Recording in progress. Oh, good. Okay. Good evening everyone,
and welcome to the regular meeting of the petaluma city council, petaluma community
development successor agency for monday, july 20th, 2026.
and as you know, we've recently begun accepting public comments, both in person and
via zoom. And this is in compliance with state bill 7 0 7,
which is an update to the brown act, california's open meeting
law. Because this is a new process, we do ask for your
patients as staff gets used to the technology and work on,
on refining our procedures. So, um,
as per our regular procedures, if you wish to provide a public comment
on tonight's agenda, we are, um, and are joining us in person, please
fill out a speaker card. They're located in the hallway, outside the chamber,
and bring it to our clerk who is at the front of the chambers.
um, as for the new procedures, for those who are
participating via zoom, please raise your hand virtually when
the item is called, those participating over phone and zoom can raise
your hand by pressing star nine. The city clerk
will provide these instructions during each public comment period.
so please do not raise your hand yet. Please wait until,
uh, your, to raise your hand until the item is called.
please note that concurrent translations services are available in this meeting
in spanish and a variety of other languages. And to access translation
services online, please use, use the link on the agenda
to access the language in the room, please scan the qr code on
the sign in the back of the room. Okay,
so, madam clerk with that, let's have our roll call for the evening.
barnacle present cater thompson.
here di carly. Here
now. Here, quint. Here. Sch shrimps.
here mcdonald here. And we do have a quorum. Wonderful, thanks.
and let's all stand for the pledge of allegiance,
our visions to the flag of the united states of america,
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under
god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
and a moment of silence, please.
now from time to time, the council uses this opportunity to honor
a member of the petaluma community who has contributed to the fabric of petaluma
through their efforts and life and has recently passed. Tonight
is a moment of such honor and sadness, and I'd like to close tonight's
meeting in honor of bernie al. Uh, bernie passed away this month at the
age of 90, and had been active in petaluma issues until just
recently. Um, bernie had been involved in so much of petaluma over so
many years that I can't cover it all, but he was a science teacher.
and that doesn't begin to cover or describe bernie. So
let me read just one quote from the press democrat in nine in 2007,
a small sign on d street reminds cyclists to ride on the right side of the road
with the traffic fittingly. The sign is on the wrong side
of the road where cyclists who are not, um,
uh, where cyclists who are not riding with the traffic will see
it fittingly. The sign is bilingual, and this is since
many local cyclists hail from mexico where the custom is to ride against
the flow of traffic. Bernie did this. Bernie was an out of the box thinker
and achiever. Bernie is a recipient of the sonoma county lifetime environmental
achievement award. He was a member of the county and of petaluma's
bike advisory committees. He was instrumental in starting bike to
workday in the county. He worked with cots to help their clients succeed. He
is a founding member of the friends of lynch creek trail, and I'm pretty sure
that bernie's bicycled to heaven and formed a committee to
help make it better there. . Tonight we'll be closing the meeting in
honor of bernie. So at this point in the meeting, we
looked at, at our agenda, and I look up and down the diocese to see whether tonight's agenda,
uh, has any modifications to be made on it
and seeing no council member, um, proposing
then, uh, the council the agenda tonight is exactly as
you see it in your, uh, handouts or online.
and we move now to general, uh, public comments.
and as per our regular procedures during general public comment,
the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the
city council's subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed
on the current agenda. Public comments are limited to three minutes per person,
and depending on the number of persons wishing to address the council, tying will be allocated
in equal shares equaling no more than 20 minutes
as per our new procedures. And as a reminder, we'll now be accepting
comments from zoom as well as in person.
the, um, in-person and remote commenters will be granted
equal time. So if we have more than 20 people wishing to speak,
the first 10 in-house speakers will get to speak and the first
10 remote speakers will be able to speak.
um, zoom tracks the order of hands that raise, and we'll
work from that list in order for zoom and an in-person
participants to know if they have the first 10 or not. Then, um,
the names of the speakers will all be announced. Additional comments
will be heard after the last business item on the agenda. If there
are less than 10 in each in-person and online, then we will balance
out until 20 speakers have been, uh, heard in the evening.
so, um, we will hear the in-person comments first,
I'll call, um, I will call speakers to the podium. Once these have concluded,
the city clerk will call upon remote speakers to unmute themselves
and in turn make their comments. It's a bit of a learning experience
for all of us, so I appreciate your patience in this new procedures.
and, um, back over to the city clerk here.
um, so we did receive eight comments ahead of the meeting, and also there
are 20 attendees, uh, joining via zoom. So at this point, I
will start a 32nd clock for general public comment. During
these 30 seconds, members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker speaker
cards to the clerk's desk if they have not already done so. And members of the public attending
online should raise their virtual hand. Those attending via phone should press
nine to raise their hand. And speaker requests received after this time
may not be accommodated.
okay, we did receive three hands online. And those are s kirks, veronica,
o and theodore scar. Ato
no, for sure of. Okay,
so we have three hands raised, three hands online, and,
and we have 12, 12 comments, 12 cards right here. So 15 total, so that's a 15 total.
and so with 15 speakers, it's one minute each speaker,
and tonight, and it looks like everybody gets a chance. So our,
uh, first speaker is christopher brown, um,
to be followed by jennifer boyle.
my name is christopher brown. I'm from little woods mobile home park. Um,
and I'm here just to state that, uh, the psychological
terrorism from harmony communities continues. Our parking is still
abominable. Um, bullying
is being continued and it feels as they operate
without impunity.
the city council, you guys have been great. Everybody that
has supported us has been great. Um, but I just feel like
nothing's happening with them. And there's no, there's no, they're operating
with no impunity. That's what I got.
thanks. Thank you very much. Jennifer boyle to be
followed by tina yonkers.
good evening mayor. City council, city staff. We, the mobile
home park residents at youngstown, little woods and capri
continue to feel the weaponization and intimidation in our parks.
youngstown mobile home owners and management
continue to make, to market and sell mobile homes they
own to all age families. This is still unlawful. As a senior
park overlay zoning has remained in effect since october
20, 23, 80 20. Still does,
does not allow any mobile home to be sold as all ages,
nor does it allow purchase agreements, leases or rules
and regulations to say anything but senior park
as spelled out in the lawful zoned ordinance under california
laws. And note and notably federal laws and local
and local laws, the following, apply possible civil
violations, fraud, or intentional. Thank you mis. Our
next speaker is tina yonkers to be followed by marie kunio.
okay, thank you.
possible civil violations, fraud or intentional
misrepresentation. Negligent misrepresentation,
violations of state consumer protection laws, breach of contract
or warranty. Failure to make required disclosures,
unfair business practices, possible criminal violations,
theft by false pretenses, real estate or
business fraud, forgery or falsification of documents
perjury, ab
2 5 9 6, which just codified existing laws
for senior parks will be on the consent floor in the california
state senate when legislatures resume work august 3rd.
in addition, I know I, I won't be able to finish this, so
I'll just leave it at that. Marie coneo to
be followed by jimmy rankin. Just start here.
okay. Thank you.
thank you. In addition, little woods and capri both have been
served with another arbitration with the clear intent to bleed
residents legally dry. Since large equity park owners
are not winning, the arbitrations abuse, frivolous pleadings,
and im intimidation are among these egregious
acts. Youngstown capri and little woods mobile home parks
residents have and continue to experience reduction
of services of pools, keys, clubhouse, hours,
management hours, trash, overcharges, and demand
credit. These permits to operate in petaluma should be
suspended immediately. We have heard rumblings from a few
non-mobile park disgruntled in residents that the city of petaluma
is not prevailing in court in just learning about one case,
where it was not dismissed immediately. The cases
in the federal. Thank you. Thank you jimmy rankin
to be followed by kelly rankin.
hello. Uh, so I live on vallejo and d street. Um, the company,
uh, rebuild petaluma together has opened a house on three
16 vallejo street, which they call a shared housing,
um, development. Uh, they have a lot of people there that are,
you know, using drugs. Um, we've seen prostitutes walking down
the street, people speeding up and down the street that we've never seen before. I grew
up in this neighborhood. I've lived there for 32 years. We have not had problems like this
recently. People's houses have been being broken into, and there's a preschool,
not more than half a block away. So I just feel
scared because I work an hour and a half away from home and I get a call from
my wife saying that the back gate to our backyard has been open to
close until my dog ran around the corner and started barking. And that's
when the door closed. So I just don't feel safe in my neighborhood anymore
since this house is opened. And it's only been three weeks, maybe a month that they have been living
here. Thank you. Thank you. Kelly
rankin should be followed by mark kimberly.
okay. I'm on the same topic that he's on. So our neighborhood has gone downhill again, and
I'm super disappointed in the city for this. Nobody in the neighborhood was informed that
this would be happening. We were not consulted. Um, we have been
a neighborhood that has had its share of homeless in the area, in the armory
with the soup kitchens where the, the home for this, uh, place is
now. And so we finally had this neighborhood with these beautiful families. Look right
here, these beautiful babies walking through the street all the time. And now they're afraid
one of this couple back here doesn't even wanna buy a house in our neighborhood because of this pro,
this situation. And mayor, what I was told is this was your idea. So
I just want you to understand that the community, I'm speaking for a lot of people. I've
been talking to all of my neighbors. The fear is big. This
couple back here has their houses to the back. They're here screaming, yelling, cussing all the
time, all throughout the night. Um, we, again, we are seeing all kinds
of things, and they're about to bring in 10 shipping containers and build more houses
for low income housing. So I can only imagine it's gonna get worse.
thank you, mark kimberly to be followed by tim portus.
I have here this government issued license plate 1 3 5 7 5 0 1.
I found it in santa rosa. According to dmv, this belongs
on a vehicle that's owned by the city of petaluma, but not in the possession of city of petaluma.
there was no release of liability filed. The government plate's not returned.
so the vehicle has not been sold, it's just missing. But no one here seems to know about it.
I investigated further and I found the actual truck as well.
it's sitting in santa rosa in front of 1906 bel air way.
I suggest that you report it stolen and have santa rosa pt retrieve that for you
tonight. Uh, guess who lives there? I'll give you a hint.
his initials are ms. And him and his corporation were fired by city of petaluma and
six o others recently, you know, the same guy that built millions of
dollars out of all of you in this city over the last eight years. You did nothing. The
same guy who allegedly killed animals and falsified records to hide it as you all
did nothing. The same guy you all protected and covered for, for years,
ignoring all reports and complaints. Yes, that's the guy. Here's your license
plate. Thank you, tim portus to
be followed by christine white.
thank you. Hello.
the cases in federal and sonoma county court that have been dismissed are
over. The additional frivolous pleadings, in our opinion, are headed the same
way. There is not one case where the large investment
in vi investment mobile park owners have prevailed dating back
to two oh through three in petaluma surrounding areas, different
judges, different opinions, but when all the facts are shown, they produce
the same result. These residents do not want notoriety nor even
recognition for standing up for the truth. They simply want peace,
calm, legitimate business practices that follow the city, state, and federal
existing laws. Sadly, we have lost some of our seniors
as recently as three days ago, that never saw their money returned or their social
security in their past last days on a mobile home that they own. Our city
has stood tall in the protection of the most val vulnerable
as they have voted time and time again after careful analysis to
defend, enforce, and strengthen their own laws and ordinances.
thank you. Thank you. Christina white, followed by michael shapiro.
good evening, mayor. Counsel. Uh, first of all, I wanted to just
say I am so sorry for everything that little woods is going through.
it's just I've listened to it time after time at all these meetings, and it's just,
I, I empathize with you. I, I wish I could do something I cannot,
but know that you have people who are thinking good things for you. Um,
secondly, I'd like to say thank you to chris cornett for their grazing. They,
for the first time have grazed behind our home, and they are still back there.
the sheep will be back there for probably another week. So it's phenomenal, and they're
doing such a great job. So, uh, we feel protected. And lastly,
I I've been approached by many people asking me about data centers
and what is petaluma? Have I heard anything at the city council meeting
about the data centers? I know fairgrounds are being approached
to put in data centers. Big concern for everybody is water.
we have a water issue here in california, here everywhere. We need to
have water for our people. And data centers
use a lot of water. So just concerns. And I don't know when that's gonna come up in
a city council meeting. Thank you. Thank you michael shapiro,
to be followed by, um, uh, j
mangan. Good evening. Uh,
I'm here to make my annual plea to bask ban gas powered leaf blowers.
um, I don't know how to get this accomplished, but I do know that
communities that have done this have reported that the quality of life is
vastly improved. Much less noise, far fewer fumes
from these gas powered leaf blowers. Um, these leaf blowers,
burn gas and oil, and about a third of that is expelled in an aerosol. So
it's basically an airborne oil spill. And this is what we and our kids are breathing.
um, I was in washington, dc uh, two months ago.
they have successfully banned gas powered leaf blowers. I spoke to a gardener. I
spoke to a, a woman at the smithsonian who manages the garden there. Everybody's
thrilled with it. And I can actually document that with video if you're interested. Um,
petaluma has a great climate ready plan. We're three and a half years away
from 2030, less than that actually. And if the goal is really carbon neutrality,
one of the easiest and most, uh, productive ways of getting there
is to do a slow but gradual and
progressive ban of gas powered leaf blowers. You can start with a few months
very much, and then go from there. Our next speaker. Thank you. We'll be
mondragon to be followed by nina zito.
um, good evening counsel. Um, thank you for all the hard
work you guys do to upkeep. Um, my, my little p town hometown. Um,
I appreciate it. But I'm here to ask you, uh, I'm here to ask more of you as, um,
so many folks before me have, um, I have
recently, um, been aware of, uh, how many flock cameras we
have around, um, the city of petaluma. And I would request that if,
uh, the contract is coming up soon, I remember, um, that was something that
was, um, mentioned at some point might be, um, open for community
discussion that we do not renew the contract with flock. Um,
they are tracking people's locations, they're lying about keeping our data. Um,
they can be easily hacked and they're using ai and the ai can get it wrong.
um, and they're giving our data to ice, which is a transition that
I'm also requesting that when the council puts it on the agenda for a non-cooperation
ordinance with ice, that every one of you does the right thing and votes in favor
of a no cooperation ordinance. Thank you. Thank you.
and nina zito, and then we go to our zoom participants.
thank you, council. Um, I appreciate the
council council's creativity
in making public comment available. I'd, um, like
to point out that it feels disrespectful to folks who make the
not inconsiderable effort to show up
and, uh, take time from their day and to have their remarks, um,
weighted, um, with people who
just feel it's enough to like dial in. And I, I, I do feel that's disrespectful.
perhaps those that time can be allotted differently
or perhaps people can provide a reason why they can't show up in person.
but it invites, uh, flooding the zone as
we've learned to think with, uh, stakeholder remarks,
um, that, that don't necessarily reflect the will of the community.
thank you. I think this is important. Thank you.
now over to our clerk to do the zoom work. We did also
receive one late hand up. I dunno if you wanna accept one additional speaker,
uh, sorry. Online. Uh oh. Please do that. Okay. So we'll
start with s kirks. Uh, I'm gonna allow you
to speak and then ask you to please unmute yourself and make your comment.
good evening, susan kirks petaluma,
the city of petaluma, has engaged in eight
harmful and destructive actions at the paulo lane
open space property in west petaluma. I'm speaking about
one of those this evening with the need to correct
that action. About 10 days ago, a little fawn
was struck by a vehicle and severely injured on bodega
avenue at paula lane. The fawn was down at bodega avenue
with the mother doe and the other twin fawn, where they never
would have been had they had access to their natural
home and habitat. The city of petaluma has installed barbed
wire fencing around the perimeter of the open space
property on paula lane. And that fence should never have been installed,
and it needs to be removed. That is my comment this
evening. And by the way, the fawn was euthanized by
fawn rescue after marin humane came and, and retrieved
it.
our next speaker will be veronica o.
please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, good evening,
council and community. Thanks for, thanks for allowing me to comment
tonight. Data centers are a climate issue, and I want to name that
they cool through evaporation consuming water that doesn't return to the supply
in a state already managing chronic doubt. And the power behind
them mostly still comes from the grid that isn't fully clean yet. So every new
facility adds real ongoing demand at the exact
moment when we're trying to bring down emissions and not add sources.
a company called global stack is pitching exactly, um, at
fairgrounds across the state. Um, I don't want one
at ours, and I don't want one anywhere on sonoma county's farmland.
this isn't the use that belongs on land. We're trying to keep agricultural
and climate resilient. My ask is to agendize the 12 month moratorium
on data center land uses so the community can weigh in and staff can define
this use and set standards before a proposal arrives
rather than after. Thank you very much.
the next speaker is theodora sato. I notice you lowered
your hand if you are still interested in making a comment.
uh, thank you. I'm testifying in support of agenda number two,
consent request for a proposal for a data center. Moratorium data centers
bring together nearly every type of pollution, air, water, land,
light, noise, and emf. With im with impacts that can extend four
miles. Communities are blindsided by proposals
and by the time residents become aware it's often too late. I work
on this issue nationwide. Cities, counties, and the
state all have a role to play. And the first step is putting a regulatory
framework in place before, not after a data center proposal
arrives a proactive regulatory framework. It
helps you avoid costly litigation, protects public health, and
equally important, it spurs innovation towards lower impact
ai infrastructure, air pollution. As an example,
a single hyperscale facility may have 40 to more than 50 diesel generators
on site. And they are regularly run a report by caltech and the university of
california riverside called the reports called the unpaid toll
documents, how data center air pollution is crossing state lines. Thank
you. It is steeply increasing fine particle pollution. And I did submit
extensive, uh, documentation in my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much for the comment. We're moving to
our next zoom speaker. The next speaker is andy schrader.
hey, andy schrader from petaluma. Uh, the woman who said that we
shouldn't have zoom capability, obviously doesn't have to pay a a hundred bucks for
childcare. So, um, thanks for that comment lady.
uh, I want to call in a second the ban on leaf
blowers. I want to second getting rid of barbed wire that's, uh, inhibiting
wildlife connectivity. I also want to second getting rid of flock
uh, surveillance cameras. But most of all, I want to say that
the city council should hear and discuss data centers.
I work on colorado river compact issues. Lake mead is at a record
low lake powell's at a record low when southern california can't get water.
they take it from northern car, california. And, uh, we
really need to do everything we can to save water. Also, data centers will
deeply inhibit the city's ability to meet its climate
goals. So, uh, we need to do everything in our power
to make sure that they don't come to petaluma. And the city council should hear that as soon as possible. Thank
you.
that's all of our online comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. That, uh,
concludes the, uh, speakers for general public comment tonight. And,
um, I'd, um, like to bring it back on up
to the council. And, um, this is our opportunity for council report
in on what they've been busy with since our last meeting. And, uh, I'll
start with, uh, council member shri. Um, just one
item to report. Um, I was watching the news story
on tv, um, a week or two ago, and it turns out, uh, sacramento
is having an infestation
of a new, um, insect. It's called the turkistan cockroach.
not the oriental, not the german, it's a turkistan cockroach, which is a little different
species than other cockroaches. It's new in town, it's come to sacramento,
and they think it may have come in on the planes that, uh, from air travis air
force base that go to the mid east area and back again over the last several years. So
it's come in a few years ago, but apparently it's gotten really bad in sacramento.
however, it is, um, we need to have awareness of it, and
I got really aware of it because I think I have an infestation in my front yard.
so I, uh, anyway, I took the actions, I took all the recommendations, and it looks
like, uh, fortunately it doesn't climb walls as well.
it is an outdoor cockroach, not an indoor cockroach. It seeks water is the
only reason it comes indoors. I said it doesn't like to climb, likes wet environments,
uh, mulches and the like. And, um, so I did all those things, put out traps,
cleaned out the yard, and pretty much got it under control. So I don't see any more, haven't seen any in
about three weeks. So that was, that's been really good. So I can, that's a good report that
that is manageable. But, uh, be aware that there is a new insect here in
town, um, uh, coming from, uh, from other countries. So
it, it's just something new to be aware of at this time. So when you see it, it's, don't automatically assume
a german oriental, it might be the new turkistan. And they're very,
um, they grow very fast, um, uh, and, and, and
propagate anyways, just, just for awareness. Thanks. Thank you. Okay,
that's, um, disturbing . Thank you. Uh, council member
quint. Yeah. Uh, that, that's a tough one to follow. Um, so I just,
uh, I don't have any liaison reports for tonight. I do want to say, I want
to congratulate the petaluma national majors little league team for beating
rankin valley, uh, and winning the district 35 all-star tournament.
they advanced to the section one tournament. Uh, this is the same team that in 2012
went all the way to the world series. And if they continue to win, who
knows? They're a good team, a good group of, uh, kids playing
and some really good coaches over there. So, um, share your support.
uh, I also wanna share, uh, concerns. Uh, I wasn't here
last week. I know there was discussion around ice. I just wanna share that
I share our community's concerns over the actions of ice. I'll leave it at
that. Um, and I also, um, support, um,
a phased out ordinance on gas, uh, leaf
blowers. I realize that that's not a, um, a priority at this time, but,
but I do think it's a good thing. Thank
you, council member now. Um, thank you, mr. Mayor.
um, I attended the petaluma police department's display date, and you
can still have the same opportunity on tuesday, august 4th from four to seven
on the petaluma fair fairgrounds. Oh, sorry.
uh, you will get to see up, close the equipment, enjoy free food, meet
staff, win prizes, learn how to be safe in our local neighborhoods.
so a wonderful free family event. And I have,
I have a gift for the mayor here. Our local petaluma regional library had
a 50th anniversary. I was given the task of remembering opening
day in 1976 when I was a sophomore at petaluma
high school. I was excited for a modern library to do research and
homework and hang out with friends. Plus its modern library. Had a
copy machine for our mayor, a book bag
for the occasion. Um, and I like to
visit on wednesdays when my grandkids get to read to
the dogs at the library. On a more serious
note, um, I wanted, um, address our city
attorney about little words parking. Um, it's still an
issue and a lot of the tenants have, um, tenant
agreements with the owner that they have parking
privileges, but there is no parking privileges. And I'd like to
have an update to the council on how that's going with, um,
the owners and on the leaf blowers. Um,
I don't know where the gentleman went, but I would like to see, um,
maybe our climate protection committee bring this back and
talk about how we can do something in petaluma. Thank you.
thank you. Council member barnicle? Yes. Um,
one update. I attended the ribbon cutting for the son, clean power,
um, uh, solar and storage project. It's a four megawatt project up in
mendocino county. It is currently our largest, uh, solar and storage project
by a factor of four. Um, it brings our evergreen portfolio to 20%
served by local, uh, solar and, um, in storage. So,
um, quite a feat. And, um, we're the only cca in california that's, uh,
serving a hundred percent of our evergreen, um, portfolio with local renewables.
so, fabulous. Uh, council member cater thompson.
uh, thank you. Um, I too would like to, um,
well, actually with the leaf blowers, I've been talking to michael for a long time about this.
and can this be just incorporated in the general plan? Um,
go in that direction since we're close to completing our general plan.
and I would like an update on the house on vallejo street.
um, you know, it's challenging when you're dealing with unhoused,
and I think we just need to make sure that the neighbors feel,
feel protected and that what's happening or what they're saying.
I want to know if that is happening. So I would like an update on that. And
that's it. Thank you very much. Thank
you. Vice mayor di carly. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. Over at
parks and rec. We elected new officers and there was no net change there.
