City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm out of here. Hey man, nothing but fun. Yeah.

I know.

Nice to meet you. I saw you guys in sign when I came in. email.

Fantastic. Sorry I'm late, but I had to break for I know. I know. I know. I believe.

Good evening everyone. I'd like to call this meeting tonight, the regular city council meeting for February 3rd, 2026 to order. Let us stand as we proudly recite the pledge of allegiance. I pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Uh, thank you, Madame Clerk. Would you kindly do roll call, please? Yes. Council member Brando Cruz, here. Council member Melissa Lamatina, here. Council member David Oro here. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph here. Mayor Pierre Washington, I'm here. Uh, report on close session, confirmation of reportable action. When you're ready, Miss Heismith, can you please share your report on close session?

Yes. Thank you, mayor. The council met in close session this evening with legal counsel to receive a briefing on a matter of existing litigation, Orchard Partners versus City of American Canyon. The uh city council provided direction to legal counsel. No action was taken. The second close session matter was one item of anticipated litigation. Again, the council received a briefing from legal counsel and no action was taken. And that's the end of my report. Mayor, thank you.

Thank you. Uh moving on to our proclamations and presentations. Tonight we have uh one proclamation, no presentation. Uh, and I would like to call up those who will be receiving a proclamation for Black History Month. I will read the proclamation and I will offer uh time and opportunity for those who may want to speak of the importance of Black History Month. So, those who will receive, don't be bashful. I'll start off by uh reading the proclamation. Black History Month, February 20 26. Whereas Black History Month is observed each February to honor the achievements, contributions, and enduring legacy of African-Americans who helped shape the history, culture, and progress of the progress of the United States. And whereas African-Americans have made invaluable contributions in every sector of society, including education, science, government, business, the arts, sports, medicine, and civil rights, often in the face of injustice and systematic barriers. And whereas the recognition of black history is essential to fostering understanding, equity, and respect, and to acknowledge both the struggles and endured and resilience demonstrated throughout generations. And whereas Black History Month provides an opportunity for our community to reflect on its importance of inclusion, justice, and equal opportunity, and to recommmit ourselves

to building a society where every individual is valued and empowered to succeed. And whereas the city of American Canyon celebrates diversity as a strength of our community and strives to promote dignity, opportunity, and belonging for the residents of all backgrounds. Now therefore, be it a be it proclaim that I, Pierre Washington, the mayor of American Canyon, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim February 2026 as Black History Month and urge all residents to observe this month by learning about, celebrating, and honoring the rich history, culture, and contributions of African-Americans. Now, I have some proclamations, but I wanted to give you guys an opportunity to to share and not be bashful. Well, my name is Charles Walker, and I've been a resident of American Canyon for close to 30 years. Over well, over 30 years. And I really wasn't prepared to speak tonight. I just got prompted by some new friends and I'm just here to be in support of this proclamation. And with that, I'm going to

Well, I'm going to brag on you a little bit, Mr. Walker. You are a uh retired captain of the Oakland Fire Department. I thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody has a job to do. That was mine. It was Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. First of all, thank you, Mayor Pierre Washington and the council for the proclamation. I'm here tonight. I was able to get away for a few moments and I'm doing my cultural need for my family after taking care of my husband. God works in mysterious ways. He did wait until my husband went home to be with him before my mother became sick. So, I'm back to back. You may be missing me in the community, but just know I'm doing what African-Americans do. I'm doing what black families do. I'm doing what we do when it's time for us to take care of our families. We step up. We may not be able to do those things that we are accustomed to doing with others in the community because it's time for me to spend with my family. So, I came by just to say hello and goodbye.

Thank you, Brenda. Good evening everyone. Um to the mayor and city council, uh thank you again for this opportunity. Um when you saw Ken come up, that was a silence. But what we don't want to do is have anyone take our silence for complacency because silence does not equal complacency. We are the very fabric, the very fabric of this country. And what we're currently seeing is those who would like to remove that fabric, destroy every thread of that fabric. But we stand here not in silence but in silent protest to ensure that our history is never forgotten. We black Americans and that's black with a capital B have strengthened the US democracy through civic leadership government even up to the presidency. We the black Americans made sure that civil rights progressed and we still see the results of some of that today. Although there are others who would like to tear that down. We black Americans are inventors. We're scientists. We advance medicine, transportation, technology, including breakthroughs in blood transportation in banking, GPS,

and space exploration. We black Americans have served proudly in the military. I myself am a reserve, retired reserve officer in the United States Army. We have also participated in the economic and labor impact in this country. From entrepreneurship to labor organizations, black Americans have driven economic growth and workplace protections nationwide. Through art and culture, black artists, writers, and musicians have profoundly shaped American culture, influencing global music, literature, and visual arts. And we're doing all of that here in American Canyon. And so we wanted to be here tonight. Others could not be here for one reason or another, but we wanted to be here, the black men of American Canyon, to represent and to show that the fact that we are here and we are making a positive contribution to this city. We have, we will forever do that. Thank you. Thank you, Orlando. We're going to take a picture with everyone. And I I want to say that black history is not just something that we read about. It's something that we live every day. So, Mr. Mayor, before we take a picture, we would like to um share a video with the audience first. We put this together um in honor of Black History Month. I was born and raised in in Philly. I came from an inner city environment. I'm a product of a white mother, black father. Um, and I grew up in a time when that wasn't really accepted. But over time, I realized that I had a quality that drew people together from from both sides. You know, at my age, I think of

