Good evening. I'd like to call the city council meeting of February 5th to order and I'd like to ask
the city to call the roll.
Are we going to do the invocation?
Call the roll first and we'll do the invocation because I'm out of order.
Council member Cross-White. Council member Hernandez. Council member Proctor.
Vice Mayor Garmin.
Here.
I'd like to call up al-Geline for the invocation. Could you all please stand?
I'm too out of order.
Yeah.
That is right.
Thank you for your blessings and all who are present here.
For all of deliberations and decisions that will lead to the betterment of our community.
We give you thanks for all the community members who are willing to help and assist our neighbors during the recent fires.
We know that some of our friends will be affected by the fire for some time in the future.
All this we ask for patience and understanding for all of us.
We also ask for guidance with them and considering the needs of our most vulnerable members of our community.
For all of this we give you thanks and that's for your spirit to be with us as we go about our daily work for the betterment of all of our community.
All of this we ask in your name.
Oh, man.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Garmin.
Would you be this in the by-sleep?
Absolutely.
Is it a lie?
Do I hand over your heart?
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the state of America.
And to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation.
I'm the God.
And it will.
With liberty and justice for all.
Okay.
Do we have a closed session report?
We did a major already.
Good.
And members of the council.
Good evening.
There were two items on the close session agenda tonight.
That close session began at 530 in the council discussed a significant exposure to litigation.
The government co-checks on 54956.92.
The council also had a discussion with their labor negotiators.
Michael Rock and the employee organization was SCIU local 721.
At the conclusion of that close session, the council took no report of elections.
Thank you.
At this point, it gives me a great pleasure to call on our chief police student.
I'm going to come up.
And he has a number of presentations and I'm going to come down.
So Steve can take some time with us.
And we all can get to meet our new officers and our people who have been.
Got information.
Thank you.
Mayor Vice Mayor.
Members of the council.
It's my pleasure to introduce you.
New members of our team as well of.
Two officers who are being promoted to the rack of sergeant.
It is small.
Please department.
We don't get that many openings for sergeants.
So when we do, it really is a big deal.
Especially when you're talking a 25-year veteran like Sergeant William Pickett.
Come up here, Bill.
Sergeant Walter Harper.
They were recently promoted to the rack of sergeants.
So well deserved and congratulations on your promotion.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And of course, we're in the process of enhancing our department.
And so what you see is part of our new membership new members of our team.
We look at have officer William you who came from the central police department.
He's got, he's a 12 year veteran.
So William you will stand up.
Be recognized.
Thank you.
Thank you, officer.
That's wonderful.
And we've got Jason Oboode who's currently a couple months into the field training program.
So Jason Oboode.
And of course we have a new dispatcher.
Please welcome Amanda Salinas.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Okay.
So we are.
Thank you.
Everybody we're really glad to have you all.
Okay.
All right.
So we are up to public comment on the agenda.
And at this point, I'd like to call Roger Dredman.
Good evening, Roger.
I'm ready vice mayor.
Good evening.
Council members staff.
In fellow citizens.
In residents.
This is going to be a very brief public comment.
And I'm going to complain about something.
And I really feel strongly about this.
This last week, I had to pay my business license fee.
It's too low.
Seriously.
If a business.
I paid under $40 from my business license.
And I don't make a lot of money.
But seriously, if a business.
Any business can't pay more than $40 for a business license.
Maybe it shouldn't be in business.
So I respectfully ask the committee.
The council to take a look at business license fees and find out what the comparable rates are in other cities.
And see if you can make me pay more next year.
Thank you.
Good idea.
Okay.
We've very seldom get people asking us to have them pay more.
But great.
Next speaker is Carlos Morris.
Hello.
I'm going to go first to meet you tonight.
Thank you.
And Randall, 155.
Say Road Santa Paula, California for those who don't know.
We'll be official here.
Mayor Gerardi and esteemed council members and.
Manager Rock.
We're here on behalf of the Santa Paula Historical Society.
We would like to share with you an invitation to a very special public event,
for having. And also shared with you, we hope all of you might also participate by joining
the Historical Society Mayor Gerardie. I know you've been a long time member, so we
appreciate that. We'll leave these here with you. Carlos will be here to explain a little
more about the event specifically, but again, we are asking, we're out kind of recruiting,
and we're trying to get more members and more interested in our Historical Society. We're
not politically motivated, we're not a community activist. We simply want to preserve history
by offering these immense which are educational, and again, some of them we try to do
a free or community events each year as well as our own annual meeting, which there's also
some information there about annual meeting for members. So with that, thank you for having
us here in letting us explain. I'm going to turn it over to my good friend and colleague Carlos,
Juarez, and what you've explained about that? Can I have these? Yes, if it's a list.
Yes, if it's a list. Okay. Okay. Are some application materials and some materials specifically
about the event, which Carlos will speak about? Thank you.
Thank you, and Randall. She's a president of the Historical Society. My name is Carlos Juarez. I live at
1320 for an Oak Strive here in Santa Paula. I believe, thank you for those words about the
Thomas fire. It's something that obviously affected all of us. I was here that night when
the fire happened, tragedy can strike at any moment. Sometimes you have minutes to respond, sometimes
hours, and it's incumbent upon all of us to remember. We're a historical study, and I'm sure we'll
remember this as years go by. We were in as great an effect it has been to, or Montecito, but nevertheless,
it started here. I draw your attention to what's going to be our event on Monday, March 12th at 7 p.m.
For those of you that don't know, I don't remember, that would be the 90th anniversary of the
break of the St. Francis Dam built by Wilmo Hond in the San Francisco, to serve the residents of Los
Angeles. The night that it was filled, it was filled to capacity, and there was really nothing to
give warning that it was going to give way other than it had a leak. And apparently it's quoted that they told
much more home that the dam leaked in his response was odd dam's leak. Unfortunately, at 3 minutes to midnight
on March 12th, 1928, the dam did break, and it started flowing down through the valley here, and so our residents
had about 3 hours to be notified. And since there was nothing to full on them, all they had was the
people from the town, including telephone operators who call people, people on motorcycles who wrote
around, and of course neighbors. As a result of that, they've lost well over 400 people, and so what the
historical site of this year is doing on Monday, March 12th is we're having a candlelight vigil. And this was an idea
by Anyard Ways, who's a Santa Paul high school teacher for music.
A member of our society. On that evening, we're going to begin at 7 o'clock at Ebel Park, and it will be an event that's going to be marked with some music by Xavier Montez, some speeches by Mitch Stone, John Nichols, and Peggy Helly, and some predators by Algaline and Nadi from the University of the Church.
There's going to be luminarians set up that are going to designate the amount of people that passed because of the flood in a certain color. In another color, it's going to be those that were unidentified, and then there's going to be 16 that are going to be identified, who identified from Santa Paula.
Those are going to be read by several students from all the schools in Santa Paula. She'd be a very moving event, and we promise you that it won't last more than an hour.
So we'll be at Ebel Park on Monday, March 12th, and so we'd like to invite you and all the public to join us.
As a follow-up to that, the historical site is having its annual dinner on that Thursday, the 15th, and I believe you're having some fliers that have passed out, and it'll kind of recap the events of the same Francis Stan, the kind of like visual, but also there'll be a speaker, John Wilkman, who's a filmmaker and author, who's going to be discussing the history of the event in his recent book Flood Path.
So we encourage you, if you're not a member of the historical site, and there'll hopefully be an article on the paper the next few weeks of getting people to join us.
Because it is for the historical site members or their guests, and I think at this point we'd like to invite as many people as possible to share that event, and it will be up to us on the 15th, 530 of Z.
You know, goes far and I believe the event starts at 7, and again we hope to be no more than an hour.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
And I would like to just say that both Ann and Carlos enter the audience that if you have an opportunity to participate in the historical societies, the events you should.
It's a pretty low-cost organization, and I think the programs have always been extremely interesting and informative and really good for you to have an opportunity to take part in if you can.
So thank you for coming tonight, and I will be at both, so.
Thank you, Mayor Jordi. Thank you.
Okay, our next speaker is Rose Chaconne. Rose.
Mayor Jordi and rest of the city council members.
I am here to speak in regards to some issues that have come to my attention in regards to our senior population here in Santa Paula.
And these were items that most of them I wasn't aware of previously, and as I talked to people and started doing a very unscientific survey of just anecdotal answers from 10 people in town.
And I asked the question, what can you give me one or two pressing issues that you would like to see addressed in Santa Paula, not necessarily by the city,
but just by everybody.
And I just wanted to bring these to your attention as you're thinking about potential regulations or things that you have to pass if you can kind of keep these things in the back of your mind.
The first answer that I got, and I got from six different people.
This was the number one item that they were very concerned with and I just went,
the lighting downtown.
They told me that they hated the lighting.
They didn't, they were afraid to go out at night.
They felt unsafe.
They felt unsafe just walking and not being able to see the sidewalk clearly.
You know, you're talking about people with walkers, with teens, and all sorts of limits on their mobility.
And that was the number one item.
And like I say, it was reiterated over and over again by different people.
It was brought to my attention that there is a gap in our senior care facilities.
There are senior care facilities.
We have the VISTA cove, which is the skilled nursing facility.
And if you don't need that, but you need just a little bit of help.
Like in assisted living, we don't have an assisted living here in town.
And so what is happening is that people that need a little bit of assistance end up having to stay in their home,
which may have become unsafe and unsanitary for them to live in the conditions that they're now living in.
Many people aren't aware that there are a number of assistance organizations here in town.
And in order to bring that to light, it was suggested that we have like a senior fair where we bring everybody in.
All the organizations hand out literature, talk to people, make them aware of things that are going on around town, both public and private.
Dementious services.
It was brought up that there are a lot of people that are in, just keep going.
That are in various stages of dementia.
And I know by I worked for a while with the Alzheimer's Association, they provide training on how to be sensitive to people with the various dementia.
And I believe there is no or very little cost at doing that.
And if we could have some of our public servants, people that work at counters, people that are in the grocery store, people that do a lot of things.
And I can see this a lot of times, especially at the grocery store, where the checkers are going so fast.
And people are, I mean, they get visibly upset because they can't keep up with what's going on around them.
