The golf club at the heart of the eastern Santa Rosa retirement community is planning to construct a new 2.5-acre lake in the middle of its driving range as part of a major water conservation project. The new 9-foot-deep lake, modern irrigation system and installation of drought-tolerant turf are expected to reduce the water demand of the semiprivate club’s two 18-hole courses by a third — 40 million gallons per year. But it will be the city’s ratepayers, not the golfers, who will be picking up the $2.8 million tab for the project.

On a narrow stretch of Burbank Avenue in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood, an impressive $28 million elementary school has been under construction since last spring. But plans to open the school in the fall are in jeopardy.

Santa Rosa City Schools took a first step Wednesday toward putting a tax measure before voters in November. While stopping short of agreeing to pay for a consultant to poll voters, the school board asked for more information on how a survey would be conducted and how to proceed with defining what the district would do with more money from a bond measure or parcel tax.

Facing $8.3 million in potential cuts in the upcoming school year, Santa Rosa City Schools officials are considering putting a tax measure before voters in November. “We are at a point of almost desperation,” school board member Tad Wakefield said. Would you pay more to fund local schools?

Santa Rosa’s legal bills continue to rise in the lawsuit brought by a former police captain. The City Council on Tuesday approved an additional $100,000 to fight the federal lawsuit brought by Jamie Mitchel, who was fired in 2008. Mitchel claims he was unfairly dismissed, his privacy rights were violated and he was discriminated against because he is a white man.

A proposed $750 fine for people who abuse disabled parking privileges isn’t punishment enough for the Santa Rosa City Council. The council requested a steeper fine for those caught using forged, altered or expired disabled parking placards. “I have no sympathy for anybody who abuses this law,” said Councilman Jake Ours.

Like a terminally ill patient preparing for the inevitable, Santa Rosa’s redevelopment agency finished getting its affairs in order Monday. The governing board of the 54-year-old agency, responsible for everything from fighting blight to funding downtown bicycle races, held what was almost certainly its final meeting before its Feb. 1 dissolution.

More than 50 parents of Doyle Park Elementary School students filled cafeteria tables Monday and listed the reasons they want the Santa Rosa school district to consider saving their small campus. Declining enrollment and test scores led Santa Rosa school board members to propose closing the kindergarten to sixth-grade school on Sonoma Avenue.

When it comes to parking, society affords disabled drivers some notable privileges. They receive prime reserved parking spaces and get free parking in public spaces all day, every day. But an increasing number of able-bodied drivers appear to be abusing those privileges by using disabled windshield placards that are forged, expired or don’t belong to them.

The state’s decision to grab local redevelopment funds will have a big impact in Santa Rosa, according to City Manager Kathleen Millison and Economic Development Director David Gouin. They say the city will lose more than 2,800 construction jobs and $84 million it had planned to invest in projects, programs and services. They want residents to contact the Legislature and urge lawmakers to postpone the Feb. 1 deadline.