We'll go to evening. I'm Mayor Erica A. Stewart, and I'm here to say that the entire council is present.
And with that, we'll start us off with the pledge of the legions from Council Member Marks.
Thank you. And today we get to start off with a proclamation.
We have Tobin Johnson, who will be receiving that. And then after we get done reading the proclamation, I'll bring it down to you.
So you can have three minutes to share about reviewing and about your organizations.
And with that, whereas the city of San Luis Obispo is committed to creating a community where every resident is treated with dignity, respect, and fairness, whereas lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer members of the community are valued, and their contributions enrich the civic cultural and economic life of our city.
The month of June is nationally recognized as Pride Month, honoring the history, resilience, and ongoing percent, sorry, ongoing pursuit of equality for LGBTQIA plus people.
Whereas the city of San Luis Obispo continues to work along community alongside community partners, organizations, and residents to increase belonging, connection, and safety for LGBTQIA plus individuals and families across our community.
While progress has been made, LGBTQIA plus individuals continue to face barriers and inequalities and inequities.
And with the city remains committed to advancing access and opportunity for all.
During Pride Month, community members, businesses and allies show support for the LGBTQIA plus community through actions, both large and small, including displaying pride flags, wearing pride pins,
and fostering inclusive spaces that affirm belonging and our shared humanity.
Now, therefore, I, Eric A. Stewart, Mayor of the City of San Luis Obispo, on behalf of the entire city council, recognize the month of June as Pride Month,
and reaffirm the city's ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and respect for all people.
Madam Mayor and members of the city council, my name is Tobin Johnson, and I'm, I serve as the chair of the NAACP LGBTQIA.
Committee for San Luis Obispo County.
Thank you for this proclamation and recognizing June as Pride Month.
This acknowledgment sends a powerful message that all members of our community are seeing, valued, respected, and welcomed.
I would like to also share that the LGBTQIA committee is a brand new committee within the NAACP branch, and I am honored to serve as this first chair.
The creation of this committee reflects our commitment to ensuring that the LGBTQIA voices and concerns are represented in our civil rights and advocacy work throughout the slow counting.
At a time when members of the LGBTQIA committee are facing increasing challenges and uncertainty local leadership matters.
Pride Month is more than a celebration. It is a recognition of those who fought for equality, dignity, and the freedom to live authentically.
It is also a reminder that the work of building inclusive communities continues as an openly gay combat veteran and advocate for civil rights.
I understand the importance of belonging acts of recognition such as this proclamation help create communities where people feel accepted, supported, and valued who they are.
I would like to also thank our community partners at the Pride and Diversity Center of Slow County.
For their continued leadership, advocacy, and support of LGBTQIA individuals and families throughout the county.
Finally, I would like to invite all of you members of the community to join us in celebrating Pride Month.
As we encourage everyone to attend slow pride at metal park on June 26 and trans pride on June 27.
As we come together to celebrate diversity, inclusion, and community.
On behalf of the NACP and our newly established LGBTQIA committee.
Thank you for your leadership, your support, and recognize and pride month.
Happy Pride Month and thank you all for your time.
Thank you, Tobin.
And with that, we'll move forward to the city manager's report and city manager. I'll pass it over to you.
Thank you very much. We have just a handful of slides to go over. Hopefully folks I also want to mention at our last regular city council meeting on March 19.
We did go over a list of ways that the city is helping to support Pride Month and so if anybody's curious.
The information is there as well as in a lot of our other publicly accessible spaces on our website.
And I'm sure you'll see post about our involvement as well. So just wanted to mention that.
First up, we will.
We want to let folks know and remind everybody every year we go through a process where we make an adjustment to our user fees and impact fees.
They change effective July 1st of every year based on CPI increases or decreases that's consumer price index or ccci which is essentially construction cost index which applies to our impact fees.
And those increases or changes happen whenever we are not otherwise undertaking a comprehensive fee study.
So this is one of those years where we will make an automatic adjustment effective July 1st.
Our updated user and impact fees will again go into effect in just under a month.
This year our user fees will increase by a consumer price index change of 3.68%.
And our impact fees are going to decrease by half of a percent and that is again because that ccci showed a decrease in inflationary forces for our construction costs.
So if anybody has any questions about where to find the actual fee amounts, those are posted at slowcity.org slash fees.
There's also a lot of great information on there about why fees.
How did we create the fees? Why are they charged? How did they get applied?
And so if anybody has any questions please go there and of course reach out to us.
Particularly our finance department or community development department largely since a lot of these fees are housed there if you have questions.
User fees are paid by users of individualized services that include application fees, filing fees, business license fees, inspections, permits, things like that impact fees are paid by applicants for development projects.
And those are used to support the construction of additional facilities, so just a little breakdown of those differences.
But again, a lot of that information or all of it is at slowcity.org slash fees.
Okay, next up we want to remind everybody we are also in the business license renewal season.
We are working to notify all of our business operators of the requirement to renew their licenses and our providing renewal forms to all of our current businesses.
We are working to provide a month long grace period.
So that means if your accounts are not renewed by the end of July 31st we would be looking at potential citations that could amount up to $800.
Now it only costs $44.58 to renew your license.
We really encourage all of our businesses to take a look at them renewed if you have changes in your contact information we asked for that as well.
We want to make sure that we are reaching out in the most effective way possible.
And there are multiple ways to renew your business license you can do that online through a business license portal you can come in in person to our finance counter, which is on the lower level of city hall or by mail.
Of course if you have any questions reach out to finance staff with any business license or business tax related questions by email at bt at slowcity.org or by phone at 7817134 or again you can visit the counter in person downstairs Monday through Friday 8 a.m.
To 4 p.m.
Next up we are excited to share that this year's state of the city will be offered in a couple different formats.
We are bringing back our in-person state of the city event which will be live here again next Tuesday.
This is a really great opportunity to hear directly from the mayor and a number of others about the accomplishments of the past year and to ask questions engage in conversation and just learn more about the work going on across the city.
We will also be publishing a state of the city report.
In next week the report will be available digitally on our website and if you need a heartbeat please let us know we can provide you a heartbeat.
We're just trying to go the digital routing case in order to save on printing and those types of both you know expenses and environmental questions.
But we really hope you'll join us next Tuesday June 9th at 530 p.m. here same same place and so come if you have questions will be happy to hear them as well.
We are also holding on Saturday January 13th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Our fire department will host a wild fire education day and this event is actually held at our city corporation yard which is located at 25 proud of road so that's important to note it's not going to be at the fire station.
I think we want to make sure there will be plenty of space because we know this is a topic of concern and there's lots of information we want to share.
It's of course a free community event and it provides will provide residents with practical information on wild fire preparedness home hardening,
and maybe if you wonder what those terms are.
This is a great event to come and learn more about it.
Vegetation management, evacuation planning and emergency notifications.
We will have four education sessions offered throughout the event including presentations from our emergency manager,
little our city biologist Freddie Audie and also have representatives of Yacht T2 T2 T2 Yacht Tilkini and other local partners who are involved in wild fire mitigation in our community as well as other resilience efforts throughout our region.
So you will have an opportunity to visit education booth staffed by.
Our community risk reduction and home assessment team as well as county of San Luis Obispo office of emergency services staff and other organizations who really work around our region to help reduce wild fire risk and improve emergency preparedness.
So we look forward to seeing everybody there who wants to learn more about how to be fire wise fire safe in our region.
Ask questions get great information and again at our corporation yard at 25 proud of road.
And then finally just highlighting items we have one more meeting in June, June 16th which then we will take a little break and be back on July 21st.
So want to highlight and we have our annual advisory body appointments on this meeting as well as annual reviews for the San Luis Ranch and Avila Ranch development.
Next slide shows our resolution calling for the November 3rd general municipal election and adopts regulations for that process and finally want to highlight our business items which includes our 2025 local hazard mitigation plan.
Our 2025 urban water management plan and water shortest contingency plan and filing an updated water supply and demand assessment.
So a lot of water, great water information and then an annual review of our office of diversity equity and inclusive strategic plan and vision for our next fiscal year.
So we do have a fairly full agenda on June 16th before we will on a brief break and with that I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much any questions from my colleagues.
Okay.
Thank we're good.
Before I call public comments I want to give one more chance if anyone has something you'd like to comment on that is not on the consent agenda and not on the public hearing and business items.
This is your time to turn in a slip over there the yellow slips right near the deputy city manager Greg Herman.
And with that city clerk and I just want to welcome Sarah armus we are lucky to have our city clerk today for this meeting as her first official city council meeting.
Thank you mayor.
We do have three non agenda public comments.
We have Sean Harris will be followed by Sharon Spadafora in Roberta Smith.
Thank you.
There we go.
Okay, thanks.
I'll be quick.
I just have a couple of concerns and that was pretty impressive from Ms. McDonald the pronounce in our local.
Native Americans.
I can't even pronounce that name.
I've seen it written before but on how to pronounce it.
The last verified slave in the US died in 1972.
Mr. Peter Mills at the age of 110.
What America's need to understand is that my late parents generation boomers.
We're last generation of walk and live amongst actual slaves.
Let me see that again.
Boomers live amongst free slaves.
Is it any wonder then that the US economy is structured like a cotton plantation.
With the rest of us need to understand and beyond guard for is not falling for the same trap as poor whites in the Annabelle.
We may share similar levels of pigment, or in the off chance to actually hold religious beliefs, that we worship the same God. We do not. They're God as money and power. Just ask yourselves what color of this nation's all regards are? Are they black? No, do we live under a dictatorship of African Americans? No, is the majority of Congress black? No, our problems are not racial. They're financial. We live under a dictatorship of capital. Bankers, acting through Congress, the Secretary defense, defense contractors have demanded a outrageous $1.4 trillion,
this budget. If this goes through and it will, it will be, it will spell the end of the dollar for several banks and all on our national debt instruments, hyperinflation will ensue through trillion dollar corporate bailouts, Americans will starve, cities like San Luis will be unable to pay their municipal bonds. Well, little social spending, we have will shrink even more. Our our anemic social safety net will be shut down and passengers and little ladies living on fixed incomes will die in agony in their mobile homes, unable to pay for air conditioning or food. Everything will be sacrificed for a
defense department that has become an enemy of the American people. At this point, does it really matter? Who we vote for? We always get John McKinney life sucking defense budgets to crowd out everything Americans deserve. The defense department isn't killing foreign American enemies. It's killing Americans. Scott, the cent, Howard Ludnick and Kevin Hasett have two things in common. They all stutter went on national television as a lie to us about economic indicators and two when they, they come from New York City. New York City in Washington, DC, or making war on the American people on our birthright. One through the blood. My grandparents generation.
They've built it on my beach in World War II. Namely, a strong social safety net. Solid jobs and responsive government. Although my parents generation through our patch money. My grandparents generation literally died for in the trash as they dropped acid, copulated in the mud at Woodstock or attempted to levitate the Pentagon. We will not. The first thing we did need to do is tax concentrated wealth. Stand up. FDRs work for the program. Recapitalize our social safety net.
To make a direct investment in non defense rate in industry and try to balance our national budget. This is not partisan. There are emergency measures.
The defense department is out of control as is having $40 trillion in national debt. I'm not a leftist or a liberal.
In order to acknowledge the idea of taxing with those who have taken the risk and starting business of acquired.
But at this point, does Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk really need another trillion billion dollars.
Well, Americans experienced downward mobility, a debase currency and squalor.
I'm more, but thank you. Next, we have who again? Sharon's better for you.
Thank you. Sharon's better for him than after that. Sorry.
I should have written it down.
Travel if I were a participant. Thank you.
We already know I'm Sharon's better for us. Good evening.
I've been a resident of this city for 78 years.
Consequently, I've had plenty of time navigating the streets of our beautiful city.
As a board member and owner resident of Parkside Town Homes on King Court.
I'm here to express my concern regarding the intersection of King Court and South Street.
All the residents of Parkside Town Homes and Villages have only one way in and one way out.
Turning left from King Court onto South Street can only be called an experience that requires extreme patience.
Since the residents on King Court did not receive notification of the current project,
I respectfully request a pause, allowing the homeowners an opportunity to weigh in on any changes.
Thank you for your consideration. Thank you.
Some whatever repeat, but we're very interested in this in our environment.
My name is Roberta Smith and I'm owner and occupied 2250 King Court.
I've only lived in this location for approximately six months, but I've experienced the anxiety and waiting trying to turn left from King Court onto South Street.
A left hand turn out of King Court onto South Street is a totally unsafe for vehicles.
Currently, this intersection has a white flashing light that can be activated by pedestrians and bicyclists using the push buttons on the side of the road.
There's no plans and as I understand it, installation of a mostly completed for a new safer indicator using a pedestrian hybrid beacon.
That's kind of like what's on broad street and forget the intersection.
Our neighborhood myself included.
I think this is a great idea and it will make it much safer for pedestrians and bicyclists across South Street.
And those folks are typically going into metal park.
There's no question, there's no argument about the increase safety.
However, King Court is the one and only way for my home and every residents home to get out into South Street safely.
Left hand turns are basically our concern.
We evidently had no way to express our need for left hand turn signal during the discussion on the new pedestrian hybrid beacon.
And King Court itself is a dead end street.
It's just a call to sack with entrance to our homes as well as entrance to a metal park.
So you have down at the end of the street, many people who come with their kids and they park down there.
And then they try to get out at a five o'clock traffic or something and it's pretty difficult.
And my neighbors are officially asking the city to allow King Court residents to provide their input in order to improve the safety and operation of King Court South Street intersection for our families and our visitors.
Specifically to allow some kind of traffic control device to allow a safe crossing in turns or throughput actually to go to the school from King Court onto South Street.
The current plans are not addressing vehicular safety or accessibility in ease of use for the residents of King Court. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I know we have some new people in the room. Sorry to let you know one of the things always hard is people putting public comment but because it's not on the agenda we can't discuss it up here.
But there are some staff members in the audience that may come and chat with these speakers today.
With that, we will move on to our city or consent agenda and ask my colleagues you have anything you wish to pull from 5A to 5K.
Vice Mayor.
Not to pull, but I do need to recuse myself from item 5J because my residence is too close to broad street to vote on it.
Thank you. Councilor Michelle Shoresman.
I was going to pull 5J but really just for a couple of questions of staff.
Sounds good. Do you want to ask the questions before we?
If we can do it without pulling the item that I'm happy to do that and then we just vote on everything together.
City Attorney, can we ask if we question the staff before we start?
We need to pull the whole thing.
Okay.
Mayor. Yes.
I did have one last non agenda public comment.
If we wanted to squeeze that in before we moved for the consent.
Okay. After I called for the.
Okay.
No.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
First day.
We do have Dan C.
Hello again, Mayor council members.
My name is Dan C. I'm a resident of King court.
I'm sure you've received my letter today.
After our last meeting here, I went and did some more digging.
Found the contractor approval from January or mid January.
And then there was reference to an October 7 meeting and found that memo.
I have the item and we still have a report on this policy and the
question from the council and correspondence city correspondence to council.
And in that correspondence, there were two questions posed to the engineering
department,
one was about the operational capacity basically of the intersection King and south.
And there are eight potential warrants that would grant a technical justification for a
sign law at an intersection per the California MOT CD that's the manual uniform.
you know from traffic control devices and so only one of the eight conditions was met for
that would warrant a signal at that intersection and that movement is the northbound King
court movement that is R vehicles all of the 130 homes residences on King court there means only
means of egress and so that has a level of service F that's the worst grade it can get we can't there's
no G or H it has a long delay time has seen in the morning early morning hours and the staff report
also are that the answer to that question also confirms that it says via firsthand field visits
that it's in line with what's been studied. The second question on that is
pertaining to the working court residence notified of the change from a full signal to pedestrian
or versus a pedestrian hybrid beacon and the answer to that from south was no it was not King court
residents were not consulted. I've attached that city correspondence with my letter and snippets
within the letter itself. I took it upon myself and a couple of neighbors to this last weekend
go out Saturday and Sunday and get signatures from 77 of the 130 units in King court in the two
complexes on King court signatures in support that no we didn't get anything about this never heard
about this change to from a full signal which would provide us a dedicated left-turn movement
stopping the traffic on south street and to this pedestrian hybrid beacon that not only doesn't
maintain status quo it makes things harder because the signal timing will be longer it provides
you know it makes all vehicle movements illegal even if they're crossing on our right-hand side
and it would be technically safe to do an exit it makes it illegal under the current
we planned designed project so we're asking you a couple of present and and thank you thank you
I believe one of our team members would like to provide some input
sure appreciate the opportunity again I know we can't discuss this item in detail tonight
but I do want to provide some information this crossing is a challenge I totally understand it is very
challenging making a left-turn out of south or out of King court during peak times of day on to south
street this has been planned as a pedestrian hybrid beacon crossing for several years it was in our active
transportation plan as adopted in 2021 it was initially part of the Hygira complete streets project and has
been publicized and all of our community outreach was proposing this is a pedestrian hybrid beacon because
initially it wasn't meeting more on for signal for full signalization we looked at it as we got funding
through slow-cog to advance this project and start getting into design we collected updated traffic data
and confirmed actually volumes now have gone up a little bit we could make the case for full signal
as we started looking into those details one of our first conversations with the city emergency services we
know this is a primary quarter for fire station one and said would this be a concern and what we
heard at the time was yeah this would add some friction this is a primary route that we get to the south
Hygira quarter a full signal create some heartburn in terms of the potential delays we prefer to start with
the pedestrian crossing only and look towards potential upgrade to a full signal so all of our
community meetings public outreach to said this is going to be a pedestrian crossing with
potential to be a signal we've designed it to be easily converted to a signal.
