to time. It's a parent's job to educate their own kids to make sure that they are safe for you and everybody else who's on the bike path or on the sidewalk or even on the roadway.

I respect your approach with the education. In addition to the kids, We've got to educate the adults. There was recently a fatality of a five-year-old on an e-bike. Now, what parent would let a five-year-old on an e-bike is beyond me. But they're here to stay and anything to educate kids about safety. I agree with Patricia. I'm on the bike path every day, and these things, I mean, yesterday there was like three of them that were like motorcycles just whizzing by, and you don't hear them until they're past you. So thanks for your explanations, and good luck.

Yeah, and I can just quickly, I'm going to step away from the microphone. Every, even the ones from, like this one, likely from China, when they are shipped, they have a sticker which at least has the wattage on there. They may not say class 1, 2, or 3 because they're not made in the United States and they don't comply with California law. But they all have the wattage somewhere. And the sticker has to be applied. So you'll see there's a couple of stickers on this one. This particular vehicle right here has a sticker on here that says the maximum power is at 2,000 watts. So to be exact, every watt increases the speed that these can travel. This travel was traveling about 38 miles an hour when it was stopped by one of our deputies with an adult on it. On top of that, these pedals that you see on here, they'll spin backwards, and they actually do, if you pedal, it does propel it forward. This particular one is a throttle propulsion, so there's a little button over here that you press to make it go faster. If you choose to pedal it by human power, there are gears. It's actually, I don't know how many gears there are, maybe a 10-speed, maybe an 8-speed, so it's a little bit less. This particular one, though, is completely unlawful. It is technically an e-moto under the law, which means that it is not a class 1, 2, or 3, but in fact falls as a electric motorcycle. But if you look at it, it says e-bike. GT 2000, 2000 is actually the wattage. So if your kids have these, if you know your neighbor's kids have these, just make sure they know that these are not legal on the street without a license plate on them.

more question. What I'm sensing here is that everyone, I think the majority of us are in line with what you're saying with the education approach. At the same time, we just want to make sure that everyone's rights and safety are observed. And I'm just wondering about good old signage to help, you know, signage on the bike paths about the legality of these various vehicles, what you would think about that?

So I will tell you I'm not a sign expert. I do know there is, I think it's called, let's see, too many signs in one area could be a, I think it's called sign pollution, when there's so many signs that people become numb to the signs. I travel on a road where they just put up 620 corner signs that I have to pass. I can tell you I don't see half of them because you stop noticing them after a couple. That's an excessive amount. So yes, you can put up signs. You can put up signs that are more clear. You can put up signs of rules of the road. I don't know that it's necessarily that they don't know the rules. It's that sometimes rules are chosen to be ignored and or it's more fun to just ride fast. If they're on a bike that goes fast, they will ride it fast, just like probably every one of us did if we had the opportunity. I had a 10 speed that would go very fast. And the reason why 20 miles an hour is considered a safe speed for a class one and class two is because a human-powered 10 speed will travel between 15 and 17 miles per hour. So 20 is not significantly faster than that. And it's probably still a somewhat safe speed. And you can't hear that most of those 10 speeds coming up behind you either at a relatively similar speed.

I want to thank you for your coming tonight and sharing this information with us. Um, it's very important for this commission because the council's 2026 goals for this commission assigned specific priority quote to enhance pedestrian safety and accessibility throughout the city. So while we've been focusing a lot on use and whether or not they were like properly educated by their parents or whatever, My concern on this has been really initiated by the stories I've heard from other cities of pedestrians, many of them as elderly, where you don't even know which way to turn because they don't call out. You used to say on your left or right. If you turn the wrong way, and these people have been knocked down. One got a brain damage. The blood on the brain was in the hospital for six months. lost her job for the time being. So there's a risk liability issue here that's divided, I see it. If the youth have an accident on their e-bikes, then their parents are going to be responsible. But if a pedestrian is hit on a city pathway, then isn't the city liability? Because then it comes back to this issue, what's the proper signage, what's the proper enforcement of it? And it's just, For example, many bike paths, I don't know if ours is wide enough because of the width of the bike path, but they have a yellow line down them, so at least you know which side you should stay on if these things go flying by. So that seems like something we should look at to see if we can better enhance the pedestrian safety on these bikeways.

So what I will say is the vehicle code is a lot more lenient than your city code allows. So under vehicle code, I can ride a class one or class two e-bike across the plaza. I can ride it on the sidewalks. I can ride a class one or two down your bike lane. Your bike lane allows that, but not a class three. There are some bike lanes specific that a class three would go into. The bicycle lane here in Sonoma does not qualify for that. The signs say, right now, no motorized bicycles. I don't know what the interpretation is to the rider. If I see a sign that simply says no motorized bicycles and I haven't read the municipal code as I've read to you today that says class one and class two are exempt from that, I would assume that's any bicycle. Big part of the reason why I wanted to present to you tonight was we have a lot of people that tell us there's an e-bike on the trail and it's not allowed, the sign says so. I agree the sign says so, but there is an exemption for class one and class two. That decision is one that the city could change. You as a commission can look at that as a potential solution and make a recommendation for something like that. The markings on the ground on the bike trail i'm not aware of any vehicle code that regulates that there's a line in the middle or a passing i do know the types of paths you're talking about i see them all the time where it says pedestrians keep to the right up in lake tahoe almost every bike path up there has multiple signs where it's there's a triangle and i know at the The Creek Trail off Second Street East, and I'm drawing a blank on the name of it, at the head of it, there's three, it's the right-of-way sign. It says what takes right-of-way over what. Bicycle, pedestrian, I think there's a horse or picture on there or something to that effect. I can't remember what the third symbol is, but there are three symbols on it, and it does tell you what the right-of-way process is. i don't know if there are any on this part of the trail i haven't seen them and when i took pictures just yesterday or two days ago of the signs that i showed of the trailhead there isn't one over there so that may be another consideration just a reminder of courteous riding and the rules of the road and just to piggyback off that i think an excellent point commissioner donnelly i think there's a level of legality requirements for signage and then what we're talking about is more

again, education and etiquette. And so I think that's something that we can continue to discuss as a commission, as staff, I think relying on some of these resources where they may have looked into that. And I think to Chief Cutting's point, we want to be careful not to oversign things because then people just are oblivious to all of it. But if there's a way to look at, uh, something that captures your attention, that's tasteful, that really is that education component. I think we're all ears. At the end of the day, we're trying to make it a safe environment for everyone. Unfortunately, there's going to be people, no matter what the rules are, what the etiquette are, they're going to choose to toe the line or jump across the line. But we think that the majority of people do want to follow the rules. And so I think there may be an opportunity to look at, as these bikes continue to come into regular circulation that some people just may not be aware of what is allowed, what's not allowed, how to, like you mentioned, from an etiquette standpoint, the 15-year-old whizzing by may not realize what it's like to be a pedestrian with someone coming behind them. So I think an opportunity to look at that. We're going to have some planning opportunities. We're looking at our entire system in the coming year, but I think this is also going to be something we could dive into in more detail between now and then.