I think everybody stayed the same. Um, we talked about, uh, there's a trail
on the east side of town that's gonna be getting a new name and kind of narrowed that down,
and I'll save that for when it comes to council. And then, um, no airport meeting,
but I will say that the taxiway is finished. Um, everything looks
pretty good. I think they're wrapping up some few little things here and there.
and then, um, yeah, I, I did attend the, uh, the
rebuilding together, their new house that they just bought over on vallejo, and as you saw, some
neighbors came and just spoke about it. So I would kind of like to see too that, you know, we're not,
um, you know, that we're doing a good thing, but not introducing problems to,
to neighbors over there. And, um, you know, the other weekend, uh,
it was the swiss picnic in penn grove, um, outside of petaluma, but a lot of petaluma's
that go to it. So rich swiss heritage around here. Um, so that
was fun. That's, that's every year right after 4th of july if anybody ever wants to attend.
and then, um, I did also attend the library's 50th anniversary.
um, as you heard, councilwoman now gave a, gave, gave a great speech there. Uh,
john sheehy talked about his, uh, bib biblio mania,
um, as a child. Um, harlan osborne gave what he put the
common man's, you know, recant of libraries in town in that part of,
uh, of petaluma. And then mary dooley talked about her addition to the
library that she did some years ago. And so that was really great. Um,
you know, great community thing. And then the, at the sonoma county fair,
the four h auction is coming up. That's, that's a great way to support agriculture
to go out there. Um, you know, the kids work really hard on these projects. It
teaches them about business responsibility, raising animals, and, um,
you know, they're always looking for buyers to help support them. They'll use that money to,
you know, further their projects go to school, um, and help them really understand what
responsibility is. And that's all I have this evening. Thank you. Thank you very
much. Um, yeah, I do want to, uh, address that, uh, uh,
vallejo street house. Um, you know, I, I think it's a great step forward to try
and, and, uh, provide, uh, low income housing in the community and, and,
uh, solve our homelessness problem. But a step forward can't be a
step backward. At the same time, we have to make sure that it, uh, doesn't harm
the neighbors as, as we move on. Um,
also, um, on a much lighter note, now that the world cup has concluded, um,
and all normal business can continue, um, you know, I, uh,
note how many, uh, watch parties there were around town and how that helped businesses.
I was at taps to watch, but I love taps because I love the businesses
that face the basin and, and, and then do well. And
that all leads to, I want to commend the team that put, uh, from the float house
that put together the huge bands on the basins festival on july 11th.
I mean, you could walk kayak to paddleboard to kayak right across the basin. It
had just one more big fun thing in petaluma and
also want to come, uh, commend, uh, the same weekend art and garden festival in july 12th,
also another huge year. And, um, I helped with the team that tabled
for, uh, the improvements to the trestle promenade now. Uh, and thanks
to downtown business association for their efforts there, I attended to the, the
county homelessness coordination committee meetings. And, uh, we're still moving
on trying to re reduce and, and get through the
impacts that, uh, changes that the state and fed are bringing to our systems.
uh, I was able to help with the chamber of commerce with their, uh, new, uh,
officer installation meeting too. So, um, been a busy
short two weeks. And, uh, with that, I'd like to ask the city manager
for her report. Thank you, mayor council community. Um, just
a couple things. Speaking of events, we have the 19th annual petaluma music festival that
will take place this saturday on, uh, the fairgrounds. They're
gonna feature 14 bands. The gates open 1130 and music
will continue through 9:30 pm family friendly local food,
three stages, and all proceeds support music education programs
in petaluma public schools. Uh, for tickets go to petaluma music festival.org.
um, also in our continuing effort to address downtown parking, we've added seven
seven angled on streete parking spaces on the c street block between first
and second, make it even easier to visit downtown businesses and
restaurants. And the new spaces were striped late last week, and they're available now.
and then I'm going to ask brian o of our community development department,
welcome back, brian, to talk about, um,
the rebuilding together project on vallejo.
thank you. City manager, brian o director of community development.
I didn't see, I, sorry that I didn't catch the,
um, constituent committee member that was here. I'll go back to the tape and
try to connect. Uh, but there's a request on the vallejo
project. The city has had an initial, very preliminary,
um, preview of the housing proposal there,
rebuilding together, um, recently purchased it. It's been an underutilized
site for, um, many, many years. And so
it's very early in the process. There's no, I mean, at this point,
I'd say it's conceptual. Uh, no permits have been submitted.
um, but, uh, everything, um,
every indication from drake, the executive director down
to the staff with rebuilding, they're really strong partner of ours
for the city. Um, every indication points to wanting to
be a good neighbor. Um, there was a recent introductory,
um, community meeting that the vice mayor had, uh, referenced.
I suspect we'll continue to have those or encourage those, um, from
rebuilding and any public safety issues. Um, much like with
any neighborhood, um, we have the means, um, to ensure that,
um, our safety and any, um, code or compliance
issues can get addressed, um, whether it's through code enforcement or public safety.
and so, mayor, we will continue to provide updates, um,
as they come, um, from the property owner.
thank you very much, appreciate that report. And that concludes
mine. Thank you. And that concludes, uh, city manager report, and that brings us
to our consent calendar for the evening. And at this point, um, I look coming
down the diocese to see whether any council member wishes to, uh, poll any of
the consent items. Council member barnacle, item two,
item two ladies. And, um, that's, um,
item two being pulled. And, um, let's move to public comment
on this and on the consent calendar. And we will take
public comment on the consent calendar in its entirety. And when we bring it back to counsel,
we'll have a voting on the two issues separately.
so, um, please, um, uh,
bear with us while we have our little movement in the room
as we open public comment on the entire consent calendar. Uh, the public is
invited to make comments, uh, on the listed items. Our procedure
on the agenda will, will follow the, um, process that I
outlined extensively earlier. And, um, except
that the number of speakers is not limited in this case. And public comments are limited to
three minutes in person. However, uh, the time per speaker may
still be reduced depending on the number of speakers. We'll hear in-person comments
first, I will call on speakers to the podium. Once those have concluded, the city
clerk will call upon the remote speakers to unmute themselves. So, um,
city clerk, it's your take it away. We did receive 12 comments on
item number two ahead of the meeting, and those are posted online. We also have
23 folks joining us on the zoom at this time. I'll start
a 32nd clock. During these 30 seconds. Members
of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to the clerk's desk. Members
of the public attending online should raise their virtual hand, and those attending
via phone should press star nine to raise their hand. Speaker request
received after this 30 seconds may not be accommodated.
okay,
we have, um, uh, 10 cards and one hand that's,
um, 11 speakers. And so I'm gonna shorten
the, um, speaking time to two minutes per person for this item.
and I'll start with donald johnson and move to darren kuzen.
donald johnson
going once donald johnson, um, darren
kuzen to be followed by alex ale.
thank you. And I think john hania seated time on this item as well. So
if you have his card and need to call his name or just to make sure we get
the john hania. Thank you very much.
um, the two minutes will be doubled. Excellent, thank you.
so ai data centers obviously in a major issue across the country. Jurisdictions
keep getting caught. Flatfooted projects are lobbied and approved before
residents have a chance to weigh in. If you want more information on it. Aaron brockovich?
yes, that aaron brockovich has put together the comprehensive website on the proliferation of
ai dentist centers and the issues surrounding them. Uh, just this morning
though, uh, one of my environmental consulting hats, I received an email from eurofins
international testing company talking about the risks and sounding the alarm. That development
is outpacing regulation when it comes to ai identity centers pointing
to the threats, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt. Mm-hmm . Um, um,
you need to make a nexus to an item on the agenda. So what you're talking about, consent
calendar item number two, there's a memorandum proposing the discussion of a moratorium
on data centers. Correct? It, it is not to be deliberated tonight,
it is to be decided whether well, we're gonna talk about the discussion of whether or not a discussion of a moratorium should
happen. So I'm giving context to that end. I'm literally gonna get to the sentence of, we
should have a mor moratorium carry on. Kevin, we're, we're in control
here. All right. So it's certainly logical and smart to meet this moment
with an open discussion of an ai data center moratorium box checked
kev. I've seen petaluma get caught out by undesirable land uses before
when our layered land use rules and ordinances proved ineffective at stopping expected
and undesirable land uses that came forward. So I hear the argument,
why not just wait for the ieo if you guys have interfaced with our ieo
from 2008, it was widely considered as riddled with loopholes and inconsistencies
that have been closed over the years. But that history is a reminder that the ieo is not
a perfect or permanent document. Zoning codes and even general plans
can be changed. The protections they offer are mutable. When a proposed
project doesn't conform developers work to change the ieo or a general plan, create
overlays or use other tools to get around zoning protections around land use.
I've also seen developers bundle undesirable uses with a desirable one to
help, help push it through. The david dom project is a great example. The
d street extension homes were resisted for 20 years until the developer promised to expand
helen putnam park. And now the park looks infeasible, but we got the
homes. So an example of where projects come forward. And even if the council and staff
say that a land use is not desirable, there are ways that a developer makes that
happen and pushes it through. Could a data center developer change or skirt code?
could they package a data center with a more attractive project or an environmental concession
to sway decision makers? A moratorium or an equivalent policy action
is a stake in the ground. It demonstrates community values and clearly signals
what we want to do to prohibit this land use. I understand that a concern
is a moratorium would defer existing work on the zoning code updates,
but beyond the mutability of the izo, the timeline for those updates is unclear.
and honestly, we're talking about generating word documents. I can't believe we can't draft
an ieo update and discuss a moratorium in parallel.
as the mayor says, we can tie our shoes and chew bubblegum at the same time. I think we
can make a couple word docs. The trickiest part is defining what the data center
land use actually is, and that will have to be done eventually. Whether it's now through discussion
around a moratorium or later when we roll out updates to the izo,
there is a strong argument to front load that work now we need to at
least have a public discussion of these issues. I don't think the public at large has heard almost anything
about the city's stance on data centers. Even as we constantly see stories of communities
run over by these projects, discussion of a moratorium is warranted.
it is a logical step, and we would hope the city would be an ally in those kinds of discussions.
let's not get caught flatfooted when we have this much lead time in this many cautionary
examples. Let's get ahead of an emerging land use trend and have the conversation
in the open, the merits of a moratorium. What other tools exist
and how we intend to prevent or shape the future of this land use. Thank you.
thank you. So in council chamber,
we generally observe a certain decorum, which means that decorum, which means
neither cheering nor geering anyone. So let's
not have that behavior again this evening. Um, alex adela
to be followed by, uh, heather gallagher.
it's a, it's aade, just so you know. Okay. Um, here to talk about the data centers,
the moratorium. I feel like nobody wants a data center
in their backyard. It's pretty simple, you know? And
there really isn't much more to say than what, I can't remember your name, but
what he just said, which is, you know, air pollution, noise, pollution,
emf, everything comes up and everything checks off. It
uses a lot of water. Nobody wants it.
so a moratorium to make sure that it
doesn't get pushed through, it doesn't get past anything, would be great.
that's really all there is to say. And I think you guys all get it. Nobody wants it.
thanks. Thank you. Our next speaker is, uh, heather gallagher
to be followed by, um, dean barbero.
good evening council community staff. Thank
you for bringing the topic of discussion of data centers. While considering a ban
in the general plan, we have all heard of the health hazards
and environmental hazards associated with standalone data centers.
and we are now learning of the same hazards associated
with ai data centers disguised as standard office
buildings or r and d facilities. The equipment needed to
support these massive technology companies create low frequency
noise pollution, water usage concerns, and light pollution issues
that harm residents and adversely affect agricultural communities.
please consider setting a precedence for sonoma county by
opposing all attempts from tech company companies who
encourage you to sign non-disclosure agreements
that conceal project details from the community during the permitting
and approval processes. Thank you for investing in our
health and safety by dec decide dedicating your time
to place a moratorium on data centers, big and
small. Your decision influences the surrounding communities
to do what is best for the entire sonoma county agricultural community.
thank you. Thank you. Um,
dean barbar, barb to be followed by susan ball.
so I'm new to this, um, subject, but, um,
yeah, I hear nothing but bad news in the, in the news about
water usage of these centers. And I use ai occasionally.
I asked it today what it thought, it said yes, regulate me.
so I would thought that was good advice.
so I would just encourage you to, um,
probably I would, speaking for petaluma, that people want enforceable, you know, and enforceable
protections in place ahead of time. So I thank you ahead
of time for doing that. Thank you,
susan. Paul should be followed by beverly alexander.
good evening. I encourage you to,
uh, not to to ban instead
of do moratorium. I have been on sort
of the ground
for 10 years on following water in sonoma
county. I started out protesting the wells
being taxed at the santa rosa grounds,
uh, santa rosa planes protection
organization. That is anything. But I have
discovered, we discovered that the the water is being sold
to santa rosa. Santa rosa is selling to marin. Marin is selling it to
oakland, and oakland is selling it to the
la area. We are running out of water
here. Our groundwater is not being sustained.
most of the supervisors are backing the vineyards,
the, the marijuana and, and the agriculture is,
is, is being harmed. Farms are being sold because they
don't have any wells. This will increase
if we start moving in data centers. These
are big guys. They will come in and make lawsuits that we
will not, you will not be able to, to deal with. So
you have to start at the beginning. You have to start at a ban
and then get your ducks in a row for the, for what's coming at it. That's
my, that's my say. Thank you very much, beverly alexander
to be followed by paul alexander.
good evening. And I'm not tall enough. Um,
and thank you for listening. And I'm amazed, um,
to think that the library is 50 years old, because I remember bringing our
children to the b street library and, and,
uh, going upstairs and they had vinyl records, all kinds
of stuff. Anyway, to get to the point again about the data centers,
um, a moratorium, I, I would too, would love
a band. But if that's not possible, a moratorium
will give us time to study, to take public feedback
and to show that you really respect your constituents
and let developers know that petaluma will stand firm.
there will, and one of the lines that
I saw there was about standalone data centers.
does that mean they can attach anything to a data center
like, uh, a swimming pool? That's meant to be sort
of a joke about the devon development.
but, um, you know, once something is
attached to a data center, it no longer is a standalone.
and these developers have a lot of money,
a lot of resources, and I don't wanna see them pushing
us around. So we really,
really need to have all our ducks in a row. And I think
a mor moratorium will help with that. So thank you for listening.
thank you paul alexander to be followed by jorge
reg ti.
uh, good evening council members and fellow petal lumen. I also
support a moratorium on data centers, although
a ban would be even better, but if we must consider them, here are
some points I'd like to, and they've been eloquently expressed already, but I'll express them more
as well. Petaluma needs a data center
moratorium built into our general plan now
to protect our quality of life, our climate, and our environment.
a moratorium is needed with no buy right permitting,
where developers pay a hundred percent of infrastructure costs
and the industry reclassification zoning and
code loopholes. Loopholes are closed. We
need meaningful and defensible noise and vibration. Frequency limits,
air and water pollution and usage limits and heat island
effects limited. And we need to consider
limiting surveillance and flock data impacts.
so developers are sliding in, getting through
by somehow becoming listed as
not standalone. That was me before, or tenant improvement
or ways to dodge local restrictions that are not airtight. We have to be careful
of that. So we need a moratorium or ordinance that isn't comprehensive,
would be barely better than the ordinance at all. So we need our city
to proactively close these loopholes now, not
discover them open later. And finally,
petaluma wants strong, enforceable protections in place before,
not after a developer shows up. Thank you for your time, and please take this
seriously. Thank you. Thank you jorge.
rag ti to be followed by don johnson.
second chance for don.
thank you. Can you hear me? Um, I
strongly support the request from council members, alex de carley and john
trips to impose a moratorium on the construction of data centers
in the city of petaluma. In my opinion, a ban would
be even more desirable. The environmental impacts of these
data centers have become public knowledge for communities where they are deployed
and nationwide. Huge amounts of water for, for refrigeration
of the computers, huge amounts of electricity, air pollution, light
pollution, sound pollution, et cetera. These environmental
impacts are very grave, but the main purposes of the, of the data centers are
even more concerning. Some of those are real-time
location tracking, behavioral data capture, biometric
and financial surveillance. Automated enforcement tied to digital
id and programmable money of every individual.
this already disaster list is complemented with the department
of defense project of creating ai control fighting
robots. Your decision to ban any data center in petaluma
should be easy to make if you come to understand that the benefits are hard to
find and the risk are many and very large.
thank you. Thank you. Uh, donald johnson.
not seeing donald. We'll go to our zoom, uh, participant now.
we have one speaker, uh, on zoom and that's amy taylor.
I will ask you to unmute yourself.
amy, if you could go ahead and unmute yourself and make your comment.
sorry, we're not hearing you, amy. I made a mistake
and I wanted to speak on agenda 12. Okay, got it.
sorry about that. No problem. Okay.
okay, that brings it, that that closes public comment. That's the, the
last zoom and last house card we have. So I'd like to bring it up to council. And again,
we've split this into two sections. I'd like to treat the bulk of the consent
calendar first. Any, um, questions or, um, uh,
comments on the that, or may we have a motion on the all items, but
to consent calendar, I'll move all items except to
I'll second. We have a motion from quint and a second from shrives.
may we have a roll call? Vote barnacle. Aye. Cater
thompson? Yes. Di carly?
yes. Now? Yes. Quint? Yes. Shrives?
yes. Mcdonald? Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you.
and now to the matter of item two. Uh, item two, uh,
arises, uh, on, on our agenda as a standard
te tentative, uh, tentative agenda and a request to modify the
tentative agenda. And, um, so the issue
at hand is what the issue is
and not the advocacy of it, but what the clarity of what the issue is
and also, um, whether the timeliness of it warrants
assigning it to a, that's the deliberation we're having as a council at
this moment. Council member barnacle, you, um, asked for this to be pulled.
why don't you, uh, lead the conversation? Yeah. Um, appreciate
the concern about data centers. I certainly don't want one here. Um,
I checked with, uh, sonoma clean power, ceo, and he said
we have a very early report system with anyone, uh, looking at data centers.
um, also the staff, I asked the question here, there's been no
reported action, uh, or interest in data centers in sonoma county that he's aware
of, um, and that our staff's aware of in the city of petaluma. Um, still,
uh, in the, it says though there is not a permissible use
within the city's implementing zoning ordinance. There are loopholes that leave
the city vulnerable. And my question to the two council members who put this on is what
are the loopholes that leave us vulnerable?
and would either of the advocates, uh, like
to address that? Council member di carly,
thank you. And I appreciate everybody coming to speak on this. Councilman schibs and I brought it
forward because we do believe it's a very serious issue and there's a lot of concern nationwide
and in our state about this, and a lot of concern based around, you know, things everybody
mentioned. But, uh, you know, certainly water and energy consumption.
um, the amount of land it can take, you know, what that would do, what that would do to us here.
there's also health concerns, um, and, and a whole lot of unknowns about them.
and so, um, you know, we, we just saw over
the hill, there was one proposed in calistoga that's really not that far away.
and, you know, that's arguably, um, a very similar town
in some ways too. You know, you wouldn't expect one to pop up there, but there it was.
and so, you know, in, in initial discussions, uh, with staff, you
know, we talked about doing an ieo update and they've agreed that they want
to do that and put that in there. And I think that's wonderful, you know, but that
does still leave us vulnerable for however long that takes. And best case
scenario, we'd be looking at four months of where we're at now until
that's implemented. And, you know, given how long ieo updates,
how long it's taken to get here, you know, we're, we're way behind on those
four months is the best case scenario. So that could take even longer.
and, um, you know, that said, that's, that's why I think we
should be looking at a moratorium. And the value of a moratorium here
is it actually gives us 12 months to, to really be thorough
to think about it, consider all the different things, because data centers
is a very broad term. And, um, you know, and there's
been a lot of concern about, you know, staff time prioritizing things.
and when you, when we give 12 months to staff to
determine this, to help ban it, you know, that's gonna give them
a lot of time to fit it in with everything else. And then we won't have to worry in the meantime about
anything coming in. So I think the moratorium is a value valuable tool
in that sense. Now, um, you know, what
I'd really like to have on this is, is also a public discussion.
and I feel the public needs to hear our stance on this. It's a great opportunity for
us to declare our values and say that we don't want this here if that's how the entire council feels.
that's how john and I feel. And, um, you know, it, it provides
transparency. It, it, uh, you know, helps with public trust.
um, you know, and we should be discussing things like, like ndas with staff. If,
if somebody comes in and wants to actually discuss something like this, because I think that's an important
thing to have because if we just do an icl update, we're not talking about things
like ndas. And so, um, you know, if, if this prevents
even one data center from being built, I feel it's a very valuable use
of our staff's time and resources. I, I think you were being asked
if you could identify the loopholes that you were referencing.
yeah. I mean, some of them were addressed in the first public comment, so all a developer
has to do is come to town, request a variance, request, new zoning,
and, and they're able to start that process. They go through cqa, they go through all the hoops
and, you know, and, and, and they're, they're rolling.
you know, and one of the things I was assured of when I first started this discussion
is we would never allow a data center to be built here, but I'll let councilman
trips talk about it. But we do have some small ones, and maybe those are okay.
maybe they're not, I don't know. We're gonna have to define it and figure it out. But,
you know, we already have them built and have been assured that they never would be.
so the biggest loophole is somebody coming in and,
you know, it's, I mean, nobody ever thought there would be a six story hotel right
in the center of downtown, yet there were loopholes found and staff
went with it. Councilor barnicle.
okay. I, um, I interested to hear what council member schibs
has found.
okay. The, um, let's get back to the original question, which is, uh, why
even think about a discussion about a moratorium and about timing?
and I think it's the right time to at least have a discussion, whether we go
with it, this or that, or how we define it, or what we ask staff to do. I think at the
right time to do it, uh, to at least have a discussion on this thing, on
this issue. Um, uh, 'cause there is these things happening. So here's, I'm
gonna give you a list of, of what brought me to this conclusion of
the things that are happening in our state and even locally. Um,
so data centers are being supported, uh, by, of course the tech industry and the ai
companies and the global folks working out there. Um, but it's also being supported,
uh, specifically by gavin newsom, our mayor. Our governor is fully supporting him,
and he has the full supporter of the ag department, which is now pushing him
and, and actually seeking out fairgrounds all over the state to, to put these on.
recently, calistoga had a, had a proposal put down for their
fairgrounds, uh, which also included, uh, a heliport for,
um, uh, drones that are transport of people, transporting drones.
so it wouldn't be a standalone thing. So if, if there's laws against standalones
that can be bypassed. There's also, um, one in morgan
hill that was proposed. It's been denied temporarily on a
moratorium. Um, so it's happening there. The largest,
there's a proposal right now in santa clara county to, for the largest
ai data center in the world is being proposed at santa clara,
uh, uh, county right now. And it was probably gonna go through 'cause of the current, uh,
'cause that's where the tech industry is. Another factor we are, uh, are
have been called telecom valley. So we're not silicon valley,
we are telecom valley where we had a fc and we were the leaders of telecom.
we still have all that expertise still here, and there's still a lot of 'em are still working
here. And, um, and because of that, what people don't,
may not realize, we have two data centers here in town already. They're already here.
uh, one is a data center. It's small, it's a pilot study. We have a company
in town that's actually producing special optic tools, optical
cable tools to connecting these servers. And they have a, a testing room. I've seen it,
um, actually a really nice company, uh, local, almost all local
employees, uh, from from the telecom valley. They're working on it. And they're producing
these special little, little things about the size of your thumb, uh, for
data centers from all over the world for tens of millions of dollars right now.
so we actually may be getting a one, one, uh, cent per sale sales tax from, from this
company right now. And they're operating right here in town. A second company,
which people I wasn't even aware of, um, is called, um, it's called
x two n sat. They have a small data center. It's using 1.2,
uh, um, megawatts of power right now. And it
actually serves the satellite community actually is hooked up with satellite
dishes on the roof. And they're actually hooked in right now. And it's a, um, they've
got high tech, um, uh, cooling potential
on there to keep 'em cooled down right now. Not as much water. They're actually using,
um, uh, electricity cooling systems rather than water cooling systems from what I'm
reading here, uh, for my notes. So these are things that are happening right
now. Um, right now in the us there's 1,500 to
3000 data centers be in various stages of, of
construction or proposal in california. Right now, there
are 32 new data centers being planned right now in
california with 2,270 megawatts of additional power.