Since then some things have changed to and that we've upgraded more emergency vehicle
preemption equipment for our emergency vehicles that add more capabilities to talk to our traffic
signals further downstream and as you probably see in some of our communications with the concord
residences week we acknowledge that we'd like to a signal would be a great solution from our perspective too
if we could do this without creating those concerns for emergency response we've had more
conversations with our new chief heres this week and said you know if the new equipment we have is this
still the we're at and from those conversations I think there's more openness to revisit
accelerating a traffic signal as maybe the right solution here it's something staff would prefer we'd be
supported that it's more about process what's the process to come back and make sure that there's
an opportunity for public conversation on that potential shift but that is something we'd
like to explore and plan to come back to the council and continue to discuss with the concord
neighborhood about that possibility is maybe the right fit for this project moving forward.
Thank you so much for providing some input on that I know that you sent an email to many people on that
and I wish we could come verse about that and ask lots and lots of questions and have some really
good deliberation unfortunately we are not at that point today since that's not on the agenda but thank you
really appreciate that and then we will move back to consent agenda items five a through five k
there was a quick question about something on five j and with that which member would you like to
chat with council and resourceman. Maybe maybe could come back up to the mic I haven't
literally cannot talk about that. You can't answer a question. Not broad street no. Oh that's right okay
so whoever can. Perfect thank you. Sorry to she's inappropriate. So my my question about five j is that
we've gotten quite a few agenda correspondence letters from residents who are
Both excited about this moving forward. I think if I can interpret correctly, the e-mails overall, they're very interested in this moving forward.
And they're interested in interim solutions before we can actually get all of this off the ground that is the full RFP project that's described in the staff in the agenda item.
So we have talked a little bit about this in the past and I know that there are efforts to do some things in the interim.
Do we are able to summarize what types of things we might be able to do in the interim before the full project goes into place?
Sure. Brian, we are good evening, Mayor of members council.
Yes. For that question, we are staff is working right now.
Very short term deploying the speed fee back trailer in the area.
Maybe you've seen that on Broad Street. We are going to be deploying on to Latin in the next couple weeks.
We also will be collecting some 48 hour speed data on Latin specifically in the next couple weeks.
We understand the desire for more immediate improvements.
And so we're looking the summer at some speed feedback science on Broad Street to address some of the kind of low hanging fruit of faster speeds before we can get to the full planning effort.
One thing I do want to bring up is that lot in and many of these other Jason Streets are going to be part of the full planning effort.
And if we kind of skip that and go straight to some quick build we run the risk of having unintended consequences.
So if there is the possibility of like I think some of the correspondence had indicated some quick build speed tables or speed humps on Latin some of the other streets.
And that has not really seen that there's a reduction cost with those temporary measures that an asphalt speed bump is about the same.
And so we that's an option for us to take a look at in this summer.
So that that is one of the options which you'll evaluate along with speed signs and some paint and other things that you're looking at.
This summer before the full study is complete before public outreach is really underway and we we go through the whole process.
Okay, and it sounds like you'll do some kind of many speed studies.
In order to decide where if you are going to put some of those.
Yes.
In a place where you would do that.
Great. Okay, and it includes that whole area.
A lot in funds to.
Yes, several of those streets are in the in team program currently.
Another thing to kind of keep in mind is that lot in meadow.
They are 6th in line currently in the in team queue.
We have several projects that are in front of them.
So it would be helpful for staff to maybe get some direction to elevate them outside of the normal and team process as they would kind of be like skipping.
Outside of that established queue knowing that they.
They would be part of this full planning effort.
You know, 27.
So.
Okay, and you just used an acronym.
Okay.
So it's the program that the city has to address.
Speeding volume concerns our residential streets.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Sorry.
No, I just if you want to give guidance.
I feel like we need to pull it if that's okay.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
All right.
Do we have public comment actually before we go there.
There are some yellow slips there by the deputy city manager.
Anyone have any public comment on consent agenda items or public hearing or business items.
So I'm going to make sure I will give everyone a chance.
Okay.
Any public comment.
You can assure you.
Yes.
Okay.
Three.
Thank you.
All for items.
We'll start off with.
The pass.
Maybe that's for
30 children. Okay, this is just in this neighborhood, the broader neighborhood around
middle part. Obviously, that's a high traffic area for children who are traveling to school
as well. And so I know that there's a lot of comment, there's been a lot of emails,
thank you for acknowledging these in a timely manner and for the opportunity to speak on this.
I think part of the concern here is that this is going, this could get worse, right? And
there's no perfect solution for things like this because there's always ripple effects. And I
can appreciate that. One of my concerns is that a lot of the cars that are doing this are not
cars that will willingly slow down because they see how fast they're going. In fact, that could
make it more fun for them. It's almost a game, it seems, to beat the traffic light. And so these are
some of the cars that you would expect it to be cars that have big big motors that can go fast,
that are low to the ground. So something like signs, I don't think personally, living on the street.
And I think if if police or anybody from the city spent three hours, not even three hours, just sitting
near one of these intersections, it would be abundantly clear what the issue is.
So something like what this gentleman was talking about, consideration for speedhomes or something
that would actually physically require cars to slow down. I think is what is necessary here.
My son is here, nine year old. He was one of the 30 plus children who at this,
this took out a memorial day. This is really, really important to us. We appreciate that you guys
are considering it. And I think if I understand what's going on here, I think what I want is that we
want this to be pulled from the agenda to have a more robust conversation about near-term fixes rather
than having to wait another 12 or 18 months for this. Thank you. Thank you.
Hi, council. It's Elianz. I live at the corner of Winston and Martin. Similar to what I said last
time, we would really, we're so excited about this health broad quarter product. We're excited. Our
all our neighborhood is up in arms about it in a good way. What we're hoping for, it's going to be a while
until that project comes to fruition in our neighborhood. So what we would really love to see is just
near-term, traffic calming measures in our little neighborhood, something that can be, you know,
low cost, temporary bolted in, rubber speed hump, something that I understand is fairly simple.
So specifically asking you to just allocate a small part of the budget for those traffic calming measures
in the interim. That doesn't take away obviously from the bigger picture of what you're trying to
do with the planning and design of this project. With love also the signals for the speed,
but I think that goes in tandem with also the speed humps. And yeah, just to make it a safer place,
while we all wait for the redesign and the bigger picture. So thank you. Thank you.
Good evening, council. My wife was here last time speaking and tonight's my turn. So thanks for
having me. So my name is Michael Labavich and my wife and our two daughters, three year old and a six-month-old
live on Funston Avenue between Lawton and Broad. I'm here tonight to a just strongly support our
endorsement and excitement for the Broad South corridor project. We know that project matters
and we believe that it is kind of a bigger long-term fix. But I'm also here as a parent to ask you
not to make the families on our street that my neighbors here sort of just spoke about, you know,
wait any longer for what feels like basic safety. Every day drivers cut through our neighborhood to
avoid specifically the light at Broad and South. And they come down, Funston fast and not just a little
too fast, but fast enough that I feel it in my body when I'm standing next to my three-year-old
in our front yard. And you know, Funston is not just a shortcut. It's where people live. It's where
kids play. It's where families walk dogs and ride bikes and push strollers and, you know, walking simply
two blocks down to the park. And, you know, this really keeps my wife and I and our neighbors up at night.
The reality is that when you live on a street like this, you start to do the math of what if a
kid runs out and, you know, as Alec mentioned, you know, people are really trying to beat that light.
And people are on their phones, unfortunately. And what happens if someone is just not looking as they're
trying to just save an extra three seconds to cross through a light and there's a child out in the street.
And so it's it's it's really important to us and specifically just want to also advocate for some type of
temporary measure, something that possibly could be allocated outside of kind of the current
allocated budget for something that's bolt in, but would physically slow drivers down driving through that
neighborhood really appreciate your consideration and time and thanks for having me. Thank you.
Any other speakers? No, we do not. Okay, thank you. Council Member Marks.
Yeah, I have a question for a city manager. Is this issue something that could be discussed when we talk
about the budget allocation later as a business item? In that allocation of a small amount
for this purpose? That's a great question. Thank you because the it's the budget is it touches all things.
So, however, I think I need to check with staff to see if there's something about the RFP, the way this
project is structured in the consent item that makes that the better place to give the direction.
If not, then it could also come up in the budget item. So, thank you. And I appreciate your
mental and work. Yeah. Hi, Madeleine Consent as Assistant Director of Public Works. If we wanted to
implement some type of a quick build, we do have funding within your two of the budget for things like
vision zero implementation or active transportation implementation. So, we do have things set aside where we
could look at items like this that would be within a city manager or director per view to allocate.
So, that would be within staff's discretion or we could come back to council to talk about items like that.
And would that be under, do we need to talk about that today with five J or is that per the
vision zero plan that we've already discussed? So, five J would consider more long-term
corridor planning, which includes the neighborhoods around broad streets. So, that's already
encompassed in the RFP that you guys are considering tonight. For the quick build, you guys would not need
to make a decision on that tonight. We can already move forward on that. Great. Thank you so much.
All right, with no other public comment, we'll come back to the council. Go ahead, council remarks.
Sorry, wait, one second, I have city manager jump in. Go ahead. I think we could do now, or is this
something we need to do at another time? So, I think I'm hearing from our staff that we don't need the
South Broad Street corridor planning effort and the quick build that's intended to be incorporated
into that project would not be where we would pull this funding. It's not contemplated directly
in that project right now. And so, we would not recommend modifying five J. But instead, we can take
specific direction. Maybe under the budget item, if you would like to provide it on this stretch of roadway
at the same time, we think we could accommodate the request even without that direction. So,
so I think we're good on consent. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Council, I'm Reshoyesman.
Yes, sorry, just to follow up on that. My understanding from other conversations and emails with staff
and from what they've said here is they are already working on some short-term solutions in the areas.
So, we don't even need to provide extra direction through the budget item tonight or
additionally because they're already working on a short-term plan along with the RFP that we're contemplating
right now. That is correct. I think the one nuance is that we have a standard process that we use
for requests like this and we treated in as sort of a, there's a queue that occurs and we can, we typically
have enough budget for a certain number and staff availability for a certain number in a year.
And so that's the piece where we're just looking at trying to figure out how to prioritize the
request that we do receive. At the same, it's not so much a funding side of things. I believe as it is just
which one comes first. So, certainly five J. We can move forward without that direction. If you would
like to give a specific direction under the budget you can, but if not, we will continue to work
on this and we are hearing the desire for this to happen quickly. You know, same time, same, you know,
is what we're looking at for other improvements related to the quick.
There is no one to be navfiled pieces of Southbrad. We here in understand the concern and so I just
will make sure maybe during a break. If we have a moment to check in with staff to make sure
we don't need that specific direction on prioritization. I believe that otherwise we're good. I believe
overall.
Thank you very much and thank you for bringing that up, Councillor Merkel. With that, can we have a motion
I'd like to move the staff for accommodation for the consent items.
All the way from 5A through 5K.
Sounds good.
Thank you.
Councilor Shoresman.
I will second approval of the consent agenda.
Thank you.
City Clerk, can we have a roll call please?
Yes.
Councilmember Boswell.
Yes.
Councilmember Boswell.
Yes.
Vice Mayor Francis.
Yes.
With refusal on item 5J.
Mayor Stewart.
Yes.
Thank you so much and motion passes.
And thank you to the community.
With that, we will take a quick five minute break and then we'll come back to talk about the budget.
Thank you.
to adopt the budget. Talk through our user fee cost recovery goals because we will be kicking off
a process in this next year to go undertake a comprehensive user fee study and then get an update
briefly on Sloma, San Luis Obispo Museum of Arts progress on phase one of their grant with the city.
But first off, I'd like to take a couple minutes to highlight some information that was included in
the City Manager's message, which is the first few pages of our budget book and document.
It was oddly maybe a great experience for me to review and help put together this year's message
because it really provided an opportunity to highlight a lot of the amazing work that we have
done over the last year because this is actually the second year of our two year financial plan.
And so we have a lot of things to be very proud about accomplishing over this past fiscal year,
which we will be concluding this June. So July 1st for us is a new year and so we're almost to the end
of our year and so again, lots of things to celebrate. So first, want to highlight some of our major
capital projects. You see some photos up there of some of those. One, our water resource recovery facility
upgrade or we call our work was completed this year. It is the largest single capital improvement
project to date for the city to years to build and it was completed this year. Of course, we completed
our cultural arts district parking structure and then began construction on the Regatee Community Park
project, which will add nearly 11 and a quarter acres of new amenities, including pickleball courts,
bike facilities, walking paths, event space playgrounds, and wreck areas to the Regatee Ranch
area, which we are incredibly proud to bring forward. We took care of new paving on tank farm road with new
striping, approved the Hagaric Complete Streets Project, completed the mid-Hagaric bypass project with
which most people don't see, but it is an incredibly important flood control project. We've been working
on for decades with the county and San Luis Obispo and the Department of Water Resources at the
state. We also mean significant progress on our mission plaza enhancement projects. So hopefully folks
have had an opportunity to use our new restrooms there, which were opened and we are in the process of working
with a local business to open a chaos cafe in the plaza. We restored all of our fixed transit services
to pre-pandemic levels, and that took a lot of concerted effort by a lot of people to essentially
restore our services. And that as well as adding electric buses, charging of the structure in new
rider tech.
Legal technologies to help make using our buses easier. We completed a Laguna Lake Bike Park project and I would love to take a moment to really highlight.
That was a unique opportunity for staff to work directly with community volunteers to build that project ourselves together. So it was truly, I think of it as sort of a sweat equity project that we did together and really built something amazing that's being used every day in our community.
We also made a lot of progress on a number of programs, operations and other initiatives and that includes developing and kicking off a public information campaign about our new citywide single vote election system.
We have an internally articulated and now will be externally articulated goal if we want people to hear about this so much you ask us to please stop.
And we're getting there so this is another opportunity we're kicking off that information campaign because it's so important that people are able to vote and exercise their vote and a way that it can be counted.
So remember this November vote for one the top two boat getters get the seat.
We launched a slow grown business support program, which is a free service that helps businesses navigate through our city processes and access resources.
We completed our by any by any old community academy program we had more than 30 participants and it was incredibly successful.
Really big shout out to Natalie Harnat for her work on that program she really put it together and was the cruise director for everyone through that process and I know we all had a ton of fun through that and thanks so much to Natalie.
We adopted new fire hazard severity zone maps, which was a huge lift, but also has enabled us to get out in the community we got to announce an event that we're holding on June 13 to really help get that information out.
We obtained recognition from the state as a clean California community so really recognizing efforts to reduce litter improved public spaces and foster community pride.
And I really want to highlight this to we worked in partnership with Cal Poly to ensure a significant reduction in illegal parties.
I think Patrick's Day weekend and completely eliminated illegal street parties so that was a huge undertaking and work effort.
Incredibly big lift by our police department in particular as well as our fire department all of our first responders and that was no small feet and I want to highlight that too.
We took a lot of steps forward on housing we now have almost 3,200 housing units that we've permitted in this city since 2019 that's huge.
We helped to deliver the Maxine Lewis Grove apartments providing 39 permanent supportive housing units.
