[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:26] All right, everyone. Welcome to the closed session meeting of the Oregon City Council for Tuesday, August 25th, 2026. Can we get a roll call, please? Council member Lowe.
[0:36] Here, council member C.Cress. Here, council member Gathry. Here. Mayor Potsen, Marbillian. Here, mayor, mayor, may rest.
[0:42] Here. And would you please join me in the flag salute?
[1:05] All right. As is my weird custom, I'm going to skip to number five and have our city attorney announced our closed session.
[1:11] Thank you, Mayor. This evening on the city's closed session agendas one item public employee performance evaluation pursuant
[1:17] government code section 54957B title city attorney.
[1:22] Thank you and I'll go ahead and open up public comment on that item and seeing no one in chambers.
[1:27] We'll see if there's anyone with us online today.
[1:29] There are no members of the public online.
[1:31] Thank you. So we'll close public comment and we will adjourn to close session and we will be back at six o'clock.
[59:52] All right, everyone. Welcome to the Tuesday August 25th meeting of the Roya Grande City Council. We are back from closed session. Can we get a roll call, please?
[1:00:00] Councilmember Lowe here, councilmember C. Cress here, councilmember got three, mayor, protest and marbelia, mayor, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer, mayer. And would you please silently join me in a moment of reflection.
[1:00:25] Thank you. And will you join me in the flag salute?
[1:00:52] All right. Under a gender review, does anyone have any reason to move anything around tonight?
[1:00:57] All right. Then we will proceed as published. And item 5A is closed session announcements. I will turn it over to our city attorney.
[1:01:04] Thank you, Mayor.
[1:01:05] So for the one close session item read into the record earlier this evening, there is no
[1:01:08] report of election.
[1:01:10] Thank you.
[1:01:11] And we have no ordinances tonight, so no motion to be made there.
[1:01:14] So that takes us straight to our special presentations.
[1:01:18] The first one is honorary proclamation declaring September 26 as hunger action month.
[1:01:23] And I will see Molly Kern, CEO of the Food Bank at the podium.
[1:01:37] All right.
[1:01:37] Welcome.
[1:01:39] This is an honorary proclamation declaring September 2026 as hunger action month, whereas each
[1:01:46] September, the nationwide hunger action month campaign unites millions of people across
[1:01:50] the country to raise awareness and provide nutritious food to neighbors facing hunger.
[1:01:56] And whereas the region's high cost of living frequently forces many of our neighbors and
[1:02:00] San Luis Bispo County to make impossible choices between paying for essential needs such as
[1:02:06] and buying groceries. And whereas the slow food bank provides food to 50,000 neighbors every month.
[1:02:13] I'm going to say that again. 50,000 neighbors every month, a 58% increase in individual served over the past five years.
[1:02:22] And whereas the slow food banks, I just did math in my head. There's only 300,000 people in this county. That's huge.
[1:02:31] Amazing.
[1:02:32] I never editorialized during these things, but that was striking.
[1:02:36] The slow food banks hunger relief network reaches more than one in six county residents,
[1:02:40] including over 14,000 neighbors each month in South County.
[1:02:45] And whereas this work is made possible by a collaborative network of 70 non-profit partners
[1:02:50] who distribute food directly within their own neighborhoods, including cap slows the
[1:02:55] Inter, Equipers Church, Salvation Army, and St. Patrick's Outreach in Roya Grande.
[1:03:02] And whereas the Slow Food Bank's mission is made possible by the profound generosity
[1:03:06] of our community with more than 70% of the organization's funding coming directly from local
[1:03:11] individuals, businesses, and nonprofits. Whereas the expansive reach and daily operations
[1:03:17] of the Slow Food Bank are sustained by the dedication of over 1,300 active volunteers
[1:03:23] who generously give their time to nourish their community and whereas hunger action
[1:03:29] month serves as a county-wide call to action, inviting all residents to learn,
[1:03:35] raise awareness, and contribute their time and resources to help feed slow
[1:03:38] county together. And now therefore be it resolved that I care and raise a mayor
[1:03:43] of the city of Aurora Grande do here by proclaim September 2026 as hunger action
[1:03:48] month in Aurora Grande and we invite you to say a few words.
[1:03:54] Thank you so much, Mayor
[1:03:56] council members, really appreciate you taking time at the top of this meeting to shine a light on
[1:04:01] something that is as was shared incredibly pervasive in San Luis, Bispo County and in Rio Grande,
[1:04:09] but also really invisible. There's no way to know if you know maybe your child's friend in their
[1:04:14] classroom, one of your, you know, co-workers or even the person who's backing your own groceries
[1:04:19] might be themselves struggling to afford basic nutrition. And so for this month, in September,
[1:04:25] It's a really beautiful time for us to remind these, you know, 50,000 people that they're
[1:04:31] not alone, that there is an army behind them that slow counting cares so much and is committed
[1:04:36] to ensuring that no one goes without the incredible nutrition and the bounty that our
[1:04:42] county provides.
[1:04:42] We are so lucky to have our cultural abundance that we have here, and at the food bank
[1:04:48] we feel really honored to be a conduit for that bounty to reach all of our residents regardless
[1:04:53] of what they're going through in their lives. As you shared in the population this community is experiencing
[1:04:59] record levels of food insecurity and just for some context during the previous sort of high water
[1:05:05] mark we experienced was in 2020 in the depths of the pandemic when we served 47,000 people in one month
[1:05:11] and so we are now regularly serving more than that many people on an ongoing basis and we're really
[1:05:19] to do this work, to provide compassionate care, to be a place for so many thousands of people
[1:05:24] come together as volunteers, as donors, as leaders, to care for our neighbors, is really
[1:05:31] some of the most incredible work that we get to do.
[1:05:34] And we all have incredible memories around food specifically.
[1:05:38] Everyone has a favorite food, everyone has the experience of being cooked for by someone who
[1:05:43] loves them or cooking for someone that they love.
[1:05:45] And so, while the five and a half million pounds of food that we distributed last year is incredible, and the
[1:05:52] four cliffs and giant tracks, and all of the infrastructure it takes to do this work is impressive.
[1:05:57] We never forget the impact it has on an individual level, and that moment of having delicious, nourishing food is really what drives all the work that we get to do together.
[1:06:07] So, while hunger is obviously an incredibly
[1:06:12] pervasive local challenge, the solution is also local.
[1:06:16] And so, getting to be a part of this work and to care for our neighbors
[1:06:20] is part of every day.
[1:06:22] And I invite any of you and also anyone who's listening.
[1:06:24] If you're ever interested in learning more, please reach out.
[1:06:27] We love to provide tours of our warehouse or even meet up with someone
[1:06:30] at one of our incredible distributions where you get to see first hand
[1:06:33] the power of this nourishing meal and get to see the relief on someone's face when they get the groceries that they need to make it to the next week.
[1:06:42] So thank you so much for your time and for really your support. Not only in this month, but you're around. It makes an incredible difference.
[1:06:49] Thank you for all you do.
[1:06:56] All right. Our second special presentation is Introduction of New Employee,
[1:06:59] Any response and recreation coordinator and I'll invite up Director Bolkin.
[1:07:08] Thank you so much, Mayor and Council members.
[1:07:10] My name is Sheridan Bolkin.
[1:07:11] I'm your Director of Recreation Services and tonight I'm very pleased to be introducing
[1:07:16] response in our recreation coordinator who has just recently joined our team, come on up
[1:07:21] breeze.
[1:07:23] Reese has been with us for about a month now and since day one he has just jumped right
[1:07:28] in and we are so pleased to have him.
[1:07:30] And he's super, super talented. He's originally from 1000 Oaks. He moved to the central coast in 2018 and earned his recreation parks and tourism administration degree from Cal Poly and 2022. Since then, Reese's gained valuable experience from the city of Moro Bay recreation department, as well as a special Olympics of Southern California, and locally from the five city swim school.
[1:07:53] Bruce truly enjoys being involved with use sports, often doubling his weekends with officiating
[1:07:59] youth games, and we are very excited for Bruce to be part of the AG Rec team, and he's going
[1:08:05] to be helping us to make sure that everybody in a Royal Grande as well as our surrounding regions
[1:08:10] get to enjoy recreation and feel that they are included as well as having the access to the programs
[1:08:16] that we provide. So thank you very much. If you would like to share a few words, you're welcome to
[1:08:23] Yeah, just wanted to share my excitement to be further involved with the community and the city of Aurora Grande.
[1:08:29] I'm already a felt very welcomed by the team here at the city and more importantly, grateful to be able to contribute or contribute to the youth and adults within our area to allow for more access to our amazing recreation programs.
[1:08:44] Thank you. Welcome to the family.
[1:08:56] All right, item 60 is introduction of new employee, Trevor Nunez, utilities operator, and I
[1:09:04] so excited to have Assistant City Manager Public Workstractor Mr. Robison back.
[1:09:09] Thank you, thank you, I am glad to be back, but it's not about me right now.
[1:09:17] So please join me in welcoming our new utility operator one, Trevor Nunez.
[1:09:24] I have a bunch of points, but I think he wants to say some things, so I don't want to steal
[1:09:28] anything, but Trevor is in a position, this utility operator one position, where there's
[1:09:35] a lot of career advancement and promotional opportunities through our certification process.
[1:09:40] So there's a pretty rigorous educational process within our crews, and then they take tests
[1:09:47] and become certified in expertise in water treatment and sewer conveyance.
[1:09:55] So, he was selected from a large pool, he used the successful candidate and we're just excited
[1:10:05] to have him as part of a team that provides clean drinking water, protects our public health
[1:10:14] and our local environment.
[1:10:17] And we're just again very excited to have them on board.
[1:10:21] So I'll let Trevor say a few words.
[1:10:26] Hey, so I'll keep it short, but I was born and raised here.
[1:10:30] My family's born and raised here.
[1:10:32] I went to school here, always worked here.
