And ask him for a listening device, if you would like interpretation services tonight.
I would like to call this meeting to order for the City Council meeting of May 5th, 2026, Madam Clerk, can you please call the row.
Council member Aguilara, here. Council member Nataya.
Council member Sato, here. Mayor Potemplores, here. Mayor Potina.
City Attorney, Mr. Watson, would you like to give the closed session report?
Absolutely, thank you, Madam Clerk.
With respect to items 3A and 3B instructions were provided to the negotiators, no further reporters necessary.
Thank you.
We will be doing proclamation tonight and the very first proclamation will be given by our council member Gloria Soto on Water Awareness Month.
Thank you.
Where has the City of Santa Maria maintains a water awareness and conservation program that includes community outreach,
school education, complementary home water visits, and expected leak notifications to residential and commercial customers.
And where has every industry, business and resident can make a difference by conserving water out, work, home and school.
And where has residents of all ages and businesses and industries of all types are invited and encouraged to implement just one of the many tips and ideas to help conserve water in Santa Maria.
Now, therefore, Alice Petino Mayor of the City of Santa Maria here by proclaims the month of May 2026 as water awareness month in the City of Santa Maria.
And here to accept the proclamation, we have Myra Richie.
Good evening Madam Mayor, fellow city council member city department heads and fellow city residents upon receiving this proclamation may as water awareness month.
Again, my name is Myra Richie and I am the water conservation specialist for utilities department.
Part of my job is I educate the community about water conservation.
We all know how a valuable resource it is to our community.
We definitely have a robust water conservation outreach to our community not only we do outreach social media, but we also advertise in print ads both English and in Spanish.
We have print ads among the whole Santa Maria ad times in the news.
We have artwork done by students.
We are actually having this evening celebrating the 15th water awareness poster contest, which I'd like to acknowledge these students.
This year we had over 300 posters that were submitted with six local schools here in Santa Maria.
We invited third grade students to participate.
That wasn't for the elementary school administrators along with the teachers.
When maybe having this contest, so first and foremost, thank you to Santa Maria Bonilla school district and with that said, I'd like to start the evening by announcing our six winners.
For most educational from Alvin school in Mrs. Lee's class, we have Kila Ithor Bidea Ayala.
Thank you.
Good evening Madame Mayor and console members.
My name is Kila Ithor Bidea Ayala.
My teacher's name is Mrs. Lee.
My poster is about water awareness.
Water is important to us because we need it in our daily life for everything.
Let's take care of water because water is life.
Thank you for your time and I appreciate this award.
Next, we have from Oakley Elementary School in Mrs. Watkins class for Best Solvation of Water Sophia Vargas.
My name is Sophia Vargas. My teacher's name is Ms. Watkins.
My poster is about water awareness. Water is important to us because it gives more energy and even animals needed water to survive.
And from Alvin school in Mrs. Lee's class for most colorful Danyana Ithor Bidea Ithor Bidea.
Good evening Madame Mayor and console members. My name is Yana Ithor Bidea Ithor.
My teacher's name is Ms. Lee. My poster is about water awareness.
Water is important to us because we need water to survive. If we didn't have water I wouldn't be here to accept this award.
I am so thankful for this award. Thank you so so much.
From Alvin Elementary School Mrs. Long's class for most artistic Jennifer Pineda Nester.
My name is Jennifer Pineda Nester. My teacher's name is Ms. Long. My poster is about water awareness. Water is important to us because it is good for your body and good for planting plants. Thank you for this award.
Thank you so much.
It is also from Alvin Elementary School in Mrs. Long's class for most water awareness.
Thank you so much.
Good evening Madame Mayor and console members. My name is Brittany Romeras.
My teacher name is Ms. Long. My poster is about water awareness. Water is important to us because it brings life to animals and people.
Thank you for this award.
In last but not least from Oakley Elementary School in Mrs. Walkens class for best slogan we have Camila Santos.
Good evening Madame Mayor and console members. My name is Camila Santos. My teacher's name is Mrs. Walkens. My poster is about water awareness.
Water is important to us because we need it and also our surroundings too. Thank you for this award.
And if I can have the student winners stand at one more time please. Again I present to you this year 2006 water awareness poster contest winners.
And once again to also for the teachers who are here this evening if it was in for you and the communication with you I just want to say thank you with all the endless emails and calls.
Thank you again for the city administrators. Thank you for Madame Mayor for always letting me do this outreach and having the students participate.
Again to our students are our future leaders of America. So let's do our part in conserve water. Thank you and have a good evening.
Thank you.
Next we'll be doing a proclamation for municipal clerk's week and this will be given by council member Gloria Soto.
Okay.
We're as the office of the municipal clerk a time honored and vital part of local government exists throughout the world.
And we're as the office of the municipal clerk is the oldest among public servants and it is most appropriate that we recognize the accomplishments of the office of the municipal clerk.
And we're as the office of the municipal clerk provides the professional link between the citizens, the local governing bodies and agencies of government at other levels.
And we're as municipal clerks have pledged to be ever mindful of their neutrality and imparting now.
Letty rendering equal service to all and we're as the municipal clerk serves as the information center on functions of local government and community.
And we're as municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administration of the affairs of the office of the municipal clerk through participation and education program seminars workshops in the annual meetings of their state, provincial, county and professional organizations.
Now therefore Alice Patino mayor of the city of Santa Maria here by proclaims the week of May 3rd through May 9th, 2026 as municipal clerks weeks week in the city of Santa Maria and further extended appreciation to our elected city clerk.
Patty Rodriguez chief deputy clerk Donna Schwartz assistant city clerk at Alexandra Faldes and toward deputy city clerk actually at Sienega for their vital services.
They for the vital services they perform and the exemplary dedication to the community they represent.
And here to accept the proclamation we have Donna Schwartz.
We appreciate Donna and all that she does and all our others clerks that make things run efficient here there's plenty of seats up here people want to take seats there seats up here you guys want to move us a sit in the back.
Yeah, I'd also like to thank the clerks you guys do a really good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, our proclamation is compost awareness week and council member Bethiah will be presenting the award.
Whereas we're asked the compost research and education foundation along with Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom and other countries have to clear the first week of May to be the annual international compost awareness week organic materials suitable for composing.
Is an effective form of waste reduction reuse and recycling compost improves the soil structures reduce.
And runs off supplies the soil with a variety of Michael and my nutrients and enables compost amended soils to use less water and whereas using suitable soil enriching compost helps prevent.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We'll talk soil without being valuable while life habitat.
Community.
His in and by composting green waste, bios soiled and other organic materials and per month, the use of renewable resources in ascaping and our cultural returning compost organic resources to the soil is a method of decreasing.
To the distance of chemical, fertilizing and decreasing erosion reducing water and non point pollution and whereas the city of Salamia has initially green waste and food waste collection programs to aid in the efforts of environmental.
And great ink regional composing facility, Salamia has been successfully composing organic materials for.
Symbol agricultural practice since 1983 and the city has invested in collection programs to meet state requirements and save valuable man.
Now, therefore, as Patino Mayor of Salamia City of Salamia have been recognized the week of May 3 through 1926 as compost awareness week in the city of Salamia as well as recognizing the efforts of the composing councils.
Extension agents, householders, taskkeepers, farmers, recyclables, public workers, gardeners and plant growers, airware along with eagle and gray ink and harvest plant compost.
Here, to accept a pop eagle.
We love composting. Council and all the public hearing really like to thank you for recognizing
international compost awareness week. I think this is a 26 year that we've been doing international compost awareness week.
We've gone through a lot of pots of plant. Something special about this year is England great celebrating our 80th year of doing business here in Santa
and so we had some hats made up with our harvest win compost and it's our 33rd year of composting with the city of Santa Maria here.
One of the first really in California and we were not the first, but one of the first to get into the composting business and provide those services.
So, like to thank you for being at the forefront on behalf of the United States composting council, just to recognize the benefits of compost and what it does to soil makes soil healthy.
It concerns water. It's always so appropriate to be here on the water saving month too because we kind of compliment each other.
So what you're using that compost in the parks is great and rejuvenating the soil and making everything look good, the soccer fields love it.
So we appreciate working with you and thank you very much for recognizing the benefits of compost. Thank you.
Thank you. I forgot the biggest thing. We have a big event on better maybe road Saturday 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. if you want to get some free complimentary compost.
We don't give you anything away free. It's always complimentary.
We can get up to a cubic yard of compost for free. Bring a bucket, a car, a pickup, whatever you got and we'll load you up. We're also having transplants.
We're also bringing the kids. We teach the kids how to make potting soil with the compost and sand and then they plant a transplant in there and they get to take the pot.
I'm home with them to grow their vegetable transplant and we give you extra vegetables. If you want to do a home garden. We give those out free. We have a whole selection of different types of veggies. So that's this Saturday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 7.45 West better area of your road.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you Bob.
The next proclamation is the National Day of Prayer, which I'll be reading and the word will be accepted.
The proclamation will be accepted by Benita.
Monios, she's a treasure of community National Day of Prayer. It says,
Throughout history, Americans have lifted forever prayers to God on behalf of our nation.
From the gatherings of our founding fathers, elected officials have prayed and encouraged those.
They serve to join them in prayer, including the authors of the Declaration of Independence.
Who wrote that they were appealing to the supreme judge of the world and continuing to present day and present presidential proclamation and by the citizens to see God's guidance, mercy, protection,
and whereas a National Day of Prayer has been part of our heritage since it was declared by the first congress in 1775.
And was established into law in 1952.
Later, amended in 1988, affirming the importance of prayer, directing the president to proclaim the first Thursday of May, each year as a National Day of Prayer.
And whereas the servants of the National Day of Prayer will be held on Thursday, May 7 with the theme, glory God among the nation, seeking him and all generations based on first chronicles.
First chronicles 1624, and whereas first Thursday of May, Americans express their faith, exercise their freedom and prayer, uniting and personal prayer, and publicly gatherings with praise, repentance, love, and humble intercessions for our neighbor and nation.
Now, therefore, Alice M. Patino, mayor of the city of Santa Maria, hereby proclaim May 7, 2026, as National Day of Prayer.
Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council and city leaders.
It is an honor and a privilege to be here this evening to accept this proclamation.
On behalf of the community of prayer, here in Santa Maria.
This is a monumental year as a National Day of Prayer celebrates its 75th year and America commemorates its 250th year as a nation.
The theme for this year's National Day of Prayer is from first chronicles 16 in the Old Testament which claims, glorify God among the nations,
seeking him in all generations. This year, we will declare our personal rededication focusing on our own hearts in our own city, where God has established us.
We will gather together to pray, to celebrate, and to rededicate ourselves back to the Lord, in covenant as one nation, under God.
Committing to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as Jesus loves us.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council and city leaders for you support these last 29 years as we have come together to pray for our city, county, state, and nation.
Our prayer meeting on May 7th will be at the healing rooms. It'll start at 6.30.
So please come join us and we also have a midday one at the Veterans Hall at noon and that will be for about an hour.
We would love to see anyone who wants to pray with us. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next proclamation will be National Police Week, and it'll be given by Councilmember Battaya.
Whereas of all the promises of America all first known is more precious and lose it than the right to be free from crime and whereas the dedicated man and woman who have chosen law enforcement as a career face is journey risk and danger in pursuing our freedom.
And security and whereas during the week of May 10th through May 16th, 206 National Police Week is a reserve to recognize our courageous work.
Serious responsibility and strong commitment of our national peace officers and whereas in conjunction with this important observance, the city of Santa Maria is observing May 13, 206 as peace officer tomorrow day of those noble officers who have tried to sacrifice their lives in the line of duty and whereas 12 California peace officers are recognized as being killed in the line of duty during 2020.
25 and whereas the special observance provides all of them with attorney to appreciate their heart, men and women who have dedicated their lives to preserving public safety.
Now therefore, out of the Latino Mayor of Santa Maria have been recognized as the week of May 10th through May 16th, 206 as National Police Week.
And proclaim Wednesday May 13, 206 as peace officers Memorial Day in the city of Santa Maria and encourage all residents to remember those individuals who gave their lives for our safety and express appreciation to those who continue to dedicate themselves to making Santa Maria a safer place in which to live.
And here to accept Lieutenant Felix Diaz.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for recognizing police officer Memorial Week and for taking a moment to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice to their lives.
On behalf of the Santa Maria Police Department, we'd like to invite everybody in whole community council to join us for annual Memorial next Wednesday May 13 that 10 a.m. at the Santa Maria Police Department will be honoring the 12 fallen officers who died in 2025.
So we hope to see all there. And this year also special will be honoring one of our very own Santa Maria Police officer Robert C. McMichael who died in 1932.
He's never been formally recognized. So we'll have a ceremony as well.
Having a moment for his death in 1932. Again, it'll be next Wednesday May 13 10 a.m. at the Santa Maria Police Department for all of you who are interested.
I hope to see all there. Thank you again for the support and see you there.
Thank you. Our next proclamation is the 80th anniversary of life way fellowship and councilmember Gloria Soto will be presenting the proclamation.
Thank you. Whereas on May 17, 1946, a group of faithful believers founded Santa Maria Southern Baptist Church known as life way fellowship.
With a mission to share the gospel and serve the Santa Maria community.
And whereas for 80 years, life way fellowship has faithfully made disciples equipped believers and impacted generations through worship, teaching and outreach.
And whereas this milestone reflects God's enduring faithfulness and the churches continued commitment to his mission.
Now, therefore Alice Petino Mayor of the City of Santa Maria hereby proclaims May 17, 2026 as the 80th anniversary of life way fellowship in the City of Santa Maria and we give things for the past and look forward with hope to the future.
And here to accept the proclamation, we have leadership of life way fellowship church.
I want to thank the City Council and the City for being willing to do this.
I'm sad that Mayor Petino is not here. She has been an incredible supporter of the church and faith in the community.
And as we get a chance to celebrate 80 years, it's a reminder of the need of that beacon of hope in the community.
And not just for what has happened in the past, but what is to come that we can trust in the God that not only made us, but the God that has saved us.
And one of the greatest things we can do in the community is continue as we're going to do with the National Day of Prayer.
Pray for this community and for you leaders as God leads every one of your steps.
Thank you again for letting us have this recognition tonight.
Thank you.
Our next proclamation is going to be given by Council Member Aguilera Hernandez on National Public Works Week.
Whereas the City Council of the City of Santa Maria has supported the role of the public works in utility department to provide vital services to the community,
which are an integral part of the city's residents every day lives.
And whereas the support of an informed community is vital to the operation of public works.
Systems and programs such as the production and delivery of clean water, wastewater collection and treatment, storm water collection, treatment and control, solid waste collection and disposal.
And whereas the health, safety and comfort of the community greatly depends on these facilities and services.
And whereas the quality and effectiveness of these services and facilities as well as planning and designing construction are vitally dependent on the efforts and skills of public works officials.
And whereas the efficiency of the qualified and dedicated personnel who staffed the public works and utilities departments is materially influenced by the residents attitude and understanding of the performance.
And now therefore Alice Patino, the mayor of the City of Santa Maria here by recognized as the week of May 7th thing through the 20th or 2026 as National Public Works Week.
In the City of Santa Maria and encourage all residents and civic organizations to recognize and contribute public works officials to make every day for better health, safety and quality of life.
And witness here, she's at her hand and had caused the Seal of the City of Santa Maria to be effects here to this fifth day of May 2026 and to receive this is Brett Fulgoni from Director of Public Works.
Good evening, council members and public and other employees.
I just want to sincerely thank each and every one of you for what you do. If those in public works could stand up, that would be great. I know Luis is one of our engineers.
And then Omar here is on our on our asphalt team.
And doesn't pay me around town in house paving. I'm really proud of what these guys do. These guys and gals that are on our team. It's amazing work that they do, and I'm very proud of them. Not only in the public worst department, but also in utilities department, and, of course, our recreation and parks department, we consider them public works employees as well, and they deserve recognition alongside our actual public work staff, maintaining our fleet facilities, managing the engineering, constructing all of the wonderful things that the city needs to function.
And so, thank you all, and we appreciate what you do.
Thank you.
I'll be watching you all more. I live off the college. Thank you for patching all the holes around the town.
Our next pop formation will be in bite month, and that will be given by council member Maribel Aguilar Hernandez.
We're asked bicycling is an economical, healthy, convenient, and environmentally sustainable mode of transportation, as well as a valuable recreational activity that allows residents and visitors to enjoy Santa Maria scenic beauty.
Throughout the month of May, the community will celebrate bicycling through educational programs, community events, organized rides, art, and recreational activities collectively known as psychomania.
And we're as a city of Santa Maria supports bicycling through coordinated efforts across as departments, including maintaining bicycle infrastructure, ensuring clean and safe lanes, supporting development standards,
and fortsing safety regulations, maintaining path and landscaping, providing educational resources, and promoting bicycling programs and events.
And we're as fostering a bicycle-friendly community enhances a public health, improves quality of life, supports economic development, and student access, and reduces pollution, congestion, and roadway impacts.
The city of Santa Maria, Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, move Santa Barbara County, CalTrans 5, the League of Americans bicyclists, local schools, businesses, and civic groups will promote bicycling during the May, during the month of May and recognition of national bike month, recognize locally a psychomania.
Now, therefore, Alice Patino, the mayor of the city of Santa Maria, here by proclaims May 2016 as bike month in the city of Santa Maria, and urges all residents to join her in celebrating cycling.
In witness here, she sets her hand and has caused the seal of the city of Santa Maria to be a fix here to the fifth day of May, 2020.
And to accept this is Peter Williamson.
Happy Psychomania!
Thank you, council members. My name is Peter, I'm on behalf of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, SBKag, who coordinates bike months for the region.
I'm honored to accept this proclamation with my fellow bicyclists. Each year, the city of Santa Maria becomes more deeply involved in bike months.
In this year, marks the strongest level of participation yet, we're especially grateful for the city's leadership in expanding ride with the Ranger by partnering with smart and public works to add BC Jela, creating more exciting reasons to bike.
Let's also recognize the Santa Maria library for hosting stay alert. Don't get hurt, which helps riders build their confidence and awareness.
Smart is also part of the bike to bus and ride free promotion throughout May. Put your bike on the rack and ride free helping you go farther to the other Santa Maria to work it to solving or maybe to Santa Barbara on a cleaner express again free during cycle mania.
Bike month is about connection health and giving people more ways to move.
I'm excited to celebrate with you. I hope to see you at the city's events, a group bike ride to ice cream, a free bike breakfast, the Elx parade or other event on the cycle mania.org calendar.
Join in any event and get a chance to win a $2,000 E bike.
Council member or two has been known to join the fun. Hope to see you there. Thank you.
Mr. Wheeler, would you like to say something? I know you had a lot of bike runs. Yeah, go ahead.
Thank you.
I'm just happy and proud that we can celebrate bike month here. I know our public works has a lot more plan in terms of bike by paths or multi use paths and they've done a tremendous job with adding few new bike lanes around town that really open up the bicycle network where we can have bicycle calls.
And it's a place for bicycles to ride, bicycle to ride and motorists. So we're not mixing it up so much, which is inconvenience is motorists and makes driver bicyclists nervous.
So thanks to public works and other people trying to make us have a more bicycle friendly Santa Maria. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Wheeler. Appreciate you.
For rodeo days, the mayor is on our way. So we're going to go ahead and have the mayor do the presentation to you.
She'll be here if you don't mind waiting. She really wanted to do that. So we're doing a little things a little bit different here tonight and tell the mayor gets here.
The next proclamation is Santa Maria Town Center and Councilmember Vathaya will be presenting that.