We are helping to advance an additional 357 affordable housing units over the next five years and this includes 75 permanent supportive housing units and those are super important because that's what's truly needed to help folks who were recently unhoused.
You know, be able to remain housed we've worked with internal teams and community partners to close and remediate 250 gate encampments over the past year.
This amounted to 42 tons of trash and debris and with a lot of work by our community action team and mobile crisis unit, which made 740 unique contacts when it individuals experiencing homelessness.
This included referrals for 162 folks to mental health and substance abuse treatment 111 housing referrals and help to reunify 26 people with.
Family or support agencies and that's incredibly important because that helped them receive help they need so it just wanted to thank you for giving me a moment to really highlight a lot of this work because.
We've been incredibly busy, but this is the work that our community has asked for and that we really take a lot of pride and delivering and the budget is how we do it because it all requires funding and resources and so next up.
We are showing a long a general fund long term forecast that is well, our general fund is budgeted and in balance both general fund and all of our funds for this fiscal year.
We did, however, to had to take a lot of work to get to this point we were forecasting a deficit in the 2728 year largely related to the need to open an additional fire station in our community in order to make sure we had enough funding to do both that and all of the other things that we need to do plus us like all other agencies for pretty much in the state.
And a lot of folks in the nation saw a reduction in revenues or slow down in revenues and so while our costs went up our revenues slow down and we know we have a new fires station to open in a couple of years so.
On March 3rd we brought forward a really comprehensive look at a number of reductions that we knew we would need to take to bring us back into balance and propose.
About 1.1 million dollars in reduction so those were budget cuts that we went through very carefully to make sure we could provide on an ongoing basis to bring our spending within what we are forecasting to be our revenues in the future.
We're really proud of the work it took a lot of effort by every single department and our city to look very closely at our spending knowing that you know our funding.
As I tried to remind folks whenever an opportunity comes to talk about our funding sources.
We we fund ourselves through through our citizens through taxes and so it's incredibly important that we are careful with our spending and that we look to our spending before looking to asking for more money from them.
And so we took that process very seriously to come up with these reductions.
We're really proud that there will be no layoffs as a result of these reductions.
However we are eliminating four and a half positions those were all vacant and some of them were held vacant very.
And so we're really proud to be able to make sure that they could be considered as part of this reduction process.
We saw this is essentially a right sizing to make sure that we are being very responsible going forward.
And made sure that we're constraining our budget growth so we will talk a little bit about and you'll see in some of the information in the staff report that.
We have been constrained to the the process we went through for considering increases to just normal operating costs.
A lot of them are passed through through contracts as well as any new items that we felt we needed to fund and ended up coming up with a.
The smaller list and smaller amount than we have seen in prior years again just knowing that's what we need to do to be.
Fiscally responsible coming forward.
So thank you for allowing me a chance to kick things off highlight a lot of the amazing work and give just a preview of.
What we went through to get to this point and we're really proud of what we've been able to put together and to present to you all this evening.
And certainly happy to answer questions as we go along. So thank you so much.
Thank you very much. That's a great.
Interence into this report and I love seeing the many pages in the beginning of this budget reports showing all of the wonderful things we've done this year.
And with that I'll pass it back to Emily Jackson.
Thank you. Good evening council. I'm really happy to be here this evening this item before you tonight is a culmination of several months of a lot of work with all of our departments.
I want to take a moment before we dive into the details to thank all of our departments and staff who contributed towards this effort.
A lot of them are in the room and hopefully some of them are taking some well deserved time off before they come back into our morning.
It's truly a team effort. The budget obviously touches every single employee in our organization and everybody contributes to this recommendation before you in some way.
And so we were lucky to have such a great team and so much good partnership that helps support the finance department and delivering this to council every year.
The team manager noted we are seeking adoption of second year of the two year financial plan, which was initially adopted back in June of 2025.
The focus of this document is much smaller than the two year financial plan that you saw last year.
And the reason for that is that this is truly just a supplement to what you adopted back in June of 2025. So the focus of the document is really on the changes compared to what we had initially expected when we put the 2527 financial plan together.
And as you're aware, many of the recommendations before you this evening we're already discussed in the comprehensive budget preview that we provided on March 3rd.
And so our hope is that we can keep the staff presentation relatively short this evening to allow her plenty of time for public comment from members of our community questions and deliberation from council.
And in total the budget that we're seeking adoption of for all funds is just under 225 million.
And so that amount of money is really important that we answer all your questions and provide plenty of time for deliberations.
So you're all comfortable with the recommendation before you this evening.
And with that, I'm going to kick it back over to Riley to walk through the details.
Thank you.
The first slide I'd like to share tonight compares the recommended budget for next year with the year two assumption from the financial plan.
Staff see a slightly improved revenue outlook with many adjustments both up and down.
But the improvements largely driven by a correction to a conservative budget for development fees, which have been highly volatile and hard to forecast in recent years.
Our budgeted slightly up year of year and more than the revenue increase and this is largely driven by a one time.
Basically an accounting adjustment transfer between the general fund and the capital out lay fund to close out the winter 2023 emergency storm projects.
So after the use of fund balance the recommended budget actually does indicate a surplus for the next year.
Moving on to the forecast for the general fund retaining some of that surplus will actually be necessary in order to offset some of the one time increase and expenditures to open that fifth fire station.
But in the long run it does look like the previously forecasted deficit for the general fund has been closed out.
I should point out the additional funding for the operating reserve which is slightly below pause policy levels may also be necessary to retain in future years.
Among the recommended actions necessary to close the deficit where the set of budget reductions the city manager spoke to.
These reviewed and discussed in detail on March 3rd with the budget preview and based on council's direction they were included in the recommended budget without change.
These are the results of a very thoughtful coordinated process with all departments and carefully designed to mitigate impacts to the community and to the city at large.
Critically as we've said no layoffs all positions recommended for elimination here were vacant and most were vacant for quite some time.
And the public published document includes much more detail we've shown high level here and happy to take any questions on those details.
The budget also includes some cost increases and this is somewhat of a departure from recent history.
No across the board inflationary adjustments were made initially departments had to request each and every increase to line items within us now analysis to support.
The only across the board adjustment that we ultimately recommended was to fuel.
We assumed a 20% increase for fuel prices city wide so that if we're wrong we'll at least be wrong evenly throughout the year and we can come back to correct that at the right time.
Also in the general fund there's a number of many small lines from nearly every department because we were so broad and what was required to report for it as a budget request.
But some representative items are critical public safety contracts increased public outreach items and the cost to generally maintain service levels.
And one thing that was noted in report is this exercise saved about $150,000 versus a pure CPI adjustment or resulted in about a 2% annual increase to operating expenditures budgets.
I think that that was worthwhile.
Within the water funds the primary increase was source of supply or purchased water.
In the sewer funds we had a large increase recommended for the biosolids hauling contract as the water resource recovery facility.
I've become mature now fully online staff have a better understanding of what those operations cost.
In the parking funds the recommendation is largely driven by the cost to accept increased revenue from a new parking structure.
And in the transit fund we're seeing the fuel price increases that we spoke to earlier and also increased activity from implementation of the short range transit plan.
What's typically presented in the budget is the significant operating budget changes and these are all the new things that have been recommended.
A quarter to a half of the 500,000 to 1.2 million in recent years. This includes critical safety investments,
like body-worn cameras, and electrical panel inspections. It also includes policy-required items, like a user fee study.
And for the general fund, zero new full-time employees, although one position is reclassified upwards to address some recruitment challenges.
In the water fund, there's a recommended one-time expenditure for water treatment coverage, just assist with regulatory compliance.
The water and sewer funds also include a shared allocation of a special project manager, a new employee added.
But fully offset with reductions to operating budgets.
And the recommendation for the parking fund is a reorganization of five-half-time parking compliance officers to two full-time.
Moving on to major city goals, please report that 86% of tasks from the 2025-27 financial plan are on track completed or on track to be completed timely.
And we have 17 tasks with language or timeline changes and just one task no longer recommended.
And no significant issues with the original recommended work plans.
So, as indicated on March 3, there were some recommended changes, but they've largely affect learning since work programs kicked off or externalities that we've since found out about.
And with that all-hand it's our assistant director of public works for update on the capital budget.
Thank you, Riley.
Madeleine Cassenta Assistant Public Works Director.
During this supplemental budget, we are not doing a full-true-up like we did in a previous financial plan, but rather looking at aligning projects with anticipated project delivery.
So, one of the projects that we looked at was the 1042 walnut project tenant improvements, which is the police station.
This we did not deprioratize or take any resources away from the project, but rather looked at what the funding need was currently and looked at where we were within the design phase.
We currently are in at 12 month window where we're leading to really spend time on the design of that project and will not enter into construction until we hit the next financial year.
So, looking at that, we're looking at reallocating funding into projects that can currently use that funding, including, we're a getty park.
Bridge abutments, the storm drain projects, California tap, tap around about and replacements of some pedestrian crossing improvements downtown amongst some others that are listed in your report.
We also, in the CAP, just wanted to highlight some of the big things that we are doing in the upcoming year, which includes some transportation recreation and downtown improvements, which also include replacement of the parkla and mission plaza, which you may have noticed we were working on earlier this year, but we'll be back again after concerts concerts in the Plaza and before the holiday season.
But in addition, we're planning for the 2027 peaving project and as part of that, looking at curb ramps along the grand avenue corridor to see how we can upgrade some ADA improvements along that area.
For more details, please feel free to ask any questions or reference door.
I'll pass it back.
Thank you, Madeline.
So that concludes the presentation relative to the recommended budget. We did have two other items at the city manager highlighted in her introductory remarks.
I'm going to cover those really quickly and open it up for question deliberation from council after that.
The first item in addition to adoption of the budget is just a quick update on slow most progress towards their phase one grant funding requirements.
The information about the progress fairly significant progress that they've made so far is included on this slide.
As a part of this item this evening, we're just recommending that you receive and discuss if desired the update and potential next steps, but we don't have a firm recommendation other than to note that our plan is to return for a conversation about potential additional funding with the year and budget report next February.
Once we have our audited numbers finalized.
The next item that we wanted to bring your council's attention to this evening was our user fee cost recovery policy fiscal policies are typically adopted every two years with adoption of the two year financial plan.
And so the user fee cost recovery was amended based upon the last user fee study and then adopted by council in June of 2025.
Believe it or not, we are getting ready to do the next user fee study to comply with the make sure we're doing this every three years to study our fees and our processes for delivering certain services to the community.
And so we wanted to take this opportunity before we get an RFP out on the streets to get a consultant on board to give council the opportunity to discuss review and provide if necessary alternate direction to staff relatives to cost recovery levels so that we can make sure to factor that into the upcoming user fee study.
I think it's important to note that per council's request during the last process we will be making two stops with council on the user fee study.
We plan to come back after we work with the consultant and all of our staff and have calculated what the fees should be consistent with cost recovery levels is stated in the policy.
We're planning to come back and preview the recommendations for council in March of next year and then take any feedback from council at that point make any necessary adjustments and then return in April for adoption of the fee schedule so that we can.
We wait the proper amount of of time 60 days before the fees can go into effect on July 1 and so.
This item is is a placeholder this evening in case council would like to provide additional or alternate this direction to staff relative to cost recovery goals and this slide.
It includes just kind of a high level summary of what the policy currently says it focuses both on kind of conceptual reasons that would favor low versus high cost recovery for certain different types of services but also identifies more specific cost recovery levels for individual fees or categories of fees.
So with that, that concludes our presentation this evening and we are back on the recommendations and would invite at this point any questions comments from council.
Well, we do the museum.
Presentations that is update now or later.
I believe we're handling that as a sort of general public or.
Okay, great. Thank you just making sure.
Well, thank you for a very thorough report and I also thank you for just spending some time. I know not every single one of us but most of us kind of have 12,000 questions ahead of time so I appreciate you spending that time.
And I also appreciate you looking at March versus February when we're in the middle of the the major city goal priorities and figuring out what to see with the budget next so thank you very much city manager.
Thank you very much I've got one after having a chance to confer with staff on the question we talked about earlier, which was when and how we would potentially install some.
We would be calming features on near broad street.
We do have potential solution and because it's somewhat, you know, because it's budget related I thought it might be helpful to have clarification and perhaps a request of council for direction and ahead of when we get public comment just so folks can hear what we're thinking of.
Anybody hear who would like to speak to that issue. So with that perhaps I could ask.
Mael and consent to our assistant public work director or our really anybody over here who might want to be able to come up provide more information.
Thank you. Thank you.
I think I'm just going to stand here the rest of the night.
Mael and consent. This is a public workshop.
Yeah, I just wanted to give a little clarification on that project and how we might be able to implement some quick build on within that corridor.
So one and funsten avenue is currently within the 2026 roadway ceiling project.
And so one of the thoughts behind potentially installing something like a temporary speed hump in that area would be to wrap it up within that project.
And so that would likely work if it was a quick build making sure that we are evaluating and doing more long term education and outreach for the long term need of if we are doing a permanent installation of a speed hump or something more long term that would stay.
But that's always the the larger concern is if we're really impacting the community we want to make sure we're doing an education and outreach.
If it's a temporary feature that allows staff to be a little bit more nimble if it's not working out we can always remove and take a look at that.
Thank you, vice mayor.
Yeah, I just wanted to quickly follow up with the city attorney just for the record because lot in and funsten is more than a half mile from my residents and my allowed to be a part of this conversation since it's now removing it from the discussion of broad street in general.
If it's more than a half mile from from your house, I don't see a concern there.
Okay, thank you.
And thank you for that clarification as well about the project list and Morris is going.
All right, city manager.
Thank you one additional clarification relating to sloma and their grant agreement I just we have a few opportunities to talk about the phase two portion of what they have requested.
We think we should take another look when we come back with a year and results which we typically do around October we think this year may be more like November December in order to make sure we a little more accurate on our reporting.
That would give us a better sense of where we ended the current fiscal year and whether we may have potentially unassigned fun balance available.
We would not be recommending we actually allocate or say appropriate money at that time typically we like to do that just two times a year when we do our budget and then when we do our second quarter or midyear budget report that typically comes back to all in.
That'd be wary and so what we would say if we get to that point and there's lots of ifs.
And we receive direction we would go work on an amendment to the agreement and try to have that back in February.
So that's kind of what we're thinking depending on how we end the year and what the direction is at that point in time about potential future allocations of that funding we usually do spend a fair amount of time talking about your end.
And where unassigned fun balance may go if our audit confirms that that's the funding we have available. So that's why it's important for us to do things in that sequence we get a sense where we ended we make sure we get the audited results before we actually appropriate any money, which happens later in February.
So hopefully that makes sense as well.
Thank you. Thank you.
And the time there's like the timeline aspect and if there's money.
All right. With that any initial questions before we go to public comment.
Councilmember Boswell.
Thank you just a few.
First I'm I'm happy to see that where we've got a budget that is balanced and maybe even puts us a little tiny little bit in the black for the following year.
Of course I'm looking out at the year after that and seeing the brackets again showing us potentially in a deficit and I know we continue to be worried about.
Inflation in inflationary effects on quickly construction.
The couple things that we're doing to get ourselves in balance on this current budget cycle are the no no base CPI adjustment for the budgets and then also essentially eliminating some unfilled positions.
That's good but we that's harder to do a second time isn't it so when we're looking at the next financial plan and the next set of budgets.
We're going to be in a more difficult position and I think I'm just trying to think a little bit ahead so I just want to make sure I'm thinking about that correctly.
Yeah, I think that's a that's a really good question potentially.
You know we as Riley noted during his presentation things have performed better this year than we had initially expected and so we're trying to balance the optimism and the cautious.
You know with cautious budgeting on on a go forward basis and things are a little bit wild out there the market is responding.
It's responding in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect it to respond, and it's hard to know how long that will last.
You know, I will say that we spent months on identifying budget reductions and the intent was that they were things that we would be able to get rid of and continue to sustain operations at the same level that we're currently providing them today.
You know, I would say in a lot of cases we've, I don't know that anything was easy to cut, I should say that, but we've kind, you know, the quote unquote easier things.
And so it certainly makes it a little bit more difficult as we go further and if we need to go through that exercise again, I do expect that it would be more difficult than it was the time before.
But one of the things that we heard from departments and one of the things that we did internally within finances, we took a look at what do we, what have we historically relied on consultants for versus what do we do in house.