[1:10:35] So I'm happy to work for the city that's basically
[1:10:38] help make me go and I hope I can help make it even better place.
[1:10:45] Yeah, I did attend Cal Poly, I graduated from Cal Poly of Degree in Biology,
[1:10:52] so I love this
[1:10:54] area.
[1:10:56] Thank you very much.
[1:11:09] Homegrown.
[1:11:10] We love.
[1:11:12] All right, and I did say my traditional welcome to the family privately too.
[1:11:17] All right.
[1:11:17] And so this brings us to item 60,
[1:11:21] what we're just kidding, city manager,
[1:11:24] communications.
[1:11:27] I'll believe me, I feel it, thank you, Mayor.
[1:11:30] Members of the Council, Matt Danning, your city manager.
[1:11:32] A couple of updates for you this evening, not nearly as fun
[1:11:34] as those that we just heard.
[1:11:36] I do want to start.
[1:11:37] My comments this evening to note that there is a supplemental memo
[1:11:40] for item 9F regarding the resolution up
[1:11:43] for consideration this evening.
[1:11:44] So that would be the item for the Council
[1:11:46] of the consider action on this evening.
[1:11:49] As the November election nears, the city will be holding two informational town halls to learn
[1:11:54] and ask questions about both measures C-26 and D-26 on the November 3rd ballot.
[1:11:59] The first town hall is scheduled for September 10th at 5 p.m. right here in the council chamber
[1:12:04] will focus on measures C-26, the proposed cannabis business tax, if approved by voters,
[1:12:10] the tax could generate an estimated $500,000 annually for the city's general fund.
[1:12:15] However, I want to stress that approval of C26 does not automatically permit cannabis
[1:12:19] businesses in the city.
[1:12:23] Instead, what it does is it establishes the tax structure if a future city council chooses
[1:12:28] to authorize cannabis businesses at that time.
[1:12:32] The measure would also apply to current cannabis deliveries made by a rogue-grunday residents
[1:12:36] from dispensaries outside the city limits.
[1:12:38] That's all run by the state.
[1:12:40] We can't make, we can't prohibit that.
[1:12:42] So this would actually cover that as well.
[1:12:45] The second town hall is going to take place again here in the council chamber on September 29th at 5.30 p.m.
[1:12:51] And we'll focus on measure d26, including information regarding the city's water supply and potential solutions to mitigate rising challenges associated with that, including state water.
[1:13:02] So mark your calendar, shall we? 5.30 here in the council chamber.
[1:13:05] And then I do have a rhetorical question, are there any big ditch market fans out there?
[1:13:10] I know I am one. The big ditch market is back on Friday, September 4th from 4 to 8 pm in the Car Carole here in the village.
[1:13:19] It's presented in partnership with the Aurora Grande Recreation Services Department, and the market will feature unique handmade goods from local vendors, delicious food trucks, and live music by a local favorite Ryan Jenkins.
[1:13:32] So come support local businesses, businesses, and enjoy a funny evening in the heart of the village.
[1:13:38] But then we got more music for you.
[1:13:40] This Sunday, the city's concerts continue with Jane's gang, so they will regale us with their multi-generational high energy dance music.
[1:13:50] So, stock up on your energy drinks.
[1:13:51] Let's see what I did there.
[1:13:53] And enjoy the summer concert series at Heritage Square Park.
[1:13:56] Sunday is one to three p.m.
[1:13:58] Happy to answer any questions.
[1:14:00] Thank you.
[1:14:00] Any questions?
[1:14:02] I have a question.
[1:14:04] Will those two community workshops be videotaped and included are YouTube channel?
[1:14:11] I'm going to quickly look to my right. I believe yes.
[1:14:15] They are going to be recorded, so we'll definitely put them up on our website and YouTube channel.
[1:14:20] Perfect. Thank you very much.
[1:14:22] All right. That takes a city council reports, and I am first.
[1:14:26] So, the CJPA as you well know was July only, the five Cs Fire Authority board has not
[1:14:36] met since July. The mayor's meeting, Mayor Potem, so graciously attended on my behalf,
[1:14:43] although I didn't see you in the pictures, so I'm not sure I believe it.
[1:14:48] And, seditation district did meet, and there is something germane to the city of Aurora,
[1:14:52] Sunday that we did a truck sewer cleaning and inspection project so that will take place within the city, but that.
[1:15:00] That's in just regular routine maintenance of our trunk lines for the source. So with that, that is my blessedly brief report, and I'll turn it over to Mayor Protem.
[1:15:10] Thank you. Are you talking about the zip line picture?
[1:15:13] Yeah, I did not ride the zip line, but the other mayors did in Grover Beach. It was very entertaining to watch.
[1:15:23] I did, my two committees that are on here did not meet during this last month, but I did
[1:15:29] as when the mayor's meeting last Friday.
[1:15:32] We received an update from the county regarding homelessness and really talked about the
[1:15:37] point in time count, which I think you covered a few weeks ago or something like that.
[1:15:43] But I think the biggest takeaways from that were, you know, the 65 plus on-house population is growing
[1:15:51] and that there's a big jump of people living in their vehicles right now. So I think that's something
[1:15:56] that concerning and, you know, looking out for what's happening around the city. But there is a decrease
[1:16:04] in the amount of people that are experiencing homelessness in this area right now, which is a good thing.
[1:16:10] We also discussed the success of the Etasca d'Aro.
[1:16:14] I think it's called Bayley Co.
[1:16:16] It's the Family Housing Center.
[1:16:18] Yeah.
[1:16:19] I can't pronounce that.
[1:16:20] Sorry.
[1:16:21] I butchered that.
[1:16:22] But a family center, so it centers, or it houses families rather than individuals, and they're
[1:16:28] looking for more places to do similar projects at this time because they have some funding
[1:16:32] for it.
[1:16:32] So I thought that was interesting.
[1:16:34] And then just updates why as we talked about the 500k grant that Donna had us secured for
[1:16:42] the city for the Reservoir Coding Project.
[1:16:46] Jimmy Paulding talked about preparation for the upcoming, I don't remember what they're
[1:16:51] calling it, Super El Nino season, which sounds fun.
[1:16:57] And really just talked about how the county has been meeting with the various areas and what
[1:17:02] we're doing to prepare for this as well as prepare for if there is a disaster type situation during
[1:17:10] this next rainy season. And then down our T's leg was also there and talked about how the
[1:17:16] county is preparing for the impacts that are coming from HR1 that really will be starting in January,
[1:17:25] which is going to be a loss of insurance for many individuals, I guess one and four people in the
[1:17:31] So that's going to be a huge impact for our local hospitals as well as the county because their costs are going, they have to play a part in the loss of that.
[1:17:44] They have to provide services.
[1:17:47] So people should probably look out for the years being much busier and cost going up for those who have private insurance because of this.
[1:17:55] And that was about it for the meeting other than the zip line that I mentioned before.
[1:18:00] go to social media.
[1:18:02] All right.
[1:18:03] That takes us to council member.
[1:18:04] Got three.
[1:18:07] Be short.
[1:18:08] Once again.
[1:18:09] I do the MA is not met.
[1:18:11] So not July or August.
[1:18:12] So we have a very full September meeting.
[1:18:16] And so far, reach has has not met.
[1:18:20] That's quite a while.
[1:18:22] That's it.
[1:18:23] All right.
[1:18:24] And council.
[1:18:24] More secrets.
[1:18:25] Thank you, Mayor.
[1:18:27] Okay.
[1:18:28] Air pollution control district has not met.
[1:18:30] in the time that's elapsed recently.
[1:18:33] And neither has South County chambers of commerce,
[1:18:36] government affairs committee,
[1:18:37] but there has been a lot of meetings on, for me anyway,
[1:18:41] on H.S.
[1:18:43] I think, let's see, there's the regular board meeting.
[1:18:47] There are several executive meetings.
[1:18:49] There's Friday meetings for Zoom,
[1:18:50] and we had an ad hoc meeting.
[1:18:53] The two main things I'd like to convey are the federal grants
[1:18:58] that come out through HUD have been problematic for the last few years.
[1:19:03] They've gotten worse in terms of the service providers and the counties don't even know
[1:19:08] when the applications are going to open and then it's a scramble to see what they are requiring
[1:19:14] and how they are requiring agencies to respond to what data they're looking for.
[1:19:21] And in the last round, it was pretty extreme in terms of how the feds
[1:19:28] or attempting to reorder grants and reorder what was going to be a priority, and it was
[1:19:36] my thought, no, sorry, and to the point that there was a lawsuit and the federal government
[1:19:42] lost. And a court said that they actually can't do that sort of crazy things they've been
[1:19:48] trying to do. And I think I'm going to talk about this a little bit before one thing they
[1:19:57] of on-house folks that receive services.
[1:20:00] They're quite different, the easier or less complicated group
[1:20:05] would be families, children, you homeless youth.
[1:20:09] And those folks can often be really assisted
[1:20:13] by the prevention services that can help them
[1:20:16] before they do get evicted San Eldely persons rent
[1:20:20] and has gone up like $1,000.
[1:20:21] Things like that happen a lot.
[1:20:23] That group can be handled much easier,
[1:20:26] I guess I would say, and much more cheaply, but the chronically homeless folks, even though
[1:20:31] it's not as large a number, these are folks that have been homeless for at least 10 years
[1:20:36] and they almost always have coexisting conditions like serious substance abuse and or mental
[1:20:41] health issues, those traditionally have received 70% on the funding in certain categories.
[1:20:47] And the feds were trying to say, we're just going to switch that.
[1:20:51] So that's just so impactful for the agencies to try to deal with that and still provide the
[1:20:54] services. Anyway, federal courts said no, you're going to have to rethink it. It's not clear
[1:20:59] what's going to happen. The whole application was canceled, which is too bad because,
[1:21:04] of course, lots of people took their money. They're sorry, they're time and they're effort.