Oh, sorry. You seem just doing things different.
No problem.
I was going to call you eventually. I didn't know when, but I would have. Thank you so much.
Good evening. Council members and public on behalf of the Santa Maria Chamber and partnership with the city of Santa Maria.
I have my pleasure to present the Santa Maria Town Center as a business of the quarter.
Since it's establishment in 1976, the Town Center has served us as a cornerstone to our community acting as a regional destination for shopping, dining and entertainment.
By the way, tomorrow our Thursday will have a big mixer there.
The center is a vital economic engine providing employment for approximately 350 people across all of its diverse retail partners.
More than just a shopping mall. It has evolved into a central gathering place.
That strengthens our social fabric through regular community engagement, programming, seasonal events, support for and support from both national and local businesses.
We're proud to recognize their long-standing dedication to the vitality of Santa Maria.
Joining us tonight to accept the certificate is General Manager Sylvia Velocius.
Good evening, everyone.
Thank you to the City of Santa Maria, the council members, the Chamber and the community for this recognition.
As he mentioned, we will be celebrating 50 years as being part of this community on July 1st.
We opened July 1st, 1976.
So thank you for the recognition and we appreciate the community support.
Thank you.
I'm honored to recognize Fusion Colors Auto Body Repair as a business of the quarter.
Founded in 2010, a Marcus Limone, the business is a remarkable story of local growth in entrepreneurial spirit.
Starting with just a single unit and one office, Fusion Colors has expanded into a state-of-the-art five-unit facility.
The employees tend people.
They remain at the forefront of their industry by investing in innovation, such as heated spray booths,
that drastically reduce drying times, advanced diagnostic systems to ensure modern vehicle safety,
and beyond their technical expertise, Fusion Colors is dedicated to community partner.
Sponsoring numerous youth sports programs and even helping the Santa Maria police council restore a historic Chevy.
Please join me in congratulating the owner, Marcus Limone, as he comes forward to accept the recognition.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Thanks for all this.
I really appreciate this.
This means a lot for me in my group here in town.
So we still waiting for all the support and see you soon.
Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so nervous. Thank you.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to proclaim rodeo days in Santa Maria.
Whereas the time is fast approaching for the 83rd Annual Elxrodium Parade, May 27th through May 31st,
2026 in the city of Santa Maria, considered by many to be the event of the year.
And we're as continuing the tradition of Clarence Manetti and Leland Buchsemus,
hundreds of loyal elf lodge, 1538 members have volunteered,
and have been drafted to make this rodeo a tremendous success,
because the Elx lodge, 1538, to be named number one, Elx lodge in the United States,
numerous times over the last 37 years.
And whereas the Santa Maria Elx rodeo Parade will begin at 10 o'clock on Saturday, May 30th,
and continue down Broadway from Mill to Ina Street,
immediately after the parade, the street fair will begin at 1321 South Broadway.
And whereas it has been a longstanding tradition to begin wearing Western clothes,
several weeks prior to Elxrodio.
Now, therefore, I, Alice Fatino, may of the city of Santa Maria.
Hereby proclaim May 27th through May 31st, as go rodeo days in the city of Santa Maria,
and encourage all residents and businesses to enter the rodeo spirit by wearing Western attire.
And witness there, I have here to set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Santa Maria
to be a fixed this 50th day of May 2026.
And here to receive it are members of the Elx Club.
Well, we are so honored.
My name is Eva Guzman, and I'm representing the Elx lodge.
I've got Jay Argonzales.
He's one of our officers in Elxang, she's one of our officers.
And we're here representing the Santa Maria Elx lodge, Santa Maria rodeo and parade.
And we are just like Ms. Mayor, Ms. Fatino.
Thank you so much in all city council members that agreed to make this a proclamation.
We are honored.
We want to remind you that it is a 83rd annual rodeo.
And so please participate, partake in this event.
It's a tradition, it's a family tradition.
I know a lot of generations that have been attending this rodeo this parade.
So let's make it even more so.
Let's teach our kids our grandkids that what Santa Maria is about and what our traditions will remain
and will continue moving forward.
We appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
And now it gives me great pleasure for the certificate of the appointment
to our new council member, Bataya.
And city clerk, do I read this or do you read this?
Okay.
Will you go ahead read because this is I don't wish words.
Okay.
She's been reading to you.
Can you go get it?
Certificate of Appointment.
State of California, County of Santa Barbara.
I don't wish words, CMC.
Chief Deputy City Clerk of the City of Santa Maria, State of California.
Do you hear by certify that a regular city council meeting.
held in city, the 7th day of April, 2026.
Virtua Bataya was appointed to the Office of Council Member District 1.
For the term effective, the date of the certificate through the November 3rd, 2026,
special municipal election in their after.
And tell the newly elected members seated.
And witness thereof.
I have here until I fix my hand.
And official sealed this 7th day of April, 2026.
Well, it would have been helpful.
And at this time, I'd like to move up the public hearing item.
13A, regarding the Santa Maria, 2045 General Plan.
For that sounds like a long way away, 2045.
Director of Community Development.
Shen and Dow will be present the staff report.
Mayor Patino, City Council members, the Community Development Department,
and the many other departments that have touched this over the last six years,
are very excited to present.
To give a little bit of background, the roll of the general plan is to establish a land use map, which
designates what is allowed and where. Create a policy document that informs land use decisions,
conduct an environmental impact report, which evaluates impact on existing environment and is not project specific,
and provide an adaptable road map for future growth. The general plan does not replace more frequent and specific studies
the ones that are done on a regular basis across all that apartments for the city.
Dictate all city decisions through 2045, of course, we do not have a crystal ball,
and attempt to predict all possible scenarios. So it is our best foot forward, as far as
what we assume will happen in the future, but it cannot capture everything.
Within the planning hierarchy, there are a number of elements that we take into account. The general plan comes
in just below state statutes and regional plans, and then as we get into more detail about land use decisions,
we have area plans and specific plans, our zoning code and subdivision ordinances,
and then of course individual development reviews. So those will look very specifically at each individual project.
They're appropriateness in a certain part of the city and they're environmental impact.
This is where we are in the general plan update process. Again, this has started in 2020, and we are now concluding it with review and adoption.
There has been a significant amount of public input throughout that time.
We began with existing conditions reports in 2020. In 2021, we moved on to establishing the vision
and guiding principles, which were shaped by a number of workshops surveys and other public input.
And we then moved on to land use alternatives and analysis, so there were different options,
examined for whether or not annexation should be contemplated for our future growth.
This, the City Council and Planning Commission selected an option for those land use scenarios,
and that included some annexations. So that study was done, and water and wastewater systems for
luminary assessment was performed, and analysis was done for Highway 101.
In 2025, the policy frameworks were drafted, and we had a public review period in early 2025.
And later in the year, we had the public draft general plan, EIR Public Review,
multiple joint study sessions with the Planning Commission in City Council, and in 2026,
we have had two planning commission public hearings.
There's been, again, a significant amount of community engagement throughout this process.
From key stakeholders, developers, business owners, Santa Maria residents, various organizations.
There have been eight community workshops, 13 technical advisory committee meetings,
four online surveys. This is our fifth of the City Council meetings,
eight planning commission meetings, two joint meetings with Planning Commission in City Council,
dozens of stakeholder interviews and one-on-one meetings, thousands of comments
reviewed and addressed. I can't emphasize this enough. So as we go through an EIR in particular,
we have an obligation to review and address every single comment that was made,
and we have a very engaged public that was generous and providing comments
and helping shape this to be the best plan it could be.
Every single one of those comments was carefully reviewed by our staff, by our consultant staff,
to look at the appropriateness for the City Over the Long Term. We incorporated everything we could,
and we believe we have the best document it can be today.
General Plan Elements, we have nine of these. It looks like we cut off one with public facilities,
and land use circulation, conservation, open space, noise, safety,
health and environmental justice, wrecking parks and economic development.
So the plan intensifies to establish policies around all of these concepts.
Rather than dive deep into each one of them,
there are a few threads that are common throughout all of them.
We aim to establish vibrant and connected places.
So this includes things like a walkable downtown, active mixed use corridors,
a mobility network for all ages, abilities, and transit modes.
A sustainable and resilient city, this aims to protect natural resources, open space and working lands,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building climate resilience into infrastructure and land use.
Next we have safe, healthy and equitable communities, investing,
equitably in public safety, housing parks and healthcare access, as well as environmental justice for all residents.
A thriving local economy is another key part of the plan.
This includes supporting business growth and workforce development as well as tourism,
and leveraging Santa Maria's unique identity and its airport as well as land use to strengthen
the economic position of our residents and thus the community as a whole.
And finally a well-served and engaged community across all of the policy documents we're looking to
maintain and expand quality public facilities and services, foster inclusive community,
driven engagement, and planning and decision making.
I will do a little focus on the land use element since that is the key purpose of the general plan.
It plans for a significant amount of growth and this is anticipated rena numbers for the next three
regional housing needs allocation cycles.
So this includes up to 16,140 units, which could mean up to 58,000 residents and almost 24,000 jobs.
As far as how we're planning for that, we do have about 5,600 units in the development pipeline today
and we are also accounting for estimated future ADADU growth based on past practice.
So we have permitted approximately 2,500 ADUs to date in Santa Maria.
The remaining minimum residential growth to plan for is about 9,300 units.
So this would include future residential units within the existing city limits, which average is about 5,500
and within a planned annexation area of 985 acres and that's about 3,800 units.
So you can see on the map there, we have the annexation area highlighted in red.
That will be the proposed annexation.
There are a few key changes that we made to the land use policy map in order to accommodate this growth.
There are two new land use designations.
Main street makes do some broadway mixed use, which allow for higher densities on these key corridors.
This is an addition to the existing downtown specific plan area, which already has no limit on density.
Additionally, we've changed our high density residential, which is currently 22,
dwelling units per acre to 30, to allow for more growth in those areas as well.
We are also incorporating a single family residential land use designation to replace the area designated as a commercial and professional office in the area 9 specific plan.
As well as a future Santa Maria joint union high school district site located on North Broadway south of Praskar to accommodate future growth.
And finally, to accommodate the growth that cannot exist within the city limits, we are looking at a plan annexation of 985 acres as previously referenced.
This is the proposed zoning map.
We had a number of stakeholder interviews and public input opportunities where people identified new development opportunities through the general plan,
so this will update zoning in a number of locations.
This is just a very brief list of the stakeholders, technical advisory community members, organizations who participated in our public outreach process.
It is challenging to balance both the need for growth with the need for sustainable and resiliency over the long term,
and we have done our best to incorporate all of the public input that we have received.
There are a couple of outstanding issues I want to highlight that you may hear from the audience.
We have complete streets as one question that has occurred throughout the planning commission process.
This is an attempt to ensure that all modes of travel are accommodated for within our future growth.
So we want to ensure that whether you're walking, biking, using a vehicle that you can travel safely around our community, we would like to retain that standard within the general plan.
Additionally, we have our parks acreage per 1,000.
So this was set approximately 35 years ago at five acres per 1,000.
And once again, we would like to retain that to ensure that we have the future parks needs for our residents.
Additionally, I think we have a fundamental, we have a fundamental conflict between some individuals within who want no growth at all,
and some who want as much annexation as we can possibly get.
So again, we've chosen a balanced approach based on the councils and put a couple of years ago with the 985 acre annexation.
This represents about a 6% increase in our land area and a substantial opportunity for population growth.
So with all that, I would also like to say a huge thank you to the many city staff members who have worked on this throughout the years.
The city council and the planning commission for all of their input, the technical advisory committee and everyone on this slide for everything you have done.
Together, we have made this the best plan. It can be for the future of the city of Santa Maria.
And with that, we recommend adoption of the plan.
Any questions of Ms. Go? Any comments?
First, thank you so much for your work on on this.
It's been a few years since we got started and said it's really great to be at this point in time and thank you to everybody who provided comment and participated in this process.
My question is more around the annexation and growth piece of the general plan.
I for one deeply value in fill as much as possible.
And I would preferably, would like to prevent sprawl or encroachment into precious agland.
And so, you know, I see here that a large part of residential units that are set to be developed here are going to be within the existing city limits, which I strongly support.
So, I'm just curious what specific triggers may be in the general plan that will ensure in fill development is is prioritized before development in any annex area is is is activated.
We do have a significant amount of redevelopment that has occurred and higher densities that have occurred over time within the city limits.
So, looking at the remaining available available sites, there simply aren't many left.
For example, we recently met with the county to discuss, you know, their letter and their comments on this and one of the questions was, well, what about this area here?
It was Blossom Ranch which is of course the subject to current development is being rated as we speak and will soon be home to about 1,500 new units of housing for our community.
Other areas as you look at the area, and say, hey, maybe we could develop that.
There's a significant amount of land surrounding the airport that looks like it would be easily developable, but that is California Tiger Salamander Habitat and per an arrangement with fish and wildlife for future development of the airport area that can never be developed.
It must be preserved. It can't even be open space that people can use as trails and things like that. It must be solely for that animal.
So, with those limitations, we have done everything we can to ensure that in fill is a good opportunity.
So, for example, the changing the high density residential from 22 units to 30 units per acre, there's a significant gain there.
Again, with the 2,500, 80 units that have come in already and projected future growth with similar numbers.
We're maximizing existing single-family neighborhoods, and of course the other units that are currently in the pipeline that are planned for those large swaths of land you may still see out there.
Generally, if you're driving around town and it looks like there's developable space, it likely has plans for it already.
So, that's where, with the math that we worked through through this process, we have identified that kind of medium, Goldilocks approach to an annexation opportunity.
What role will the city council play, or can you elaborate a little bit on the next steps for for
the last quote proceedings? Absolutely. So, part of the recommendation tonight will be to direct, I can go back to that language.
We'll be to direct staff to prepare the information for the
Sphere of influence change. So, that can be a dual step process where we first change the sphere of influence or we can do everything at once, where we do the sphere of influence along with the annexation.
So, Lafco will actually be reaffirming the existing SOS on Thursday, just as a matter of routine. That's what's on their agenda.
And as soon as we're ready with presoning scenarios and all of that information, we can then go forward to Lafco with an annexation application.
Thank you.
As we've been having these discussions and just based on what I saw in the EIR, it really, there's what we see unavoidable impacts to
to add, what specific mitigation measures are going to be in place as we consider this.
Yes, I do want to particularly highlight Claire Weinman in the Growership Association, I believe I saw her here earlier.
She has been a huge asset to us in working through this process and everything from being on our technical advisory committee to holding one on one
meetings with us to help shape the policy language to ensure that it optimizes as best we can.
That conflict we see between growth and preserving the agriculture in the future. So, this is a balanced approach where we've attempted to create things like buffers.
One thing that we heard from Claire is that as time goes on and restrictions get greater on agriculture from the state.
They see kind of encroachment on existing uses because they want greater buffers between sensitive receptors.
They want additional open space things like that. So, part of the plan for annexation is to make sure all of that is built in.
So, you don't see that increasing encroachment over time. And so, all of that is baked into the plan at the outset.
Thank you. And then my last question is really around the our downtown corridors of Maine and Broadway.
And then mixed use designation changes there that will allow for higher density.
One of the priorities or one of the goals that the council discussed at the last goal session that we had was really around housing affordability.
And the challenges that, you know, that residents are having to face when it comes to that.
And so I'm curious what tools the city may have to ensure that that increased density supports with the production of affordable housing units.
I know you talked about 80's and that in us seeing more of those, but but I don't necessarily know how.
How, whether or not those are deterrent, I know that for arena purposes those are are considered affordable, but when you look at how much they're actually being rented for, it could be, it could easily be debated whether they're affordable or not.
And so I'm just really curious as to, you know, what policies or what systems can we have in place to ensure that as we continue to.
See this redevelopment in our downtown corridors that that and just throughout the city even with with the annexation that that that that we have systems policies in place that that ensure affordable housing.
Absolutely, I agree with you, I think affordable is definitely a subjective term and I think deed restricted is a term we that is a little bit more objective in that.
Our income levels are area median income in Santa Barbara county is so high that and rinse are so high that as a natural order of things even affordable housing is high in terms of costs.
So we were just looking at a 55% average.
Project that will be coming forth here in the downtown that is affordable and it would it's shocking looking at the income levels that would qualify for that so called affordable housing.
So we look at the tools that we have available to the state we don't as the city have our own housing authority that is a county entity.
So we're not directly receiving those different funding sources that might give us a direct avenue to creating funding for a project like that.
Some things we are looking at with the community programs stuff I believe Rosie is here is looking at directly receiving some of those in future.
We're currently we're evaluating those opportunities and looking at how we can support things like down payment assistance programs currently we already have a minor home repair program to support existing homeowners.
So there are also a lot of state density bonuses and things like that that help supportive affordable housing and just generally helping things to pencil by increasing those densities.
That is a significant boot to developers because of course the more units that they can put on one piece of land.
You know the more principal diminishing marginally utility will see both for their construction and then of course for the cost for the end user.
So those are kind of some affordable by design things that we can do as we look at additional opportunities to get grant funding.
Yeah, and I think that this is also an opportunity for the council to you know as we're moving forward with the general plan update.
For us also think about what policies we can enact as a governing body that can support with that.
I know that we're one of the use cities in the region that does not have an inclusionary housing ordinance for instance or or even policies around.
You know I can go on but I'll just leave it at that that I also see a potential here for us to think about how we can not just protect but also increase affordable housing in in our area.
Any other questions?
As far as any questions.
Ms. Dalham.
How many of what is the acreage a high school needs to build high 60 acres 60 acres and the junior high needs how many acres.
I believe it's 40.
That's on the right.
Yes.
Approximately 40.
40.
Okay.
And an elementary school.
I believe it's 20.
Yeah.
20.
Okay.
So right there you have 120 acres.
That's just for one of each.
Right.
And so we need.
We need a high school right now.
Right.
Okay.
And so we'll need a couple more when we start building out.
Yes.
And so that means one what probably but two or three junior highs to one high school and then more elementary schools.
Yes.
And I wish we did not have to go into Agiland and that's the only answer because we have no place right now in Santa Maria to build one high school.
Correct.
And so and that's just talking about schools.
Then we have the fire stations.
We have police.
We have parked open space commercial retail and everything else.
And that's really a difficult decision for us to make because none of us here want to go into Agiland but I think it's really important for people to realize.
We can't just stack and pack people on top of one another in our community and have a healthy community.
I know that to do what we need for affordable housing.
We have to partner with the people self-help housing and with the housing authority.
And that's who has built here before.
Yes.
And I can't remember how much how many million was the depostry departments.
Do you remember that, John?
What was that?
38 million dollars.
And when that pencil out that was I think 450,000 per unit and a person could have purchased house cheaper than 450,000 dollars.
So you're talking about taxpayer money using for all these millions of affordable housing.
That it just seemed like there should be a better answer than spending that kind of money and being able to put people into affordable housing.
And it's a struggle and we continue to have that because at the state level we keep getting these mandates.
As you know, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
And when I sit on the housing task force for the legal cities, we talk about this.
And people are all in agreement just matter where they come from.
They're having a very difficult time in the state of California finding affordable housing for the residents.
And we certainly are here because our residents are not that affluent.
They can afford those kinds of mortgages anyway.
I just think it's, you know, I voted for the annexation.
I approve the annexation.
And I really hate to go into farmland, but these are the choices we have.
If we've got 30,000, 40,000 people we have to figure out where we're going to put them and not just them, but their kids and the schools.
And as I said, the fire station, the parks and everything else.
Any other comments from Council?
I have three people.
I've asked the speaker.
Three minutes a piece.
Anthony Coachello.