people like Martin Luther King. And I think it's important to understand the past u but even more so important to embrace that past and know that we need to do something moving forward that's positive. We need to have a society that's more united versus divided. Um one of the things I admire about Martin Luther King was he always preached about peace, you know. Um and he was always civil in what he was trying to do.

I have a dream. My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I mean it's all about serving people. It's all about, you know, giving back. I enjoy it. I enjoy giving back. I was born and raised in in Philly. Can you please mention that our first mayor in Anderson was our was our first mayor and he was a black. Yes. Correct. And he was supposed to be here tonight. Just want to make sure I know you were talking about our history.

Oh, no. We knew that. I know you do. There are people here that may not know that. Thank you for and I just wanted to make sure because we're we're seeing this and and Ben Anderson is a good friend of mine and he was our first mayor. Yes. Thank you. First appointed mayor, first elected.

Yes. Thank you. and Hugh. Hugh, just so you know, I do have one for Ben Anderson, too. And I I know he's in town. I know he's in town. But I do have a proclamation for Ben because I thought he was going to be here this evening.

Yeah. I just had to say because I didn't hear it and let me know. He's he's he's he's another one of my mentors as well. So, thank you. Okay. At this time, we're going to move on to uh open public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda. Uh typically what we do, we have you come up to the podium, talk for three minutes on op on items that are not on our agenda. And I'm going to go to the matter clerk to see if we have any speaker cards. Do okay. I'm going to call Katherine Bit. Hey, Katherine.

And I believe you have some handouts um from Katherine at your dasis.

Right. Good evening, Mayor Washington and members of American Canyon City Council. My name is Katherine Bit. I'm a senior at American Canyon High School, ASB vice president, co-president of Napa Schools for Climate Action, and the current youth commissioner serving on the OSADS Commission. As our schools and governments recognize their obligation to protect our safe and healthy futures, please remember that now more than ever, it is critical to provide strong climate leadership. Young people are especially vulnerable to climate breakdown. Please dedicate yourselves to restoring a safe and healthy climate for us while there is still time. Climate restoration is a critical factor in how we will end the climate catastrophe. If we just reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by the 2030 net zero deadline or later as the international community proposes to do, what do we do with the existing atmospheric pollution that remains? This is where climate restoration comes in as its reliable, scalable, and durable sequestration can lock existing carbon dioxide pollution away for millennia. Knowing that climate restoration can take us to a world of complete sustainability has been an incredible light of hope for me, alleviating my personal climate anxiety and mo motivating me to work on such an incredible project such as House Resolution 1563, introduced by Representative Mike Thompson in Congress in 2024. and now House Concurrent Resolution 46, which he introduced in the 119th Congress last July. In November, at the invitation of the Napa RCD, our Napa Schools for Climate Action team led a one-hour workshop at the California Association of RCD's annual convention in Sacramento. We are grateful for RCD's resolution and enthusiastic support of the Congressional Climate Restoration Resolution as it emphasizes the importance of leveraging natural carbon sequestration methods, mostly marine-based, and supporting emerging technologies to help achieve this

critical goal. As Napa Schools for Climate Action continues to grow, we will remembers leaders like you who choose to prioritize the needs of their community. As Congressman Thompson's 2024 climate crisis champions, we understand the effort and dedication it takes to make positive climate action. Please continue the positive momentum. In doing so, you will help us realize our dreams of a safe and healthy future for many generations to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Catherine. Alexander Gagos. Good evening, city council. My name is Alexander Gyos. This is my first meeting here at the city council and I'm a little nervous, so I'm sorry if my voice is shaky. I'm a junior at New Techch High School and I'm a new member here for the Napa Napa Schools for Climate Advocates. And the reason I joined this was because I feel like there's not a lot of help right now in the moment that the world is in to support climate. And I wanted to join this group to advocate for that. And I'm seeking out new members in my school since I'm the only member in my district to help with this group. I am grateful for being here today and would like you to and would like to ask that you consider a resolution to endorse our Congressional Climate Restoration Resolution introduced by Congressman Mike Thompson, which calls for the removal of heat trapping greenhouse gases, specifically CO2 of the pre-industrial levels below 300 ppm by 2050. This date is extremely important detail as the next few years will present critical junctures in our climate systems. Many of Earth's tight tipping points, including the melting of Arctic sea arctic sea ice and the collapsing of the Atlantic meonial overturning circulation are being passed as we speak and without a doubt will have a huge cascading negative effects on our climate and ecosystems for centuries to come. Given these terrible prospects, it is of up utmost importance that every person and organiz organization big and small is aware of the urgency of our climate emergency so we can act fast and shape a safe and healthy climate for future generations. Recently, Napa RCD