[1:21:08] These organizations are already really on the edge in terms of how much work they do. So,
[1:21:13] anyway, that's that's an holding pattern. Good news is regarding the state grants.
[1:21:18] There's H.S. doc has been working hard to come up with guidelines for how money is awarded to the local agencies.
[1:21:27] And there was kind of a big,
[1:21:31] as a protest or objection for some of the last funding choices, particularly regarding the central part of the county.
[1:21:37] And it seems like they've come up with a really workable new formula that's a little more nuanced.
[1:21:43] and so they're going to look at the percentage of exits to permanent housing that an agency has,
[1:21:49] the total number of exits, the total clients, their application score when they fill out
[1:21:54] a particular application, what data, how thorough and the regional need and that's based on the
[1:21:59] pit count. So I think all of this is coming together in a more precise way and folks are happier
[1:22:04] with how it's going to be distributed. And that's all I have. Thank you.
[1:22:10] Thank you.
[1:22:12] I can't count to run below.
[1:22:14] Thank you.
[1:22:14] Let's see.
[1:22:16] I have two reports.
[1:22:18] One is from slow cog and one is from the water resources advisory committee.
[1:22:22] As the zone three water advisory board didn't meet since we last were here.
[1:22:27] At slow cog the big news was that
[1:22:30] There was a determination, a decision to withdraw the measure jay from being placed on the ballot.
[1:22:41] And that was the half-cent sales tax measure for transportation projects.
[1:22:48] It was a measure that had a lot of support in the early phases,
[1:22:56] but the committee that was formed to promote it to maybe, excuse me, to have the committee
[1:23:05] to the campaign committee to get it across the finish line with through their support.
[1:23:11] So that was very unfortunate. Hopefully there will be something coming back in the next
[1:23:16] election cycle, which would be alongside the general election. But that was a kind of a tough call
[1:23:24] because the Slokog Board had, of course,
[1:23:28] voted to put it on the ballot,
[1:23:30] but notably it was not a unanimous vote.
[1:23:32] Among the Slokog Board,
[1:23:35] so that was a little bit of a sign there.
[1:23:38] Nonetheless, I would also like to report
[1:23:42] that the Slokog has something now called the Maraposa Pass
[1:23:47] for transit.
[1:23:49] This is part of a pilot program
[1:23:51] where qualifying folks of low income can get a special pass at a discount, and they've issued
[1:24:03] the first round of those passes, and there will be other rounds, but it is not going
[1:24:09] to say competitive, but it is something where people do apply for the discount pass, and then
[1:24:16] at a $574 application slow-cog was able to award $232.
[1:24:21] Passes.
[1:24:22] This is something that's also being supported by the state.
[1:24:26] But I would encourage folks to check out the transit options,
[1:24:32] especially for frequent trips up and down the 101 corridor
[1:24:35] as things get busier with the projects that are online under construction.
[1:24:41] And then moving on to the rack, I would say the most exciting thing that came out of that meeting was the decal plan.
[1:24:53] That's both an acronym and a title of shortening of the decalinization feasibility study that the county flood control participated in.
[1:25:04] They identified five potential sites in, in San Luis Pispus County, basically,
[1:25:10] a long coast that could potentially function for desalination efforts.
[1:25:17] The nearest ones here are Oshana Grover Beach, and then an opomal mesa by the Phillips
[1:25:24] 66th refinery, and then going north.
[1:25:26] There was one in the Moral Bala, social area, and one in the San Simeon area.
[1:25:32] I must be missing one, that's only four, and the county did a really good job of boiling
[1:25:43] down the essence of the factors that would be needed to meet a type of desalination effort
[1:25:52] here.
[1:25:53] This doesn't, at this point, take it further into investing into a new water source for us,
[1:26:00] But I think it's an important step in determining the feasibility of that.
[1:26:06] The plan that they presented at the meeting on August 5th is going to the San Luis
[1:26:12] Municipal County Board of Supervisors for consideration and acceptance on September 1st.
[1:26:17] So if you're interested in that, check it out and that's my report.
[1:26:22] Thank you. I have a question about the slow-cog report.
[1:26:25] That's the first I've heard of why that measure jake up hold.
[1:26:30] So the citizen group decided not to back it.
[1:26:33] Do you know why?
[1:26:35] I believe they felt that they were concerned that it wasn't going to be successful.
[1:26:43] Got it.
[1:26:44] Okay.
[1:26:44] Thank you very much.
[1:26:47] All right.
[1:26:47] This takes us to community comments and suggestions.
[1:26:49] This is your chance to come talk to the council about items that are not on tonight's agenda.
[1:26:53] If you'd like to speak to the Council, please come do so and keep your comments to 60 seconds or less.
[1:26:58] So if you'd like to comment on items not on tonight's agenda, please come forward.
[1:27:11] Good evening.
[1:27:12] Mayor and City Council.
[1:27:13] I'm Montesa Fielan Lopez.
[1:27:16] And I'm the Vice President of Philanthropy at a Roya Grande Community Hospital.
[1:27:20] I'm joined tonight by our Board Member and Treasurer, Tim Jensen.
[1:27:23] And I'm here to thank you for your support in allowing us to close Nelson Street last Saturday
[1:27:29] for our day of hope parade and our dog, I'm sorry, day of hope car show and pause for hope
[1:27:36] dog parade. It was held at Heritage Park and it was just it was such a great day and this is our
[1:27:43] second annual day of hope parade and having the street clothes was really a game changer for the event
[1:27:50] providing the extra space we were able to host 82 cars and we had 50 dogs. So it was really fun
[1:27:59] everyone had a great time. Additionally, having the wine and beer permit, having a live band
[1:28:05] and having food trucks really added to that festival feel. And so we're excited. We think
[1:28:10] that there's so much more that we can do in the future. And we wanted to just share that thanks with all
[1:28:17] of you. And would you like to speak as well? Yes. Do I get 60 seconds for you to
[1:28:26] Okay, so this is why we both came out.
[1:28:30] So I wanted to share that as a follow on to what we just had the event in the park.
[1:28:36] Tomorrow is the actual third annual day of hope event happening tomorrow.
[1:28:39] So you might have seen people around town with the Santa Maria Times special edition.
[1:28:44] So we're using this as a fundraiser to raise funds for the day of hope mission.
[1:28:51] I hope cancer center right here at the Matthew Will Center, right there on Fair Oaks.
[1:28:55] So I'm happy to say that we've already, like, from generous contributions of people in the
[1:29:00] community, already raised over $100,000, and so tomorrow's sort of the big culminating event.
[1:29:05] So I have maps of where people will be tomorrow.
[1:29:08] So if anyone would like one, anyone in the audience would like one, happy to share them with
[1:29:15] you and I encourage you to donate it supports every dollar that's donated, stays here
[1:29:20] the community, so it's, you know, there are multiple mission hope, cancer centers, but this
[1:29:24] is all local to the community, so I appreciate everything that you do to support this.
[1:29:31] Anyone else?
[1:29:44] Good evening, Judy Chikati, and I concur. It was a very nice event that
[1:29:50] Montesa had. I'll just say Montesa had it. And so I'm kind of wondering if we're going to be able
[1:29:55] to take a poll on whether this round about at-
[1:30:00] I was going to go through, I noticed they surveyed and they were supposedly a local company that had
[1:30:07] out of town people because I did speak to him. I did let him charge his little thing at my house. And so
[1:30:13] never had permission to come on our property to survey. And they were from Bakersfield, so I'm just
[1:30:20] wondering if the city paid for their motel and paid for their food and whether we will be able to vote on
[1:30:28] whether we want to round about there or not.
[1:30:32] So that is my concern about having one there.
[1:30:35] Thank you.
[1:30:39] Anyone else?
[1:30:42] Seeing no one else will check in online?
[1:30:45] There are no members of the public online.
[1:30:48] All right, great.
[1:30:49] And so a couple of things.
[1:30:49] First of all, we have a couple of questions.
[1:30:51] And if you'd like to put one of those flyers
[1:30:53] and give that to our city clerk, that would be great.
[1:30:57] So while he's doing that, we do have two questions of staff
[1:31:00] that came out of public comment.
[1:31:02] The first one is we'll have a poll on the roundabout at Wazna.
[1:31:11] I'm not sure if we call it a poll, but we will have community input, we'll have our staff
[1:31:16] out at the site again. We'll have other opportunities for the community to give us information
[1:31:23] or whether or not they feel the roundabout is appropriate or any other information they'd like to provide.
[1:31:29] So we'll have a few opportunities for that. How about the public process?
[1:31:35] the public process will be that, so we will be getting information together like the survey that was talked about.
[1:31:46] We're going to get it together a an estimated cost and then we'll have some information that we can kind of balance with the
[1:31:54] the public's information so that we can make a concert effort on whether or not the roundabout is going to be appropriate.
[1:32:02] I see our city manager would like to chime in.
[1:32:05] Yeah, so one of the things, yes, a land survey is being done because we need to see if we can actually make the entire thing work with all the cross slopes and the amount of right away that we currently have.
[1:32:16] Does this thing actually fit?
[1:32:17] Does it make sense? Does it work?
[1:32:19] And then go through that process.
[1:32:20] Ultimately, we'll come to the council as part of a formal action.
[1:32:23] So the council will be the ultimate decider on whether that roundabout does go in or not.
[1:32:27] That's what I was looking for.
[1:32:28] Thank you, and so we will have the opportunity to participate in the public process as well, and secondly, did we pay for the motel and food for the
[1:32:38] consultants, surveyors? I don't know exactly who we're talking about.
[1:32:43] I'm not sure if we paid for the hotel and food. We got a bid on a package for serving, and if it takes them a day, then that's okay with them.
[1:32:55] We get a bid, we get the final cost, and that's what we pay.
[1:32:59] So whatever they need to do to accomplish that job is what we pay for.
[1:33:03] So it's not necessarily called out separately, but it's wrapped up in a bid cost.
[1:33:07] All right, thank you very much for that.