Followed by Claire Weinman.
Be sure and open the public comment, Mayor.
Pardon?
Open the public.
Yes.
Open the public comment.
Yes.
And they here.
Okay.
Claire.
Weinman.
Followed by Laurie tomorrow.
Good evening.
My name is Claire Weinman.
I'm the president of the Girl Ship Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Fispo County.
We appreciate the Council, Planning Commission, and staff for the opportunity to engage throughout this process.
As agriculture is a leading source of income and employment for the city.
And making a final determination for adoption and certification by the city council, we respectfully urge the council to reconsider the merits of two specific policy positions.
Consistent with our prior public comments.
So Max Simmons and done has provided additional information on these two points in our written comment letters submitted on Friday.
First is the area nine reason.
We remain concerned about the proposed conversion of area nine from commercial to unrelated residential use, especially given the industrial zoning of the surrounding areas.
We are concerned that residential housing unrelated to nearby industrial and agricultural operations will result in predictable land use conflicts for both residents and neighboring operations and run contrary to many of the great policies outlined in the plan.
Next we do not oppose the proposed annexation of the portion of lands north of Main Street and would strongly prefer continued consideration of the annexation of Bradley lands.
However, we continue to oppose the annexation of the lands parallel to Highway 101 from East Jones Street to Pearl Street.
The majority's prime aglands and if it moves forward, this action would have major negative ramifications both for the immediate site being converted as well as the agricultural operations on nearby lands.
In its final consideration of a range of alternatives, we urge the city council to maintain the current zoning in area nine.
We continue to express our support for the infill alternative or modified hybrid that avoids the conflicts from the proposed annexation of lands parallel to 101.
South of East Jones Street.
Thank you again for your time, dedication to the public process and responsiveness to our previous comments.
We look forward to continuing to work with the city through adoption and implementation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Wyman.
Lori Tamara.
Good afternoon or evening.
Lori Tamara with urban planning concepts.
Here tonight to thank you and the planning commission and the staff for a large.
I'm going to say almost arduous process of preparing documents listening to the public going through debate and coming forward with the plan.
As you well know, I didn't agree with everything.
I still don't agree with everything.
But I don't want to hold it up.
I really think about this.
This is not my plan.
It's the future.
I just wanted to make it better and I wanted to make it so that housing was affordable.
And I don't know necessarily if this plan will accomplish that.
I do like to ask, as you move forward with this plan.
I think that there's a big question about what Los Flores is to the city.
That branch, the city has put a lot of money in it and there's not one word about Los Flores in the general plan or the EIR.
And it seems very suspicious that it's not included because so much money has been invested in that property.
I would like to request a report to the city council on what the plan is for Los Flores.
Separate of the general plan and get some information about what the game plan is for the future and how much more money is going to be spent out there.
I do agree that the five acres per thousand was adopted 35 years ago and the city has never required it.
It was aspirational.
They only ended up doing 2.5 acres per thousand.
So I don't think that the arbitrary raising the bar for future housing, affordable housing or any type of housing,
should now have to pay exorbitant developer fees to try to create 800 acres of open space for the future.
I am concerned about schools and where they're going to go.
I just don't see it unless it's on top of a skyscraper or somewhere I just don't see it.
Complete streets. My ask is that the complete streets standard be removed for private projects.
Not the public roads but private projects.
Those should not be held to the same standard.
And you've seen all of my comments over the years and I think the staff and I think the city for pursuing this effort.
So thank you.
Lori, that was great.
I mean, that's a one time happening, right?
Three minutes?
I could keep going.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Great tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
Is Anthony Coachello here?
I can see him.
Okay.
Can I miss out?
Can I ask you about the difference in on the private streets for having complete streets versus the public streets?
What?
Yes.
So we are required by state law to have complete streets on public streets.
So that is a given.
We believe both public works and and community development believe that the best practice is to have complete streets everywhere.
That is actually one thing that we do hear from the existing residents of projects that do not have complete streets.
I have complete streets that hey, where can I push my baby strollers safely?
There's no sidewalk here.
Things like that.
So what we would look to do is integrate creative opportunities into new developments that would establish trails, establish opportunities for people to move safely through the development.
Get to those bigger streets.
Again, whether they're walking, biking, or in a vehicle.
And those do not necessarily have to be extraordinarily expensive.
We're not thinking every time you're going to have to have very wide streets with parking on both streets.
With parking on both sides and curb gutter sidewalk.
It doesn't have to look like that.
And additionally, I would note that the language in the policy is very flexible in that there are we have this existing policy today.
And there are projects that were.
I allowed to be built without it because the, either the economics, the space just didn't work. So we were able to have that flexibility.
But it is an ideal, it is a best practice and we would, we do believe it is appropriate to keep it in the plan.
So you're saying what's different developments, and I can see how it would work well with some developments and not work well with others. It would be a negotiable item.
Yes.
Madam Mayor, can I have a close public comment if, if we're done public comment?
Oh, okay. Yes, I'm sorry, close public comment.
And then just so that I can announce, we have two written comments from Laurie Tamira and Kelly Tabber.
Thank you.
Okay.
So it would be a negotiable item then.
Yes, it is currently and you can see that in some of the projects that have been built and we continue to have that flexibility in the language.
Would that flexibility, can that be written into that then?
Yes, it is there now.
It is there now.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Okay.
We have four recommendations.
Do I hear any motions?
Any other discussion at all?
Okay. Yes, Madam Mayor.
I do want to just, you know, reiterate my gratitude to the team who worked on this.
It was a long process and I am honored to have been part of it.
So thank you all for your hard work.
I will say that there are pieces of the general plan that that that that I'm not a huge fan of in those pertain to to the planned annexation but overall I think that you know, I
I want to see us move forward.
You know, with that being said, you know, I, I, I still move.
Thank you.
Do I hear up a second?
Yes.
And under discussion, I would also, um, excuse me, like to say thank you, but it's been what five and a half years.
Yes.
And I have to give credit to Dana Edie for being the project manager throughout.
She has seen it from through from start to finish.
So this is a big day.
How much money is that five and a half years of general plan cost the city?
Oh goodness.
So there is a significant consulting cost and yeah, I are cost in particular.
I believe we're at 1.4 million.
With with grants.
Yes.
Okay.
But it's still a lot of money.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Any further discussion?
Hearing none.
I do.
The last question about the loss floor is comment.
Is it possible to discuss that in this plan or get an amendment.
So the, the reason it was not included initially is because it is not within the city limits.
It is kind of a satellite for the city is obviously owned by the city, but is not accessible as in terms of a neighborhood park.
So as far as counting towards that acreage.
It's also not intended to permanently be a park.
It was always intended to serve a waste purpose.
And so that is why it has not been treated and I understand that utilities is exploring all opportunities for solid waste for the future of Santa Maria.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Madam clerk.
Okay.
Council Member Setto.
Mayor Pritem Flores.
Aye.
Council Member Aguilera.
Aye.
Council Member Buddaya.
Aye.
And Mayor Patino.
Aye.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dow.
The next item on the agenda is a public comment.
Madam clerk.
Can you please read the criteria for public comment.
Speaker's may provide public comments on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council.
Each speaker will be limited to three minutes.
Maximum 15 minutes for public comment period.
And less than majority of the council.
And Jack's the mayor may provide speakers more less time to speak.
All comments or queries shall be addressed to the council as a body and not to any specific member there.
President government code section five for nine five four point two eight two.
The Ralph M. Brown act no action or discussion by the city council.
She'll be undertaken on any item not appearing on the positive agenda.
Except to briefly provide information as for clarification.
Provide directions.
Staff are scheduled a matter for future meeting.
Thank you.
We have four requests to speak.
And I think he is Eric Collier here.
I think he left.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
Eric Collier.
And I have Eddie Navarro.
Followed by Gary Hall.
Followed by Nicole Bryant.
Mr. Navarro.
Thank you madam mayor.
The city council members.
City leaders and guests.
My name is Eddie Navarro.
Alejandro Berl.
And I started a group called the senator.
aosport history club trying to keep the memories of our path's.
More support to preserve and designate the following.
As a historical site.
Our first request.
Our first request is location where the mulledon,
The center now sits in the name of William B.
Ellis Bill Ellis.
Bill Ellis was a local businessman,
So Ellis was a local businessman who, along with others, was instrumental in bringing little
league to Santa Maria, an orchard in 1950.
In 1952, we founded Middle East Baseball for kids who are grew little league.
Bill's daughter, Shirley Ellis married Jim Cobb, whose father was Major League Hall of
Famer Ty Cobb.
Jim Cobb was the first middle league All-Star Coach in 1953.
Shirley and her family have contributed to donate to our veterans through our local
Elx.
Second is the Elx Field, which was established in 1948 to become home to our Santa Maria Indians
established in 1944, coached by Bush Seamus and Mad Anderson.
Our Elx Field through the Indians played host to teams like the Kansas City Monarchs
of the Van Nigro League, the Bob Liminal Stars, Tokyo Giants, Dodger rookies and others,
and was home to the Indians 1982 National Baseball Congress Champions.
The third location requested Seamus Park Fields, the field on the west side, next to
Paul Nelson Pool, now Carl Barbatini Field, is the original Little League Baseball field of
1950.
Notable names that played in the first year of Little League were Ted Davidson, Bob Williams,
Fred Worker, Ernie Corral, John Eventura, Bonnie Ames, and many others.
The field across the, on the east side of Seamus Park, closest to Millestreet, was a side
of the 1981 Orchard Express with Tracy Compton and others winning the 1981 Girls Under
18 Fast-Pitch Tournament.
We are blessed to still have with us today, athletes like Ernie Corral, John Eventura, Bob Williams,
Bonnie Ames, Sterilized Nerd, Don Gatewood, Brent Smith, Robin Vintura, James Steels, Brad
Dandrich, Doug Bernier, and many others who have played on these fields and can share their
stories with our youth.
Ernie Corral, who was an audience today, was on the first 1950 Little League All-Star
Team Coach by Harry Goodchild, and on the first Middle League 1953 All-Star Team, coached
by Jim Cobb.
We request that the three locations, William Bill Ellis, at the Mother and Other Center, Elx Field,
and Seamus Park Fields, be designated as historical sites.
These locations, events and individuals as well as our present future athletes will forever
be part of our Valley Sports History for our youth to look up to and try to emulate.
I have some information if you'd like to skim through it, if you care to keep it, that's fine.
If not, you can get it back to me for future reference.
If you don't mind, if you'd like it, it's not that's okay.
Thank you.
Mr. Navarro, I'll give that to Mr. Smitherman, and have you guys gone to the Parks Commission
yet with any of this information?
No.
Okay.
I will give this to Mr. Smitherman, and he'll be contact in you, and that's probably
here is right here.
That was a fast contact.
Hey, Dennis.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
I think I'll have some answers for you, though.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Gary Hall.
Follow by Nicole Bryant.
Good evening.
Madam Mayor, council members, staff, and the citizens of Santa Maria.
My name is Gary Hall.
I'm a resident of Rancho Buena of Histimobilist States, a 21-30-bog North River to Avenue
here in Santa Maria, District 1.
I want to publicly congratulate our new District 1 Council member, Richard Bataia, on his appointment
to City Council.
I also want to remind you, I represent the North Santa Barbara County, manufactured homeowner's
team, or in Nespit, Nespit's primary goal remains to provide protection to all Santa
Maria of Mobile Home residents, presently living in an unregulated rental market.
Yes, we continue to ask the City of Santa Maria to stand with us in maintaining affordable housing,
affordable mobile home living in Santa Maria is vanishing and all across the state.
I have pointed out to you so many times how the 2020 Model East and enforcement agreement with
all their flaws have proven to be ineffective in protecting homeowner equity and maintaining
affordable mobile home housing, which is of course what was originally intended to do.
I have repeatedly reminded you that on June 7th, 2022, nearly four years ago, this council
passed a motion with the intention of improving the 2020 Model East or replacing it.
This city council has done neither.
Now is the time to take action to replace the Model East with the uniform mandatory and enforceable
mobile home rent stabilization program, much like those of our neighboring city and county
jurisdictions.
Please, help us find a way to get this on a future meeting agenda.
Santa Maria and Mobile Home Seniors also continue to live with the ongoing threat that their
senior mobile home park could be converted into an all-age park, as was attempted by the new
owners of Delcello Senior Mobile Home Park in work.
I brought this to the council's attention 20 months ago and we are patiently waiting for action
to prevent similar conversion efforts in Santa Maria.
According to the Community Development Department, the draft senior mobile home park zoning
overlay ordinance will soon be presented at a planning commission study session.
We have heard rumors of the potential sale of senior mobile home parks in Santa Maria.
This could bring similar and inappropriate conversion efforts to our city.
Please, help expedite this new zoning ordinance activity wherever possible.
Thank you.
Nicole Bryant.
Good evening Madam Mayor to seeing which council members.
I'd like to extend our warmest welcome to council member Betaya and I thank you for the opportunity
to speak this evening.
My name is Nicole Bryant and I am the field representative for SIAU Local 620
who has the privilege of representing the dedicated public servants across the city.
We are here tonight because the city has informed us that the structural budget deficit next year
in the general fund and measure U funds requires employee pay concessions.
Specifically SIAU members are being asked to accept a 10% reduction in wages through furloughs
and up to a 20% cut to medical contributions.
While all other bargaining units are scheduled to receive cost of living increases this July,
while no service reductions within the city have been identified.
Our members are simply being asked to do the same works for significantly less.
Behind me tonight, our members are holding signs showing what these proposals would actually
cost their families over the next year.
Cuts of pay of upwards of 13,000, 14,000 and 15,000 dollars per employee per year.
I want to ask you directly, could your household absorb a 15,000 dollar pay cut next year?
By the city's own figures, these cuts would save approximately 4.1 million,
but would not fully resolve the deficit.
All while the audited financials for the fiscal year's 2024 and 2025,
though legally obligated to be reported remain unavailable to the union into the public.
SIAU's membership at the city of Santa Maria's unique.
Over 70% of our members live here in the city they serve.
Their paychecks are spent here at our local businesses and restaurants.
They are your constituents living across every council district.
Cutting 4.1 million from workers pay doesn't just hurt your employees.
It removes the same amount from your local economy and will lower city revenues proportionally.
A city that strives to be an employer of choice doesn't start by balancing its budget on the
backs of its lowest paid employees.
Our members want to be a part of the solution, but solutions must be transparent, comprehensive and
sustainable. Tonight we urge you to make take concrete's responsible steps.
Adopt the common sense reserved policies brought forward at your last meeting.
Increase your earning potential on your pension funds with the 115 trust.
Support placing the revenue tax measure on the ballot this evening, allowing the community to weigh in and vote in November.
Published the audited ACFR reports for 2024 and 2025.
So workers and voters can trust the city is doing all that it can to write the ship.
And require that management leads from the front and shares equally in the berth-
Finally, as you approve your city council goals tonight, I ask you to acknowledge who makes those goals possible.
SCIU members are the staff in every department, optimizing service delivery.
SCIU members are your city park rangers, PD and fire support staff maintaining public safety.
SCIU members are your code enforcement officers. SCIU members are the crews maintaining the parks, streets, facilities and utilities.
SCIU members are the teams running your recreation programs for seniors in youth.
SCIU members are the professionals who permit and inspect affordable housing.
And SCIU members are the very foundation of this city's economic development,
because SCIU members live in work here.
These goals are not achieved without SCIU workers.
Thank you for your time and consideration this evening.
Thank you, Ms. Bryant.
And I think I'll call Eric Collier again, but I think he has left.
Thank you. That concludes public comment.
Madam Mayor.
Yes.
I have a question for staff.
It's around the comment that Mr. Hall made about the mobile home land.
Zoning ordinance can we get a timeline update on that please?
Yes.
Excuse me, the ordinance has been drafted and some preliminary outreach has been done to the affected mobile home parks.
And it is scheduled to be on study session.
I believe in July and it would come here shortly thereafter.
Thank you.
We'll now move to the consent calendar calendar.
Does anyone have items they wish to pull for discussion?
Okay, if not.
I do, Madam Mayor.
Yes.
I have a question on 11F1.
I know we have a contract with him already for our city, which he does a horrible job.
And I'm saying this publicly because I think our city deserves better.
But are we adding my question as who am I addressing this to?
Are we adding this to his remaining contract?
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Coach, council members.
J.D. Human was selected through the process to do the districts and special benefits zones.
Through the course of the year, there's been special projects assigned whether to be a
Martha Bateman on oak trees, car accidents through medians, gym blinds way.
Those extra tasks have taken the funds that were allocated towards specific projects.
So what we're asking for is to this additional funding.
So we can continue those projects that we had already planned for through the course of this year.
Okay, my question is, were there any offers for any other beds?
Are we just going with him because he's just been doing it for a long time?
And I want to let you know he does a horrible job.
I live in District 2.
And I know Parks and Rex is responsible for some of the clean up there in my area.
But so is he.
And I brought this to the last time when we talked about his contract.
I brought this up.
And nothing's changed.
And we can't just continue to have somebody doing taking care of our city just because he's been doing it for so long.
Sometimes our, you know, our limbs are blocked by what we see.
But I, I drive my city and I don't know why nobody else sees it, but I do.
Because I care about what, what our city looks like.
And when we have like we're getting ready for western days and we're getting ready for the rodeo, the car show.
And and and still things are not cleaned up.
I, I question that as much money as we pay this contractor to take care of it.
Not only him, but our, our own parks and rents.
So my question is, did we not try to see if somebody else could take care of it?
Or we just put in it on with him because we already have him.
Thank you for your comments.
We have a two year contract with JD human and we're halfway through that contract.
At the end of this contract, we will go back out for a full request proposal.
And look for contractors who can meet the needs of the city within the budget that's allowed.
You'll see tonight, I'll be presenting another topic, which is our landscape and lighting district and special benefits zones.
While the increases minimal, the expenses have grown exponentially.
So we will continue to work with the dollar months that we have available to us to make sure that the city looks as best as it can.
And and I have also met with with your constituents and walk the streets with them to to look at areas.
They are out there with 16 special district staff to cover 383 acres.
And the contract, it's a lot of work.
And right now, then again, we'll talk about the money in the presentation.
But it is the resources are getting more and more limited.
Thank you.
I didn't know if you'd like to give them, you know, not right now, but later give them some of the specifics.
I did that on the last time when the contract was up and I did give it to our former parks and director and to avail nothing was done.
Okay, I don't mind giving you that information and showing you myself.
Yeah, I drove through two districts today.
That's part of my job in Angela Oslo is the assistant director.
We do inspections a couple times a week.
We meet with constituents who call us regarding specific issues.
Including things like malls and trees and today I had dead rats.
So yeah, we are making efforts to meet with the public.
That's also why we do the assessment that we do every five years.
Council adopted that last December to really get the input of the public to hear what their priorities are.
I'm curious what districts that you go to district four and district one today.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Thank you.
Okay, do I have a motion on the consent calendar?
So moved.
Do I have a second?
Second.
I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar.
Any further discussion?
Hearing none.
Madam clerk, can you please call the roll?
Councilman regular.
I can't remember.
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Mayor put him.
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Mayor.
Now we will make appointments to various outside boards, commissions and committees.
Chief deputies.
Clerk.
Donna.
Can you please read the staff report?
Yes.
Madam Mayor.
Members of the city council.
The report before tonight is for mayor to make appointments to fill a city council.
Vacancy on.
Outside boards.
And the city council.
To ratify the selections.
The resignation of council member.
Because as the battle on March 3rd.
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Created vacancies on 4th.
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Staff has conferred with mayor.