and Napa County Board of Education passed resolutions endorsing our congressman climate endorsing our congressman's climate restoration resolution. In in their be if further resolved clauses, they specifically called upon Napa County and its cities and towns to endorse House Concurrent Resolution 46 and take action to restore the climate by stabilizing greenhouse gases concentrations at pre-industrial levels. I deeply appreciate your climate leadership and urge you to pass resolution endorsing House Concurrent Resolution 46. Your commitment will benefit our schools and far beyond, not only by educating our community in climate crisis, but also providing solutions. Thank you very much. And Alex, you did great. Okay,

Matthew Beaston. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Matthew Beaston. I represent the Carpenters Union, and I'm here to stand up against negotiation without representation. The Carpenters Union is not affiliated with any Building Trades Council. The Building Trades Council is an organization that represents some construction trades. The Building Trades Council does not represent the Carpenters Union. My comment today is regarding sites reservoir. Barnard construction, the construction manager at risk, selected for a $1 million preconstruction contract, has negotiated a PLA with the building trades council. The carpenters union was not invited to the PLA negotiations in good faith. Negotiation without representation. We were we were delivered a quid proquo LOI by Barnard after their negotiations with the Building Trades Council had already begun. Multiple Building Trades Council representatives have gone on record at recent meetings stating that there will be a place for us to sign the PLA. Negotiation without representation. The Carpenters were not given the opportunity to negotiate this PLA. And the assumption that we will just sign a PLA that we did not have a hand in crafting is false. negotiation without representation. That is why hundreds of our members have traveled to Maxwell, California to protest the last three sites reservoir board meetings negotiation without representation. In a letter to the sites board, the governor states and quote, "I am concerned that the authorities's consideration of this role, the Seymar, thus far has not fully considered the importance of maintaining strong labor relations, which is critical to the

timely completion of the project." The governor's concerns were marginalized by site staff. The California Water Commission had a vastly different reaction. The majority of the commissioners as summarized by the chair are quote concerned that you sites have an issue that may cause a major breakdown in this project and site staff was instructed to fix the labor issue. The carpenters union is not part of the building trades council and we stand against negotiation without representation. Leading up to this meeting, I sent you all emails, some outreach, try to have a meeting with you. I was able to connect with a couple. I would still like to have those meetings with you in the future so that we can move forward together. I'd like to be a resource. Thank you.

Thank you, Matthew. Clarence Mamarel.

Oh, good evening, Mayor and City Council members. Um, my name is Clarence Mamril. I am a um longtime resident of American Canyon and um so I have two comments and the first uh is uh related to my job as an immigration attorney for Catholic Charities Yolo Solano. We all know that um well there's there's been some things happening on the national level that we all know about and um I wanted to let you know that um there is a group a very you know small right now but a grassroots group called um American Canyon Together. It's a working title by the way. um still figuring that out. But um we have had actually two rallies in American Canyon um over by Safeway um by the gas station and um we've also had an article um in the American Canyon Current. I'm I'm I'm old. I don't know these things, but apparently it's a new social media news outlet thing. Um, but I I just want to let you know one, thank you very much for your support. Uh, council uh, Vice Mayor Joseph has been there. Um, has has attended a rally. Um, council member Oro has attended a rally. Um, council member um, Lamatina has given us a he a friendly honk um, out there. So, um, Hugh Marquez is part of this group. Um, and we're just we're just out there, um, exercising our free speech rights and peacefully protesting what is happening out in the world. So, um, I'm going to, you know, switch hats to a second comment, and that is the Gateway Award

nominations coming up. Um, the young folks in the community development department uh, posted a video with, uh, three of us gateway award winners. It was fantastic. So, um, check it out. There are some Gateway Award winners, uh, here. We, um, we call them, we call ourselves Gators. Um, Fran and Beth and Mark and myself. Um, and there there's a community recognition event coming up in April. We just encourage everybody to if you have a um, a volunteer who has made an impact, nominate them. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Clarence. Ivon Beginski.

Good evening, mayor, city council, members of the public. My name is Ivon Beginsky and I'm a resident of Napa County. Uh there's a lot of talk going around about 1661 Green Island Road. The committee against Measure L has distributed over 5,000 flyers throughout American Canyon asking people not to sign the petition for the initiative to be either approved by this council or taken to the ballot. That's a lot of walking and talking. Now, we're hearing that the owner of this property might be pulling the measure off the table and could be willing to set aside more of this land for conservation. From the sounds of it, he might be willing to aced to the promise he made a long time ago that he'd meet with environmentalists to determine what portion of that property should be saved. But so far, he hasn't had a working meeting about Green Island Vineyard conservation with anyone representing any environmental group in Napa County. In fact, Measure L caught us by surprise. The people we've met and talked to, your constituents, they're confused. They already sent you a clear message about Measure J. Almost everyone talks to me and says it's about the money. So here's what Redf Fin says the property is worth now. 2,381,000. The Green Island investors paid $4.5 million when they bought it back in the 1990s. It served them well. They had over 20 years of successful grape harvest. Now the property is undeveloped, empty, and seems to be worth less money. The investors pulled all the grapevines out two years ago. In 2021, they tried to sell the property for $6,750,000. And based on tax records that I found on the internet, the estimated value of what they're taxed on for that property is worth say it's only worth $270,000. So what is the worth of this property as it stands now? What what would it be worth if it was prezoned? Would the owners be willing to sell this property? and would the city protect it with a