and where's this power coming from? Um, I thought, oh, they'll do it with solar
and, um, and the light and, and uh, uh, battery backups and
turns out, oh, um, no, they're gonna be using natural gas and even
small nuclear power plants is what's actually being used worldwide right now. So it's
all fossil fuels. So that was a concern. What are they targeting?
not necessarily cities anymore. 'cause there's a lot of cities already. There's four here
in california nearby that are already saying, let's look at it.
so it's already happening here. And in around, uh, california is
actually leadings, there's some legislation right now in california legislature
that's pushing this forward a little bit slowly, but there's two bills right
now on this. Uh, in california there is a,
um, oh, by the way, and even the folks that are, um, what I did, I
did, I used ai to actually do this. I'm using ai almost every day now to do something.
um, and what some of the letters we got in anti a ai saying no data centers,
it was obviously they were produced by ai. So we're using it. Um, and
so it, it, it is gonna be, it's coming, it's gonna be worldwide, it's happening.
um, and there's even more in other countries than even here in the us now, um, being proposed
and done. Um, they use consumption of water. Uh, so
it's the size of facility that matters for large ones. They can
run up to one to 5 million gallons of water a day. Um,
and they're using a huge amount of energy. Uh, we're talking about, uh, uh, on grid.
now they can promise to produce more energy than they use and actually give energy to
the grid, but it's all gonna be fossil fuels or nuclear right now. So these
are the concerns that are happening, uh, right now. And given that we've
already had two proposals here in the bay area, calistoga, and, um,
and are we a sonoma county? A possible target? So yes, sonoma
county is a target. The farmland here is a target. Uh, they may even come through
as a possible offer down the road here at may. So right
now, there is no proposal for us locally in sonoma county. But,
um, in my perspective of looking at the near future, yes, would
they come here and what power do they have to push forward? Maybe not in pen, they
don't. The largest property you have here in town, I think is 18 acres. Small data
center could easily put on 18 acres. Not the big, so it a scale.
so we already have two, uh, in operation. It depends on the
size. What size do you wanna limit? If we say, oh, no big
ones, okay, well then they're gonna come in with a 10 acre one and and maybe
do that. Um, and it's gonna provide service. Does our hospital need a data center? Maybe that's
where it's gonna be. Um, so these small ancillary data centers
we may like to have here. We may want to have technology here. We may want to have telecom
valley again and have, have our, our folks here working
on this and produce ai centers. The small ones that are ancillary and beneficial
to us. We use locally for our local businesses, for our
local hospital, whatever. So that needs to be discussed, um, as
to what is it we want here because we already have it here. So where are we
gonna put the limits on and where, what are we gonna tell the county? Us the city
needs to tell the county, county, hey, hey, awareness, wake up. It may happen.
it may come this next year. Are you prepared? So I just want pre preparation
to happen anyway. That's my rationale as to why it needs to be at least discussed
and thought about and maybe planned ahead. We may not have
to have taken action right now. It may not have to put on a moratorium 'cause there's no proposals right
now. And looks like our staff said we have regulations in place to, to slow
it down, stop it, whatever. I just want to have better planning and to
move forward so that we're thinking ahead and, and have a future, uh, options
and actually push it up the scale as to what we want the the county to do. What do
we want the state to do? Let's have a voice in this matter. So that's why now I think it's
important to do it now, okay. Rather than later. Anyway, that's my discuss. Council member
barn. Does that answer the question you asked? No, it doesn't, but that's all right.
um, I don't doubt that a fallow vineyard is a, is is a target
and that the, the downturn in the wine industry makes our county a target for,
for data centers. Um, but I don't see prime
real estate in the heart of our, in, in our city being, um,
being a target for this. Um, and I don't see, um,
like some of the, the commenters talked about san jose. San jose
explicitly allows data centers in their commercial general combined industrial,
commercial, industrial park, light, industrial, heavy industrial transit employment
centers. All of them allowed explicitly. Petaluma doesn't even define
it. The closest we come is exactly what you described, which is a
business that does processing and, and equipment and things like that, having a
data center there to support their business. And with a co with
a council that says that we support business and we want to see economic development
to then take a business that's generating tens of millions of dollars for our city and
saying we don't want another one of those because of a small, uh, a small
data center in their facility. Um, I think that, uh,
we're, um, putting a moratorium on that is the wrong thing to
do. Addressing it in our zoning code where we're actually addressing policy and we're
talking about policy is, uh, the right way to approach something
like this. Um, the other thing is, is
there are, um, the idea that we can walk and chew gum,
absolutely we can, we do it every day. Um, the idea that we can
continuously add more things to our plate without compromising the
amount that we show up for our mobile home parks, because our city attorney is ultimately gonna
be involved in this, um, is, you know, like there's
only so much that we can load on our staff. And I don't think that
this is a risk to our city right now. What I do see every day
is people not being able to afford housing here. Like it's not lost
on me that people my age that are on this council or people on that are not
my age on, on this council, but have kids. All of them, if we're, if they're living in this city,
have been helped by their family members, and that's not, that's not the city that I
wanna work on, or that's not the city I want to govern. I want to try and address those problems.
those are real problems that I think we should be focused on. And this right here,
put it into the zoning code update, put it into the general plan update. We've got four planning
processes running right now, and we want to add in an emergency
moratorium for a problem that currently
doesn't exist. We have zero applications in the, in the works anywhere in the county.
and neither one of you could identify a loophole yet. You said there was loopholes.
I'm just like, what problem are we trying to solve other than like,
we need this. So I'm a, I'm a no on this because it's
a distraction. Okay. Uh, council member quint.
yeah, I, you know, I, I'll share, as I was hearing, uh, listening to
council member di carly and, um, and, and the,
the members of the audience speak, the first question that came to my mind was, I wanna understand
the loopholes. And, uh, so thank you council member barnacle for
answering that because if there are loopholes, I really wanna understand it. One
question that I have, and I don't know if this is for the city attorney or not, but in our,
in our izo, um, if something isn't
specifically identified as a permissible use,
how is that treated as an impermissible use?
and can you define that for the layperson? Sure. It means, it, it means effectively we
have a ban on that use unless, and until the council chooses to amend it
and lift it. Got it. So, um, how
would, like, just in terms of the discussion of loopholes, can you
give your point of view in terms of how
at risk we are from loopholes? Thank you. Um,
council member quinn, I'd be happy to do that. Um,
so we have looked at this issue because
there's no debate about the potential impacts of, of large data
centers and standalone data centers that members of the public has spoken about, council
members have spoken about. Um, we're seeing the literature about that. There's lots of discussion
among municipalities about that. But the issue is,
are we at risk of having, of the council having to approve a use because it's already permitted.
and the answer that we see when we review the code is no. Um, because
standalone data centers, large data centers are not a permitted use in our code like
they are in san jose as council member and other jurisdictions as council member barnacle has
pointed out. So, um, so we don't see the
risk. Um, I'd like to draw a comparison to the last time
staff were recommended and brought forward, um, moratoria
on a use in petaluma. And that was when, um, the council had
already indicated a desire to, um,
um, to, to prohibit future new
gas station uses in the city. Um, and
we recommended and brought forward to the council. And the council enacted
moratoria first the urgency one that can last 45 days, and
then the renewal that you have to start on immediately because the first one will last 45
days that can extend it a year. Um, I don't think we needed the third renewal
that could take it up to three years. Um, and that, and we recommended that
because it was a real risk because we knew there were, um,
developers that were in interested in, in proposing
gas station uses, and it was a permitted use in the city. And there was
land that was developable where it was a permitted use. So I would
contrast with that, with our, our current circumstance. And so if we,
given the council concerns, given the community concerns, given our
own awareness as staff of the potential negative impacts of large
data centers and standalone data centers, if we thought there was a wi risk, we'd
be already working on it. And so, and, and certainly,
um, you know, anticipating the council directing us if we weren't already working on
it. So the other thing I wanted to mention procedurally is that for
the city council, for the city to enact a moratorium
that's under section 6, 5 8 5 8 in the government code,
um, we need to make findings, urgency findings, that there's
a risk, um, with respect to a change in the land
use scheme, that the council wants to freeze
the status quo, um, because of that risk while it's considering,
um, legislative change. And, and so we have to have those urgency
findings about what the risk is, excuse me.
um, and, and it's like the risks are like the ones I described
that, that were real risks when, when the council was considering, and in fact ultimately did
adopt what was the first, um, ban on new gas stations in the united states.
so I, we, I
I I think we'd have a difficult time making those findings in this case. Um,
and the reason why is because we don't have a risk, because
we're protected by the fact that we have a defacto ban already against large
data centers and new data centers. 'cause they're not a permitted use. And what's
what's helpful for us about that is, um, let's
see, I was gonna look at the timing that staff provided regarding the,
um, updates that are, that are already scheduled.
so there's a planning commission session scheduled for august 11th,
um, that's a study session, uh, planning commission, public hearing
scheduled for september 8th and city council first reading october 5th
on zoning code updates. And that is a wonderful and a lovely time
for the whole community and the council to have this discussion. Um,
that I think is probably because it's not a permitted use now
is probably gonna have to, I anticipate ha it having a different focus,
more like the one council member barnacle just suggested. And that is
recognizing that large data centers, standalone data centers
are not a permitted use. What
policy does the council want to consider and potentially adopt and,
and, you know, and receive public comment about, and staff recommendations
about to ensure that uses like we have in place
now that don't present the, um, water usage, power usage,
other nuisance conditions, risks, um, um, to
the public, um, such as large and standalone data centers do so that
we can have that economic development, um,
in a way from businesses that's, that don't raise those threats. So,
so that's what I would say in answer to that
question if I missed anything. Oh, one, one other thing is, um, and this is quick.
so the loophole that the vice mayor
identified is always a risk. And that is,
right now the zoning code
does not permit large data centers, standalone data centers.
um, an applicant could come forward
and apply for a discretionary
decision by the council that would be subject to environmental review and discretionary deliberation
by the council to add that use as a permitted
use to make his zoning amendment. And if the council,
um, w in the course of the zoning amendments that are planned
that I just talked about, the scheduling of, um, were
to prohibit that use or
permit it in limited circumstances as an ancillary use, it could still,
in response to subsequent action or later, counsel could still change that.
so that it's not really a loophole. The possibility of, of discretionary
legislative change always exists, but it's only
based on a, the decision of a majority of the council. So I, I don't think
unless the council will be inclined to improve, approve such a thing, I don't think that's a real
risk. 'cause the council gets to control that. So that's, that, that concludes my,
my answer. If there are more questions, we'd be happy to address 'em. So,
so I'm satisfied from that, that our current, um,
situation is that we don't have a lot of, we don't have any loopholes.
and if anyone disagrees with that, I, I'd welcome your input
from my perspective, um, you know, I don't know if I could
act like the mayor for a moment. I'd like to see a show of hands from the council who
here is in favor of a standalone data center in petaluma
. Um, seeing no hands. Okay, so my point is
that from my perspective, none of us want it. And, um,
and so, so the question at hand is do we
act immediately to stop some threat
that doesn't exist right now?
or do we wait a couple of months, a few months and
address it in the zoning code? And so, so that's kind of the
question from my perspective. And when, you know,
if there is, um, if there, if there's things being thrown out, they give us
anxiety, like the data centers are coming in and they're gonna overrun our fairgrounds,
uh, like they are in calistoga. To me that feels a little bit,
um, like, you know, just trying to create fear and anxiety.
and what I would say to that is, and again, this is just, this is me
using ai, hopefully it's from a, a data center that's in iowa.
um, you know, I just asked the question, you know, what, what's going
on in calistoga? And the proposal was not a formal development
application, it was a conceptual presentation
made by a private company. Um, and I, you
know, it was, you know, appro, uh, the approximate use of five acres
on a 70 acre site. Um, it, it
was a presentation, it wasn't a formal proposal.
and what happened, uh, no application was ever filed,
no entitlement process began, no environmental review occurred
after the public backlash. Calistoga deputy city
manager stated that the city would not pursue this idea further.
and discussions with global stack ended. And, uh,
that fairgrounds is, hasn't been in use since 2012.
it's completely, uh, dilapidated
and overrun and or overgrown. And it, it, it doesn't,
um, from my perception, it doesn't represent what we're dealing with
here. And so I would suggest
that we, instead of creating a distraction for staff to
work on that, we let them address this in the code update
the zone update. Thank you, council member. Now. Um,
well thank you council member quint, because, um, two weeks ago I didn't
know what a data center was, and I had to go to ai to ask them what a
data center was, but bringing up the fairgrounds, one thing that makes
our fairgrounds different, and I wanna smash all rumors,
the other fairgrounds are mainly owned by the state of california.
so our governor could, you know, suggest a data center.
petaluma owns its fairgrounds, we have control
of it, and no data center's gonna go there.
and please spread that rumor. The other thing is,
I applaud the two council members who brought this forward because
it's the protocol to, if a council member wants to
have a discussion about something, you can't talk to more than two council
members, or it's a brown act violation. So you have to put it
on an agenda request through these channels.
and it comes to the consent calendar. I welcome this discussion,
but everything our city attorney said in, I don't know, maybe
two, three minutes, I would like to read two or three times. So this
is the reason we put it on an agenda so that the city attorney
can write all those words down and we can read it and read it and read
it until we understand legalese. So I really want our city
to be proactive. But, um, 20 years ago,
and the city attorney can remind me when we had a request for a
ban on plastic bags, and I don't remember if it was ordinance
or a ban, but it took, what, 20 years to have that
ban in place. And they first came to the cities and there were
some legal issues. So, um, we wanna be proactive
and I suggest that our climate committee
brings something to us as well, because I would like to hear from them.
that's what they're for. And I believe mr. Rebs, you are the
liaison to that climate committee, and I don't know if they've ever talked
about it. Um, and then we need to have the staff report
and our vulnerability and the legal details,
and then we have a very robust public discussion.
and do we, what do we add to the general plan council member
barnacles is right in october, we're gonna be hearing about zoning. I'm looking
forward to that discussion and what we
can do and put in place for our next 20 years general plan.
so, um, I look forward to that. And I thank everybody who came and
spoke today. I thank everybody who texted me, phoned me,
emailed me, and caught me on the streets or in social media
and had a conversation. But please know that none of us are in favor
of a data center in petaluma. Thank you. Council member
cater thompson.
uh, thank you. Yeah, I am I'm actually looking forward to, um, the zoning code. We've
been waiting for a long time, and that's right around the corner. And I hope everybody that spoke
tonight actually participates in that and sends information in. And
I just wanna bring up, um, you know, just
another comment. There is a council member that continues, continually
brings up that we need an amazon distribution center in, in petaluma,
one of the locations was close to the deer creek shopping center.
and, you know, when we're doing zoning codes, I wanna make sure that that is also
included. That we do not have, excuse, excuse me, we're staying focused on,
on, uh, whether to agendize. I, I understand that, but we're talking about, we're
talking about zoning and I understand what we're talking about. But they do
cross and they are both impactful. And so I think this should be done during
the zoning, which is right around the corner. But people need to participate.
'cause it, this is, data centers are not something we want.
we understand, um, the ne negatives about those, the water,
the electricity, the sound that's well known, and that's
not what we want in our town. And just to reiterate, that's why we took the
fairgrounds back. So we had control. There are 54,
um, daas in the county, in the state,
and we are not one of those. And I applaud the council for pulling
out and taking back our fairgrounds for these very reasons. So we have
total control of what happens in our community. Thank you.
uh, thank you. Council member de carley something. Yeah, no, I'd like to respond
to a lot of that since it's, I, I, I don't think we wanna respond. I think we, we wanna say whether
we have, um, this to be agendized in the next meeting. This is not the discussion
of ai or data center. This is the discussion of izing
it. So you have an opinion and you should express your opinion on why
it's an imperative to you. Yes, I understand my role.
so, um, basically it's called being proactive and getting out front of something.
you know, I feel like, uh, a lot of times we, we aren't, and then,
you know, there's lawsuits, there's a lot more staff time that goes into something. There's more council
meetings that are required and time. It's, it's, uh, this is, this is an
opportunity to be proactive here. I mean, it's, it's really that simple and it's a
very real issue. And I don't, I don't think that anybody pretending it isn't.
um, and then saying that they don't want data centers is, that doesn't make sense
either. So, you know, a concern that
john and I looked at and what does the moratorium look like was, you
know, we, this would be part of the discussion. We determine,
you know, what, what supporting infrastructure is to an existing business and
determine how many square feet that is. So we could be looking at something like, you
know, it's a moratorium, but under a thousand square feet it's allowed, you know, that's an
example of it. And then that way you're not prohibiting anything that should be allowed
is gonna contribute to our economy and to the betterment of our city. That's
just one way. But we can't determine that without a discussion. And
so I will make sure this is working because, um, councilman
barnacle, you know, you said, I didn't describe a loophole, but I did thank
you city attorney danley, for describing it in detail.
but, um, it's, it's as simple as the zoning text amendment. And you just
had a former, um, planning commissioner with four years of experience
watching this happen over and over and over again, and just, and
you just admitted it was possible. You know, it's, maybe it's harder, maybe
it's not as easy of a path, but it is possible through a zoning text amendment.
and, you know, I, again, I want to go back to wasting staff's time on
this. 'cause that was kind of one of your points is that it's gonna waste a lot of staff's time. But how did
you feel about staff's time during the bathtubs? You know, the community didn't
walk down. I think we're, we're varying off of, uh, the topic. I, no, I right back on. No, I can finish
it. So, you know, I think we need to listen to what the public
wants here. I think we need a standalone discussion on this. Not to
just loop it in with the izo updates, though I do appreciate that because
that is what I ultimately want to see. But this deserves its own discussion
and the public wants this conversation. And that's what I'm trying to get here. Agendized
here, you know, and I didn't find, I do find it strange that there's so much
pushback on this because this should really be a nonpartisan issue amongst
my colleagues and I thank you.
um, and for my part, um, this is just an discussion of whether
this should be on tonight's agenda in a minute I'll
explain what the voting means when we get to that such and such part.
um, but I do think the conversation about, um, loopholes
is, uh, a question of what one's perception is. Um, certainly,
um, what looks like process in public process to
most of us often feels like a loophole. I mean,
a loophole means, did it, it could get done. Well, if it gets done by a
public process, not a trick, then it's not a loophole.
it's part of the public process. Now, moratorium is a process,
and what we find is we need to have a finding for it. We don't have the basis for
that. Um, so we don't, we don't have something we can do
in terms of a moratorium. There's no, the urgency,
qualification's not there. So it doesn't have public process.
if we did have a moratorium on something, um, the loophole
would be public process. The things that we're worried about getting public input on and
participation on are all part of public process. Uh,
I concur that, um, that we do not want, uh, that would not
be a beneficial use for any lands within the city to, uh, have
data center here that does fly in the face of
large economic interest, ai data center, big
powerful interest. So I am, um, I'm interested in, in
getting this tightly in to our izo. We have the opportunity
for a workshop in the next month and a half in, in the august, september window that
the planning commission is already scheduled for. We've said that this needs to be a
priority. Staff has heard that this is an issue that should be in the front end of the
izo conversations. So I think that that is, uh, the
adequate and correct place. Uh, we talked about staff
utilization of staff time. I would rather they did it in the correct process
to really put the right nails into it for the workshop they already intend, rather
than divert the work planning away from the ice out issues away
from the mobile home park issues, away from the other priorities that we have.
it's, I wish the city to achieve more,
more and better. And I think that works by having it done efficiently.
so, um, with everybody having weighed in, um,
uh, we can, we have a
situation here where the, uh, tenant agenda is listed. It does
not list the added item of a discussion or of an action,
um, for, um, as recommended or requested
by the participants there, uh, and the advocates. So
due to council rules, if those are, uh, if, if a request
is made by two council members, it gets put up to this level.
so the, the motion that's on the floor right now is
do we have the dis the discussion added to? So
if we, if we make that motion, then the yes
position is we're adding that as an agenda item. And
if we vote no, we're saying we don't want any of that agenda proof, make a new
motion . And then the alternate is if the motion made is
approve it as is without the request, then the
yes is approve it without the change.
so do we have a motion from the floor? Council member? Barnacle?
go ahead. Council member, um, um, sch, um,
yeah, I'll, I'll given the discussion and what we've heard, um,
I'd like to amend the motion if I may. Um, I'd like
to, instead of a calling for an immediate moratorium, which is
what we would like to have, what we've originally suggested, given what staff has
said and what you have just said about maybe postponing to actually putting it into a
workshop or, or future to discuss. Because the loopholes we have too,
um, already in town, it just, it's a size. Are they small,
medium or large? Small. We already have, what's the motion? So the amendment would be,
let's have a discussion, um, later on this year and just
say, we would like to have that in order to, um, um, have
a, as you said, maybe include it in a planning workshop and have that as a topic.
um, and, and I would then suggest, okay, let's take it off the actual moratorium
question. I think where you're going with this one, is it, um, to not add
the action to tonight, the tentative agenda tonight, but I think the part you're
asking for is a promise of this conversation happening
and happening before the end of year is more direction to staff. Yes.
and so that's not part of a motion, but I think staff's pretty
well aware what our intention calendar as is. Sorry. So your
proposal is approves consent calendar as is on the consent
calendar, the tenant of agenda as is, right? Uh,
yes. With that understanding. With that understanding, thank you. We have a second.
second. Can you clarify what that means? We are
approving, or, or the motion is to approve the tentative agenda
as written without the request for change.
and we have a motion by schibs, second by barnacle. One, one
question. So I do see merit in, in addressing this through the zoning code update.
um, can we direct staff to, to the ex to the extent
possible, address it in the zoning code update, which is august, september, october,
we'll have two planning commission hearings, and then it'll come to the council. Is that
possible? Yes. And staff are already preparing for that. Alright. But
then it'll definitely be before the end of the year, so yes,
that would be satisfying me. Thank you. Thank you.
um, council member di carly, I don't dunno if
I can perhaps readdress the motion, but, um, I mean the motion
was, what we were looking for was on the august 3rd meeting to have
this discussion, discuss the moratorium and,
you know, everything that's in the memorandum that was submitted on the 13th.
the, the, the, the request. The request was to, um,
like you say, that was the request. And that's the request is not part of the motion that's
on the floor. It's to approve without the request
motioned. And second.
so, uh, may we have a roll call vote on that. Barnacle
aye. Cater thompson.
oops. You're muted.
yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Uh, do carly?
no, I support the original now. Yes.
quint, yes. Rebs
reluctant, but yes. Mcdonald. Yes. And the motion does carry
with, uh, one no vote. Thank you very much. That
moves us to public hearings matter for consideration. We have a resolution
authorizing the city manager to accept the spirit of petaluma beacon as a
gift from the rotary club, from the petaluma rotary club
to the city public art collection and execute related donation, transfer,
installation, maintenance, and moral rights documents.
to help us through this, we have melissa abercrombie, our public art specialist, and
very glad to have you too. Thank you. Good evening,
mayor, vice mayor, council members, city manager and staff,
and the public before you. Tonight is this proposed spirit of petaluma
beacon, a public art gift from the petaluma rotary club,
sorry, um, for installation of the petaluma boulevard south
at crystal lane. Roundabout. Following nearly a year of design,
refinement and technical review, the public art committee at its may 28th
meeting unanimously recommended that city council accept the work as a gift.
this is a picture of the current conditions of the petaluma, uh, boulevard
south roundabout. It is one of the city's primary gateways and has long been
identified in the public art master plan as an appropriate and prioritized
location for public art. Rotary's proposal transforms the site
into a welcoming civic gateway, um, while
maintaining access to the roundabouts existing utilities and infrastructure.