And I think we just need to be more sensitive to that.
An issue regarding senior friendly communication, a website for the city.
I've been told, it has so much on it that it becomes difficult.
It is intimidating to use.
And especially for seniors or anybody who is not computer literate.
And if we can simplify it a little more, make the type a little bit bigger.
These small things can make a big difference as to whether or not somebody is going to use this tool or not use it.
Transportation is a big issue.
And although we have our little bus that will come and pick up and all, there are many times that there are culturally events going on in town.
Or just events that could facilitate social interaction with seniors that need, especially some that are at home most of the day to facilitate social interaction and get them out and get them enjoying life and that they're not isolated.
Free and or reasonable house cleaning.
This becomes very difficult, especially for people that are on the lower end of the economic.
Scale and they can't do housework anymore.
They can't bend and lift and do things.
And if we got a group of volunteers, if people know that there's this kind of a need out there, they'll rise to the occasion.
It was brought to my attention and intergenerational mentorship program.
And that could benefit people on both sides that could involve tutoring, helping the person explore career.
We have this wealth of knowledge information experience in our seniors and we are just letting it sit there.
And they can provide so much for us and especially if they're here and they don't have family here.
They have so much to give and we just have to reach out and bring that need together with someone who can fill that need.
Nutrition classes.
Simple exercises and exercise program, maybe they can develop themselves at home.
I understand that the senior program at the senior center has granted not by the general fund but by grant funding.
And if we can actively actively try to look for more grants for seniors and I hope that I understand that the assistant city manager wasn't that person supposed to be like a grant.
Hi.
To look for grants so that we can beef up that program because I know that over time it has gone willfully underfunded.
And as I recall, isn't there supposed to be a senior like committee?
Didn't we have one at one time?
Like we have the youth committee and we have this committee in that.
I don't think we have one but it might be an idea for the future.
Yeah, because I would personally be very interested in being involved in something like that.
Because just asking people this question, oh my gosh it was like somebody finally asked us and we can maybe have a voice.
And so I just wanted to throw this out there.
I know you guys got a lot on your plate but I'm giving you a little bit more to eat.
Thank you Rose.
Okay, the next one is Jack Pitluck.
And I have two cards for Jack Pitluck.
Some calling it out for two cards.
Madam there, this is not a reflection on any of the speakers that we might move the municipal code from in front of the timer there.
I don't know if you can't see it so I don't know what you're talking about.
There you go.
We don't want the code to create an obstacle.
I don't even know if I should try to follow up after that.
Yeah, it's a little problem.
Marriage or party.
Vice Mayor Carmen.
Members of the Council of City manager.
I'm here in the evening has Mayor Sped on two items in chronological order.
The first is that the Santa Paula Chamber.
Oh, I'm here representing the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce.
The first item I'm here to speak about is a Chamber of Commerce reception.
We're calling it a super mixer that is being held on February 7th.
That would be this week.
And it will be at 530 p.m.
A Placio events center.
And it is a reception for the Santa Paula Times owners, Donna Debbie Johnson,
who are beginning to step back from the paper.
And I'm sure you all heard of that.
We will be having prizes.
This will be a Chamber mixer, but we will be having special prizes.
Food.
We will also be.
Excuse me.
We will also have a couple of tickets for moonlight at the ranch for those that are interested.
The event is open to all, not just members of the chamber because this is a special event.
Mission is $10 at the door.
We look forward to and I want to invite all of you to join us.
Okay.
My second announcement for the evening and is actually an invitation to all of the members of the council,
city manager and members of the city government as well as all members of our community.
I'd like to formally invite our mayor to bring us our state of the city address on March 8th.
Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce awards dinner.
That will be held beginning at 530 at the Plasio event center.
And it is a special evening for not only to hear our state of the city address, but also equally importantly.
It is our awards banquet where we will honor a number of businesses and community service providers or participants.
Normally, I would be up here announcing who those winners are this year.
However, a couple of them have not been notified yet, so I'm going to hold back.
But their names are right here.
We do have a large business of the award, a small business of the award, non-profit community service of the year award.
Business beautification of the year and citizen of the year.
And this year we are going to have a Sam Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award.
So it's going to be a very special evening.
It will run beginning at 530 and we look forward to everyone attending to help us not only honor all of the award winners,
but also to hear the mayor's state of the city address.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
What was the start time on the chamber awards?
530.
Dinner at 6.
Thank you, Chair.
Okay, and I have one last card, and that's Andy Silva.
Andy Silva.
1236.
Bruce Rive.
Santa Paula.
Mayor.
Vice Mayor of Thompson.
I'm trying to get an update on what's going on with the consultant for the use services needs assessment.
If it's my understanding that some limitations went out to some entities, I'm curious.
Who was approached?
What was the criteria?
How will who went with a decision be made and how will it be made and who's making that decision?
Who is going to help them to find the scope of the study once we figure out who it is?
And how can interesting community members be involved?
Thank you, Andy.
I've already asked our city manager to comment on that.
Under his city manager's report, so you may get your answers real quick.
Thank you.
Okay, I don't have any further cards for public comment. At this time, so I believe we're up to city council reports.
Does anybody have a report?
Yeah, a couple of things. A couple of events.
And once you just this weekend, a really good event. One billion rising.
And I think that council member, cross-white, could make a more comment on that.
But I wanted to give a special thank you to, to, it's Heather Van Heam.
Is that her name?
I mean, she did an amazing job of community policing and talking to the people there.
And just, I was so proud of her. And also, I want to make mention that the chief was there along with Scott Marner.
And it was a great event. It was done in Spanish. And then translated into English.
Then secondly, EDC VC, the economic development collaborative of Ventura County, I sit on that board.
I attended their annual dinner with our assistant city manager, who has just been pointed out again.
It's time to be out. I'm getting there. I'm getting closer.
And it was really an interesting topic. And it was a mouthful.
I'm going to have to read it entrepreneurial ecosystem.
And at the beginning of the presentation, he played about a five or six minutes YouTube video.
And it was called How Wolves Change Rivers.
Now, I would recommend that you Google that.
Because it talks about the reduction of Wolves into the Yellowstone Park.
And what does that have to do with it?
He kept drawing analogies of how bringing different businesses and how the parallels are in business and nature.
But if nothing else, go watch the, it's called How Wolves Change Rivers.
I just want to give a report back to the council.
I had the opportunity.
Little over a week ago to go tour the toll on the landfill.
I don't know if any of you are aware.
But as a result of the Thomas Fires, there was close to a thousand homes that were destroyed in our county.
And so what we did was to partner with Cal Recycle, which is a state agency, to provide some debris clean up of those homes.
And do it per health and safety and welfare codes.
In other words, get all the hazardous material out.
And have a clean space.
So if those homeowners wanted to rebuild, they could do so.
And this was at no cost to the homeowners.
So about two thirds of those over 600 of them signed up for this debris clean up in our county.
You know, not only to toll on landfill sustains some damage, as a result of the fire, which has already been repaired.
And it's back online, it only took about three weeks to do so.
They partnered with Cal Recycle, who's a lead agency in this and partnered with the county.
Environmental Health and planning to authorize an emergency use authorization for the landfill to start accepting that.
Debrit clean up.
Increasing their daily tonage and allowing them to operate seven days a week in order to accommodate the intense amount of debris that was going up there.
And they also partnered with the county using toll on park, which many of you may or may not know exists out there along toll and road.
But it has a loop road around it where they were going to stage trucks to get them off the road.
They also used a underpass that's just passed the Santa Clara River Valley School or the school little red school house.
It's just passed that it's a right from the right-hand turn.
You turn right and it goes under the one 26 and comes back up and heads back west to not in and date that left-hand turn lane going up to toll and road.
And so I wanted to monitor that and see because they apparently had traffic monitors.
They have daily air quality monitors out there that are in place by the contractor that the state contracted with to do this work.
And it's not VRS. The Vinter Regional Sanitation District staff. It's a contracted workers with the state.
Quite impressed with the operations up there. There was several trucks up there. They're always staging they have two scales up there to accommodate the amount of trucks.
They have a lot of trucks that are monitoring the trucks that are coming in documenting them documenting that the waste has been fully wrapped before it goes up there.
And up at the working face where they're putting this as well.
So just want to let people know about that update. You may have seen these little. They're not quite the size of a regular semi truck.
They're maybe about half the size. They're just little duck trucks and they're very well labeled.
They say debris clean up contractor on the side. They've flagged them on. They're all numbered.
But I do announce this for two reasons. One, your Regional Sanitation District Board representative on that board.
That monitors that landfill and manages that along with other things throughout the county, but also if you have any complaints about how these trucks are driving.
Please get in contact with me so that we can through the Regional Sanitation District Contact.
That's how recycle who will then take that up with their operator.
Okay, so that was a mouthful, but I just wanted to give you an update on that. I know they recently sent the mayor memo regarding a lot of this that I've spoke about tonight.
And also to our local newspaper. So just to.
Right.
Martin. Thank you.
I think what they're doing is something we clearly need.
The only problem I had with it and it's something that's been rectified is that the city of Santa Paula was not notified. This was going on.
So, you know, we found out about it through the newspaper.
I think the county is a little bit aware of the fact that if they're going to be running 500 extra trucks on the street in front of us, that they need to tell us.
And so the letter went a long way in explaining what they were doing, but clearly, you know, nobody's going to object. Everybody understands what the fire did.
So thank you for your report. And if again, if you have any problems with it, contact Martin.
Did you have anything you want to?
I'll just say briefly. Thanks. Councilmember Proctor for your help with the one billion rising event.
This was the fifth annual event and it went really well.
We had a lot of sponsors and I'm not going to take up the time to thank them all right now, but thank you to everyone who helped and who attended.
It was an event to raise awareness about domestic violence and human trafficking and all kinds of gender-based violence.
And there were, I think, 13 to 15 different organizations that were there that people could get information from and resources.
And they had on site counseling and so anyway, it was a great event.
And then I also want to say thank you to Elvia Hernandez and our lady of Guadalupe Church, and then Jose Luis Milgar, a Palacio for the great event that they put on to thank all of the city workers and first responders from the Thomas fire.