I would just love to see at some point, and maybe that's being developed, is the research behind which angle is the most effective. Education, enforcement, signage, et cetera. I'm sure that other municipalities have something like that. So if we get our hands on that, that would be great.

So I can tell you, I speak with the chiefs from Sonoma County every month. Petaluma had a very strict enforcement on this. I think they seized something like 25 bikes in just a short month period, and they were replaced. They still have the same number of bikes on the street. They still have the same problem. They still have kids zipping around on them. I'm not going to say it was ineffective. I think it sent a message to the majority of the community, but it They're still a fun item to ride. Kids still like it. Adults still like it. So they're still going to be out there. You can't stop them unless you live in Marin or Southern California, Santa Barbara County. I think those are the only two that have the ability to say none, zero. Everybody else, we have to have tolerances to them.

If there's no other comment, thank you very much, Chief Cutting. Appreciate the information.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you, Chief. You're welcome. Have a great afternoon and evening.

Okay, next up, I'm gonna hand it over to Dave for the presentation and update on the Field of Dreams site enhancement at the 2026 Transcendence Theater Season.

I'm gonna go capture my clicker back.

Are we all gonna start singing the songs from Mamma Mia?

That's right, this is the rehearsal.

Thank you, Chief Tolbert. And unfortunately, I do not have any exciting props to bring into the room like Chief just had. But I want to take this opportunity to give you a brief update on the Field of Dreams site improvements. If you came into the building this evening, you most likely saw the stage almost fully erected. They are getting prepared to start. The Transcendence Theater is beginning to start their season in just a couple of nights. June 12, that kicks off. But I know some of you have been aware, others may not be fully in tuned with the work that went into essentially establishing the new location for Transcendence Theater and also just overall site enhancements that have gone in place for the Field of Dreams. So I want to give a brief update on that front. So for some background information for those not aware, Transcendence Theater Company, who performs the Broadway Under the Stars series, they've been here in Sonoma since the summer of 2024. The 24 and 25 seasons took place I'll show you a map here in just a second on the more northern field called Fazio field for the last two seasons at the conclusion throughout the 25 season really at the conclusion of the season staff received a series of noise complaints from neighbors due to the amplified sound so did receive these complaints. Generally speaking, the community has embraced this and seems to want this to continue in Sonoma. And so City Council in August of this past year authorized the use for Transcendence to return to Field of Dreams for the 2026 season. But taking these complaints and the disruption that it was causing very seriously, they directed staff to look at options to help mitigate the sound. So we realized Field of Dreams was the best location given the footprint and the ability to host an event of this nature, but looked at opportunities of how we can make it not so impactful for the surrounding neighbors. So based on the feedback received, we figured we looked at a few different options alternatively, looking at sound barriers, looking at utilizing the same field, but redirecting the speakers, but ultimately landed on sound. Trying to find an alternate location, alternate orientation for the stage was probably in the best interest. So back on the timeline again August Council approved the use of field of dreams for the transcendence theater performance for the 26 season and then immediately following that. And i'll you'll sense a theme here is i'm the one presenting but really this was a all hands on collaborative effort to make this happen and. A lot of heavy lifting, a lot of time, a lot of effort spent by other members. And I'll show you everyone that was involved. Um, but really field of dreams, um, took a lead role in, in helping develop the site to where it is today. So began in the fall of 25, really sat down and spent a lot of time out at the field, looking at configurations. You know, a key consideration was we want to make sure that this was successful for transcendence, but also that this would not create additional, any negative impacts for the users, the sports users of the field of dreams complex. and ideally create additional opportunities when Transcendence is not utilizing that space. So we moved into more detailed site surveys in the fall and winter months, looking at a host of different conceptual plans, ultimately ended up with some engineered site drawings that were approved by all the parties involved, and then in February, site construction began. The project completion as far as laying the groundwork wrapped up in May, and as I mentioned, in two nights, June 12th the Transcendence Theater will begin their performances. So just a quick overview. This is if we're sitting in that building with the solar panels on it on the bottom right side. So if you look up to the right, the red-hand square, that's where the stage was positioned for 2024 and in 2025. As you can see, it's pointed directly at some of the neighborhoods that are up First Street West and again pointed in the direction over beyond the Overlook Trail and Montini Preserve. So focused efforts on moving the stage down to the lower area adjacent to Peterson Field. So that's the yellow box and redirecting the sound more towards the hillside. This led, after figuring out the directions, some preliminary grading and layout design to essentially get how we would orient it, what the different materials would look like. And I won't go through these in all details, but what you see out there is the finished product is some all surface material, really some reduction of turf grass. There's a whole lot of work that happened underneath the surface that I don't think is apparent at first glance. So there was initially some demo, so that required removing an existing backstop, reconfiguring the outfield fencing. So that was to enable the adult softball leagues, the youth baseball leagues to continue to use Peterson Field. Field is no longer used on a regular basis by the high school baseball team so allow those fences to come in a little bit closer than where they were before and then reconfiguring the irrigation lines out there. This led to some heavy machinery coming in 15,000 square feet essentially were were rough and refined graded to make it a even playing field or an even surface. And also to address some of the existing drainage issues that were taking place. So some of the area near the backstop previously was notorious in the winter months would become quite soupy and had drainage issues. So this not only would become the location for the stage that you see now, but hopefully in the off season, the winter season will create a lot better drainage. Um, that also included a new underground drainage system that connected to the existing storm drain, as well as the addition of a bioretention basin, um, kind of at the Southern end of the construction site. And that's intended to help aid with drainage into the aquifer and and capture contaminants as it washes down from the playing field. The biggest thing that you'll see it notice out there is the addition of an all weather surface material so over 10,000 square feet of new all surface material out there again that's to provide a good good surface for the stage to provide. better ADA access for users of that space, and really an idea and opportunity to use that space in a year-round capacity. So some of the concepts that Field of Dreams has floated out there is this could be an opportunity for families to gather for award ceremonies, to host picnics, to have off-season entertainment or gatherings in that area that would support existing Field of Dreams activities. And then additionally, some pathway and surface improvements. So the pedestrian pathway that connects from the parking lot right outside this building You'll see that's been completely regraded, resurfaced, and the addition of a new ADA parking stall has been added. Some of the work in progress. And ultimately landed with a conceptual site layout. A few minor tweaks to this beyond this version, but this is essentially the layout of the stage. If you have the chance, I'd encourage you to take a walk by on your way out of here, and then once it's up and running, if you have a chance to go to show, you'll be able to see the configuration in full effect. So a quick update on the schedule. Load-In began May 12th. They have three productions scheduled, so three separate shows, one in June, one in July, one in August. The biggest difference from this year compared to last is that July is now just a single performance, and there used to be performances in September. So it's a more condensed schedule, and the intent behind that, that will allow the Field of Dream users to utilize that grass space, really have a heavily used soccer schedule, and so that gets the theater off the fields sooner, creates a more condensed schedule, so those that are impacted by noise pollution Essentially, that is a smaller period of time doesn't extend all the way through the summer and also keeps it to the summer months and doesn't extend as far into the school year. And I mentioned this before, again, you know, I have the opportunity to present these, but really this was you know, I think the epitome of what, you know, community collaboration in its finest. And so, you know, there was many opportunities throughout the process where any of the various partners at Field of Dreams, Transcendence, could say, you know, this is going to be too challenging. This is going to cost too much money. We don't have enough time to pull this off. But kind of everyone to a person was on board with finding a solution that worked well for the users of the field, for the performers, for the attendees of the performances. and anyone that benefits from the use of this space. And so, again, Field of Dreams board directors, specifically J.J. Abedeli, M.T. Robertson, Seamus Canning, and the entire board had a heavy role in making this come to reality. Transcendence Theater, their team, they had to essentially take their same operation, move it about 150 yards, but that really entailed reimagining their seating plan, their sound plan, their lighting plan. And then, you know, the really big thank you goes out to the community contributors. And so all of those names you see on the screen contributed time, resources, materials to make this happen. Saris Corporation was the lead construction company who made these improvements and donated a lot of their time and effort. As was shared to me, a lot of their family members helped actually build the Field of Dreams initially and have had family members come up playing on it. So I know it was a rewarding job, but not a small job nonetheless. And Chad Mall Design did all of the design work behind the scenes. And then you can see a whole host of others that made this happen. So we're excited to get the season underway. I'm personally excited to see how the field is utilized in the offseason as well. I'm really interested to see how the improvements hold up through the winter season. I think one thing we've said, you know, we know we're going to get in here and try this, but we know this is not the end of the line. We know that we're going to see how it works for the theater company. But also in the off season, I think the intent in talking to the Field of Dreams board is that this will be a work in progress. And if this year's successful, we'll find things, I think without fail, we'll find some things that need to be modified before next season. But I think that's what makes it exciting is that we're continuing to make improvements that will benefit the theater, but also all community users of the Field of Dreams. So with that, I've breezed through it quickly. Happy to go back to any slides and answer any questions you may have.

