Sonoma Coast MAC Meeting | 5.19.21

one more minute as we try to figure out why the stream isn't displaying properly then we'll make sure nobody's missing anything again my apologies no we will wait so okay sounds good oh and supervisor hopkins has made it oh perfect so um picking uh were we picking up with the uh approval of agenda is that right that's correct so we're approving then the agenda with no changes correct okay okay so i'll do my roll call here jay scott yes marty yes paul yes abby yes wanda yes liz yes brooks yes and kathy okay we'll move on to the statement of any conflicts of interest uh are there any uh conflicts of interest that need to be brought up okay i'll take that as a no um is there any correspondence scott on none okay and we'll i'll hand it over to you scott all right we're on to the consent calendar um approval of the march uh meeting minutes one one little um yes thing is i noticed the contact information about the um uh banned the kashaya banned homo indians it um said bank of como promo indians so i just wanted to clarify it that they don't have a bank oh okay thanks for catching that okay um and then i had one uh kathy okay on page eight when we're talking about um in my comment i talked about the the large coyotes that were across the road it's spelled c-o-y-o-t-e-s coyotes not it was just a yeah that's it second line yeah okay got it any other um corrections okay well include the band instead of bank and we'll we'll uh correct coyotes and i'll go through and we'll um i'll do a roll call here to approve or che hi okay scott hi marty i paul yes abby hi wanda i liz i brooks yes and kathy hi okay thank you uh the lower river mack and myself and elise um together and tried to uh come up with a uh updated land use committee process uh and uh that was sent out in the packet uh and were are there any comments or and and then we'll approve that brooks um scott i i didn't really see any difference from what we had um were working by last um well the prior meetings so um what what is the difference yeah are there any major differences at least you want to run through that or i can touch on it whichever you prefer the the main difference is that there will now be a standing committee and a standing committee is subject to the brown act rules so there will be a monthly standing committee that will have uh an open meeting with notes and and those that standing committee will review every single permit application that comes through our office that pertains to the coast and then pick out the ones that seem um worthy of review um so for example if you're gonna if you're gonna put up a tough shed in your backyard we don't really want to review that but if there is something for a development of a hotel on the coast we do want to review that so the standing committee will be looking at those and bringing them up um so that's really the biggest change right and we're going to have two two um people on the committee which gives us the flexibility of adding people that um may want to be on the committee for a particular permit evaluation that it's in their neighborhood or so we have flexibility to we have a base of two with the flexibility to expand before based on the event or uh landing or um permit i also wanted to state that in the definition of land use it includes events right thank you anything else yes scott it's paul yes i'm assuming that permit sonoma is fully uh on board with this process uh elise again she's shaking her head yes i thought i was muted yeah this is this will be just fine okay any other comments questions okay cindy great well another roll call vote here jay hi scott hi marty hi paul yes abby hi wanda did we i know lana was having mic problems no it's me i oh there she is okay liz hi hi happy hi okay great thank you okay on to a public comment on matters not listed on the agenda comment from the public regarding items not on the agenda but related to the sonoma coast mac business pursuant to the brown act the sonoma coast map cannot consider items consider issues or take action on any request during this comic period due to time constraints comments will be limited to two minutes uh and there'll be a timer that will come on at about 30 seconds left and um any um public comment are there any uh hands raised jason we currently do not have any hands raised nope we have one hand raised by c higgins see yes please go ahead see hi good evening everyone um i'll just take a moment of your time i wanted to provide you with three quick updates in regards to happenings here on the coast um number one at the last meeting i had talked about the u.s fish and wildlife mouse eradication project at the fairlawn islands um they were or are planning to use 1.5 metric tons of a very toxic chemical toxic chemical and so that was i had come on to let people know that that was going to be before the coastal commission as a special hearing but i wanted to come back to say that that hearing has been delayed it was scheduled first in may then move to june and now the earliest it could come back is september but i do advise people to stay vigilant with this issue i think it was sort of the general opposition and those of you that wrote letters of concern to the coastal commission um they were effective but i suggest that you know we we keep an eye on it and you can get a lot of news at save the fairlawns.org on all the updates with that the other thing i wanted to let folks know is that tomorrow the greater fairlawns national marine sanctuary is having their sanctuary advisory council meeting that's an all-day meeting but you can find their agenda online they will be providing a very detailed update on the american challenger uh the boat 100 gross ton boat with the 17 oil tanks that grounded just south here of bodega bay and so i will also be presenting a resolution on a way to deal more effectively with grounded vessels along the sonoma coast so you can access that tomorrow and then also we have the lcp workshop next week on the 25th and i hope you guys touch on that a little bit too in front of the board of supervisors so that's the uh coastal news thank you thank you see you here any other hands up yes we have a hand raised by larry needleman okay larry please larry go ahead and unmute yourself well larry has lowered his hand okay anyone else that um we have tom and prudie tucker okay tom and prudy go ahead and unmute yourself okay do you hear me now yes i would like to add on to c's uh lcp request to address the rodenticide being passed out in the fair lines i'd also like to see if the lcp address roundup a glycophosphate based weed killer that all of our or most of our gardeners used in our communities it's been identified as a carcinogen i'd like to see the lcp ban it that's my opinion thank you okay thank you jason anyone else we do not have any comments on facebook and no hands are raised in the attendees okay thank you for commenting those that did moving on uh regular calendar items um supervisor linda hopkins is here i understand and i believe she has some opening comments and and also she'll be swearing in our new alternate brian lubitz i hope i spell or pronounce your name right alternate for bodega bay thank you for um joining linda you so much and maybe we can um sort of first handle brian swearing in so brian if you want to go ahead and unmute and it'll be pretty simple i'll try to make sure i pause enough just repeat after me with one exception i will say i state your name state your name don't say state your name so aside from that it's abusive so um go ahead and raise your right hand i state your name i brian lewis do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support