conservation easement? If so, can we come up with a figure and then pursue conservation possibilities? There are many who would be willing to help with this. We also know now that this property is going to be seriously affected by seawater rise. I am asking this council to have this property appraised as it is now. Once we know what it's worth, we can start negotiations over the land and money, and maybe we can work out what's best for this city, the people, the wildlife, and the environment. Thank you. Thank you, Ivan. Arvin Nigel.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and friends. So today I came to make a small announcement which I do every year. So my event is coming on this called holy festival festival of colors. It's coming on uh 12th of uh April. We are going to celebrate at Shandova Park from 2 to 5. So I encourage everybody should come over there and enjoy the event. And it's a really good event and kids like it, everybody like it. So to make this event great, you should put on your social media all the time that we has celebrating this event in Men Canyon because in other cities they are coming about 500 to,000 people come over there but in my city in this one in M Kenya only maximum 100 people show up. So if we said if we advertise in our social media or in the newspaper or somewhere else I put the flyers there, I put everything there but we should encourage people to come and enjoy this event. So this is summer time and it's a very good time to do it in the Shandava park from 2 to 5 on 12th of April uh this year. So we'll celebrate before before that also with a CD having a cake. We'll do that def defin definitely. So thank you very much for uh inviting and we'll love to see you there on that day. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Arvin.

Hugh Marquez.

Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Hugh Marquez. Um, I just want to thank uh the parks and public works for the shelter and the bathrooms at the wetlands edge park. My wife is loving you guys to death. Um, she was not an outhouse person, but I just wanted to acknowledge that our city has improved. It seems to be growing. We've got the covering Northampton. I know that you guys are working on other coverings at different parks and and uh it's good to see our our city um uh going with the times. We got the coverings because of the heat. the heat. We have 100 degree weather during the summer and we re we realize that we needed coverings for it and it was good to see the council uh push for it. The parks and the public works fight with PG& and whoever they had to fight with to to get it done and and I'm just I just came to say thank you for for seeing the improvement that the city is doing for our residents.

Thank you, Hugh. That was our last speaker card for in person. I do have some hands raised online when we're ready for that. We're ready. Okay. Oh, Fran. Okay. Go ahead, Fran.

I just want to say that I only piece of property. They want to develop their property. Just like people that buy a house, you know, you want to of your home. So, I supported measure. It's in Green Road and I felt like they deserve to be able to develop their property. So, I just wanted to pass that on. Thank you, Fred.

Okay, we are going now to our online participants. I'm calling Justin Hamilton Hull. Go ahead, Justin.

Yes, me. My name My name is Justin Hull. I'm northern Napa County. I live in Mary for 34 year 35 years. Um and my birthday my birthday is next week and Thursday. I'm going to be turn 37. Um my question is thank you so much um um Melissa swing by my house. Thank you so much and um I do want to see um I can't wait to see what going to happen. Um I think tonight we're going to be hearing more about how we highway Highway 29 door um that we need to um uh update the Broadway Highway 29. I think it's tonight. Um and then I do want I think somebody asked me about uh over by um West Karen Dmore 11. Um, we need to put that little more sidewalk that people can walk to Walmart area, but um, I think I know we're going to see more working out there. So, thank you so much.

Thank you, Justin. And happy birthday. Okay, I have Arya. I'm gonna just switch them up here. Go ahead, Arya.

Hi. Um, I'm gonna be speaking about the same topic as Kate and Alex did at the beginning of this segment. Um, so my name is Arya Adday. I'm a senior at Vintage High School and I serve as co-vice president of Napa Schools for Climate Action. So our organization formed in 2018 and has members from almost all NBSD high schools as well as Justin Sienna. We advocated for the climate emergency resolutions that all Napa County jurisdictions adopted, each with the goal of achieving net zero climate pollution by 2030. And we are of course happy to say that Napa and American Canyon have a new general plan that specify the 2030 net zero goal and we're super grateful for that. Um, today I wanted to urge you to pass a resolution in strong support of Congressman Mike Thompson's House Concurrent Resolution 46, which was introduced into Congress this past July. It expresses the sense of Congress that the United States is committed to ensuring a safe and healthy climate for future generations by actively restoring the climate. In general, it states that we are in the early stages of a climate emergency that is already inflicting massive economic damage, loss of loss of life, and societal disruption. Even if all current Paris agreement pledges are fully met, global warming is on track to exceed 3° C, an outcome that risks irreversible collapse of natural and socio economic systems. emissions reductions and adaption while essential are no longer sufficient. The IPCC's sixth assessment report um from 2022 states that limiting warming to 1.5° C requires the removal of 100 to 1,000 billion tons of CO2 this century. Large scale carbon dioxide removal moving beyond net zero to negative