the spirit of petaluma beacon builds on rotary's lawn history of investing
in community projects throughout petaluma, from kennelworth, walnut mcdowell,
and laer parks to the mid to the miracle league. The beacon
continues that tradition through a privately funded campaign supporting the artwork's design,
fabrication, installation, and additional maintenance plan of five
years. Rotary to date has raised approximately $145,000
from private donations towards its $150,000 fundraising goal.
the vision for the spirit of petaluma beacon extends beyond a sculpture. It integrates public
art, gateway, signage, landscape, and lighting into
a unified welcome at petaluma southern entrance. Tonight we are discussing the
artwork. The design was developed collaboratively by artist
david best local engineers, fabricators, and city staff
to create a distinctive landmark that responds to site constraints while ensuring
visibility, public safety, utility access, and long-term d
um, long-term durability. The artwork,
the approximately 24 foot tall sculpture features a slender steel
supporting an illuminated circular petaluma bracelet visible
from multiple approaches. Its open perforated design provides visual
transparency, prevents water collection, and creates a distinctive landmark
by day and a subtle beacon by night.
the site has many constraints, although it appears open. The roundabout contains
irrigation, drainage, electrical facilities, utility access, and
the sonoma county aqueduct input from the community
development department, public works utilities, sonoma county water, and
the police department shape the artworks location, footprint, and height to protect
infrastructure while maintaining roadway safety.
the project brings together internationally recognized artists, david best and local
fabricator royce van bever of van beba brothers steel. You may
recognize them as a collaborative pair on the petaluma, uh, river arch on
the lynch creek trail. So if you're looking towards a feature within our
community that exists, that shows these types of materials and uses, you can point
to there, which was installed in 2022, and to this day, has only
required, um, periodic graffiti removal.
the sculpture will be fabricated locally using a-s-t-m-a 5 8 8
weathering steel, commonly known as corten. This will
be a half inch to three eighth inch in, in, um,
in, uh, thickness. Also, we will be using structural steel and
engineered concrete foundations designed to current california boating building codes.
the corin steel develops a stable protective patina that resists corrosion.
this is because it has a higher amount of copper, chromium,
phosphorus, and nickel. These, all these annoying elements form
a protective layer that prevents extensive corrosion to the sculpture,
making it exceptionally durable and low maintenance. It's designed as a permanent
public artwork with an anticipated lifespan of up to 75 years, if not
more. The beacon will require only routine inspections and occasional
cleaning based on its construction materials.
the spirit of petaluma beacon underwent the city's established review process through the
public art committee. Staff evaluated the proposal using the public art master
plan, particularly the policy on gifts and loans and
the implementing zoning ordinance. Chapter 18 on may 28th
was the unanimous decision to move the item forward as proposed to the city's
council for acceptance.
the public art master plan specifically identifies gateways and roadways, so it
makes it really easy for us to look based on the informed decisions
that were created in policy.
we wanted to make sure that this created a memorable sense of arrival. That was why so
much staff weighed in on the front end to make sure the design really reflected what was
required of the site. In the end, the site had 10
foot by 10 foot section available out of a 90 foot diameter.
the, the petaluma rotary chose in their design to use a much smaller section
and to make it in scale with the site, they reflected the diameter of the,
or the circumference of the, the roundabout. And that's what you see
in that that bracelet shape is them using best use and best
practices to create a design that that site would allow.
the proposal fulfills the public art master plan's vision for the gateway
by creating a permanent, durable landmark that enhances community identity while
respecting the needs of the site. Staff
finds the spirit of petaluma beacon is consistent with section 18.120
of the implementing zoning ordinance. Rotary will fund the first five
years of maintenance, which will include lighting as needed. That would be the replacement
of the bulbs, periodic inspections, so that the, the
project is always being reviewed to make sure it hits the standards of the design that they
had hired van be and david best to create. And
they will, they will, um, deal with graffiti and do the abatement
as needed for the project.
the acceptance rotary will fund the, these first five years and acceptance remains
conditioned on final engineering, permitting, utility traffic, safety
insurance, maintenance and legal approvals staff and the public art committee.
therefore, recommend the city council accept the spirit of petaluma petaluma beacon
as a gift to the city. Thank you.
thank you. We're set, right? We're
set. Okay, thank you. Uh, any questions from council? Council member schibs?
uh, thank you. I did, uh, submit a whole bunch of questions I think earlier, uh,
which you did answer online. Um, so it's all available there for everyone to go
take a look at. Um, so there is a couple concerns out there. I just
want to make sure everything gets addressed. I think you did address that. Uh, um, you're
actually gonna look at the water flows, uh, so that there is actually water capture rather
than raw water runoff off that site, uh, because I'm looking at a lot of
hardscape there, uh, rather than ground soil to for penetration. So
that, that, that, that you're gonna be working on that. Um, and then,
um, the other area thing I was looking at is, uh, for the birds,
um, and wildlife, um, there is a, a couple concerns there. If,
if birds may start inhabiting it like they have here in town, a couple buildings
here in town, whether or not there's, um, any, um,
knowledge already that these types of structures are going to either,
um, have lots of nesting in it or not, and if the birds will be able to pass
through it or not. Um, so is there anything that we know already
on these structures and how we're gonna work with, with, uh, with the bird life? Yes. Um,
david best had at one point created a sculpture that had had a bird enter it
in sacramento and there were concerns, and that was information that's informed
us with river arch and with this project. So when you see the scale
model of it, it might show a cap when you can see it at copper fields or
petaluma market. And that was really designed so that you could see the lighting in
these, um, marquettes that are available throughout the community. In the actual design, there
will be some kind of netting or, um, uh, a perforated
covering so that you won't, it won't become a basketball hoop, a nesting ground, or a debris
catcher for any kind of leaves. Um, it'll really, it's really designed to be
something that's perforated, breathable, but not in any way would trap insects,
large insects or animals or birds. Okay. Uh, just making
sure for, uh, that the wildlife gets protected on this. And then on the lighting, um,
I know we've, uh, I know a couple folks are working with the city on, um, it's
what's called, uh, uh, night sky project, uh, or dark
sky project, which case you're changing the light temperature. And, um,
and, and also the timing of the lights and intensity of the lights illuminations
for, um, uh, reducing interference with any wildlife that could be bats or anything
floating around in that area. So, um, will we have control on, on
that? Yes. All lighting will be approved after,
um, building department review. It will hit all standards for daylight,
um, settings and it would be internally illuminated.
so that's all going to be, um, part of their application process and
that will be applied to how that's reviewed. Good. So if there is some internal
lighting, that means there's probably a ladder on the inside of some sort that things could be
maintained if anything goes wrong on the inside? No, it's gonna be two foot by two
foot wide in the column from the base, and then it builds up. So there
would not be an a ladder inside of it. You would, you would have a ladder or something
in which you climb, you enter the top and change the
lighting. Okay. So there is, what you're saying is that there is an entry point somewhere
below the base that folks can get into and then yeah, there will be an access point to replace
the l-e-d-l-e-d lighting and it would be compliant with, with
all of our standards. Okay. So, um, the actual, what
it looks like to me that there is some symbolism that, that's implied here that, that I
see, and maybe other folks, I thought one person wrote in that they saw something also, but it could
be, um, a water tower type. 'cause I've seen water towers of similar
shape. Uh, also the, even the eiffel tower in france has a, a,
a pillar and it expands out for a restaurant on top. But also our, our
liberty statue, our statue of liberty has a torch that has a
very similar shape, and the only difference is it has little flames on top. So
is it possible that maybe if, um, I know and in fake fireplaces
there's you, it looks like flames, but it's not just by lighting and a few types of, of,
of gimmickry be able to create a flame type looking thing. Is there possibilities
that we could add, enhance it, um, by, by on like 4th of july
and other special dates to be able to enhance it with some sort of,
um, uh, lighting effects? I imagine there's
probably a way to do that, but that's not what I've prepared for the evening. Um,
it, it's probably true of almost all of our art pieces that they could be augmented with
lighting in some way, but, um, for this particular piece, it would
have a co a mesh covering of some kind. And I, I imagine an
led light, like there are flickering ones that look like fire, so maybe we could replace
it with something like that. But I'm really, um, that would be up for,
for discussion at a later date. As of right now, I, I, I would, I
would suggest that we review the project as is okay. Because as the, um,
uh, because I saw recently, uh, being my wife's from connect in new york, looking at the ge
sign that just got put up there and, and with the drones that are out there and leds
have various lighting of displays that this structure is
large enough, fancy enough that we could actually create, um, a
lighting display that is more artistic around it, not just flashing,
not just a solid white light. So I'm gonna suggest, so is I'm just asking if that's
possible to be included at this point in time. Um, I wouldn't imagine we'd include
it as part of this conversation, but it is something that could be considered as a, at a later
date if there's funding or will to support it. Okay. Those
are my questions. Thank you. Any other questions?
and, uh, seeing none, let's go to public comment on the item.
we did receive 15 public comments ahead of the meeting, and those are posted online
and we have
currently 15 people attending the zoom meeting. So at this time,
I'll start a 32nd clock. Just bear with me while I get my clock going.
okay. Now we'll start at 32nd clock. During these 30 seconds, members of
the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to the clerk's desk. Members of
the public attending online should raise their virtual hand, and those attending via
phone should press star nine to raise their hand. Speakers requests
received after this 30 seconds may not be accommodated.
so we have two, uh, speaker cards here tonight, and we also have, um,
one online. And so I'd like to invite up, uh, lena furlong to
be followed by sue simmons.
hi. Hi. Thanks for having, thanks for allowing me to speak on this.
I wanted to, um, represent the rotary club of petaluma on this
project here as, um, I am a petaluma resident, and
I, um, was able to buy a home here by the skin of my teeth
and work in really super long hours, uh, in the field of landscape
construction and contracting, right as a, as a mom, uh, with a
young boy and no familial support at that time. And now
I've lived here for 13 years and, um, I am part of this
wonderful group, uh, called, uh, the petaluma rotary club. And in
my experience in the last few years of being in this club, what I've learned is that we have
a really rich history being 104 years old this year of
going around the city and, um, focusing on the seven areas
of focus, which are, uh, rotary sort of foundation, which include, uh,
peace building, environmental impact, education, um,
um, economic development, maternal and children health
eradicating diseases, and clean water and sanitation.
and through that information, what I noticed is that these
group of people get together and they have a lot of fun making friends in the community
with something to do, you know, giving themselves sort of, um, fellowship, but going
around and improving on our wonderful community here. And every single
person in rotary is a volunteer, and virtually every dollar that comes
into our club is dispersed. And that is the sort of main focus
of the rotary club of petaluma. So when our a hundred
third president, sherry ranney sat down with me at lunch and, uh, talked to me about
what she wanted to do for her legacy project, which is being passed on through
the next couple years through the next few presidents, and she focused
on the south entrance to town, uh, naming, you know, citing
the c-n-e-c-n-n, um, news, uh, naming
our town the sixth best place to visit in the country. And she was like, look at
this mess. You know, we've gotta do this for the city of petaluma and for all of us who
have worked, you know, we're raising our kids here, we're we're, um, you know, arguing
with each other and being each other's friends and we're in community and we're raising this town
together. That's what this project is about. And, and it is the true spirit of petaluma
as we come together, um, in community. And working with
the city has been amazing on this project so far and, um, so
many north stars. And, um, we're really looking forward to,
uh, yay vote tonight and to be able to, um, you know, bring
this, this piece forward. And in the spirit of 81-year-old david best,
who's a petaluma resident, and royce van bber, who is 120 5-year-old
business this year, what we also have a number of supporters that are,
um, not only centennial businesses from this town, but you know, younger businesses
or businesses that are 80 plus years old. And what a cool testament to
the city of petaluma and what our community is, uh, to be, be able
to bring this forth for our posterity and, um, not just a civic
landmark. But anyway, thank you. Cheers. Thank you sue simmons.
simons. Simons,
good evening everyone. Thank you so much for all your time and energy that you put towards
the city. And I feel pretty blessed to have joined the rotary with this
group of people. And the brainstorming and the energy
and the love that has went into this project really speaks to the spirit
of petaluma. I've been, I'm third generation, most, you know me, I've been driving
in and out, probably walking in and out and rode my bicycle in and out
of that entrance. That's everything that's ever been.
um, and I think all the entrances of pma, um, means something. And
there's quite a bit of love and energy put into this project. And I think
cleaning it up, making it something special, but I think the spirit
is really, the word for it is taken a lot of,
a lot of our rotarians bring a lot of things to the package, whether
it's engineering or landscaping, and they have certainly tried to
cover and think of everything that you all needed and everything
that's been stated for a project, including all the underground. So,
um, it's my extreme pleasure as a person that lives here in
peta, has raised my family to have this happen. And I'm only hoping
that it continues on throughout the city and throughout
that entrance, because it really is just the beginning. Um, so
I'm very pleased that you're gonna take a vote on it. Thank you very much.
thank you very much. And, uh, now to our zoom participant.
yes. Uh, chris rainey, please
unmute yourself and speak. Thank you
very much. Uh, thank you very much to the council for your time. Again, my name
is chris ranney. I'm a resident of petaluma since 1991 and live
in the westridge area. Uh, my wife, uh, and I are both speaking tonight on behalf of the
spirit of p of beacon project. We wish we, we could be here, but we're on vacation.
um, and as I said, this is an art piece that's been gonna be installed at the peta
boulevard south crystal lane. Obviously, we're also both members of the rotary
club of petaluma. Um, one of the things that I wanna emphasize here
is how petaluma truly petaluma centric. This is, um, again,
it's being designed by david best. It's gonna be built by van, be steel,
and you've just spoken to, uh, lena. And lena is going to be our project manager,
uh, and installation general contractor. Um, melissa has also laid out
a lot of the, um, detailed information that we've been working on with the city for
the past year in terms of its, uh, guidelines. Uh, I also wanna thank very much
the city for their guidance and support and encouragement all through along this,
this piece. Um, also very, very excited to say that we've
raised over 95% of the funds. Uh, we have 150,000
goal, we're 145. Uh, we will exceed our fundraising goal
and we're very excited to be able to move forward with that. Um, this
is a, again, like I mentioned, a very truly pama centric project and we recommend that
the council vote in favor for the city manager to accept the spirit of petaluma beacon
as a gift from the rotary club of petaluma to the city of petaluma. Thank you for your time,
and thank you very much. Thank you for calling in from vacation. And, uh, with
that we are, uh, closed on public comment
and um, so I'd like to bring it back to the dais for, uh, any, any
comment, um, before we move the item. Um,
council member quint? Yeah, sure.
I, I just wanna say I think the project is incredible
and I wanna express my sincere, you know, appreciation
to the rotary club for bringing this to life and
my appreciation to the city, uh, for working with the rotary club
and, uh, I can't wait to see it. Thank you. Thank you. Council
member sch ribs? Um, yes, uh, very strongly in favor. I just wanna double
check on the height. Is there any problem with the height in our zoning
or anything? Because it is a pretty tall structure. You, are you
addressing staff? Yeah,
the, the elevation conforms with the site and we felt like it was really
adequate in that it is not in the view shed for traffic. So it's
elevated far above. The height was also chosen specifically, so it would be visible
from the 1 0 1, so when people are passing through, they might see it at night as a beacon,
just showcasing what our community stands for in our creative vibes.
good. And did we, uh, check, check any, um, uh, wind resistance,
uh, factor there so that the, uh, it's strong enough to withstand yes, there
are structural, there are structural calculations included, and they, they will also
be submitted when they, um, pull their permits. Okay, good. I just thought I'd just double
check on those two features there. Otherwise, I'm very supportive of this project. Thank you,
councilor barnacle. Yeah, this is, uh, not every night you
get a really good news project. So thank you to the rotary club, to president rainey,
um, david best royce, van bber, petaluma rotary, and, and so
landscapes for being the project manager on this. Um, we have so many great community members
in this town that do great things, and this is just another shining example, so I'm
happy to support it. And, um, thank you council
member. Now, um, thank you to the rotary club. Thank you members for being
here. Thank you to david best and royce van bber.
um, my love for partnerships
with the city and nonprofits goes way back.
little do people know that the painting of the coca-cola sign
for years, that funds came from our heritage home's
annual home tours that we had in the christmas parlor tours,
and I'm not sure who funds it now. And then there was also,
uh, the bashaw bridge lights were paid for by river festival
funds that were collected during the river festival years. So
I am wondering, and I'm gonna throw it out there to staff and the public
and rotary, after five years, there
is no funding. But could we put together something that the public could
add to it? Um, right now, the beautify petaluma nonprofit
partnership with the city downtown hanging baskets in the solar lights
is all funded by, uh, the public. Public
is sending in money. So I didn't know if the rotary thought, you know, in
six years, could we have like a little fund already established
so we could put money into it and it would, you know, when people
pass away, they like to, you know, give to the city that they lived
in. So I support this project in any other partnerships, and I
love public art. If you go up and down 1 0 1 north, you
can see lots of public art, and this will really stand out for our community. Thank
you. Thank you. Uh, council member cater thompson.
uh, yeah, thank you. I just think this is fantastic because that area,
this is the gateway into our city, one of the gateways, and this is
gonna be, um, you know, a great piece of art. I wanna thank dave the best
and royce van be for their collaboration. Um, and I wanna
thank the rotary for their collaboration with the, the city of petaluma. And
I think this is a great project, and the new president
I, I think is fantastic. And with that, I'd love to move
this. Thank you very much, council, uh, member di carly.
I just wanna say I appreciate all the rotarians coming in, the effort they put in royce
and david, and, um, that's about all I have to say about it. Thank you. Thank you.
um, yeah, I appreciate the idea and bringing it here tonight. I appreciate the patience of
waiting to, to till your item gets called in the evening.
not sure that, uh, lighting with fire would be anything other than triggering
in sonoma county. So , um, um, but, uh,
could be the last, but, but I, I really appreciate that, uh, this is
our happy item for the evening. You know, there's a lot of tense goes on and you brought us something fun.
so thanks to all who are involved in thank you, melissa. And I think
with that, we have a motion from council member cater thompson. Do we
have a second? I'll second. A second from now. And a, uh,
roll call. Vote please. Barnacle. Aye. Cater thompson?
yes. Di carly? Yes. Yes.
now? Yes. Quint? Yes. Shrives?
yes. Mcdonald? Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Oh,
thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here and advocating
the issue. And that moves us to our, uh, next issue of
the evening,
which is,
uh, item 12, uh, resolution of approving the city council's response
to the 2025 2026 sonoma county
grand civil grand jury report entitled animal service revisited
a city asleep at the wheel. And, uh, to help us with,
uh, this presentation, this item we have, assistant city manager brian cochran.
brian, it's yours. Okay, thank you.
good evening, mayor and city council members and members of the
community. This presentation tonight, uh,
summarizes the city of petaluma's formal response to the
20 25, 20 26 sonoma county civil grand jury report. Uh, as
the mayor just stated, we, uh, do have a resolution for
the council to formally approve the response and then transmit that
response over to the grand jury. The report, uh, this, this
new report is a follow up to the report that the civil grand
jury did last year, which looked at animal services
throughout sonoma county. And, uh, many of those recommendations
that they made a year ago we are working on and working
toward implementing. Purpose of tonight's presentation
is to review the grand jury findings and recommendations, explain
the city's responses, and highlight the actions that are already underway
to strengthen animal services in petaluma.
while the city does disagree with, uh, several of the
factual legal and policy conclusions that are contained in the report,
we recognize the importance of public accountability and continuous improvement,
and we acknowledge the grand jury's role within son county to contribute
to those objectives. Our goal tonight is to respond
to the grand jury's most recent report, but also, and importantly, chart a path
forward for petaluma's animal services program. Together with
the council and our service providers and our community, we want
high quality, humane, and responsive animal services that petaluma
can rely on. We're very fortunate to have a shelter here locally, which is a benefit
to the community, and we want to ensure that we can continue providing those
services into the future and a sustainable and accountable way.
so throughout the presentation tonight, we will discuss both areas where
we agree that improvements are warranted and where they're underway,
and where the city believes the report, uh, mischaracterized or
misunderstood the city's actions, responsibilities, or
legal authorities involved. Next slide, caitlin.
so first wanted to touch on some of the actions that have been happening,
uh, since the grand jury report from a year ago.
and some of these we mentioned in that prior report, or there have been updates, uh, to
the council and community over the last year on some of these activities. So
we did invest in some shelter capital improvements, uh, roofing,
hvac, fixing water leaks painting, and
a variety of other improvements to, uh, make sure the shelter could, uh,
properly handle the animals in its care. We retained a consultant
to assist nba, uh, sorry, north bay animal services, nbas
with compliance. And as we documented last year, they
declined to take us up on those consultant services or
participate with the consultant. We have worked on
strengthening oversight and planning, um, per council's discussion and request.
at your march 2nd meeting. We are in, we have hired
a firm and are in the process of conducting a fraud risk and compliance
review that's underway of the nbas financial records.
and additionally, as you know, at the march 2nd meeting, counsel directed termination
of the nbas contract, and that was effective march 31st
of this year. At that same time, we
transitioned to marin humane, uh, who stepped up as our interim
service provider operating our shelter, doing licensing and animal
patrol or animal control duties for the city of petaluma.
we also, around that same time, were developing and issued an rfp
for a longer term provider, uh, to take over from marin humane.
and we are currently in those discussions and we'll return to council for
approval of those agreements in the coming months. And then finally,
and we'll, we'll talk through this a few times tonight, uh, later in the presentation, but
the council has initiated, and the city is actively
participating in collaboration around a jpa joint powers agreement, or
a consortium or another regional service delivery model to
improve and, uh, standardize and stabilize services throughout the county.
next slide please.
so, just a few summary points to, to hit here at the top. The city remains
committed to providing humane, transparent, and accountable animal services.
we support continuous improvement, and we recognize and have been
working towards strengthening reporting records management and contract oversight.
we welcome constructive recommendations while respectfully
disagreeing with many of the, this current reports, factual
and legal conclusions, we, uh, we had
many significant improvements already underway at the time, uh, and
actually prior to the issuance of this latest, uh, civil grand jury
report. Uh, and one of the, the challenges that, uh, is
not really touched on much in this report, but really more, uh, in the
last report from a year ago, is that the challenges faced by animal services
are more regional in nature, and they require regional collaboration.
we can't fix this issue by, uh, by solutions that
are being born by one jurisdiction. I think it's
safe to say that fu our future and upcoming animal services contract
will serve as the primary mechanism for implementing operational improvements
and accountability measures. And we'll talk through some of those tonight. And
again, the city, um, is working with regional partners to develop a
sustainable and high quality model for sonoma county moving forward.
next slide. Please.
just wanted to touch on the structure of the report a little bit because, um,
these are, these responses are mandated by law, and
we do, we, we are required to respond in these very
specific languages. So on the findings for each finding
that the grand jury assigns to petaluma, we must respond. Either we agree,
we disagree in part, or we wholly disagree. I would
say in many of these, we, we wanted to say we agree in part, but we're
required to say we disagree in part, and then explain what we agree with or what we
disagree with. On the recommendations side, there are
four different choices that we can, uh, we can,
uh, put forward in terms of what we are doing with each of the recommendations. So
we can say either the recommendation has already been implemented, the recommendation
has not yet been implemented, but will be in the future with a timeline.
the recommendation requires further analysis and, uh, the grand
jury states that we're supposed to have the analysis completed within six months,
or the recommendation will not be implemented because it is not reasonable or not warranted.
and again, those are the descriptions in the law that govern our responses.
wanted to mention just a little bit about how we've structured this, because it is different than the report
itself, uh, because many of the findings also have
a corresponding recommendation. We tried to group those together in the presentation
so that we can talk about similar findings and recommendations together,
rather than having to repeat, uh, ourselves multiple times as we move through all of these.
so I think we can go to the first one here.