And so, you know, I can say in my own department we came up with a pretty small handful of things that we've been contracting out that we've determined that we can do in house, probably for less money, then we were paying some of the else to do it.
And so, you know, the reduction exercises are also a really good opportunity to look at how we do business and it had been a while.
But, you know, since we have looked at how we had provided or produced, for example, the state controller street report, which we're legally required to do and back in the day it made a lot of sense to contract it out and we realize that today it doesn't make sense and so we're going to do it in house.
Again, I think nothing, nothing is an easy reduction and I think that yes, if we, if we are in a position that need to reduce more it will be harder every time that we have to do it, but part of the reason for taking action now is to mitigate against the potential for future, you know, higher, higher deficit and higher number of necessary recommended reductions.
Thanks.
The tap around about project, if I recall correctly, we're estimated about two and a half million of increased costs there, that's part of one of our budget adjustments is to push some.
Funding over to that project is, is that is that just because the cost of everything is gone up, is that why we're seeing an increase in that or is there been.
It hasn't been a redesign or something of that nature right it's just an evolutionary cost.
I think did me want to phone a friend.
Brian Nelson signature. Thank you for the question. Yeah, it's it's effectively to accommodate the increase in cost escalation that we've observed through the design with the updated 100% estimate received from the consultant just a few months ago.
Okay, that's the no no design changes have.
Create that increase it's really just the cost escalation of construction that we've observed over numerous years. Great. Great. Thanks.
Well, hopefully when that eventually we got to bed at the bed scum and we'll we'll open.
You know, very conservative in our estimate.
Yeah, the intention is that we won't need any more money, but we still have yet to bid the project and see what those kids look like to so we're looking at that probably later in the year.
Great. Thank you. And I think city manager wanted to add in on that.
Thank you not on the cost escalations on the specific project. Thank you, but back on your question related to the process of budget reductions and next steps.
Council member Boswell, I really appreciate the question because I think we're trying to.
I think it's a little bit of insight into what we went through to come up with the list of reductions and what things will look like going forward.
If revenues don't significantly increase because the reality, as you mentioned, is.
What we've presented is a list of reductions that we don't believe will create significant impacts to the community.
And there's more reductions if we do need to do them in the future.
Will likely or undoubtedly create impacts to the community and they would come.
It depends on where we're looking at cuts.
But everything we do is to serve a member of the community in some way or part of run certain programs that people are using.
So if we do get in a position where we need to make additional reductions, which I think we don't anticipate.
We need to do that to continue our course.
But if we were to add new programs as an example.
If we're looking to add something new to a slate of programs.
If we're looking to significantly increase the program or staffing in a particular area.
That's when we're going to start looking at.
If we're looking for reductions that will be needed in other areas that will come with a cost to most likely a service that's being used in the community.
So just want to kind of forecast that a little bit for anybody listening now or in the future for our next financial planning process.
Because our financial planning process is when you know we love hearing from everybody in the community about what they would like to see us do in a complex over the next two years.
It's just significantly constrained budget situation.
That's a lot harder to do that without having to make cuts other places that will impact somebody.
And so we're just trying to what folks know that that may be coming.
It just depends a little bit on what we would be looking to add.
It depends a lot on our economic picture going forward.
As well as other choices that we could hear from our community.
If people want something new and we can't get there without making cuts that will create potentially harm somewhere or cut surfaces that somebody really wants it or needs.
There are other revenue generating things that we can talk about as well.
But again that's coming from the people themselves meaning we will be looking at you know other revenue sources are typically taxes and some form or fees.
So that's just the struggle we constantly have around the work that we do.
We want to provide the services that folks are leading and asking for and but we're obviously constrained in that.
But I just want to reflect a little more and thank you for the question so that it's helping.
Get that message out as we we're already thinking about our next financial plan for sure.
And so it's never too early to start contemplating what might happen then.
Thanks for that additional clarification.
I mean definitely the decisions we make tonight about our next year budget.
Effect the kinds of decisions we can make next year when we go and turn next financial plan cycle.
Just a last question about the cost recovery principles matter saying so that's that's unchanged from the previous set of principles that's correct.
I do recall some discussions this year about challenges with a large scale events and user fee recovery on large scale events.
Is there any.
Thing you need from us tonight that wouldn't be in here that will be helpful direction on that or anything to discuss.
I don't know that there is specific direction that we need from council at this point on on that item.
There is one of the things that we have put on paper that we are actively trying to address through this new user fee study and so our first step is is going to happen before we even get a consultant on board.
And and in the next couple weeks I'm hoping that we'll be able to pull together all of our departments who are involved in supporting or preparing for events in some way and this could include.
First amendment events other types of special events that are are not normal and planned and and you know we're going to have we're going to kind of do an audit of what are all the things that we do.
What can we reasonably recover costs for reasonably recover costs for and identify any potential holes and so you know that that that may result in additional fees are restructuring of the fees but you know our.
Our absent any direction to the contrary and the user fee cost recovery policy are intent is to is to to calculate the fees that would that would require that would recover the cities costs and so.
And so that's again absolutely any any changes to the policy that's what we would plan to do and bring to council next March for any feedback that you have before adoption in April.
Great thanks and it's a make question.
I'm good. Thank you. Thank you.
Council. I'm a shortman.
Thank you. Yeah. I have a couple of different questions, but since council member Basel was just talking about cost recovery all start there.
I noticed that in the mid range cost recovery activities.
A particular event that we don't host in the city anymore is still listed and I'm at the triathlon is listed and I'm just wondering if that is being left there as.
The two for a potential come back or is it meant to represent some other type of event that would be similar to that.
Or if we should maybe replace it with you know I don't know something more along the lines of what council member Basel saying is that supposed to represent like a large scale event.
I believe Dr. Vacuum will come up and share some input on that too.
Thank you.
Good evening. Thanks for the question. Greg of achy and director for parks and recreation.
It's twofold one.
A little fingers crossed maybe a little bit on that as as I hope.
But when we modify this we didn't really rearrange or add any new subject matter.
We kind of slid a couple from a high to a low or a mid at our last financial plan meeting, but we didn't officially adopt or redo the entire structure for a cost recovery.
So it's still listed listed on there.
But I think this is our opportunity as we circle around for our next financial plan to look at that and probably just generic terminology for maybe a large city style event.
Lunar New Year for example has become something of a of all play that we used to do with the triathlon so that's an opportunity to kind of look at those things.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah that would it would make sense to me to like generalize the term a little bit more rather than.
Dating some very specific type of 40 years of tradition was hard to kind of erase that I think for all the best emotionally.
So I think we're playing.
We're might be ready there.
Yeah, special place in my heart to love to see you come back but no times change.
No worries.
Okay.
Thank you for that.
Then just jumping around just a little bit.
It wasn't really talked about in this particular report.
I know we've talked about it many, many times before, but our pension liabilities.
Does this particular budget.
Does it anticipate making just our regular required.
Payments to CalPERS or does it anticipate any additional payments.
So the budget presumes that we will continue to make our normal payments are unfunded liability payments.
Those are about twenty five twenty six million dollars a year.
And our ability to make our additional discretionary payments relies upon the availability of unassigned fund balance at the end of the year.
So I think Council has given pretty good direction on prioritization of use of unassigned fund balance.
I'm getting the name of that wrong, but there you do have a fiscal policy, which you most recently adopted again in June of twenty five that prioritizes CalPERS pension payments is the first use of unassigned fund balance at the end of any given year.
Okay.
So kind of looking ahead sort of like Council member Boswell does the better you all get at predicting how much we're going to have at the end of the year or not.
So potentially less likely there will be for those additional payments that we have been lucky to be able to make it in the past correct.
And we did we removed the two million dollar placeholder for the trust and didn't we decide to remove that at a previous meeting recently.
We unassigned it and we are including it in our twenty five twenty six eighty p to CalPERS.
So the eighty p just from the general fund will be about four point four million where it's normally about two point four million.
So one time two million dollar bump.
Okay.
And we are regular ADP payments would be.
The amount that we have to pay to CalPERS each year is.
That number is created based on increases in our in our regular in our employee pool in our staffing costs correct.
So it goes up incrementally over the years we have.
Increases in salaries and benefits cost and things like yeah yeah and it's important to note that that's something that's directed by us as an organization.
So the ADP is entirely discretionary.
It's above and beyond what we are required to pay to CalPERS every year.
Okay.
For a number of years we started making the ADP is back in fiscal year 2018-19.
And we've made about we've made over 28 million in ADP's thus far.
So we're on a good path but the the the amount was relatively stagnant for a number of years and about two years ago.
We had a discussion about inflating the ADP so that it was it was having the same impact even as the pension liability grew with the increased number of staff and increased the ongoing increase in.
Compensation did a cost of living adjustments and other things right for forgive me.
I use the term ADP and I didn't mean that I meant the required payments that we have to make are those incrementally raised by.
CalPERS to and they give us the number each year.
Yes.
So we make a normal payment and then an unfunded accrued liability payment and CalPERS.
Tell us what those are. Thank you, Director Jackson. Just to finish your thought there, with our ADPs, I believe
we gave direction to continue to apply the escalator to that ADPs, so when we're determining it, we're
adding additional to that, and just wanted to make sure that that direction had been given in the
previous meeting. Yes, we're I think we're very clear on that, and our recommendation, just like it was
back with unassigned fund balance from 2425, I anticipate our plan is that our recommendations for
use of unassigned fund balance will factor in what the ADPs should be, including the inflator
based upon staffing or. Thank you so much, and thank you. Yeah, and that's assuming that we have
enough money at the end of the year to do an APP on top of the required amount. Yeah, okay, thank you.
One last question, it's kind of maybe a little bit more of a specific question about the proposed changes to
one of the work items in particular. It's on page 343 of the packet under the cultural vitality
economic resilience and fiscal sustainability, and I believe Director Jackson, you can probably answer
this one because it's the 5D about the business license. I know you did this past year, I believe it was,
or maybe it was two years ago now, but you've done a lot of work on the collection of our business
tax and refining that process and getting more backed payments, if you will, people caught up on
their business licenses over the last year, and so I'm curious what the we wording of that language means.
It sounds like you're anticipating even doing some more work on that process. Yes, so I would say that we,
we've made a lot of good progress. Part of that is because we're spending more money to
mail regular communications out to people. I think we've done what we can do at the staff level.
I think we're still working, we're planning to work as soon as the busy season of business licenses
has passed us this year with our communications team to improve the website to just make sure that information
is reorganizing more accessible to business operators within the community, but I think we've really
nibbled around the edges of what we can do without any council involved in and so there are a number of
issues that we've identified related to our ability to enforce the municipal code that we would like to
were planning to do a study session with council on in early 2027, and I think it's going to be
an opportunity to get some to kind of identify some of the issues. We already have in mind some proposed
solutions, some of those are things that we can do on our own and we are doing them on our own,
but there are things that are going to require direction and a certain comfort level even if it's
not, you know, amendments to the Muni code or passage of a resolution that we need to, we need to
have a good sense of what council's comfort level is, especially as it relates to things like enforcement
efforts. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I would have thought that you would have checked that one
off your list. So when I saw more things on there, I was curious what they would be. So thank you.
You got a lot of ideas. Now that you have a lot of experience, you have a lot of ideas. All right. Thank you so
much. Thank you. Looking forward to those. Council Member Marks. Thank you. Yeah, I had a question about
the fire station. So we have actually two that we're talking about, right? We have the temporary
fire station out there in Avola Ranch development area, and then we have fire station number five.
And so I just would like a little bit of clarity about in terms of the this budget and then the upcoming
budget. What exactly are we talking about? We said the fire station. What do you mean? Yes, thank you for the
question. When we talk about staffing and additional fire station, we do mean staffing at the interim
station that's planned to be built within the Avola Ranch development. We do have some planning efforts
budgeted in the capital improvement plan for more permanent fifth fire that's it will also be.
It would replace the interim station in Avola Ranch. The reason for the additional planning efforts is to
identify a more ideal location. So this one will serve the southern part of the city, but it would be
better if we had that station located St. closer to Tink Farm Road in order to have just
quicker access to other parts of our city that also drive a lot of our call volume. So we're really
looking at response times within all of our city and seeing where it is that we need to like where would
be the ideal location for this fifth fire station. The Avola Ranch development project
had pursued and identified this is an interim station an idea that it would be kind of a stop gap.
That concept really came out of a study done back in 2016. I think there may be somebody in the audience
who is a little familiar with that. Study around the need for an additional fire station and it did
identify the potential for an interim location in an area once development reached a certain area and so that's
really what we're talking about today or what we're planning for opening at the essentially the beginning of
2020 to serve that part of the city but we know that's not the best location and so we want to plan for
a look at a really a larger permanent location that would be more ideal. So the immediate budget
how do I say the need immediate budget need is for the interim and then there should be some money
located for the planning effort for station. Correct that's right and that permanent station will also
require a very large capital contribution. I'm not sure that anybody really builds a fire station
that's of this scale that we would need for less than $30 million as an example and I'm probably
thinking that's probably more like $50 and that would spend a few seconds so that's $52 million so you
get where I'm going with so that will be a large planning and capital undertaking for us as we go through
the future of coming years. Okay thank you I had a question about it's a user fee question about
what we're charging for or the fees that we're requiring for charging EVs in the parking structure.
Is that included in this budget or is this something that's just being planned at this point?
I'm happy to my mic and light on happy to take that on our parking rates are not addressed in our
user fee studies generally those are done through a separate rate study process. The EV charging rates are
actually established by the city manager pursuant to a prior direction from the city council and so
we are continuing to evaluate our charging rates that are existing in our current what's called
lot four which is in the Mar Street structure at the bottom four and then also the rates that are currently
in effect in our new structure in the cultural arts district parking garage and we just had a
conversation about this yesterday actually and are continually looking at ways of refining and how we
might set those in a way that will both encourage people to use them as well as make sure that we're
recovering costs and doing it appropriately from that standpoint so it wouldn't be addressed in this
upcoming user fee study. Okay so but the EV charging is in the user fee. It is not.
What is it? I know it was in there. Okay thank you. Let's see in terms of the going back to the business
licenses again we keep some of us keep saying we need to list each rental units separately and
I'm wondering how that is reflected or not reflected in the budget we're looking at right now.
It's somewhat tied up with the rental registry idea in that it would be kind of a first step.
Right now the my understanding is that if someone owns a bunch of rentals they just need to have one
business license and so that makes it hard for tenants and residents in general to know whether
their landlord is actually paying that business license. So to what extent is an effort toward
holding landlords more accountable on that level included in this budget document we're looking at right now.
Yeah so there's not a specific appropriation recommendations to move that effort forward and
that is one of the items that we would like to discuss with council in the upcoming business
license study session is the question of how should business licenses be structured the code currently
requires that you have a business license for each physical location that you have. So we've got a couple
of pretty good examples of that in in the city right now we've got you know scout black horse and slow
joke ho off the top of my head which all have multiple locations same business they all have individual
business licenses for each of their physical addresses. So six among the three businesses we
we don't see the same thing with residential rentals and so that's that's one of the things that we would
like to discuss with council is what should the requirement be we've heard you know in the past very much
along the lines of what you're saying that we should require a business license for each physical address
regardless of business type and so that is an option it's also an option and may not meet the needs of
you know a potential of rental housing enforcement but there is an option to also just have the
property management company have one license and then everything under under that license for all the
properties that are owned so different agencies do it differently and those they're both options and
there's upsides and downsides to both they think the you know the difficulty the difficulty that we
have and one of the things that we discussed as part of the rental registry study session a couple of
months ago is that we we don't have a way of knowing for sure where all of the rental houses are and so
we do we we try together information when a rental rental rental housing businesses opening when they
apply for a new license we attempt to get a listing from them of all of the addresses that they
have that they're planning to cover under that business license and but we can only go on the information
that they voluntarily tell us and we don't have the ability or the capacity to go out and do an audit
of all of the rental housing properties within the city limits but that's that is that is one of the
topics for consideration in the study session yeah well study sessions are great but it's also wonderful
to get things done sometimes so we see if I have some more questions let's see the request that we got through
an email for having some fun set aside for ADA curb cutouts in the neighborhoods is that something
that can be accommodated within this budget or is this something that council would have to direct
I may want to phone a friend on that again but you know I like Madeleine highlighted in her presentation
of the CIP aside from the the really large scale capital projects that we do in some years I'm transportation
infrastructure is one of the single largest kind of categories of work that we do in any given year
and regardless of what the actual project is there's always pedestrian improvements and pedestrian
improvements included in those projects even if it's just a paving project that's intended to support
you know bicycles and cars there's there's we we usually have to touch a sidewalk and we'll do a
curb ramp replacement at that point as well and so wherever you see transportation projects I think it's reasonable to
assume that there's some curb ramp work being done in that area as well but I'll let Ryan look like
provide me. Yeah thank you for the question Brian Nelson situation here we do incorporate ADA
improvements into our roadway paving projects so by federal law we actually have to upgrade
curb ramps if we're paving the adjacent street so a recent example that is the paving work on Sacramento
and Tank Farm where we upgraded the ramps on those roadways so those ramps in some cases they they look
like they exist and they don't need to be upgraded but oftentimes federal standards get more stringent
over the years so even though there are ramps there existing
We do have to replace them to current standards, which basically look like specific width for the ramps and the landings, as well as the slopes that meet the professional or the public rights away guide published by the federal government.