I think it's a real benefit to the community to have Transcendence right here. Since I walk here every day, I've seen the progress on the whole project, and it's really been impressive, especially in the last couple weeks when Transcendence has come in with their stuff. But I noticed they have a generator. Is there a long-term plan to provide adequate power without a generator?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I think the short answer is yes. And so that was contemplated for this year, and actually some conduit was put in place. I think a piece of it was we wanted to make sure that wherever the stage was placed this year was actually the final landing spot before plugging it in. So we actually do have some sleeves that run underneath, and so some smaller 110 outlets where actually you've got some cords running through, but the intent would be to get away from a generator in the long run.

I'm just wondering if anyone has looked into the wildlife impact of the sound going up into Montini?

I would say not specifically. And one thing that was part of the plans last year and will continue to happen is sound monitoring, I think, to capture some really good understanding of what the decibel level is at that distance. So I think that's something we could look into and capture what's in that area. And so I know even with its original sound orientation, we were the sound was projecting into Montini and also in its previous projection, kind of more of in the overlooked trail section. So I think that would be something to continue to get better understanding of. And I think, you know, if you look out in that direction, we're very interested to see how that sounds, you know, anytime you get sound involved, how it may bounce off of certain elements and, and reverberate to different areas. So short answer is no, that hasn't been, we haven't specifically studied that, but I think that would be something for us to keep an eye on.

I believe the ecology center could give a quick answer.

Do you know offhand the hours of the productions? Is it like 6.30, 7.00 start?

7.00, I believe, is the performance start time and then are done by 10.00 p.m.

Were there any adjustments to the sound system itself other than the generator and reoriented the stage? I thought earlier I read that there was going to be some effort to reduce tweak that sound system so it wasn't quite so broadcasting throughout the wider range there.

Yeah, and that was one of the initial steps taken in its previous configuration. So that's something we've been mindful of and talked to Transcendence about is making sure that, you know, we want to make sure the sound's at an appropriate level for the audience to enjoy it, but trying to keep it at that as the maximum. And so with the new orientation, different areas, so that's something that I'll be attending the first show and interested to hear how how the sound is projected, so they have the ability to level those up and down, and so I think part of it is they're going through rehearsals now, so that's a request that we've made, is to make the volume, again, appropriate enough for the performance, but trying to keep it contained within that space as much as possible.

I'll just follow up and say that I really appreciate this kind of win-win situation, because we love Transcendence. They were really a hit at Jack London. They did a lot in terms of helping Jack London meet a lot of deferred maintenance. They had to move, as you know, and the cities embraced them, which is really wonderful. Last summer, though, Graham Bennett, who lives directly across from the entrance to the Mountain Cemetery in that old Vallejo house, he called me and said, he asked young children, he said they were absolutely going nuts. Every night it was the same songs, and it was loud and booming, and so he went and saw then David Guinn, I think, and then got the city involved. So I'm hoping I won't hear from him this summer.

Yeah, we're hopeful. I've had an opportunity to have several conversations with Mr. Bennett, and I completely understand, right, with his vicinity to where the performances are happening. And so it's something we take seriously. I mean, I won't come up here and sugarcoat it. You know, this is not going to completely... make the noise go away, right? We're still in the same field, but the hope is that it's not as drastic of an impact that it has been previously.