emissions is now unavoid unavoidable. House Concurrent Resolution 46 declares that the United States has a moral obligation to future generations to restore atmospheric CO2 to levels humans have safely experienced long term below 300 ppm by 2050 through rapid deep emission cuts and massive deployment of safe scalable carbon dioxide removal. Thank you so much for taking our message seriously and ple please let our organization know if we can help in any way to make this happen. Thank you. Thank you Arya and thank you for your involvement.

That is my last hand raised. Okay. And seeing no one else in the room I'll close public comment. Move to agenda changes. Are there any agenda changes from uh hearing? None. I'll accept a motion to accept the consent calendar as is. I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar. I'll second.

Thank you. Uh madam clerk, we have a second. Can we get a roll call, please? Oh, one is that not sorry. We are just bear with me one moment please. Council member Cruz. Yes. Council member Lamatina. Yes. Council member Oro. Yes. Vice Mayor Joseph. Yes, Mayor Washington.

Yes. And thank you, Teresa. Uh, we'll move to public hearing. We actually do not have anything on public hearing for tonight. So, we'll move on to business items. We have one business item. Item number seven, State Route 29, corridor improvement project. Uh, and we have a represent a representative from NVTA. Good afternoon, Mayor Washington, Vice Mayor Joseph, and members of the council. My name is Grant Bailey and this evening I Yes, I I'll be presenting on the SR29 corridor project. Uh, but let me bring it up first. There we go. And with me tonight, I've brought a whole team. Uh in the audience I have Perog Meta and Ravi Padaga with Kimley Horn and Associates, our executive director Danielle Schmidz. And then online from Calrans we have Ammani Maligi and Anthony Cabin Gagan. Uh so as a brief history of this project before we dive into the uh the topic this evening. In 2014 NVTA initiated the uh SR29 corridor gateway study. that uh study uh formally logged this uh this section of the corridor as you know number of safety and congestion issues uh and developed some early alternatives for addressing those those issues. In 2020, MVTA uh furthered that plan and created a a comprehensive multimodal corridor plan where we continue development of the alternatives uh which led into a project initiation document that NVTA completed in 2023 which narrowed down about four or five alternatives to two which we'll speak about tonight. um and also logged the uh project with CALR as a state highway

system improvement uh that can move forward for environmental clearance uh design and construction. Uh so first you know I want to note that uh while MVTA is leading this this project uh there are a number of stakeholders including Calrans as the owner of the state highway system and the city of American Canyon as the local stakeholder and uh its residents that will be most impacted by uh the delivery of this project. Uh it has regional implications but also local implications as well. So the purpose of today's meeting uh is to discuss the some findings that um we found through and I'll say it one time. It's the intersection safety and operational assessment process or ISO but in short we can refer to it as the intersection analysis. Um this analysis was completed in December 2025 and what it showed was one of the two alternatives uh significantly outperformed the other when it came to traffic operations. So, as far as traffic flowing through the corridor, one alternative was much better. This uh caused the project team to step back and review the project at a higher level uh and do a greater a larger alternative analysis where we compared the project on about uh nine or 10 different criteria. And I'll speak to both of those a little bit more here. Um but I'll give a little bit more background on the project first. Um, we've also presented this to the NVTA board of directors on December 21st and pending feedback we received today uh will be presenting again to the NVTA board at our December 18th uh meeting.

So the project purpose and need uh so the purpose is to improve mobility for all modes that includes vehicles, transit users, bicycles and pedestrians. Uh we'll be working to improve safety on the corridor, improve trait trait travel time and reliability, support resident and support residential and commercial uh development along the corridor. Uh the purpose is informed by the need uh and currently the corridor lacks multimodal connectivity. There's limited uh sidewalk connectivity, difficult crossings uh for pedestrians across the corridor. Uh public transit facilities are lacking. In fact, NVTA's Vine Transit departs from the corridor due to the low travel time reliability and um high travel time through the uh the corridor today. Uh there are also low level of stress routing options. And what I mean by that is there's a class 2 bicycle facility currently along the corridor where uh vehicles traveling up to 55 miles an hour are uh right next to the bike lane. And so that's that's there's a high stress for individuals who are on bikes uh or uh pedestrians who may be walking along there uh along the corridor where sidewalks don't currently exist. Uh there are constraints at the intersections would lead which lead to extensive queuing and delays. Uh and then the number of collisions on the corridor is higher than uh the state average for similar facilities. And I forgot to mention the actual project limits which are at at the bottom of the screen here. Um, so we're we'll be improving the corridor from just south of American Canyon Road uh at the south end to just north of Napa Junction Road at the north end. Currently there are five signalized intersections. Um, and I'll speak to what the improvements will look like here in just a minute or two. Um, so onto the alternatives. Uh, I mentioned there were two alternatives that are under consideration for this phase. In fact, there are actually three. One