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A vacancy as an alternate proposed appointment by the mayor's council member, Bethiah,
central coast collaborative on homelessness. There's a vacancy as an alternate proposed appointment
council member, Bethiah. Senate and report council information. There's a vacancy as a member
proposed appointment as mayor for 10 floors. Schools quarterly round table, there's a vacancy as
a member proposed appointment as council member, Bethiah. Okay, I support these nominations and make
a motion to point these nominees. Second, I have a second, any discussion?
Hearing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Patino. Yes. Council of Maguilar. Hi,
council member, Bethiah. All right. Council member, set up. Hi. Mayor for 10 floors. All right.
We'll now consider making an appointment to the Block Granted Advisory Committee.
Chief, Deputy City Clerk, Donna Schwartz. Are you please give the staff report? Yes. Madam Mayor,
members of the City Council, though, requested for tonight's to make an appointment to a vacant
position on the Block Granted Advisory Committee. Oh, present the committee for consideration of the
appointment in the City Council's notification. The Block Granted Advisory Committee currently has one
vacancy, staff received one application from Corrie Mills for the vacant position, previously nominated by
council member Aguilara. The appointment will serve an an expired term and need to lie in
2026. Council member Aguilar has the nomination to this committee following the nomination of
appointment will then be conferred by the Mayor with verification by the City Council. Council member
Aguilara, do you have an nomination? Yes. I would like to nominate Corrie Mills and I accept this nomination
and make a motion to appoint the nominee to the Block Granted Advisory Committee with any
would like to second the motion. Out second. A motion and second. Any further discussion?
Hearing none. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes. Mayor Patino. I. Mayor Patino. I.
Mayor Patino. Hi. Mayor Patino. Hi. Council member Aguilara. Hi. Council member Patino.
Hi. And Council member Setto. Hi.
We will now move on to the public hearing portion of the agenda and the next item is the introduction
of an ordinance updating solid waste collection rates interim director of utilities.
Michelle Rus will present the staff report.
And Mr. Springer may be watching. I'm certain he has. No pressure.
Dr. Springer is unavailable tonight. He sends his regards to the council. Good evening, Madam Mayor,
City Council, City staff. My name is Michelle Ruiz and I'm a staff member in the utilities
department. We'd like to introduce an ordinance tonight to update solid waste collection rates
for the next four years. We're going to walk you through our process for how we set rates and talk about
what the proposed rates are at the end of this presentation, which we hope will be brief. We will go ahead
and request the Mayor to open public hearing. If I can just and wrap really quick, I just want the
the public to know that we're on 13 public hearing on the agenda and we're on 13 B.
Thank you. Thank you, Donna. Why I want to thank I have staff in the audience tonight from the
utilities department also available who supported this 18th month long effort to get to the cost of
service study. And I appreciate them being in the audience tonight. You'll also hear from Josiah close.
He's our consultant we work with to develop the cost of service study. He'll be at the other
Dias here shortly and he'll talk a little bit about their methodology and approach to the project.
So let's get started. So tonight what we're going to cover is an overview of our collection
services. We're going to talk about the Prop 2018 process required by the California Constitution.
Josiah is going to talk a little bit about the technical piece of the methodology which is the
rate setting process. Why we do it and how we get there. And then we'll show you what the
proposed rates are. We'll have a little bit of a comparison to how we compare to our neighbors.
And then we'll request to open the public hearing. Staff's recommendation tonight is to
approve the rates as proposed in the staff report. So in the utilities department we provide
trash, recycling, and organic service through our solid waste division. We have about
19,000 cart customers, about 1,500 dumpster customers, Citywide. I was asked the question today
for the media of Santa Maria's population is so big. Why do we have so few customers? It's really
about accounts and service addresses. So while we have a lot of high density areas in Santa Maria,
we may have multi families but it's all one service account. Our crews start early. We're out there
at 330 in the morning, 6 a.m. out there servicing trash, recycling, organics. We do that daily
Monday through Saturday. We have up to 22 of those big blue beautiful trucks that you see out there. That's
a teaming with you to keep Santa Maria clean. Our team takes a lot of pride in the work they do.
We manage different pick-up frequencies during the week depending upon the account. Last year we
collected nearly 71,000 tons of waste from the community. This is just within Santa Maria City limits.
The solid waste division is also responsible for doing the Citywide streets sweeping. They manage
that contract. California Constitution, we're required to comply with the California
Constitution. This is what's known as Prop 218. It's required any time you're setting
or implementing rates or fees that are property related. You've heard the utilities department and the
finance department refer to this legal requirements when we're talking about the enterprise funds.
It applies to water to sewer to trash. This law sets rules for both designing the rates and
walking through the public process. So it begins with a cost of service process. That was that 18 months
study that the city completed and we must design rates that comply with Prop 218.
And if we weren't in California, the process would stop there. We would be bringing those rates to council,
but because of Prop 218 in California, we are required to...
You conduct a public hearing process that has noticing requirements, the public hearing, and it also has majority
protest provisions. So, if a majority protest is received, legally, city council could not adopt the
rates. That is not the case for tonight and will ask the clerk's office at the conclusion to give us an
update on how many written protests were received for the process. So, I mentioned that this has been an 18-month-long
process. We started in December of 2020. Our excuse me, in July of 2024, and we just wrapped in December of last year.
We engaged HDR consultants through the city's procurement process because they're leading expert
in cost of service studies. It's really important that the consulting firm comes aboard and helps
this gives assurance to the city that we are doing defensible cost-based rates. So, at this point, I'm
going to go ahead and hand the presentation over to Josiah. Josiah closed behind me and he's going to talk
about the revenue requirements, the cost of service, and rate design. Thanks, Josiah. Good evening.
So, as mentioned, oh, if you could back up one slide, actually, I'll just talk about the process
in general. So, we have industry manuals that we look at within utilities that outline this process. It
gives us the methodologies and approaches that we can use to identify the cost to provide service.
And then distribute those costs to the different customer classes depending on how they utilize the
services. And that is our nexus between that gives us our justification under Prop 18 between
what the customers are demanding for service requirements and then the rates that we're charging them.
So, the three step process is the revenue requirement that looks at our total balance or deficiency of funds.
We accumulate our operating and capital costs and compare them to our current revenue contribution
from all the customer classes. And we project that out over a five or ten year period to look at
what rates need to do into the future to make sure we can adjust rates smoothly and steadily over time to
accomplish funding those costs. The cost of service then, again, key within Prop 18 requirements
and legal decisions. Case law, we need to justify what we're charging the customers. So, in the cost of
service, we ask the question why we're incurring the costs. And we'll go through the budget and
identify whether that's related to the total volume. So, for solid waste collection, that is the majority
of costs related to the volume contribution from customers. We also want to look at the size of container
bin that they have, the pickup frequency. And so, we assign costs to all those different categories
and then we distribute it to each of the customer classes, the container sizes based on how they utilize
the service. Then the rate design is where we design rates to collect that revenue piece. Again,
based on the revenue requirement that total cost, the operations and the capital to make sure that we're
collecting the adequate amount of revenue. And again, that connects to how the customers are
demanding service. So, as mentioned, we look out over a longer period of time for rate setting.
We're looking at a four-year period. However, we do want to go a little bit longer than that, especially
with capital considerations. You'll see in a little bit the electrification is driving costs
within the solid waste collection utility. And so, we want to try to anticipate what those costs will
be out between that five and 10-year period to make sure that we're trying to transition rates to hit them
again smoothly and steadily if possible. We want to analyze the solid waste collection utility on a
standalone basis. So, as an enterprise fund, making sure that those rates support the operations and
capital expenses of that specific utility. We're also incorporating financial planning criteria
as we look at things such as reserve levels. There is no debt, but if we had debt on the utility,
making sure we're not too leveraged. And so, we incorporate those considerations as well within our revenue
requirement. Again, some highlights on what's driving our rate adjustments, the annual
onem expenses. So, we start with our budgeted by anium costs. We escalate those into the future based
on historical costs as well as informed by local indices, nationwide indices, for construction
materials and those types of things. So, we can escalate them into the future. Again, trying to
adjust rates over time to cover those costs as they increase. We have additional regulations
that we have regarding organics, recycling things like that. We have to incorporate those costs within
the rates going into the future, meeting our targets for reserve. So, you'll see in a couple slides
what that looks like, but we're targeting 50% on the utility track for water sewer as well as the
collection solid ways so that we have a buffer, both cash flow. So, for operating expenses and for
capital projects to make sure we have capital funds available if there's any catastrophic emergencies or
things of that nature. So, that's an important piece as we look at our rate transition as well.
Some key impacts with numbers. Again, the fleet electrification is a significant cost that we're
looking out within the next five or so years, totaling about 11.5 million with vehicles being
electrical as well as the infrastructure for charging, maintenance, training, all those sorts of things.
So, that's a significant cost we have coming on. Processing costs, those are more on their regulatory
side. Almost a million there that we have to include within the solid waste collections costs.
Fleet, we have another half a million dollars attributable to that as we replace trucks and things like that.
General liability, I'm seeing this in a lot of rate studies that we're working on in the last several
years. I mean, it's continuing. It's just those costs of the insurance increasing so we have another
half a million that's attributed to that. So, this is a summary of our total revenue requirement.
The dark blue shaded box is our total cost, both operations and maintenance and capital.
And what we do is we compare the current revenue generation, the lighter blue box on the bottom
to that. And then we start to look at what we need to do to rates within that time period to adjust
them to cover the costs. So, we have the white shaded area as our proposed additional revenue from the
rate adjustments. We are utilizing reserves over this period. It's important to note that there is a
little bit of uncertainty related to the electrification costs. So, in working with staff we do anticipate
that there could be some savings, whether that be grants, whether it be competition for their
development of the technologies. And so those costs are weighted towards the end of this period.
And we are confident that they should come in lower than what we're seeing. However, we want to be a
little bit conservative. And so, we are utilizing reserves to mitigate that risk over time.
You can see we have a much larger deficiency. If we don't roll forward with those proposed rate revenue
adjustments, which would lead to further decrease in that reserve fund balance. And again,
due to the compounding nature of how those rate adjustments will work,
then that deficiency would get larger, but also to climb out of that deficiency would also
become larger as we lose the compounding on any rate adjustment that you would go with.
So, that's the revenue requirement. Again, the total amount of costs that we need rates to support
for the solid waste collection's utility. The next component is the cost of service.
And this is where we look at why we're incurring the cost to provide service. Again, looking at
the big buckets of costs for a solid waste collection related to the tonnage or the amount of
solid waste that we're collecting that's a disposal of that, the cost related to that, the containers and
bins. And so, all of those, we look at proportioning them then between each customer class. So,
what is driving the cost, each rate that we charge based on Prop 2 18, as well as the case law,
we need to defend that charge. It needs to be a mathematical calculation based on our assumptions of
what those costs are. So, the cost of service helps us achieve that. Again, this based on the
variables that we have within the cost of service. So, looking at the tonnage, the cubic yards,
and the weight, also the bin size, each one can only carry so much solid waste, right? And so,
we have those variables that we can put into the cost of service. And we determine what that average
unit cost is then to provide that service. And we accumulate those costs within the cost of
service to give us our total revenue contribution that we need from each service.
So, we're maintaining a separate rate by carton service. And we'll see here a summary of the rate
design. We did try to make it a little more concise than what we had previously. So, making it,
there will be a base charge. It includes one pickup a week. You'll have an extra cart or bin charge
and then if you require additional pickups, that will be another charge. So, it's very transparent
as far as what the rates are for the customer. And we work through the cost of service to provide those
average unit costs. So, this table summarizes those proposed rates based on the results of the
cost of service. There was not a need to increase the 65 gallon, the 95 gallon, and the two yard for
the first year. And so, instead of make, or because we didn't need to do that, those are actually staying
flat. And we're incorporating the cost of service adjustments within the rates. And then in years two,
which is 2027-28 through 209-30, those will increase based on that overall rate adjustment need.
And so, for the majority of customers, there would be no impact that utilize those services
for the first year. And then back to the show.
So, in Santa Maria, we don't set rates based on the market. But we do like to show comparisons to how we
stack or measure up with our neighboring cities and entities responsible for a waste collection.
The first blue bar that you see is what the rate is today. The second blue bar on each size chart
is what it'll be four years from now. We're comparing our rates against these other agencies to show that
the city still remains competitively priced even out four years from now. And these assumes the
entities' current rates. We know their rates will go up because our costs are going up. And it's likely
some already have planned adjustments coming for fees to go up. Or once we adopt our rates, then they will too.
And so, we've shown that for comparison, I did not intend to hit every slide, but just a quickly
show you this visual, visual, all advanced each slide. You can see as the size of bins go up.
So, two yard in the upper left, three yard bin at the bottom, even at four years out, we are still falling
below the price. That a lot of our neighboring entities are charging their customers for the same level of
service. We also have three yard bin, four yard bin. So, just repeating that theme.
And then we also offer a six yard bin. Pretty rare, not a lot of customers have that size.
And then an eight yard bin is available only to specific recycle accounts. So, we do like to show that.
That does conclude our presentation. We'd be happy to receive any comments that are questions that
you may have. Barring none, we would welcome the opening of the public hearing.
A majority protest will be reviewed by the clerk's office. They'll let you know that number and how many
valid written protests have been received. But if no majority protests exist, staff recommendation is to adopt
the solid waste rates as proposed based on the schedule in timeline so that we can ensure those revenue
requirements are met for the enterprise funds. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions from the council?
Yes, Minnesota. Thank you for the presentation. Can you speak a little bit to
you spoke, you both spoke at the S2, the increase of costs for service. Can you talk a little bit
about what cost saving measures you may have tried to implement in the last two, three years to
help offset those increases? Certainly. So, like other city departments, the utilities department
has had salary savings as positions were held vacant. That certainly helps our enterprise funds.
But uniquely in the utilities department, we have regulatory mandates that we're required to fund.
That's SB 1383, AB 341, AB 1826. These are regulations from Cal Recifel that drive our
costs associated with diverting green waste.
Foodways, mixed blue recyclables, all of those things. So, the only tool we have left in our toolbox is the
explanation of grant opportunities to help offset some of those costs. Staff do apply for grants as they
come up. In the past, we've been more fortunate and received some grants, but we haven't brought a grant award back to
this council in some time. It's highly competitive out there. So, but we'll continue seeking those opportunities to
help lower costs for our right payers. And importantly, with the recommended rates today, Josiah touched
on it, are most of our customers won't see any change in year one. So, if this recommended
rate adjustment is adopted as proposed, there's a year to plan for what that difference or that
impact is going to be. For most of our car customers or our single family customers residents, they
either have the 60 or 90 gallon car. That's going to equate to either under $3 for the 90 to jump
from current rates to the your first increase in that year. So, from year now next year, when they jump,
it's less than $3. Our 60 gallon would be around four in the life cycle of this recommended rate
increase. The maximum increase they'll see is about $14. So, we do aim to keep those costs as low as
possible. But that's still in a span of four years. That's over a four year period, which is with no
increase in year one, right? Right. You talked a little bit about the timeline just now and how in year one,
some residents will not see an increase, but I think tied to this is the fleet electrification investment
that you mentioned. It's what? Over 10, 11 million? Yes, family one point on a million estimated.
Can you walk me through that timeline and what would happen if perhaps we delayed that?
So, importantly, in this proposed rate cycle, that's a cost driver when we look out at the 10 to 11 year
mark of rates. For the purpose of rate modeling, we want to look out at about 10 years, but as you can
imagine, it's very difficult to get accurate forecasting that far ahead. What we've done is we've
done our best estimate of what that fleet electrification is going to cost if we have to get the vehicles
and the infrastructure for charging, but we're also hoping that we can buy some time and not
recommending those increases now because how we've done so it's becoming with that recommendation. The
cost would have skyrocketed for residents and we don't want to do that. We want to be responsible and
have a phased approach and if we can delay those costs to win its eminent, it's still a few years away
so our goal would be to see if the mandates change if we're not subject to them or of technology
improves so that would help drive the costs down related to the electrification market. The other
thing I would add and maybe it also does tell us on your first question is that knowing the fleet
electrification requirement was coming, the utilities department did work with the public works department
and pleased a vision to buy more diesel trucks now before the car regulation kicks in and says you can't
buy diesel anymore. So we're trying to, while that was a very expensive cost, it's less expensive than
jumping to fleet electrification today. Thank you. My other question is kind of pivoting now around to
to, I think it's the two to 18 to the proposition to 18. Is there any opportunity that exists
within that that would allow us to implement or put in place measures that could support low-income
ratepayers? Unfortunately there's not. Prop to 18 is very specific that we cannot charge more
than the cost to provide the service. We could decide to charge less, but that would require some
kind of subsidy or offset from another revenue source because we have to meet our revenue requirements.
An example of that would be the general fund which we would not recommend. What have other cities
done? Cities have to comply with Prop to 18 and they charge the cost to provide the service.
Okay. Those are all my questions right now. Thank you for your question.
I'll tell you a member of Laura's.
Outreach have you done to to the community letting them know that this rate increases coming. We don't want
our community to all of the sudden, you know, look at your bill and then it's up. Yes ma'am thank you for saying
it's one three dollars. It would it about three dollars for a 90 gallon car customer in two years
time. Yes. We we did outreach required under Prop to 18 to do a public noticing process. That's our
Prop to 18 notice that went out with the utility bills. So we sent notices to over 20,583. I think it's the
number to all of our customers with their utility bills in the months of January and February.
In addition to that, we held a public workshop in March at Shepherd Hall in the evening
to encourage residents to attend. We appreciated the two residents who showed up and their engagement
staff felt really good about that. But we also in addition to holding the public workshop, which is
not required by Prop to 18 but we like to do it to make sure the community feels informed and we're
transparent about our process. We also posted the information on the city website and advertised in
the Santa Maria Times about the rate adjustments as well. We actually received very few phone calls
in the utility's administration office. That is unique to a rate increase. I don't know if it's the
soft-faced approach. I'm not implementing in year one but there were very few contacts based on the
information we provided. Thank you. You're welcome. How much of that outreach was done in Spanish?
All of it. Okay. Yes ma'am. What about Ms. Stucco? We have a big macecle population here in Santa Maria.
Yeah, we generally don't do Ms. Stucco translation. It's difficult with the written part.
But we do require to do it in the two primarily languages in the city, which have been
identified as English and Spanish. I think I always think it's interesting when I've gone to these
unmet, like unmet transit needs or any of these workshops. There's more staff people than there are
residents at those. Yes ma'am. So how often do those carts get replaced?
Yes, so some carts have a longer life than others. It depends on a lot of factors. We often get phone calls from
residents that say you're trapped in my can and we go out and replace that at no charge. So it just
varies. We have some old style that have been around for 20 years or so. Still out there in the community.
And we have others that tend to break more often. It can be driven by a resident's request
or the driver will document it as they're doing the service that it needs replacement.
So this is basically based on it's just costs. We're doing the safe service. Yes ma'am.
In the days or including more days we're just doing the same service is costing us more.
Absolutely processing costs are a big driver. Today's significant costs have to
do with the processing with the future fleet needs and with insurance changes.
Nice to cost to do in business. Yes ma'am. Can you go back to the slide about the residents that they
can be other cities? Yes ma'am. Oh. You got it?
This is the 60 and 90 comparison.
So we're paying. There's four cities are paying more than we are. That would be in four years
time. Okay but as of right now. As of right now it would be everything after the first blue line would
be paying more than we are. So only Oshianna, Grover Beach, Oregon and Oregon pay less than we do. Yes ma'am.