So thank you.
Great. Thank you.
Okay, I think we're, unless there's anybody else, have anything less than it.
I would concur with that. It was a great event at Palacio.
Can I ask for the city manager's report?
Yes, thank you Mayor members of the council. A couple things.
There is a, the council gave direction to staff back a couple months ago to proceed with the needs assessment for youth services and programs.
The staff released requests for proposals from professional consulting companies.
We did receive responses back or reviewing those responses.
And we will come back to the city council with a recommendation to hire a consultant at the next council meeting.
The scope of work is includes interviews, surveys, focus groups, community workshops, and a summary report.
And all of this is a public document and is in the request for proposals.
I'd be happy to share that with Andy or anyone who's interested in what the scope of work is.
And so we're looking forward to getting that process started very soon.
And related to that issue, the youth advisory committee, which the council did form last year.
We have finally finished the application and release of waivers and have permission from the city attorney to proceed with recruiting five.
I believe it's five members to a youth advisory committee.
We'll be working with the school district to immediately advertise those openings.
And we will have it on our webpage and Facebook very soon.
The application is available for anybody who's interested up to 25 years of age and looking forward to getting that committee started.
So that is underway.
Do you have anything else?
Oh, I do have one other item.
I received a communication from the county regarding the memorandum of agreement on the fire and excitation issue.
And they will be meeting internally on Wednesday of this week and they will be setting up a meeting to respond.
And to continue this negotiating process with the city hopefully next week.
So that is moving along and report further on that is.
And we're hoping to, you know, just keep this thing moving as quickly as we can.
Great.
Okay.
So we are now up to the approval of final agenda.
Anybody have any changes?
Okay, consent calendar.
Do we have an action?
We don't have any comments that you want to pull anything on.
Okay, so I'll move first.
That we approve the final agenda.
All of it.
Hi.
And I'll move.
We approve the consent calendar.
Second.
All those in favor?
Okay, that was quick.
We're making up for time that we let people run over just a few.
Okay, so we're up to the order of business and I believe.
The item is the discussion of the administration of the housing authority board and the affordable housing trust funds.
So may I remember the council.
I have a couple of bars on that too.
Okay.
Would you like to do that?
I think maybe we.
I'm just going to get a shake of heads for people.
I think maybe we'll be appropriate for us to have the staff presentation first.
And then we'll call this.
Okay.
So the council suggested a.
Basically, this is sort of like a workshop.
It's just that it was a short agenda.
So we put it on the regular agenda.
And then James are deputy planning directors going to give a presentation on the housing authority and on the in the housing fees issue.
This is a study session.
We're looking for direction perhaps from the city council.
There are no recommended actions tonight.
So with that, I will invite James Mason to.
Give the report.
Thank you.
Good evening Madam Mayor.
Vice Mayor and council members.
So Mr. Rock mentioned.
So tonight more of a workshop or study session than actual order of business kind of to give you the council.
Some background and be able to get some direction for staff from council.
Staff recommends that city council receive and file this report and direct staff on recommended alternatives.
I've got several recommended alternatives at the end of the report that we can discuss further.
And take action.
Both on council side and on staff side as we move forward.
I want to go through a few things just a little bit of background on some of the city processes and how housing authority came to be and where we are today.
But basically in 1969 based on state statutes city council adopted a resolution declaring the city council as the housing authority and the council as the commissioners of the authority.
In 1970 the council adopted another resolution rescinding the council as the housing authority commission and appointed commissioners of the Santa Paula Housing Authority.
The Santa Paula Housing Authority was formed in 1968 so it kind of preceded the actual council housing authority.
So it's kind of two entities operating at the same time.
I think the idea was to provide direction so that there wasn't a conflict there.
But then in 2014 the city council adopted resolution authorizing the housing authority to administer in movies.
We'll talk about that a little bit more.
Excuse me and ask and if you have a question as he's going long because this is a very confusing issue.
Please feel free to let me know and we'll ask him a question.
So are you saying that since 1970 to 2014?
Nobody changed any of the rules or any of the regulations.
I presume the council appointed the housing commissioners in 1970.
Who's appointed them since because they can't also be alive.
That.
The municipal code grants the authority to the city council to appoint housing authority commissioners.
It has not been done since I've been city attorney.
So I can't I can't see when the last time it was done.
Okay, so do we have the terms of the existing people we know who they are.
But what it is, what they are. We don't have that tonight, but I will address that later also. I think the main thing is the overarching theme that you'll see in this is just really how we move forward, what we know as far as accountability and how we ensure that from the council side and how affordable housing is managed that we have visibility, clarity and accountability.
Can you clarify you said that there was at 1.2 different organizations and in 1970 they became one, is that what you said?
No, so you clarify that actually it's something about 1968.
In 1968, the housing authority as an organization was formed. In 1969, the housing authority as a council commission managing funding and processes associated with affordable housing.
So one was a nonprofit, one was a city entity and in 1970 the city turned that over to the nonprofit to that commission, to their commission to be the board for affordable housing.
James, in some place in your presentation, I don't want to make you jump ahead. Are you going to address how the agency is funded, who's responsible for it and how does it relate to the city?
Okay, you are as usual on the spoiler alert, so there goes my whole presentation.
Sorry.
Yeah, well, I was at a order all year.
Just a student up to figure that one out, but really what it comes down to is there'll be some recommendations on how we get to that point because that's really important to how we move forward.
So I will address that. Okay.
Last thing I'll address, unfortunately, but I'll get there.
Okay.
Also in 2004, the city initiated in lieu housing ordinance and that was to ensure that affordable housing was a priority within the city.
And also when housing was built that didn't fit it within affordable housing, that there's in lieu fees associated to ensure that there's funds available to build.
Low income and very low income housing in the community.
Excuse me. The city just didn't do it because they're good people. They did it because the state law required them to do that. Is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay.
Just want to be clear on that.
That.
That committee that did that along with Mary Ann Crossey who is in the audience.
And I don't remember that being an absolute, absolute necessity.
But anyway, let's go ahead.
We get argue both in front of that perspective.
Maybe it became one.
As cities in lieu housing ordinance really in certain circumstances, as I mentioned, developers are authorized to pay those fees instead of building affordable housing units.
That goes into cities affordable housing trust fund.
Let's talk about that a little bit later.
And then the in lieu fees are deposited in that trust fund and city council defines how that's used.
And the city manager or as designated as a community and ministers that affordable housing trust fund based on council's recommendations.
And first amendment in the rest of the development agreement.
This is important because when we're talking about in lieu housing,
the biggest significant impact that we're going to deal with is coming out of the Luminaire Lewis development.
And as a part of that ordinance and as a part of the development agreement, the Luminaire Lewis,
the developer will contribute to total of $6.5 million to the city's affordable housing trust fund.
And that's around $4600 per unit that receives a certificate of occupancy.
Real quickly just because there looks like there may be a gap there between $4600 and $65.5 million.
It's exclusive of public benefit units and assisted living units.
So there are some units that they plan to build that will qualify for affordable housing that will take some of them off of the in lieu.
So moving forward the concerns that we have is there needs to be clarity and accountability regarding the operation of the housing authority.
And whether that's an external agency or an internal agency, we all have a fiduciary responsibility for the use of public funds.
The need for a competitive process to allocate the funds.
And that's important because there's shifts in affordable housing demands.
I mean there are needs within the community that year to year, decade to decade dramatically can change,
where the needs are.
Is it families?
Is it veterans?
Is it homeless?
Is it seniors?
And having an understanding of what those things are.
And then funding sources.
Grants are available.
Matching funds are available from the state and federal government.
And they're looking for things like collaboration between organizations.
To be able to get those funds.
And current reliance on the housing trust fund to leverage funding as I mentioned.
State and federal funds are available.
Those funds can be used to as match funds to actually get us more funding for programs.
And then diversity of vulnerable groups that need affordable housing.
I already mentioned.
We've got farm workers.
We've got homeless.
We've got veterans seniors and families that are all within.
And people with disabilities all within low income categories.
And being able to ensure that we have a process that addresses all of them.
So quickly, revisions to the affordable housing administration authority.
These are some of the things that staff is really from a, I guess from a workshops standpoint,
putting out there for council to consider some approaches.
One is to initiate city council as the housing authority board,
being responsible for affordable housing policy, housing inluffies, and affordable housing trust funds.
And then another one is to implement an affordable housing advisory body.
Like the planning commission or, as you mentioned, youth commission.
Having a body that can provide recommendations on housing policy to the council.
Reach out to community stakeholders that deal with affordable housing and provide that information to council.
Recommendations on the allocations of funds.
And on the city control funds, the inluffies and housing trust fund.
And establish and maintain relationships with local affordable housing development organizations.
So that we have openness, transparency and really best practices within the market.
Understanding what's happening out there.
And that body could be accomplished two different ways.
One like we do many of our commissions, a pointing five group member that's individuals that are not affiliated with affordable housing agencies or with the city.
Or by initiating a competitive process to select an agency that has a specialty in working collaboratively with private nonprofits and public sector.
James, I'm going to stop you again.
Because again, I'm having difficulty understanding the issue because it's not clear to me what the other agency does.
Okay and I and I'm not sure the relationship between the city and the other agency.
I know people that can't afford an apartment or simply to live go to them.
They apply for some kind of low income housing.
They help them to get on a long list.
These help them get an apartment or something.
They check out apartments.
They manage their rent.
I'm not sure how what they do and I also find it unusual or perhaps.
Odd that nobody from the housing authorities here this evening to discuss.
Are they okay to discuss what it is what their role is and what the relationship is with the city.
And until I really have a good understanding of that question, I have a hard time looking at making recommendations for change because it's not clear what they're doing right now.
I can address that right now.
Where I was going and really what it comes down to is we have not had any formalized process for receiving an annual report.
Understanding how operations happen.
Understanding what the responsibilities are.
And that's critically important and you know, you picking up on that from the standpoint.
If we're going to make decisions based on an operation of an organization and what the financial responsibilities are and how it's operating.
And we may take those responsibilities over as a council and as staff.
It behooves us to understand what those things are.
At this point we do not have.
We have not received those reports and one of the recommendations staff has is for council to recommend that we approach the housing authority.