and defend that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california and the constitution in the state of california against all enemies thanks to all enemies foreign and domestic born and domestic that i will bear true faith and allegiance that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california and the constitution of the state of california did i take this obligation freely did i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion or purpose of evasion and that i will well and faithfully and that i will and faithfully discharge the duties discharge the duties upon which i am about to enter upon which i'm about to edit it congratulations and welcome to the municipal advisory council thank you so much for being part of this process welcome brian thank you so um with that i do have just a few things that i wanted to let everyone know about um i will be saving my remarks on fire services funding um to when i'll be presenting with assistant chief hertzberg on the item um as well as with mark bramfitt later on in the agenda but i do want everyone to know and the local coastal plan as you are all aware is moving forward in the process and in fact um it will be coming before the board of supervisors for another update next tuesday at 1 30 p.m so i'd

encourage everyone to participate in that and the good news is that it is a time certain so hopefully you won't have to be waiting around for too long and i want you to know that in terms of what i've been hearing from constituents and from coastal constituents that i plan to raise as critical issues number one and sort of vacation rentals and how quickly we can move forward with actual kind of regulations around vacation rentals as opposed to putting that on a future to-do list for the local coastal plan because i'm increasingly hearing particularly from the north coast section that folks would like to see some kind of reasonable um regulations implemented also the issue of pesticides as a public commenter just recently raised if there are ways that we can kind of put some controls in there and then thirdly and which will also come up of course later in the agenda is the issue of emergency services out along the coast and it feels as though those three issues are not adequately addressed in the draft that we have to date that is my major coastal update so um i will have more to say later um but i also actually before i hand it back to our chair just want to say thank you so much to sheba and claudia for joining us this evening and just a brief introduction um sheba person whitley our fearless director of the economic development board she has really come in with a desire to really kind of change the way that the edb operates and to really bring a focus on equity bring a focus on communities that have really struggled particularly to recover post-disaster and so i'm excited for her to have the opportunity to share a little bit about that work today um but with that i would hand it back to you chair farmer unless there are any questions are there any questions well we'll have time later to ask questions during the um okay um moving on uh we're um claudia vecchio uh from sonoma county tourism and sheba person whitley of the economic development board are here to talk about what they do and rel and we're going to look at it relative to the trans transient occupancy tax so first claudia if you have the floor is yours thank you i i have a presentation i'm not sure if i could share my screen uh i think you can is that something you're able to do yourself no it might be okay there we are can you all say that yes excellent so i i appreciate the time tonight to talk a little bit about what sonoma county tourism is doing for on behalf of the coastal area of sonoma county it's difficult for us to parse out transit occupancy tax specifically as it relates to this area um but i will talk about what we sort of do with with the tot and how the tot spending differs from the business improvement area and then um kind of the the issues and the uh sort of the opportunities that we see out on the coast i will tell you and you probably know this but i came into sonoma county uh about four years ago but i've been coming to sonoma county for decades because my father uh and his wife lisa lived at lived in the harbor and so really bodega bay was where i fell in love with sonoma county so it's a it really it means a lot to me and to what we are able to share with the world frankly now let me see if i can advance this so a little background you probably again all know this but uh sonoma county tour tourism was established in 2005 um and per rtot agreement with the county we as the contractor is designated in the county's advertising program policy as a recipient of transient occupancy tax for advertising and promotional efforts so uh our whole sort of reason for being is to create um advertising and it's i mean that has evolved tremendously since 2005 but and promotional efforts for the county of sonoma we're funded with two sources and that is through the transient occupancy tax of which at the moment we get 1.25 points the first nine points of t.o.t collected in unincorporated sonoma county i'll talk about this difference here in a second and then we also have a business improvement area and that is the lodging receipts of which we get two percent of of lodging receipts and participating municipalities so that's unincorporated sonoma county as as well as municipalities that are that do not include healsburg and the town of sonoma so per legislation that those dollars must benefit those participants of that area so really is the the beneficiaries are the hotels and the lodging um but they often call themselves investors in that part of our funding so kind of going back to tot the the importance of tot for us because we don't have that sort of mandated legislation about how those dollars are spent this allows us to promote non-lodging entities such as restaurants retail i mean the outfitters and those who are providing tours and the tour operators so that's a that's an important differentiation and why tot for sonoma county tourism is so critical because it does give us that broader ability to really elevate the extraordinary experiences that we have certainly in the culinary some of the great tours and other things that the experiences that people can have while they're in sonoma county just both of these tax bases and funding sources are generated only as a result of overnight lodging so transit occupancy tax doesn't just happen when visitors come it only happens as a result of overnight lodging so our charge is always to promote those who stay in a hotel or in an overnight accommodation uh because that's the only way that this that this generate this these these funds are generated that's the best way for us to help support the county and that's really what our what our mission is is to be a supportive entity for uh sonoma county we are in fact a revenue generating organization lots of times it's sort of seen is you know they're we're given this um these funds but in fact we give back funds so for every dollar invested in tourism marketing 166 comes back to sonoma county and visitor spending and 6.90