Okay and this is with the increase that will come. The second bar would reflect our increase.
It does not take into consideration their future increase says because those are unknown. Okay.
And just so we're clear as to what we're paying for because it's going to be you said $3 per 90 gallon increase.
Yeah. So it would be $2.82 increase a month on the 90 gallon cart in year two of the recommended
four years. So not July up 2026 but July up 2027. So $2.82 increase on the 90.
$4.22 increase on the 60. So by 2027 we will all be paying $2.92 more per month.
Yes ma'am if you have a 90 gallon. Okay and then $4.22 for dollars in 22 cents more per month.
Yes ma'am that's correct. In 2029? That would also be in 2027.
2027. Yep. By the time we get through that four year period I did the math earlier it was around
$14 over the four years and increases to our residential or cart customers.
Oh here it is 1317 over four years and 1356 over four years the 60 and the 90 respectively.
So that's an increase of like $3.50 every year.
Yeah there's not a percentage necessarily that's attributed to it because the costs
escalated a little bit differently here to here but yes.
Okay we just want to be clear because I know that a lot of people aren't tight budgets absolutely.
The income is limited and so we just want to be clear with the constituents that we're talking about
$3.50 per year that we would see an increase in all of our bills. Yes on the carts.
Oh the cart. Yes ma'am thank you. And that's only once what size cart is that?
Are you clear if I? Yes so the over the four year period that $13.56 increase to what they pay today
that would be on the 90 and that $13.17 increase over the four years on the 60.
And 60 is the smallest we have. We often get calls asking for smaller but our equipment just can't
support the smaller size bin. What about larger bins for ADUs?
Yeah so the 60 and the 90 is what we are able to offer for our equipment, our automated side loader
equipment. We used to have 350 gallon bins. Those were phased out of service. They were an issue for
operations and we had very few customers who were on them. So we're comfortable operationally with
the 65 and 95 that supports our inventory as well and our planning for the future.
And the reason why I mentioned this is because there's a street central where there is the house
in ADU, a junior ADU and I saw it overflowing. Yes and so are we giving them two, three,
90 gallons or are we able to give larger? The city under the municipal code the department director of
utilities has the authority to impose service limits to meet health and safety requirements.
We have invoked that provision of the code in the past. Our processes such that our drivers
would be monitoring the property and reporting this is overflowing. The team internally would attempt
to make contact with them to increase service levels voluntarily. If we can't do that then we do invoke and
mandate an increased service level to address the overflowing issue. But how will you know?
Our drivers reported. So we use the route where system onboard our trucks that allows our
drivers to make comments to take pictures at services. It's one of the tools we use when a customer
calls and says you missed my service today. We're able to go to that system and validate what time we
were there if we were there, if we in fact missed it, if the driver skipped the stop for a reason and
documenting overflows and then also periodically doing audits out in the field or how we address that.
And then once you know that there's an overflow that's when you can provide additional bins.
Yeah, usually we start with offering an increase in service and see if they go for it. So in the case of
a cart customer, it would be too upside there to increase their quantity of carts because cart service
is only once a week for trash. You can't add additional pickups.
Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any questions from Kelsey?
Yes, is there anything that? How do I frame us? What could? When looking at between, let's say, 2020,
between now and 2030, is there anything that could happen in the next year, two years that could
be a risk and increase and could potentially see an increase cost to service?
There's always the risk for certain. I think the immediate cost drivers and significant cost drivers
were seeing today are the processing costs. The city does have some limited short-term control over
that when we enter into contracts with our processors. So it sets escalation or CPI for those
contracts that they can't basically unduly increase it. That would be a significant cost driver that would
require us to go back to our rate model, update that information and see what it does to our revenue
requirements and our estimated expenses. So there are always that potential.
Now, while our performer or rate models look at that 10-11-year time frame, the reason we only set rates for every
four years is because that's what we're comfortable with. And we feel like if there are significant changes, we're going to start looking at the
cost of service and rate model for its solid waste in two years. So even though this process is just now concluding and we're setting rates for four
in two years, we start looking again. So we'll get an opportunity to come back to council. Likewise on that
fleet electrification item, I know it's a scary number that 11.5 million, we will be looking at that and it
has that changes giving up to city council as well. I do have a question now that we have technology.
Let's say we are using artificial intelligence robots in cost do come down. Is there something written in the
ordinance where we would reduce the cost? I don't believe we have any language that would allow the city to
reduce part of that is because under the prop to 18 requirement that we can only charge the cost to provide the
service. So in theory if expenses go down or revenue requirement go down, we can reduce rates for our rate payers.
That seems unlikely based on my 15 years of experience costs usually go up.
Thank you. Yes. I will now open for public hearing. Are there any requests to speak or written comments?
No, Madam Mayor. I'll close the public hearing. I'd like to close the public hearing. I asked
Chief Deputy City Clerk Donna Schwartz during the official report of the protest received.
The city of Samray has 20,583 rate payer accounts from majority protests to exist to the water and
survey for 20,26 to 20,29, 10,293 valid written protests would be required. I have confirmed that at the
close of this public hearing this evening I received a total of seven valid written protests.
Therefore, no majority protests exist to the solid waste rates for 20,26 to 20,29.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis. Have you ever heard of a city that has protests
received in that amount? No, Madam, I haven't. It's you. I'm sure city attorney Watson has, but not my time.
He is an attorney. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the discussion. Do I hear a motion?
So move. Do I have a second? I have a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none.
Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Councilman Bagulara. Aye. Mayor Patent Flores.
Aye. Councilmember Vithiah. Or Councilmember Soto? Aye. Mayor Patino? Aye.
The next public hearing will be the adoption of the engineer's report and the intent to
levy and collect the 20,26, 20,27 landscape district assessments.
The interim director of recreation and parks and does submit a amendment will be presenting the staff report.
Thank you, Madam Mayor Councilmembers. Tonight's item is the required annual public hearing
for the recreation and parks department landscape maintenance district and associated engineer's report.
This is an annual process that allows the city to continue collecting assessments for the
maintenance of landscaping and related improvements within the established districts.
These assessments help fund ongoing maintenance projects and other responsibilities including
meetings, parkways, public landscape areas and other district improvements that benefit properties within
the assessment areas. As part of this year's process, staff reviewed and updated the assessment
role data files that work included applying the annual consumer price index adjustment,
reviewing new annexations, accounting for lots of splits or mergers and updating assessments
where development has moved forward or new units have been added for this year. The CPI is 3%.
Staff also reviewed the engineer's report budget tables, report updated projected revenues and
expenditures, the special assessment amounts, and the city's general benefit contribution.
Those figures are used to ensure the assessments about our properly calculated and the report
reflects the anticipated cost for the upcoming fiscal year. For this year's report, there are no new
areas being added. The work before Council is primarily the annual review of date and approval
process necessary to continue assessments for the upcoming fiscal year. The report has gone through
staff review, administrative review, and has been reviewed by the city engineer, is part of the process
before being brought forward to Council. Following tonight's public hearing staff recommends that the
Council accepts the engineer's report and authorizing assessment role to be finalized and submitted
to the county tax assessor for placement on the property tax roll that concludes my information.
Thank you. Are there any questions from the Council? Yes.
So the assessments are going up and you said it's 3%. 3% based on the CPI. Again, much like utilities,
we have to follow the same process in procedure in order to raise rates other than the CPI.
So this is just an inflation adjustment. It's not a new tax. Correct. Okay.
Any other questions? Okay. I will open up for a public hearing. Are there any requests to speak or written
comments? No, Madam Mayor. I will close the public hearing.
Any further discussion? Do I hear a motion?
So moved. Have a motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. I have a motion. And a second. Any
discussion? Hearing none? Madam Clerk, can you please call me all? Councilmember Sedu. I.
Mayor Pratim Blores. I come. So member Aguilera. I. Councilmember Bethiah. Mayor Patino. I.
Next, we will consider approving the measure a five year program of projects. The Director of Public Works,
Brett Fulgoneva will present the staff report. Good evening, Mayor. Council members. Members of the public.
Tonight we're going to talk about measure A and measure A. What measure A is? What it funds?
And what we plan to do over the next few years.
The measure A is a one half cent sales tax approved back in 2008 by a 79% majority in
Samaria, notably. It's a 30 year program that expires in 2040 and provides over a billion dollars for
specific transit and transportation purposes countywide over the life of the program.
13.3% of those funds is allocated to special projects. 43.3 to North County
program of projects, which is distributed based on population and 43.3% of the funds are allocated to South County.
So our total five year allocation for measure A is over $40 million dollars. 15% of that total
dollar figure needs to be spent on bike, pedestrian, ADA, safe routes to school. We call that alternative
transportation. So that funding level is about 6 million. I know everybody loves spreadsheets,
especially in engineering, but this spreadsheet kind of shows what categories we spend this money on
each year and what our fund balance is. We do maintain a fund balance for major projects if need be or if we
want to speed up road maintenance or speed up. If we get a grant or something like that, it's helpful
to have the fund balance. We also use these revenues to pay for some of our staff and so if we were to
enter a recession or something like that we would have a fund balance within measure A to to help less
than that burden. This is something that I wanted to share. I hadn't shared this in years past with
the measure A, but this is our street list. And so this is an actually our in-house street list that's a new program for us.
And the new program is basically in-house paving. We bought a paper two years ago with measure A dollars and so we have
both contracted maintenance and we have the in-house maintenance. And so the in-house maintenance is actually
our team going out there and doing the work. Our employees going out there and doing the work and these are the
streets that they've prioritized. Well that we've prioritized as a group that we're going to do
on the local streets side. And to figure all the way to the right is our actual cost of the materials to
do these streets, which is a fraction of a cost of us contracting this service because we're only buying the
materials. We're already paying for the staff. We're not incorporating that, but we are buying the materials
with measure A dollars. And so it's really just an increase in productivity from our staff.
Another spreadsheet, this, and I'll bring this back for everybody to for consideration, but
Mahoney, Black Road, Southside Parkway, Miller, College, Donovan, McCoy, Taylor, Industrial Fairway, A Street and
Benwiley. These are the roads that we've identified that need road maintenance. And this is the order of
priority that we plan to work on these roads. Last year, so you tonight in your packet. Yeah,
you're packet. Thank you. You had SB1. And so SB1 had allocated money to part of this road system. Last year,
we actually allocated money to Miller College, Donovan and Mahoney. And so now they're up for construction
basically. So we try to allocate money, design the projects, figure out what we're going to do,
and then go into construction. So these are the priorities in our estimated costs for doing this work,
just for digouts and overlays. And then we'll follow it up the following year with a chip seal.
And I want to show you a tool that we have to make. Can you go back decisions to the roads? Sure.
Maybe. So there's Mahoney Black, but then I see better area. Is that part of it, too?
In number two. So those are limits. So the road name would be from better area to
so Black Road from better area to Winset basically. There's a waterline that we may need to install.
We'd go all the way to A Street, but we're not going to A Street yet because there's a waterline that needs
to be installed there. And so we don't want to spend money before the waterline goes in.
But those are those are limits of construction. So you'll see college from Alvin or from Maine to Alvin
or Miller from Maine to Boone. So those are the segments that we. That way. So Miller gets fixed
from Maine to Alvin. Yeah, Miller. So Miller, if you look at all the four segments that we analyzed,
right? Miller gets fixed from stole all the way to Donovan.
What? Hopefully fall winter this year. Depending on how quickly we can get everything out.
Do you have the schedule like the scheduled repairs as part of this presentation?
I don't. So this is generally what we're going to do within a year or two.
And I say that because we have Mahoney and Black out to bid. That's going to be out to bid this week.
However, that's a. We're going to be doing an on-call contract. And so we're going to spend time
developing an on-call contract. And then with that on-call contract, we essentially write a work task quarter.
And then we have the contractor go out there and do it when we want them to. So that'll be a two to three year contract.
And that's how we did our last pavement program. And so kind of that opportunity times will go in and
and do the work. So it's not as formal as like a bid project like we're doing with Mahoney and Black.
The reason we're doing it with Mahoney and Black is because production paving. All of it's going
out, all of it's going back in. Yeah. The other streets, they're going to be a little bit more
real be a little bit more selective about how we pave them to conserve dollars. So. Okay.
All right. Oh. I want to pull up and show you a tool that we have.
Maybe. No pressure. Okay. This is a tool that we have. We have analyzed 100% of our streets.
Um, we have an estimated PCI based on this of 80. We were at 68. We still have some true thing to do.
But red is bad, red or bad streets, green or good streets. And this is really what the public sees.
This is visually what the public sees. We have a system that analyzes the roads for cracking and, you know,
what the condition is. And so we did all this work at about two weeks with a cell phone on the
front of a truck that went back and analyzed the information and then provided us with this report.
We'll be able to see how this changes over time as well, which is really exciting. And it was only $10,000,
which we used to spend $160,000 for a quarter of our city to do this work and we never had this map.
Another out of benefit is we can go into each road segment and press play. We have a video of it.
So if we have a natural disaster, we'll have evidence of what that road looked like before that natural
disaster for FEMA purposes. But it's also productive for our staff to sit there at their desk and then
estimate what our segment contributions will be for construction. So it has kind of a two-sided benefit.
Well, a lot of different benefits. But this is the primary tool of how we're
now beginning to prioritize roadways. What you'll see is we'll continue to focus on
our arterials and collectors, the main roads in town, we'll continue to make sure that those get into
good shape and then we'll move into neighborhoods and do large slurry projects, dig out and slurry
projects to preserve that payment. I have a question regarding that. How are you selecting the projects?
So the condition?
There's primarily traffic. If the road is economically important, has a lot of traffic on it, we try to prioritize those, like better AVF, better AVF, stole, blaster, all the roads that we did last year.
There's also cost. So if we can afford to treat a segment and treat it with minimal treatment, be it few digouts and then hit it with a slurry seal and preserve that road, that's a tenth of the cost.
Then, treating a road like Mahoney where you go into Mahoney, you've got to grind out the whole thing and spend ten to twelve dollars a square foot to fix the road.
So we try to do different treatments at opportune times that are the cheapest, like as cheap as possible.
But we do prioritize roads with the most traffic that serve the most people that need the less work so that we can get the segment done and then we get to the bad ones.
And how are we making sure that the older neighborhoods, like the lower income areas are getting services, there's not a lot of traffic.
Yeah. And we don't know how much it's done across.
And we will. We're very close to that. And so the goal is that the entire city grid, our materials and collectors get completed and get.
You know, 80, 90 PCI, we want them in solid shape. And then from there, the areas that need it, which are primarily those areas, they're red.
We're going to go in there and treat those and get and try to get those to turn into red.
Yeah. So primarily, like if you, if we were to scroll up into the Northwest, you can see a neighborhood here near the high school and, you know, pine street.
Those areas need it too. And so what we'll start to do is look at schools, which we are already doing with our in-house paving program.
So the in-house paving program is for our local roadways. And they're already starting to pay segments around schools.
You'll see El Camino, parts of El Camino, we're just done, we're going to do the entire segment of El Camino in front of El Camino school.
And so prioritizing usage around schools and important, you know, parks and things like that, and then we'll do big slurry projects where you'll see, like a quarter of the city, be completed.
So.
I know, because we have, say, north of Maine, south of Alvin, around and west of a railroad. Those neighborhoods are really old and those streets probably haven't been touched.
Yeah, those will be the first ones. So we have.
We have, we have a policy that we're developing where we have Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 roads. The Tier 1 road would be like a better area.
It doesn't have a pot hole. If there is a pot hole, we call it contractor out. We do a soccer.
We make sure that road stays in good shape. It gets the first dollar, you know, and then so on and so forth.
Local roadways, once they, once they get past a certain threshold and they become so deteriorated, you've got to repay it. And that's the in-house paving program.
If we can prevent them from getting to that point, even if they're cracked up and they don't look too good, we can hit it with a slurry seal, just like we did in the big five parking lot.
And if it doesn't have that much traffic on it, we can treat that with a relatively cheap treatment and get it mostly green.
And, and sometimes that's enough to keep it going until we can come back with a, with a bigger treatment.
Well, in particular, Ben Wiley is an example.
Yeah, Ben Wiley was on the list that we saw that. But if I was asking, how do you make that decision?
Because that one really needs a lot of work. And there's a lot of air.
Yeah, a lot of theory.
Because it's a lot older neighborhood.
Yeah, and that's what we'll start to do. As we get, as we move out of their tears and collectors, we'll be able to take care of the worst of the worst in neighborhoods that maybe aren't a top priority right now, but we know they're out there.
They don't carry a ton of traffic, but we know that there's fixed neighborhood quality.
You know, we know that that's an issue.
Thank you.
Any questions?
I think I have another slide or two.
I'm sorry.
All right, back to me.
Okay, so a couple quick photos. This is our in-house paving program.
So we have in-house concrete in-house paving now.
This is our new paver. We have a new superintendent on truck coming to optimize this paving program.
You know, could be a point in time where we upgrade our paver even to another, you know, new facility, or a new type of equipment that we can even do more.
So a recommendation for this evening.
Hold the public hearing.
Take any public input on measure a local program.
A project.
And adopt the risk.
The resolution.
When do you plan to have the public hearing?
Right now.
There's not going to be a pub where you invite a town hall or anything like that.
No, I would certainly be happy to do that.
Should the council want me to.
Yeah.
I was just thinking you could have one in each district.
I would look.
Yeah.
I'd be happy to have one.
We did that for council member florist.
Yeah.
I was grocery shopping.
Other day in this lady.
I mean, she yelled at me.
I told people I get the most complaints about potables that anything else.
But this lady was yelling at me.
I would like.
I would like it if she would yell at you.
How great the city is.
No.
That's not what we're saying.
I want to tell you the rest of the word she says.
But anyways.
She was very upset.
But I see that she's she's on the list there to get done pretty soon.
You can let her know now.
I didn't get her name.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Yes.
Go ahead.
I know that there was an extensive conversation about the particular streets and how the streets were identified.
But what about the sidewalks?
Is it the same process?
Yeah.
If we do an overlay.
It's required by law that we that we do the sidewalk and do the.
The curb ramps and bring those up to standard.
And so that's what we tap into some of that 15% funding.
If we don't treat the whole road.
There's a threshold in what you cross.
So if you're below a certain threshold, you don't need to do ADA.
Sometimes we elect to do it anyway because of, you know, could be safe route to school, could be.
Could be other reasons we decide to do it.
There's going to be a lot of concrete work in the next few years.
I didn't really touch on that here.
But there's I think we were looking at about six million dollars with the work.
We just started construction.
We got a grant for a portion of work on pine street and cook street.
That's right over here.
That was some additional dollars that we were able to get.
It's under construction now.
So yeah.
I think my next question is around.
It's somewhat similar but with the street lighting.
I see that in the five year.
Spread sheet that we all love to refer to.
I see here street lighting.
Street lighting upgrades.
Are going to take place.
And underlit neighborhoods can you share what underlit neighborhoods you have identified?
Yeah.
A lot of them are in the fourth square mile.
The old parts of town.
So we just completed a project over on.
Not Western.
It's right over here.
Just know what the Morrison.
North of the high school.
Yeah.
I can't remember the name of the street right now.
We've been focusing on neighborhoods that are within the fourth square mile.
And we know that they don't have lights.
And so we install annually.
We try to do a street light project.
That is.
It can be cumbersome.
Because you've got to dig up the road.
You've got to put in the conduits.
You've got to do the electrical.
You've got to sink the lights in.
And so we've been kind of experimenting with solar lights actually.
And could allow us to do that work a lot more quickly.
Hopefully cheaper and still provide a good product for the neighborhoods.