So, in addition to that, we also look at incorporating as funding allows some ongoing ramp improvements that we've received from the community.
So, over the years we do get emails, we get requests for corners that don't have ramps that there's no physical way to get down to the street level or in accessible to those with mobility challenges.
And in recent history, we've capitalized on grant funding if it's available to incorporate of smaller projects to just do neighborhood ramp improvements where we can.
And sometimes, in addition, the grant funding we utilize completed projects funds if available to do that.
So, as we look forward in the next funding, the budget year, you know, we can look for opportunities to to utilize completed projects funding to make some headway on those those neighborhood ramp requests.
Could look like surveys, design work, and trying to leverage some future capital funding to implement some of those with future payment projects, for example.
Okay, so there wouldn't, I noticed that the 80 ramp update for the downtown is called Ellis a separate item, but not for the rest of the city or the residential areas.
There's a sidewalk maintenance capital improvement project. Yeah, that that incorporates both street tree sidewalk replacements.
So, uplifts of the sidewalk caused by street trees that create, you know, slope issues or a great separation from street trees.
It also, in some cases, does replace curb ramps on a, you know, we'll want off basis.
So, within the budget there is an item in there. There is one curb ramp we've identified that we'd like to replace within that funding amount within that sidewalk item.
Yes. Thank you.
I think that's all the questions in the hand.
I'm going to ask a real quick follow up to that too. So if someone is in their neighborhood and they see that a curb ramp, the yellow.
Black or it is coming up or something of that sort of crack that's not good.
Anyway, going to their ask slow or reaching out to us online.
That would be the way to get one of them taking care of quicker if there's an actual problem in your someone's home.
Yeah, it's very helpful to know, so we have we have thousands of curb ramps, thousands of corners.
We don't always know what the specific issues users are encountering is in that when the urgency.
As slow as a great resource to receive those requests email is often times the way we get those requests.
What do you need?
The public works email address or phone number, any staff email address, sitting in your director, whoever it will get funnel to the right place.
There's the contact link on the website.
We'll get you there.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
All right.
Vice Mayor.
Yeah.
Thank you to Michael.
Just one more question on the fee recovery.
This is probably for Director of Ake in here.
We've had a lengthy discussion about potentially looking at sort of tiered rate structures for residents and non-residents.
And there's some discussion here under number five about cost recovery activities less than 100% should have a differential in rates between residents and non-residents.
And I guess my question is just kind of about the study that's coming up and whether or not we're going to look at.
Some of the things that tend to fill up quickly like swim lessons in child care.
If there's any way to kind of ensure that that tiering system sort of encourages that residents are, if not first in line, at least kind of more likely to get to those spots.
The priority.
Prioritized.
Thank you.
It's still my word.
Thank you.
Well, great question.
And I think this is another opportunity for the first time incorporating the resident non-resident fee in our last study.
And right now still assessing how that goes.
And the first year of inclusion.
Other agencies that we did survey throughout this process have even a pre-registration timeline.
So it could be something incorporating, especially like a swim lesson program.
That's highly impacted not a lot of opportunity because it's kind of a seasonal format and small ratios of classes that you could do.
Maybe it's a two week early early bird registration for residents and then you fill in after that.
It will just come down to probably some equity and kind of assessing that on value and fairness at the same time.
We want to kind of look at what other agencies are experiencing is like successful.
Does it make it more complicated?
So it's not just necessarily about the fee recovery, but also an equitable access to our programs.
Absolutely.
I know another community that I've been a member of.
There's oftentimes sort of a recreation card that you utilize in order to get access to.
To get access to all the different recreation facilities and I'm wondering if that's something that could help unlock.
Being able to determine easily and accessing all these different resources on a resident or non resident basis.
Those things are available to the non residents but kind of identify them as a non resident.
So when they go in they tap it or use it however they're going to kind of helps navigate that system.
I've used that system.
I guess not 25 years ago, but yeah it was a it was valued at that point.
I think the other portion of this is looking at our scholarship.
And also like some of our school district.
Students might be from out of out of the area, but we consider them residents because are within our school district from most of our programs.
And just going again finding all those kind of punch list and making sure that we're not.
Being accessible for everybody really glad that's on your radar.
Make sure that all of our school aged kids have access to all of those resources that are residents.
One of your priorities one of our priorities.
Thank you.
And can you say right there for one more minute.
Kind of tying along with that same conversation.
We were talking about the childcare and different.
Low medium high as far as the recovery and at one point you know we said child care is one of the high priorities.
But it's gone into the medium.
That cost recovery and so I think you said the key word right there which is the scholarship because one of the things that we were concerned.
I was concerned about was.
If people are coming from low income households and yet.
Having to pay the full high price.
I was worried about that now.
Do we know anything about the cap.
Substities are those still here.
How does that work for someone that's coming and saying anything about.
Yeah we're we're in a good place right now in our.
In our area are both our school district cap slow and the city.
Thanks to the financial contributions by the council on our scholarships.
Multiple like avenues and tools that they can apply for.
So we have our city scholarships around 39 to 40,000 that we budget every year.
That are utilized for qualified families.
And they get a different tier based on their household income.
So it's a thousand dollars or a five hundred dollar per child kind of opportunity.
The cap slow also has their funding.
Boach they pay directly to the families.
So we help it vendors turn that but it's really through cap slow it's so it's removed from the city's responsibility.
But we track that as well and then the school district also provides opportunities.
For supporting their their clientele so it depends on the program with we do we have before school.
We have our T.K program and our after school programs and they all have different tiers and categories based on that.
But we have a lot of different opportunities for families to apply.
And I don't know if they double dip or triple dip or have that opportunity.
But I know that we can track our city scholarships.
And then we also track the cap slow because we help facilitate those.
Yeah, thank you.
Perfect. Thank you.
Okay.
Well thank you to my colleagues you've asked all of my questions sort of that last one.
So I do have one more question I think around the business licenses.
So I think I'll come back to that later.
So with that we're going to do a five minute seven seven seven ending stretch and then we'll go back.
Thank you.
Thank you all. We'll get right back started for public comments, city clerk.
We have five speakers. We'll start off with Stephen Barrish, followed by Leslie Hall's and Lianzianish.
Good evening, members of the city council.
I know I was the first public member of the city's finance committee for over five years.
I had access to a lot of the city records and I really appreciate Michelle's comment about calpers because that is our one single largest debt in the city.
I've kept kind of quiet for three years since I got off that committee, but I'd like to get some feedback just tonight.
It's a ceremony about how we're going to deal with our city's insolvency.
Now, insolvency means in simple terms that we own more in debts than we have in assets.
We've had the city buildings appraised in the last ten years and then updated.
Insolvency is kind of like you filling out alone application. You have to list all your assets. You have to list all your liabilities.
I'm sure some of you have gone out for loans in the last five years and it's been really, really difficult the banks have been very nitpicky on who they give loans to because they don't credit extended for too long.
But insolvency creates a problem in terms of our borrowing rates.
It creates a problem with review of our assets and our priorities for physical improvements.
I happen to be both an architect and have a business degree and I really sense the city has not really tackled.
The long-term insolvency issues. We're not going bankrupt. That's not an issue.
But we are in a situation where our debt is becoming larger and larger.
For example, CalPERS, the interest on our unfunded liability is over a million to a month.
I mean, it's really high. If you're paying 30 million or so a year, you can see how that interest on the unfunded liability is compounded.
I think we should really have some kind of focus group on the city council looking at our long-term debt obligations.
Outside of what kind of projects we think the public needs wants or desires.
Because this insolvency problem has been kicked down the road for many years.
And unfortunately, this council is saddled with having to deal with the impacts of that insolvency in terms of bond ratings and in terms of dealing with outside vendors.
So it's not going to go away unless we really start focusing on it kind of soon.
I'm done. I've got 15 seconds left. Thank you.
No bother for you. Thank you so much.
Good evening. My name is Leslie Halls. I've lived here since 1979 and served on a various number of committees over the years.
I was very pleased that councilwoman Shores have been asked about the public employees retirement system debt because I want to address that.
Nobody from staff here said anything about it as you noticed. This was not on the agenda, I guess, but Michelle, thank you for bringing it up.
You've inherited an enormous fiscal mess. It's not of your making. You inherited it.
We owe over $260 million to CalPERS.
$260 million. Let that sink in.
That's a lot of debt for a city of $47,700 people.
The interest alone on this debt is over a million dollars a month.
A million dollars a month. Bleeding out of our city just to pay the interest.
Like the interest on your credit card that you never want to pay off.
You know, like I say, you didn't create this mess, but you got to deal with it because now we're on the state's watch list.
And we're looking at insolvency and I don't think you want to be on the city council when the state calls this do and says pay up.
The time to tackle this elephant in the room is now and you're not going to do it by just leaving four positions vacant.
You're not going to do it by just trimming the edges if you will. We need to make some serious cuts and staffing because it is staffing that is driving this debt.
And this is an addition to other debts like for parking garages and the like.
And the more debt we have the higher our interest payments are when we go for another bond. It's very simple.
So I think what you need to do is consider some cuts across the board maybe 10%.
There have been a lot of people hired in the last seven or eight years to do specific projects.
Maybe those jobs aren't needed anymore. I know some of you are rolling your eyes at me at the thought of cutting staffing.
But you know, you don't want to cheat these city employees out of their retirement benefits that they've been working for and they have paid into.
And don't think the state is going to come along and give you millions of dollars to pay this off when other cities are doing a better job and are not facing these kinds of problems.
Again, this is not something you created. You inherited this mess and I've been following it for almost 20 years now and nobody has had the courage to say we got to stop and take a look at this.
I think you should really re-graph this entire budget take a look at where you can cut.
The a lot of these cuts will not impact the average person out on the street.
It's going to impact people here at City Hall. It's going to impact some of these department heads all of whom showed up tonight.
But you know what if they want to have a retirement we need to make these tough decisions and I guarantee you with the good you have done for this city with bike lanes transportation roundabouts child care and everything else.
Nobody's going to oppose you because you decided to tackle the hard issues. Thank you.
Thank you.
After we understand this, we have Armina Kareem and Amy Lynn Hilderbrand.
Well, greeting council and mayor. My name is Lee Ann Sanis. I'm the executive director of Sloma and I'm here to share a follow on Emily's update about our project.
As you know, if you've read our report, which is extensive and very pretty.
Sloma has secured all the permits and entitlements we need for phase one. Our interior demolition is underway.
Things are happening. We're on track for a grand opening in July of 27 and we couldn't have moved this fast without the incredible support of city staff every step of the way.
The community is showing up in a really big way. The response has been extraordinary. Thanks to the large part of the city's early investment and enthusiasm.
Sloma has raised over eight and a half million from 32 million donors hitting 100% of our construction goal for phase one.
Our donor community is wonderfully diverse spanning the private sector, foundations and hundreds of individual supporters who believe in what we're building.
Things are coming to downtown Slo. The expanded museum is going to be a real engine for downtown vitality.
We're projecting more than 100,000 visitors in our first year alone.
Bringing energy, foot traffic and spending to local businesses while submitting.
Sloma or San Luis Obisso is well it earned reputation as a cultural destination and we're keeping the momentum going.
The things scarce we had to stop and look even during construction. Sloma stays committed with our community through partnerships with downtown Slo, local businesses and cultural organizations.
We're continuing to activate public art hosting pop up programming and launching a marketing campaign that keeps Sloma visible and exciting right through opening day.
We're thrilled about what's next. As phase one construction moves forward we're looking ahead to phase two focused on property acquisition to secure Sloma's future as a free accessible resource for every resident visitor.
We're excited to work with the city toward securing additional commitment this fall and helping to realize this community gym for generations.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Good evening Mayor Stuart and council members as co board chair of Sloma and chair of the expansion project I want to begin by thanking this council for its leadership.
It's hard to believe it was less than eight months ago that you made a commitment to invest in a bold vision and over the last six weeks as demo has been.
Really underway you've been able to tangibly see that vision turn into reality.
So projects like this do not move forward because of a single vote so for that I want to offer my sincere thanks to city staff.
As you heard from Leanne we've made incredible progress and that's because many public servants has spent countless hours helping navigate permits.
Solve problems answer questions and really work collaboratively towards this shared goal.
We are deeply grateful for the partnership.
So I'm a little tired because a few hours ago I returned from New York and on Sunday I had the opportunity to visit the newly reopened and absolutely ons firing studio museum in Harlem.
And as I took in the space and there's that there's like beautiful representation of the timeline it's been a 60 year journey into this new home.
It struck me that that museum wasn't really about a stunning building.
It was a culmination of decades of community belief, philanthropy and civic leadership.
The city's November commitment helped signal that this project matters and in return as Leanne shared the community has had an incredible response.
An exciting most is that the return on the city's modest investment which currently is about 4% of the total funds raised to date will be measured not only in dollars but in an ROI of experiences.
Families gathering downtown children experiencing art for the first time.
Being able to see their work in their community visitors spending more time in our downtown and future generations and haridine a community asset that they can be proud of.
And while tonight is an update I will leave you with this thought momentum matters.
The progress we are celebrating today was made possible because leadership came early.
The city investment signals confidence confidence drives philanthropy and philanthropy creates a lasting community asset in the heart of our downtown.
So as we move into this next phase of the effort our focus as Leanne noted is shifting to securing this long-term future a long-term future for this community asset.
We look forward to continuing this conversation with you in the coming months and for tonight tonight I will end with a simple thank you.
Thank you.
And lastly.
Amy Lynn Hilderbrand.
Thank you city council for taking public comments and I do want to commend some things that you have done you have been.
Been quote careful with your spending you have been aiming towards right sizing.
You are aiming towards being physically responsible and you have a quote balance budget unquote.
I grew up in San Luis and I want to stay here.
I have friends that leave this city because they can't afford this city.
I have friends who can live here because they've been here a long time but their children cannot live here.
I'm concerned that's why I'm here tonight.
I'm here to beg you to look at this again.
I want to commend you Michelle Sherman for asking some tough questions about that debt.
The debt interest alone is 1.2 million dollars per month.
I can't fathom that kind of money.
And of money, even though my bachelor's is from Cal Poly in business administration. And I want to ask you a very important question, all of you, what could you spend on with 1.2 million dollars more a month?
I want you to think about it, a lot. And I want you to consider the impact of compound interest, which makes every single month worse.
And I want you to think about people like me that are horrified at the idea of living the community they grew up in.
They birthed their child in. And the thought that many people are leaving this community because it's becoming absolutely ineffordable.
And I'm not alone. But some of my friends are working two jobs, some of them are working three because we love this community.
So I'm begging you to look at your budget again. I know I really do know that it's not easy to cut, but you're going to have to. If you're going to be able to do for this community what we deserve.
I'm just going to ask you and I'm going to thank you for what you've already done, but I'm going to ask you to go deeper. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Any other commenters?
No.
Okay, thank you.
Well, thank you to everyone who spoke. We really appreciate your input. And as always, I thank people who emailed us already and shared their thoughts.
There was a lot of input. And, you know, this budget. It's a lot of money. And we're trying to figure out how to manage this community in a regular basis.
And I am so thankful for all the departments who went and looked through your budgets and figured out what can we do.
And to be able to be at this point where we have this balanced budget and a little bit more is definitely better than we were looking at two years ago. And I think you count them or buzz well for mentioning that as well.
So with that, I just wondered first and foremost if there's any response from staff before we get into additional questions or deliberation city manager.