Receive start to receive an annual report and get a full disclosure of understanding how all of all these things work.
So we can come back to you with a clear understanding of what is entailed and how how the operation works and what our responsibility could be.
Okay.
From again my perspective apparently we've been doing this since 1970 according to this.
And so there should be some clarity or some idea of what the city's role is versus what the housing authority's role is.
And whether it's changed in 2004 or not I don't know but it seems to me that that ought to be the first step.
And at least laying that out.
So we see exactly what the expectations are what the responsibilities are of each of the agencies.
I think I understand the fiduciary responsibility of the city having fees.
And whether they you know by by ordinance or whatever couple years ago they just gave it to the housing authority.
Whether we're going to leave that or not is an issue or a question but I think we ought to have the information.
So we have that fully in front of us before we make a decision about which way to go.
That's just my opinion on others may differ on that John.
I can get through the presentation because I think he's okay.
I think he's almost done.
And I would address that too that that's.
Madam Mayor it's it's clear that we.
Put it plainly we need a clear understanding of soup to nuts before we can do anything.
I mean we really really do.
I'm sorry.
No thank you John.
I thought it was finished.
And then the other thing was talking about a fort just the affordable housing trust fund in in Luffy's that there is.
There's an opportunity to have a competitive process that's another recommendation.
It provides for rehabilitation and preservation and production of quality housing and ensure as I mentioned before that the type of housing that's presented and provided is diverse.
So there's you know lots of players in the market and that are nonprofits that understand all the nuances of different affordable housing options.
And it would benefit us to have a better understanding and better opportunity to have better products.
Yeah, maybe I'm confusing this would be able to re-development agency housing set aside.
But isn't there it was a certain percentage that was devoted to rehab that we could only use a certain percentage just evering about.
That was part of the resolution that was passed in 2014.
2014.
Okay.
That was something that the the council at the time said that 20% of that should be used for that purpose.
Okay.
So these are alternatives that we'd be looking at as I mentioned earlier further along down the road.
And that's we're sending the resolution that exists authorizing the housing authority to administer in Luffy's and housing trust fund.
And which is especially the East area one development trust funds and then adopt a resolution authorizing the city council to function as the housing authority board.
And then finally directing staff to initiate a competitive process to select an affordable housing advisory committee so that kind of hierarchy.
However,
Here we go to the city council could also direct staff to require a comprehensive annual report from the housing authority and return to the city council with the report.
And review the organization operations financial management programs before seeking any further direction.
So that's.
Just to add to that for some context here in the vast majority of cities in California have the function of a housing authority board is the responsibility of the city council acting the capacity of a housing authority board.
And then vast majority of cities do it that way in Santa Paula in 1970 they decided the council decided to release that authority to this body.
What's a little bit unusual is that the housing authority as far as we can tell is still appointed by the city council even though they act relatively independently.
And have full authority to make decisions on staffing budgets and all the typical things that an organization would do.
So what James and I are and we've been talking about this for a while is what we really I think what we need to do at this point and get direction from the city council is to come back to you with a full report and annual report but also a full report.
Of the governance structure of the housing authority their annual budget process their capital their projects that they're working on.
So that you can get a much better sense of how does this organization work.
What do they do?
What are their financial commitments and how are they staffed and how does that relate to what and how does the city fit into that picture.
As far as we can tell it has acted as a very independent standalone agency although the city council does appoint the housing authority board.
And then Lucy the city clerk and I have been asking all of the existing housing authority board members whether they're interested in being re-appointed or not.
As soon as we get that information we were planning to come back to the city council to resolve the issue of of the actual appointing process and the seats that are available there.
They're supposed to be appointed every four years and that's the function of the council and working with the staff to make sure that they are re-appointed so we'll we will do that at the next meeting as well.
Let me ask a couple more specific questions.
Is the housing authority working on the behest of the city council?
No not the way that it's been running practice now.
I understand the way it's been running practice but based on what you was said in 1969 and 1969.
1770 appears that the city turned over its obligation to the housing authority in the city's obligation.
So what I'm asking for is like, if you were an independent agency, this is, and bricks I know is on there.
If you were an independent agency, you would have statutory authority.
And you would have specific rules and regulations that you have to be in compliance with.
So I'm having difficulty understanding what their role is relative to the city.
And I think Rick, who's on the board, can answer some of those.
So, please ask Rick to step up. Thank you.
I've been on the housing authority for 37 years.
You're confusing the whole situation.
I'm sure I am. The housing authority is an independent board that originally was put together by the city council because of Section 8 funding that the federal government was going to give to the city of Santa Paula.
In order to do that, they had to produce a third party entity of non-profit organization to handle the Section 8 housing back in to 70s.
I was appointed to the board in 1982. Paul Beckett was the original actually was done all over.
It was the first one. Paul Beckett was the second one that ran this organization.
We have bylaws. We have responsibilities to the federal government because of the Section 8.
That was originally what was, that's all we did.
It was which rental assistance.
The rental assistance we had about 200 homes or families that were had funding available.
We would go and we're now at the 550 under the Section 8.
What's just being confused is the inluffy.
It's totally different. It's a whole separate situation from what the housing authority was originally set up to do.
During the Carter administration.
But there was cuts made to the federal government program.
What we looked at is how are we going to successfully help these families.
We were up to probably 300 or 400 families under Section 8.
We had no rental assistance.
The whole Oakland organization got into big trouble because they owned apartments.
And they were not only using Section 8 funding.
They were taking some of the other programs that were available.
Over the many years the federal government has tried to present other programs.
There was a housing assistance program in which a person could get into housing assistance.
And part of their assistance would go to a down payment to their houses.
As long as they stayed on their program for 10 years.
But after that 10 years they have to get off and they'd have to buy their own home.
We attempted that program probably 15 years ago.
We had like four families that took advantage of it.
But it really was under a federal program.
This whole housing authority.
It was nothing to do with the city of Santa Paula.
As far as reporting every year.
We'd go do the same thing that the city of Santa Paula did.
We hired independent outside.
Auditors.
They come in.
They do an annual audit.
We have to report to the federal government.
And there's same thing that you do.
What are the recommendations any findings that are made.
All those have been annually sent to the city of Santa Paula.
I don't know where they go.
But they've been sent annually to you.
It's a public record.
The same is what you have when you do your odds.
So every year we have to go out to bid.
I think we usually go to a three-year program for our auditors.
And annually we get an audit.
Probably two-year-old, whenever the 2014 came up.
The Enlufee's came up.
And it wasn't us that came to the city council.
It was city manager at the time.
They came to us and said, I need a mechanism in which to use this money to build,
to build homes in Loufee's.
He came to us.
We didn't come to them.
And he said, we've seen some of the programs you've done.
Because back when I told you that the Section 8 is all we did, we were afraid that the federal government
was going to cut that program.
And we wouldn't be able to help these people.
So our first project in which we were purchasing something was at 8th and Harvard.
We purchased 32 units.
And we used some in Loufee.
We didn't use in Loufee's.
We used some tax benefits to the owner.
If the owner financed us, all his interest was tax-free.
He could sell it to us, hold that paper.
Anything he made was tax-free to him under the federal government.
So we've used that several times to purchase different programs.
We've purchased apartments.
And the reason we were doing that is we knew, if we owned the apartments,
we could use that profit to supplement the Section 8.
And that's the only reason we got into owning apartments.
We didn't try and own apartments just to buy apartments or to do.
The next one that came up Mayor Gonzalez, the health care agency was going under on Main Street.
He came to us because the county wanted to turn it into something that he didn't want.
And he said, would you be able to make that a senior housing project?
And we said, yeah, we can go look at state funding for nonprofits.
And that's exactly what we did.
And we purchased that one.
Right at the corner.
I think it was dean.
Right there.
We did that one next.
And that's basically how we've grown.
We've, as we got money and as we were funding, there was venture county community trust.
We've used their money for down payments and we've paid them back.
But because you, the nonprofit availability of funds from not only private enterprises, but state and federal,
we've been able to purchase other projects.
As far as being seniors, we only did that because the council told us that's what you wanted.
In 2005, we bought Harvard Place, which is next to Poeloco, and we built that project.
And that was a collaboration with another nonprofit.
Housing trusts.
And we take over that one.
It was a 15 year buyout.
We take over complete control of that this next year.
But that was through.
It's got the longs office at the time that helped us with some of the funding.
So we're really independent of the city.
But what you do is control our commissioners.
You are supposed to appoint the commissioners.
And then after that, we're really an independent board that acts and is responsible to follow federal guidelines.
And any funding sources that we use, which would be the inluffy, you would attach any requirements to the inluffies towards the housing authority.
And if I'm understanding, it would be helpful to have this explanation.
And with this information, that's been put out today.
But yeah, I was I was I saw this going on and I thought I'm going to just run down.
Well, I believe I can express it in very much Rick, but what you're saying.
I think is that up until the issue of inluffies are really is in any city money involved.
Right. Exactly.
It's all federal state or some kind of grant.
That's all it ever was.
And then Jaime came to Randy J. I believe.
And said, I've liked your projects.
Can you do it? Would the siloufi help?
And obviously say, yeah, we could, you know, it'd be very helpful.
Yeah, that's all true.
What's highly unusual about this setup is that everything Rick's described would typically be an independent housing authority board.
Lots of big cities have them.
Sacramento housing authority.
It's a separate company.
There's nothing to do with the city of Sacramento.
They are independently.
A board that is elected either by the people that large or appointed.
But this is this is a little unusual because the council has to continually.
Keep the board intact by re-appointing by an appointment process.
And normally housing authority boards would be completely separate.
And so that's where it's a little.
A little fuzzy in terms of what is the city's role.
Everything Rick said is true in terms of how they've operated.
And so what I would suggest is that we come back to the council with a little more detailed sort of.
Here's where they are. Here's what they've done.
Here's who's on their board.
Here's, you know, where they are right now with their budget and their project.
To see you have a better understanding of everything they do.
So that we can then figure out.
Where do you want to go in terms of not just the in-loop housing fee.
But all the other projects that are going on.
Yeah.
We can take public comment.
And then we may have.