comes back in taxes so you know do we pride ourselves on this ability and capacity to generate revenue for for the county and uh you know when we have uh years which thankfully we haven't but when we have impacts like we had with coronavirus and certainly some of the big fires and our capacity to generate funds is limited that's um that's not we don't that's not a good thing for us we are really this capacity to generate taxes is important so we do on behalf of of the coastal area we are we are very mindful of the need to protect and preserve this incredibly fragile environment but we also are very mindful of the need to promote the businesses out there so it's a constant balancing act and again something we are working really hard to be sure we are mindful of that balance so we started many of you were probably part of this let's talk tourism initiative kind of back four years ago when we went around the county because we knew there was um some there was an increasing level of consumer and visitor you know resident unrest about how about the impacts of tourism on the county and very much understandable but back in 2016 and 2017 we went around the county for this let's talk tourism piece wanted to get people's input and understand what the issues really are and those issues have in many ways exacerbated since that time but we certainly did begin to understand what the issues are and have incorporated them in our strategic planning ever since we moved to a destination stewardship organization in 2019 and what that really means means all these things that are here but we move from being a numbers driven organization to a quality and revenue driven organization so instead of just you know touting that the number of tourists came to sonoma county keep their numbers keep growing that is no longer a viable or really interesting number for us because those are not the right visitors those are not those who can will respect and and protect our natural environment along with enjoying all that sonoma county has to offer so we've had starts and stops with getting that off the ground certainly uh but that is still the foundation for sonoma county tourism and really the mantra by which we are incorporating some new programming certainly for this summer throughout the pandemic we were very mindful of continuing to engage by people in the discussion around sonoma county and about uh midway through we launched the safe travels promise program which many of you may have seen but it really started that conversation about when you come into sonoma county travel safely be mindful and certainly follow the protocols i so so we are just continuing that stewardship ideology around how we promote sonoma county post-pandemic and starting this summer we are in a partnership with the regional parks um and a national organization called leave no trace leave no trace has seven principles that they tout and really communicate in a number of different ways and it is really about mitigating those issues that tourists who are behaving badly leave behind and so it's the trash it's that you know that the floats it's um the way they interact with neighbors and the respect they have for people's um neighborhoods and and the fact that they are coming in and leaving again and that that just sort of overall um respect for the destination and we think it's really important that we along with the parks talk about this and make sure that people um understand the importance uh we're working through what those initiatives are going to look like but right now we do know there will be a summer radio campaign and in that campaign it will be all about travel safely if you're coming to the coast if you're coming to the russian river um you know here's here's how you travel responsibly and and so that's that continues to be a really important piece of what what we do along with that really in the idea of protecting and preserving we did the tourism cares um to a coastal cleanup out in uh out in the in your area and it was a big one people people were very enthusiastic about having an opportunity to clean up the coast it's been a couple of years since we did that um but it's uh it's an important piece tourism cares continues to be an important piece of what we do in terms of giving back to the community um you probably heard we did the board of directors did approve 75 000 partial funding for the bodega bay for an ambulance out there with your emergency management service and very you know we are committed to helping them um we also have a new accredited hospitality professional program some of you may have been ctas but that's evolving and we have a accredited hospitality professional program and visitor safety including coastal safety how to be mindful of our natural resources that's all part of our fundamental training that these what we're calling ahp um participants will be doing but we also know we have this balance and uh your businesses the lodging retail restaurants they need visitors they need um people to be in those entities generating dollars so to do that we um we have a paid media campaign that we have kicked off for the summer will continue to kick off and it's it's really talking about our brand sonoma county life opens up which we couldn't be luckier to have that brand right now but it it does invite people to come out to sonoma county i will tell you we don't at the moment have a coastal image but that was by request that we're not driving people out to the coast for general visitation i mean it's just because we're really trying to focus on the protect the area we know people are going to come out to the coast um so our focus is protection um promoting is um uh we're working for the kind of the rest of sonoma county but certainly keeping your businesses in mind so we will convey um if a hotel has a special or i have bert's wonderful gender by the sea i if that has something that we want to convey we certainly will support the businesses like that but we do want to be very mindful of the overarching invitation off the coast we do continue to do a number of trips with the media and influencers and people who talk about sonoma county again they know that the responsible travel message has to be part of what they do um they continue with social media posts uh the coastal entities certainly the mega bay lodge and um you know the tides wonderful place for incentive travel so for business executives and others to bring you know their their best sales people or other kinds of incentive trips uh we continue to work those leads and to work on talking about those properties out there in uh to drive business in that way so it's a i you know i i just really want and i hope that i've been able to convey that we are trying to do that balance between protecting your area and promoting it and keeping the businesses vibrant and alive and uh you know continuing to survive in a very very difficult time for them we know that the coast has an extraordinary appeal for our entire entire group of travelers for locals weekenders international travelers i mean this is just such a gem for sonoma county um that we spend our tot dollars certainly um on both protecting and preserving the area uh we work closely with the bodega bay chamber on various initiatives and we'll continue to do that um and we listen to them when they say please keep people you know don't promote uh bodega bay uh but we do promote the businesses because those are our partners and we want to be very mindful of that and you really lastly we want to understand your issues we want to find solutions we want to advocate on your behalf mitigate tourism impacts we want to be solutions based and we want to work with all of you to make sure that we aren't doing things or saying things or inviting people in and having them negatively impact your area there there's messaging we can do there's various ways that we can do that call out that does help to protect the area i haven't talked about like voluntourism and other kinds of things that we could we could do more of um but that's sort of yet to come as