Thank you very much. Just just a few comments that we want to make sure to kind of be clear on.
Just as that our current unfunded liability with CalPERS. So that's the amount that we've occurred that we pay that $24 to $26 million a year toward is just over $188 million.
And of course, that's a very big number, but it's not $260 million.
That's the current amount that we at least that was as of June 30th of 2024. It takes CalPERS a while to catch up our additional payments in terms of what they report back to us.
So it does literally take them an entire year to get back to us on where we're at with our unfunded liability amount.
What we've been paying to them in additional discretionary payments above and beyond what we are required to pay. It does bring that amount down.
The struggle that we have is that it's also reflects what happens in the market. And so if the markets do well, then our unfunded liability amount can do better and if the markets don't do well, then it can kind of take a hit.
So it doesn't mean we don't keep trying because we definitely do. So just wanted to make that clear. That's why we're at with our unfunded liability amount.
Also wanted to make sure in a sure folks. We are not on a state watch list related to our budget.
We do receive rewards for our budget the way we put it together and provide that information to the public.
And we're not in any danger of in solvency that's not a term that we would take lightly if that were even the you know, faintest possibility.
I do appreciate the recognition that bankruptcy is not in our future because that is true as well.
We are in very solid standing our current bond rating is a double A bond rating. And so bonding agencies look at our debt portfolio before they give us a rating.
We did go through this just a couple years ago when we issued bonds related to our parking structure that we enabled us to build a new 40 million dollar asset.
And so again when they look at our overall credit rating they look at all of our assets and all of our liabilities and ensure to assure people who are on the market buying those bonds that they will get their money back after we repeat it.
So I just want to let folks know that those questions that came up.
We of course are consistently looking at them. Our calipers means are an ongoing conversation. I know we talk about that with you all.
At least yearly if not more when we look at making that additional discretionary payment if you recall.
I know I do we got stuck in a little bit of a loop that I created to some degree talking about how much additional additional payments we were going to be making to CalPERS to address that debt overall.
So I just wanted to thank you for the moment to provide a little bit of clarity and if there's any additional information then maybe needs to be added happy to do that to.
Yeah, I think I think the city manager covered it really well. I think the only thing that I would add is that we in addition to having a rating from standard and poor as a couple of years ago related to the issuance of the debt for the cultural arts district parking structure.
And the other rating agency that greats us and we meet with them. They do a full review every couple of years and they do annual surveillance is I talk to them just in February of this year and based on that conversation.
I've provided a lot of follow-up information that their requests related to our overall financial position and our plans moving forward.
And they affirmed our double a bond rating and just to be clear a double a bond rating from an industry standpoint represents a very strong capacity to meet financial commitments.
And the question I remember discussing this during our cultural arts district parking structure conversation and that was actually how we were able to borrow a little bit less, which was really helpful for us as a community.
So thank you for bringing that up and I appreciate it and thank you city manager as well.
You know, I just looked real quick and I see that the CalPERS stopped printing a watch list so I don't know where that would be but something that's good to know that we're not on it so I appreciate that.
So bringing it back to deliberation.
I wanted to first just say what I thank you all to Council for your many questions.
I think all of us are trying to look at how do we continue to of course not just stay balanced but find this balance of what we can do and what we can't do as we heard the needs of safety earlier for many neighborhoods and communities as well as trying to figure out how we can help with.
Substandard housing and business licenses and code enforcement so we have a wide range of things let alone parks and fun things for the summer that we're getting excited about.
So this covers a multitude of conversation and a multitude of services and programs and so.
I just really appreciate again all of the time it's been taken to look at how we can do this even even better with less expenses when possible.
And I also know that one thing that we do.
On there I forget a couple years back when I said yes please go look for free money please and so that's something that.
I know that staff you take great care in is looking at are there grants available is they're finding available whether it's federal whether it's state whether it's nonprofit.
A partner that we can work with and forget how we can still make things happen when times are a little tough it's a different time so thank you for that.
With that I'll bring it back to the council council resortsman.
Sure thank you Mayor.
Of course as soon as I start to talk.
As soon as I start to talk my frog appears in my throat.
So thank you for kicking us off Mayor.
Just want to start out by thanking staff for the very.
Thero yet the same report and thank you for the time that you took earlier I think was late last week to kind of give me at least a briefing in advance of this so there wasn't really any.
I have a big surprise is in the report when I went to go read it and I did ask a fair number of questions so I appreciate getting those answers in advance.
I know that staff and leadership worked incredibly hard this last year in this cycle to look for ways that we could.
Continue our commitments to the community without.
Any cuts that we're going to be really really felt by our community member but I still know.
I've had to go through this process myself in my in my everyday job and I know it's not fun and it's difficult and I really appreciate all the.
Digging deep and looking carefully at every single line item to see where we can again make those cuts but still try to avoid negative impacts on the community so thank you for that.
And I also recognize that as you all get better at this as I mentioned in my questions there's likely going to be less and less of those year end funds.
As you get better at predicting how much we're going to how much we're going to need and how much are forecasting shows us you as you start to get those numbers closer and closer together it means those year and balances at the end of the year are likely to get smaller and so.
We've been able to do a lot of really cool one time things with that money at the end of the year and that's going to get harder and harder to do.
So as we do that I just want to re emphasize that I think it's it's important for us to continue to stick to our priorities when those numbers shrink of you know paying down our pension liabilities and also saving for some of the big projects that we have coming up.
We have some pretty pretty big commitments that we've made in the new fire station the Proto road over past the Proto bridge.
The police station we've got some pretty big projects that are going to be very expensive and again I.
I'm not a big fan of borrowing money if we don't have to so I recognize what our public commenter said about you know the difficulty in having that debt sort of hanging over our heads as the city.
I know it's necessary sometimes and again it's been it's enabled us to do some pretty big important things that our communities benefiting now but I always want to try to minimize that as much as we can so.
I'm prepared to support the recommended supplemental budget as is I think I will go back just because it was mentioned earlier I think by our city manager about.
supporting short term solutions in the.
Meto park broad street neighborhood there and I'm I'm pretty content with what staff has said that they can do with the paving project I'm hesitant to.
put too much additional funds especially out of the broad street project itself we set aside a very definite amount of money for that project and we also obtained a pretty reasonable size grant to do that project and some little hesitant to.
promise to dedicate some of those funds to a short term project when we don't really know what that project is really going to result in yet so if staff can be creative with the short term solutions.
out of the already established possum money that we have for this year that would be my preference and if we do get to the point where we may be need to prioritize some of those.
I was trying to think through the acronym the neighborhood transportation management projects and reprioritize them I would personally rather that recommendation or that conversation go to the active transportation committee first and have them.
make recommendations about how to reprioritize things if we needed to go that way first they they have the ability to do the deep dive in the years the ground.
on that better than I think even we do just from here making those decisions without that information so.
I'll stop there and hear what my colleagues have to say.
Thank you vice mayor.
Yeah, thank you so much.
I'll just second all of the thanks for the hard work from staff and administration getting us here today I know there were some scary projections of numbers a while back and.
and thanks to an economy that's been very weird and all of your hard work I'm glad we're in a much better place so definitely appreciated.
You know looking ahead I was appreciating the end of the kickoff from council member Boswell kind of thinking about.
our needs in the future and any projects that we've got our eye on it's going to get a little trickier to carve out extra funds for those things and you know we we've been making some real promises to the community in terms of investing in tenant protections as well as all the big projects mentioned by council member shores men so.
I think we're going to need to think a little bit about where we're going to find the funds to make sure that we're funding these things sustainably and keeping our promises to the community.
I'm also wanted to second council member shores men's comments about balancing the immediate needs of the neighborhood around broad and funston you know I'm very cautious about making sure that we're not.
I'm just slowing down the long term project there it sounds like we've got some good solutions in place by kind of utilizing the paving project.
So when we jump ahead too much, we miss out on kind of thinking about the big picture there. So kind of careful balance from staff. And I trust that you all will do that really well.
I know we're asked here about the user fee cost recovery.
I think our priorities here look really good. I am interested in kind of seeing what creative ideas come out of here in terms of thinking about our resident versus non-resident and kind of higher cost recovery on those types of uses.
Our large scale events. And we have to do a lot of evaluation of some of the different types of events that we host in our city and how to make sure that we're doing that in a responsible way.
I trust that there'll be some good answers that come out of that study.
And on the topic of slow-month, I'm interested in exploring a scenario where some portion of the funds are allocated annually, but I want to have that conversation at year end when we have some clarity on our numbers.
And maybe thinking about rather than lump sum, kind of portioning things out over a little longer time.
I think there's some interesting ways that we could potentially handle that. I know we have some uncertainty here.
So how do we do this in a responsible way, but also investing in kind of the future of our community here on this front.
So I will leave it there for now and see what my colleagues have to say.
Thank you.
I definitely appreciate as we keep talking about where we're at right now with the budget.
The user fees and as far as the levels where they're at.
One thing that I definitely heard though was we're able to couple this together with the scholarship fees and the caps though money.
And so I just want to think about, do we have to structure our fees differently if we didn't have that additional funding.
And so as we talk to the consultants and understanding what is done in other markets, I know it's part of the process.
I would be really interested in hearing that because of something.
I mean as we saw what happened to cap so recently in this county.
You know they lost some funding and so if that continued to happen or federal continues to take money,
then we won't have the money that we think we do to make this work.
So as far as the cost recovery then is could be a concern.
So that's kind of one of the things.
The other part is I know that parking rates are not a part of this and it shouldn't be an I understand that.
But I do see a disproportionate.
Recovery for lack of a better word when it comes to parking at Toro and Marsh and parking at our cultural arts district parking structure, which I know that you're working on it right now city manager but I just want to make sure that is.
I just thought about it because we're asking.
Evie.
Driver is to pay different different cost for their recovery in a sense and well we're very excited.
There's another place that they can park in charge.
It's a different different price.
I wonder almost with the.
Outreach is a lot of our conversation.
Maybe as we talk about our different CIP projects that we could talk about also.
What is happening with pedestrians so as there can see that outcome as well.
So when we see our money and what it's being set for in the community it is what's being spent for all different forms of transportation or mobility.
I know that I'll reach cost money and that's why I mentioned it.
And then I know that the.
Fire station five is interim.
And eventually permanent but I also am super concerned about the construction costs and where that goes so.
I'm kind of in the Council of Merchorsmen if we need to save some to do that.
That we're thinking about that.
I know that it's hard when you have money sitting there and you want to spend it on something else but as we look at.
I think that's not a bad idea.
I'm similar to that we talked you mentioned property management with multiple addresses.
For business licenses just wanting to see what other.
Cities do for their business licenses around the user fees because we also have.
Not just individuals that own multiple properties but we also have trusts and so what does that look like.
Is that the similar is property management that's similar as a individual owner.
How do we just really have a good handle on what's available in the 23,000 doors in our community.
That's what behind the doors is not what I'm asking.
So I think those are oh and then as far as broad street.
I think you know with the.
Paving project if it makes sense to do some of the quick build hey whatever we can do I think that's something we've talked about over and over is when a quick build makes sense for safety whether it's for.
Any form of mobility I think I'm I'm always for that.
So with that I think I've answered some of the questions for the user fees I'm in.
I'm in favor of this draft.
Can you imagine.
Very thankful for the hard work and Councilman Boswell your next.
Thank you just add a few things.
First I think staff for making this job a lot easier every first of all.
The forecast from last year, we're pretty dead on and so when we made a bunch of tough decisions last year and wandered.
You know where would we find ourselves a year from now what kind of tough decisions might we have to make in terms of Possibly cutting programs.
of possibly cutting programs, but we didn't have to do that because we had good budget estimates
and we've delivered on them. So thanks for that. And then you know the other really
important thing out of this budget and you know for me this is my first financial plan so I'm now
I'm really seeing the value of putting a lot of work into that financial plan for two years
is certainly makes the second budget year much easier to deal with. But I really appreciate that
that work plan that we put together for the major city goals which has like I don't know
80 items on it or some crazy number of items maybe it's more it's maybe no the number
by any chance any any health. So trivia question how many items are actually on there.
There's a lot of items on that major city goals work plan that we've not had to modify we've not had
to say we can't do some of those programs. So it's it's very satisfying to be here and know
that we can continue on this work plan that we put together last year put so much effort into and really
reflects and tremendous amount of community input we can continue to deliver on that commitment to the
community this year. So thanks for all of that. I'll be supporting the budget as as presented
and same for also supporting the direction that is recommended for the user fee study.
Thank you. I also want to say that going back to when we asked for trade-offs in this last year we've really
seen a real clear reality around the trade-offs that we asked for and I just want to thanks
staff for that because as people bring us things we're like we really want to do that too and we
realize we can't and by saying sticking with those work plans that's why we're here today. So thank you
for that too. Council Member Marks. Thank you. Well I appreciate all the comments. I get to go last so
now I appreciate all the comments and my colleagues. I do want to acknowledge the importance
of continuing to be as responsible as we can in terms of our personal ability. Back in the day
I remember there was a purse holiday. There was a time where purse said we're not going to charge
the cities anything because we made so much money and I said no we we still have to keep making
the payments. I lost. I lost that. It's one of those things where it's like yeah I was right but
anyway one of the reasons I was right but hey you know but so in the past I'm saying the deep dark
dim distant past we have been less responsible and I want to acknowledge although they're not here
right now but the role of residents who are concerned about our purse liability in terms of just
keeping it on the on the radar screen and it's really hard because it's so you know like they say moving
the goal posts depending you know we keep paying it's not like alone where you can actually say oh
good you know we could just make an extra payment now and then and then the interest rate will go down it's
not like that so anyway I feel like we're on the good course with the purse liability. In terms of the
overall financial picture I do think that one thing we haven't talked about is actually if the city
would look in its assets not just from the point of accumulating more and more assets but also from
the point of view is there any way we can realize some of those assets and I give you an example of that
parking structure parking lot on Iguera and Toro next to Petra. I was very uncomfortable with us buying it
in the first place and I understand that you know it's providing more places for people to park but
do we really need to own that and does the parking fund really need to oh the general fund money and so that
puts a pressure on the parking fund and you know I'd rather sell just me personally I'd rather sell that
lot on Iguera and put the money into the fire station which we really need so it's just the it's just the
question in general I do support the item in front of us tonight but just we're looking down the road you know
are there are there any ask do we really need to own as much as we do probably yes for most of it but
there might be some ways that we can actually realize some money from what we own. I wanted to
say that I appreciate all the concern about what's happening at Lawson and or Lawton and
Funston in terms of the need for traffic calming we could put up signs that say no
cut through traffic which we have on Johnson but that's not that there's not any signage like that there
right now but it's pretty obvious also with what people were talking about in terms of King Street
and South Street that that whole corridor is very problematic and I think that we need to look at it
as a as a corridor and do we can to help the neighborhood really feel as safe as possible.
I think I really support the idea of looking at future deficits and trying to
be as responsible and thrifties we can be at the same time looking for opportunities in a grants or
one opportunity one kind of opportunity but there are other opportunities that are out there
I appreciate the testimony from Sloma and really support what the city manager was saying
is let's look at if we have an allocated one balance at the end of the whole budget cycle and see
what we might be able to afford. In terms of the user free I am
concerned about inadvertently discouraging people from using those chargers in our most street garage
there are a lot of them empty I'm over there a lot because of post offices so you know I see
they're empty and I know people are working during the day they could be charging their their cars
and I think that I've done a little bit of research I think that other
cities vastly reduce the parking fee for electric charger for cars that are actually charging
they also though limit the amount of time that you can charge and then you have to move your car so
it's a big complicated thing but I think we need to take that seriously because we have our sustainability
in climate action goals at the same time we're making it like financially and possible for
people to actually use the facilities that we built in them to use so let me just see that
and I do want to thank staff the entire staff for being so taking such a fine-grained approach to
you know not just well to the estimates of inflation for example you know asking people for the exact
dollar amounts that it incurred rather than just blanket we is making assumption of so much for the
inflation so I really appreciate this effort and I think we're basically in good shape so I'll
stop right there nice thank you I think there was one that you said okay so with King Court I know
A very thorough email sent by Luke Schwarz regarding King Court. It sounded as though there was a potential in a closer future than there was before to have an actual traffic signal built after the pedestrian beacon. Can you just, you can just take your head and say yes or if you want to add any two cents to that. You want to add some two cents. That way the people with her watching YouTube can hear.