But I could provide some resources on what areas we've.
That we're looking to prioritize for that.
But it's generally going to be consolidated within the original part of town.
Great.
Thank you.
Okay.
You've showed us the schematic on on the streets.
Do we have the same thing on the sidewalks?
We completed our GIS layer for sidewalks.
We actually have the ADA transition plan underway.
And as part of that is going to include surveys.
Very, very specific surveys of our sidewalks.
And we'll have complete data on sidewalks.
We do.
We do have programs that have been completed.
And programs that haven't.
I hope to come with an index in what that looks like.
Very soon.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
I will open the public hearing.
Are there any requests to speak or written comments?
No, man.
I'll close the public hearing.
Okay.
Bring it back to the council.
Here's a question about the 15% alternative transportation requirements.
Sure.
Okay.
Are we on track to meet the requirements over the next five years?
Yeah.
There was one year where we didn't quite meet the requirements.
And that was due to construction timing.
But we will absolutely spend that money.
We have a big concrete project coming out this year as well.
And so we'll, essentially, we will be spending that money in a very large,
tronch of construction over the next two years.
And do you know which specific bike lane pedestrian projects?
Safe routes that we're going to focus on in the next five years.
Do you have that mapped out?
We do.
Yeah.
We have an alternative transportation plan.
We have as part of the grant that you had approved us to apply for earlier today.
That includes that has a lot of different information and data in there.
The maps to really try to connect the city.
That's like, if we get that, that's tens of millions of dollars towards the program.
Notably, we received an ATP grant that will be under construction next year.
That's about $8 million that will go from blaster on fess layer from blaster to highway 101.
And then again, from the college at college all the way to sway under the highway all the way to,
the sway limit that will include new bike paths.
Thank you.
A lot of people are excited about that.
Yeah, that's going to be a great road.
I know if you ever go in there and see the whole plan that they have on bike paths.
It's very interesting.
Yes.
The psychomania people will be very excited.
I hope so.
Okay.
Any other further discussion?
Do I have here a motion?
All right.
I make the motion though we approve.
And a second.
Second.
I have a motion in the second.
Any further discussion?
Madam Clerk can please call the roll.
Council member Aguilera?
Aye.
Mayor Patent floors?
Aye.
Council member Bataia?
Aye.
Council member Sato?
Aye.
Mayor Patino?
Aye.
The next item is regarding the city of Sanomria workforce, vacancies, recruitment.
And retention efforts.
Personal into AB 2561.
Chief Human Resources Officer.
Graziella Renosa will present the staff report.
Good evening, Mayor.
Members of City Council.
Tonight I'm presenting on the city's annual workforce vacancy and recruitment report.
And compliance with Assembly Bill 25.
61 that basically took effect last year.
This is my second presentation before the body to talk about what our vacancies and levels
are like and to evaluate our hiring and retention efforts.
It's also an opportunity to for our recognized employee organizations to express
Assembly speaking to the microphone.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Let me try that again.
So the presentation today is for basically legal compliance for Assembly Bill 2561.
We'll also have an opportunity for our recognized employee organizations to address the council following
my presentation today.
So Assembly Bill 2561 essentially asked that we present before budget adoption.
What are staffing and workforce?
Look like in the previous year or so.
It increases employment transparency between public agencies and the public and ensures the public agency
operations are appropriately staffed.
And again our bargaining groups can present during the public hearing regarding this item.
So.
As you'll see in the graph, the city currently as a January of this year.
We have 719.4 FTEs spread out through the departments that are listed here.
And that is a reflection of action that we took in January to right-size the organization
and clear some vacancies to really have a clear view of our staffing needs and staffing.
So that staffing could be very clearly defined as we approach our budgetary process.
We do have the labor groups that are listed here.
We have a fire fire fire fighters union local 2020.
We have a non-represented group which we call and Mac.
Police officers association public safety managers, service employees international,
SCU local 2020 and our Santa Maria police association of middle management.
So these are the groups that if represented can present before you today.
So again.
As of December, 2025, the city had 741 budgeted full-time equivalent positions across ten departments.
Our overall vacancy rate was 13.33, and no bargaining unit exceeded threshold, which the assembly bill stipulates of 20% kind of being a threshold.
By being a threshold identified as a high vacancy rate, none of our groups approached that amount.
So since December, the city has again taken steps to clean up long-term vacant positions to improve position control and budgeting accuracy.
And so currently we stand with 719.4 FTEs and 82 current vacancies as of April 17 of 2026.
In 2025, we conducted 56 recruitment. We received over 1600 applications that the human resources department would partner with the operating departments to review and qualify for city employment.
And of those recruitment and applications, there were 241 appointments.
Of those appointments, 93 were promotional appointments, which is a very healthy rate for transferring within the organization for growth opportunities.
With for growth opportunities within the organization.
To attract and retain talent and a qualified workforce, the city continues to offer range of incentives, including education pay, hiring incentives for hard to fill positions and relocation assistance.
We offer competitive benefits and salary programs and we also maintain strong partnerships with our departments to ensure that our recruitment processes are aligned with operational needs and that we are meeting the the needs of the department and therefore the community with our staffing models.
This is an opportunity for our employee groups to I believe there are a couple members of our employee groups to address the council with their comments on our workforce staffing models.
All right, can you hear me? Okay.
All right.
Well, good evening Mayor Patino, council and city staff, special welcome to council member Patia.
We look forward to working with you. I guess you never thought Tuesday nights would be so different, a little bit longer, but I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you today and represent local 2020 over 74 sworn employees that take an oath to protect this city every single day.
And I'm thankful for AB 22561 to be able to address our current staffing as well as our future.
On behalf of the firefighters, I want to look to council and say thank you.
Thank you.
In May of 2025, this council made a decision that broke a 10 year trend.
You chose to compensate your firefighters fairly.
That decision mattered. It's signaled a shift, not just in pay, but in priorities.
And it is how this profession is valued in our community. And we are already seeing results.
For the first time in years, we are experiencing stability.
Since the implementation of that contract, not a single firefighter has left our department.
After years of turnover and lost experience, that kind of retention is not just encouraging its transformational.
That stability and part of a broader shift with your commitment and under previous and current fire administrations.
We have seen real progress and intentional planning moving forward.
The department is hired and maintained two civilian positions dedicated to training firefighter safety.
And ensuring injured personnel receive care quickly and effectively.
That means our firefighters are better prepared and better supported when something goes wrong.
And administrative battalion chief position was created to maintain allowing suppression battalion chiefs as focus on crews, calls and daily operations.
Those operations include more than 50 fire and medical incidents every day.
And that level of focus directly improves performance in the field.
We have implementing a training captain position and investment in readiness.
When the tones go off, we don't get to choose the call, we just go.
That position ensures our firefighters are trained prepared and operating at the highest level possible.
We have bolstered our fire prevention division, often the unsung heroes of our profession.
Their work does not always make headlines, but it prevents them.
Through inspections, education and enforcement, they quietly reduce risk across the entire community.
They also investigate fires, including arson, helping hold those responsible accountable, and in some cases putting criminals behind bars.
Their impact is real even when it is unseen.
We have also recognized that firefighter health goes way beyond the physical.
The additional, the addition of a peer support canine reflects forward thinking and commitment to mental health, because taking care of our people is essential to sustaining workforce long term.
The fire department has implemented comprehensive firefighter physicals, including head to toe screenings and blood work designed to detect hidden health risks early.
That matters. As a result members within our department have identified cancer in its early stages, they have begun treatment, and in most cases prevented further spread.
Cancer remains a leading cause of firefighter fatalities, occurring accounting for over 80% of the names on the IFF fallen firefighter memorial.
This program, the physicals is about protecting our people so they continue to serve the community and return home to their families.
And in 2025, engine six was placed into service, adding three more firefighters to the daily staffing model.
As this community grows, so much the department and commitment.
But the foundation for this, for that made this progress possible, is the change in mentality from this council and city leadership.
You chose to prioritize firefighters through fair compensation and benefits, and because of that, they are staying.
That is the difference. It is also important to be clear about what is driving our current staffing shortages. This is not a retention problem.
Because of the changes you made our firefighters are staying, the stability we are seeing proves that.
Now while retention has improved staffing remains a critical issue.
We recognize the eight suppression vacancies and one time fund reallocations that have been utilized to assist balancing the budget.
Approximately savings of $2.18 million in the general fund and $6.5 million from measure you in fiscal year 2425.
And we remain committed to being responsible stewards of the resources provided.
We want to continue to serve as a collaborating partner alongside council priorities, city staff and fire administration as we navigate these challenges together.
At the same time, our members have absorbed and increased workload as a result of ongoing staffing shortages, creating downstream impacts on operational efficiency, mental and physical health, and overall work life balance.
As presented in the state of the city and the Santa Maria Valley housing summit and even tonight, we know the city is growing demand is increasing and we have a clear opportunity to ensure that fire protection grows alongside in a thoughtful and responsible way.
The good news is we have already shown that we can accomplish this work together.
We have improved retention.
We have strengthened the organization. We have made forward thinking investments.
And we can take that same approach to staffing. We recognize the challenges but also we recognize the progress we have made together.
And what that means for what is possible moving forward.
Working collectively as we have done, we can fill today's vacancies.
We can retain the professionals we have invested in and we can meet the obstacles in front of us whether they are staffing shortages or budget constraints.
There's a lot to be grateful for.
And there's a clear path forward because we have already proven that we can accomplish it together.
Together we can ensure that this department is properly staffed, properly supported and ready to serve the community at the level it deserves.
Thank you.
Good evening again. My name is Nicole Bryant representing SCIU local 620 in our general unit employees.
And I wish they could say the same, but our members are not facing the different reality as you heard earlier.
Tonight's AB 2561 vacancy hearing highlights the importance of transparency and fiscal decision making.
The city has reported 82 funded vacant positions as of April 17, 2026.
SCIU local 620 requested the total value of those vacancies in line with our rights under the assembly bill to prepare for this hearing and that information was not provided.
Without knowing the financial value of these vacancies it is impossible for workers the public or this council to fully evaluate the structural deficit or the need for concessions from our members.
Using a proportional equation which is not a test of high validity, but all I can deduce from the information provided.
If the 24 funded vacancies eliminated on January 20, 2026 saved approximately 2.9 million as outlined in attachment C table 2 of that agenda report, then 82 vacancies reported this evening would have a value close to $10 million.
Now Rebecca don't jump out of your seats. I don't believe that value is accurate. I believe it is over estimated, but without the city's provided financials that's all we can deduce.
AB 2561 was designed to promote openness and accountability, full disclosure of vacancy savings is essential to meeting the school.
Transparency builds trust and trust requires complete information. Thank you.
Anyway, I needed to open the public hearing before they spoke, but anyway that's fine. So it will open and close public hearing.
Any other questions comments?
Is the presentation still dying?
That was it. You have a few more slides?
Okay.
I'll reserve my comment.
Sure.
Just my closing comments. I want to highlight that a major component of our long term retention strategy is a comprehensive classification
and compensation study currently underway. The study will modernize more than 200 job classifications as we work to again right-size the organization and make sure that our job classifications fit what our employees are doing and what they articulate the work that they are doing.
And also to ensure legal compliance and support competitive compensation and classification practices that reflect both market conditions and the complexity of the work performed by our employees.
We do have a very complex workforce and I think I've mentioned that before.
A lot of compliance issues that you've heard a lot about today.
So overall the city remains committed to maintaining a professional and well qualified workforce that brings a diverse set of experiences to the city.
And our ongoing efforts and recruitment employee development through training programs, employee engagement and labor relations will continue to support the high level of service or community expects.
This does conclude my presentation and I welcome any questions.
Okay questions of council. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
My questions are stemming from the presentations from one of the bargaining groups, particularly SCIU.
Can the budgeted value of those funded of those vacant positions be be shared?
Do we know what the what the what the what the what the what the dollar value I should say of those vacant positions are?
We will work to get that information.
I think there's different staffing models and different methods that we can do costing.
I think part of the difficulty has been changing to a new system and kind of some outdated models that we've had.
And how will that figure what will what role.
How will how would that be.
How will that impact the budget like how will that value ultimately be and be impacting the budget.
For a budget question like that all differed to Rebecca.
And I'm asking because if we can't if we don't have the dollar value of those vacant positions and yet we're talking about budget and budget because I think that that's a really key piece of information that's needed.
Thank you council member Soto.
Thanks for the questions so Rebecca Campbell director of finance.
We do.
For our budget preparation, we do do a salary forecast that includes any vacant positions on the
books, so we can estimate those positions. I don't have those with you today, but we can do
that. For budget planning, we're going to continue to work with the departments on, you
know, it could be vacancies, it could be other budget reductions that we need to take or it
could be revenue options, so we will take those into account.
For the budget discussions. That's correct. Okay. And then my other question is around the total
number of, I believe, positions. It seems like there may be a discrepancy or a misunderstanding
with the math count of the FTEs. From what I've been told, the math count back in December was
741.6 FTEs, and then we eliminated or not eliminated, but then fully, I guess, 24 of those were
eliminated in January, which equals to about 17.717.6 remaining, but yet the report that's presented
in front of us, it's 17, 719.4. Sorry, it's been a long day. FTEs, as of January, with a gap of 1.8 FTEs
and accounted for. I'll need to go back and check that and I can work with our HR director on that
to make sure our numbers are correct. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? In playing terms,
what does the 98 vacancy gap mean for the services of our residents? Today, response times,
permit processing, code enforcement, park maintenance, library hours? The vacancies are,
the vacancies have been around for different variants amounts of time, so a position may be newly
vacant and we're working to recruit it, or it could have been vacant for a significant amount of time as
we talked about clearing vacancies from the last year. Service levels are always very,
very carefully measured when deciding to fill a vacancy or to hold it open, so we work with the
departments to ensure that operations will be able to continue and to meet the needs of the community
as we recruit for these positions. And do you have a chart as to how our salaries and benefits
compare to neighboring jurisdictions like Lampoke, San Luis, Santa Barbara? The classification and
compensation study will provide that to us and we do have identified comparator agencies within our
MOUs, so those agencies that will compare to have already been decided. And hopefully,
class income, the class income study should be, like I said, it's well underway and it should be
concluding over the next few months. And do you have a chart that shows which positions have been
open for more than a year or two years, three years? We can get that information, I don't have it here
today, but we do have that information available to us. And part of what was cleared in January
were some of the long-term vacancies, so I believe that that has become a more mobile number than it was
before, so we're right sizing and we're clearing up some long-term vacancies. Okay, if you can provide
that, because I think that would be useful for the budget as well. Thank you. Any other questions
of the council? Yes, I know that for these hearings, there's a trigger right at 20, right?
Present frequency? Yes. And the non-represented management group is right under that triggered,
can you just share a little bit about how that may be impacting services or also what could be driving?
Sure, that. I do want to clarify that the 20% triggers for represented groups,
so for unrepresented groups, it doesn't really apply. And again, it's kind of a reckoning
within the organization to see what vacancies need to be filled and what does the department leader
ship really believe that needs to be filled immediately versus what can be held onto for a little bit.
The management group includes, so that would be NMAC, which would include your administrative leaders,
your business leaders, your management group, and your confidential texts. Those are positions
where some of the work has been absorbed. And we are looking at vacancies and when the department
deans that it's necessary to move forward and we're able to move forward with a recruitment where
pretty agile and getting that going. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. Miss Flores?
In what departments would need the vacancies to be filled, but it'd be fire, would it be the place?
How would you guys determine that? We partner with department leadership because they best know
their operations and there's a lot of moving parts, so we're taking into account some of the budgetary
constraints we're taking into account what is some long-term planning and we partner to open
recruitment as we talk with the city manager and decide when the position is needed to move
forward with. So say, in the fire department, they need to say the Italian chief and their and that position
hasn't been filled. Would we, would we fill that with our men on that's there? We would conduct a
recruitment, yes. So we would do that, right? Yes. We would eliminate that position. We would not eliminate
a position without discussing prior. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? The council? If not,
this report has been received and filed. Thank you. Thank you very much.
The next item is a tax and equity fiscal responsibility hearing regarding the Perlman Apartments
Director of Finance for Beckett Campbell would present the staff report. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening,
council members again for Beckett Campbell, Director of Finance. I'm here tonight to open up a tax equity
and fiscal responsibility act or a tap for hearing. A tap for hearing is a requirement under the IRS
for non-profit borrowers that intend to issue tax exempt bonds for a conduit issuer or such as the
California Municipal Finance Authority, also known as C.M. F.A. The tap for hearing provides a public
a time in a place in a forum for then for folks to come and comment on the exempt bond proceeds
for the project and the capital needs. The tap for notice has to go out at least seven days before
the hearing and for this project it was noticed on April 22nd of 2026. In this case the borer is Denko
Communities, a non-profit organization and they're requesting that C.M. F.A. issue the debt
and service the municipal issuer of the tax exempt bonds in aggregate of principle in the amount
not to exceed $35 million for the project. The project consists of construction,
improvements, and acquisition of a 150 unit multifamily rental affordable housing project
that's located on 100 north Broadway in Santa Maria. It's also known as the Pearlman project.
A little bit about C.M. F.A. Santa Maria is a member of C.M. F.A. which is a joint powers authority
that was established in 2004. They were set up for to promote economic, cultural, and community
development throughout the state of California. C.M. F.A. includes 350 municipalities.
C.M. F.A. was formed to assist local governments, non-profit organizations and businesses in the
issuance of tax exempt bonds, aimed at approving the standard of living in California.
The bonds to be issued by C.M. F.A. for the project will be the sole responsibility of the borer,
and the city will have no financial, legal, or moral obligation to those bonds, no liability.
Participation by the city and the C.M. F.A. F.A. will not impact the city's appropriation limits
and will not constitute any type of indebtedness by the city. The bonds are payable, solely by the
revenues derived by the Prairie, and the applicable project. And the city is not obligated to the
debt payment. The Board of Directors of the C.M. F.A. for strong communities. It's also a non-profit
foundation. The Act is the Board of Directors for C.M. F.A. and they share a small portion of the fees with
the city. And I also have a representative here that sat through the whole evening to be here.
Anthony Stubbs is here from C.M. F.A. if there are any questions that come up about the bond.
Or the deal. Thank you. That's it. That's it. Thank you very much. Okay. Any questions from the council?
Thank you for sitting through our meeting. Okay. I will open up the public hearing. Madam Clerk,
are there any requests to speak or written comments? There is none. Thank you. I will close the public hearing.
So I bring this back to the council. Do I have a motion?
Oh, go ahead. Get some of Mr. Dan Kota come up here. Hello. I wanted to explore
a lot of people. A lot of us don't know Dan Kota and I wanted to ask what is Dan Kota? What other projects
have you built in California and how have those projects performed if you can provide some background?
To the point of clarification, I'm with the California Municipal Finance Authority. Okay.
We're the issue of the bonds. However, we worked with Dan Kota on. We've closed about 10 to 15 projects
with Dan Kota throughout California. Mostly the very northern part of California. You can't
think of all the places off the top of my head, but great organization to work with, providing affordable
housing to many Californians. We've never had any reports on any of the projects that we've done with
them in any type of negative, negative fashion. Okay. That's good to hear. Thank you.
Now you're said you're here with California Municipal Finance Authority. We want to explain them to
them. Yeah, so we're joint powers authority as explained. We will be the issuer of the tax exempt
and taxable bonds on this project. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions, comments?
Nope. Nope. Okay. Do I have a motion? So move. Do I have a second?
I have a motion a second. No further discussion? Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll.
Councillor Member Settah? Aye. Mayor for 10 floors? Aye. Councillor Member Budaya?