we continue down this protect and preserve road so that's what i have for you and i hope that kind of gives you an idea of how we spend our dollars and my cat's about to jump up here i hope he's not in the picture um but i if you haven't obviously i'm happy to answer any questions i will tell you that sonoma county tourism when we went into the pandemic our budget was about eight million dollars and that's that's a kind of a mid-range budget for um for international uh destinations like ours uh we it came down to about 5.2 during the pandemic and we think it's going to go up to about 6.5 if we're forecasting next year of of that about 2 million is is t.o.t and the rest comes through the business improvement area so i'm happy to answer a bunch of questions as well but um so that's sonoma county tourism and our efforts as they relate to the coast thank you claudia we'll hold questions until after shiva talks that's fine um so our screen back thank you um um please the floor is yours sure thank you so much and thank you for having me shiva person whitley executive director of the economic development board i do not have a formal presentation so i really just wanted to share with all of you a little bit about what we do because i know some people have heard of edb and some people haven't i will start by saying that i know that there were some questions about the budget so um of our budget for edb um 1.7 i'm sorry let me rephrase

1 million 77 000 of the proposed new budget will come from general fund and grant fund sources 1.624 will come from tot and we will have um in our proposed budget 632 000 approximately thereabout that will fund creative sonoma because i know some people are familiar with creative sonoma they've heard of that organization that is actually a division within edb so i wanted to provide some context in terms of where our funding comes from so again that's around 1 million 77 000 that's going to come from general fund and grant sources and 1.6 that comes from tot and um certainly we want to do everything we can to always be good stewards of that funding and so then it always moves into the next question well what do you do and long story short we are here to support business um we do a tremendous amount of business assistance in our department and that is at every phase of business so if you're an entrepreneur your startup if you're an existing business who is trying to expand if there um are opportunities to really look at growth or if a business is at risk of leaving and we want to retain them we want to make sure we can keep them here we do all of that it is everything from providing market research to understanding your competitive advantages um to understanding you know what are the high growth opportunities talent attraction and workforce is a huge part of that as well access to capital whether that be grants loans all and everything in between we do that in our department we also oftentimes get questions about well what are those key industries who are you focusing on and so i had a great conversation with supervisor hopkins in the past couple of weeks about you know it's this really is this mix it is those traditional industries like ag and tourism and hospitality um but also we look at data and what that's showing us about the potential for some of those high growth industries and so that's healthcare that's construction that's craft beverage um supporting the creative economy supporting film um we also do that in our department and of course broadband is a huge part of what we do in our department as well and so we we try to make sure that we are responsive and that we are providing a suite of services that are timely and relevant again to support our businesses at every phase um and and also being acutely aware that there are times just like the past you know 14 15 months where you have to adjust and you have to not only do all those traditional things because we are actually still getting a ton of calls for startup assistance people want help um people are trying to figure out what's their next move some people um are looking at this opportunity wait wait a minute i've been displaced i don't know what's going to happen with the future maybe they were laid off maybe the traditional industry that they had worked in and had been had a successful career in for 20 years and maybe that's going away and they're trying to figure out their next move and so we have been doing a lot of that but of course ben have been very responsive to covet 19 and being acutely aware of some of these specific assistants that businesses really needed in order to help them survive covet we were thankful that the border supervisors did provide us with um two and a half million dollars worth of stabilization grant funding that we were able to make available for the most vulnerable and the hardest hit eighty percent of those grant recipients were low to moderate income because we recognized that that's who needed it the most and unfortunately there was never going to be enough to go around but we knew that we needed to be able to again be responsive we've heard over and over again about language access particularly for some of our monolingual or a bilingual population making sure that people had access especially around cove because everything was happening so rapidly and it was changing so quickly so making sure that everything that we were doing was available in english and spanish so that those businesses and those entrepreneurs were were able to have access to that same timely relevant information um we did a lot uh early in covet around understanding all of their different shelter and place orders which you could do which you couldn't do i am so excited that we are moving rapidly towards june 15th it couldn't get here fast enough we we recognize that this has been an unprecedented time for our small business community they've been decimated quite frankly and you know knowing what they've been through you know being able to open knowing that there's probably gonna still be some mitigation you know at least in the very beginning um but people need to be able to you know get back to business and um there's so many who have lost so much and we are you know acutely aware of that and we're here to continue to be advocates for those most impacted um and i know i mentioned workforce earlier we are hearing a lot of probably the same thing that you're hearing challenges around workforce and what does that look like and so we are having those difficult conversations with our local employers um to say well how do we you know be really thoughtful about bringing people back into the workforce we from our perspective i don't think it's the case that people don't want to work it's that people need a livable wage and i'm very aware that for some of the businesses that can be a challenge but we also know that people want to come back to work but they um have some of them have struggled for a very very long time and so it's you know one of those situations from our perspective we do what we can to continue to advocate for businesses but also bringing the information to them in a very thoughtful tactful way to say okay okay here are some of the challenges our workforce is having and how do we think about this in a more comprehensive way so that we bring people back in in a situation where they they're better off than they were before covet happened because again so many have been through so much and so an example of that is we do have a job board sonoma county connections that we've created that's specifically around workforce opportunities we do actually have a workforce development specialist that really