so, finding f uh, finding one and recommendation one. These really deal
with, uh, council authority and a thought from the grand jury that
the council, excuse me, has ceded much of its authority
and governance over animal services to staff and to the city
manager. Uh, we wholly disagree with this finding.
we think that the governance is consistent with the charter. Uh,
the council retains its legislative and oversight authority,
and it, it appears that the reason for that this finding, uh,
came about in the report, is really a misunderstanding of the
council manager form of government that we have in petaluma and in much of
california. And a misunderstanding of some of the charter provisions and
how authorities or, um, tasks and administrative
tasks are delegated down to the city manager. Uh, we feel, and,
uh, that staff fully acted within charter defined administrative
procedures and the budget, authority and council direction.
there's a specific action that the grand jury cites in this particular
finding, uh, and in, in the body of the report and some of the background materials.
and that was the council's decision on march 2nd to provide direction to staff,
uh, to terminate the agreement and to generate and, uh, execute a
new agreement with an interim service provider. The council direction was
very explicit and very clear, and that's what the city council does all of
the time. You all provide direction to staff and the city manager and the rest
of the city staff implement that direction. So we feel that that,
uh, that structure and the way that those decisions and implementation
occurred were fully within the law and fully within the, the regular course
of how the council and the city staff, uh, do the public's
business. The recommendation one is related to, uh,
purchasing limits and signature limits, and, uh,
we did not choose or propose to implement that there is
a significant, uh, existing governance framework for purchasing
within the city. There are multiple controls in place and oversight
in place. Uh, there are some purchasing provisions in the charter and purchasing
provisions in, uh, the municipal code that govern those overall
procedures. And this, uh, this particular action fit within that. So we
did not feel that that needed to be implemented. Uh, if we were going to look at
that, it is a much bigger discussion than just animal services. This really implicates
our entire purchasing structure, and that would be a much longer conversation and
more involved conversation. Next slide, please.
so, finding two, uh, dealt with the reporting of nbas,
the lack thereof, or the, uh, very slow and, uh,
untimely nature of their reporting. They were required to report,
uh, at least once or twice per year, as well as provide an annual audit, et cetera.
um, so the city disagreed in part because we, we,
well, let me first address what we do. Agree. Uh, we definitely agree that their reporting
was, was lacking. It needed to be strengthened, and we look forward to
strengthening reporting of our future provider. Uh, it will improve,
and we, we absolutely agree that it can improve. But the, the finding
goes further to say that because of the slow reporting, the city or the, uh,
city management was unable to assess the performance of north bay
animal services. I, I don't think that's fully correct. We had inputs
not just from their reporting, but from members of the community, from city council members,
from talking directly with north bay animal services about some of their challenges.
so there were many inputs into our ability to oversee them. Uh, the
reporting was one of them, but it didn't fully impact our ability
to oversee them. The recommendation two, we do plan
on implementing, uh, we will implement a more robust regular,
we're looking right now at a quarterly reporting framework with our new service provider,
uh, with metrics that will be regularly, uh, reported out. Uh,
and they'll be standardized. So you can follow from quarter to quarter, uh, how the performance
is tracking. Next slide.
so finding three, uh, links up well with recommendation
six. So talking about both of those on this slide. This is related to,
uh, animal licensing performance and monitoring. Uh,
we said that we disagreed in part on this one. And really the, the focus
here, uh, was basically almost a repeat finding from a year ago
that talked about needing stronger, better licensing performance,
uh, and enforcement. But the finding here said that this
was neglected by, uh, city management and the city of petaluma.
w we, we take took issue with that because we don't think it
was neglected. There's a fully abil there's a full ability for any members of the public
to get their dogs licensed. That is the, uh, the obligation of
the animal owner. Uh, and that was
always and continuously available, even under the north bay animal services
contract. So while, yes, it needs to be better, and I think we can do better,
and that is one of our goals in our new contract, uh, I, we, we don't
agree that this was neglected. The new service contract will
address this. And in recommendation six, that
is a recommendation from the grand jury to, uh, select
purchase and implement a new licensing software platform. They named
a particular one that is used throughout sonoma county. This is,
I, I think, essentially redundant because once we select and contract with our new
provider, they will then implement that new software package for our residents,
uh, to be able to, to get their dogs licensed. And then part of our reporting
will include licensing data with those quarterly reports moving forward so
that we can see what that performance looks like. Next slide.
all right, f four, uh, finding number four in the report, uh, in conjunction with
recommendation nine, these addressed resident complaint tracking. So if you have
a problem with the service or you think something wasn't handled correctly, how do
you make a complaint about it? We disagree in part with this, and the reason
for saying that is we do agree that the complaint procedure,
the, the clarity of it, how do you make a complaint? How do you track whether that's
been responded to or not? That can absolutely be improved, and we feel confident
that that will be improved, um, in our new agreement. Where we disagree on
this one is that the finding, uh, says something like that we were,
uh, unable or un un yeah, un unable to receive
complaints. And I think we would disagree with that because clearly we did receive
complaints, counsel received complaints, staff received complaints,
uh, usually through email, through phone, et cetera. And when appropriate,
we researched those and responded, uh, to, to those complaints. So
I don't think it was, we, we were fully unable to, but the tracking
and the documentation could be better. So we do look forward to implementing
that, uh, improvement in the future with the, uh, upcoming agreement.
next slide, please. Finding number
five, we, we don't have a, a, a recommendation that directly corresponds
to this one, but this one related to the financial stability and
oversight of north bay animal services itself, and then
it also wrapped in how that impacted other cities. So this
one, this was a bit of a head scratcher, I think for staff.
we wholly disagreed with this one because the finding, uh,
implies that the city has some sort of fiduciary duty to
the nonprofit or over the nonprofit, and we do not agree with that.
uh, the, the city doesn't owe the nonprofit,
uh, a fiduciary duty. It's actually the nonprofit board that needed to be
ensuring that they were fiscally sustainable, that they could provide the services
that they were contracted for, and to monitor their sustainability
and potentially communicate with us if they were seeing challenges on the horizon.
the second half of this finding essentially states that because
they're saying that we didn't properly monitor their financial stability,
that that somehow, uh, caused insecurity or
risk to the other cities that were contracting with north bay animal services.
uh, and, and again, we do not agree with that the city is
not and cannot be responsible for the contracts that other cities have
with their animal services providers. So, um, this, yeah,
this one, uh, we, we couldn't quite make that connection as to how petaluma
itself could have, uh, caused or otherwise been responsible for those
types of risks in other cities. With that said, this
is one where we agree that financial reporting overall
for the service provider can be improved, and we do look forward to that
being improved and are confident that that will happen with our, uh, upcoming
provider contract. Next slide, please.
finding number six, related to, uh, statewide shelter
oversight, and whether the lack of statewide shelter standards
and shelter oversight provisions, uh, could have contributed to
nbas, uh, taking on multiple contracts that maybe they didn't have the staffing or
the financial wherewithal to handle. Uh, we did agree, or, I guess
disagree in part, and also agree in part, and it is true there, there are not
statewide shelter standards, uh, or shelter oversight. So
all of these shelters are able to kind of operate a little bit differently than
one, uh, from, from one another. But we do, uh, as we've mentioned, support
regional coordination and think that some shared standards, uh, do make sense
and could help, but we, again, don't necessarily see the connection
between the statewide oversight or lack thereof,
and n nba's financial stability or their ability to provide
the, uh, the, the services that they had contracted for. And so, moving
forward, uh, again, we will participate in that countywide process that is, uh,
kicking off here. Next slide, please.
so, finding seven is closely related to recommendations three and five
in the report. And these all deal with the dangerous animal
hearing process. So in the event that a,
there is a, uh, significant bite that occurs, and an animal control officer
determines that an animal may be potentially or is a dangerously, uh, dangers
declared animal, there is a process for the animal owner to
go through a hearing, uh, to ensure that they have
received a due process in the restrictions that are going to be placed on their
animal, whether it's muzzling or confinement at home, or posting of signs at
their home. And there are a variety of potential mitigation measures that an
animal owner can be subjected to if their animal is declared
potentially dangerous or dangerous. The specific finding
in f seven is that, uh, the grand jury didn't
feel that our code and the definitions of how the hearing is
conducted and who is the hearing officer, that those hearing officers
were not truly independent, and that that could have compromised the,
the due process rights of the, uh, the, the participants in
the hearing. We did not agree with that finding. Uh, we think it's clear
when you read the various provisions in chapter nine of the municipal
code, that there is the ability and there is the, um, the obligation
to appoint independent hearing officers and the city manager and the appointing
authority of the hearing officers has that ability. So, and that is also our
practice and our procedure, uh, that we would always appoint an independent hearing officer.
so we feel like this is already kind of taken care of in our code, and there's
not a change that's needed. Um, the, the recommendations,
or one, or recommendation three basically said, change your code
to allow independent hearing officers. So again, we think that's, that's taken care
of. Another one, uh, recommendation five that I, I feel like
resulted from a bit of a misconstruction or misunderstanding of our title
ix regulations is, uh, that it wanted, uh,
uh, bite victims basically to be a party to the hearing.
and that's, you know, unfortunately that's not how the code is constructed.
the, the purpose and the intent of the hearing and the hearing officer
is actually to allow the, uh, animal control officer to
present the evidence of the case, the incident, what happened, and this is why we
are putting these restrictions on the animal. And then for,
uh, the animal owner to present contrary evidence if they would like some
of those, uh, restrictions to, to not be implemented. So the, the victims,
while they, they provide absolutely critical evidence and testimony,
uh, in those hearings, and they, the input I think is really critical in,
uh, what the hearing officer ultimately decides. The victims themselves are
not actually parties to that hearing. So that's, um, again,
just a difference of interpretation or understanding of our code.
yet, uh, bite victims in these cases do have other avenues
to seek redress, uh, whether it's filing a claim with the animal owner's
insurance company, uh, seeking civil litigation, et cetera. So,
uh, yet in spite of that, in spite of some of the, the differences or
disagreements we have on this particular topic with the grand jury, we do think it's
relevant to review the title ix regulations. And so we can absolutely do that.
there are likely some ways we can clarify some of these regulations make them
stronger. Uh, so that's something that, that staff can engage in when the timing
is right. Next slide, please.
okay. Finding eight. And, uh, in conjunction with recommendation four related
to records management and records retention. Um,
this is actually more specifically related to records around bike cases
and victim's ability to receive records, to request records.
and we, we said disagree. In part, we do agree with much of
the finding that the records management needs to be strengthened there.
uh, there were instances where the records were very slow or they were incomplete
or, uh, o other issues. And we, we fully agree
that that will be, uh, strengthened in a new future provider
contract. But the way, uh, finding aid is worded in the report, it
also could be read with the assertion that no records
existed and no records were ever provided. And so we, we didn't think that was
accurate. I mean, we, we know that's not accurate. Um, so we disagreed with part
of that finding. Uh, from a practicality standpoint,
we are in a different position with these types of records than we are with regular
city created records. So in animal services, most, if not
all of the records that somebody would be requesting or needing, uh, they're
created by the provider and they're maintained in a provider database,
whether they're paper files or electronic files. So the city is really
reliant on the provider to keep the records, manage the records,
and inventory them properly, uh, as well as timely and accurately
provide the records when requested. So, again, and I'm start, I know I sound like a
broken record, but as we're moving to the new contract, this will be a piece of it. It
was included in our rfp, uh, for services that we wanna make sure that
the provider we, we select and contract with is fully
equipped to, uh, implement this recommendation
in accordance with the public records act, uh, and with, with victims or other
folks' rights to request records. Next slide, caitlin.
okay. Recommendation seven. Um, again, this is
kind of a repeat from the report a year ago, uh, advocating for and,
and, and wanting the city to participate in a regional governance
model. Uh, we said that we would partially implement this, uh, not because
we don't want to implement it because, but because there are plenty of questions around,
uh, timing around what the agreement and the collaboration will look like, what
the costs will be. Uh, and then ultimately, clearly the city
council still needs to approve and analyze that and tell us to move forward
with the, uh, the consortium concept. So, again, timing is up
in the air, but we're actively participating in the county as started those discussions.
next slide. So, just a few high level themes,
and we're, we're wrapping up here. So I think one thing that we saw from the grand jury
is concerns about governance, which we, we did not agree with most of
those conclusions. Improper delegation of authority or,
uh, issues or problematic regulations that needed to be, uh, corrected
in a, in a significant way. Definite themes around oversight.
and, and we've mentioned those multiple times. So stronger reporting, stronger records management
and, and records retention, complaint procedures
for, uh, for folks who are not happy with the services. And then monitoring
all of those things to be able to see, are we, are we meeting expectations
or are we falling short? Um, really it's the, the new service agreement,
because we are currently in an interim agreement with marin humane. The
new service agreement will be central to all of the corrective actions
that we're talking about tonight. And then the collaboration with our
regional city partners and county partners, uh, is a key to long-term
sustainability with our animal services in son county.
next slide. I think we all wrap up on this one. So
we just wanted to conclude by acknowledging that there are opportunities for improvement.
there absolutely are. We acknowledged that a year ago we've been working diligently on some
of those corrections, yet we did not agree with many of the findings
that were in this new report, uh, from the grand jury this year,
we've got contractual, um, improvements, procedural and operational
reforms, uh, underway. And our future focus areas will
include, uh, really all of the above service delivery, reporting, transparency,
records management, and regional coordination. And just
in, uh, three or so short months, we are already experiencing a new
level of service with marin humane, and we look forward to continuing
the discussions with the county and sonoma humane about our long-term service
model moving forward. And I think that's all we have for the
presentation, and staff are, uh, happy to answer questions. Thank you.
thank you very much. Um, big, big topic
tonight. Um, any, this is a question period for, for council.
do we have any questions of, uh, council member sch?
yeah. Um, some of the main, uh, a couple questions in here, but the main one,
uh, breaks down to the, um, some of the legal language. I said,
uh, our response had a lot of nice really legal language in and how,
how it described both what we agreed with and what we disagree with. So I
just wanna find out a little bit about what are the legal consequences, like we've disagreed
with some of the findings. Um, are, are there any, um,
or what we agreed with, what are the legal consequences now that it's been reported?
we, we have report back. Um, is it, is this,
could people take us to court as, as whether or not is this truthful or not?
things like that. So what are the, some of the legal consequences to the a after
that we make this report back. So,
um, the grand jury, the civil grand jury is a, is a
recommending body and investigating and recommending body. Um,
but the counsel is the, is the, um,
is the petaluma electorates, um, elected representatives
and the legislative body of the city. So the decision whether
or not to implement the grand jury's recommendations is solely the councils.
um, there was, were no, as, as, as this assistant
city manager pointed out, we had some strong disagreements and that
we explained those in detail with the grand jury's,
we believe misunderstandings about our charter authorities,
um, the significance and lawfulness of the council's action
in directing staff and staff's action in implementing that. Um,
so those are legal matters, but, um, the council, or
I'm sorry, the grand jury, um,
is, as I said, uh, investigating and recommending body. They're, they're, they're not
a court. Um, they're overseen by the presiding judge
and they're advised by county counsel that is assigned to them. But that's it. So
it's really up to the council to conclude, you know, with staff
input and community input, um, what direction
the council has going forward as to these issues.
and what we've provided is our recommended draft based on the analysis and the explanations
we've given, um, to be the legally
compliant response. You saw, um, brian talked about
the pretty formulaic, um, way we need to structure our responses.
um, that's prescribed in the penal code statutes that govern these reports.
so, so there's no direct legal, um,
you know, consequences. We, with respect to our animal services program, like anything else
we do, we have to follow the law, we have to follow our charter, we have to follow the municipal
code. Um, and there's potential legal exposure if we don't. Um,
but we don't believe there are any instances, um, of that kind of exposure.
if, if there were, we, you know, we'd be identifying those, right? So I'm looking at,
at possible exposures on things, um, because I found the language to,
um, be avoiding of a lot of details that were very generic,
vague, and, um, um, inconsequential and,
and hard to measure as goals and hard to really see what is
actually going to happen. It was very, very, we're going to improve, we will make it better.
uh, I didn't find a lot of did was that, uh, on purpose? Uh, what
did we exactly, we said we agree in part, but you never listed what
we actually agreed to and what was the evidence that we agreed to that was found.
and even in the results, we're going to improve. We're not really listing,
we're gonna do this, we're gonna have a database, we're gonna do, have a city control of this. We're,
so what you described on your screen seemed to be a little bit more detailed about
what we're actually going to do, not just improve. I was wondering why,
why that, uh, language was avoided or intentionally, or do we really need to add
in the language of what do we actually agree with? What parts exactly?
well, well, as brian explained, we, I mean the, and I don't know if you wanna,
maybe we should bring back up that slide that has those formulaic responses
that the penal code dictates that we use. So
we, we really, we used the language that the law requires that we use,
as brian said, if, um, it would've seemed, I
think, I don't know, maybe,
you know, we would've preferred to use language about agreeing in part instead of disagreeing in
part, for example, 'cause it's just more negative. But that's what we use. The, the,
the language that's required on the penal code. Um,
I, you know, I I leave it to staff or to,
you know, if there's, um, there's certainly no desire on our
part to not be clear in the responses. Um,
it's, it's a rather detailed draft that we provided to the council. We've
been pretty clear about the process that's underway. Um, we've
also been clear that, um, the real nitty
gritty of the, the running of the program and the obligations
of the contract service provider is, is, is gonna be in the scope of work of the
services contract. Um, and that's what we'll be, um,
using to hold the contract service provider a, a accountable.
and that's, and I would suggest that that's what the council
should use to hold the service provider and staff accountable
in terms of the administration of that contract. Um, so
I don't know, I, I don't know what I'm missing in the response, but that, that's, well,
I mean, maybe an example is helpful. So for example, finding
number four, and I'll just read it, uh, verbatim, by failing
to develop a system to document and respond to citizen complaints,
the city manager's office lost opportunities to receive and respond to
community input. So that's pretty
vague in terms of what the grand jury is recommending for implementation. Now, there
is a corresponding recommendation, but basically all, all of the recommendation
says is the city council should adopt a system to receive and
follow up on, uh, citizen complaints. I mean, the recommendation is
also very, uh, very vague and it leaves a lot of the detail
to be filled in by the city. Um, so again, like eric
said there, at the end of his comments, we'll be looking to work with our service
provider, and we included specific language in the rfp that said,
please outline. And, uh, it's a requirement to
have a clear reporting and complaint procedure,
uh, as well as we required in the rfp, that the, um,
with the quarterly reporting, all of the complaints that are filed,
uh, with the service provider need to be provided to the city manager's office. So
we're starting to outline what that looks like. But again, depending on the
provider's own systems, what they already have in place, um, how their
routing and, um, and, uh, oversight already
looks, the, the pro the specific details of the process,
uh, may still need to be worked out and finalized. So that's kind of part of
what we're going through now in developing the agreement and the scope of work with the, uh,
the future provider, but other, other ones in this report. And
in some of the city's, um, you know, declarations that we are
going to make, you know, improvements here or improvements there, those are going
to happen once the new provider is already on board, they're up and running.
we can see, you know, what does their data look like? How are their, uh, procedures
and flow within the shelter? What are the specific procedures about bite
reporting, um, or animal control calls? So some
of these things, again, are gonna have to wait. Other ones, I think we can
have a little bit more clear idea of, of what they're going to look like
with input, again from the provider, um, as we move forward.
and, uh, I guess the last question we might have is, is, um, if we
wanted, do we need to accept this, like right at this point in time, do we need to
accept this report pretty much as written? Are we allowed to tweak it? Do we,
can we advise you to go back and look at some of the language that's in there? 'cause, um,
the way it's written in some ways, not very, um,
uh, natural, it's has some legal languages, as you said,
it's very tight as document is what, what we can
say in there. So is there any, um, how much effort would it take
and are we required to actually review in more detail or in detail
how to take it to the next step? Do we do that or just go with
what you've got at this point? So the, the agenda item
is structured with the resolution for the council to approve the report as written.
the council also would have the option to amend it here tonight. If, if somebody wanted to
propose and, uh, approve specific language, uh, changes,
that's, that's fine. Um, the report,
I, I think I've, I've done them. The, uh, the, the 90 day
calculus. So we have 90 days, um, after the issuance of the report, I believe that would mean we
would need to have the report to the grand jury and approved by something like august 9th.
um, so if the counsel wanted us to come back on august 3rd, that is theoretically
possible. Um, lemme put this depending on this differently. Yeah.
did you have a particular area or paragraph that you, uh, wanted to well, the only one, like
up reading through it in, in general, as, as I'm reading it, uh, being, having been in
the corporate world, looking at documents of complaints and, and, and revisions and, and recommendations,
um, from the corporate world, this would be very dissatisfactory because it's not de, there's no
details in it. It's a very vague language, and we expect measurable goals to be
listed down a little bit more in detail. Okay. To fleshed out. So, uh, that
was, I, I was, that's not a question, that was a question, but it was a, um,
uh, a request sort of like thinking about what opportunity do we have to, to revise
some of that. Um, and, um, how much effort is it
really worth putting in at this point in time? Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. I hear, I hear you on this. Um,
I, I think the grand jury report requires us to do certain things,
address certain things, but, um, it doesn't, um,
you know, many of the things that we're saying we're addressing aren't available on the timeline to reply
to the grand jury. They're to develop more metrics and,
and more specifics for our benefit for the community's benefit and things like that. So
I like the idea having more detail in when the, um, rfp
comes out or when the negotiated, uh, proposal comes out. But for
the timeline of getting it in august, uh, date,
I think this is the kind of data that the grand jury's looking for. You're treating this problem we addressed.
right? I, I generally agree with the, um, the overall perspective
on, on it. I'm just missing, um, the length of the agreements was
very vague and small, and the disagreements was very long and a little more detailed,
and I was expecting a little more balance between the two. But, uh, that's, that's,
that's just me if, if I would rewrite it. But again, I, uh, this is a legal
document. I just wanna be careful around the legalities, what could be used
for down the road if we say, if we try to be too tight, do things. Good point.
thank you. Council member, quint, any, uh, questions? We're still in questions.
yeah. Um, my mine is just more kind of, um,
I, I, I think pretty basic. You, you talked about a software,
um, solution. Was that for licensing only
the specific software that the grand jury referenced was specifically for licensing?
yes. Got it. Uh, so
where I was kinda where my head was at with the whole, um,
challenge around reporting, um, you know, most organizations
use some kind of, you know, erp to run their
operation, and I would think that reporting,
you know, ought to be able to, you know, come out of that. So I
wasn't sure if that, um, if that software license,
you know, if that, if that, uh, platform, um, was something that would
solve for that. But just kind of looking online, it seems like the
major, uh, animal service players that are in the,
you know, in this area, aside from north bay animal services,
have robust systems. Um, so one would think that reporting,
they ought to be able that, like, that's kinda like standard stuff. Um,
one would hope. Um, that was my only question on that.
in terms of the, uh, again,
this is just kind of an immediate thing on the whole, you know, having a procedure
for dog bites, um, or animal bites,
um, you know, both, uh, sonoma
humane and marin humane have, you know,
uh, their portals have a place for dog bite reports.
so whoever the responsible party is, maybe it's something as simple
as, um, the city's website has a link to that.
um, you know, right at this point
in our current setup, it might be confusing as to who to go to.