[1:33:09] Okay, so that takes us to item nine.
[1:33:12] Item nine is our consent agenda.
[1:33:14] This is collectively tonight.
[1:33:15] We have a few of these.
[1:33:17] Nine A through nine G and echoing what city manager said earlier,
[1:33:22] remembering that nine F has a supplemental and I believe the supplemental is just simply updating
[1:33:27] times. So nothing super substantive there. First of all, I'll check in with the council and see if
[1:33:34] the council has a reason to pull or consider something separately. And council will have to have nine
[1:33:40] F pulled for the TUP because I'm wondering the committee that puts that on. Got it. Anybody else?
[1:33:48] All right, so seeing that there's no questions, we'll pull item 9F separately, but for
[1:33:53] right now, we'll go ahead and open up public comment, and we will take comment on items 9A
[1:33:58] through 9G. So we'll hear 9F if you have something to say about that. So if you'd like to comment
[1:34:04] on any of the items 9 right now, please come forward and seeing no one here. Again, we'll see
[1:34:11] if anybody's joined us online. There are no members of the public online. Must be August.
[1:34:18] All right, so we'll close public comment and we will take items 9A or 9A through 9G minus 9F, would anyone like to make a motion or comment.
[1:34:32] I'll move approval.
[1:34:35] I'll second.
[1:34:36] All right, can we get a roll call please.
[1:34:40] Council member low.
[1:34:41] Yes.
[1:34:41] Mayor.
[1:34:42] Yes.
[1:34:43] Council member got three.
[1:34:45] Yes.
[1:34:45] Council member secrets.
[1:34:46] Yes.
[1:34:47] Mayor.
[1:34:47] Yes. Yes. And NIDAM, NIC. Item 9F. Mr. Guthrie, do you want to make any other statement about
[1:34:57] refusal or should we just consider?
[1:34:59] Well, I think I did. I said on the committee that puts this on, so I will be stepping down
[1:35:04] in non-photene.
[1:35:05] Does he have to actually step down?
[1:35:07] Mayor and Councilmember Guthrie, he may remain at the dice and just take that item on
[1:35:11] concerns, separately.
[1:35:12] If there is a discussion, I'll leave.
[1:35:14] Okay. Is there any discussion?
[1:35:17] All right, would anyone like to make a motion?
[1:35:20] I'll move to approve 9th, second.
[1:35:23] All right, we have motion a second on that one.
[1:35:25] I think we can take a voice vote, right?
[1:35:27] All in favor.
[1:35:28] Aye.
[1:35:29] Aye. And one, recusals.
[1:35:30] So that motion passes 4-0.
[1:35:33] All right.
[1:35:36] Let's take us to items 10.
[1:35:40] We have none tonight.
[1:35:41] So item 11A is our 2729 police department strategic plan.
[1:35:45] This is coming back.
[1:35:47] Again, from the police chiefs, so this is a receive and file, but we had questions last time, right?
[1:35:54] So that's why we're here again.
[1:35:58] Believe this is the first time you're hearing.
[1:35:59] Oh, mind me seeing this up from something else.
[1:36:02] I sure am.
[1:36:03] Okay.
[1:36:04] Believe the there was a initial presentation from FCFA, their strap plan.
[1:36:09] Thank you for the correction.
[1:36:11] All right, Chief, nice to have you, sir.
[1:36:12] I speak here.
[1:36:13] Dave Culver your chief of police and my honor this evening to bring forward the police department strategic plan for 27 through 2029
[1:36:27] You know as we kind of kick this off the understanding that we we looked at things within the department in order to kind of
[1:36:35] Fix some current processes and so that's what the intention over the next three years are here. So
[1:36:46] I love when technology works, right?
[1:36:48] So the development of the strategic client for the police department, this was something that
[1:36:54] goes back February of 26, so earlier this year is when we really started looking at this.
[1:36:59] The goal, the plan, is to identify the needs and opportunities within the operational
[1:37:04] division of the department.
[1:37:06] Planning included individual staff conversation.
[1:37:09] So I met with every single member of the agency, one-on-one, find out what their viewpoints
[1:37:15] We're assess needs, identify difficulties and points of either roadblocks that they were facing.
[1:37:26] And things that were meaningful to individual staff members.
[1:37:30] At all ranks. There was a planning review session that was held with the city's administrative team, where we went over some of the broader goals that were identified through these one-on-ones.
[1:37:42] We then had an internal department survey and I created a working group within the department to then go through a lot of the different goals that were identified in some of those things in order to kind of whittle down what is really important and what is achievable over the next three years.
[1:38:00] We also conducted a community survey through FlashVote where we were able to look at one of the needs of the community and how we could address those within the goals that were identified in the strategic plan.
[1:38:15] So all that to get us to the next point where we identified four major goals.
[1:38:21] So through the development process, the police department team identified these four goals as areas to address.
[1:38:26] The community survey also identified very specific areas where residents wanted us to remain
[1:38:32] focused and provide more service.
[1:38:34] And so that led us to an overall personnel, technology, community engagement and infrastructure
[1:38:42] as our four areas that we're going to identify action items in.
[1:38:49] So starting off with personnel, to apply creative future focus recruitment and retention initiatives
[1:38:55] to bring the most exceptional talent
[1:38:57] and keep them engaged, support, and growing within the department.
[1:39:01] So when we looked at personnel, it was one of the things
[1:39:05] that was identified through the community survey
[1:39:09] was that the community told us that traffic safety
[1:39:12] was a high priority for them.
[1:39:14] And in the strategic plan, we were response
[1:39:16] but specifically identifying traffic enforcement
[1:39:19] as one of our specialty assignments,
[1:39:22] and allowing us to build an organization
[1:39:23] capacity around one of the issues that residents told us that they care most about.
[1:39:30] The will get to that in some of the additional specialty assignments.
[1:39:38] The first action item there, the International Association was chiefs of police.
[1:39:42] They reached out a few months ago, and they identified the Aurora Grande Police Department
[1:39:49] as one of 15 agencies in the nation that is moving towards the initiatives of the International
[1:39:57] Chiefs and Police Association with regards to officer wellness, training, and development
[1:40:03] of our people.
[1:40:04] And so we're really honored that they reached out and we will be doing a film of the Department
[1:40:09] highlighting some of the things that we're doing on a national level.
[1:40:14] This brings a lot of pride to the officers within the agency and hopefully to the community at a broad that our agency is really kind of on the forefront of what is
[1:40:26] the initiatives of the International Chiefs of Police Association.
[1:40:30] We plan on utilizing this film both as a recruitment and as a promotional video for the agency and ultimately promoting the city on a national level.
[1:40:39] So the third item, the continued development of our public safety cadet youth program.
[1:40:46] This is something that was slightly changed over the last year to include the five cities
[1:40:52] fire authority.
[1:40:53] So we have a very unique kind of structure here where it's law enforcement and fire youth
[1:41:00] experiencing both of those public safety worlds.
[1:41:04] And so the item here is to really kind of develop that as it is the future of first responders and how we're going to identify one of the areas that was a priority of the survey were 45% of the survey said that youth safety and behavioral provincial programs was the top priority and so this kind of addresses that community concern.
[1:41:29] The expanding of our special assignments and opportunities within the organization to include the traffic officers, detectives, our K9 program and our community action team.
[1:41:43] This has been identified and will get in this a little bit without addition of any staffing, but more of a reallocation of existing resources and staffing in order to meet these needs.
[1:41:57] So the goal over the next, the strategic point over the next three years is to have two full-time traffic officers,
[1:42:07] but to have an additional motorcycle so that we can allow for a part-time as staffing allows.
[1:42:14] So we're really kind of focusing on one of the key initiatives that was identified as traffic safety and being able to put that out.
[1:42:22] The detective program, along with our traffic safety, we're looking at reorganization of the rank and structure within those two different specialty assignments in order to expand the specialty assignments that are offered to our officers at the end of the day, this increases our ability to retain our quality individuals that we have working for us.
[1:42:44] The K&I program, the reintroduction of that program,
[1:42:49] does amazing things for the community,
[1:42:52] the officers from a safety standpoint and a community engagement.
[1:42:54] And our community action team, this is something
[1:42:56] that we've already started to pilot,
[1:42:58] and we just hope to continue to grow that.
[1:43:00] It currently we partner and officer with a behavioral health specialist
[1:43:03] one day a week for eight hours a day.
[1:43:06] They go out and they make direct contact with those
[1:43:09] experiencing homelessness and mental health in our community.
[1:43:13] And they've made phenomenal strides over the last few months as we started that pilot program and we hope to continue to grow that over the next few years to be more than a one day a week operation.
[1:43:26] The implementation of annual one-on-ones with all staff. This was something that came out of when I took over his chief sat down with all the officers.
[1:43:34] There seem to be a lot of real value that came out of that, I learned a lot and so that is going to be in an issue of moving forward.
[1:43:40] We will do that on an annual basis to kind of take a temperature and re-evaluate where the department is at all levels.
[1:43:48] And then moving the finally here, the move to an annual staff evaluations.
[1:43:53] Right now staff evaluations are consistent with their anniversary date.
[1:43:57] After meeting with the police officers association, we identified that it would be very beneficial if all of the evaluations took place during the same month so that they can have more realistic feedback from their supervisors and how their performance has been over the year that they have been observed by that same supervisor.
[1:44:17] So we feel that there's a lot of ability for growth and development through this program.
[1:44:26] When we look at technology and to provide technology to secure an environment that supports the department
[1:44:32] operationally and administratively, while enhancing our ability to best serve the public.
[1:44:37] The technology investment in the plans are tied to operational capability and services
[1:44:41] deliverability. The goal is to make officers and staff more effective, improve information,
[1:44:46] and ultimately provide service to the residents.
[1:44:50] So, beginning here with the first action item, and this was also identified in the IT strategic plan,
[1:44:57] and we have started the implementation of this.
[1:45:00] Integration of Artificial Intelligence into the Department's operation with regard to report writing and investigative.