again is working both sides of that from the employee and the employer side understanding you know where the opportunities are i'm doing a lot of customized training pulling down federal funding making that federal making sure that our local employers know that federal funding is available for customized training to get their workforce back in full force so that they can continue to operate um to a greater capacity we've recently partnered with the russian river chamber on a job fair we do that type of thing a lot i think it's one of those situations we're such a small department we only have 14 full-time employees so we're very very small and in order to really get to capacity we have to partner quite a bit we work with chambers we work with the rotaries we work with community-based organizations and we actually go out all over the county and if we are doing something we want to make sure it's accessible we've partnered with so many organizations all over the county to make sure that if we can set up a local assistance center they let us come in and utilize their um their office space so that people can you know for example access a grant application to be able to apply for it we've we've done a lot of that type of thing and we will continue to do that type of work um in addition i think a lot of people have heard of some of our events so restaurant week is done by our department state of the county spirit of sonoma those types of things have been done by our department and sometimes people don't necessarily always affiliate them with the county but our department is the one that does those events and the past year has been quite you know stressful right trying to figure out how to still support the community um and do those events virtually we will be doing interestingly enough spirit of sonoma this friday but we're doing it at a park um so we're so thankful to our partner burt whitaker at the parks for allowing us to do that and it's going to be outdoors and instead of having this big event it's going to be individual so all the awardees show up at a a lot of time they'll get their you know opportunity to have their picture taken and receive their award and so we've been um trying to do lots of different things in that way doing a lot of virtual events a lot of webinars and making sure that you know again that whatever we're doing is timely is relevant it meets the need you know promoting business um of course safely i always have to say that because we're still in covid promoting that people are doing things safely and um you know supporting our small business that is what we do and i guess without with that i'll you know stop talking and if anyone has any specific questions i think mr farmer was saying we'll wrap that up um at the end but you know certainly we are here to you know support business and and be an advocate particularly for small business because oftentimes sometimes they don't have anyone um speaking on their behalf or they don't have the resources and so those are the ones that we are here to to really be the champions for thank you yeah thank you uh i want to acknowledge the economic development board's role in rural broadband it's been an ongoing um issue and uh your depart your efforts are very much appreciated on that front so let's have our um questions now for the two of you and uh let's first um go through the council members and see if there's any questions or comments um uh any council members like i see brooks brooks do you have any questions for either not really a question but um hi claudia i have a suggestion maybe for you if it would ever work out i just thought it for your advertising that would you know be great if say you could donate a few trash bins or maybe a porta potty decorate them and and say they're from um sonoma county tourism or something like that that would really help bodega bay and i know jenner a lot too if we could add to um some of the needs we have out here and one other thing we would really like to get started is um a shuttle bus we could get a shuttle bus going around and perhaps you could decorate that and um advertise that it is sonoma tourist um department that's a great idea yeah we were thinking about uh incentivizing people so having trash bags because you know people behavior has changed if they get incentivized to change their behavior so we were thinking about you know having trash bags available for people and if they would turn in the trash bags all filled with you know with their trash we would give them coupons or something like that so i'm i'm with the on the trash bag situation and we'll we'll definitely think about that and it's great yeah yeah anyway i thought some somehow if if you could use it with the advertising um funds instead of actually putting you know ads in magazines and newspapers or something have it here locally so the people who do come here know who is you know supporting the area and um striving to um you know have a have a better area safer great thank you thanks uh kathy do you have any questions or comments um but one comment that i have since is that we have 30 miles of state parks so the county parks and the county tourism board it appears like you're you know trying to deal with this issue but i don't know if it's possible to get two government entities to work together because state parks is a huge the overuse of state parks is also a huge issue here on the coast all the way up to guala to the river you know so i can't i try to figure out something that we can do and i know they're underfunded blah blah blah so that's just a general comment that i see after living out here for as many years as i have yeah and plus i loved your dad's editorials he was awesome that's hilarious thank you he did he did mince words did he no um we've tried with state parks too we were on a call with um with mita friedman from the regional parks and um state parks and they did a lot of explaining of why they can't they can't they can't so we will we will keep on them but um you know the trash is the big issue and the and the um porta potties or whatever they have their restrooms open i guess but the trash is the big issue so yeah we'll keep at them but i um i can't make any promises right now thank you we'll try we'll keep trying uh liz do you have any comments or questions um i think covered the one i was concerned about was the uh shuttle of getting people out and and having a few less cars on the road and then i was just thinking maybe if you know peop people were also um maybe did more advertising about being on the coast on the off season yeah you know if they you know they could come out now when it's nice and windy and and maybe not i don't know but um i think once they um you know once they get out i think everybody's gotten a taste of you know some kind of freedom you know the biggest freedom you know and you hate to you know have people you know tell people you can't come out here because i live here or something and you're bugging me or whatever but i love to do that but but you know it'd be nice if we could kind of stagger it somehow you know if there were more incentives to come out you know i mean i don't know exactly where you could go with this as far as you know i could see maybe people have certain vacations they want to come out during the summer but i mean the fall and things are beautiful also but um you know the winter can be fun if they stay you know off off the beaches but um you know i think if we just see if there's some kind of control of all this you know you know group of people you know um converging on us all together so yeah you're 100 right and our um our our mandate and