So moving to 4.3, again, we'll turn it over to Dave for an update on the 2026 Summer Recreation and Activity Guide.

And I'll just state for the record, I know all the commissioners can see that there's no one in the audience for us to call upon for public comment, as I know not everyone can see that. But we certainly will pause if there is someone here present. Okay, so switching gears. I hope that you all have had an opportunity to at least take a quick glance. We just released, we being the Parks and Recreation Department, and it's a huge, huge shout out goes to the team. Again, I get the opportunity to present this information, but there was a lot of people that went into making this happen, including our community partners. But specifically in-house, I just want to thank Lisa Jansen, who's our Senior Management Analyst and part of the Parks and Recreation Department, and Sarah Tracy, who is also a senior management analyst in the city manager's office, did a lot of heavy lifting to get this recreation guide completed and out the door. So intend to go through the guide. I'm not going to go through it page by page. You should have a copy that was provided as part of the packet. It's also available online, both in a PDF format and a flipbook. But just want to go through a little bit of the background, talk about some of the highlights, and then really what we're here to do is get your initial feedback. So some quick background. As you well know, the Parks and Recreation Department just started this last August, but a lot of groundwork was laid to get us to that point. And so this stems back, again, this timeline could extend even further back, but a lot of work that was done by your predecessors on PROS Commission, that was the Parks and Recreation task force, you know, with one of their initial steps was to create this and recommendations was to create a centralized location for resources. And so this lived on the website, a listing of the various providers and partners, a lot of work went there. It still exists to this day. I know it's a well-used well-used resource. Um, and so that was one of the initial initial pieces, um, in 2024. City Council identified starting a Parks and Recreation Department as one of their goals, and then ultimately in August of this year, a Parks and Recreation Department was launched, and some of the groundwork that was laid by the Parks and Recreation Task Force and members of the community carried forward in some of our initial steps to get launched as a Parks and Recreation Department. Our model here in Sonoma, from a Parks and Recreation perspective, is unique in comparison to others. Because we didn't have a department for many years, and because we have incredible partners, nonprofits, organizations, individuals that have stepped up over the years, we have a lot of fantastic recreation service providers in this community who've been doing great things for many, many years. And I've shared this with you all before, but our number one goal of creating a Parks and Recreation department was never to come in and replace what these entities are doing, to step on their toes. If anything, it's the opposite. Our first order of business is to try to help those partners continue to what they're doing, continue to thrive, to be a support agent for what they're doing. And so we have kind of our established core providers. This list is just a snippet of all the various community partners that are out there. And so anything that we're doing, we want to always have our community partners in mind because they have been delivering services for this community for a long time. And it's our goal for that to continue and to continue to be a support. So with that in mind, how we've went from the establishment of the department to how we got to this guide. So early on in my tenure, again, this spans before my time, staff here, one of the things that we heard early on was that there was an interest for a centralized location to find program offerings. The existing resource on the website was fantastic. people what we were hearing was we wanted a more detailed version of that so rather than having to go to each individual website to find out what's happening during the season to register is for items to live in one one location in kind of the parks and rec business this is often referred to as a rec guide but we knew that our version was going to be a lot different if you were to pick up another another city's rec guide they certainly will highlight partners but a lot of those those Those courses, those camps, those programs are going to be offered directly by the city. Our intent was to bring information in from the various providers and provide one location so that if you are a parent with a two-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a grandparent who's 85, you have one location to go look and find your various resources. So we met initially with the core group of providers and shared that we were interested in doing this. They were supportive of that notion, and so we requested their information for the summer. We knew that this first edition, based on the timeline of it coming together and also just being the first edition, we would not be able to capture everything. And admittedly so, from start to finish, we know that there's programs, there's resources that are not in this guide. But the goal is to make this first edition focused on youth summer camps. Happened to be a timing, and also in talking to our partners, that's what everyone was getting geared up for was registration for summer camps, and we were told that would be of support to them. So we've included other classes, other programs, resources, but really the focus of this is on youth summer camps, summertime classes, special events that are happening, how to get outdoors, how to utilize the parks in our system. We do expect that this will continue to evolve over time. We know essentially this is a pilot. This is a first edition. We hope that people come to us and say, hey, we notice we're not in there. We'd love to be in there. That would be music to my ears if people want to be included in this. And I think a component of it, you'll see in my last slide, is we want to make sure this is actually the right vehicle to utilize. Just because it works in other communities doesn't mean this is a format that will work best for Sonoma. And so that's something we'll continue to monitor. So diving into the content again, I'm not going to go page by page. I'm going to look at some of the focus areas. I will have it. We can pull it up on a flip book and you have the full document in front of me if you want to look at anything specifically. So this launched just this last Friday, June 5th. I will share. I know it's right in time for summer in a perfect world. And hopefully next year, if this continues, we would be launching this document in the February-March timeline. We know that this is coming out later than we had hoped, but it was also a part of the work plan that came together. And we said, let's go for it. Let's get this out there, knowing that there were still families that needed that resource. It also shows, I think, demonstrates hopefully to the community the various resources that are out there, if not for this summer, in future years as well. And so broken into five different categories, looking at parks and open space, the summer camp program specifically, a focus on aquatics. That's something we heard. We know that Splash offers a tremendous resource at the pool at the high school, getting more information about the programs and hours of operations there, a focus on special events, and then ultimately how people can stay connected, both from an information standpoint, but also volunteering and getting involved as well. So early on in the guide, we put together a park map. We realized this is not Google Maps. This is not intended to get you from point A to point B, but to give you some relative understanding of the various parks. and resources in the community, that's been coupled with an amenities page. So if you were to look up a specific park, you can see the different amenities there from picnic tables to athletic fields to barbecue areas. Again, a resource for hopefully long-time visitors that may not utilize all the neighborhood parks and, sorry, long-time residents that may not utilize all the parks and for first-time visitors that may just be interested in where various resources are. Moving forward, we put together tables for summer camps. And so this was something we worked directly with our partners on and that we broke it down by week and then also by age. So that if you had a specific age bracket you were looking for or specific weeks of the summer, you could get a comprehensive look at all the camps that are offered on any given week. We know some families are looking for summer camps for all nine weeks. Other ones need one specific week. We've even heard some people reaching out that, hey, they're going to be visiting for a week or they're visiting their grandparents for a week and they want to know what's going to be happening in town. Each of those blue links is actually a hyperlink. So by clicking on that in the PDF or the flipbook guide online will take you directly to the registration page. As I mentioned before, we then have a feature on Sonoma Splash and the pool looking at the various hours and the programs. that are being offered there. We're continuing to work on this as we know that some of their hours for certain programs vary based on availability throughout the year, so we'll continue to work on this, but I think it's an area that gives people a general overview of what's happening at the pool, which we hope is a continued to be well-used resource in the community. We then moved into focusing on community partners and programs. Again, this is an area where I see expansion in the future. We know we're not listing every single partner, every single resource. This was a listing of those directly providing summer camp programs or ones that the city have, we work closely with on a regular basis. But again, we hope that community partners continues to grow. And then again, focus was on summer camp programs, but we want to make sure that active adult senior programming is featured And hopefully featured in a more prominent light in future additions as well so worked with our partners at vintage house to get a general. General overview of their programs that they were offering with links to their registration page, making sure that our programs are being highlighted for everyone in our minds anywhere from age two to 102 and beyond. And finally, we know we added a piece at the end, I think this is going to be an overarching thing we want feedback on this, we. A, we've got tough skin. We know that there's going to be some comments that people want to see things in a different format, but I think it's really important to us with this being a new resource that we get the feedback. Is this actually useful? How did you use the guide? What's missing? How should it be laid out differently? So we put a QR code in the back. There's also a clickable link, and that'll take you to a very brief survey, but an opportunity for people to give their direct feedback on was this useful? What do you want to see different? How can we improve in the future? And we really want people to use this. I'm going to go forward one, and then I'll just go back and see if I can get this flipbook to pull up on the screen here. looking at next steps again we want community feedback that starts here started over the weekend but starts here this evening would love to get your feedback on this community's feedback throughout the summer we'll continue to touch base with our community partners to see if this actually did help with registration did help with getting people to their programs to their facilities we'd like to create a more streamlined calendar so the community knows if we continue this if we they know when this will be coming out so when they can expect it and you prepare for their summer or their fall accordingly, knowing when this document may come out. And we'll continue to modify, hopefully expand, and adapt to community need. I mentioned it before, but just because this is the format that we've put together doesn't mean this is the format that it needs to remain in for the rest of time. So with that, I think I've got any questions. I'm going to try to pull this open just if you haven't had a chance. One thing we did focus on was this being a digital first format. We do plan on, we will have some hard copies available in our facility. It is printable for folks. The reason we went digital is it allows us to modify it a little more regularly. We've heard that people want a digital resource that they can access from their phone. And quite frankly, when you get into high-level printing, the cost goes up dramatically. And so until... And so we hear that that is something that's in high demand and we're set on the format. We wanted to try it as a digital format first. And so one thing in addition to a PDF is we're utilizing, let's see if this will allow me to do it. It doesn't look like it's going to project onto the screen. I encourage you visit our website. There's a flip book option. So essentially, if you prefer to look at it rather than scrolling, it will flip like you've probably seen it the same way you read newspapers online can flip one page to the next, provide that same feel with the hyperlinks involved. So that I will pause and happy to answer any questions and receive any feedback you might have.