Could you stay because we may have a few more questions.
Thank you.
Going to call public comment at this point.
I'd like to call Mary and Krause.
Good evening Madam Mayor and members of council.
I have a prepared statement that there were several questions that kind of came up that I'd like to answer as well.
One of them is while I was on council with councilman proctor.
We did a point housing authority members during that time.
I recall interviewing people and we chose not to re-appoint someone and appointed someone else in their place.
So that was still going on as recently as 2006.
Next, the state law does not require us to have an inclusionary housing ordinance.
It was our own city housing element that was adopted actually while councilman
Espanosa was on council that said this is going to be probably the most important tool that the city has to meet the housing need that the state was imposing.
And so by the time councilman proctor and I were on council together we were the subcommittee that was working with staff to put together the inclusionary housing ordinance.
And that's the ordinance that includes the in-lu fees.
So that's how we got there.
That inclusionary housing ordinance does not recognize the use of any of those funds for rehabilitation.
It was to create new housing, not to rehabilitate housing.
You might be able to use some of those funds if you were taking market rate housing and turning it into affordable.
You might approve some rehab as a part of that process.
But it's not to rehab individual homes or other apartments or whatever because the city has other funds that they use for that purpose.
You have community development block grant funds and often.
But the reality is you would always program more community development block grant funds than you could use and you were at the end of the year.
You were reprogramming those funds because you hadn't used all your rehab money.
So the inclusionary housing ordinance money is supposed to be for new housing to create new housing.
Okay, so now my prepared statement.
I'm here with a group of people who are in the audience and we are Santa Paula together.
Which is a coalition of organizations and individuals that was formed in the fall of 2015.
To review and to comment on changes and emerging details related to the East area one development.
Several members of our organization are current or former members of the Santa Paula Farmorker Housing Committee,
which has a long history of advocacy on the housing element on the inclusionary housing ordinance and on the inluffies that come from that ordinance.
Following on their work.
Our organization has studied and remains very concerned about the management and the distribution of the inluffies in general.
And specifically on the six and a half million dollars that would be paid by the East area one development.
We believe that a fair and open process for distribution is needed to ensure that the funds will be used for their intended purpose.
And that adequate fiscal controls will be put in place to protect those valuable funds.
We also believe there should be an open examination of the two million dollars that the Santa Paula Housing Authority says it is already committed.
Just to note on our organization and the future you may see some of our work under the name Santa Clara Valley together,
which is a larger coalition that was recently formed to address issues of valley wide concern.
Santa Clara Valley together includes people from Santa Paula, Fillmore and Pyro.
And for purely local issues like we're talking about tonight, we will continue to address you as Santa Paula together.
Thank you.
Good evening, all you hardworking council and staff.
I'm Ellen Brokeau.
I'm speaking tonight for the Santa Paula Pharmacare Housing Committee.
Now we call ourselves Santa Paula House Pharmacare.
This committee started about, I don't know, at least 16 years ago, started by Al Galine and Dora Crouch.
With the mission vision that every Pharmacare living in Santa Paula have safe affordable decent housing.
And that is still our goal.
And it has still not been achieved. I am going to scrap most of what I was going to say having
listened to the presentation so far, which particularly listening to Mr. Arisa really underlines
our conviction that the city council needs to take charge and be in charge of how money's in the city, in the housing
and trust fund. The Senate Paul Housing Trust Fund are allocated. You have approved a housing element that tells
you what the needs are in the community, and it's not just farm workers, it's widespread, and commits you to addressing those needs.
And now you are going to have a substantial fund from the East area one to make a dent in that.
And Mr. Arisa made clear that the Santa Paula housing authority has primarily been working with the feds, and not carrying any of Santa Paula specific housing goals, and no fault to them, that was the way it was set up.
So, city council, the farm worker housing committee strongly supports your becoming the makers of policy and the administrators of the in-loop funds, and I think that way those funds will have the best chance to be effectively used to build the most
quantity and best quality housing for our community. Thank you.
Good evening, I'm Laura Spinoza, district director for Lou Lack, and I'm pleased to offer some comment tonight in support of the proposed recommendations of noted in the city council staff report, Lou Lack district 17 is a member of the Santa Paula together and Santa Paula Santa Clara Valley together group, and
we have followed the status of this item for several years and have participated in review of the council documents, resolutions and actions of previous city council bodies.
We advocate for your current action in order to emphasize the needed transparency going forward in the administration and distribution of future in Lou fees.
That is a key component that was seem to be lacking was transparency. We ask for a retraction of the previous resolution awarding the Santa Paula housing authority without that RFP process.
These in Lou fees and we seek a new resolution from you. It is also concerning to the public that all due diligence and openness allow for complete packs about all financials be presented regarding receipt of or allocation of in Lou fees.
It would be helpful if staff reports and I believe that it was adequately done in this report but going forward seeking additional facts and to include the legal criteria and the history of the use of these funds.
Thank you for your time and your review of this very important matter.
Thank you at this point with your indulgence I'd like to ask Rick to come back up to the podium and then I have a couple of questions and some of you may have questions.
Okay, if I'm finally letting this sink in because obviously I'm having a thick hit at night tonight.
There are currently no housing trust funds money. Is that correct?
Right, that too many dollars that apparently everybody thinks is committed to the housing authority.
It was not given to the housing authority. What the housing authority did in building the project on 12th Street and building the project on Oak Street.
We had to go out and have some financing to look for it.
I want to see the bank and your county community trust, lend us money for development.
One of the things that the bank said is we need some collateral and we told them, well we're going to get so much money.
Okay, so when you get that money, can we commit some of that money as collateral basically.
So it hasn't been spent. It's just it's kind of just saying it will extend you a credit card based on what you're going to get.
And we don't expect you to pay it to us. It's just in the event that that project falls apart.
The project isn't falling apart. It's just before we even build it. We know what we're going to charge for rents.
We know we have a huge market that is necessary to pay for that project.
So in every project we've ever before we even get started on it, we want to make sure it's self-sustaining once it's built.
But to build it, we didn't have the funds to build it ourselves. We had to go out and find funding to build it.
Once the funding, it's a construction loan, it transfers into a permanent loan with supposedly your 20.
It's the same as I'm going to make it simplified. If you're going to buy a home, you would put 20% down.
And that's the collateral we use and then they finance the rest of it.
But it's all it's paper basically at this point.
OK. I've never had a problem with going to a competitive process.
But that's not was asked of the housing authority. What was asked of the housing authority was can you handle the $6 million?
Which we could.
And I have that because it's obviously that was what was asked at the time.
I just want to make sure I understand where we are with the money.
What money is within the city's budget and or purview.
And what the housing authority has. What you've just said is use 2 million as a collateral.
But you don't even think you're going to need to use it.
Right. But we can't let it go because then the bank could say, wait a minute, you didn't get the $10 million in collateral.
And that's the only thing that we would say as a housing authority.
And I'm Ramsey's not here to ask.
But my understanding is we need that 2 million as collateral.
We may never use it if we were to, if it was freed up, we could then use it for another project.
The projects are dictated by what true what the community needs.
We have never said we're not going to build farm labor housing.
And a farm labor could easily apply to one of our low income projects.
You're correct in that there's a long list of people in the 2, 3 year list before someone even.
And that's probably why people get the misimpression that they can't apply.
They can apply as long as they meet the criteria of low income housing.
At the Harvard place it was a partnership with mental, mental health.
So some of those are dictated to only go to people under mental health.
I think Markine was at the well where Kathy Long was involved in it and that's how we got some of the funding.
And so we've used different funding sources to get projects started and get projects completed.
I want to say what else is really.
And your board decides which projects to go for.
Ramsey has been the one that puts them together.
As I said, we've partnered with other nonprofits.
A few years ago, you saw a lot of nonprofits because there was a lot of nonprofits.
But money's available come into Santa Paul.
We didn't necessarily partner with a lot of them.
Some of our independent.
There's one.
At 622.
He's Maine.
That was not ours.
You've got the one next to DMV.
That's not ours.
Those are independent third party nonprofits.
They're after the same money.
The same money is that the farmly this group is after.
We're more than happy to compete with anybody because we have seen what the salaries are of those.
The administrators.
We've seen what the rentals that they're charging.
We're not anywhere near.
I mean, my commissioner, we get $50.
Okay.
All right.
So let me ask again another hypothetical question.
And then I'll obviously other people have questions.
If we were to absent the $2 million, which is.
Off the table for right now could come back on the table.
But off the table for right now.
If the city were to retain all of the in-loop fees.
Within the city within the city's budget for the purposes of low income housing.
Your organization would continue on.
It's very way.
And you'd be just happy to come in and apply for some of that money.
Yes.
We would be more happy to come in.
More than happy to compete with anybody else.
It's going to ask for that money.
Okay.
And then the city would have.
We would ask for their financials, the same as ours.
And what they're going to charge for rent the same as ours.
To see who really is getting the best deal for the money.
Because I basically always hear, well, you're such a small organization.
You don't really get all the good funding and Sacramento.
I've been in Sacramento.
We get funding.
It's just whether you can leverage that.
Okay.
Who else?
Anybody else have a question for Rick?
Okay.
Or anybody's?
Martin?
Thank you.
Please take.
Just a guess.
Thanks.
Thank you, Mayor.
Yeah.
I'm so excited to have this before us tonight.
I mean, I've been asking for this to come back since we made that.
I'm going to use some strong language tonight.
That ill-fated decision back in June of 14.
As you heard the housing trust commissioner, Riza, state that they didn't ask for this money.
You know, what I objected to that night and what the community objected to is that
this was basically forced down our throats, I'll say.
It was an outreach by people that are no longer here that made this offer to the authority.
They said, well, sure, we're not going to turn that money away.
It came unannounced to council meeting on the agenda.
And we made the decision that night.
I was so angry about that because I'll tell you why.
Because the history on this is that the Santa Paula House Farm Workers Committee, right,
attended since its inception way back, had been asking the city administration.
I don't even know if I think it may have even been with Wally.
I'm not quite sure.
It was, right?
You sent the first letter to Wally Bobcoyote saying, hey, we understand that this came as a part of the development agreement.