Yes, so you're correct. The current project as designed added elements to the project that allowed for a full signalized intersection.
We pushed pause on that waiting for vehicle preemption from emergency services. And so we have recently connected with our emergency services team with our new fire chief and we have found that that might be a sooner option.
For us to look into the project as design can still move forward with construction.
So there's no need to pause on that, but we may come back to council for a future discussion just to make sure that we have clarification right now.
The project is on hold with construction just do to some PG&E and timing issues with purchasing of the equipment.
So we have a little bit of time to come back to council and just make sure we have that clarification.
But it looks like we do have a path forward and we can get back some communication to the community and to council.
Wonderful news. Thank you so much city manager.
Thank you. I realized this was an a topic that I wanted to moment to clarify as well because I heard our prior comments and thought wait.
Okay, so we're putting the pedestrian beacon on hold until we come back to talk about a signalized project.
And as you're shaking your head that answers incorrect, but I just want to make sure for I think both myself and anybody else who may be listening or still here.
We intend to do is to move forward with the beacon project.
At the same time, we will we will be evaluating moving forward on a next step, a next phase for that same intersection that will be fully signalized.
We may come back to council just to make sure everybody's clear on the same page, but people will see a project go forward that puts a beacon up that is the same style as what's on broad street.
While we continue working on a full signal. Okay, I'm seeing a face that maybe that's not correct.
Let's yeah.
I guess both of those things are true, but the pedestrian the full signalized intersection might just because of the timing of you know having to wait on PG&E and the equipment might allow for us actually to install the full signalized intersection and not actually.
Construct the hybrid beacon.
Just because of that timing. So we will move forward with the current construction project that just because it's on pause right now and we already have that.
The way that that project is designed is about 90 per 90% of that would allow for a future signalized intersection.
There's only minor elements that we would have to change to turn into a full signalized intersection.
So it's basically a change order to the project that would get us there.
So that's the only portion that we would bring back to council and just make sure that we're clear on a path moving forward.
Do a little bit of community outreach. It's the timing of that that is the question. I do not believe that the community would see the pedestrian hybrid beacon without a full intersection.
We would come back to council to get that.
Okay, that helps me certainly and I think it's more of a it's kind of a horse race issue based on timing of components for the original projects which was the beacon.
Since we're delayed on some of those pieces that we can't really control we're going to take that time to try to bring back something that's actually the full scale intersection.
Thank you for that clarification because we're talking about the budget what we're spending where.
I think that was the kind of the competition earlier was how do we bring this back to the conversation of the budget so that's why I brought it up and thought it was just have some clarification would be good.
Council member Shoresman.
Thanks. Yeah, I want to follow up on the budget piece because my understanding is that at least most of the beacon is granted.
Would there be additional expense or cost to going forward with the full.
Signalized intersection that we haven't contemplated in our existing budget that we're looking at.
Not that I know of right now, but we can come back to council and if there is an existing class we can look at bringing that back and potentially using completed projects or another funding method.
The most important thing is that we do have a grant deadline of using those funds and so that's why we want to keep moving forward with the project and the grant would allow a full signalized beacon as well as the hybrid it's not specifically for the.
Begin correct yes, okay that's important. Thank you.
Vice Mayor. Thank you. Do we have an updated kind of estimated timeline for when we would see either the beacon or the signalized intersection completed with the delay that's currently in place.
Thank you.
Yeah, as Matt on said, the contracts currently on hold for PG&E, we're also waiting on material delivery for the this signal equipment as well as the mass farms.
I think the current estimated completion date is September late September for the project the the pedestrian hybrid project.
As currently designed we still as of today we're talking about.
The other elements needed to convert to a signal those are minor is my understanding, but there will likely be a schedule impact.
Right now, I don't I haven't heard any concerns about completing the project within the grant window.
Yeah, I think the last time we got an update it was kind of early September right after the beginning of school, but glad to hear that we're still on track for that estimate.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Well, with that, can I get a motion to adopt a draft resolution vice mayor.
Yeah, do we want to put up the recommendations.
Yeah, move approval of the recommendations is drafted by staff here and leave there.
Thank you, council members.
I'll second that.
Thank you, City Clerk. Can we have roll call.
Vice Mayor Francis.
Council members for me.
Yes.
Council member Baswell.
Yes.
Council member marks.
Yes.
Mayor Stewart.
Yes, and the motion passes five zero.
Thank you so much for this conversation and look forward to the future changes.
With that, I will.
Get us ready to move on to the next and almost final topic, which is with deputy city clerk managed.
I'm sorry, deputy city manager.
Greg Herman and deputy city clerk Sarah armus armus to receive a presentation on the feasibility of advisory body.
Competition or compensation, wow.
No problem.
Okay.
Thank you, Mayor and council members.
We're happy to be here tonight for this item.
This, of course, is a follow up to a recommendation from the council compensation committee related to advisory body compensation.
We'll go through all the details of the analysis that we did related to advisory body member compensation.
I do just want to take a moment before we do that to acknowledge a support of our partner departments for a finance and human resources and pulling together all of that information and also to our deputy city clerk Sarah armus.
We took the lead on pulling all of this together.
I'll be providing the majority of the presentation.
I think we recognize that the recommendation that we're putting forward is not direct compensation to advisory body members as envisioned in some of the work around the feasibility of looking at a 25 dollar per meeting level of compensation.
But I think the core principle that was trying to be addressed with a 25 dollar compensation was to offset costs that folks may incur by nature of participating on an advisory body and an interest in wanting to limit or reduce where we can out of pocket spending that people would need to make to just be there and participate in that process.
So we put forward the recommendation that we think is most feasible in terms of being able to do that and for tonight's presentation I'll hand it over to Sarah.
Thank you to be a city manager. Again, my name is Sarah armus deputy city clerk within the clerk's office under administration department.
Good evening. Mayor members of council.
I will be presenting a brief analysis on the impacts of a 25 dollar per meeting compensation program.
The study was conducted based on review of the data provided for council compensation committee as well as an analysis of the current process for our advisory bodies who are compensated planning commission and architectural recognition.
I'll also briefly touch on the three alternate methods that we explored with the final method being our recommendation to minimize costs of advisory body participation with only minor administrative impacts.
Staff's recommendation tonight is before you hear on the screen receiving the report on the feasibility of implement things such a program adopting a draft resolution amending the advisory body handbook to add a parking and food budget section.
To continue the current system of monetary compensation only for planning commission and architectural commission members.
So we'll briefly look back as to how the idea of a 25 dollar meeting program was decided.
At the May 21st, 2025 city council meeting council opted to form a council compensation committee in lieu of a standard CPI increase.
The question is part of the council's bot annual review of mayor and council member compensation packages review planning commission and architectural review commission compensation has been done in conjunction with mayor and council compensation since 2001.
When council chose to form the compensation committee, they directed the committee to also look at the additional city advisory bodies to see if compensation would be warranted based on their time and work commitments for their respective committees.
The committee met monthly from September through December of last year reviewing data provided by the clerk's office and human resources that would assist them informing a recommendation to the city council.
At the January 13th, 2020 city council meeting council approve the committee's recommendations is following.
Increased salary and additional funding for mayor and council members no change to the compensation for planning commission and architectural review commission and direction to staff to.
Explore the feasibility of an opt-in pilot program to provide $25 per meeting for all city advisory bodies quite a mouthful.
Staff began with reviewing the data provided to the council company council the council compensation committee to gauge community member interest in compensation.
Two surveys related to advisory body compensation were distributed in October of 2025.
The first re-reviewed was distributed to advisory body members currently serving and advisory body members who had previously served up to six years ago from 2025.
The recipients were asked various questions regarding time commitment and whether the compensation they received or didn't receive was appropriate.
In the table before you, you see the results of the question, do you feel the current stipend or lack of stipend is appropriate for the body that you serve or served on.
Of the 53 responses roughly 41% of the respondents ranked the current compensation mostly appropriate for the role ranking seven to 10.
The common themes of these responses were the importance of advisory body participation being voluntary.
The small amount of meetings actually being attended and the difficulty in finding a common dollar amount will be fair across all the various committees and commissions.
23% of the respondents ranking zero to three felt that their current compensation was inappropriate.
Common themes for these responses stated that compensation could provide offset to cost barriers to serve as an incentive to participate.
Or an incentive to participate as participation could potentially be a large-time commitment for some.
The others survey created to assist the Council Compensation Committee was posted on the Open City Hall Forum available on the slow city website.
City new subscribers were notified that could fill out a brief survey consisting of three questions.
Whether they would consider or have considered applying to an advisory body if compensation would influence their decision to apply and if there are any barriers preventing community members from applying.
Staff reviewed responses to the second question and categorize them into four varying levels of influence.
As you see on the table before you, there was an almost even number of responses that stated compensation had a major influence or no influence at all.
A difference of 104 for no influence and 102 for major influence.
Again, common themes were discovered to be time commitment demands and monetary incentives to participate.
Usually reference in the major influence responses versus the importance of volunteers on the no influence responses.
In response to the question on barriers, the issues of parking, child care costs, food and time commitment were repeatedly mentioned.
After analyzing the survey data, staff began to assess the different ways that city would begin to compensate 70 additional advisory body.
Members, the clerk's office and collaboration with human resources and finance reviewed the current method of compensation for planning commission, architectural view commission, what we'll refer to moving board as the employee style method.
In addition to the employee style method, three alternate methods were reviewed the independent contractor or vendor method, the gift card method, and a food and parking budget option.
And now briefly explain the differences between the four.
So, so the employee style method, so again, current process, planning commission and architectural view commission are paid on a quarterly basis with the final distribution amount being taxed.
The government finance estimated that if the remaining advisory bodies were to be compensated at $25 per meeting under this model, they're take home amount for one meeting attended would be roughly $19 in one cent after taxes.
We have various bodies that meet at different schedules.
So some of our bodies are meeting regularly on a monthly basis, others need on more of a buy monthly basis, so we have like active transportation committee and mass transportation committee that meet every other month.
And then we do have a few that are meeting on an as needed basis.
So obviously, these are all going to be receiving different amounts at each fiscal quarter.
The estimated budget needed to compensate all of these bodies and this is just for the monetary compensation piece is estimated to be about $14,000 to $250,000 to $14,250, sorry, money numbers.
So as that number was stated in the council competition committee recommendations previously when discussing this.
Looking back at the original direction from council on the opt-in or opt-out piece of compensating bodies.
I do want to highlight that although it was included in the independent contractor method section of the report.
This does apply to this employee cell method classification that we can give the advisory body members in opt-in or opt-out option.
So if they don't want to receive compensation and main voluntary, we can do that.
However, we can't change the positions classification.
So we can't re-classify them as employees essentially like they can not take payment, but they would still be considered employees and help to the same standards which I'll go over.
The impact on administrative workbook for staff and additional requirements for the advisory body members themselves were found to be even more significant that the financial cost alone.
So summarized in the table before you are some of the impacts staff for CB necessary to ensure proper compensation and compliance with city employee requirements as they stand.
So new requirements for these advisory body members under this model would include live scan services and i9 verification upon appointment to ensure we are putting their information in our payroll system correctly.
As employees, they would be required to partake in applicable state and city trainings such as harassment and discrimination and workplace violence.
This would be in addition to some of the other requirements we already asked if some of our advisory body members such as completion of conflict of interest statements by annual ethics training and regular onboarding tasks.
Several impacts to our current payroll system are also noted.
The cost of a license to add 70 members into our payroll system is around $30,000 annually.
Currently there is a single administrative assistant in the community development department who inputs meeting attendance for planning commission and architectural review commission be a time cards in the payroll system.
Seeing as there's multiple departments who staff these various committees and commissions depend on their preview.
Review and refinement of our current procedures with most likely be necessary to ensure consistency and understanding of accurate time card entry.
Across the agency.
Formal training would need to take place to ensure staff and administration, parks and recreation and public works understand the process of deadlines.
So finance can review time cards and distribute page x properly.
Human resources in the clerk's office would also need to increase follow up with new advisory body members to ensure proper compliance upon appointment.
All those difficult to kind of quantify how much additional staffing is needed based on our analysis of the current existing process and what we require to make sure we have the administrative bandwidth to take on all these new members.
Human resources estimated at least a .5 FTE administrative assistant position.
Well finance estimates periodically others within the department might need to be pulled from their current workload to assist payroll staff.
All these impacts into account staff isn't recommending moving forward with the employee style method at this time.
Moving on to the independent contractor vendor method.
This was discovered early on in our analysis is a popular method for other cities within the state.
This method essentially distributes compensation to advise your bodies without payroll tax upholding as if it were for a service rendered.
Although 25 dollars would be the initial take home amount this was still need to be reported as taxable income on their personal taxes.
When we were setting the legality of this method it was determined that the duties responsibilities of advisory body members don't necessarily fit under an independent contractor method style of service.
Compensating these members such could position the city to be out of compliance with federal and state labor laws as we're potentially.
Looking at them doing.
A little bit more than just what an independent contractor would essentially be doing for a city.
So with that again or reminder that they can't necessarily opt in or out of the classification of what they're working as they can opt out of payment but not what the requirements would be.
So again, we're not we're recommending moving forward with this method.
Providing get cards was also method briefly explored as the model was suggested during one of the deliberations by the council compensation committee.
It's not a method that's currently being used by any agency to regularly compensate their advisory bodies members.
Staff of Dean this is an insufficient substitution for regular compensation as it could still potentially require members to report these get cards as income tax if distributed on a regular basis for services rendered to the organization so again deemed invisible and not recommended.
The last method explored by staff is the creation of a food and parking budget to be used for all advisory members for their meetings.
As previously mentioned in the survey results parking and food were meant to were noted regularly as potential barriers for community members to participate.
Majority of the meetings began at five to five 30 so it doesn't allow those working to have much in time in between the end of their work day in the beginning of their meeting.
So staff proposed that providing increased three hour parking validations and a snack budget could alleviate some of the issues for those who struggle to find parking in the city hall back.
Or for those who don't have enough time for full meal before the meeting starts.
I just want to note two things about this proposal that we're not recommending full meal orders to be placed prior to these meetings.
We don't really have a standard process for regular full meal orders that's cost effective or consistent.
And although we can provide these parking validations also like to know that we aren't guaranteeing parking spaces from these parking facilities.
So after assessing the cost of twenty five dollars per advisory body member for food and a three hour parking validation provided each meeting per their regular meeting schedule.
It wouldn't total cost three thousand four hundred seventy dollars annually.
So parking validation and snack drinks slash drink orders would be handled by the clerks office to ensure both are fully stocked.
And of course, these would be available but always optional for members to participate in.
So we are recommending the food and parking budget mostly because all those standard monitoring compensation was noted as potentially being an offset to barrier.
These are tangible benefits that we're providing to kind of get ahead of that and offset these costs of participation.
And as mentioned by the committee members without creating a disproportionate administrative burden on staff.
So this is the end of my presentation.
We have our three recommendations here and again I'd like to echo my thanks to human resources finance attorney's office and various other staff within the organization who discuss this in depth with me.
So available for any questions.
Thank you appreciate that I know as a extra kind of work action after the compensation committees we appreciate that vice mayor.
Yeah, thank you for such a fantastic presentation just a couple of quick questions.
So under if you could go into a little bit more detail on the kind of pitfalls of the the gift card method and if we have an understanding with the threshold is for when you have to report income tax with gift cards.
Thank you for the question.
I might lean on a little bit of help here from Greg but Mr. Herman.
We when discussing this as a potential method for for compensating them regularly.
I know that we discussed that dollar amount to that threshold that needed that would essentially be reportable and it just didn't.
With the way that these advisory bodies are meeting currently it just is hard to predict how often they're going to me at a certain point you know right now we actually are.
We're not many of them are meeting her the regular meeting schedule but that could always change we could call for these advice bodies to meet more than the regular meeting schedule in the future it's just kind of hard to determine.
I don't know if you have anything to add.
I think the I think the the tester threshold is that is it being used in place of regular compensation and so I don't know that we have a specific.
Line that that crosses but if if we are clearly trying to compensate someone via a gift card in in lieu of what we would otherwise be doing for regular compensation I think that's where we clearly get into the legal issues associated with it.
I don't know if you have a question of potentially doing it as not a like meeting permitting type of compensation but maybe like an annual sort of thank you thinking maybe in line with kind of when we do the by local program and have it be you know local business gift cards kind of.