[1:45:07] One of the key takeaways with this moving forward is, while we are definitely not the first law enforcement agency to go down this road,
[1:45:16] we are on the forefront of this kind of initiative in San Luis, so accounting.
[1:45:21] One of the things that this does is this dramatically reduces the amount of time in their officers or in the station,
[1:45:27] have to complete the reports and puts them back in a position to be on the street and be more
[1:45:34] engaged in the community and be more present in the community. And that was something that was
[1:45:39] highlighted in the community survey. There was a desire to have officers more present and more
[1:45:44] visible in the community. So this allows us to do that. The AI program that we are working with
[1:45:54] meets all the strictest confidentiality standards.
[1:46:00] It does not push any information outside.
[1:46:03] It's a standalone system, so we are very aware
[1:46:06] of the concerns with AI and utilizing it
[1:46:10] and approaching it from a very cautious standpoint
[1:46:14] and working closely with the district attorney's office on this.
[1:46:17] The replacement of our record management system
[1:46:19] to meet the needs of the TIS technology integration.
[1:46:23] This is something that has been on the kind of horizon for the police department for at least
[1:46:29] the last five years and is continued to be pushed off for one reason or another.
[1:46:34] I think we are in a time now that if we don't aggressively start to look at changing and implementing
[1:46:41] a new record management system, the cost is only going to continue to go up and we're going
[1:46:45] to follow further and further behind in our technology of how we manage our internal
[1:46:49] please records.
[1:46:51] Our collision investigation drone, this is something this is a specific drone that is utilized
[1:46:57] with current software that we have in order to take three-dimensional renderings of our
[1:47:03] traffic collisions when they occur in the city.
[1:47:06] This dramatically reduces the amount of time that our officers are on-scene, reopens
[1:47:10] our roadways faster and produces a higher quality report moving forward in order to be able
[1:47:19] really document what occurred. And we have secured funding for this through the Cops Office grant program
[1:47:27] already. The last technology item there, the automated customer service tool. This is something
[1:47:35] that will ultimately allow us to get almost instantaneous feedback. Every time an officer makes contact with
[1:47:42] the member of the community, they'll have an opportunity to fill out a brief survey on what that contact
[1:47:48] was like. In the survey that went out, 60 approximately 65% of those surveyed said they hadn't
[1:47:57] had contact with law enforcement, the of the remaining 33% said it was a positive interaction
[1:48:03] that they'd had with our agency, but this allows us to capture a much broader and immediate
[1:48:09] following of that. And all that to say that if we understand how the officers are interacting and
[1:48:16] the those pressure points are. Then we can adjust and maybe change the direction once we have that
[1:48:24] feedback. So that's something we're looking to do.
[1:48:30] On our community engagement,
[1:48:33] importance of strength in the interest in improving transparency and fostering a meeting full
[1:48:37] partnership between the police department, the community while ensuring the outreach efforts
[1:48:41] address both general community interests and the needs of the vulnerable population. So the survey
[1:48:46] the residents we took. It wasn't simply about more policing. They wanted effective, professional,
[1:48:53] and approachable policing. Community engagement is a core of the strategic goal and not just
[1:48:58] an afterthought here. We're going to conduct at least two town hall meetings with the community
[1:49:04] moving forward in order to get that feedback and openly share the direction of the department and
[1:49:10] where we're going. Tended at least that first town hall meeting will be scheduled in January.
[1:49:16] The development of the national night out event, it's an event that a number of our neighboring
[1:49:21] agencies do, and we will look to bring a national night out event here to Aurora Grande.
[1:49:28] And the police department will is partnering with and his gracious, our recreational service
[1:49:34] director has agreed to help us with this, because full disclosure of the police department
[1:49:38] is not the best at putting on community events, but we will work together as a team to make
[1:49:42] that happen.
[1:49:44] implementing and expanding our community outreach officer program to address those
[1:49:49] experiencing the unhoused and mental health. And then this goes back to our community
[1:49:54] action team or cat team as we're calling it. Continuing to expand that as I touched
[1:49:59] on earlier and grow that, grow that program.
[1:50:05] I think creating the last action out of there create an implement the mission and
[1:50:09] you statement to align with community priorities.
[1:50:12] And looking at this, our mission statement is good,
[1:50:16] but it's a little, maybe a little outdated,
[1:50:19] and so we're really going to take a deep look at can we,
[1:50:23] can we tweak the mission statement to meet
[1:50:26] what the current objectives are of the city
[1:50:29] and the community and ultimately what the police department
[1:50:32] is doing, and then I identify a value statement
[1:50:35] to go along with that mission statement.
[1:50:38] We wanted, we didn't want that to be just something that we put out as part of this.
[1:50:45] Done, we want that to be an actual process that we work through in developing that for the future.
[1:50:53] Looking at the infrastructure of the agency,
[1:50:57] as essential to ensuring the police department has a space systems and operational resistance necessary
[1:51:02] to meet the current demands that future needs and provide a reliable public safety service to the community.
[1:51:07] So when we looked at the infrastructure within the agency, we looked at a number of different
[1:51:12] things.
[1:51:13] And one of the things that came to really kind of a forefront was our property and evidence
[1:51:18] storage, and needing a renovation and expansion to meet our current and future needs of this.
[1:51:25] This is something that has been identified as a capital improvement project in the future.
[1:51:30] Through that initiative, when we do the proper and evidence expansion, we're not expanding
[1:51:39] outside of the current footprint, we're simply better utilizing the space using new technology
[1:51:45] and new storage systems available.
[1:51:49] We feel that the renovation of this proper evidence will allow us to meet the needs of our
[1:51:57] storage at least in the next 10 years, we are reaching a critical level of what our current
[1:52:06] system can withhold, if you will.
[1:52:10] The operational workspace to optimize for detectives, patrol, and administrative
[1:52:14] sergeant.
[1:52:16] We looked at all of the workspaces within the police department and looked at what spaces
[1:52:21] were overcrowded and what spaces were underutilized and ultimately we were able to identify
[1:52:27] a shift in where we put people with.
[1:52:30] Open the department, again, trying to best utilize the available space without asking for additional funding at this time to build new buildings or stuff like that.
[1:52:40] We're trying to be as responsible as we can utilizing the space that we have available and we feel that this change of workspaces within the agency is going to meet that goal for the short term future.
[1:52:53] The item for the microgrid infrastructure development through solar battery storage, electric vehicle charging to ensure resiliency.
[1:53:04] This is something that as the department looks to help the city meet California's goals of carbon neutrality by 2045.
[1:53:14] We feel that the police department is poised at a point where we can develop solar, battery
[1:53:23] backup, and ultimately moving forward in the future with the next police fleet.
[1:53:27] Move towards a fully electric fleet.
[1:53:30] I think this will help the city meet the goals that it needs to meet.
[1:53:34] It also puts the police department into a very strategic position from an emergency operation
[1:53:39] standpoint that in the event of an actual disaster if we have this set up we are able to operate
[1:53:46] autonomously and an off-grid for a period of time in order to continue to provide emergency services
[1:53:52] to the community during those situations.
[1:54:00] So when we looked at how we're going to implement this,
[1:54:03] the search engine plant outlines proactive deliberate and collaborative path towards meeting the
[1:54:07] department needs over the next three years. We're going to do this to hopefully
[1:54:13] better serve the community and continue to ensure the quality of life. That's
[1:54:17] the goal of all of this. The action plan will be funded through current fiscal
[1:54:21] budget grant funding and community support. We have also identified that no
[1:54:28] staffing increases are necessary to achieve these goals at this time. With the
[1:54:35] funding piece, any action item which requires funding that would need to be from General Fund
[1:54:44] will be brought back to Council for consideration and approval at that time.
[1:54:54] So before I get to this, I want to thank everybody both within the Department and beyond
[1:54:59] the Department who contributed to the development of this plan.
[1:55:02] It's as a living document serves as a roadmap for our organization and our community.
[1:55:06] Together, I believe it reflects our share goal to create a safe approachable and efficient,
[1:55:12] effective method, at policing that supports a vibrant community.
[1:55:15] The Department remains steadfast in delivering the highest level of professional service,
[1:55:19] and we will do everything reasonable within available resources to pursue the objectives
[1:55:23] outlined in this strategic plan.
[1:55:25] So with that, the recommendations are received in the file of the Police Department's strategic
[1:55:29] plan, and I am available for questions and happy to answer anything you have.
[1:55:33] Thank you, Chief.
[1:55:34] All right, any questions to my right?
[1:55:37] Yes, ma'am.
[1:55:43] I have some comments.
[1:55:44] I don't know.
[1:55:44] I just don't wait to do comments.
[1:55:46] I'll get to get to my question.
[1:55:47] But I just want to say I really appreciate how lean this.
[1:55:52] How significant this is and how lean it is.
[1:55:55] It's very, it's very well organized, very, very thoughtful.
[1:56:01] And I want to, so I have a lot of, a lot of positive things to say about this.
[1:56:06] But I do have a question.
[1:56:08] And this, my question goes from the three-year horizon that this is, but in light of the goal for infrastructure.
[1:56:18] So we know that infrastructure needs in and of themselves can, you know, to really look ahead and be ready for the future.
[1:56:28] We might identify them now as something that we need to tackle for the future.
[1:56:33] So, my question is, how will you scale your department and the infrastructure needs as the city grows outside of the three year planning horizon for the strategic plan?
[1:56:47] Sure, one of the goals of this strategic plan and it, it was purposeful that it was a three year plan.
[1:56:55] A typical municipal police department at Strategic Plan is a three to five year plan, because it's an operational or staffing plan, and really be on that in order to predict the size of the community, the needs of the workload and things of that isn't really responsible to do that in a strategic plan of this scale, if you will.
[1:57:20] One of the kind of analogies that I've been kind of using on this one is, we've, this strategic plan, if you would envision a ladder, this gets us off the ground, this puts us on the ladder and starts that climb.