would be the no bill alternative. uh and conditions would remain as is under that um under that alternative. Uh alternative one is uh proposes signalization improvements uh and uh coordination throughout the corridor and uh we'd also be installing business access and transit lanes or BAT lanes. Uh this would enable free flowing transit vehicles along the corridor as well as transit priority and Q jump opportunities at the intersections. Alternative two proposes multi-lane roundabouts at six intersections along the corridor with the American Canyon Road corridor uh excuse me, American Canyon Road intersection remaining signalized. Uh that I I'll speak specifically to that intersection for a moment. The reason that uh intersection is not being considered for roundabout improvements is the high level of of traffic volumes that are moving through there currently specifically from the southbound to eastbound lefthand turn movement. Uh when you start introducing a roundabout in uh at that level of traffic volumes it typically leads to congestion and uh we don't want to worsen conditions on the corridor. And so under both alternatives uh American Canyon Road would stay signalized. Uh regardless of which alternative we move forward with uh there there's work that will be performed that's common to both. Uh the first is constructing a physically separated class one shared use path on both sides of the highway corridor. That would be a 10 to 14 foot wide uh mixeduse bike and pedestrian uh path. We'd be working to lower speeds from 55 and 50 miles an hour on the corridor with the goal of getting it to 35 miles an hour. Uh we'd construct four bus stops or bus islands along the corridor. We'd construct a mobility hub which would function similar to a park

and ride but have also have end of trips facilities such as parking, EV charging, uh bike storage facilities, and potentially a refreshment kiosk. We'd also work to improve intersection configuration uh lowering the crossing distance uh pro providing uh pedestrian refuge islands uh in the intersections uh to improve visibility and uh crossing ease. So, some of the alternatives or excuse me, some of the advantages offered by alternative one include uh improved traffic operations uh throughout the corridor. And so, I alluded to one of the alternatives having an improved uh operations for for vehicles. It's alternative one with the signals. Um transit reliability uh would be improved with the business access and transit lanes as well as the Q jump lanes. Uh as far as rightaway goes, there would be a limited rideway take required to uh construct this project or construct this alternative. Uh it' be limited to private property corners and but would mostly be constructed in the existing rightway. Additionally, this project would not induce uh any vehicle miles traveled or VMT by uh through through construction. In summary, alternative one supports transit reliability, emergency response times, uh limited rideway impacts, and improved mobility for all modes including bikes and pedestrians. Advantages offered by alternative 2 include uh potential reduction in injury collision. Um there is a higher alter alternative 2 carries a higher crash reduction potential. Um but that's not to say that both alternatives uh don't provide safety improvements. By reducing the speed limit, we should see safety improvements uh under both alternatives.

Alternative 2 specifically provides uh reduction in a specific type of crash at the intersections being the T-bone type crash. Uh also at the public meeting that MVTA hosted here uh at American Canyon City Hall in April of 2025, there appeared to be a public sentiment uh or preference of preference for roundabouts. Uh as roundabouts carry the perception that uh there's improved traffic flow, which is true. Uh under certain specific conditions, uh roundabouts do function better than signals. Unfortunately, what we're seeing is the traffic volumes that travel through SR29 uh don't support roundabout improvements. Um so, alternative 2 supports potentially reduced incidence of collision as well as improving mobility for all modes uh similar to alternative one. So in anticipation of this question coming up uh I prepared a slide to discuss why signals and how can they make things better on the corridor when we already have signals now. Uh and I also want to note that uh under alternative one we'd be adding two signals to the corridor at Crawford Way and Pocaway uh or and South South Napa Junction. So that would be a total of six signalized intersections uh or seven if you include American Canyon Road. Uh currently there's um a number of well excuse me let me let me back up. Uh currently the signal uh system out there now uh has somewhat older technology and uh while it is coordinated it's not adapting in real time. And so as part of this project, we'll be replacing all of the existing signal infrastructure on the project and adding two signals that will uh ensure communication between all those signals uh while also utilizing

new technology with traffic sensors and cameras uh that you combine with uh new software to have um real time coordination and adjustments to the signal timing uh which allows for optimized signal timing uh resulting and reduce delays and less congestion. Uh let's see next slide here. Um also wanted to speak to the business access and transit lanes. So, uh the the BAT lanes will provide uh efficient and reliable trans transit movements through the corridor uh by adding a a what will effectively be a shoulder uh for for bus access. Um on the slide you can see on the right hand side there's uh red buson lanes that are uh noted for uh conceptual purpose purposes but in in reality they'll likely won't be painted red other than at the intersections where they'll transition from uh business access and transit lanes to bus only lanes which will allow uh transit Q jumps and priority movements through the intersections. Uh as far as local access goes, the uh business access and transit lanes will provide uh acceleration and del deceleration lanes uh to the local uh businesses on the corridor which will improve operations through the corridor uh allowing the general purpose through lanes to move more efficiently. The standard the the bat lanes will also access or uh excuse me act as a standard shoulder uh to accommodate vehicle breakdowns. Uh if a bus were using the bat lane, it could enter the general purpose lane to go around broke down vehicle and then uh return to the the bat lane uh on the other side of the um