Get people that evening out as a thank you to for their service and have it be a one time annually or by annually or something like that.
I think that could be an option that we could look at more if we're seeing this is sort of like a gift to acknowledge participation and whether or not that would allow us to steer clear of some of those laws but I don't know that I have a specific answer on that unless any of my colleagues.
Feel like they're clear on that at this moment.
Okay, I'll leave it there then. Thank you.
Thank you. I asked that same question before.
Council Member Shoresman.
Thanks. Yeah, just to kind of piggyback on that a little bit I feel like the purpose of this discussion initially was to try and help.
Encourage folks who couldn't afford to essentially be on an advisory body or increased diversity so that feels a little bit it feels like it's changing the purpose a little bit but anyway.
The question that I was going to ask is more related to the data and I'm guessing that you won't be able to answer this but I'm going to try it anyway.
I think it's kind of fascinating that in the table you showed that the compensation.
Whether or not it was a major influence or no influence was yeah, I think that's just fascinating that about the same number of people think that the compensation is either a major influence in them.
They're wanting to participate or it's like no influence at all and I'm just curious if you had the ability to drill down on the folks that answered in those two ways and see if there were any commonalities between the people that thought that a major it would majorly influence their.
Their interest in participating versus those who had no interest in participating.
Yeah, actually I can answer that question.
I did kind of you know assess the two responses together and there wasn't a clear correlation between the people that were ranking it as a major influence and also saying that the barriers were you know x y and z.
It would it would vary some would say that like it is a major influence and it cost a lot to have someone watch my kid for you know an x three amount of hours.
But sometimes they say would be a major influence and then they would say and I don't really have any barriers that's preventing me for from it you know participating or I've tried before.
I'll be some other reason so no exact I mean I'm not a physician but I didn't necessarily see a clear correlation between the two okay that's interesting.
Which you can you mentioned child care which is the one other area that I feel like I talked to deputy director Herman about this already it's like if you like that's the one other barrier.
from a lot of the populations you know difficulties in getting to especially in after hours meeting it's one thing if you can satisfy that.
That food need coming straight from work and paying for the parking but the child care issue is one that we still haven't really cracked and I'm just wondering if there were any ideas that came up as to how we could manage that.
Again I'll start and because anything to add I'll have him at it but.
We we kind of focus on the food and parking because those were something that we could immediately offer like they're we have the ability to offer the validation we already established the.
We'll snack, basket, that's something that, you know, something we have familiarity with and we're able to kind of tackle that at a sooner time frame.
I think with the child care cost aspect of it, it would probably require a little bit more in-depth research and, you know, it is something that we could maybe look into, but I think it would require a little bit more from staff to kind of assess as an option, but
I think let me know, have any thoughts?
Yep, thanks for the question. I think we just acknowledge that that was the hardest of the three to address.
You know, that we've taken different approaches with really large public meetings where we know there's going to be a lot of folks there, like our community forum.
We provide child care. That's not really a great fit for the solution clearly to be a cost associated with that and kind of matching up that with need might be really difficult.
I think the reality is that if we wanted to compensate people for cost associated with child care, we would probably need to do that via the employee compensation method.
Yeah.
I figured, but I just thought I'd ask. It's, I don't have a good solution for it either, so just curious though. Thank you.
Thank you. Council member Marks.
Thank you. Yeah. I just quickly looked up the 1099, the IRS 1099 form requirements.
For years, it's been $600 that if you earn $600, you have to file a 1099, but it's just been raised to 2000.
So I don't think that that's a barrier, but in terms of just making people feel welcome and appreciated.
I think, well, I'm not in deliberation now, but I just want to say that I think the recommendations very practical and easy to do.
It also could be something we could do for year or two and then see what what happens.
So, you know, the gift card thing, I just somehow I just don't like that because it is volunteer work.
So anyway, I'll talk more later. Thanks.
Okay. I don't see any other questions on the list. Do you have any public comment?
I do not. Okay. Well, bring them right back for deliberations. There you go.
Thank you for that amount for the independent contractor. I think what I heard was it's not so much the amount, but the paying in lieu of money is that correct.
For the independent contractor or that was more along the lines of like how we are compensating them for is the issue with the legality of it, because if you think about what roles and responsibilities that advisory body members are doing.
We, we kind of assessed it. There's a, there's an employee classification test that ABC dynamics test that I referenced in my report.
That has these three kind of stipulations as to how you can classify employee versus otherwise.
And overall, it's not a simple yes or no answer that all of these advisory bodies fit under that specific assessment, so that was kind of more of the.
What we were talking about when it came to the independent contractor that the gift card method thinking about it now, just the fact that it wasn't necessarily a substitution for compensating them for their time.
Also, like getting into the negative like where are we going to, you know, get these gift cards are we going to partner with someone I know we had talked with staff.
One of the council compensation committee members had brought that up is as a trial for one of the advisory bodies that they were looking to compensate them that way and they were partnering with specific.
Bank, I think is what she was saying.
So again, where do we decide where we're going to get these gift cards regularly, so that was kind of one of the, I didn't really highlight that in my report, but that was one of the issues we ran into when discussing like the gift card method.
Like as a method of compensation.
I don't know if that answer your question, but that did. Thank you. I was just trying to make sure I was there was kind of two lanes there and I wanted to make sure we got those.
All right, any.
Moving to any motions, any questions, where are we at council members, or something.
I guess just a quick comment slash question, I know it came up in a gender review today that either zero or not very many other cities even offer parking validation.
To community members, so I feel like we're already a little bit ahead in sort of this.
I don't know in even considering this policy and I do think that although it's not compensation at least providing parking for folks when they're here for three hours at the end of a work day or even in the middle of the day where it might be harder to find parking.
I think is is a nice benefit. It is in some ways. Maybe if it's not compensation. It is a small thank you for for your service and having snacks is reasonable.
I do want to kind of keep it on our radar to think about ways that maybe in the future we might be able to do either compensation or some sort of subsidy of child care, but I'm content enough with this approach to support the support the staff's request.
The staff's recommendation tonight. Sorry I'm starting to lose my words.
That's okay. Thank you. Council member marks.
Yeah, I think the staff recommendation makes perfect sense.
You know, the other question that I would have that someone I'm related, but it's whether people could participate via zoom if they had small children.
You know, if they didn't want, you know, I mean, and just this by own experience when the kids are really little.
I want to spend as much time with them as I could, you know.
And so I mean, that may be a decent sense of volunteering for something that takes place in the evening just because of your personal wish to spend especially if you're working all day.
And then you've just got a little bit of time with the kids in my anyway. So I think I think it would be a good way to go the staff recommendation and when I I do want to say with the snacks, they should be somewhat substantial snacks in that.
If they are coming straight from work.
Everyone knows that when your blood sugar grows down, you stop making good decisions. You just start thinking about food.
Anyway, so that's I will at the right time like to move the staff recommendation.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.
Yeah, you know, as Council member, it sure has been pointed out earlier kind of the intended spirit of this discussion was to kind of promote more.
A demographic and socioeconomic diversity on our advisory bodies and I know that there are a lot of barriers to doing that at this stage.
But I just kind of want to keep this conversation alive.
I'm willing to support this pilot today.
I think compensating for the three hours of parking and having some food is, you know, a nice first step.
It doesn't really get at the essence of what we're trying to solve here.
And so I want to just kind of encourage us all to keep thinking about how we can have an advisory body group that really is representative of all the people in the city.
And I think that might require us getting a little more creative here with some compensation or some childcare and trying to figure out this tough not to crack.
But I'll be willing to support this on a pilot basis of what we keep thinking through this.
Thank you. I appreciate that I know that this was the goal was to help people who are not able to come to the table.
And I hope that, you know, in two years, this was looked at again.
And at the same time to be realistic as to what what changes right in between now and then.
I think that this is a great move parking was something that we heard quite a bit from members and people who turned in for the survey that that is like I'm trying to get from work to the committee meetings.
I think this would be very helpful and of course, blood sugar absolutely little snacks keep us going.
I think I think makes a lot of sense. So I'm in support of this recommendation and, you know, I think,
I think if nothing else with parks and racken and childcare just seems logical that we'd put those to get those to the get of people needed it, but that's a I think it's a longer term goal that maybe we can work on in the future.
So that's what I have council member marks. She said you wanted to move.
Move the staff recommendation.
Great. Thank you very much. Council member Schorzman.
I'll go ahead and second it. Thank you.
Thank you, city clerk. Can we have roll call.
Council member marks. Yes. Council member Schorzman.
Yes. Council member Boswell.
Yes.
Vice Mayor Francis. Yes. Mayor Stewart.
Yes, and thank you, emotion passes five zero and with that all we have left is the liaison reports and communications vice mayor.
I'll jump right in here on 520. I had opportunity to go to one of our day of welcomes. It's for new employees and was a small group from IT and the police and public works, but actually the small group made it really fun because we just got to have kind of a roundtable discussion and have it be pretty informal and got so many awesome questions from this new group of employees and excited to see what they do in the city.
We had our investment oversight committee meeting on the 21st and kind of a big focus of that discussion was talking about our ESG strategy so that's environmental social and governance strategy.
There are some companies that were currently invested in. We just kind of were wondering how they're retaining the rating that they currently have under the ESG ratings and wanting to get a little more information about about how the third parties that they give the
ESG ratings determine that and make sure that we're investing aligned with our philosophy here at the city.
The 21st I also got to attend the advisory body lunch with the mayor, which is always one of my very favorite events getting to hear with the advisory bodies are not only working on but excited about and really just left inspired.
So thank you. Thank you. We just finished talking about all of our lovely advisory body members and just so grateful to all their service, not leave it there.
Thank you. Council members.
Yeah, just a couple things hasn't been very long since our last meeting. So last Wednesday I believe it was I was able to attend a history center event recognizing me a Lawrence and the semi-quincentennial.
Display that they have in the history center.
Really, really good display and Mia created this, this just a great display with a lot of Chicano heritage memorabilia in it and then on Sunday. I think it was no Saturday.
Food bank open house over at there, warehouse and really fun competition to watch them fill no cook bags.
And they turn that into a fun competition, so it's always fun to watch and lots of great food to appropriately at the food bank, lots of great food there.
And yesterday I one of my favorite times of the year is always community service awards for our local high school students. So I helped give out the mayor's award at slow high last night to I don't know, it's like 120 kids.
So a lot of and got to hear some of the stories of what they're doing to earn their hours and just always fun to see our young people doing so much good stuff for our community.
And just want to close with a little congratulations and we've got a slow high school graduation this Friday afternoon I have a graduate so congratulations to all the slow high schoolers graduating on Friday.
And then to all the Cal Poly students graduating, I think the following weekend. So congratulations to everybody.
Thank you. Councilman Marks.
Well, on the 20th, I had an air pollution control district meeting and it was about the budget same, you know, this time of year.
They are under budget and they're basically always it's a very thrifty organization one thing that I learned.
That was somewhat concerning was that there's no ozone monitor in the in the city of San Luis Obispo.
There was one up until I think the year 2021 when our ratings were so good with ozone that they decided that.
Carb the mothership of the all the air pollution control districts the California air resources for decided that we didn't need one.
However, there is one in Moro Bay and the ozone and ozone travels kind of like in a cloud and there are pretty high ratings.
Also on ratings in Moro Bay, which is near the ocean.
So I'm concerned that we don't have an ozone.
The city staff at some point should check in with the air pollution control district, because I think it's really important, those zones can have very damaging health effects on people.
And tomorrow is the rack meeting, the water resources advisory committee meeting, and we're going to be talking about, among other things, the slow base in GSA.
I asked a question of staff about whether we needed to an update is due in January 2027.
So I asked if we needed to appoint two members to be part of that base in GSA.
Since we had one, we had two members, Emily Francis and NDPs back when, but it turns out that the update was going to come to the whole council in January.
So this body will serve as the, we will be doing the hearing for the update.
On the 25th, I went to the Veterans Memorial Celebration for Memorial Day, and it was packed.
It was very emotional, and it was really, very, how do I say, it was just very low key in certain ways, but it was really solid, it was great seeing the whole community come together like that.
And then on the 31st, I went to with some other council members as well, a celebration of the third year of the tenets union and a send off for Tyler Corey, who's as a student has really been kind of a spark plug for getting the whole thing going.
He's now going to be doing an internship with a city of San Luis, the city of Long Beach.
He's hoping to become the city manager someday.
So we'll see.
And that's about my, my events in terms of my announcements.
I wanted to let people know that city form slow has got a farm stand on Saturdays from 10 am to 1, and then on Wednesdays they've added another day.
From 2, 30, to 6 pm.
And people who, it's a pay, pay what you can is the motto.
People are given up to $30 worth of discount on these organic vegetables, and a lot of people are coming.
And now that the word is out and getting basically free organic vegetables.
So whether you want to pay the price that is listed or you want to donate some more or if you know somebody who's feeling.
Food insecure who wants some great food.
Now's the time.
Lots of beautiful beautiful vegetables.
Okay, that's all I have.
Do you have a name for the little lamb?
Millie.
So we did not name the lamb compost.
I'm glad compost did not win as a name.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Millie.
Thank you.
Can't remember.
As well.
I like compost.
No, you don't want to need to go compost.
They're good at that though.
Just a couple things to mention.
Tended the cap slow board meeting on the 21st.
Nothing particular report out of that.
And then.
Tended the slow food bank open house.
And just always want to thank them for feeding our community.
Well, thank you.
Yes, I also got to attend the slow food bank open house.
It was a lot of fun.
And I just want to say congratulations to rate.
The mortgage company.
I saw Don Lewis and her whole team just killed it.
They made 10 no cook bags in record time filled them all accurately.
But saw some additional.
I learned Cal Poly and what was the fourth group.
Which one?
Thank you.
Columbia Bank.
All did amazing jobs, fill in those food banks.
No cooked food bags.
Also, on the 21st, yes, advisory body quarterly advisory bodies.
One of my favorite times to be able to see what's happening.
Not just in our community and in our communities, but with the volunteers who give their
time.
And so that's really a wonderful full circle for today.
Got to say thank you to Isaac Pummel and Mark Cabalisa, the president's student
money president of Cal Poly and Quest at the student community liaison committee, SCLC.
And hello and welcome to Sean Shelton and Tanner Schinderley, which will be serving us serving
their schools in the next year.
A big congratulations to Lewis for 50 years of Lewis's place.
They had a fabulous pancake competition.
And I feel like I talked about that before, but I just, it was an amazing experience to watch.
Whale Walk.
Whale Rock.
Wow.
It's the end of the night.
Whale Rock Commission was on Thursday the 28th.
And I just have to say city manager McDonald was the chair of the committee.
Thank you very much for your service.
I know that rotates around, but this is our partnership with Cal Poly and with CMC.
And just great to see, not just the water, of course, that we help provide here in this community,
but the work that was done has secured more water to not disappear out of our dam.
Also, continue to rebuild the fences.
So we could keep any cow matter out of the water and keep a safe and clean.
And so I just thought it was, there were a lot of projects they did together and it was really great.
So if you have free time and you're interested in water, check it out.
It's a really good report.
And it's a whole year of their projects.
On the 30th, I got to spend a little time with one of the Laguna Middle School community service project recipients.
She gathered people who had gone through the Tech Trek 8th grade middle school program and people who were going into the Tech Trek.
This summer.
And these young women are looking at, you know, what they're going to do in the long run, whether it's with STEM, science and technology,
but also with potential public policy and leadership in the future.
So that was really great.
And I went to the Greek festival.
It's been happening since 2009.
Wonderful food.
Wonderful dancing.
And just a wonderful experience.
So thank, I'm very thankful to them.
Tomorrow, we'll be talking with many people in our community, our in our county with a slow cog, the slow county council of governments.
We'll be talking about the ballot initiative and potentially putting a sales tax on the ballot in November to help us with our infrastructure to become a self-help county.
So that's one of the big topics, but actually the agenda is pretty large.
If you want to take a look at what we'll be doing.
I just want to say congratulations to Peyton.
But I also want to say congratulations to all those who just graduated just in the last week or two at mission.
At quest and are coming up this year.
I'm sorry, this week at slow high and all of the slow coastal along with the cowpolly next next week.
And lastly, I hope everyone got out there.
Vote.
I see many of us were our I voted stickers.
And look forward to seeing what happens with the primaries at this time.
Thank you so much.
And we'll see you all for our last meeting of the year on June 16th.
Last meeting of the fiscal year.