[1:57:36] We will be looking at in the third year of this plan of looking at bringing on a outside qualified consultant to then do a broader look at what our current staffing levels are.
[1:57:49] in relation to what the needs of the community are at that point by then the city's 10-year
[1:57:55] general plan will be in place and we'll have a better understanding of what the direction
[1:58:00] will be over then at 10 years and so at that point we would look at then bringing back a five-year
[1:58:06] strategic plan so when we're looking at this this is this builds a foundation in order to
[1:58:12] best position the agency at looking at then the three years from now, the next five years.
[1:58:22] So we are looking at a seven year in the theory if you will, but this three year plan is what we need
[1:58:31] to accomplish in order to best position the agency for that next five year step.
[1:58:38] Once we understand some of the unknowns within the community currently.
[1:58:45] Questions?
[1:58:49] So a great report.
[1:58:51] I also glad to see Lane and Maine or Lane and Nice.
[1:58:56] Nice and Lane.
[1:58:57] Here we go.
[1:59:00] So I'm wondering when I see the administrative and detective areas,
[1:59:06] We don't hear a lot about what kind of investigations actually take place.
[1:59:10] I mean, we certainly had the tragic murder this year.
[1:59:15] But outside of that, what kind of things are we actually investigated?
[1:59:17] We do a hundred investigations a year.
[1:59:20] Maybe some sort of data point that gives us a feeling for that.
[1:59:24] Sure, absolutely.
[1:59:25] So our detective bureau is currently made up of two at full staffing.
[1:59:30] Two full time detectives.
[1:59:32] They, between the two, two detectives, they handle an average of about 45 to 50 investigations a year.
[1:59:42] Those investigations are quite lengthy.
[1:59:45] An investigation may take a month or two months to complete.
[1:59:51] There's multiple reports that are associated with these investigation, multiple interviews,
[1:59:55] search warrants that have to be written. The types of re-
[2:00:00] Investigations that are detectives are doing are something that is going to take more time or more expertise
[2:00:06] that can be handled by our patrol officers. And they go through additional training for all of this.
[2:00:14] The typical types of crimes are very violent crimes. The homicide that you mentioned, high profile cases, such as the one that's
[2:00:25] in the news that you in shape, case that we're dealing with.
[2:00:30] So, in addition to that, we also get an unfortunate high number of
[2:00:38] special victims, cases,
[2:00:42] and particularly dealing with exploitation of children.
[2:00:45] And these cases have to be treated very carefully and investigated thoroughly.
[2:00:53] So those take a lot of time and expertise in order to investigate those.
[2:00:58] If we didn't have our detectives doing this work,
[2:01:02] it would require us to remove patrol officers from the street for extended period of time in order to do this type of investigation.
[2:01:11] And ultimately that's just not feasible.
[2:01:13] If we are going to be a full service police agency,
[2:01:16] we have to have an investigative unit that can really devote the time
[2:01:20] to really pursuing justice for the victims of some of the worst crimes that are committed.
[2:01:30] Thank you for that, Chair.
[2:01:33] Any questions?
[2:01:35] No, I think comments at some point, thank you.
[2:01:39] Yeah, I just was curious with the chime in with the thank you that everyone else is saying as well.
[2:01:46] With the flash out, I don't think I don't remember seeing and this could be an oversight of me to have seen the results for
[2:01:53] that? Do you know how many people participated?
[2:01:58] I'd have to go back and check the numbers. I'm happy
[2:02:00] get that to you. Yeah, that'd be great. I'd love to see what it actually looks like. I'm glad we
[2:02:06] reached out to the community. I just don't remember seeing anything, which again, could be on me. I think
[2:02:12] that's my only question I have comments. I have a couple questions. So with regard to the use of AI,
[2:02:20] As you said, we had talked about that back during the IT strategic plan.
[2:02:25] So, has that already been underway?
[2:02:28] So, is that going as you expected better worse, same?
[2:02:34] I had to say it's going as I expected.
[2:02:37] We had in full transparency.
[2:02:40] We had some hurdles to get over from a from an IT standpoint, if you will.
[2:02:49] just integration between the artificial intelligence
[2:02:54] report writing system and our current systems that we have
[2:02:58] for instance, our record management system
[2:03:00] and getting those systems to communicate together.
[2:03:04] And because ultimately, if the system is able
[2:03:07] to communicate together, then that greatly
[2:03:09] increases the efficiency of it,
[2:03:11] working that system with our body camera system.
[2:03:14] Again, it greatly increases the efficiency
[2:03:16] if they're able to communicate directly
[2:03:18] with each other. So we've been working with both our vendor for our body cameras and our vendor
[2:03:24] for the AI report writing in order to get them to work together so that we can then utilize it.
[2:03:33] The other side of that is that the district attorney's office and in full support of them
[2:03:40] approaching this cautiously, we've been able to utilize this for our misdemeanor crime reporting
[2:03:46] not any felony crime reporting because this is new to them as well and how it's going to work through the
[2:03:51] court system. We haven't had any issues with any reports. The reports are checked and double checked
[2:03:58] before they ever get to the district attorney's office. We've set up multiple safeguards through
[2:04:03] that process and we're compliant with all current state laws on how we document the use of
[2:04:12] A.R. report writing use in the agency and how that is shown on that final draft of the report.
[2:04:19] Excellent. And then also it's been reported recently as recently as this week about some agencies using AI on their non-emergency line.
[2:04:29] I don't recall us talking about that. Is that something that we may be looking at as well?
[2:04:33] we're not. We don't have any current plans to do that. We still believe this is a great value in having an actual person answer the phone when they call the police department and we will continue to do that.
[2:04:47] Thank you for that service. And then you said there's going to be two town halls. Where are those going to be?
[2:04:54] still yet to be determined.
[2:04:58] We're looking at two locations, one would either be here at City Council or potentially the women center depending on the, you know, we want to make sure we have enough space available.
[2:05:07] Okay, great.
[2:05:09] And then I didn't think of it until we were just talking that if you're going to do a new mission and value statement.
[2:05:18] Is the ensuring quality of life going away?
[2:05:21] No.
[2:05:21] Okay, that's I love I love our motto. That's it's it's not to protect and serve it's it's a it's a cut above and and our department consistently delivers that cut above.
[2:05:33] If anything, I think it's it's a.
[2:05:37] A simplifying to that goal.
[2:05:40] That that's the over that's the overreaching.
[2:05:44] uh mission is to ensure that quality and so we would be we would be looking at taking that
[2:05:50] and expanding it um but our current mission statement is quite lengthy and so we're just looking to
[2:05:56] maybe better focus it kind of like that report you just did lean and nice right okay all right
[2:06:06] let's go ahead and open up public internet oh yes real quick um in our one team one dream model
[2:06:11] I did look up the survey results to answer the question of the last.
[2:06:14] So we invited 1,218 individuals to take the survey.
[2:06:18] Those are the folks who signed up for Flash vote.
[2:06:20] You can still do that for those of you who are out there in the community.
[2:06:23] Just search Flash vote on the city's website.
[2:06:26] So 1,218 individuals invited and we had 537 responses.
[2:06:31] That's standing.
[2:06:32] Great.
[2:06:33] All right, let's go ahead and open up public comment.
[2:06:35] Would anyone like to comment on item 11A?
[2:06:40] Good evening. Council and staff. Thank you. My name is Glenn Martin. I live on Olive Street and I'm currently serving on the Planning Commission.
[2:06:50] Being in small town is easy to assume the quality of service of our public safety team remains local in scope.
[2:06:56] But I'd like to compliment Chief Culver on the recognition from the IACP on the performance of and the improvements within the AG police department, getting that kind of national attention and recognition is something we all can be very, very proud of.
[2:07:10] I also support the attention on traffic safety assignments and look forward to participating in the town halls.
[2:07:18] Just again, thanks, Chief, for a job well done by all of our public safety personnel. Thank you.
[2:07:26] Anyone else?
[2:07:28] Alright, let's check it online.
[2:07:30] There are no members of the public online. All right, so we'll close public comment. Council on below. You said you had comments.
[2:07:37] Thank you. I would just like to thank Chief Colour for your leadership.
[2:07:44] We repeated this about how lean it was, but I also just want to say this idea about the mission statement that you just described.
[2:07:51] I've been involved in efforts like this where people get stuck on the mission statement, and so they won't get it done,
[2:07:58] or it will take a long time for people to really sort of drill it down into what the essence
[2:08:05] of what they want to accomplish.
[2:08:06] And so that will sometimes just take over and delay everything else.
[2:08:11] And so I love that you were able to recognize that this needs some work, that the essence
[2:08:17] of what you do is solid that needs some massaging, but you carry it on to deliver a very, very,
[2:08:26] thoughtful and deliberative sort of plan here.
[2:08:31] And I also very much appreciate your approach to kind of looking ahead to how you answered
[2:08:36] that question about the kind of the five-year look and release, you know, all together
[2:08:41] it's about a seven-year look, so you're both looking at the near term and providing the leadership
[2:08:48] that's needed in this tangible space that we're all living in with an eye ahead to what we need
[2:08:55] looking forward to, so I just thank you very much.
[2:08:59] I guess I'm going to go through any questions.
[2:09:01] Sorry, comments?
[2:09:02] Yeah, I too.
[2:09:04] I won't pontificate on my love of mission statement process.
[2:09:09] But I do, especially appreciate the recognition that things change,
[2:09:16] that priorities change, and that we see the nimbleness here to move staff around
[2:09:20] to begin to meet that and put, and not just adding more staff to get it done, so I think
[2:09:27] at some point traffic issues may become less, but right now those are certainly the major
[2:09:33] concerns of the community. Thank you. Councilor C. Crest, any comments?
[2:09:39] Yes, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chief. Great report. I really appreciate that as you're
[2:09:45] starting out with your plan that you have just
[2:09:50] taken advantage of areas that you already looked at and realized
[2:09:54] could be either modified or improved.