We'd really like to be involved in the process of how this oversight committee has developed.
That's all they're asking for.
They weren't asking to be the decision makers.
They just wanted to be a part of a transparent process that at the end of the day, whoever was chosen was chosen.
So that's not what happened, unfortunately.
And they made several attempts to contact the city with the following city manager and so forth.
And it was just totally ignored.
It was really, really unfortunate.
I meant to preface my comments with, this is, by no way,
or means a reflection of the housing authority, I think they do great work.
I've been to many ribbon cuttings.
And what you guys have been able to do with your blended creative funding is amazing commissioner.
And I've told Ramsey that many of the ribbon cuttings.
How you've been able to leverage state money and federal money to build a,
a thorny, metafact accounting, you know,
Kristi Madden in that group that is the one that comes through with a funding to help out with some of the partner with you.
Always looks to you as a leader in developing a fortabilding because how creative you are in leveraging it.
So with that said, I really look at this as two issues.
Really one is the housing authority issue, which is over that filter, the cracks with the city is in the past.
Previous councils, some did a better job than others.
We're charged with that now.
Let's revisit that and let's see how we can bone that up better because I know it's really not too unlike, for example,
what I do in my day job, the Pirate of Cemetery District, they're independent,
Legislatively authorized independent quasi governmental agency yet,
that their district supervisor appoints all their board members.
Other than that, there's no per view whatsoever.
But they do have bylaws who only do monitor that when they come for reappointment,
and so it's not unusual that relationship.
But so that's one thing.
And I think that's going to be a longer issue for us personally speaking.
I think tonight the issue is in the fees.
And looking at options to how we provide that money to be leveraged by affordable housing builders in our community,
in our county, right?
I mean, it could be housing authority.
It could be cabrio.
It can be many number of other ones that have done work in Santa Paula.
So I really think we need to focus on that for the interest of the Hindu fees dedicated to us
by the Lehman era project.
I mean, we're working on almost four years now that this decision was made.
That money's going to start rolling in because if staff can remind me,
I think that money doesn't start coming in until they get this certificate of occupancy
as when they have to pay that 4,000 something per unit, right?
Which means we don't currently have any in-row housing fees.
Now that they're breaking ground, those certificates of occupancy are going to be requested within the next couple, maybe two years if we're lucky.
Yeah, they're first occupancy permits should be ready. Just over a year from now, right? Just over a year from now.
So it's just, all I was speaking to is that, you know, I realize the money is not there. It's right around the corner. We've wasted four years to get to this point. Let's be effective. Let's do it right. Let's do it transparently.
Can I put you on the spot? Mr. Bronshweiger and ask you to put your mic of a question or two for your she's from the intercounty housing trust fund?
Could you please state your name and address for the record?
So my name is Linda Bronshweiger, I'm the CEO for the Ventura County Housing Trust Fund, and I live in Camerillo, California.
Thank you for being here. Yes, I'd like to put questions because I want, I mean, this is obviously an educational process for a lot of us, and so this purpose for my questioning.
Can you give me in like a 30 second commercial? Because I know the city already participates by making a contribution to your trust fund? Could you give me the 30 second commercial? What you guys do please?
So we are a county-wide nonprofit, separate nonprofit. We have a revolving loan fund that is made up of public, private, and charitable money that's all leveraged together for the development of affordable housing.
So nonprofit or for profit developers come to us and seek free development, construction, or gap funding for new affordable housing.
So for example, the housing authority for Santa Paula has approached us three times.
We funded their citrus grove loan for 300,000 that was in 2013, and they paid that off in 2016.
And they also approached us for their Oakwood Court or Oak Court. That was in 2014 for $250,000.
We were approached by them in 2017 with some challenges with paying that, and so we re-evaluated the loan.
They paid $175,000 of the $250,000 loan with a remaining $75,000, which they now pay principal and interest monthly.
And we are hoping that we will have final payment of that this summer in 2018.
And then we also funded the citrus grove loan, which was funded in 2016 for 300,000, and that is expected to be fully paid in 2019.
So it's a low interest loan or no interest loan.
That's a below market interest rate.
And usually it's at 4%.
We did on this request for sort of an extension modification of the loan.
We now charge them 5%.
Our loans are all supposed to be short term loans.
So the money comes into the fund.
We lend it out.
Comes back in three to five years because back out again.
That's the value of the leveraging that we have the ability to do.
Do you know how much city?
Yes.
So the city of Santa Paula invested $50,000 in the very initial phase.
We do have another request in for the city to consider partnering us with us again as all of the cities are being asked to do a second investment.
We've already had the city of Camaroo step up with additional funds.
But your city, I will say, has received the most in funding, particularly for that $50,000.
That's great.
And thank you.
That's probably, unless anybody else any question.
The reason I asked her to step up and I did not invite you, right?
She just showed up and you show up at all the fortuitis.
Maybe the fortival housing.
That's a good thing because I think you guys do great work too.
In terms of what the county wide trust fund does.
And this is one example that I would hope that we would explore for administering those funds.
Because one of the things that makes me a little nervous is like, okay, so that's a lot of money as it comes in
and Michael's already challenged with the right amount of staff to do the work and provide the services that our city does now with the staff.
And how do we, who and how do we administer this within the city?
So that that should be explored too.
All I'm saying is that there's other options out there that if we do bring back some options for us to consider the other 4 million as you said.
We should look at all options including some like these that exist that have the staff already that leverage that money for projects.
Not only in Santa Paula but county wide as well.
Could I clarify one thing?
Yeah.
I think it was mentioned earlier about the 2 million from the East Area 1.
When we reviewed all of these loans, there was no mention in their loan application about the use of those funds to pay off our loans.
And so when we do our underwriting, we use the sources that are listed in their application.
And so from our purposes, we are not expecting those funds to be used to pay off our loan.
That's not the way it was structured.
And that's important to us because we knew those funds would not be coming until after our loans were due.
So just to clarify.
So you're saying basically there's probably 6 million in there as opposed to 4.
And all I'm clarifying is is that when we reviewed our loans, we did not.
That was not part of their application.
We need their money was pre-development money.
So ours, the 2 million is for the permanent loan.
Okay.
Got it.
Just so you know, they're different funding sources.
Very confusing.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Is there any other questions for John?
Well, this is workshop, right?
There's a lot to unpack here.
I think the, at the heart of this was the unusual way in which this money was gifted.
In a way, I mean, almost, I don't like to, maybe use the term gift of public funds.
But also I want to say that housing authority did everything a good faith based on the way it was presented to them.
To me, I just was very unusual.
I'm using that as a diplomatic word is that usually these things go through a competitive process.
When you have funds available, you put out a notice of funds available and no file.
And then there's a competitive process.
And I think another conundrum that I see is that if someone is going to be administering the funds that they,
in most, seems to me, in most kind of governmental type arrangements, they would not be eligible for the funds.
We need kind of a separate third party, whether it be us and our staff or I think James, I think in your presentation,
you mentioned something about that was a possibility to have someone else administer it.
But I mean, we can get into those, those weeds.
But that's, to me, that was, that was another conundrum.
And basically it should be returned to, in my, in my view, be returned as a competitive process.
And we have to, I think we have to kind of bifurcate what's going on here.
We, what, the housing authority was originally doing the serve like the Section 8, was, is that what it was called.
And that is, you know, should be of a free standing, almost committee.
I understand that we could be a point of that structure of make sense that it's a separate kind of a separate entity.
But I want to come to these funds that are coming in.
And they're not really coming into the city and the sense of our budget.
This is a separate fund that is, that is dedicated for this.
It should be a competitive process.
And I think the money should only be awarded and only makes sense of me is when we built up a certain amount.
In other words, it gets to, you know, it's 2 million, 1 million.
We put out a NOFA that, you know, just some funds available.
So I think I've gone on enough about that.
But I'd like to hear any other comments.
I just, I think we just have to kind of separate things.
And also, I think it's important that the housing authority, regardless of what comes out of this,
should also be eligible for competing for this.
This is what Rick was saying.
And that can't be the case if they are the ones that are also administering it.
In my view.
So.
Are there a question?
Jenny?
I don't know if it's a question.
So much comment at this point.
Although, who knows?
Maybe somewhere along the way they'll become a question.
I mean, I think sort of echoing what has been said.
I think the thing that I hear the most concern over from people that I've spoken to has been the process.
For how the former resolution was created and the fact that I know even some more have been mentioned.
I know habitat had also expressed interest directly to the city in being notified when the funds became available.
So the fact that the funds were allocated before they were available was something that was concerning to a lot of different people.
The other thing that I do think it was mentioned that we supposedly as a city get a copy of the annual report and I have not been seeing that.
So if that is something that a copy of the city has or if we don't have if we can get another copy.
Because I know I have not been receiving a copy of that annual report and so I don't know if that's something that we can give some direction to the manager to work with.
We do get there monthly agendas right but that's different than an annual report with you know the financials and what they've done and what they've been doing and so I think on the last slide.
There was something about that we could give some direction let's see to direct you get some directions to the manager to return to the council with a report and review of sort of what they've been doing and.
That would be helpful I think.
I agree as well as an RFP process.
I concur if you guys have any questions for what.
I would love to see people bid.
Okay.
The issue that the good news here is there's no money.
So we're arguing over some philosophical RFP because the and Richard wants to pay more.
So there's no money here and nothing has been spent on anything other than there's two million dollars is basically set over here that we may or may not get back so basically nothing's been lost at this point.
I think yeah it makes a lot of sense that we have a competitive open process when we actually have money to allocate and that's not here yet.
So although before the money gets here we have to have.
The process and the structure.
I'm getting there because that's what I think we need to do next is set up how we want to do that and when I think we need to come back with a better report or at least a fuller explanation.
It's clear now that these are really the functions of with the housing authority is doing is really separate from.
The issue of the in loopies that we may choose to give to them or anybody else based on whatever kind of competitive rules we want to set up and ask the staff to come back with.
Basically how we would set the process up for ourselves and a comprehensive report separately on what the housing authority is doing is that does that.
Yes it's there are two separate issues.
I was hoping that that was articulated in the staff report but we will we can come back with an annual report from the housing authority and we could come back with a resolution.