of the breakdown. And then lastly, enforcement. Uh it's not NVTA's intention to create new uh constraints on the corridor and add uh additional uh personnel that need to monitor uh for compliance. Our approach would be technologydriven uh util utilizing technology that's currently available through signal-mounted cameras uh for enforcement as well as deploying cameras along the corridor to ensure uh compliant use of the bus bus only l or excuse me the bus and business and transit access lanes. Um, and then looking forward as increased as NVTA increases service through the corridor, uh, there's also an opportunity to mount uh, uh, cameras to our buses uh, to uh, site vehicles that are using the the bus only lanes at the intersections. And this technology is currently in use in San Francisco and Alamino counties. All right, so on to the intersection operation evaluation results. Uh there's a lot going on here. So I want to first uh direct your attention to the bottom of the screen and talk about level of service for a moment. There's six categories of level of service A through F. Uh A through D are acceptable levels of surface acceptable levels of service with uh D being having an intersection at capacity and E and F are unacceptable levels of service with either poor or failing operations through the intersection. These are defined by average delay experienced uh in seconds of delay per vehicle at each intersection. Acceptable levels of service uh correlate to up to 55 seconds of delay at the intersection and anything above 55 seconds uh constitutes an an unacceptable level of service. So looking at the table here, uh on the far right, excuse me, far left, we have

the six intersections that are under consideration for improvements. The second to the left column shows the current conditions on the corridor. And so that's three of the uh three of the the six intersections currently failing. Um also just a little orientation the first letter shown in each column is the AM peak hour um condition and the letter in parenthesis that follows is the PM peak hour condition. So moving on to alternative one. Uh there's two years listed there. 2030 is our anticipated opening year for this project and then the design year which this project uh is designed for based on CALR's design requirements is 20 years later in 2050. You can see immediately in the opening year of 2030 under the signalization improvement uh we elevate the level of service for the entire corridor uh taking those those uh intersections that are currently failing into uh an acceptable level of service. In the design year there there are uh there's a slump back to uh a few of the intersections beginning to fail in at least the the PM if not both uh peak hours. By contrast, uh, alternative 2 immediately would immediately decrease the level of service for almost every intersection along the corridor. And by 2050, uh, every intersection would be failing at least in one of the peak hours. You know, I'm going to back up one slide. So this is the information that really flagged the fact that we needed to take a step back and look at both alternatives from a a higher level uh and perform an alternative evaluation uh not only considering operations through the corridor but also a number of other uh factors such as safety

uh does the project meet the uh pro purpose and need uh does it meet bike and pedestrian uh needs and a number of other factors. The evaluation criteria are qualitative and quantitative. Uh they're based on adopted plans, traffic modeling, cost estimates, and safety data that we have currently available to us today. Uh the evaluation criteria for better or worse is weighted equally. Uh and the evaluation is comparative. So if one alternative outperforms the other, uh that one scores higher. And the alternatives can tie. So each each alternative can perform at the same level uh for any given criteria. Before I show you the evaluation table, um I want to talk about a couple of key evaluation criteria. Uh the first being cost. And so these these figures are in 2023. Based on the project initiation document that we completed in that year, alternative one to deliver rightaway and construction is estimated at approximately $58 million with alternative 2 being estimated at approximately $75 million or a $20 million difference. Rightway impacts, alternative one, as previously noted, presents only minimal impacts to uh private property owners. uh and the project can largely be built in the existing CALR rightway. By contrast, alternative two would require major acquisitions of private property and require potential uh structure demolitions. Alternative 2 also carries a delivery risk. Uh there's currently limited use of threelane roundabouts in California and there are no examples in California of the configuration proposed along this corridor with multiple uh consecutive roundabouts shortly space with short uh shortly space spaced out

because of the spacing of the intersections on the corridor. There's the uh the potential that the pro this alternative could also induce vehicle miles traveled which would result in uh mitigation requirements and could significantly inflate the cost of the project. And so here are the evaluation results. I won't walk through every single one of them, but I'll leave them up here for about a minute uh so the uh the audience and the council can review um the analysis that was performed. That wasn't quite a minute, but in the interest of time, I'll keep going and we can come back to this one.

So, as far as next steps go, uh, NVTA staff are recommending that we, uh, carry forward alternative one and screen out alternative two for further evaluation from the current phase of the project. Benefits of this would be to accelerate phase completion to 2026 and allow us to enter into design and rideway uh in 2027. Uh it would also limit the use of additional resources to further evaluate uh environmental and engineering studies under alternative 2. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions and receive feedback from the council uh on the proposal.