I have a question. Is it going to be easily translatable into Spanish? Will there be a little something at the top, a little click?

Yeah, it's something that I know Sarah Tracy and I looked at towards the end of production. So the flipbook version is not, it doesn't automatically, it does not automatically translate. And so the information that's on the website will have that click button, but if we want it to translate, something we'll have to manually do. So it's definitely something that's top of mind for us, and you know, we look at all kind of city publications. I know that's an area that we can grow in, and so Unfortunately, no, it just won't translate automatically, but it's something that we can look into.

I think this execution is wonderful. Someone worked very hard on this, or some people worked very hard on this. I think it's really easy on the eyes, the font, the open space. I mean, a lot of it I think is really attractive and inviting. Is this an ad?

So it kind of looks like ad format. The reason that one was highlighted, so the city is testing the waters on providing some recreation programming. And so we've partnered with National Academy of Athletics. We talked to our friends at Field of Dreams first to make sure these weren't being offered by them. And so that was essentially a flyer. So I know that one does feel like an ad, but that was to highlight those specific programs.

And I'm just wondering the online version which I haven't had the pleasure of looking at yet if it is ultimately Navigable because I know that like I met website consultant and I know that's the number one thing people want They want to be able to get from anywhere to anywhere lots of navigation searchable I'm sure I'm familiar with the first term that you used ultimately Meaning, can they find what they want easily? Can they get around? Can they get back to the table of contents with ease? Things like that.

I see what you're saying. So, yeah, you mean like in the flipbook version, can you go from page... 20 immediately back to the table of contents.

Well, a lot of times there's a way for the main menu to remain kind of present. I see what you're saying. And then also, can someone search for something specific? Meaning, let's say, senior activities or disabled whatever.

Yeah, I will check on that if the menu header remains. I know what you mean by that. I don't know. I mean, essentially, it was, you know, we have a PDF that goes into this flipbook version. So I don't know if you can search directly and go directly to that page. I'll find out. That's a good question. I'm not sure if that's a feature or not.

I thought it was very well done. I think that it's really very user-friendly. I appreciate having the amenities page available for people to use. What if grandma has a wheelchair and needs to be able to sit down, that kind of thing. I think it's really good, really easy to read. I love that you've got it all laid out by week. I think that in thinking of people that are coming for vacation or tourists that are also here, that, oh, I'm here the week the 15th to the 19th, let me see what's available. And so kudos to all the work that you did. As a parent, the cost is really prohibitive. And so if I have any concern, that is really the only one. I know this is the first time around. And as more people get involved, or maybe periodically during the summer that there can be a couple of lower cost options, not by calling it out like, oh, you know, this is where the people who can't afford the big camp goes, but just really trying to weave that in. But great work on that.

No, thank you. That's important feedback, and I know that's something we've heard. I think there's an opportunity for more low-cost options. I know each of the partners do in some way, shape, or form do offer scholarships, but I know even that can be limiting for certain individuals based on the cost of certain programs. So point well taken.

I'll add a bravo and thank you. This is my fifth year on the commission, and we started when the community task force on Parks and Recreation, Karen Collins and Steve Page, kind of hit the wall, and they left an online directory of some of the parks. But finally, we got this wonderful resource, and I really appreciate it. Is it Lisa Jensen and Sarah Tracy who said we're the hard workers, the worker bees on this? Please extend our thanks to them. And that's just really, And also we now have the parks department and a director. Thank you.