[2:09:57] And at this point, not hiring and consulting,
[2:09:59] realizing that could be in the future,
[2:10:01] but you have a lot to work with already.
[2:10:03] Great report, thank you.
[2:10:05] And just as a former prosecutor,
[2:10:10] I so understand the dynamic of everything looks fine.
[2:10:13] everything does look fine because it's being handled but all communities have some serious crime
[2:10:18] and you know just kudos to your detectives for handling the tough cases because they're definitely
[2:10:23] out there. Thank you.
[2:10:27] Thank you.
[2:10:28] Yeah again I echo my fellow council members that thank you for putting this together after we saw
[2:10:34] FCFA. I think we were kind of eager for this a little bit so thank you for thinking ahead and
[2:10:39] doing that as well. It's a lot of work doing these type of things because it forces you to
[2:10:45] think in a different way and I appreciate the work that was put in. For the next run,
[2:10:51] I'd love to see a little more data and just terms of like what our calls look like and what
[2:10:57] what we're actually facing is the police force just so I think that could help but are informed
[2:11:01] decisions from us. In terms of your goals, I think they're very practical and doable for the most part.
[2:11:10] I like the action items, I like, especially loved the idea of enhancing communications with
[2:11:16] their community.
[2:11:17] I think that's really important.
[2:11:18] So thank you for putting that in there.
[2:11:20] And then the customer service tool and being able to solicit feedback, I think the community
[2:11:25] is going to really appreciate having that.
[2:11:28] So I really do appreciate that being put in there.
[2:11:32] The technology portion, I think, you know, I agree that we need to be using technology
[2:11:39] and enhancing it in the ways that we need to, in order to, you know, better utilize our time.
[2:11:46] I think that's exactly what we need to be doing moving forward, and so many public agencies
[2:11:50] do not do that at all. I just, you know, for me it's always about balancing that with the
[2:11:57] protections of our rights as citizens. And I know we've talked about that personally, but I think
[2:12:02] that we are on the same page of how we can handle that within the future of what we're doing.
[2:12:09] And, you know, proceeding with caution just to ensure that this does happen, but thank you for putting this all together.
[2:12:19] I'm going to expand out my thoughts just a little bit because this is one of the last times I'm going to get to talk on this.
[2:12:23] Maybe I'm not going to see another strategic plan.
[2:12:26] So bear with me. First thing I want to do is just recognize the growth of the department.
[2:12:31] I remember sitting with chief prior as he was leaving and him talking about the next chief and the next iteration of this department moving toward community policing.
[2:12:44] And you have your whole department has really just embraced that modern look at what community policing looks like and it shows in everything that you do and it's all over this strategic plan.
[2:12:59] So, I really kudos to you.
[2:13:04] I asked Chief prior many years ago,
[2:13:07] bring me a strategic plan.
[2:13:09] We need the council needs to know what you want,
[2:13:11] so we can provide it and he did that.
[2:13:13] That was great.
[2:13:14] And then as you said, there was a little bit of gap here since then,
[2:13:18] not the least of which is a gap in,
[2:13:19] you know, we had another chief in between there.
[2:13:21] But I'm really glad to see this back
[2:13:24] and seeing the way you described it as the first step on the ladder
[2:13:27] because that really is what it looked like.
[2:13:30] It was very focused and very, I don't want to say internal,
[2:13:35] but it's just really more about operations
[2:13:37] and less about capital.
[2:13:39] And I'm going to say more about that in just a moment.
[2:13:41] I wanted to just shed light on the community action team
[2:13:44] as well, because that is a maybe under-appreciated challenge
[2:13:50] that police departments face in terms of dealing with people
[2:13:55] of all walks in all situations not necessarily just unhoused when you run into a mental health crisis.
[2:14:01] So that partnership is really important and again, our police department should, I hope that the people listening really understand the depth to which you have gone to, or Brett, really to do, I guess the only words I have for this modern policing.
[2:14:24] I am really excited about the video because you've asked me to participate in that, so I can't wait to do that.
[2:14:31] And it will be my honor to be one of the few things I can do before I leave, but I'm going to take this opportunity to use my mic.
[2:14:39] And I want to bring something forward that the chief doesn't know I'm going to talk about this.
[2:14:43] Nobody that I know of at the PD is talking about this, but I think it's important.
[2:14:48] Well over a decade ago, we were outgrowing our police department and we asked the voters twice to give us a new police department.
[2:14:57] And the second time we asked it fell short by-
[2:15:00] I want to say, like, 11 votes. Do you remember? Yeah, it was a handful, it was less than 20. And that's on a 66% vote. And to our
[2:15:11] departments credit, they said, okay, we heard what the community said. And we revamped the teeny, tiny piece
[2:15:19] of junk place that we had over there on Halcyon. And we've done a great job with that. And the council
[2:15:26] has supported the police vision on how to continue to morph that building is best we can but
[2:15:33] I am here to tell you they have outgrown it and it's I expect I fully expect in the five year
[2:15:41] that or at least on the near term horizon we are going to have to ask the community to fund
[2:15:47] the new police department and I am telling you they needed it then and they needed it now
[2:15:53] And they need the voters to say yes to that, again, the chief doesn't even know I was going to say any of that tonight.
[2:16:00] I'm just taking the opportunity while I have the mic to do that.
[2:16:04] Chief, I'm in when you, when you want to do community outreach on that.
[2:16:08] But I just want to put that out there that people who are thinking about this strategic plan for our police,
[2:16:14] they need that support and we're going to have to find a way to do that.
[2:16:18] So she, like I say, thank you very much for bringing a strategic plan forward and getting that off the ground and I look forward to seeing how much the council supports that in the future.
[2:16:30] All right, that is a receiving file. So let's move on to item 11 B. This is our 2025 annual report for the Northern cities management area and this is going to be so excited to hear from Bill tonight again.
[2:16:43] Oh, it's not going to be Bill.
[2:16:45] I hate to go.
[2:16:46] No, Ben Shannon.
[2:16:50] It says Robison on my report here, just in my own defense.
[2:16:58] So we have our city engineer, Shannon Sweetie, it's going to give this
[2:17:02] NTMA annual report.
[2:17:05] Thank you.
[2:17:05] Welcome.
[2:17:12] I'm Shannon Sweetie, city engineer.
[2:17:16] I'm happy to be here to share the northern cities.
[2:17:22] I am borrowing this presentation from GSA Waters Solutions Incorporated that did our annual report.
[2:17:30] They presented this to agricultural interests on August 10th, 2026.
[2:17:35] They have graciously allowed me to use their presentation to present the key findings of this report.
[2:17:48] Our presentation overview of first I'll give you an introduction and then the goal was to coordinate with agricultural representatives.
[2:17:55] We're going to share the 2025 hydrology which includes precipitation and evaporatranspiration,
[2:18:02] 2025 water use groundwater basin conditions and then key findings of the report.
[2:18:10] First, a little bit of an introduction.
[2:18:12] There was litigation that started in the 1990s regarding the San Maria groundwater basin.
[2:18:17] In the 2000s, there was a stipulation to that litigation and it created three management areas.
[2:18:26] This map shows those three management areas.
[2:18:29] The top one is the one we belong to, which is the northern cities management area.
[2:18:33] I'll refer to it as NCMA from here on out.
[2:18:36] The second is the Nepalma Mesa management area.
[2:18:39] That's the Yellow part in the middle.
[2:18:41] And then the Santa Maria Valley Management Area, called Tuchil Management Authority, it's the
[2:18:46] agencies and agricultural interests at the Santa Maria Valley.
[2:18:50] Maria, groundwater basin, south of the river.
[2:18:53] And the court ordered a monitoring program in annual reports from each one of these management
[2:18:59] areas.
[2:19:01] This next slide shows a close-up of the NCMA.
[2:19:05] It includes the agencies of us.
[2:19:08] at Pismo Beach and Grover Beach as well as Oceano Community Services District and Agracultural
[2:19:16] Irrigation and Royal Years with in this blue shaded area.
[2:19:23] As far as the 2025 hydrology,
[2:19:26] we had just under average rainfall as compared to last year where we had just about exactly
[2:19:33] average rainfall. So ours was just a little lower this year. We had above average rainfall
[2:19:39] only five of 12 months. Last year it was seven of 12 months because it was spread out a
[2:19:47] little bit better. The evapotranspiration index exceeded rainfall in 10 of 12 months and what that
[2:19:54] means is that in order to irrigate crops you needed to add more than what fell out of the sky
[2:20:00] for 10 of the 12 months.
[2:20:06] All right, this shows the agricultural land in 2025.
[2:20:10] You can see the green is in rotational crops.
[2:20:14] A pink is strawberries.
[2:20:15] You get a little bit of avocado there.
[2:20:18] And then this, the boundary of the agency.
[2:20:23] This is estimated agricultural pumpage.
[2:20:26] It hasn't changed much in the last few years.
[2:20:29] And this just shows that most of it is for rotational crops.
[2:20:32] little bit for strawberries and even smaller for avocados.
[2:20:40] As far as the NCMA pumpage, the
[2:20:45] percent pumped from the groundwater of our entitlement was only 36 percent. And so this shows basically the
[2:21:08] This shows a breakdown of each agency as well as the sources of the water that was used.
[2:21:18] This breaks it down by Lopez Lake, state water, groundwater basin, and other supplies.
[2:21:25] our supplies are from Lopez Lake and from the groundwater basin, our total amount was
[2:21:31] 270 and the total of all of the interests in the basin in our management area was 8000.
[2:21:41] It was just under 8000 last year.
[2:21:46] This shows a chart that shows that basically we used a lot
[2:21:52] of water from the basin in previous years and we are significantly lower than we were back
[2:21:59] in the 2006 timeframe. There's a small uptick from last year but it still remains considerably
[2:22:08] below what the use was back in the early 2000s since then we've had droughts that have significantly
[2:22:16] affected how people use water.