I mean there's we have a year to kind of put this together so.
We can come back with a resolution that changes the way in which the in loop housing fees are administered or awarded if you will.
Okay, let me make suggestion that you come back with a report on the housing authority.
What they do their annual report at the time you come back with a report on what terms are up and if people need to be.
You know wish to be continue or what kind of process we have in terms of appointments for that so that it's lumped together over here and then separately you set up a process where we repeal the.
That's out there and establish a new resolution that sets out a process that we will go through to allocate whatever in loop fees and we have money coming in from Williams homes and others.
It's not just Le Manera correct and we have some kind of a threshold in that report back from your staff that says when we'll allocate funds like johnson we we're not going to do it when we have $200,000 are we going to do it every time we have a million or whatever.
So that staff comes back with some recommendations on how it would work and then how we would allocate it whether you have the capacity to do it in house.
We've been on it and running that process or we need to have some other kind of.
And we'll make sure there's separate items.
Yes.
And as part of the housing authority piece.
If as part of that reporter in addition to that report there could be some specifics on how we got to the $2 million number so whether that's these are the loans that are outstanding that we.
Thought that was going to go with or something so that it's not just.
A magic number of two million but there's some justification for where that number comes from.
Yeah understood and I'll have those conversations with housing authority board in their style.
Okay and to completely separate two different time kinds of things is one's a clean process that we're going through for how we move forward as we go forward.
And the other is just it's information on our working relationship with the housing authority.
Is that.
Makes sense.
I have thoroughly confused all of you I know.
Another component we talked about too was the funding source which you brought up and how how that works and how for instance the salaries are paid.
And because I would like to know for sure I think they've been doing a great job by the way, you know,
I was one of one of the councils that asked, hey, why can't the housing authority be more and you guys stepped up and did some great projects.
But but also come back to let us know what our kind of like our legal exposure is in terms of projects that are done by them.
I'm not really clear even though we you know how independent they are of us if this is something.
Anything that is actually, like, not a state mandate in type of commission, but kind of what the legal connection is.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong, but we should know what our legal exposure liability is, or any, any anything they undertake.
Anybody else?
Yeah.
So, yeah, and I think he just touched on part of it, so thank you.
Because remember Parker was, you know, but what enacted them from what I understood from Dante's report was that they were enacted by some legislation back in 69 that created the housing authorities.
But that would be a good piece to have, because it would certainly clarify our liability with regards to them and how independent they are.
Also, you made a good point, Mayor, just recently, that I think, you know, whatever happens in the next resolution for how this is going to unfold with regards to these in lieu fees.
It shouldn't be specific to East area one, like this one, because council member crosslights, correct, there's other in lieu fees that are going to come in and we should have it all in companies for any in lieu fees that come to the city.
So, make it a little more broader.
And, and I'm just going to say this for the record, because there's been a thorn that I've been carrying it on my side for four years, and sorry, you guys, but you weren't here battling those other four council members at night.
About this, and that is, I would actually make a motion to rescind the current resolution until such time we have a new resolution for consideration.
Could you hold that? I mean, I will let you bring that back up, okay.
I'm going to break all the rules again and ask if there's anybody from the audience that has one another burning question or comment they want to make.
Get two of you.
Okay.
It's a workshop.
I know. I understand, and I don't have a problem with that, so as long as you guys don't, Alan.
Thank you.
I agree, it's wonderful that we don't have the money yet, so there's time to work this out and do it right.
But I was going to make the point that Martin made that I think for the housing authorities sake.
There needs to be action taken soon to rescind the prior resolution, so that they know that they, it could be worded so that the $2,000 is still floating.
But it's clear to you and to them that the rest of that money isn't.
That's necessarily going to come to them, because that's the way it is now.
They still have every right to feel that all 6.5 million is going to be used in any way they decide.
Okay.
Rick.
I want things about that $4 million.
We are well aware that because I think somebody made a commitment that it was only the $2 million.
That's right.
Prior City Council meeting.
We had another project at Red Road Avenue and 10th.
And we couldn't put it together unless we were to use some of that and we asked the project.
We're not moving forward with any more money because we were uncertain about the $4 million.
And we didn't want to commit because there is a, because there was a notation test that only the $2 million.
I think we've mentioned that at the last council meeting.
And that's why there was a project.
We put together a 40-some unit project there at the old church there and we couldn't pencil it out without any more money.
So we can the project.
Thanks Rick.
Laura.
I would like to clarify for the council members that I served with in 1994 through 2002.
We did a point housing authority members during that time period.
And as all commissions, I don't know if it's changed.
But any of the city commissions it went to the city clerk's office.
They kept track of the dates of expiration.
They put out notices.
That may have changed.
I don't know.
And then I would hope that you could further clarify about the $2 million.
Because I don't know what commitment was made when where is the documentation that this council said.
You are free to use $2 million for collateral.
That's the part I don't understand.
And then the third thing.
Which I have almost, I think, my brain's right now.
Gosh.
Oh, as far as an annual report.
We all know what annual financial reports are.
But the last time Mr. Ramsey was here before you.
He gave a verbal strategic plan for the year.
And it was about two seconds long.
It was not written.
And I love Ramsey.
But I'm sorry.
That report said we are not doing farm worker housing.
We are not doing family housing.
We are doing senior housing.
And we are doing veterans housing.
Those are the two.
And we are doing five houses per year over the next five years.
So, thank you.
Thanks, Laura.
Okay.
One more.
Just a quick point of clarification.
The reference of your affordable housing trust fund has been used here.
And I want to clarify that the cities may have a housing trust fund.
And it's usually funded with the move fees.
Rarely do they go out and leverage those funds.
The difference with this one and why folks around the community.
Developed the county wide housing trust fund.
So, we have that ability to blend public five and in charitable.
So, I just wanted to make sure you understood the two different housing trust fund models.
Ars is a nonprofit versus the city one.
Right.
And when and if we ever get any money, we will take applications that make a decision as to who and what we want to fund.
Yeah.
That was part of your education training.
Thank you.
Martin.
So, yeah.
I just wanted to further support my anticipated motion to rescind the resolution.
At the last time Ranzi was here too.
And he spoke about the committed two million dollars.
We asked him at that time.
Then please provide us a portfolio with those anticipated leverage dollars so that we can consider that.
It wasn't promised.
It was asked that was probably a year ago.
We haven't.
I've been asking for it.
I haven't seen anything.
So, for me, sometimes it's easier for me to get the job done when I've got a little fire stop next to me.
So if we need to rescind this resolution order to get that commitment by the housing authority to provide that documentation.
So that in the future in the future resolution, if we decide to allocate five or ten percent,
two thousand authority.
So be it.
I've not seen anything to quantify that.
So I.
Well, again, I'm going to attempt to make the motion to rescind resolution six eighty nine.
On that.
On that point, I would like.
Mr. Isaac, you come back up and just clarify about the two million dollars.
It's and how it came about that.
Just give us more insight.
Hold on a second order of business.
There's a motion on the table first.
We need a second question or to with all the motion.
I will second for discussion.
Thank you.
Good.
Vice Mayor.
More clarity on how the two million dollars was allocated.
Or that you felt that we could use that as collateral.
Just how we came to that point.
It was as the board understood Ramsey came to us and said there's a permit.
In order to get the permit alone, we want to start building this.
But we're not going to build it unless we know we can finish it out through a permit alone.
One of the banks.
We've used several different banks.
Said that we need collateral.
That's what I'm saying.
That two million dollars is it's spent.
It's still going to be.
It may never be spent.
You might always have that two million dollars.
It just would be committed until the permit alone.
It's paid off.
Or it reaches a point where they can refine.
We can refinance that permit alone.
And not without the collateral in there.
So it's like it's.
Like I said, if you're buying a home, you'd have to put 20% down.
And if you didn't have 20%.
You go to somebody and say, can I use your credit at 20%.
Then the banks says, okay, with that person co-signing that.
They're giving you that.
That's all that.
Two million was.
And I'm sure we can put together.
All it would be would put together where those loans for the various projects came to.
From where whenever we go to a project, it's all broken down by.
Reconstruction costs architectural costs.
And then ultimately with a total cost of the project is whether it's $4 million or
$6 million in our project and how we're going to get the permit alone at the end.
And on that, have you seen anything from Ramsey?
That's given it's been given to the commissioners that kind of lays out those numbers.
Over the many years, each time we go over a project, that is exactly what we do.
So that's readily available.
It should be available.
And it's $2 million just for which project.
I think it was on a couple projects.
I think it might be one of it might be Citricos.
And one of it might be the Oak.
I think it was recent.
It wasn't.
I mean, it wasn't hard to place because it wasn't even available back then.
So I'd like to ask a question of our attorney.
If we were to rescind this motion, which basically leaves the decision.
I assume with the council.
Because rescinding the motion would basically take away the authority of the.
It just for us is just the commitment and it's not going to affect us in any way.
Okay.
What I'm asking is just rescinding that motion doesn't remove the commitment.
We have to the housing authority for the use of that $2 million.
Does it?
I would have to review the loan documents with regard to what they put up as collateral.
But I don't believe it would.
Nothing in the resolution details the $2 million bridge funder.
You know.
So it still be the responsibility of the city council to make the allocation.
That's correct.
So that's correct.
And, and also, you know, the same when we did that two years ago.
It's like anything else.
Our finances have improved.
We may at some point be able to go back to that bank and say, look,
This is not now our current finances.
We now have.
Because Harvard place will be paid off.
We might be able to turn Harvard place as the collateral rather than the $2 million.
So those are things that's.
It's fluid with us.
It's not something that.
That we're very solvent.
We're not going to go bankrupt.
I think I think the interest.
Rick, at least from my perspective.
We don't necessarily want to do anything to jeopardize the projects that you're working on either.
So that's that would be my.
I don't know.
I have it.
Like I said, I don't have anything in front of me right now.
And I didn't plan on being here.
But in discussing this knowing Ranzi, we discussed this thought.
We're going to be here several months ago.
And all he was concerned with was that commitment of the $2 million.
We knew we weren't going to try and come and commit to anything more than that.
And it was only.
Paperwork commitment at that point.
Mayor and council.