rightfully so is to promote sonoma county november through april we have had so many starts and stops with buyers and everything that we had to kind of generate that we're off our off our track so once we get back on the track it will be that um november through april is when we're going to really invite people to come to sonoma county there's a lot to do there's a lot of reasons to be here during that time then april through the summer is going to be responsible travel that's going to be our key and then when we move into the fall um it's going to we're going to have to watch out for our wildfire season so you know we're we really have to plan on some of these things that we know we're going to be an annual basis but that november through april time period is is 100 right on that that is uh going to be our our key time so okay but during this time when we know people are going to come we're going to you know really encourage responsibility but um and the shuttle is a great idea we'll we can see how we can work on that too yeah transit um yeah okay moving on um jay did you have any question or comment i did not and um thank you and marty did you want to chime in um no i appreciate the presentations um which are telling me more about what exists but i don't really have anything to add thank you okay thanks paul thank you scott um claudia i i want to thank you for making the distinction of um tourists versus sort of visitors to the beaches and you know and it's very clear in your presentation that you're trying to promote the restaurants and the hotels and that type of tourism um and and that's very different than and probably a lot smaller than just people who come out to the beaches there in bodega bay um so uh i think always you know even if the mac holds on to that distinction it's gonna help us understand you know what the problems are and the solutions are without destroying business at the same time thank you that's a critical point and that really when i got here it was evident that um the marketing that had been done was so bay area out to sacramento focused that i mean it doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that that's a weekend travelers i mean that's where they come they come on a friday leave on sunday so really our push has been much more in the direct flight markets until covet had but and we started to see some really good traction but we'll get back on that as soon as we possibly can those people will stay longer and and use not only the time of year but make up that midweek and you know sort of that other time that's a little softer in the market so as a critical point and you know people are going to come out to the coast anyway and but those who are really coveted travelers who are going to behave responsibly going to spend more money going going to respect this they're going to come from further away so it's it's really important that we not spend money much money on our on this this close in feeder market but that we're we're reaching further out and we do that purposefully to get the right kind of traveler thank you thank you abby do you have some comment or question um i know i didn't have anything to add i'm just thank you for the presentations okay thank you and wanda um yeah i was wondering if um there's any way that you could be uh promoting uh donations to our local vfds volunteer fire departments emergency services along the coast there is a program that's starting to gain traction that's going to do just that so i don't really have a lot of detail on it but you know certainly uh that became you know that was loud and clear during um this this past period that we were all focused on emergency services so there is a program um that's there's a program up in oregon called the forever fund forever oregon and did that same kind of thing that crowdsourcing of funding for a particular program in that case it was sustainability program but we're looking at that same thing and i think that that will get kicked off here for the summer so there's still more to come on that but others are thinking the same thing you are okay thank you and um along the lines of wanda mentioned um there's an tension between um bringing more tourists and and funding um dealing with the tourists that come and especially uh emergency services are heavily impacted by uh visitors and so there's that that tension of um where tot funds go and um that just needs to be put into the mix yeah yeah there's no there's no question um and it's i that 75 000 that went for the ambulance with the bodega bay uh fire protection was a part of that but um and where we wanted i mean if there is conversation happening around that or any way that we can be part of that please let us know because we we we don't want to be at arm's length for that conversation because if if there's some way that visitors are impacting our county we need to be part of this solution so um you know that's our that's our commitment yeah i appreciate that uh linda did you want to comment at this point is linda there um no i mean i think i'll i'll go when we talk about the fire services and the potential funding sources all right uh let's open it up to public comment jason are there any hands raised we currently don't have any hands raised we do have um we have a few questions in the q a um i believe claudia's typing answers to two of them right now um we have one though is um and this may be for sheila where are past annual reports available yes um sonoma edb.org we've moved away from those traditional ones where we would print them because we'd made a commitment two years ago to be more sustainable so no more printed materials but everything is available in a pdf format and um on our landing page on our website we also have where we track our assistance by district so in case anyone is un you know curious about well what do they do and where do they do it and how is that shake out in terms of the staff um work and allocation of you know staff time so we also have all of that information on our website as well and now we do have one hand raised in the gallery it's uh tom and prudie tucker okay tom go ahead and unmute yourself yes i i don't know where to start but uh first of all i'd like to thank linda linda hopkins for the marijuana issue being postponed for another year for review and i appreciated her uh maya kappa you might say but you don't hear very much anymore and uh for claudia i'm curious as to the budget for safety with the tots versus what is spent for sonoma magazine which i know marketing and i know how expensive it is and seventy five thousand dollars for our emergency services is a patent because one vehicle to transport our injured is a lot more than 75 000 uh as far as uh leaving no trace and uh protecting our environment claudia thank you for understanding that but how do you see our short-term vacation rentals compliance with those issues and i can tell you from observations of a gated fence across from us that has no outside access to a trail to the beach being crawled under through and over with no respect and it really bothers me to watch this happen and i'd also like to mention the consolidation of bodega bay fire department i really think that they are over burdened they've evacuated two people from my immediate neighborhood my street uh in in the last month they've responded to broken limbs on the beach kayakers that have been blown into shore with their kayaks and hypothermia situations we'll be covering some of this uh in the next segment maybe we can i could go on and on thank you very much okay thank you all right um we do have um chair we do have another hand raised okay um uh avira lyra go