Thank you. And I will definitely pass that along to them.

Getting into the nitty gritty, but looking at the city of parks and amenities page, which is very helpful, it might be useful for future publication to note which are dog friendly and which are not. I know that's a big issue for a lot of people that has been raised.

That's a great point, and we'll see. I don't want to make promises, but part of it being digital is we may be able to make some modifications on the fly, so we'll see if that's possible, but a great point.

If that's all the comments, there's no public. Moving to 4.4, we'll go through the ad hoc committee updates. First would be the plaza park master planning process. Um, that was myself, Patricia and Joe.

So anybody want to jump in and chair Tolbert, if you don't mind, I apologize for, for interrupting. But, um, just so the commission's aware, we've placed, Chair Tobler and I discussed, we've placed this on kind of as a standing item. We recognize not every ad hoc has had an opportunity to gather and meet, and as we move through the year, there may be times you have no report, and that is perfectly fine. So we put this on as a standing item to give you all an opportunity to report on anything that you've been working on, but we don't expect, if you haven't met, obviously you don't expect to report, and we don't expect to report at every meeting. So I just want to preface it with that.

I'll be happy to jump in on the Park Plaza. We had a, I think, very productive interview session with a handful of potential consultants. And city staff were involved in that, as well as the members of the committee. And there was a lot of focus around community engagement and how that process would go. And I believe we sort of landed on two possible

candidates and then I wasn't sure where I believe some of the things may have been postponed with with new with a new interim city manager and budget proprietary process some things may have been set aside temporarily but I think that was we still have some momentum we do and thank you for this was the the one I wanted to provide an update on as well and so as Commissioner Henry's mentioned we've gone through the process of narrowing down potential consultants to work on the the plaza master plans As you also mentioned, as we've gone through the budget process with city council, I know this is something of interest, has been expressed of interest. Sounds like there may be support from the council to expand the scope of the plaza plan to look a little more holistically at the entire system. So this is news that's coming through fairly recently as they move to their budget workshop. Budget will be finalized next week, but there may be an opportunity to look at include the plaza, of course, but may look a little more holistically as our system so that we can get a better understanding of all the resources. So as that unfolds, I will connect in more detail with the ad hoc on that front.

So the development of a west side cinema park, any update from Jessica or Joe?

Yeah, we didn't... And that's, I would say, perfect timing.

I have another update for you on that front. So nothing has changed on the still council priorities, but during the council workshop, you know, council reiterated that this is a high priority for them, and so something that we will be pushing forward, I think, expeditiously on to come up with design and community outreach on that front. So we are absolutely due to meet as an ad hoc.

Can I ask a question? Was there any movement on the grants, the potential grants that I shared with you? Did they do a letter of intent?

The urban greening grant, is that the one you're referring to?

And the second one. Yeah, but urban greening, yeah, I think was...

I know, so the urban greening, I can get you more details. So the Community Development Department, our sustainability coordinator, did put in a letter of intent to focus some efforts on Depot Park. So that was put in, and thank you for the reminder on making sure that was submitted on time.

Okay.

I raised a question on this at our last meeting, specifically as we start to think about new parks in the city, such as this one. Four years ago, we did a parks and needs assessment of our existing. And I'm wondering, in four years, if we have an update on what needs remain, if any, from that assessment. Because I think going forward, we will want to make a good public relations case for a new park. But if there's enough of the unmet these needs are still unmet, I think we'll be in an awkward situation.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Donnelly. That was part of the council discussion, is that there was excitement, obviously, to develop the new park. But at the forefront of that is making sure that we have the maintenance capability to take care of anything new that comes online, knowing the parks we currently have in our system and a slim maintenance team to do so. So that was definitely part of the discussion. That needs assessment that was done, that's intended to be a guiding document for whether it's the plaza plan, the system-wide parks plan, new plan development that that is intended to be an informative document for staff and for whatever consultants we may be working with so they understand where we were four years ago and to your point should be cross-referenced with okay that's where we were four years ago where are we now has progress been made are we still at a maintenance deficit and then number three is the community activity needs and programming gaps

That would be Joel and Lisa and myself. We got together once with David and his staff. It was productive, and I think Joel's got an update about tomorrow.

Yeah, I've gotten all of the youth presidents. I think most of them are coming tomorrow. So we're going to meet here at 6 to kind of reach out to them and see what the city can do to help them out. Because as you guys all know, like Dave mentioned earlier, most of these all these organizations are volunteer run and so any help that they can get from the city financially advertising anything and would be beneficial so just kind of getting everyone in the same room and help people get on the same page and so you have a city can help out with the new parks and rec department that's tomorrow at 6 I just also wanted to call out the

that Lisa took the input that we had at the meeting and the discussions that we had during the meeting. And you can see it represented in the guide. So thank you.

And thank you for saying that. And Commissioner Green, I should have brought this up as part of going through the rec guide. But I think knowing this, that's one aspect that's also not reflected in the guide that we hope to be in the future is to really represent our youth sports organizations as well. And so I think an opportunity to highlight what they're offering and make sure the community knows about it as well. So we see this as a marketing tool to support the partners. So hopefully we'll hear more on that front tomorrow night.

Yeah, and we're just starting with the youth sports. Then we'll kind of reach out to the bocce, all the other organizations as well. Just this is something easy to start with.

Yeah, one takeaway was we asked, how do we get community participation in developing this, and that's a good question. But we've got a good starting point, so there we go. Next is the implementation of the Urban Forestry Initiatives, the Joint Tree Committee.

