A. The proceeds of the tax imposed pursuant to this chapter shall be placed in the city’s general fund and available for expenditure for any and all governmental purposes, including such purposes as: maintaining and preventing cuts to firefighting equipment/fire engines and adequate twenty-four-hour staffing; ensuring public health, wildfire, natural disaster emergency preparedness and maintaining 911 emergency response times to ensure first responders can respond quickly to calls for services; continuing homeless prevention programs and community partnerships while ensuring our local businesses, public areas, and neighborhoods are safe, stable, and secure for everyone; maintaining properly trained community based public safety officers, community outreach programs, and ensuring adequate twenty-four-hour staffing; keeping public areas safe and clean; supporting local business and job retention through recovery; enhancing street maintenance, repaving, and pothole repair on Petaluma’s three hundred ninety-six miles of streets; addressing existing road hazards and improving road safety for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians, including maintaining safe routes to schools; and improving conditions of local roads by better addressing one hundred forty-one million dollars in repairs backlog and preventing road ratings from further decreasing per the standard Pavement Condition Index, among other purposes. The proceeds of the tax imposed pursuant to this chapter and expenditures using such proceeds shall be monitored and proceeds tracked separately from other city tax receipts.

B. The city council shall appoint an independent citizen oversight committee consisting of five members to review and report on the use of proceeds of the tax imposed pursuant to this chapter. The committee members shall be city residents who pay the tax imposed pursuant to this chapter and who are not employees or elected officials of the city or members of any other city body. The city will provide administrative support necessary for the oversight committee to carry out its functions.

C. The city’s finance director will oversee preparation of biannual reports for submission to the oversight committee and publication on the city’s website on all tax proceeds collected pursuant to this chapter and use of the proceeds. The citizen oversight committee will meet biannually to review and comment on the reports. The meetings and records of the oversight committee will be open to the public in accordance with Article 1, Section 3, subdivision (b) of the California Constitution, and the requirements of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California Government Code Section 54950 and following, and the California Public Records Act, California Government Code Section 6250 and following, as amended from time to time.