ahead and unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes yeah okay great um lyra phillipini here vice president of waves of compassion foundation and ex-officio on the board for the bodega bay area chamber of commerce i just want to say thank you to claudia for being here to answer all these questions and i can attest to that she has been so responsive and helpful when we do have too many tourists out here they make sure to stop their ads on facebook and when we you know are in the in the slow season she really tries to make sure that we do have um you know more more attention to getting the tourists out here during the period of time that our businesses are you know really struggling and from you know just ongoing multiple years of watching that happen one of the things that we've come up with as like a possible solution and i don't know if it could ever be something that sonoma county tourism bureau as a separate contracted um entity outside of the actual you know local government would be able to help with but something that you know like the the lighted signs on highway 12 or 101 you know coming through either sebastopol or petaluma to indicate that like there's 40 minutes to an hour of stopped traffic um in the summer on the busiest weekends something like that might actually be really helpful to you know mitigate how incredibly busy it is out here looks like i have an unstable internet connection i hope you guys can hear me thank you very much yeah that on that signage question that's being worked on um elise has been working with caltrans successfully i believe great uh linda had their hand raised yeah actually through the chair if i might provide an update i actually was in a meeting earlier today with elise and leo and senator mcguire and a whole host of caltrans staff including the fourth district director um and we were talking about this very thing and so we have identified potential existing sign locations new signs are extraordinarily expensive so and would also take time in terms of permitting and right-of-way encroachment permits and those kinds of things so in the short term we are looking at existing signs along 101 the goal would be to get the county the regional parks and transportation and public works department the ability to directly program those signs with messages about coastal and river beaches being full and and so it is something that we are aggressively pursuing and the next step is to bring regional parks and transportation and public works staff into the contact with the appropriate caltrans death to actually work out how a memorandum of agreement for this kind of work could be undertaken but the goal is to basically co-opt those signs that already exist and use them for exactly this messaging and to let folks know during peak seasons that the beaches are full the parking lots are full so we'll come up with some standard stock messages and be able to update that in real time hopefully we're still working our way through the caltrans process but we're making good progress and elise has been tireless on this issue working with staff as well yeah it's it's uh real promising uh jason is is that are their hands raised still or are we we do not have any questions on facebook or any hands raised in the gallery okay claudia and sheba i want to thank you both for coming and spending this time with us it's been very informative and i i look forward to working on the solutions with you claudia on some of the things you suggested about [Music] funding finding other funding campaigns would be very interesting to follow up with you on uh thank you you're welcome to stay and you're welcome to um finish your evening with your family i'm staying okay you're the rest of this thank you thank you so much for having us thank you absolutely thank you so moving on uh fire department consolidation uh mark bramfitt from lafco local agency formation commission uh will speak to this and i i believe linda will uh join in as well so mark the flourishers thank you chair farmer and members of the council real pleasure to be with you this evening i tend to go blisteringly fast but try to be succinct and leave time for you to direct me with questions i intend to give you the briefest of introductions to lafco so you understand what lafco is and then i want to talk about bodega bay fire protection district and fort ross um there are other things that we could talk about but i think that's primarily what i was asked to review with you um the uh every state every county in the state has a lafco a local agency formation commission ours is made up of six elected officials that's two county supervisors two city council members two board members from special districts and we also have a public member um we are fully independent we are authorized under state law interestingly we are not overseen by the state um some people would have the mis impression that we are a county agency um we do contract with the county for services unlike sheba who has a an immense staff of 14 people um lafco has a staff an authorized staff of four we've been operating on three and one person is leaving in two weeks so i'm a little frazzled i apologize for that um what does lafco do well despite the name saying it's a local agency formation commission we rarely if ever form new agencies or incorporate new cities um since the incorporation of the town of windsor which was in the last decade the only agency that we have formed is north sonoma coast fire protection district so hi marty marty is on the board of that district that's the only district only local agency that we have formed in this century the other kinds of activities we do occasionally we do dissolutions of districts that are either not functioning or not providing adequate services or for whatever reason need to be shut down the best example i would we've done three of those in my tenure the last six years on the one that you might be aware of was the dissolution of the palm drive healthcare district um sort of our bread and butter is annexations oftentimes these are single parcels or small groups of parcels that are being annexed into a city or special district we do those sort of bread and butter but they're not very controversial the only one that you might have heard of was the annexation of the roseland community into the city of santa rosa which happened after 20 years of discussion but i'm happy to have had it actually happen under my watch a couple of years ago um what we spend a lot of our time on and i spend a lot of my time on is reorganizations and that is you know should we meld um local agencies together so that they provide more effective and efficient services to their community which is sort of the overarching charter for lafco is to try and ensure that our local agencies are providing effective and efficient services i'm going to bring up an example it's not directly under the coastal area but it's one that i think we're pretty proud of and represents the kind of win-win that everyone would really like to see as of two weeks ago the forestville fire protection district was dissolved and then subsequently annexed into the sonoma county fire district the forestville board wanted to do this as did the board at sonoma county fire i think it's a win-win the residents in forest bill are going to see a slightly higher parcel tax it goes typically from 115 a year to 160 250 so some people were not happy about seeing their taxes go up that taxation however is really undergirding um the continued provision of services in forestville um sonoma county fire brings superior leadership administration and management skills to the table the