I think we're waiting for Jennifer Gates to convene the Joint City Tree Committee, which consists of our commission as the City Tree Committee, and also the Climate Action Commission and the Planning Commission. And so I'm hoping that maybe you could speak to her and see if we can get some momentum going on that. In the meantime, something rather shocking happened at the last council meeting, May 20th. This was the applications by developers for three very luxurious homes on Brazil. It's been in the works for some 10 years, I think. And the developers and the attorney for them and saying they accommodated all the requests from the state to meet the hillside requirements that and now having to meet the Cal State Manor Caltrans and insurance defensible space requirements to remove trees within a certain perimeter of these houses. The lawyer and the developers asked for an exemption from the city's tree replacement, one for one. And believe it or not, Jennifer and present a new language that was insurgencies, which basically says tree removals required by government code for state-mandated defensible spaces documented by a qualified fire protection plan shall not be subject to the one-to-one replacement requirement or in lieu of the fee under . So now what strikes me right away when I read that is the council's goals for this year and last year were to increase the city's tree canopy, not see a net canopy loss. And they also finished this Planet Geo study of the city's tree canopy and inventory of trees. And so I think this is what I'm saying. I think we need to bring this up to the tree committee to say what's going on here. They're talking about introducing some tweaking of the tree requirements. And in my point of view, here's what's happening. The planet geo studies show that there's tremendous ecosystem benefits from our tree canopy. So now you have three developers, private developers, getting permission to build a house. They want to remove these trees and mandate with the state code, but not have to comply with the city code for tree replacement. So they're getting the benefit of being insured and the cost, of course, removing the trees to them. But the ecosystem benefits of these trees, which were estimated in the Planet Geo report, something like every year they think that from carbon storage, carbon sequestration, and all sorts, that total annual benefits from Sonoma is 547,000 for the entire tree canopy, and that equates to about 1,300 per acre every year of canopy loss. So we're shifting the social community benefits of the ecosystem benefits to the community Those weren't replaced, and at the same time, we're exempting them from any new trees. So what I see on this is that we need to go back with this Joint Tree Committee, and I'm sure the Climate Commission will accept this, and the Planning Commission too, probably, that we need to establish a tree fund for the city. And then instead of saying, OK, you have to at least pay into this fund, to plant trees somewhere else in the city along these greenway pathways or wherever you want it to develop. But the council, in my judgment, looked at these luxurious three-home developments and waived this off, if there'd been affordable housing asking for this exemption, then the council would have had a gold conflict. They really are committed to affordable housing. But this seems really something that, as a red flag for us, is... Do you know if there are many trees...

I'm sorry? Do you know if there are many trees at these three homes that are likely to be subject to the tree ordinance as opposed to trees that are My thought is, did they really need this exemption? Because if what they're clearing out is brush and scrub for fire, those are not generally going to be subject. If it's not something that's a naturally crowning bush, my understanding is that's generally not subject to the tree ordinance. Now, I may not fully understand the tree ordinance, so please correct me.

I can answer the question. If it's six inches in diameter or larger, it's subject to the tree ordinance. And these numbers, this one-to-one replacement requirement, I don't know, if you look back on prior meetings' videos, I'm the one who keeps waving this flag, but it's minuscule. The in lieu fees and the replacement requirements are minuscule compared to surrounding municipalities. The numbers come from 1992. I mean, it continues to alarm me, the disconnect between the goal of tree canopy goals and what actually manifests. And actually, it's just not being paid attention to. And quite frankly, John and I, this is our last year here. So I'm waving my flag at you all also just to know what's going on. And I don't know if the council actually completely knows how inert we are. And even the Joint Tree Commission Committee, the last meeting we had, the data was presented. We weren't allowed to ask questions about it. We weren't allowed to question the data, which it turns out isn't entirely accurate. So it's quite alarming to me personally.

One piece, I will follow up more on, again, I will find out more about the exemption and the specifics to it. As I understood, it was related to fire code, but the reason behind it, exemption or not, I'm not... I'm not privy to right now. The one thing I will share is that the most recent council meeting as part of the fee study upgrade, there was a proposal for a new calculation for tree and loo fee, and so increasing significantly from its existing number. I believe if they're not replacing a tree from development, it is $700 per tree, and that would go into a tree fund.

Per any size of tree?

There's specifics on it. So part of it is this is a, as part of the fee study, there's best practices that were brought in. Staff now has to take that back and bring it back to update the municipal code and accompanying policy that goes with it. But it sets the wheels in motion for a higher in lieu fee for tree removal. So hopefully we'll help those coffers to support our community-wide planting efforts.

I'd like to acknowledge a successful tree replacement, which I call it a home run at Hughes Baseball Field where those diseased trees had to be removed. Mayor Wellander had a central role in this, Joe Lunney and his crew, and the replacement trees are terrific. And I think we could take that as a model, as a template, for tree replacements because the ground was prepared properly, irrigation isn't set up, composting, everything about it looks to be A plus. So there can be successes.

Well said, and that was it. Mayor Wellender had a huge part in that, but there was a lot of community volunteers as well, so I know the Rotary Club, the Little League came out, and as you mentioned, it's just really, really well done. I think it improves the aesthetics. They're on par to be planted in a way that are really going to support the health of the tree. It has been mirrored again. The Rotary Club came forward and replaced a stand of cherry trees at, again, some county land, but adjacent to the city. at the Veterans Memorial as well, using that same format. So some trees had died out in that area, and so replaced them in that area as well. So I think there is, like you mentioned, opportunity to have a good model of when we are replacing trees that's done in a responsible and a long-term fashion that supports the health of the tree and the ecosystem.

If anyone's curious, there's 21 new trees that line the outfield now. Used to only be in left field and now we took them we put them all the way around right field So it'll add a lot more shade on the field So they look Ron did a great job plus bringing in the rocks and to help protect the trees.

I Do have a comment about the exemption that was made the hillside ordinance was developed to protect the view shed of the city of Sonoma and by not only well you have to apply the fire ordinances but what that does is enhance the view of the buildings up on the hillside because of the grading and everything there'll be trees removed and not to try and put more trees back in that area seems like a lose-lose considering the

ideas behind the hillside ordinance something to remind my fellow newer commissioners about is that we do have a recommended master tree list for the city and it the data came from UC Master Gardener program these trees were chosen to be best most likely to survive and thrive in the next hundred years so I encouraging the city when they do replacements like it was Hughes Field you said I don't even know if they used something off the list or that's something to keep in mind when we when we push forward tree replacements Ron was the one who selected the tree so I'm guessing he did

So I think we have one ad hoc left and I think I can speak on behalf of them. I don't believe that ad hoc is met. This is for the visioning of Depot park. And again, I think the timing on that, the reason they haven't met, um, Some of this, as you've noticed with two or three of these, are somewhat budget-driven and part of the upcoming fiscal year goals. And so I know as part of the budget proposal going forward next week is we have a certain amount of funding set aside to do some studying on the old cottage building that's there in Depot Park, as well as I know that there's some... post-dated CIP to make some upgrades to the Depot Park restrooms and bathrooms that is anticipated to get underway next year. So I think the timing is right for that ad hoc to get together as soon as that budget is passed and we have some funding to work with.