so just a suggestion. That was it. Okay. Council
member now, um, thank you, um, on the findings,
um, one, there is no mention of, um,
the now, um, we don't have the animal services committee,
but is that something that we could say that we're going to bring
back? Because that has, um, the public sitting
on the committee with a council liaison, um,
I remember being on it in 2007, and it
helps bring these things to the attention
that it, if it slips through the cracks like this, um,
you know, the grand jury found that things slipped through the cracks, and I am
embarrassed that it happened in that element, but I'd like to know how we
can bring an animal services committee back so that there is some
more attention given. And that's what our committees
do, is they look into it and investigate and bring things to
the, um, attention of staff and the council. So
that's one of my, um, questions. The other one
is the dog licensing. Um, I know that
the findings f three, it's ultimate their responsibility
of the owner that many of the owners are not
computer literate. And, you know, they're gonna depend on
a paper bill, just like their water bill, just like their pg e bill, because
not all don dog owners know, oh, I need to
remember to pay my dog license. Um, you know, they may not know when
it, um, it needs to be renewed. So
that was one thing I wanted to ask that maybe we think about
those people that aren't on computers, um, who
depend on paper bills for, um, renewing
licensing, et cetera, and paying bills. Um, the other one
was, um, the finding of
f five, and I have to find it real fast, um,
explain how our partnerships with
nonprofits work. Um, they
accuse us, of course, of not having responsibility to review financial
stability of nbas. We have many nonprofits
that we contract with to do services in our community. Um,
maybe you can explain what, um,
what is in the contract that we can see
their financial, um, obligation to the
city because sure. We, we don't have, we didn't have anything to
do with the, um, other things that nbas was doing
other than what our city contract. So maybe you could explain that.
and I think that's all my questions. The other
ones were on our afternoon questions, our council
questions, so sure. So specifically on the financial oversight,
um, you're right, we do have many nonprofits that we work with providing services.
um, there are typically standard, you know, pretty, pretty vanilla provisions
within the contracts that talk about, uh, you know, we have the ability to inspect books
and records and we can, uh, audit in a, you know,
ledgers and invoices, et cetera, if, if we want, um,
I, I don't know of a time that we have needed or, or, uh, chosen
to exercise those provisions. I mean, the reality is, at the end of the day,
the obligation for the service provider is to provide the scope of
services that is in the agreement, right? And how they do that, that's really on
them, and that they're a third party nonprofit that is not affiliated
with the city other than the fact that we are in a contract with
'em. So that's why in the body of our response, and, and I think in my
comments tonight, we mentioned that, uh, there, the, the duty is really on the
board of directors of the nonprofit to ensure that they have
the stability, uh, the financial wherewithal to provide the, the level
of service that they're, that they're committing to. Um, or
we need to have a follow up conversation right about, uh, you know, do we need, is
there some help that the city can provide? Do we need to change the scope, amend the,
uh, the contract, et cetera? Um, but I can't think of another
time when we have needed or, or elected to, uh, essentially
audit the financials of another third party nonprofit entity that we
contract with. Yeah. Uh, I, my
comment is kind of going along that same line, uh, not so much critique of, uh, what we've
written in the grand jury, but what the lessons learned and how are we adopting them here.
um, like in, in our, um, in our new proposal that
we, our new contract with nonprofit, um, more on that,
uh, council member now's point, um, you know, we require insurance
from each of them. We require the insurance to be updated per e every year,
and we require that somebody check that they sent in the insurance and they're still under
contract. And one differentiation between most contracts in
this contract is this is an enduring contract, a multi-year
contract. It's not, uh, you know, put in, uh, paving from this corner to that corner.
so it requires us to monitor on a longer range basis.
um, while we wouldn't want to audit firm,
you know, there should be triggers to show that a board is weakening
or not fulfilling their obligation, and yet they're providing us a
critical service. Can we, uh, have things in like, um, they
must submit their annual financials and we won't judge,
but they just, the fact that they did them and submitted them is
a sign of robustness. Uh, similarly, um, their, their, uh,
tax responsibility, even the nonprofits have to file a tax. And in many of
'em you see that that's the burden they don't actually get to because they're too busy chasing
animals or, you know, or whatever their primary function is, is they've lost
organizational strength. So I would love to see us have
that. I'm seeing head nodding. So that was a question. The answer is yes. Great.
um, uh, then the second question, um, so in the bite victim
at hearing, um, is it typical or
have we examined yet whether that is a typical process for say, marin or sonoma?
yeah, in looking at some other city's, um, procedures, it's, it's pretty
typical. Yes. So I would love to see that recommendation
agreed to, um, down the road. And, uh, those,
those were two, my two primary questions. Council member di carly,
what happens if the city refutes the grand jury's report?
which I think in this case, I mean, a lot of it is refuted. I mean, what,
what, um, you know, what happens then? Well,
I think that's, that was reflected, um, in eric's answer to, uh, council
member schwab's question a bit. There, there's no sort of legal weight
behind the recommendations necessarily. It is a recommending body.
um, our obligation is to, uh, file a response
and state whether we agree or disagree with the findings and why, and then,
uh, report on the recommendations and whether or not we are electing to implement
them or maybe they've already been implemented. So that's really the extent of the city's
legal obligation in this, uh, grand jury process.
and then what, uh, tools or methods do we have to get some of
the answers people are seeking out of nbas,
you know, for people in the public and people affected by this?
I'm sorry, could you elaborate on that? The answers to
what, I mean, people have lots of questions and answers and have for eight years now.
and so what, you know, people are kind of demanding accountability.
what, what sort of tools do we have, you know, as somebody who's contractually
obligated to us, probably considered a partner, um, and a nonprofit, like
how do we get those answers? Well, we've started that process
a little bit. Um, the council on, at the march 2nd meeting requested
a forensic audit of nbas. We have kicked off
with a, uh, auditing firm, and it's, uh, it's not a full
forensic audit at this point, um, but it's a, uh,
a risk review and a, a fraud risk review and a contract compliance
review, basically. And so that is what we view. That's sort of like step
one. We'll see what that comes back with, and if we need to follow up
on any of the findings from that report, then we'll go ahead and do that. Um, but that's,
I think, I think where you're, where you're headed and, uh, we look forward to working
with our, uh, the accounting firm to, to see if they come back with anything substantive.
what does the risk review mean? Well, they're, they're performing
a variety of procedures, looking at, uh, their detailed, uh, uh,
general ledger data. So we have that and looking at what,
um, you know, are there any irregularities in the payments, any, um, things
that might trigger or, um, think that there could be some fraud that had
occurred. Uh, so they're, they're doing a variety of reviews of their
financials to, um, to see if anything kind of pops
or like rises to the top that, hey, we think there might be a problem here. We should look further.
um, and they, they may or may not find anything. And so we're
kind of waiting for that review to, to be concluded. And then we'll
see if there are any next steps that come from that. Are we receiving compliance
on that? I'm sorry, from nbas? Are we
receiving compliance thus far? Yes.
and then, um, you know, one response in the letter
refutes that authority was not taken from the council. So how frequently over
the past eight years were serious issues, regular reporting oversight
or matters, you know, of concern brought to the council?
how often were those issues brought to the council? Is
that the question? Right, because the, you know, the whole
question in that part of the report is about, you know, it questions whether
city manager's office is making all the decisions or the council, the response
has been, this is the council's authority. Mm-hmm . How often over that eight
year period were issues brought to the council
and reports? Well, there were multiple touch points during that time. So
the city council through a public process, um, you know, a rfp
process and publicly noticed meetings issued the original contract
back in 2018, there, um, there was
an amendment to that con, so the initial agreement was a three year agreement. There
was an amendment to that agreement that the council deliberated on, I believe, in
2020, uh, to do a contract extension.
and so that came to council at a public meeting and was approved by
council. Uh, we did have the discussion about, as council member now alluded
to the animal services committee, I believe that was in 2022.
uh, so that was another touch point. And then we've had the grand jury reports
for the last two years. So that's at least, you know, four or five times we've
reviewed it. Uh, additionally, the, the council approves the budget every year,
ultimately. And that's, you know, just one piece of authority that the council
exercises, uh, if there were concerns that the council felt needed
to be addressed, uh, you obviously all have, uh,
the ability to speak to staff, speak to the city manager, and, uh, and request,
you know, new analysis, different analysis, um, or, or bring
an item back. And, and actually, I'm sorry, I failed to mention one. Uh, the march 2nd
meeting I think is another good example where we, we recognize the issues, brought
it to you all for a decision, uh, and you made the decision that you made that night.
so anyway, there have been a number of them. Yeah.
and then what, I have a couple more questions. What action was the city
supposed to take if contractual obligations were not fulfilled?
essentially, there are two ways that we can enforce the contract or
enforce non-compliance in the contract. One way is that we can withhold
payment. So if there's a portion of the services that we didn't receive,
we can withhold payment. The second way we can enforce the contract is
to terminate the contract for non-compliance. So those are essentially the two enforcement
mechanisms that we have. Mm-hmm . No, thank you. 'cause I did pull up the contract
and it is stated several times, and the first being in the standard of
performance that, you know, contractors failure to comply with any laws or regulations
applicable to the performance of the services shall constitute a default subject
determination of this agreement in accordance with section 25 b, the agreement.
so, you know, I, I mean, I'll talk more about that in comment, but
it seems like there were several years where they violated this. And again, it's mentioned
throughout the contract more and more times. Um,
kinda the last question I have is, excuse me, uh, vice mayor, I, I'd like
to just briefly add, there are those formal remedies in the contract,
but, um, there are other,
um, steps that can be taken. We took some of them. One of them was when the
consultant was retained to try to improve the performance that we knew was lacking.
and that's not something the contract spells out, but, um,
it's an option. Another option is amending the contract. If there, if it's
thought that the scope isn't clear or there's some other kind of change in the
contract or, um, requirements that need to be added to ensure compliance,
that's, that's an option. And I think we would've anticipated
and did anticipate that it, we might be seeing those results as
a result of the consultant, um, engagement. But we know that wasn't successful
because nbas wouldn't, wouldn't cooperate. So, um,
there are the express remedies stated in the contract and
as the awarding agency and, and with
remedies in the contract that include termination for convenience, it doesn't have to be for default,
and we can always propose amendments. So, so there's quite a range of,
of, of things. And those were some of the additional steps that were, that were taken regarding
the performance issues. Thanks. Mm-hmm .
and then, uh, you know, this grand jury reports largely based around
the city's response to everything. And so, you know,
one of the things that would help me understand this better is who were the city employees
that were involved in the nbas contract and oversight of it?
well, the city manager's office is ultimately the administrator of the contract. So,
I mean, I think that's the answer to that question. Um, in conjunction, you know, the
police department has a role at times. Uh, if there are enforcement cases, occasionally,
um, you know, many calls for service occur
in our parks department or in our city parks. So that's another department that has a
interface with our animal services provider. But ultimately, um,
the administration of the contract is with the city manager's office, but
we have other involved departments too. Um, invoices are approved
and payments made through finance. The legal department, obviously
we played a direct role in the implementing the council's direction to
terminate. But, um, also played, you know, played
the role in reviewing, um, and, um,
recommending approval of the, of the initial contract and amendments, et cetera. So it's a,
a, so under the oversight of the city manager's office, um,
there are a number of involved departments, including legal and finance.
right. But then who, I mean, who were those main employees, I suppose that were constantly
daily involved in this. Mm-hmm.
that, that was myself. Yeah. Uh, in conjunction with peggy. Yeah.
all right. Thank you. And let's bring in, uh,
uh, council member cater thompson.
I'll wait for the next. Okay. Um, councilman
barnicle. Yeah, a couple questions. Um,
considering how much I would say we largely agree with
the sort of qualitative reporting was inadequate, things like that, that we are
very much aware of the, the legal, like discrepancies,
the fact that county council was involved in this. Have we talked to county council about
any of these things and found out, you know, what's going on? 'cause I agree that some
of this stuff just doesn't make sense. No, we've not. And,
um, um, I don't know that, you know, we have a great relationship
with our colleagues in county council, including with, um, josh meyers,
the new county council. Um, I don't know that
they'd talk with us about that nonetheless, because, you
know, that's their client communications. We, um, I
don't know how much time we spent with the grand jury, but it was a lot of time to
try to, you know, provide as much clear information as we could in response to their
questions. I personally spent at least a couple hours with the
full, um, grand jury to respond to their
questions. And I, and the, the information that we included in our
response was information I shared with them both then. And also I sent them a subsequent
follow up. 'cause it seemed like they still had some, there were still some
things they weren't grasping so well. So I don't know. I, we, you know,
if, if they wanted to have dialogue with us, we'd be happy to have dialogue about that.
okay. Um, so mayor asked my
question about, um, the hearing process. Um,
have we looked at other cities in the, in their hearing process? And if victims
are able to be party to those hearings and things like that? We've
looked at some, I think the analogy, um, you know, it's
not a, um, municipal courts
have been absorbed in the superior court system. So that kind of victim redress is,
is there in the civil system. Um, if there were criminal,
um, you know, liability or charges related to,
um, animals, then, then our police department would handle that,
the da's office. But as, as we explained, the, um,
um, the, the most important role victims play is coming forward
with complaints and concerns, and then as witnesses and like
in a criminal trial, um, it's the prosecuting agency that controls
the proceedings. It's, it's not, it's not the involved parties and the witnesses
and, and the redress they, that they receive in the criminal context,
like in the animal services context, is in the, um,
sanctions and the safety protections, um, with
respect to, you know, whether someone's incarcerated in this case, it's whether, um,
uh, safety conditions are imposed on the animal owner. Um,
so it's a pretty parallel parallel, pretty
parallel process. And, and we gave that information too, and we met with the grand jury.
yeah, I'll say that's one of my concerns because of the specific dog
bite case that we had that where it was just really mishandled. And so, um,
I don't know how that applies to our hearing process or, or whatnot, but, um,
just, I guess my, my question, or I don't think there's a question there, but that's
where my question's coming from. All right. Um, so
the finding f five about financial oversight, um,
you know, we're not their board, but we did ask them for a budget update. Correct.
can, I would say regularly. Um, and to ask if they
had any needs. Um, do we need to tweak things? Do you need better administrative
support? How are, how are the status of your vehicles? Et cetera, et cetera.
so we were continually meeting with 'em and asking if they needed additional support,
uh, from the city to be able to effectively do their job. Right. 'cause we didn't, and
they never, never gave us an updated budget from the initial
contract. Right. We never saw an installation. Correct. Is that accurate? Other than in the 2020
extension, uh, amendment we did, uh, we did change the
contract. The, the original contract had a certain, uh, percentage of the license fees actually
coming to the city. We tweaked it so that nbis would be able to keep all of the
license fees to be able to e elevate their overall funding. Okay.
um, I would add that to the report, like we multiple
times, like we aren't their board, but we did ask them multiple times for a budget update. So,
um, uh, and then,
you know, one of the other things that it sort of catches me off guard with this is that we committed
to an rfp by the end of their, the nbas contract, which was july 31st, 2026.
and this came out before that whole process.
so a lot of the, the responses of what we were doing,
um, or the, the, the main response of what we were doing
was rebidding the contract and they issued this. Where did that come
from?
I'm not sure that we fully know, but it is clear that they were working
on a follow up, uh, as far back as january of this year.
uh, and so I think there, again, this is me surmising, so this is all
speculation, but I think they had a certain direction that they, they
were looking at with the report. And then when the march 2nd council meeting happened, and,
uh, the council gave us direction to terminate the agreement, I think that
kind of shifted the direction of the report. In fact, I think in the report
it says the scope of the investigation significantly narrowed
after the jan, uh, the, the march 2nd meeting. So
it changed some of their findings and the direction that they were headed. Um,
but it was, I think it was clear even in, in march that we
were, we were clearly headed toward doing a new rfp for services because we had
that checkpoint with the nbs agreement, july 31.
got you. So reading between the lines, we were headed for a different report. They were
probably gonna scold us for not taking corrective action on nbas,
and then we fired them abruptly. And the, the scope of their
findings in, in report narrowed, that's, that's how the
report reads. Uh, again, sort of reading between the lines there, there
also was the, um, the, I, I don't know if you call it news, but the,
uh, the information that nbas was not cooperating with the
consultant. And so, since I think that in the, in last year's report,
that was a, a piece of our corrective action that we were taking since
that, uh, process did not succeed, that was sort of a new,
you know, um, instigation to, to look back at things.
okay. And then, um, the other one that
I had a question on was, um,
the, when we were on the reporting in the last report,
my sense is that part of this, you know, part of it was the news that they weren't working with
the, the consultant. The other part we committed to was quarterly reports
from nbas. And I can't remember getting quarterly reports from
nbas after we submitted the, the last grand jury report. Did we get
no, I think the intent of that was with a new provider that we would be insisting
on quarterly reports. And in, um, speaking with the provider,
we, that is already, their standard practice is to do quarterly
reports. So it will fully, um, be in line with
the, um, the reporting frequency that we requested and we said to the grand jury.
okay. I will be digging into that during my public comment or during my comment.
um, and then, um, so
there's two more questions that I have about the status of the audit and where we stand
with that, when that will be complete. And we'll see that back. And then
the process of getting data we're well past the, the, the period where they should have furnished
all of the results and all of that stuff. Can you talk about how cooperative they've
been, and do we have literally everything right now that we are supposed to have? Because some
of the public comments are saying that we don't, and I'm, um, uh, wondering
where we stand on the audit and capturing data from nbis?
yeah. So one of the provisions of the agreement was that,
um, after it's terminated, they have 60 days to
furnish us with all of the data. So with a march 31,
um, termination date, that basically would've meant the end of may.
um, we received significant amount of data from 'em
by the end of may. We received even more after the end of may.
um, there were two major, um, things
that we received after, which were, uh, some of the database stuff that they
had, they had to work with their software provider to be able to get that data.
so it was, it extended out significantly past may 31st.
and then, um, we, prior to may 31st, we
did receive a large, um, drop of many,
uh, of multiple dozens of boxes of paper records. But it has taken
us up till now, and we are still not totally complete, uh,
going through all of those records, uh, categorizing them, cataloging them,
et cetera. So that's still ongoing. But I would say generally they
did comply with the, um, the procedures, uh,
to be it, to turn over all of the data to the city. And I, I think I
can say that we have everything that we were expecting to have, um,
when the contract terminated. Thank you. Oh, oh, and then
your question on the, the audit itself. Timing of it. Yeah. So
timing is a, is a little bit up in the air. Um, I would say we should have some,
uh, at least preliminary things back from the consultant within one to two months.
it is a significant amount of data that they're looking through, uh, came
over in kind of a not very convenient format. So they're having to kind of reconstruct
some of the, the pieces. Um, so once that process is completed,
I think they should be able to have some initial analysis done within maybe
one month or, or max two months. Great. And then council member di
carly and I received, um, sort of a trove of data from a member of the public.
can you confirm that that's been passed on to the auditor? Yes,
it was. Thank you. Thank you. Council
member quinn . Okay. Council member di carly,
when, uh, brian, when you were talking about all the data that was received, how, I
mean, was that months, years, I mean, about how much data,
if you can even say, I don't know what kind of mess it was when it came in, but about how much data was
that? Uh, the full eight years that they were the provider?
yeah. And was it all encompassing of everything
the city was asking of them? As far as we know, yes. It was quite all encompassing,
yes. Okay. Um, let's
move to public comment, and I'd like to ask the, uh, clerk to invite the public in.
yes. We received, uh, five comments ahead of the meeting. Um,
and those were posted online. And we have 12 people in the zoom
meeting. And at this time, I will start a 32nd clock. Whoops.
all right. Well, that's three minutes, but we'll watch for 30 seconds. Um, members
of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards to my desk if they have not
already done so. And members of the public attending online should raise their
virtual hand. And those attending via phone should press star nine to
raise their hand. Speaker request received after these 30 seconds may not be
accommodated.
okay.
we have five cards from the public in the house, and we have 2, 2 2
zoom participants, uh, for a total of seven. So, uh, let's start
with sierra morantz and be followed by, uh, derek childs.
you all have copies of these.
okay. Um, I find some of the draft responses to
the grand jury's report a bit disingenuous, especially the pieces about prompt
a action. Your position about ab bite victim's rights is just ridiculous.
I first came to mike city council member, mayor, city manager and attorney
in october, 2024. After four months of unresponsiveness from
nbas following a vicious dog attack. Brian and kevin, you
acknowledge the nbas wasn't getting the job done as it should, but even then, it
took a month to get a summary response from nbas via the city
manager's office. As time went on, you saw the sava unfold from lack of
action to excuses around why documentation was taking so long.
for a documentation example, city staff said the abatement reports that
I requested were taking mbas so long because of extensive redacting
required. When we got them after four months, it was only seven documents with
three pages each, and very little content redacted or otherwise.
by december, 2025, kevin, you even noted that nbas had
not been the partner that the city would desire. That efforts were in place to change
that, but you couldn't share more. And you asked me to wait until june, 2026
after nbas was terminated. I asked for a review of my case. The officer
assigned is one of the new marin humane officers that worked on my case while she was
employed by nbas. She and her supervisor told me they do not have all the
documents and asked me to send them over. However, while I was compiling those, I
got an email from brian cochrane telling me that marin humane had determined too much
time had passed, and they wouldn't be taking further action unless new incidents were
reported. It's ethically questionable to put a person on a case when they worked on
it as a prior employee of an entity that was terminated for cause.
if marin humane wasn't able to truly assign a neutral a person due
to whatever reason, the city should have made that clear and asked me to wait for a
permanent provider. Or if you knew nothing would be done, you should have taken ownership
and you should have told me. So it also brings into question how other
existing cases are being addressed and the need for a fully funded long-term solution.
I'm far from the only bite victim in the city of petaluma. There have been some big cases
recently with that. Here's what I'd ask you to do. First, make
sure you're being forthright in your response to the grand jury. Next, move
to a fully funded long-term animal solution surfaces solution that completely
moves away from nbas and bring back the animal services committee.
finally, listen to your constituents when they bring evidence of city
and contractor issues, and continue your full investigation of nbas.
by the way, the dog that attacked me has been unlicensed since january. It's rabies vaccine
is up in less than a year. Thank you.
thank you, dara child. I'm gonna give and tom to
mark, kimberly, please. Thank you. And, uh, let's
go to mark kimberly then. Um, but I don't
have a card for mark kimberly,
so I'm gonna assume you turned in a card. And why don't you just go ahead and have the, uh, card and
go ahead. So
you disagree with the grand jury report again, right?
how many times? You know, it just, it reminds me, I disagreed
with every traffic cop that ever gave me a speeding ticket. I disagree with the
irs every single year when they tell me I gotta pay 'em some money, but it doesn't matter
because I know they're right. And I stand up and do the right thing.
and I think it's about time you people do the same. You are
in such denial. And
I just have to say, look at all the trouble you brought on yourselves
and on this city by hiring a known criminal
in a private contract, and then covering for him and lying for
him for eight long years. Look at where you're at.
peggy flynn. Look at where you're at. Brian cochrane. People are organizing
right now to get you outta office. Do you know that? And I wouldn't be a bit surprised
if that happens. They're also organizing for about half of this council
to do recalls on you. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that happens, because first, they're
gonna ask for your resignations. And we know that won't happen. And when that doesn't
happen, they're gonna try to pressure the council and d terminate your employment. And I know that
won't happen. So then they're going to recalls and then they're going to the ballot box.
there's only two or three people here that, that are trusted whatsoever. And you brought
it all on yourselves. But
I didn't even come here to talk to you people.
I came to talk through you, to the people of petaluma.