Councillor Councillor Settah. Aye. And Mayor Petina? Aye. Next is a regular business item regarding amendments
to chapters eight of the Santa Maria Municipal Code Deputy Director of Utilities, Josh Reynolds.
We'll provide us with the report. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. And members of the council,
Josh Reynolds, Deputy Director. I want to talk to you a little bit about
the cross-connection control plan. And we'll start real quick here with what we want to do is
introduce an ordinance to a min title eight. And that ordinance, the main changes there are two.
Really allow the utilities director the power to develop and enforce the cross-connection control plan.
So we'll talk a little bit about what that is. What is the cross-connection control plan? We'll
talk about why I'm here today presenting the new cross-session control plan.
And we'll work through what it means to the community over time. So really we're here to talk about
this cross-connection control plan such a mouth.
The state adopted new regulations around cross-connection control programs, and you can see these words keep
coming forward, right? So the state of California adopted a cross-connection control policy handbook,
which sets forward that we have to maintain a cross-connection control program, elements of which include
a cross-connection control plan. I hope you've got all of that. I'll do my best to explain it as we move
through this little presentation. The important part here is that the cross-connection control policy handbook
repealed sections of the title 17 of the California code. So that requires us to make changes to our municipal
code, which references that pretty heavily and so we're going to want to get our ordinance in line with state requirements.
That's really the driving force here.
So the main parts of the cross-connection control program are threefold. The program says you have to have the legal authority
to implement this program, hence the revisions or amendments to title eight of the municipal code.
It says you have to have a designated program coordinator. We already have that in place with our regulatory compliance specialists.
It meets the certification requirements. And we have to have a cross-connection control plan that is,
you know, state approved and meets the requirements as outlined in the cross-connection control policy handbook.
It's been a year for me to get all of this right.
So I'm going to back up a little bit because I've set cross-connection or cross-connection control a dozen times or more.
So what is a cross-connection? Well, a cross-connection is a connection between our political water system, our drinking water system,
the public system, and any non-pulval water system. So, for example, it might be an irrigation or a firesmaker system,
or some kind of an industrial process that's passed the meter on a private property.
What we don't want is that water that's once it's gone through the meter and gone under private property,
we don't want that coming back into the drinking water system. That would be a backflow event.
So backflow is a reversal flow, typically due to a change in pressure, so a main breaker, something like that,
to result in a drop in pressure, water on that non-pulval system could come back into the potable system.
That's not something we want, so the cross-connection control plan is designed to prevent this from happening.
So the cross-connection control plan that we've prepared as attached to the report is what the city is going to do to prevent
and not just prevent cross-connections, but also to go out and discover cross-connections.
So that's a big part of it is getting out there and finding these cross-connections that they already exist,
and preventing the creation of new cross-connections over time.
And ultimately we want to do is protect the drinking water system from a backflow event.
So here's that word again, cross-connection, right? It's the foundation of the cross-connection control plan.
We want to prevent the potential for backflow of non-pulval water into the potable water system.
Control, so these are the main elements of the cross-connection control plan, the enabling ordinance that we're talking about here with a minimum title eight.
Enforcement, also through title eight, we're going to establish, and really we already have testing standards established.
We're going to update those to meet the new policy handbook and state laws.
And then make sure we've updated our backflow protection assembly standards and you can see a photo of that there.
And then we have the plan. The plan is how are we going to assess the hazards? What's the schedule? How is it going to roll out?
How are we going to take records that we did that work we need to do?
Notice the public and individual parties that they need to test or maintain a backflow device and do some, you know, outreach to the public.
And ultimately the cross-connection control plan really protects public health, and that's what we're setting out to do here.
So the municipal code revisions, the main changes to the municipal code is really it's simplifying out.
So the current code chapter eight 10A is our cross-connection control plan right now. What we're going to do is pull a lot of the technical detail out of that ordinance.
It goes into the cross-connection control plan. The ordinance becomes enabling an enforcement language primarily to give the utilities director the power to amend, adopt, and enforce the cross-connection control plan.
Ultimately what we want to do is ensure compliance with the state handbook and the requirements that the state has laid out.
And so what we are approached to this is that what we want to do is be flexible.
We want to make sure that we are not, you know, putting anything too tight and stone to deal with changing technology or changing needs of the community over time.
And he's be updateable so that we can keep it up to date with changing state guidelines.
We want to be consistent with what we're currently doing. We don't want to reinvent the wheel here, but we do need to bring it up to date to meet the new policy handbook or state requirements.
And finally we want to make sure it's practical.
So one of the ways that we're trying to make this practical is through mitigating some of the impacts of the community or potential impacts.
One of those is by doing our hazard assessments over time and not trying to get them done in a short period.
We've also looked at updating and we've been working with fire department and public works to update our engineering standards to make sure we're reducing and managing future costs to homes in our built.
Because one of the big follow-ons from the new policy handbook is that residential single family homes with fire sprinkler systems will now need to have a backflow protection assembly of some kind.
And so that's a new requirement and it's backwards looking.
So homes that are out there right now, fire sprinklers may need to add a backflow device to a backflow protection assembly to their connection.
So right now we we figure there's about 1,500 homes that were built since January I think of 2011 that may require backflow devices because they have existing fire sprinkler systems.
We have until 20 July, 2034 for those properties to comply and we've changed our city standards to reduce the need for that in the future.
So homes being built now ish would be putting in a looped system so that they would not need to put in a backflow protection device.
So for implementation this is the first reading.
With the adoption of the ordinance and that going into effect that finalizes our state compliance requirements.
We're doing hazard assessments as new development comes online right now and in July we'll start doing hazard assessments looking at the higher hazard commercial industrial users as well as the residential sprinkler systems.
And then we'll continue our record keeping effort on going annual inspections of the backflow protection assemblies and maintaining notifications to the community and the users.
With that I'm available for any questions you might have any questions the council.
I do you talk to when you were talking about the mitigation piece and through this having some homes put in a system to prevent.
Is that going to be on the homeowner or is the city going to apply the cost.
Yeah, that's on the homeowner's responsibility to maintain to install and maintain and test the backflow protection assembly on annual basis.
So are we going to notify the homeowners that we think should be testing.
So some homeowners have backflow protection assemblies on them now.
I think all of our commercial industrial customers have some kind of a backflow protection assembly in place now.
We have an annual testing program in place where a certified tester goes out and test the backflow assembly.
I've kind of got right there's one in the photo here.
There's a couple other examples there of what they look like.
There's ports there that you can test the pressure drop across there and make sure they're sealing properly.
That these are private property, the responsibility of the business owner homeowner.
Whoever owns or maintains that premise.
And how much does that cost?
It varies based on size right so a small one like this is like an inch inch and a half might be several hundred dollars to install.
And to test it might be 50 to a hundred to a hundred dollars a year to test.
I'm not sure where that's going to settle out on the annual testing cost.
Is that annual testing cost that's really been driving me to work internally to make changes to our standards to not continue to put out backflow protection assemblies.
But instead to loop the fire sprinkler system internal to the home.
Build it out of drinking water approved piping and then have it drain or slowly be able to leak to like a toilet fixture or something.
So that water is always moving through there.
Those changes prevent the need to put this on that house then right so they don't need to do that.
And I we're really working to make sure we didn't put that burden on homes going forward with the change in the standards.
Are there any grants that are available to cities so that they can support residents pay for this.
I'm not sure we need to look at that again it gets challenging with the being private property right and so I know that there are conservation opportunities other things where there is the opportunity that I'm not sure specific to this and how that would roll out.
So is this for like new you probably I know you already answered you already answered wait but is this more for like new or homes older homes or is it just based on the amount of pressure.
I think you said this the amount of pressure that type of things that like what causes that added pressure.
Yeah so the single family home issue is.
So before the new policy hem book rolled out single family they were not classifying the state was not classifying residential fire sprinkler systems as a high hazard right so they they did not require a backflow protection assembly and I say that is.
To protect the the drinking water system from the fire sprinkler system and so the concern there is a fire sprinkler system.
You know touch the water it got the water and you start to stop the water you don't want the water is this a kind of private fire.
So you can say why not let back and start putting the water as you want that if it gets the water you can use it with water for a long time and that stagnant water could potentially bring bacteria.
If you have a drop drop in pressure and a backflow vent that water could go into the main pipes right?
top of each other there. So I think it's a low risk event, but it is classified now as a high
risk or a potential high risk or a potential hazard requiring mitigation, requiring a back
photo device. What we're seeing is the fire sprinkler system, the fire sprinkler requirements
really rolled out. I want to say in 2011 and so homes built since then are likely to need some kind
of a back photo device. That's my home. We won't know until we do a hazard assessment and look
at those houses and see where they're at, see what how they're built, what happened there.
And then you're going to have that. Then you're going to have to have 70 check these,
the back flows every year as they do commercially. Yes, they do with the community us exactly.
Yeah. And we're trying to work, we've been working on the standards to get it so that we can put
that back photo device up against the house or near where the fire sprinkler riser is. Instead of putting it
out of the street or at the curb and gutter where it's a new sense, right? It gets damaged, stolen,
broken. We want to put them be able to put them in a secure location and so that's we've been working
through the standards to make sure we can do something like that too. So would homeowners just
call the city and be like, hey, we need this installed and then you added to our bill?
That's not currently the intent, but I would assume that we would have a list of
I mean, we don't want to endorse right a plumber or other business. So we may be able to keep a list to refer
people to. But it would be done by a private property and we would inspect the installation.
And then we have a software package that monitors. So all of the people that test back photo devices
have to register with us. They have logins to this system. The notification goes to the property owner
and CCs them if they're, you know, already hired by the property owner. They do the tests. They submit everything
through the port online portal to us. We review that work and then it comes up again and you're from now.
Dang. So any other questions? Yeah. So am I reading correctly? It's a 45 year
rollout. So none residential by 2031. Correct. Higher risk residential by 2034. Correct.
And all the remaining residential by 2071. 500 a year. How will we roll this out to communicate to the
public? Because that's a lot. And so and that's the 2034 date is the first date, right? That's the group
where we're going to be looking at fire sprinkler homes. Right? So that we can get that group targeted earlier.
We thankfully have communication capability through our billing software. And so we keep those
working together. They're in the same software package or our water metering billing and our back
flow device. So we can link those accounts. We can provide notifications through that portal. And we maintain
that database over time. And you may have a cover to this in the presentation. But what is the
cost of the annual test? It varies. I want to say it can be $150. That's for the larger ones. But the
problem is they often get damaged. So you not only do you have to do inspection and a test on it. You'll
have to repair it if it got damaged over there and so on here. What gets damaged? Specifically.
The seals can wear out. The valves can get broken. There's a check valve in there with moving
springs. Those can wear out over time. They can get damaged. Someone can knock it. Break it.
Break a testing port so you can't do the testing. If there's another cost would be if it failed.
Then you got to replace it.
And they only, so the manufacturer only supports them for so long and you have to be able to get parts and if you can't get parts, then you gotta put a new one in.
This, this is a big task.
It is.
Do we have enough backflow testers and certified specialists to complete the 500?
Yeah.
We, um, to be out, I think we added a position in the next budget.
We have one on staff right now.
We would look to consultants if needed to if we need to.
And then it's supported through some of the support of the rates, um, you know, through the.
Your paying fee, if you're, right, assume with the new fee structure that's been proposed to adopt it,
you're gonna pay a fee to submit your annual test so that we can verify it, right, and work through that.
We ask because that's about 41 a month.
So do we have the personnel?
Yeah.
We don't test.
So we don't test.
We don't.
We don't test.
We, the, the, the private property on our house to select the test or all of the approved list.
Okay.
And so we already have an approved list for.
I'm not sure what the number is with the thousand accounts right now that have.
Commercial and industrial accounts that have backflow devices.
And those are already get tested every year.
So we already managed that.
If all 1500 homes that we've identified get enrolled.
Yeah.
Basically we're doubling the size, right of of the number of devices that get tested every year.
So it's, it's a step, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a manageable.
Um, the 500 a year.
Um, the 500 year hazard assessments.
Um, that requires some staffing support.
Yes.
And do we have that staff support?
It's being requested in the budget.
I believe.
It's, it's, it's sort of like getting your car smoke, isn't it?
getting your car small, isn't it?
I really played it to that.
Yeah, you got to do it every year.
And it's, it's, if someone's wrong,
and you got to fix it.
Yeah, great, it's like, yeah.
What if people choose not to do it?
That's the enforcement aspect of the ordinance.
And through, I would envision that we're not enforcing
residential after 24, but we have to be careful with that
because the state does require you
to enforce it once you know about it.
So there is some time to roll that out.
That was somewhat intentional.
We're kind of pushing what the state wants us to do with that.
We've really stretched that out as long as they're willing to accept.
But, you know, enforcement does include shut-off.
Which I think is illegal to leave people without service.
I mean, it's legal in certain circumstances
and staffs have done properly and undertaken.
I need any questions of Mr. Relds?
I don't know.
I guess I should say thank you for the report.
But I don't think I don't know about this.
No, I mean, and it's daunting.
I get that, and it's taken me a while to kind of get my head around it
and what it means.
And I've been working really hard with fire department building,
and public works, to minimize that.
When I first approached this a year ago, the state was like,
no, you got to put an RP device on every service in your city.
Like, I have to put 20,000 backflow to buy no.
That's not reasonable.
And so then we've just been working with them, too.
Sort of re-established some reasonable conditions
and this is where we've landed.
Thank you.
Okay, any other questions?
No.
Okay.
Thank you.
Madam clerk, are there any requests to speak or written comments?
No, Madam Mayor.
So, do I have a motion?
Second.
So moved.
Do I have a second?
I don't have a reluctant second.
I don't think we have a choice, right?
We have to vote for this.
Okay, I don't have a second.
So,
I don't think they've agreed back, right?
Yeah, all right.
Just to reiterate, this is another housing mandate.
It's no different than mandate.
It's quite a sprinkler's in the first instance.
I would not recommend that you do not approve it,
but that is your choice.
And as was stated, there will be repercussions
to the city for failure to comply.
But how long will it take them to find out?
My office will be notified quite quickly.
Then you have to find.
Okay.
Well, so by when do we have to approve this?
Tom.
Yes, today.
I would like to start dressing the hazard.
Yes.
And to buy our August, this is come by.
It's ready to go.
Yep, but what's that?
I'll take these issues and then really can aren't around
how many residential homes are actually affected by this.
What that looks like.
We made some of the pain you've already.
I've already did change our standards.
We work through that to try and prevent more residential homes
when we're becoming a problem.
You want to come up here, but we can't do that.
Yeah.
Technically, the date would be when it's enforceable
to the residential, because we have to have an enforcement
program in place.
But I don't think the state is what our option is.
Yeah, but the state has a mandate that we have to have this program.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I win.
What's their date?
2034?
Technically, July 1, 2025.
I have an approved plan.
So I submitted a plan and draft form in July of 2025.
They've extended the deadline out of year, basically,
for everybody.
Are they July 1, are they going to come knocking
on the door saying where's your plan?
No, because they have my plan.
They have the plan that's in front of you.
They've approved that plan.
What we don't have is enabling ordinance for me to be able to enforce this.
We have our current ordinance, which is now in conflict
with our cross-signation control plan.
So that creates a situation where somebody calls up
and says, I don't want to put in our p-device.
I want to do a backflow device.
I tell them, well, you're going to have to put in our p-device in the future.
I recommend you do that now, and they go, no.
I can't currently make them do that,
because I don't have an ordinance that supports my plan.
So we're in a bit of a limbo here without the ordinance.
I think that for, you know, we've done what we can
to limit the impacts to the residential homes.
Similarly, we've done what we can.
The limit impacts to commercial industrial users.
We could tomorrow say everybody has to go to an RP-device,
a bigger, more expensive device.
And those can cost tens of thousands of dollars to put in.
Instead, we said, look, you can maintain and keep that
until such a point as it fails or you can't get parts for it.
Then, when you have to upgrade it anyway, we'll do the RP-device.
And so the state's accepted that.
There's not a lot more we can do.
Delaying this doesn't change the need to do it.
Delaying this doesn't change the cost of doing it.
In fact, as we know, everything over time just gets more expensive.
The sooner we start implementing and getting on this,
the more affordable it's going to be for the community.
Why was there a delay of a year and bringing this to Council?
The delay was the state.
So the state rolled out this policy handbook,
said, you ought to have this adopted by July of 2025,
and then continued to tweak what they needed to see.
So it wasn't until June of 2025 that the state finally said,
okay, here's what we really want.
A lot of workshops went out with the state to get that figured out.
So then we submitted our draft in July.
They took time reviewing it.
We made changes to it in the fall.
We submitted it in January.
They said, we think that's good.
We then adopted or amended the ordinance,
worked with the city attorney's office to get the ordinance to match the plan,
so that they all support each other nicely.
And then we brought it to you as the, you know, the gender's full.
It takes time to get here.
I meet a motion.
I know.
And we, and we don't have a second.
Was this, did this come through as an assembly bill, a Senate bill?
I did it just, the EPA just come up with this.
I did it.
I believe it's a combination of assembly bill and Senate bills
that changed Title 17 and created the cross California,
the cross California, the cross California policy handbook.
That then supersedes Title 17.
So it repealed Title 17 and all the sections of Title 17.
So it's sort of modernizing, right?
I think their sales pitch is that the last time the cross-connection control rules
were updated as data California was in the 90s, late 80s.
And so trying to modernize it around current concerns and knowledge about risks.
And I think, too, I mean, I think one thing to keep in mind is this is not a passive risk.
In fact, we recently discovered a cross-connection through our, through our work that we might not
have discovered otherwise, where water was flowing through a property through two different
meters, because they're backflowed devices were installed correctly.
So no harm, there were no damage, it was done there thankfully, but it does point to that risk
is out there that this is not a, I know it seemed simple and it says, well, there's a lot of
maybe he's on top of it, but if something does go wrong, the repercussions are huge, right?
If we introduce bacteria or chemicals into the drinking water system, right, that people can
get injured sick or die even, right?
It's not a, it's a theoretical on the one hand, but the moment it becomes real, it becomes very,
very real.
Right, which is why I'm concerned that it took us a year to even have these conversations.
And I still don't have the number of the budget that this is going to cost the city.
This is a city mandate, this is a state mandate that we have to take on what is the cost
of the city, one, and why if it's such a huge risk, why did it take us a year for us to vote on
it, because it's so important.
Yeah, I mean, and that's why I was saying we worked with the state once they set their standards.
We got the thing into the state and draft, worked with them to get a finalized, got all that
clear together, worked with the city attorney's office to get the ordinance and then we have
to get on the council agenda.
I understand that the order, but I think the order should have been backwards, because I think
the city council could have said, yeah, we're going to give you direction.
This is coming down the pipe.
We're going to give you direction to draft the ordinance to tell us how much we had to make
room for in this budget.
Being that we have a super tight budget now to ask us to approve this before we approve the budget
next month.
Right, but this is built into our rates to right into the water rates, not I understand it, but
they're still a cost to the city for this state mandate.
So there, there always is, there always is, right, council members, the mayor,
judges may add that our initial efforts towards getting into compliance with the state's
requirements on this are going to be absorbed within existing water rates and user fees, so that
initial costs to the city is already absorbed and planned for in our budget without the
ask coming back.
What we're talking about bringing us an item through the budget for staff, that's to support
the regulatory compliance program who will be responsible for monitoring and enforcing and working
with code in the future as we get a single family residences or businesses that are not
complying.
So it's not today.