What I would suggest is that you direct staff to.
In fact, come back to the council with a thorough explanation.
Of the status of the housing authority projects as they relate to the two million.
And dollars that we've been discussing.
To come back with a resolution.
They're resins the existing resolution.
And that's not in your packet tonight.
But we could come back with something that would allow you to set up a different process for the inlue housing fees as a separate item.
I will in the meantime speak with Ranzi and the board.
And come back with a full report on essentially a business annual report of the authority.
But also address these other questions as I relate to the existing projects that they have financed.
And how that might be affected by the inlue housing fee money that we're talking to.
Would somebody care to make that as a substitute motion.
I think you read my mind.
Because I'm not even though I'm very much on board with not liking the original decision.
Resinning it without having something to supplanted that doesn't make sense to me.
I think that's what he's suggesting so that's.
And.
Okay.
And so I will make the substitute motion, which basically that you will come back with and it could restate please.
I don't know what you make.
I believe you are going to you're going to come back with the original resolution for us to look at and then serve a replacement resolution so that we can rescind one.
And explanation of the two million dollars.
Yes.
As separate items.
And a whole lot more information.
So that's that's my.
That's my motion.
Does that mean clear enough?
Yeah, I mean what you you can direct staff tonight to come back with a resolution.
Resinning the existing one and explaining how you want to set up that in the housing fee process.
Okay, is there a second to that motion.
I'll second it.
So if you're open for comment.
Yes.
Before you again.
Change the course of what we're doing tonight.
With all due respect, you know nothing's been done.
We've asked Ramsey for this information in the past.
He is not provided it for us within a year.
If you recall, we asked him for the perform on the two million.
Leverage dollars.
He didn't come back to us.
So in the meantime, I don't see any harm with rescinding the resolution currently because we're not.
Only thing we're doing is we're leaving the door open for the leverage of money in the meantime.
To get some other loans.
So no harm, no file that puts it all back in our control.
We can start from square one.
I get that you're coming back with it.
You know, some kind of solution.
But, you know, it just doesn't make sense to me.
Well, and not support that.
Sorry.
We need to just get this off the table now.
And I'll do different.
We're not asking ramsy to do this. We're asking our staff to come back with a resolution with the explanation of the money in a way that's clean and how it will work.
And I personally feel that our staff will come back at our next meeting with the information we've requested.
So I'm comfortable with having a resolution in front of me before I vote on something. I support doing this, but I'd rather have something that I can read. Any other comments?
Yeah, I think that now I'm getting thickheaded.
It seems to me that we need to, something of this importance, it would have been good first to have that resolution as part of the packet.
Some of this important, so the people knew it was a gender that it was a kind of a positive, I get that it's a related action.
But it's kind of a big deal. And for it not to be a gender is possible, you know, rescinding of that.
The public, there might be some people who are opposed to it, so.
Except that it is in the...
Okay.
Just...
Oh, okay.
The resolution that was passed is in...
Yeah, okay.
But...
The existing one...
The existing one was in there, but I just...
The rescinding part, I just seems to me like was pretty pretty.
I mean, I think...
I think...
In some ways I agree with council member Hernandez, that it may be kind of academic.
But...
Okay.
Since we obviously have a difference of opinion here.
Let's ask for a roll call on this.
Unless there's a more discussion.
When it's being voted on first, you know, comes.
Oh, we have the substitute motion.
Right, Mayor Crosse.
Mayor...
We need to make sure we know what we're voting on.
We...
We have a motion by council member Hernandez and second by...
By council member Crosse White.
To be seen the current resolution.
Did that motion fail?
No.
We have the substitute motion, Mayor.
We have the substitute motion.
So we need to be voting on the substitute motion.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
And the substitute motion is to have...
Have the city manager come back?
To come back...
To council with the...
With the throw explanation, the status of housing authority projects as it relates to the...
To the $2 million and to come back with the resolution to set up a different process as two separate items.
Correct.
So he'll be coming back.
Right.
That's the substitute motion.
For him to come back with the information and a new resolution setting up a new process.
Right.
And I heard you say a little at the next meeting.
I'd like to have that.
I'd like to have that at the next meeting.
Otherwise, I'm sorry.
I just...
This thing has a way of dragging.
I'm sorry.
I'm...
At the next meeting.
Right.
All right.
To that in two weeks, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So the motion is on the substitute motion and we're asking for approval of the substitute motion.
Right.
Okay.
We're all called.
Council Member Crossweight?
Yes.
Council Member Hernandez?
No.
Council Member Proctor?
Yes.
Vice Mayor Garmin?
Yes.
Mayor Gerardy?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, do we have to vote on the thing again?
No.
That would be...
Okay.
So it's done.
Sure.
Okay.
I'd like to let Ellen have one last say since we're doing this very informally tonight.
I certainly didn't intend to keep talking.
I think there's one more thing that you need to have staff come back to you with.
And that's the resolution that originally created the Santa Paula housing trust fund, affordable housing trust fund.
I believe that was put in place when Wally was city manager.
And my recollection is that it makes city manager the decision maker on how the in-loop funds are spent.
And it doesn't have very much detail at all about the process.
So that is something that the...
That's what we're going to be coming back with at the next meeting.
The revised resolution that we've provided the process.
This doesn't have...
This is something separate.
I believe.
This is how the city's trust fund operates.
Well that's what we're talking about.
It will all be in the same resolution.
I think you're referring to the municipal code and it designates the city manager or the city manager.
It doesn't mean to administer the affordable housing trust fund.
And I think the council's going to be taking a look at all this.
So that's going to be all part of the package.
Wonderful.
Sorry.
I missed that.
That's okay.
Thank you, Ellen.
Well I think... I think the housing trust fund was actually created in partnership with the inclusionary housing ordinance.
If I remember.
Yeah.
It was part of the deal.
So I don't know if there was a lot of a lot in that original ordinance in terms of how it's administered.
So.
Yeah.
I certainly don't want the authority to handle this amount of money that should be a council decision.
Okay.
So we have one more item on our agenda.
Maybe two.
And that would be.
The item.
Accepting the creation of an ad hoc committee.
Regarding the availability of broadband internet and technology within the city of Santa
Fallon.
And we need a staff report.
And I have not asked to see if there's any interest from anybody on the council and serving on that.
So.
Are you doing this?
Yes.
Okay.
Please.
Good evening.
Mayor Durati in council.
Economy, Donald Bell, assistant city manager.
What you have before you today is a recommendation.
For the formation of the broadband and technology ad hoc committee.
To appoint two council members.
To help staff as we look into strategic partnerships with internet service providers.
To help see if there's a way to bring in a healthy level of competition for internet services
here.
So we can add enhanced speeds.
And see if we can get strategic with certain technologies.
With fiber, with broadband wireless broadband as well.
So again, this is just looking for council.
It would be great to have ad hoc subcommittee as we're meeting with these companies.
So that we can have that direction and guidance from elected officials.
And that is our recommendation.
Okay.
Thank you.
Is there anybody that's interested in serving on that?
I have great interest in it.
Any questions?
Okay.
Unless there's any objection.
I will appoint John and Clint.
Just do that.
Good evening.
Do we have a motion for people?
I think the point of order.
I think the ad hoc is actually appointed by the council.
Right.
It's not a large standing committee.
Sorry.
So then we have a motion to appoint.
Okay.
There's our resolution.
I didn't see one.
Okay.
I'll move to a doctor resolution to create E ad hoc committee.
I'll second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Post.
Okay.
Can I have somebody make a resolution to appoint councilman
Proctor and vice mayor Garmin to the committee?
Sir.
Second.
All second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Post.
Okay.
We're done.
So we are up to the part of the agenda that is.
Item for future agendas.
And I would like to say that I thought the comments that Rose
Chacong made earlier regarding having some sort of a senior fair or program.
We're and the issues that she brought up were a great interest.
A number of cities have these sorts of things.
And I think it would be something that I'd like to ask the staff to look into to come back
to see if we could do something for this city, which I think would benefit.
A lot of people want one of the other calls that I got earlier today was from somebody
who was a senior on a low-income situation.
Who was asking to see whether the city had any kind of program to have some kind of low-income
source of reducing your cable bill.
And I don't know if that's something that would also be considered because people can't really watch TV
if they can't pay the cable bill.
So that might be something else that you'd want to throw into that next.
I think we have a lot of seniors in the community and we have a great idea to have some sort of fair that was put together.
And I think maybe we could ask Rose if she'd like to participate in that and then get with our senior coordinator to see what could be done
and when we might be able to do it.
Anyway, that would be my suggestion or request of the staff come back with some details on it at a later date.
Well, that could be considered a senior summit of some sort of summit.
And there have been like Linda Parks runs every year.
I don't know that we've ever had one in Santa Paula or certainly not recently.
And there is a lot of information.
It was clear I gave a presentation at the hospice that a lot of people don't even know about the programs that we have available at the senior center.
So there's a lot of information that we could help to get out to the public.
So I think I thought it was a really good idea glad that she brought it to us.
And I'd like to see us take advantage of it not with standing that I'm a senior.
Go from there.
So anybody else was a future agenda?
I was a motion for a future item.
Yes.
That's a motion for a future item.
We have a second.
Thank you.
As seniors, to ask the staff to come back, putting on or for a senior summit in Santa Paula.
Whatever is required to do that.
Right.
Yeah.
Is there any objection?
Okay.
Jenny.
And I think it is coming back, but just to formally.
I mentioned that I'd like the discussion of the economic development of some committee.
That'll be on the next agenda.
I also have a study session on the general plan update process.
And a discussion on some recommended changes to the general plan.
So I'll get that to the council.
Well, before the next meeting.
Great.
Anything else?
Yeah.
I think following on roses comments that we should bring back the idea of some kind of senior commission or whatever.
We have a discussion of that senior advisor.
You see there's an advisory commissioner.
Okay.
I don't have a problem with that either.
Okay.
Make it so.
Okay.
Is that a motion?
That's a motion.
Is that a second?
Any objection?
Okay.
All right.
Anything else?
Maybe that's something.
Okay.
Give it my behavior tonight.
I probably needed today.
Okay.
In that case we are adjourned.
Thank you.