So any further reports and or comments?

If we're on the item of just staff reports, I just have a couple that I wanted to mention, although I think we've got commissioner reports first, so I'll defer to you all.

I thought I just did. Any reports or comments from the commission?

I'll just go back to where we left off with the ad hoc committees that we discussed. Do you know when we're going to present the pros 2026 goals and work plan to the city council? The other commissions, planning commission, climate action commission, culture and fine arts commission have all been on the council agenda. It seems that we should be filing our goals so that we can get that dialogue going with the council on what we're doing to support their goals and

Yeah, we're working on timing for that. So Cultural Fine Arts Commission is in the same boat. They actually have not. So it's just climate action and planning. So some of this I will wear the blame for with getting a full trip around the sun to understand how the calendar works here. I'm accustomed to it happening at different times of the year, but I know climate action and planning just went forward. They're the only two commissions that have presented there, so we've requested if the council would like that. I've shared our goals with them, so they're well aware, but I'm hoping there's an opportunity for us to share our goals and then also really an ideal world we presented at the beginning and then come back with a status update at the end.

And one more comment. I think Measure M money is expiring in another year or so, isn't it? Has there been any discussion yet about positioning ourselves to see if we can get a renewal?

So you're talking about the measure in general, the county, the county parks, recreation, county parks and city parks. There's a lot of work actually happening. And so it is set to expire, believe in 2028. But county parks is actually just they're positioning themselves to put it back on the ballot this coming in November. And so I know they did a lot of work to Survey the community see if there's support for it at the County Board of Supervisors just last month They presented to the Board of Supervisors to see if there was support to put it on the ballot They had asked all the various park providers to attend I attended spoke in favor of it as it is an important funding source for Sonoma and the the Board of Supervisors at least there was a Unanimous support on the ballot. So keep an eye out It will be on the ballot for this year for an additional renewal. And so those of you not familiar measure M is a tax measure countywide That's collected by Sonoma County and then each municipality gets a percentage of that We get to the tune depending on how the tax revenues come in somewhere between 140 and 60 thousand dollars annually which those can go towards a park improvements towards programs, towards planning efforts. And the beauty of those is that we have the ability, knowing we get a fairly small piece of the pie, but you can bank them year over year. And so like the Olsen Park project and things like that, we were able to save up that money over year and put them for some fairly substantial improvements.

Dave, you might have asked quickly on that. I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but have we done sort of an analysis of... sales tax collections in the city of Sonoma on that percentage, it shouldn't be that difficult to calculate. Are we a net taker or a net giver in that area?

So are you asking about sales tax that we collect as far as measure? So measure M, we get a percentage of the overall county tax.

Right, and the county tax is countywide, but everyone in the city of Sonoma is paying that. But I'm wondering, you know, is that what's being collected in the city of Sonoma for that Is it quarter percent? I think it's quarter percent. Whatever the differential is, are we getting that back in funding? I don't know off the top of my head, but we can find that out.

It wouldn't be that hard to calculate. Because collecting our overall sales tax, that's a big piece of our standard budgeting process.

And the county parks has sent out a flyer that you might have gotten in the mail, a card, on that issue.

and I'm not suggesting it should always be a dollar for dollar but just if it's way out of balance that's something to be because there are county parks that need that funding as well I have a question unrelated I am wondering if there's been any further discussion within the city government about any kind of communication that can happen between at least the chairs of the various commissions so we're not doing cross purposes and we can share what we're learning and doing and you know i guess everyone was starting to meet with the city manager all the chairs and then i don't know the brown act or something happened and i don't know what ended up happening with that does anyone know so that was a regular i know starting to be a regular meeting i don't know if it was happening

quarterly or every other month. And that was with city manager Ewan. Um, I certainly can bring that back up with our interim. And once we are, are set on who are our long-term city manager, if that's been a benefit, if that's a beneficial forum, I think what you're asking is a little more communication between the chairs, but at least that provides a forum. When we started talking between chairs and commissions offline, that's where we get in a little bit of that gray or the Brown act. But I think having that forum to get updates from the city, and also for the chairs and vice chair to provide information back to the city manager. If that sounds of benefit, I'd be happy to share that with them. So I think that stopped with David's departure, but it doesn't mean that can't get recalled.

I think also you were saying communicating with the city, but I think that the commissions being able to communicate with each other and share our various and sundry skills and what we've been working on, I think would be incredibly helpful.

absolutely so i will i will bring that up and if that's not uh the forum that decided to move forward we can look at other opportunities i think like you're saying reporting the city council reporting the community reporting to each other as i've come to learn this community is this the commissions i work with have a wealth of knowledge and talents and the more we can share that i think the more beneficial we'll all be are there any further uh staff reports or comments I will be brief. These will be a little event heavy here, but tis the season, right? Summer in Sonoma. So I mentioned this before, Transcendence Theater begins their productions this Friday. This weekend in the Plaza is Flag Day and Chicken Barbecue event is on Saturday. some Sonoma Valley Pride event taking place on Sunday afternoon. Sonoma Sunday's in the Plaza. So that's a music series in partnership with Music in Place. They do a fantastic job of bringing music almost every Sunday. They will not be here this Sunday to do the events, but we'll be back the following Sunday and continue on through the summer. So that's two to five in the Grinstead Amphitheater. And I mentioned this before, if you're interested, the final budget going potentially for adoption will happen next Wednesday on June 17th at the City Council meeting and invite everyone to tune in or join in on the meeting that will set the budget for our next fiscal year. That's all I have on my list.

If there's no further comments, I'll adjourn the meeting. It is 7.50. Thank you very much, everybody.

I don't know if they're still bringing in their materials. In the same way, they used to bring it in through the fence line, all their construction materials and everything, right next to the Montini entrance here, right over there. And the fence never got put back together, so people were bringing their dogs and bikes through, and right in the fence where there's no sign that says no dogs and bikes.

So right at the kissing gate, right at the kissing gate,

But it's the kissing gate over there. I just wondered.

They're bringing stuff in at least directly from the driveway now for the bottom of it. So I didn't see anything going up. I know there's a smaller path that's, I guess, top of the parking lot, bottom of it. So they did drop a few, like, important items. Most of their stuff is coming through.

Okay, cool.

We're actually going to be, it's that little room that's like right around the corner from here. So get in this vicinity. It's the EOC building. Thank you.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Thank you.