So I want to just clarify that while it's delayed coming to council, pending the finalization
at the state, we're not putting the cart before the horse so to speak.
We can act and move this forward with what we have today with negligible impact to funding and
a price fund because it's currently absorbable and the rest will come later.
It will follow.
When would you need the staff to start looking at compliance in a year or two?
I would defer to Josh, I think we're farther down the line from that because we have existing
staff today who have the capacity to do this initial work.
We have outreach specialists on staff, we have regulatory compliance on staff.
It's really when we start four years from now is probably when we would really need a body dedicated
it to it, but we would phase it in.
We always want to do it in a responsible and phase approach.
And I guess to support that, I have vacancies that are in the process of being filled right
now to help support this effort, so when I say I don't have the staff today but I do
have interviews coming up here to support.
But I think what she's saying is we won't even need the staff for two years, so it may not
even impact this budget cycle.
At least for enforcement, now the other budget that you're talking about, it's already absorbed.
Yes, family are existing water rates and user fees because the cost of the city to get
us to implementation are really associated with doing our hazard assessments and our
public outreach.
We have staff today where we can absorb those costs.
When we have to go on site to say inspect that installed backflow device, that would be a new
user fee we might bring then so that our costs are at least recovered for that effort.
But not to unduly burden staff through this, our residents through the process.
But because we have employees who are talking about getting a raise and all these things and
now we're saying, oh, but this is more important than that, yeah, I'm super concerned about that.
And so I'm okay with approving this if it is already absorbed and we're not approving the
enforcement action with this budget.
The recommendation before us would be to approve the revisions, the technical amendments to
the code, so that the city can get in compliance and let the state water resource control board
know that our body has taken action to implement the code, which points to the plan.
That's all we're asking for tonight and there's not future hidden costs in access.
The staff member that we're talking about through the budget, again, would support the regulatory
compliance program to which some point in the future, a couple of years from now, this becomes more
of a program, but right now it's absorbable and I'm glad Josh made the point about.
Our vacancies, our regulatory compliance group has been short-staffed for a while to be good to get them on board.
Okay. Thank you. Yes, thank you.
A little more question. How are you going to notify the community about all these changes?
Because you guys haven't done that yet.
We haven't started yet. It's really important, like I mentioned, not to put the cart before the horse.
We want to have approval of the ordinance updates to implement the plan.
Our intention is to use the utility billing software and that spray point system to get notices out to the people this affects.
Again, out of our, you know, 20,000 residents were anticipating about 1,500 based on preliminary counts.
We would identify those specific accounts, get direct notices to them through utility billing.
And then we would have personal outreach and contact utilities is fortunate to have a conservation specialist and outreach specialist.
We have staff that we can come up with an outreach plan.
And if council prefers, we'd be happy to bring that approach and plan back.
Green, new employees.
Potentially in the future as the program grows, that's always a consideration.
When we get these unfunded mandates from the state, we either have to absorb it or staff up.
Right now, we're prepared to absorb the initial work.
As the program grows, we would continue to evaluate what the staffing levels may need to be.
And of course, this also has an impact to say code enforcement, who would be the enforcement arm for people who aren't complying.
So we would be working in close coordination with their team.
Which we please you to an increase in code enforcement officers.
That's actually, but not yet.
They're already overwhelmed, I think.
They are.
What?
Okay, so do you want me to try again to get a second or just die?
Okay.
This is a public health hazard.
I just want to note that.
Yes.
If it's not passed.
Getting out and driving in the streets, the Santa Maria is public health hazard.
So we're talking about drinking water hazard.
Okay.
Okay, thank you very much.
The Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa.
It dies for lack of a second.
You're not ready to approve something that's absorbed by the fund.
If it's already absorbed the cost.
Okay, we have a motion.
Do you want to do a second?
Or, I'm asking, I'm asking my colleagues.
What?
What is it that you want to see or what else do you need to know to make a decision?
I mean, I think it's important to inform the community before anything.
Okay.
But that's that's not what we're doing right now.
What we're doing right now is a decision.
It's a Mending Chapters 8-10-8 cross connections.
And 8-1.07 of title late in the Santa Maria Municipal Code.
But what are we informing of them about if there's no change in the code?
That is going to change.
Yeah.
But there's no direction for it to change.
Not yet.
So then what are they going to outreach for?
That's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm asking my colleagues.
What do they want to see, right?
And he's saying I would like to see an outreach.
So if we vote today, if it makes them comfortable, that we can say this is the ordinance.
And he would like to see outreach, then that becomes part of it.
Part of what the council's direction is.
Well, you know what, we're getting into the weeds and we're going into being department heads and we are not department heads.
We're dealing with a policy that the state has mandated.
We either, well, we don't obviously don't agree with the policy, but anyway, that's aside the point.
And so we have this, a Mending of the ordinance as I read before.
And this is what is before us right now.
I just don't have enough evidence with this.
And I get what councilmember Soto was saying about the water.
I get all of that.
Okay.
I just, I don't feel comfortable with them telling us a year later that we should have this done.
I'm just not okay.
So what next year and six months are going to say something different.
So I'm not, I need to have more information.
Yeah.
And we can always, if we can bring, I'm going to move that we bring this back at the next meeting so that we have time to ask these questions and get informed.
Is that what for you?
Okay.
I'd like to move that we continue this to the next meeting to the June 2nd meeting.
Okay.
Do I have a second on that one?
We need to cancel the first motion.
And let that die and then come with the second.
How do we do that?
No, it dies.
It dies for like a second.
I did not already.
Okay.
Yeah.
I died for like a second.
So I have another motion on the floor to bring this back to the council and a second.
Okay.
Any further discussion?
Wait, who second?
No second.
Nobody seconded it.
Oh, I thought.
A second to bring it back.
No.
She got it right later.
No second.
Yeah.
I'll second it to bring it back.
Do you want to bring it back to you in a second or a date after that?
A second to be in that time.
And if they bring about what exactly do you want them to bring back?
She just wants more information.
Yes.
One more.
Okay.
So what's the meaning after June 2nd?
June 16th.
Okay.
Do that one.
Okay.
I move that we continue to June 16th.
Is that okay with the second?
Yes.
Okay.
The motion.
Okay.
First and second motion.
Any further discussion?
Okay.
Hearing that.
Madam Parking.
Please call the roll.
Okay.
I.
Mayor Pritem floors.
I.
Can't remember but.
But.
Can't remember.
I.
Mayor Pritina.
Hi.
Oh, she had a public comment.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Public comment.
I'm sorry.
Miss Brian.
Come on up.
Come on.
A cold.
Thank you.
My comments will still be relevant for it being moved to June.
My question is to counsel is something to consider is if we are.
Choosing to kill this or not approve this, what is the financial liability from the state of the city not going through with a requirement.
That would also impact the budget.
I do want to mention that the positions listed are all current SIA you staff and would be potential future SIA you staff outreach specialist regulatory specialist are all within our bargaining unit.
Also, this is all enterprise funded.
And not part of the general budget deficit.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Anyway.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Now we will receive a presentation on polling survey results for potential ballot measure and city manager.
David Rollins will open this up for us.
Thank you.
Madam Mayor and council.
Tonight our recommendation is to receive a presentation on polling survey.
Results for a potential ballot measure, including community priorities and support for municipal services.
And to provide direction to staff to draft approving resolutions for submission of a question to voters.
Regarding proposed sales tax measure to fund essential city services.
As part of the general municipal election to be held to state November 3rd of 2026.
At this time, I would like to have a Chelsea second hand from DHM research presentation on their polling.
Hi.
Good evening.
So as mentioned, DHM research did a poll which had two main goals shown here to assess voters perceptions and satisfaction with city services.
And also primarily to gauge support for a potential revenue measure on the November ballot.
Just to show you a bit about the methodology we surveyed 400 likely November 2026 voters in the city.
It was a mixed methodology survey which means folks got emails and texts to take it online as well as live interviews.
The overall margin of error for that sample size is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
And the demographics that we're using throughout are representative of the likely November 2026 electorate across all key demographic groups and we've heard the survey in both English and Spanish.
These slides just confirm those demographics again as I said representative of the November electorate this year.
And then getting into the data.
This is one of the first questions we ask voters before we tell them what the survey is about the city is looking at a revenue measure or anything.
This is an open-ended question where we ask them what they feel the most important problem facing the city is.
And as I said it's open-ended, they can say anything they want and then we take their responses and code them into these categories and themes.
So we see really housing affordability rising to the top if you combine that with cost of living.
There's about a third who are saying those kind of pocketbook issues crime and homelessness also big concerns people are citing top of mind.
But taxes themselves are not kind of up a lot. You can see that all the way at the bottom highlighted just 2% said that's the biggest thing they're concerned about in the city.
And then we asked them this ballot question.
This is the exact text we tested on the left which gives the half cent rate.
The total revenue it would raise each year in some additional information.
This is really representative of something that could be on the ballot informed by prior measures.
You've tested and in consultation with the city staff.
So when we ask voters this and we haven't given them any information besides what's on the screen here.
We see that 60% say they are likely to support this measure that they would vote gas and this just seems a simple majority threshold.
So pretty good on the initial vote.
Then after that we tested this list of things that the measure could fund different things that the city is responsible for paying for.
And really what you see here.
Those dark blue and green bars those are positive and there's a lot of that on here.
Folks saying all these different components things that could be funded make them more likely to support the measure.
So a lot of the priorities that the city council has explored funding through this measure such as park service youth services libraries.
I'm addressing homelessness all of that really resonates with voters saying they're more likely to support.
Then this is the text of the messages that we read the information about what the measure would do.
And then on the left there's just a short hand that you'll see on the next screen.
So we have a variety of themes some about what it would fund.
And those same libraries parks youth services some about the fiscal management and and the oversight.
And then here on this slide is how those messages performed again a lot of that blue showing that voters found those messages convincing as reasons to support the measure.
What you see here is there's kind of two tiers of messages that did really well one is those clear service impact focused messages where we said it's going to fund library hours and youth services and parks and all the things people want to see in the city.
And another tier focused on the fiscal controls and that the money would all stay here locally cannot be taken by the state there would be oversight of it and that the city would be responsible with the funds all of that really resonated with voters.
So after we tell them all that those good things the measure would do we ask them how they would vote on it again.
So that's that second set of bars and we see that the support raises to almost three quarters seventy four percent of voters saying they would support this measure now.
And a decrease both in the know and the don't know so even people who were opposed initially some of them are moving towards support just with this information about what it would do.
Finally we asked them about this opposition statement on the left covering some of the themes of why people may come out against attacks increase like this talking about cost of living and such.
And while voters do find that convincing seven and 10 said it was convincing when we asked them how they would vote having heard all of that we still see the support is really strong almost two thirds supporting the measure.
And a greater intensity in that certain so even better than the initial vote even have heard all that message.
And that's the end of the presentation.
Thank you.
Okay. Any questions?
You may as members.
I was reading on the report and it says that it was geared towards essential services can you tell me what those essential services are.
Yes so I don't know if anyone from staff wants to jump in but because it's a general use measure it would be up to the city council to allocate those funds.
And we tested a variety of priorities like I mentioned that could be funded the voters supported.
So we would decide a city council where that money would go.
Correct.
Yes.
I wanted to enhance example of code enforcement.
Take a look at codeforce officers.
If you wanted to take a look at offering different kind of after school programs for the youth of the community we can take a look and provide those items there.
This will come back in front of the city council.
To determine how you want to expend the funds. And it can change year to year. We depend on the priorities that you put up for city council, or city staff during a budget process.
So, everything is open. If you would have higher additional staffing or units within the police department, the fire department, you would be able to do that as well. Those are your priority to new year goals. Would you like to do what the funding once it comes in?
Can you go back to that other screen? I just have a question.
Yeah, which one?
The messages are the...
Probably another one.
This one?
Yes.
Yeah.
So right there, it says all proposed use of funds make voters more likely to support the measure.
And it has on their maintain fire fighting staffing, right?
So is that what we're telling then it goes down to improve library traffic safety, neighborhood police patrols, help address homelessness and Santa Maria?
Mm-hmm.
So, when we did the survey, is this what we told them that we were going to be spending the money on?
So, not quite. This was asked.
Here are some things that the measure could fund.
How would that impact your likelihood to vote on it?
So we tested some things that had been identified as priorities that we knew you all were looking at funding.
Some things that maybe weren't going to be funded and just asked voters about all of them.
Not saying this is what it would fund, but this is something a general measure could fund.
And of course, it's up to city council's discretion.
And really, I think it's remarkable here that pretty much all of them are 80 plus support.
There's a little differentiation, but not really.
So what this tells me is voters like the things you would do with this money.
Okay.
Yeah, because I don't want the public to think that we're going to pass this, right?
And then, we're paying firefighters, we're paying emergency.
Everything that's just say hypothetically, everything on her, that's where all the money went.
Right?
No. This is just, sorry, if I may just add, since I said in those conversations with Alice, I'm there.
A lot of these, these are just, we were essentially testing messaging, as it was mentioned,
to help us get a clear sense of how we would move forward with a potential ballot proposition.
This is going to help us to write the measure.
So we can decide on what we want to put in the measure.
Okay.
Yes.
So we just didn't want them to think that, oh, this is where money's going to go, and then we use it a different way.
Well, it probably would go to some of it.
Well, it should.
Yeah.
But then when we write the measure, if we're going to say, okay, half of it's going to go for athletic fields, for instance.
You know, but we're going to write the measure depending on what we see here.
Okay.
That was my question.
Okay.
Any other questions?
I guess you're not as exciting as backflow valves.
Yeah.
Save the muscle exciting for last time, sure.
Oh, my God.
This is really good.
Thank you very much.
I think this is so telling.
And actually, I think it really came out better than I was anticipating, I guess, in a way.
But I think all those things there are so important to our community.
And I think we, we feel that up here also.
Yeah.
Okay.
Any, no questions or anything?
Hey, thank you very much.
Oh.
And I, Ms. Bryant, you want to speak.
Start off by saying what a pleasure it's been to be here with you this evening.
Again, Nicole Bryant from SEI, you local six, 20.
Last item of the night, last time you'll hear from me tonight.
Our union members support placing a proposed sales tax measure being put on the ballot as a responsible
step towards sustainable revenues.
Revenue is must keep pace with increasing expenditures and broad-based solutions are more sustainable than repeat cuts to services and staff.
As previously stated, we also support the common sense reserve policy updates brought to this council and discussed on April 7.
Our members live work and spend their money in this community supporting stable revenue and reserve strength in the entire city.
We urge the city council to advance these measures together to ensure long-term fiscal stability.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And SEIU is very instrumental in getting the measures pass as you will know in the past.
They have done such a great job doing that.
So thank you very much.
So now we have a report by Dave Rowland City Manager.
Madam Mayor, I received a written comment.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I received one written comment from Matthew Trickoff.
Okay.
And we received that.
Okay.
Do we have to provide direction or is it just received from fire?
Yeah.
It's as provide direction to staff to draft, approving resolution for submission or am I in the wrong agenda?
Yes, look at it.
Provide direction for us to bring it back.
Sounds much better for your approval.
So can you explain what exactly what kind of direction exactly you're looking for?
That's the question.
And there was a lot of headnotes.
So we took that at 10 o'clock we assumed that you wanted to bring it back.
Yeah.
It's best that we make no assumptions.
So this is as part of the general municipal election to be held in November of 2026.
Okay.
I mean, I'm interested to go ahead, Mr. Rollins.
Well, thank you.
It's 10 o'clock in the night.
We'll go ahead and quickly.
We have two more minutes.
We've got the chamber of commerce.
It's about update to the next meeting.
We're looking at an introduction of an ordinance for catering vehicle or its updates.
What?
I'm sorry.
I'm confused in the process.
Direction was not given.
Okay.
There was a consensus.
Yeah.
That's what Tom just said.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there is consensus from the council.
Yeah.
To move forward.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just want to confirm.
Yeah.
That everybody was on the same page.
Because I didn't hear anything.
I'm sorry.
I'm really well.
No.
No, not from you.
I heard what you said.
But I.
I just don't want to make assumptions that the whole council is on the same page.
But I'm glad that in this one we are.
Thank you.
The clarification.
Yeah.
We'll bring you out the sales tag.
Okay.
So now we have the oral reports of council members.
Do you want to start in this course?
On Wednesday.
April 8th.
I went on duty with the Senate Maria fire department.
It was great.
And Saturday April 18th.
They went to the dog park.
We're ribbing cutting ceremony.
April 24th.
They went to the strawberry dinner.
Saturday April 25th.
They went to present a proclamation to the Philharmonic society.
Thank you.
Mr. Battalia.
For eight.
I went to the Senate.
Please support me.
I was part of an interview panel for.
Be.
I met with the Tilly director for 10th.
I met with the fire fire junior.
For 20th.
I met with police chief Williams.
For 23th.
I met with fire chief.
For 24th.
I met with fire chief.
For 24th.
I met with fire chief.
For 24th.
I attended strawberry dinner.
For 25th.
Sir Senator.
It was very beautiful but I was
mature.
Two years ago when it was up.
We just always wanted to make it a
creative challenge.
It was also presented was built by the
아니에요 Milkman state which I also attended.
The mayor's task force.
Great program at the Mermer.
It was great to interact with the exclusive students.
fontai and that same.
I attended the harmonic event.
And then fourth and thirty.
I met with director.
Finance to rub budget.
Thank you.
Councilmember Hernandez.
April 1st, I went to the housing summit.
On the 6th, I went to the Econ Alliance Board meeting.
April 8th, I went to the mayor and medical hospital board meeting.
April 10th, I went to the event for root.
May 2nd, I went to the, sorry, the April 24th.
I went to the candidate academy that was put on by the Chamber of Commerce.
And I also went to the strawberry dinner that evening and May 2nd.
This weekend, I went to the Kentucky Derby event and the event for North County root crisis.
Thank you.
Councilmember Soto.
Thank you.
On Friday, April 10th, I attended the elected leader's farm to address homelessness and housing on April 13th,
I attended the DHM City of Santa Maria Poling meeting.
I'm glad that that went forward today.
On April 17th, I attended a budget briefing on public workshops.
On April 18th, I attended the job ribbon cutting event.
On April 21st, we had a city special meeting that I attended.
And...
I want to say...
Oh, on May 1st, happy May Day.
On May 1st, I attended a budget review.
Like, three hour session here.
Thank you so much for, for everybody who made that happen and gave me so much insight on the budget process.
And those are my reportable items.
Thank you.
April 10th, I attended the Calacog Virtual Board meeting.
On April 13th, I attended my Mary's Youth Task Force meeting meeting at Santa Maria High School.
And then at Pioneer High School, April 16th, I attended the SBK Board meeting on the 17th,
fighting back, Santa Maria Valley Board meeting.
On the 18th, I went to the park park, ribbon cutting,
and did the peace rose planting at Rotary Centennial Park.
On the...
On the 20th, I did the 3CE Policy Board meeting
and attended the Veterans and Military Meeting via Zoom.
On April 21st, April 22nd, did the 50-year celebration,
that we're putting together for the City of Santa Maria.
On the 24th, attended the 26th, strawberry industry dinner.
And on the 25th, did serve Santa Maria.
And so we went out to Pioneer Park and the Mayor's Youth Task Force
painted all the picnic tables and the benches.
And then did the Arbor Day Celebration at the park.
Celebrating Virginia Sousa during that day.
And April 30th, the first of our Mayor's Youth Task Force,
did our excursion down to C. UCLA, SC, Northridge,
the Getty Museum, the Scouts of Gardens, and the Broad Museum.
So we were all tired when we got back.
And if there are no other business this meeting is adjourned.