employees of forestville are now part of a larger agency so they have more options for um promotion and then lastly and this is crucial this is i think the really key win for the folks in forestville sonoma county fire intends to staff the engine that comes out of forest bill the fire station in forceville with a paramedic so in the past forestville was only providing emt service emergency medical technicians they're great they offer superior sort of first aid service but now the residents of forestville have a paramedic on the engine whereas before they were waiting for an ambulance to come out of guerneville so um improved service really i think in general a win-win and those are the kinds of things we're working for so um what i now want to do is talk about the more challenging situations that we do have within the territory that you're representing so i'm going to start with bodega bay and then i'm going to talk about fort ross um bodega bay fire um one of the things that lafco does is sort of study districts and we did a study of all of the fire and emergency medical service agencies in west county a pretty long and exhaustive study and i would urge you to hit our website and review that and check on the agency that serves you directly and see what it says um in that process um we we did determine that bodega bay faces sort of some fundamental financial challenges despite having one of the highest partial taxes certainly the highest partial tax in sonoma county if not the highest parcel tax in the state the residents of bodega bay are paying 525 dollars a year in parcel taxes but agave is hugely challenged by tourism impacts and you've discussed that in just the two prior presentations the issue for bodega bay is they really don't have enough money to provide the level of service that the community warrants especially with that tourist impact um and now the district is really challenged and has lost some redundancy within the department um just imagine this i'm going to be very brief about this and deputy chief hertzberg is on the phone from bodega bay and he can explain it further the challenge for bodega bay is they have an ambulance somebody breaks their leg on the beach they pick them up it takes a 45 minute drive to santa rosa to get to a hospital sometime to get that patient admitted and 45 minutes back you just need a secondary crew whether it doesn't have an ambulance but at least you have a paramedic on an engine who can deal with the next potential victim that happens in that window and that's really necessary and they're losing that backup capability we did as part of the municipal service review process sort of paint a road map where bodega bay would be incorporated with the sonoma county fire sonoma county fire took over russian river so they're now running the ambulance out of guernville they were willing to take bodega bay as well if and only if a funding mechanism could somehow be arranged so so uh lafco approved the reorganization they said yes bodega bay should go into sonoma county fire they approved it with a condition that a suitable financial agreement could be reached at the time it appeared imminent that the county might be able to come up with a funding arrangement that would support bodega bay so the commission approved it and then we went through what we call a protest proceeding which is we allow the residents of bodega bay to say no commission time out this was the wrong decision so they could either if there was enough protest they could decay a commission's decision or if there was some protest we would actually go to a vote of the residents in the district there was very little protest so the citizens of bodega bay fire protection district thought that this was a good idea unfortunately the financial agreement did not come to pass so the reorganization was cancelled the commission again conditioned approval on appropriate financing and that didn't happen i will come back to that at the very end about what's happening around financing i know supervisor hopkins has probably way more information than i do and by the way supervisor hopkins does serve on lafco so she has perspective from both the county and from lafco let me briefly talk about fort ross fort ross is a volunteer fire company they're actually serving a portion of a district that falls under the county all of the volunteer fire companies are really par are are serving almost as contractors for an area that the county owns for fire protection service um chief janassi i know he's on the phone chief is desperately trying to retire um he calls me every once in a while and says mark please help us um fort ross as many of the volunteer fire companies as well as many of our districts relies on volunteers exclusively and that is becoming increasingly difficult um it's not just that people are getting older but that is true um just the number of people who are willing to do the work to be a volunteer fire fighter the amount of training that you have to do that is just in steep decline across the county it's affecting not just the volunteer fire companies but again many of our fire protection districts do not rely on paid people they rely almost exclusively on volunteers that is becoming untenable and it's becoming untenable in fort ross now i think we have a general road map at least i have a general road map in my head that says the upper portion of fort ross can be served by timber cove i have some concerns about the ongoing viability of timber cove they're doing a great job but i think they're going to face these same challenges down the road and i don't know what the solution is for them um the lower portion needs to go with casadaro or maybe casuadero and monorio needs to be folded into sonoma county fire these questions about where these reorganizations ought to happen you can imagine our fraud with a lot of concern from the districts and from the volunteer fire companies i don't like to call it political but it is um these agencies are often the heart of their community the firehouse is the effective city hall and i appreciate that but i think we all need to come to some solutions that will enable these services to continue i said i would come back to the funding issue i've been in contact quite a bit with the county over the last three weeks literally they are trying to prepare a road map around financing for the for the volunteer fire company territories including fort ross figuring out how we can how they can provide enough funding so that some of the districts can take over these territories so i'm pleased that that impetus which i think it kind of stalled appears to be moving um forward a little bit more there's discussions around using tot money to try and supplement some of these situations i will say that the county is not just looking at the areas that they're responsible for which we call county service area 40. those are some of these volunteer companies they are also very much looking for a solution for bodega bay um lafco's role is interesting in that we're supposed to figure out the roadmap of where the best fits are so we absolutely need to see the financing come together but we're really supposed to balance the service needs of communities and the best agencies that are able to do that and what the commission is facing now we did a lot of reorganizations we went from well over 40 organizations that are providing fire and ems service in the county over 40. we're now in the

low 30s there's some sense we need outside of the cities to get down to five or six and many counties in the state have gone down to one so you're either in the city getting city

2021-05-22 19:35

Other news