'cause you stopped listening to us years ago. You've had your back turned to us, and we know it
for eight years. You stood by, you watched while a criminal and a thief
dismantled the animal sheltering system system in petaluma. You watched
as they stopped providing reports, cash only thrift stores popped up,
services to the public, went into the toilet, concerned citizens came here
to this podium and begged you for your help. And you did nothing. You
lied for that people, those people, and you covered for them. Your
response to this report makes it clear. You see nothing wrong with starving dogs
while selling donated food in their thrift stores, people being mauled
by dogs in the streets and then being ignored, failing to investigate
bite cases, rabies protocols being ignored. Or with
the criminal director's salary climbing to the highest in the county for any shelter
director while simultaneously taking loans from his board of directors to stay afloat.
to you. That was all oaky fine. How foolish.
we've had multiple jury grand jury reports criticizing your lack of oversight.
but your response shows you still claim that you've done nothing wrong.
you're supposed to be our leaders. Leaders have ethics. They have honor,
they have honesty and integrity, and all those things are in very short supply
around here. Stay tuned. A lot more is gonna happen.
thank you very much. Uh, tom chamberlain should be followed by nicholas harris.
tom chamberlain. There we are. Hi.
hang on. Ready? Ready,
set, go. Good evening. After reading
the city's draft response to animal services, revisited a city asleep
at the wheel. I feel compelled to speak before the council on this
document. The sonoma county civil grand jury, which is composed of 18 fellow
citizens, spent a year investigating fellow citizens complaints
about ongoing operations of our local animal shelter. They issued
their report, which I have read, and which this citizen found clear and
well supported. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for
the city's draft response, which is now before the council this evening
for their approval. Quite frankly, I am at a complete loss in
trying to understand it. For example, regarding finding number one,
which I consider one of the most substantive matters, raised the allegation
the city manager exceeded her authority to uniformly terminate
and execute contracts. The grand jury clearly stated
that actions of this nature required council approval. And that, uh,
and that quote, no vote was taken unquote, after reading
the city draft response several times I struggled. But I believe
that the following is a city's position terminating north
bay animal services contract approving a replacement contract
to marin humane and committing funds to cover this transition
are just administrative actions only needing direction from the council
and are well within the city manager's authority.
at least this is my, a citizen of petaluma understanding.
if correct somehow I don't see how approving contracts and committing
funds is just an administrative action as I see it.
the overriding question here is, did this action require a vote
by the council? A simple yes or no answer was all that was
required. Yet I see no evidence in the city's draft
that this was ever addressed. In conclusion, this citizen
believes that a redrafting of the city's response is mandated
in simple, clear language, specifically identifying
those areas which the city perceives as quote shortcomings.
and the grand jury report, the citizens of petaluma need this.
thank you for hearing me and for your representing our city. And I'm
looking forward to the council's discussion on this matter. Thank you. Thank you
nicholas harris to be followed by nina nato.
good evening mayor and council. Um, council member
di carly asked a question earlier. It was, it was actually the wrong question.
you asked what happens if the city refutes the report?
the correct question is, what happens if the city council
of petaluma refutes the report?
the report by the grand jury is made to the council. The council is
replying. You are being asked to reply for six
of the eight recommendations.
what you need to ask is what happens to the city council? If you
refute this report, it's not a legal
question. 'cause the answer is, it's a loss of public trust.
many of you, through your questions, have intimated the report as
it's written does not really make sense. It's confusing.
there's not plain language. I appreciate your comments. Uh, council member
barnacle. Clearly this report
needs to be rewritten.
sort of summarizing what I heard from, uh, mr. Cochrane's presentation.
staff says the provider didn't perform per the agreement
and then says, staff, staff says the
solution will be to make a new agreement better. It's gonna incorporate
better parts to the agreement.
a better agreement doesn't solve performance and contract management.
the overall message from the civil grand jury is that the
council needs to take control and ensure staff can and will
manage the service. It's really
the core of management. Management cannot
blame a lying employee or a vendor for
failure to execute. Under some circumstances,
yes, but given the record of what this report and just by nature, that the
issue is a result of a civil grand jury investigation and a follow-up,
it's not appropriate to be putting the onus of
contract performance, uh, financial stability,
um, everything back on the, uh, contractor. It just
doesn't fly. And, and I really want each and every one
of you, um, and janice, you two, hi, uh, to, to
take that message to heart. What I think is appropriate is an ad hoc,
uh, subcommittee to draft a response to this with independent
legal counsel guiding that ad ad hoc committee,
what the, the clarifications that the city attorney gave to
the grand jury and their repeated conclusions that defy,
that's concerning. Thank you. Nina
zito,
thank you. I appreciate
the renewed attention to
animal issues in the city of petaluma. And I'm, I'm struck how
we're awash in, in a lot of detail and
minutiae contractual, um, discussion.
I, I feel like we need to really step
back and consider, uh, this city's
position on how animals fit into our community here.
it, um, evidence of our lack of attention, we, well, we've grown
terribly quickly, um, is, is found just in our, uh,
city parks. I've, I've, um, been treated, uh,
council people to walk with me at our designated
dog run at oak hill park, which is unfenced,
where broken glass continues to bubble up from landfill,
broken glass. And where the much valley who grazing program
leaves behind foxtails, which are documented
menace for dogs. Now, in a city that does this at a
doc, at a designated dog park, should we be surprised that we
have humane concerns? Because people aren't paying attention. We've
grown too quickly. We really need to step back. I appreciate council
member, uh, now is, um,
remarked that an animal services committee needs to be, uh, reestablished.
I think we should include our, our police department. And thank you for,
uh, rescuing a dog from an overheated car, 98 degrees
inside. Uh, we, uh, should have
a veterinarian. We need, uh, behaviorists, uh, we need
our parks department. And I've been treated our, uh,
director of parks to walk with me and look for example, at oak hill park or
mcnair where there's no water. Uh, the, these deficits
show that despite the pretty pictures on the library, and I will
admit it's a gorgeous mural. Uh,
we we're, we're, there's just an awful lot, an awful lot of fluffery and
puffery around how much we, you know, we're committed to dogs and whatnot
and, and feral cats. But, uh, putting the rubber to the road,
no, we're not doing it. And we we're
not, we're lying to ourselves. And, uh, the member of the public who
spoke about lack of public trust emerging is,
um, sadly right. We, we can't let that happen. Uh,
thank you for rejecting this resolution as it stands now.
thank you. Let's go to zoom audience now.
yes. The first speaker will be amy taylor,
if you would unmute yourself and make your comment.
can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Okay.
good evening. This city council has allowed themselves
to be bullied by city manager peggy flynn, and assistant city manager brian cochran.
instead of supervising them, that's backwards. Your job
is to oversee cities.
it appears. Staff sets the narrative, sets the agenda,
and this council just falls in line time after time when the public
brings evidence, staff says everything is fine. And instead
of challenging them, you just repeat it. For the last eight
years, the city's animal service control operator with
documented oversight failures, the grand jury found those failures.
the contract was ultimately terminated, yet we're still
being told one failed. No one is accountable
and someone, and somehow everything is just fine. Enough is enough.
brian cochran, you brought up findings number six. The connection to
that is that you let mark scott use your shelter
for other cities animal control. With that being said,
uninvestigated and uncharged crimes are still crimes.
mark scott and north bay animal services did 114 cruelty
cases, broke public public health laws on
rabies for years, and sold, donated
dog food in their cash only thrift store.
but yet, there's no forensic audit. Yeah, you said you're starting an audit, but
it's not a forensic audit, and you're not holding them accountable.
if you have a fraud case, I would like somebody to email that to me. A fraud
case number. Stop telling us that because someone
said that they care about animals. Oversight doesn't matter. Stop defending
failures instead of investigating them. Stop asking the public
to ignore what happened and accept a story that doesn't match
the facts. The council answers to the people of petaluma, not
the city manager and not the assistant city manager. If you are unwilling
to exercise independent oversight, unwilling to hold staff accountable and
unwilling to tell the public the truth about what happened, then do
us all a favor and resign, step aside, and
let voters elect representation who allows the city to
do their job, not to protect the city council or city hall.
thank you. Thank you very much.
that concludes, um, public comment on the, sorry. We have one
more. We have one more. Yes. Thank you very much. My ben sail white,
if you would unmute yourself.
hi. Um, I, I hope you can hear me. I'm on, on my headset. Um, first of
all, I just have to point out that an earlier speaker in general pub,
sorry, that was my fault. Sorry. That was my fault.
mute. One more time. Um, an earlier speaker in general, public comment
came forward with a license plate belonging to a trust that belongs to
the city of petaluma, which is currently parked in front of mark scott's
house in santa rosa. Um, I am really curious about what the city's gonna do
to follow up on that, and whether the city gave mark scott this truck, or loaned
mark scott this truck, or was not aware that mark scott stole this truck. And
I'm bringing this up because that's kind of illustrative of, of the amount of oversight
that the city of petaluma has been doing all along. And this is, this is happening
right now. Um, your, I don't know how much time I have left, but your staff's
response to the grand jury report is downright f*****g, sorry. Dishonest, much like your
staff's interactions with the public regarding animal services for the past eight years,
staff assert in its response to the grand jury report that throughout the contract term
city staff worked extensively with nbas quote, to
strengthen its operations, improve management practices, forecast staffing
and capital needs, and enhance organizational systems and processes. That was a quote.
okay. So, great. So despite this unprecedented handholding of
a city contractor by staff, the performance of nbas
declined precipitously over the nearly eight years that it held a contract to the
point that numerous unaltered, unvaccinated and even diseased animals
were released to the public under the pre pretense of foster to adopt, leaving
members of the public potentially exposed to rabies from unvaccinated animals.
many people paid for spay neuter and vaccination services that nbas
was con contractually obligated to provide. Meanwhile,
dog bites were ignored or minimized, leaving the public exposed unknowingly
to dogs with serious bite history. Council and staff were aware
of these issues for many years. The city of petaluma spent eight
years making excuses for the sad operation while playing rabies through that with its
citizens. This response, this draft response further states,
however, despite substantial city support and ongoing oversight,
ultimately became evident that nbas would not develop operations for capacity
that has, sorry, I'm laughing, necessary to consistently
meet its contractual obligations. When that conclusion became clear, the city council
acted promptly directing termination of the contract at its march 2nd, 2026
meeting. This statement is preposterous and dishonest. Nbas
provided to fail minimally adequate pro failed to provide
minimally adequate services for nearly eight years before the council acted
promptly on march 2nd, 2026. The huge answer unanswered question
is, why, why does city staff work so hard to protect this particular contractor?
why does city council advocate its responsibility to the electorate by allowing staff
to run interference for a contractor whose work was criminally incompetent at best,
when city staff finally terminated the nbas contract with cause this, this past
march, the reason cited were refusal to work with the city's animal animal
services consultant, failure to timely provide annual reporting and failure
to notify the city that it was utilizing city resources. Thank you very much. The sheltered
facility three minutes has, uh, last, I just have to say, those things were ongoing
and y'all never did anything. Thank you. Thank you.
um, and that closes, uh, public comment on, um,
the item for the evening. Um, I would like
to bounce back to staff and ask, um, what's known about the truck
in santa rosa and that situation? Do we, are
we following that situation?
one of the, oh, sorry, go ahead.
so, prior to this meeting, there was, uh, I haven't had an opportunity to
look too much into that license plate, but the information was forwarded to dispatch. We will take
a case and do an investigation on what the status of the vehicle is, if the, if
the plate belongs to a city of petaluma vehicle and as
we normally would. So we'll follow up on that.
thank you. And, and just to add onto that, part of the closeout procedure
that we've been undergoing with n-b-a-s-s,
excuse me, um, is to close out from
a financial and from an asset perspective, there were a lot of assets in the shelter
at the time of the termination that were n bss. There were also a lot of assets that were
the cities. Um, most of that is complete. There were
several vehicles and other pieces of equipment trailers,
um, those three modular homes out to the side of the shelter
that, um, you know, different entities owned different pieces of equipment.
we went through a process of deciding which ones, um, needed to stay at the
shelter and remain in city ownership, which ones were nbas owned
and could go with them. And there were a couple of vehicles on
each side where, you know, we said, yeah, we don't need this anymore.
uh, let's look at a valuation. And then nbas can buy it from the city effectively,
and also vice versa. Uh, there was at least one vehicle that we
wanted to buy from nbas. So we are working through that process,
um, now and have been to create that final accounting,
uh, to close out everything from a financial perspective with, uh, the agreement
is our fleet manager, patrick carter here to maybe give any light
to that as to maybe the, the status of the truck. Does he
know anything about it? Is your, is your answer complete? Well, again, I,
I think what, what I'm saying is there was one truck, one vehicle that, um,
nbas we agreed to sell to them because it was not in good
shape. The city really couldn't use it, and marine inhumane was unable to use it.
so we agreed on a value, and then nbas was able to, um,
take that truck or buy that truck from the city effectively.
patrick, I don't know if you wanna, I would say exactly
what brian just said. Okay.
so, uh, who would like to start the comments end of, um, tonight's discussion?
no one has comments. Okay. Uh, council member shrives,
um, yeah, it, it says overall is, is a, a sad
situation. We have, um, animal services in several cities around us
have failed several of these things. Um, lots of it has been hidden. Uh,
it's not unique to us. Um, and so we are facing a, basically
a, a failure in operations at this point. Now, what do you do?
do we spend a lot of time writing a report, getting all the responses,
or do we spend time fixing the problem? And I, I don't
like the report. I, I would not write it myself that way, but
it, it's a report. It's a recommendation, a report saying, we're going to do better. At this point,
I don't wanna waste time having legal and, and us and just like,
could the wordsmith a report that may or may not be adequate. Um,
I don't wanna spend that much time on responding in a report. What I wanna do is I wanna fix
the problem. So I'd much rather have staff spend the time to come
up with the exact recommendations that we're looking for. Um,
um, I'm not sure if we can legally just go ahead and say, oh, we, we agree
with this, this, this, and this and this. We failed here and here and here and here. Um, that
might be good for the public to hear about. I'm not sure how productive that was or how legal that might be.
but, uh, I want to hear what are we gonna do? What are the positive
recommendations? We heard several recommendations tonight. So brian, you did a good job of saying, hey, we're gonna do
this, this, and this. You had a whole list there that do not appear in the report. Do we
send it? Is, do we put that in the report and, and make it pardon in stone?
or do we just make it happen? So at this point, uh, I'd rather just,
just make it happen in reality and, and move forward. This is all one
of the bridge. Just admit that it's been a screw up entirely on this whole thing.
let's put it on the water of the bridge and let's make it right. That's, that's where I would like to go. Thank
you very much. Council member barnacle. Yeah,
let would say I'm largely in, uh, in council member, she's camp on this with a few,
um, modifications. Um, so on r three
and r five on the, uh, independent hearing officers and the victim participation and
hearings, um, I would say not be implemented
is written. Um, we say we're gonna review title ix. I'd like us to review
what other cities in sonoma county are doing and bring that back for the council. When
we are looking at the, the next, uh, the rfp, um,
response or approving the contract whenever, like, whenever the next time that we're
gonna, whether it's receiving the audit or whatever, um, I
want to actually look at what the other cities are doing on that front and, um,
edit this to, to say that that's what we're gonna do, is we're gonna look at the other cities and
the council will direct staff to, um, take action. You
know, following that. Um,
the, uh, when we bring forward
the, um, the reports, uh, and, and the rfp,
uh, actually, when we bring forward the contract, there's gonna a few things that I'm gonna be interested in
the, the sla for records, uh, furnishing that's,
you know, absolutely a non-starter or important one. Um,
uh, the, I want like a really, really clear complaints process
and escalation process that, uh, does not
create a cycle of sending someone who made a complaint back to the, the, the
organization that they're complaining about. Um,
uh, um,
the, you know, the, and then the reporting. I think the,
our, our police department, they do an annual report and they come in front of us and
they report out on their metrics. Um, I'm fine with quarterly reporting. We can
receive and file those on consent and people can ask him questions about him or what have
you. But annually, I think I want to have like one time where someone comes in and
sits in front of the council and, and presents it in the same way that our police department does.
um, and then I, I note that, you know, a lot of the right metrics are in there, rabies vaccines,
licensing, things like that. Um, I wanna make sure that we have trends in
there of like, how are they doing relative to last year in the same way that,
you know, we have that with our police department too, and that it's not just data with a point
in time, but we're actually giving a context and we're looking at improvement in quality service.
um, so,
um, a few things. I think this, this
grand jury report rehashes a lot of the things we already knew, which is that we
didn't do a good job on contract oversight on this front. And the, and the, and the,
and nvas was not performing adequately. I take responsibility for
not demanding, um, doing my oversight job in a more forceful way.
um, but I'll note that we submitted our grand jury response on september 8th,
so it wasn't a year after we submitted the grand jury response. It was actually four months.
and, um, when they started their new, like, you know,
investigation into us. So, um, we were like, there was a
lot of work that was underway that we were, we were taking to try and,
you know, um, bringing on the
consultant to try and fix the operation is the interim step of
like, trying to make it better. Um, at the same time, when we had, when
we brought the thing forward in march, we had a draft rfp with, uh, you
know, that we were issuing. So it wasn't like we were asleep at the wheel. And I,
um, I take issue with, uh, that piece of this report
more than anything is that, um, we were absolutely looking to replace
them, um, and, uh, and
. Um, and that's, that's the piece that I take most issue with.
uh, in terms of additional things, I think I'd like to add,
align that we made requests for budget re, uh, budget increases
and things like that to nbas into the financial oversight, um, response.
and, um, you know, I I,
I definitely agree with the, like the qualitative critiques
of the city and, um, and
the, and am bass, uh, and our, and our role in this. Um, but
I think also the legal responses that we're provi, like,
I think there's, like, they're capturing the, the issues properly
and we're responding with the legal facts. And those are two separate things where we're
just sort of talking past each other in this report that, um, kind
of, that's what the grand jury process sort of like lends itself to that. It's, and it's
not very satisfying. Um, but I would say overall, like
we're, I think we're taking a lot of action to address
a lot of these different things. And, um, I'm definitely with council member sheb that that's like where
I wanna focus is getting a new provider in and making sure that we have all the right, um,
the right, uh, checks and, and whatnot in place.
council member di carley, um, before I jump into my comments,
I have a question for the city attorney. Based on some of the public comment,
is it possible to run the clock out on the statute of limitations for an
open dog bite case?
um, do you mean, do you mean, is it possible for it to run barring
the case, or is it possible to extend it? Well, I'm saying if I understood
correctly, they said her case was closed, you know, it was too,
too far back, couldn't do anything about it. Um, so I mean,
can you just allow the clock to run out on something like that and be like, didn't happen,
you know, we're done. Well, when a statute of limitations runs the,
I mean, it, it can have the effect of barring prosecution of,
of what other, whatever alleged violation occurred. What, what
I don't know is factually, if, if that was the case or if that determination was
based on evidence or some other consideration, I don't know. I don't
have that information, and I don't know if any of us do, but we, we
can see to get it. Is that something we can provide more direct support to,
um, to try and help an investigation in that case, given that
there was, you know, years of nothing happening.
so maybe a little more detail on this
without going too down in the weeds, but, um, staff's
understanding of this case is that the, the original
incident occurred and the dog was declared a potentially
dangerous dog, which is the level one of the different distinctions in our code.
uh, the owner was served with a provisional abatement order, which
is how the process works, specifying that they had to comply
with certain regulations, putting a sign up, muzzling their dog, making sure their dog's leash
get licensed, uh, s spared or neutered, et cetera.
that order went into effect. It's, uh, still in effect,
I believe, 'cause there's usually a three year, um, uh,
runtime on those regulations. So
there were a couple of other, so subsequent to that, there
were a couple of other incidents that occurred not, uh, bite incidents,
but other witness reports of seeing the dog, uh, lunging
or d you know, d different, different behaviors. And, and I think
the, um, the assumption or the conclusion
may have been that, or actually let me step back. The
question may have been were those behaviors that were witnessed,
uh, and reported to I believe nbas at the time, were those
sufficient to then upgrade the dog's designation from potentially
dangerous to dangerous, which is the next level of designation comes with
more restrictions, et cetera. Uh, I, I don't think
that that happened in terms of finalizing any conclusions
one way or the other. But the assumption would be if the upgrade
to dangerous did not occur, that the animal control officer
at the time did not feel that those rose to that level when nb
or excuse me, when marin humane came on board, they went back and looked
at the case again, just to look, look through the record. Uh, and
essentially my understanding is the same conclusion occurred that
the, um, the evidence that was presented by those witnesses was
not sufficient to upgrade to a dangerous dog. Uh, and so that's
why there was no further action taken. However, and this is
really important, the potentially dangerous designation is still in effect.
and one thing that marin humane has been hitting, um,
quite, um, quite significantly in the three to four months that they've been on board,
is ensuring that those items in the abatement order that must be, uh,
a abided by, by the dog owner are in fact being,
uh, being abided. So that's been the follow-up that they have been working
on and trying to get in contact with the dog owner to make sure that everything is
kosher on that front. So that's an ongoing process. And in
speaking with them, anecdotally, their usual process is that every, at least every
six months during that three year period, so essentially six touch points
during the abatement orders, uh, effect, they're gonna be following
back up with that owner to make sure that all of those provisions are in fact in place.
so if marin humane were continuing, and I know they're currently our interim
provider, they would continue to do those follow ups until the three year mark and the
end of that abatement. So that's more of the history and background in
terms of the investigation and the potentially dangerous designation
on that case. Mm-hmm . Thank you. And so,
you know, I feel like it would help public trust a lot in this, in, in
this whole process. If, you know, staff, were able to,
in cooperation with marin humane, go back and look at a lot of these,
you know, cases that are unresolved and to try to give special attention
to those, to resolve them, um, you know, so that those
people can move on and with their lives and, and not have to
continue to worry about these things or think about them and give them some kind of
peace with it. So that said, um,
I don't, I don't see the response to the grand jury as, as sufficient.
it has a tone throughout the whole report that I feel lacks
a lot of accountability. Um, it's,
you know, and, and that's, that's what I feel like my job is, is, you
know, to hold people accountable for things, you know, no
matter the circumstances. Um, I mean, this is,
this is eight years, you know, this isn't like two weeks or a day
or a mistake here, there, this is eight years of,
you know, oversight that didn't work, a contract that didn't
work, a contractor that didn't work, and then staff that,
you know, allowed this to happen for years. And
a lot of, a lot of what's referenced in the response to the grand jury is, well,
counsel made this decision on march 2nd. And it, you know, a lot of that centers around that.
but again, there were years prior of not a whole lot done.
and, you know, I can't help but wonder when that, when that came to us in
march, that was all right around the time of everything that was going
on up in clear lake. So I wonder if things would've continued as usual,
had, had that not happened. And so,
you know, there's, um, I dunno, I've had a lot to say
about this, and I may come in bits and pieces here, but, um,
I just, uh, I, I just don't find it acceptable to just simply move forward
and say it's water under the bridge. I think, I think we need
to go back and look at what happened, you know, because
the public wants accountability. They've, they've lost trust over this.
and I think we have to go back and analyze what went wrong
and make sure that there is accountability. And
so, you know, I think, I think we should, should almost have a
special meeting over that, you know, not even just an agenda item, but we, we
need to really look at that and see what happened in that time. Because it doesn't add
up, it doesn't make sense. And every,
everything around it is nobody can lay their hands on or really get into,
you know, and everything's spoken about broadly and generally. So I think we should really be going
back and having a hard look at things. Again, I don't think this
response is satisfactory. Um,
I think, you know, we should be now if, if, if it were still nbas,
we'd be looking at, we should probably be looking at oversight almost every week.
but being that it's marine humane, snow humane, whoever it's gonna be in the future,
you know, probably a monthly report
doesn't make as much sense because these are more trusted organizations,
but we should absolutely still have oversight and reporting
that's done. You know, it's, it's, um, it's necessary.
and again, the city has a lot of work to do in rebuilding public trust on this process.
everything has to be as transparent as possible.
so let me see if anything else.
no, I, I think that's, I think I've mostly said it all, so,
but yeah, I I'm not going to, I'm not gonna support this, uh,
response to the grand jury. Thank you. Um, I
just, I, I think councilman di carly touched on something, um, um, very
valuable in, in that, um, we have the potentially dangerous designation
and it should remain current, is, I believe what we were saying. Um,
what other conditions are in the potential? I mean, does it require continuous licensing,
continuing continuous, uh, vaccinations, things like that. And it,
is it within our ability now to look at that should be an open,
um, potentially dangerous designation and
ask for compliance on that. You know, ask the owner, is the dog still in license?
is whatever else is in that conditions? Is, is that a path we can follow?
you're talking on that specific case, on one specific case that is what, uh, is currently,
uh, happening. Yes. So marine humane is contacting the dog owner,
and they have, uh, to make sure that they're licensed. I, I know, uh, certain conditions
have already been complied with, like the dog was neutered, uh, things like that.
but, uh, the signs have been out at least to, to the, the, the last report that I got, the,
uh, beware of dog signs. And there are a variety of other things that we need to ensure
a hundred percent compliance, and that's what they're working on. Absolutely. Um,
I, I think it would be warranted to provide, um, the, uh, victim some
of the data and, and, uh, uh, or in cc to counsel,
you know, the status of that, and especially if it's still open that it
isn't a fully compliant, uh, designation at this time. So that's
suggestion. We can find an update. Sure. Thank you, council member. Now,
um, yes, um, I definitely agree that edits are needed
in our response and take, um, more of the criticism
and vow never to repeat it and show that
we're putting, um, new policies in place. Um,
bringing back animal services committee, I really like to see a staff report.