[2:22:22] There are monitoring wells throughout the management area,
[2:22:27] They're five coastal wells and then they're...
[2:22:30] 1512 total. The one we keep a particular eye on is the deep well index. There are three coastal wells that
[2:22:38] tell that. There's a line we use that says, yeah, we're in good shape or nowhere not.
[2:22:48] Keep going.
[2:22:51] All right. What I say, you know, we care about how water, how our groundwater flows. This mat shows
[2:22:58] the contours of how water is moving through our groundwater basin. I pulled this up compared to last year's
[2:23:05] and they look nearly identical. Up in the northern portion of it, the water is heading towards
[2:23:11] the ocean. This is a really good thing. Down in the southern area, there's a contour that
[2:23:15] heads towards NMMA. This line looks similar to what it did last year.
[2:23:25] And then this is in the fall.
[2:23:26] So you can see similar trends.
[2:23:31] This is the historical deep well index. I referenced a line that we
[2:23:37] want to stay above and that line is that dotted line. We are three feet higher than that threshold
[2:23:48] value of 7.5 feet and staying above that line indicates that water is heading out towards the
[2:23:56] ocean and sea water is not coming in. So staying above that line is key.
[2:24:06] In terms of how much these are
[2:24:09] key findings, so you can see that in 2025, we used 8,053 acre feet, it was 788 acre feet last
[2:24:19] year. Lopez Lake, the amount of water that we used is very similar to what we used last
[2:24:24] year. I state water, which we don't fall, but other agencies do, was 581 acre feet. Ground
[2:24:32] water was an uptick of over 300 acre feet and then total urban water use of 5,477 acre
[2:24:44] feet. So third lowest in 20 years, which is a really good trend. The total agricultural
[2:24:50] irrigation is 2400. So the ground water pumping was only 36% of what is considered
[2:24:58] safe yield of our groundwater basin. That's a lot of the contribution of those trends of water
[2:25:04] heading out towards the ocean. But there was an increase. There was a decrease in groundwater
[2:25:11] storage and that reflected a little bit in the fact that we had the low average rainfall this year.
[2:25:21] And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.
[2:25:25] Thank you very much. Oh, it's not disappointing. Oh, I'm just happy to see you back.
[2:25:31] All right, first of all, let's see if the council has any questions. Any questions?
[2:25:36] Any questions?
[2:25:38] I have a quick one. Can you put the one back up that shows the flows?
[2:25:46] Thank you.
[2:25:48] So it's only been in the last 10, 12 years that that blue line at the bottom is flowing toward
[2:25:56] in a pummel and that reflects an overpumping on the mesa that's kind of reversed that.
[2:26:03] My question is, and you may not know this answer, my question is, has that amount of
[2:26:11] that flow changed increased decrease same or maybe you don't know the answer that's okay,
[2:26:18] but I didn't think of it until I looked at the arrows here and just started reflecting on
[2:26:22] that.
[2:26:24] Figuring out the direction of the arrows is easy because it's based on ground water depth
[2:26:30] Figuring out the
[2:26:34] More difficult, so no, I don't have an answer to that number. Thank you very much for that
[2:26:41] All right, that's my only question. So let's go ahead and open up public comment. Would anyone like to comment on item 11b
[2:26:49] And seeing no one in house
[2:26:52] There are no members of the public on zoom. All right, then I will close public comment bring it back to the council
[2:26:58] So this is a receive and file, but does anyone have comments to make?
[2:27:02] I know I have a question,
[2:27:05] and I'm sure it's in here, and I didn't see it, but can you
[2:27:10] describe, so this is just for the Northern City's Management Area, and obviously this
[2:27:13] is for the whole, this is for the Santa Maria River, groundwater, Santa Maria, Santa Maria,
[2:27:20] River Valley, groundwater management area, is there one entity that oversees the whole area
[2:27:29] of which these are three parts.
[2:27:32] There is not.
[2:27:33] Oh, yeah.
[2:27:35] That's not an area.
[2:27:37] It's under the court.
[2:27:40] Thank you.
[2:27:43] Sigma is, I can't remember what Sigma stands for.
[2:27:46] Do you remember that?
[2:27:48] State ground water management is a sustainable water.
[2:27:51] Thank you.
[2:27:52] Ground water.
[2:27:54] Sigma governs basins unless they're adjudicated.
[2:27:57] are just adjudicated so the court governs that rather than about it's on top of it.
[2:28:02] So are they looking at it as a whole?
[2:28:04] The court?
[2:28:05] Yeah.
[2:28:05] This is certainly.
[2:28:06] So there's no one that's really monitoring how like the Napomo one might be affecting
[2:28:15] hours.
[2:28:15] All three management areas come up with one.
[2:28:19] So
[2:28:22] the...
[2:28:24] Uh, we're going to see.
[2:28:35] They all three have to report but no one has to tie everything together.
[2:28:40] I look at the litigation type, everything, the long ago identifying the NCSD as overpomping.
[2:28:47] So that's why I don't know if you've seen NCSD as now getting 2,000, some large amount
[2:28:52] of water from Santa Maria in order not to pump.
[2:28:56] And yet, even though they've probably considered groundwater easily in half, it has not gone
[2:29:04] back to what I'll call normal.
[2:29:06] Might just be a new normal, I'll know us,
[2:29:08] but anyway, right.
[2:29:09] So it's one that are three lawsuits, essentially.
[2:29:11] Well, but it hasn't changed.
[2:29:14] That's the deal.
[2:29:15] There's been no change, fundamental change
[2:29:17] to what was agreed on at that time.
[2:29:22] Is NCFD able to bring the last time I heard
[2:29:24] it was 600, they have contracts for 3,000,
[2:29:27] but they were only able to bring 690.
[2:29:29] Do you know that that's increased by now?
[2:29:31] It might have.
[2:29:32] I might be out of date.
[2:29:33] I do know that it has increased I don't believe that they are yet taking the full amount due to logistical challenges associated with diagonal curves and storage and all that but we are monitoring that from the standpoint of seeing improvements in that over time.
[2:29:56] And even the report they did mention that there is an ad hoc committee.
[2:30:00] We're all three of the agencies get together that needs it times.
[2:30:05] I might not remember that correctly. I thought.
[2:30:08] Not that I know it.
[2:30:13] Okay. Any comments? Councilmember Seagrest?
[2:30:16] Just briefly. Thank you.
[2:30:17] Thank you for the report.
[2:30:19] Presentation.
[2:30:20] And I just shared the mayor's, I'm sure everyone's concerned.
[2:30:23] The big issue is the saltwater incursion.
[2:30:26] And it just kind of sounds like that's holding steady or at least it's being monitored.
[2:30:30] So thank you.
[2:30:33] May I have any questions?
[2:30:34] I mean, comments?
[2:30:36] No, I mean, it sounds like we're kind of that status quo with
[2:30:40] and in a pretty good spot, but always looking ahead and going
[2:30:46] we're good for now, but this could change quickly.
[2:30:52] Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how super El Nino
[2:30:54] if and when it comes to pass effects our groundwater and it's no worthy that
[2:30:59] just for our public to know that we routinely take as much water as we can out of our
[2:31:05] low peasant entitlement so as to protect our groundwater so that we're not overpumping
[2:31:10] there and it's always been a method, a matter of contingent about what safe yield actually
[2:31:16] is so better to be safe, right? Okay, so that close item 11B, that takes us to item 12, council
[2:31:23] communications, does anyone have communications to see?
[2:31:28] I just have a comment for folks who
[2:31:31] Like to ride around here, I don't know if folks have noticed that the bike path that's adjacent to 101 between five cities and five cities drive and downtown Pisa Beach has been freshly paved and it made me also think that I just wanted to make a shameless
[2:31:52] thanks to CalTrans4, the project that's going through the area here because it's really nice
[2:31:58] to have fresh pavement, not only that we have the new ADA ramps, we have the new median barrier,
[2:32:04] we have fresh striping, we have new shoulder areas, it's just, it's a nice refresh all around
[2:32:11] and I know there's been some disruptions to the neighborhoods associated with the staging
[2:32:17] And I would, you know, I know there's always a little bit of that and I just thank people for their patients because you can't, you can't do this work without some kind of disruption and I also think that the staging and the traffic control has been good.
[2:32:34] I'm always frustrated when I am delayed getting to San Luis like I never leave enough time like I never do.
[2:32:40] But I would say that the construction related delays have been pretty minimal and I don't know, I just think it's worth seeing some praises sometimes because we take advantage of being able to get where we need to go.
[2:32:53] And the same thing at the city.
[2:32:54] I mean, all the roads projects and I guess I wanted to almost say that to our new public works person.
[2:33:00] He's so excited about his job. The public works people are similar to our public safety. They love what they do.
[2:33:07] and they don't get enough, people don't recognize as much what it takes to get that stuff done.
[2:33:14] And sometimes it will look so I just want to say thank you.
[2:33:19] Councilor Cicrus, you got to have, you got to have something I know you.
[2:33:23] Okay, thank you. On the bad news is I'm just disappointed like probably a lot of us are that the slow cog ignition initiative was not successful in making it to the ballot.
[2:33:33] And I'm sad to see that our county once again will be missing out on self-help funding, which could have been huge millions of dollars from the state.
[2:33:43] But moving on, I'm sure that'll, at some point that'll happen, on the, on the happier side, I did attend a,
[2:33:49] It was a labor and union breakfast, construction trades, breakfast at the slow Elx and a lot of
[2:33:59] our elected representatives were there including Senator John Laird.
[2:34:02] It's always nice to touch base with them and just a positive community event.
[2:34:10] There you go.
[2:34:11] Excellent.
[2:34:12] Thank you.
[2:34:13] Great.
[2:34:13] What else?
[2:34:15] All right.
[2:34:15] So item 13 and we are back to our regularly scheduled every two weeks, so we'll see you in two weeks.
[2:34:22] We want to have a great rest of your August.