I know it's more staff time and more expenses, but I think it's
worth it to the community and, um, regaining their
public trust. Um, thank you to the public that stayed this late. And on the zoom,
um, to make, uh, comments. Um,
ironically, uh, three years ago this last
weekend, there, there was news in the argus
courier and online social media that north bay animal services
had gone to the city of stockton and helped their animal services
out. And they even gave a shout out to the city of petaluma
for lending, um, support for them to do it.
so when our complaints started coming, um,
just a year later, we give it back to staff,
and that's what council does when we get a complaint from the community. It's usually
you cc'd with numerous names, and we usually
send it back to staff. We need to have more accountability when
these, um, um, complaints come in so that
this doesn't happen in the future. And we need to, um,
like, thank you council member barnacle for saying we do, and council
memberships. We, we do have a lot to, um,
improve and we promise to improve, but we need to redraft the,
the responses to show that commitment and add
and edit with the council's, um, recommendations this evening and take
more ownership to the errors that were pointed out in the grand jury's,
um, findings. So those are my comments. Thank
you, council member quint. Yeah.
as I, as I kind of think back and, uh, you know,
with my time on council and how this issue has unfolded,
uh, you know, when I first got here, there was, um, uh,
you know, there was dialogue around, um, you
know, some, some concerns that
were largely contributed by
mbas being underfunded, and
the city stepping in and having dialogue with mbas around
how can we support you better, um, and that
that really, you know, didn't take shape and, and, and, and start to correct
any of the concerns. And then the grand jury report came out,
and then we, if I'm remembering this correctly, uh,
the city, um, in, in our attempt to
comply with the grand jury report, hired the consultant. The consultant
was trying to work with bas. And,
uh, and, and, and, and at that point, my recollection is that,
um, you know, there were growing concerns because of nbas
being uncooperative and working with a consultant. And
that really started to,
um, you know, paint a picture that we need to do something
and we need to, um, you know, submit an rfp. There was
discussion around that and, um, and, and, and shortly
after, um, the, the clear lake thing sort of, you know, blew
up. Am I remembering that correctly?
so, uh, you know, I don't feel like the city was
asleep at the wheel. I feel like we were working to
try to do something, and then we ultimately made the decision
to, uh, when, when there was, uh, when it was evident
that there was little to no cooperation, um, to make the change.
um, and, um,
you know, and, and, you know, and I'm concerned that this grand
jury report came out like, right as
you know, in the middle of us trying to respond to the
first grand jury report. Um, so I don't see, you
know, as I, you know, reflect on, on the
responses that staff gave us tonight. I don't,
I can't look at any one of those responses and say that's a bad
response. So, um, I do think, I mean, I agree
with, um, council member barel and, and the
suggestions that he had. Um, so I'm, you know, on the same page with him
and, and council member shrives, um, you know, I think we, you know,
we're on a path to making this better and we're gonna continue to make it better.
um, and so I support the,
the reply. Thank you. Um, council member cater
thompson, you wanna weigh in? Sure.
um, you know, my big concern with all of this is really the,
um, the dog bites and it was not handled well by nbas.
it's gone on for a long time, and I really have concerns when we're talking about dogs of
potential dangerous versus dangerous.
um, I just think if there's a dangerous dog, we have to take action and
we can't. Um, I just don't understand why we have all these different steps,
um, to get from potentially dangerous to dangerous. Um,
I wanna just talk about clear lake, real clear. I mean, the town of clear lake had
responsibility also, but it seems as though all of this is on the
city of petaluma and clear lake had an absolute responsibility
to understand what was happening in their shelter. Um,
I,
I do agree with what council member, um, barnacle
his comments, um, but I think we also need to move
on and start making decisions of who's gonna be the next
shelter, um, who's gonna take over the shelter. You know, I
go back to when this nbas got the contract
in the first place. It was a political move. It was a mess on both sides.
we should have gone with marin humane at the time, but the council didn't. And I don't
believe anybody on this council was there at the time. I know I was at those meetings
though I chose not to participate 'cause I didn't like the way the politics
was happening. And I feel like there's politics being played
here by just this constant blame, blame, blame.
and I think we need to, um, stop the blaming and actually
take the action, move forward with, um, a new shelter
provider and, and move forward because it's really about
the animals. And this is becoming too political and
people are forgetting that the animals are the most important. Um,
I do wanna just mention that we do know that there was a leak in the grand jury
well before the report came out. And I know the grand jury watches
this, and I want them to know that that happened and that
they should be, you know, they should address that within the grand jury itself.
um, I agree with council
member quint, that we do need to move on
and, and I think this is about the animals and we need to get the personalities
out of this, and we need to make sure monitor, um,
and we need to get reports back on where we're at,
um, with getting a new provider. And
that's where I want to go is moving forward. It's about the animals
and keep the politics out of it, and let's just move forward. Um,
you know, the report, I mean, we could do some tweaks in the report, but at this point
it's due at a certain timeframe. And what's
the ramifications if the report is not, um, submitted in time,
I'd like to know that. Um, and that's
about it. Looking forward to a new provider and moving on, um, to protect
the animals in our community. Thank you. Okay. Um,
um, I am gonna ask staff to weigh in and say, what's the ramification to not, uh, complying
with the timeline?
um, I'm, I'm gonna look that up. I, I, I didn't contemplate
that. We wouldn't . Okay. Well you do, you go ahead with that part. We'll continue
with our part. I'll open it up while you're deliberating. Thanks. Okay. Um, council
member shri. Okay. Now, after hearing the other, uh, council members
and, um, the direction that we're sort of going in, uh, looks like the
rule may need to be a little bit of a rewrite, but if we can just do a few tweaks here and there.
um, yeah. The change in tone as it was mentioned. Yep.
I'm gonna come back to that issue, uh, in a heartbeat. Can I ask it, hold that question or,
uh, comment for a second? Sure. Thank you. So, um,
as the council member who hasn't weighed in yet, um, I'm gonna weigh in. Okay.
and, um, so, um, number one, um,
uh, I appreciate all, um, all the actions the staff has taken
to, to get us from where we were, to where we were, where we are. Um,
I think, uh, more actions are going super necessary as we get the new
provider. And that's what you're indicating in the grand jury report and in the
rfp that we've been discussing here, which we have to sort out
before marin leaves on us. Um, you know, we need to sort out the
contract with the new, um, and, uh, when things go bad,
as they have, change is needed. And you expect
to take a lot of, um, criticism, significant criticism,
uh, for the performance of things. I think the grand jury had many good ideas.
I don't like that they, the do the, the, the way the state rules
are written for grand juries, that they force you to say, I disagree rather than agree. So,
uh, it looks like there's more disagreement, but I think on the whole, there's
more agreement, uh, than many good ideas. Um, we,
I went, uh, I've been over and toured, um, the, the facilities, uh, since
in, in the last months. And, and, um, I see a lot of improvements. I
know the, the thing you mentioned about some properties that are still there that are owned by other parties,
we have a little lot of work to get to the finish line. Uh, but there's so
many less animals there. And, and the, the cacophony,
uh, is, is gone. The, uh, uh, you know, and, and,
and that's horrible for animals to have that kind of, um, uh,
you know, terror going on there. So I'm appreciating, um,
what's been done by dropping north bay and, and getting
competent help in. Um, I am very concerned that, um,
we are now gonna have a, a significant cost. I, I can't identify where
the cost is gonna come from yet, but, um, but
apparently we weren't paying the real cost of doing animal service previously.
and, and we're headed into that. Um, the jpa
super critical, every, every city up here has a different, um, set of
rules for how you treat animals. And, and it doesn't work like that in marin. All the cities
have the same set of animal rules, and that would
be what a jpa could, could, uh, bring for us.
um, I appreciate with, um, uh, council member sri's original
point that, that, um, there's lots we need
to do, but we need to do that, we need to get on with doing the new thing.
well, and, and that's kind of my bottom line is, you
know, we better, we need to do better and we will. Um,
so those, those are my thoughts on this. Uh, mr. Attorney, do you have,
uh, the answer yet? Not, not quite yet, but, okay.
uh, so will shortly, the, um, next thing I want to tackle is
I did hear, um, two council members and two and two and a half maybe,
um, before I cut you off there, um, that suggested, um,
some, um, editing of the document. Um, I,
I did hear, um, broad support for, um, completing the
document this evening. So I'm gonna kind of ask, can the changes that we wish
to have, um, be done in the document tonight?
and since you haven't had a chance to express them, we'll go back to council member shrives now.
okay. So I was gonna go through, um, hopefully some, um, smaller changes that
could be done, uh, hopefully fairly quickly. Here's what I would like to see. There is just, um, there's
like one statement in there that, uh, basically hit me hard and going, okay,
um, it was a bit derogatory. The general, the jury counsel, uh,
the, the grand jury doesn't understand how the, how the charter works. Can I, um,
can I ask for a page reference? Um, I, I forget exactly where, where it
appeared. It had to do with the administration can charter, I asked then
also the staff, do we have a red line version of this is available to us?
we don't, but I think the comment that council member schibs is referring to is
an f1 in the response to f1. Yeah. I, I think, yeah.
yeah. So, um, that's, that's where like sets a tone and I think was was
it starts, was that at the very beginning of, of one of the, um, uh, statements of we
disagree and that was sort of like ted. Um, so that was a bit of a, a
negative, um, feedback to, to the, to the jury, grand jury.
oh, you don't really understand. So that is what, that's the type of tone that was set
and just like, it, it just hurt me a little bit when seeing that. So in
that, in the, uh, we agree in part or we agree in
those agreement statements, um, what is it we agree to, because
it doesn't say, what are we agreeing to agree in part, well, what is it we're agreeing to? So I
wanna see we agree that yes, your statement of this is correct, I want
some admittance. Yes, we agree. Why do we agreeing to that?
that should not be a vague oh, in part we agree in part, but now we are gonna disagree
in detail. So the agreements need to be what do we agree with particularly
detail. That's one thing. I'm, I I'm suggesting that you want editing that
can't be done tonight. Tonight. That might be, well, if, if it could be done,
if, if they understand it, I, I'd release 'em to just kinda work on it and then have review
it. And can I say that you'll then any, any, uh, suggestion you make, you'll leave
the discretion of staff and and pass the resolutionary? Yeah. Yes. I would be willing to
do that, um, with a final reading by the mayor to, to, to just double check
that it was done. Sure. Equity. So this is f1 you're talking about, which
the finding is, apart from I proving the annual budget statement of goals and mergers, the council
has largely delegated its governing authorities to the city manager.
this allows the city manager to take actions that are not authorized. Um,
that's the one you're talking about? Yeah. Well, and, and then the, the response is the city wholly
disagrees, uh, not where we wholly disagree, it's where we say
we agree or we agree in part. So this is not finding one is not the, the
one you're worried about. No, I'm trying to figure out, it's whatever we, we say we agree
or we agree in part I would like a a statement of what we
agree. I understand. What are we agreeing to when before we disagree
in part, so a a little bit more definitiveness, so
little bit. So, so I, I got, I mean, if we're going to, if we're gonna
ask staff to do this offline with an approval, and I a little bit of
specificity. Okay. So, and, and, and not your clarity, but staff's
clarity of what your thought is, right. And the rest of the council understanding what your thought
is. So first the staff, you think you can do that? Yeah. So, uh, you
know, overall I would say on the findings, we did try to do exactly
what, what you're saying, council memberships, we, we could go back through and make it a little more
explicit. I'm just looking at one, like finding f six that talks about there's
no state or county authority that exists for periodic inspection of animal shelters.
this enabled nbas to contract for services with multiple cities, et cetera, et
cetera. So then the response is the city disagrees. In part, the very next
paragraph starts, the city agrees that there is no comprehensive state
or county system, et cetera. And the city also agrees that regional coordination
could improve consistency, efficiency, compliance, and animal welfare
outcomes. So again, we tried to state where we agreed and
then the rest is why or what we disagreed with. But I'm happy to
go back through if we need to do some cleanup to make it very explicit when
the points of agreement, uh, versus the points of disagreement. Right. Okay.
so I think we've got that. Is there another point you wanna make? Uh, yes. Uh, one more. Um,
you made several recommendations tonight in, in the, in the powerpoint,
but I don't remember reading some of those in the actual report. Could,
and, and at the very end, even instead of stating, uh,
f1 and r six and responding directly, um, either in
this report or in a report back to us, I would like to see
a full report. Here's what we were, this is the fix. I would see a whole list
of this is our fix. So I'm gonna suggest that in the, so I'm not sure if we need
it in this report, but I, I would like to see that fairly soon. I would, I would like to suggest
the rfp is coming to us fairly soon. I think, uh, marin's, uh, contract
expires end of august will, and the cover memo can have exactly
the lessons learned that you're referencing. Yes, yes. So I'd be, I'd be happy with
that. Uh, but I wanna make it clear that we want to see the, the, the rfp list
in detail, the things that, that have been missed and what we need to fix and
see. So we, we submitted the rfp and it's already been responded to,
but the contract will show, actually we've listed that in
the contract provisions for the new provider of what we are gonna do. Oh, that's great.
good. Yeah. And, and, and, but, uh, councilman now also suggested,
I think there's two or three of us thinking the same, that maybe we need to have a, a committee
that actually oversees or looks at it, not just their own board of directors, but
we need to have a little bit more citizen oversight. So, so that the only, that's not part of the grand
jury, but, um, I guess it's a, something that could be brought in with the staff
report at, um, correct. So we need to make that fix also.
I, I would call, it may not be in the report, but somewhere at, we have to hear back, just trying to get clear what we're
yes. In this document. I, I think for the responses, what
I'm trying to get to is in general, but, uh, councilman
quint said the responses were appropriate for the legal language that's required
to win this type of report. Indeed, we, we, we sort of like yes, agree to all that,
but uh, but we, we need to focus on the fix. Okay. So that
point, that's where I'm going over to the city attorney, so there's no penalty
if, if we're not timely. 'cause the, remember the grand and I just was doing,
I looked at the statute, did a little bit more research, um, remember the grand
jury's just a recommending and, uh, I'm sorry, and, and investigative
and re and recommending body. It's not an enforcing body. Okay. So there's
no thank you. Explicit penalty. And the other thing I wanted to just note is this,
um, the structure of our responses that brian referred to
in, in f six, they're all that way. They all say
use the prescribed language and they say city agrees that
city does not agree that city agrees that the city does not agree that. So
we really did use that structure mm-hmm . Um, so I, I, if, if you
look at it, I think that's, that's how that was intended to work, to be clear actually
that um, right. To distinguish even, even, you know, working
consistent with the, it's their language that leads with disagree. Right,
right. Sets its own. So, but, but as to the question about what happens if we don't
file it timely. Okay. Thank you. And that replies to, uh, council member
cater thompson's question. So we're set on that front and council member.
I'm, I'm sorry, I should clarify one other thing. And that's the legal implication.
the practical implication is that it's, it, it would not reflect
well in the city if we failed to be time. No, it would not, would it? Yeah. Thank
you. Right. Okay. Let's not do that. Council member now you had,
well only it's for the city attorney. What if we bring it back to the august 3rd?
that still gives us time. Isn't august 9th the deadline
for the response? It wouldn't give us enough time to quickly
incorporate all this. Where I was going with this is if there's nothing that
requires, um, substantive change, and we
have the sentiment on the council that we're gonna resolve tonight, and I think
we could do a straw poll on, on that. I, when I was listening, we have the
broad support for moving on and getting on tonight, then,
um, we wouldn't need to come back, even though, even though there was no penalty to taking
it out september. And we have to, we have notes on council member
barnacles suggested edits that at least, I dunno
if I'm, I'm working my way across. Yeah. Okay. So, um, and council member, now
you had a, a, you said errors. Was there a specific error you needed to
comment on? Um,
oh gosh. Um, the,
I think it was on the, the, um, dog bite. I don't know what finding that
was. There was definitely errors made
by the city that, um, prevented
it from, I mean, it became a, a situation.
so you, you don't mean errors in the report, you mean errors in
practice and what we did as a city protecting our citizens from
dog bites and future dog bites. But I don't remember what finding it was.
um, it's just how the formal complaints are made. And, and
that should be the kinds of things that were clearing up in the rfp and correct.
and in the metrics that we're using. Correct. Okay. No, added to the resolution. So policy policies going forward
would, um, prevent that from happening again. A
lot of that's really, really important. I mean, we all, we get, I think the,
uh, council member, I, I think the change that we made
with canceling the contract with mbas and going with,
with, um, marin and, and, uh,
sonoma. I mean, they have, they already have the procedures
in place for capturing dog bite reports. And,
and, uh, so I, to me, I think that's a, an
issue that's been remedied. So I'm, I'm hearing no modification of
the reply to the grand jury. No. I just wanted it to be really
emphasized in the, in the response that we are doing this with
future policies and future. I'm sorry.
you do want a statement in no, I was just saying , I was backing
up staff in their findings. Yes. Okay. Um,
I'm sorry about that. It's okay. Okay. It's late. Um, and then the other, um,
editorial, uh, offering was from councilor barnacle.
yeah. Page eight. Um, there's a paragraph on page eight where
we, uh, sort of dive into,
um, it is the second from the bottom. So
it says, the agreement also required nbas to notify the city if additional funding or
other contractor related issues arose that could affect performance.
I think right after that sentence, you could add a sentence that says, the city also made
multiple, uh, inquiries to nbas, um, about
the need for additional funding. Um, and then I
think that would play, that would be fine there. And council member barla also mentioned that
regarding the, uh, review of our regulations, we should indicate that we're
reviewing those of neighboring jurisdictions. Yeah. So on
the r three and r five, I don't see, I think there's gonna need to be more
considerable rewrites than we have time for tonight. I'm comfortable with you
taking my guidance, but I would say that instead of the city will review title
ix procedures, I would say the city will review title ix procedures as well as
the practices of other sonoma county cities and return to council
with, um, an analysis. And I would put
that for, there's, uh, the response, the first sentence
says, will not be implemented 'cause not warranted, not reasonable. I would say
this, like, this recommendation may be implemented,
um, following a review of, uh,
of title ix procedures and, um, other city
practices from, uh, sonoma county cities. And I would
just make that the, and then I'm comfortable with everything following that as long as that's the first
sentence. Um, yeah, I think, uh, sorry. Council member, the, the issue with
changing the first sentence is that, that first sentence is the, the mandated
phrasing. It, it literally says you, if you're going to say it will not
be implemented, it, it's because it is not warranted or not reasonable. But I
think your edits on the second part of that sentence are valid, and we can absolutely make
those okay. To reflect what the city is actually going to be working on in the future. Great.
yeah. Okay. Do, that's, that's fine. And then on r five,
similarly there's the first sentence, uh, page number please. Uh, 16.
um, the first response sec sentence says, the recommendation will
not be implemented because it is not warranted or, or is not reasonable. I would say,
um, related procedures from other sonoma county cities will
be pre, will be reviewed and ana, like a summary of analysis
and potential changes will be presented to council. Um, so
given that thank you staff is clear on that, is that an acceptable,
I'm, I'm straw polling the council right now. If anyone has a problem with
basically allowing that to pass through tonight, to vote the resolution and,
and have staff make that fix behind the scenes, um,
if you have a problem with it, raise your hand. Seeing no hands looking
even into the zoom, um, then that's gonna
be an element that'll say, as amended in our, in our motion. We'll have to say
as amended. Okay. So, um, do you want, do you want
me to make a motion or you got amendments to, or you, if we're, if we're set.
I think, I think we're set. And it's, it's is motion time. Are are you council member
shri, are you saying, uh, to pass it tonight? Uh, as a pass through or
we, it's gonna come back to us in the rewritten document on the third. No, this is the pass.
this is, yeah. I'm asking if you're comfortable, uh, having
the, that amendment that was proposed and discussed there, um,
a verbal direction and we passed the, um, we passed the
resolution with the modifications suggested at counsel.
the alternative is we wait for them to make the modifications. Say it again. And I don't,
I don't want to, I don't wanna bring being made. And then will
you do the final reviewer? I'm so, um, so question. So que yeah. Uh,
'cause otherwise, um, at this point, uh, I would like, I want to go through it
in, in, uh, council member barnacles,
uh, went through it and, and make any suggestions. I did not do the fine tooth
comb. Now I wanna do the fine tooth comb. So, uh, I
wanna go through it in detail now and, and, and actually, uh, pick
out sentence by sentence. 'cause that's what's needed. Uh, so I wanna go through an edit.
I'm famous for red line to, to a larger extent that can be accommodated. Yeah.
I may do a larger edit. Now, since we're doing this,
uh, can I call for a vote if that, that's
what making a motion means. Yes. Yep. Are you, are you I that barnico made a
motion? I have not yet. Oh. Then I would like to
make a motion that we, uh, that
we accept it, that we pass it, uh, with the suggested
edits that, uh, council member offered
friendly amendment for council member schibs is amendments as well.
okay. So we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second.
second by barnacle. Um, and are
we clear on what the,
could you quickly recap what the modifications are, just kind of for the record?
um, to, uh, the, the, the edits we have
are to, uh, mention that, um,
that we requested budgets from npas. That's in what section do you remember? Janet?
um, that's an f five. Thank you. And also, um,
to note that our review of the, the, the review of the regulations
will include, um, comparisons with those of the other sonoma county
cities for analysis and report back to council.
and those are in, uh, recommendations three and five.
and then I also, I thought, uh, council member roves, at the beginning of
your comments, you had mentioned potentially softening the language in f1
regarding the misunderstanding of the, I would
say that there's a few references to not understanding the
municipal code. And I, if I'm characterizing you like that was the, the
sort of thing that made you bristle. So yeah, look for references to the grand
jury, not understanding the ref municipal code would be maybe a, a
more sweeping way than just f1. 'cause there's multiple instances where we
say that. Yes. Yes. And also restating, um, what
we are gonna do versus we disagree. Yes. And, and what
we agree with. Yeah. Yeah. To make it clear. And
I would also maybe if we, if we could, uh, council member
quint, um, direct the mayor to have a final review before submission,
if you would accept that oh yeah. Since you're signing that, he's gotta sign it. So yeah, I
would expect that . Okay. So I'm, um,
we have a motion, um, and we have a second
and we're ready for roll call. Vote. Thank you. Barnacle. Aye.
gator thompson to carly.
aye. Can't sweep this under the rug and move on some a no.
now yes. Quint, yes.
shrives, uh, no. Mcdonald? Yes.
motion carries with two no votes. Thank you very much. Uh,
thank you everybody who stayed. Um, we're looking, all looking forward
to a new and better day for animal services in petaluma.
and with that, we come to the end of the meeting and I'd like to remind everyone we're
adjourning in, uh, the memory of bernie album. So thank you very much
everybody. Good night.