Thank you. Thank you, Grant. And if just for the interest of time, can you turn it back to that one so everybody can still absorb that one. Um great presentation. I like I always like your presentation. So they're they're really good. Um three questions for you. U before I move it on to the councils for their questions and clarification for the safety pedestrian piece. Uh could you explain how the proposed pedestrian crossings at these intersections will improve the safety for you know like in our current condition based on our current conditions?

Yes. So uh while we would be adding you know the bat lane we'll be adding uh also bulbing out or there's a number of I guess uh measures we'll be taking bulbing out the uh pedestrian crossings to minimize the crossing distance providing uh also providing pedestrian refuge islands uh in case you know you get to the signal late and still decide to cross there will be a safe area for you to find refuge uh in the middle of the corridor. Saying that now doesn't sound very safe, but um as well as uh blanking. Oh yes, thank you. Uh also the speed reduction through the corridor taking it from 50 and 55 miles an hour down to uh the goal of 35.

That's good to know. That's good to know. Now you mentioned the business access for the business bus operations. How will access by nearby businesses be maintained? That how's that? How do you maintain I guess that that part for the buses to pull out too? How who's going to maintain that and how that's going to be maintained as far as uh like street sweeping or maintaining the existing driveways as they Well, for the clarity and then the beginning part of it when it first starts up, how are we going to navigate through making sure people know that that's the bus lane and and that's how they're going to be coming back in? Are there gonna be signage?

Sure. So, there will be signage and there will definitely be an education component to this. uh project. Once these are implemented, uh MVTA in coordination with the city of American Canyon will need to uh do, you know, public information uh releases, you know, broadcasting on social media, potentially in the press as well on how to effectively use these and how, you know, how they should be used. Okay. And then finally, my last one is you you you had something on here for the no build scenario, right? So, if no improvements were made, what would traffic in a quarter conditions probably look like by 2025 to your estimate?

Um, I actually have a backup slide to this question if you don't mind me. Okay, so um to your question, this is a similar table to what was presented previously, but it actually includes the no build alternative there between existing conditions and alternative one. So you can see as uh we move to the 2030 opening year uh conditions worsen uh and then by 2050 virtually every intersection is operating at uh an unacceptable level of service. Okay. Thank you Grant. Uh Council Member Oral.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Um I actually have a list of questions but I was going to suggest that as we get into council discussion I would love to hear from the public first we open it up to public comment. Uh, and then we go from there if that's okay. That's fine. That's fine. So, any other clarifying questions before we open it up to public comment? Seeing none, uh, then I will open it up to public comment for item number seven, the State Route 29 corridor. Um, Madam Clerk, do we have any cards?

I, uh, I had, uh, one written comment from Janette Guy, which was delivered to everyone. There's also a copy of it on the um side counter there. Um I have no cards for this item. Hugh Marquez would like to speak.

Good evening, Q.

Good evening. Um for for years we've heard about the roundabouts. NVTA was was was very persistent about roundabouts. I'm glad to see that that's sort of going away uh because the the properties that were around those areas were a concern to the property owners and what the costs were going to be to for that. Um when we talk about the smart lights and the and and uh the technology, are you talking something similar to that I've seen in other cities where if no one's there, it's green, it doesn't turn red, and then it it goes if when traffic comes. Is that sort of the philosophy of this smart system? I saw there's going to be a um a road a light at Crawford, which will be a new it's on my street. It'll be right there. um at 35 miles an hour, has NVTA or CALR figured out that that we'll be able to get enough of the people through during rush hour uh traffic at because right now at 55 miles an hour, it's backed up a long ways and and we're talking two more lights and I understand that the idea of having it run smoothly, but when you're talking smart lights, can you explain a little bit more what that philosophy will be for me. I I am just trying to figure out how you're going to get that traffic during rush hour because during normal times off rush hour city seems to goes pretty smoothly if you know if you go it's I mean there's times it's but um uh the residents here and we're getting more building we are building more and and uh that is a concern for them and and I I I'm I'm concerned about the two other lights. I like it because Crawford right now I have to sneak out when I have to. Um I'm just concerned about that and and

if you could explain a little bit more how these smart uh lights are going to go for to keep the traffic flowing. Um because roundabouts I know you don't like them but but um they I've been to a minium they seem to work very well. I don't know if they'd work here. Uh, I'm glad to see you're doing the lights as as an alternative as as a preferred alternative and I hope the council will see that that may be what what is best for the city. Anyway, I just wanted to ask about that. Thank you.

Scott Meyers. Yeah, I just wanted to say that um I'm for the lights, too. Um, roundabouts work great, but um, I've been at Napa, the roundabout there. It keeps traffic going really well, but nobody thinks they have to to yield for the traffic that's coming on. And I've seen three people every time I've go drive up on the roundabout medium because somebody didn't yield for the traffic to come through. And I think that would be more voice for us. And I think I like the uh, lights better. Thank you, Scott.

Leon Garcia,

thank you. It's uh I appreciate the presentation very much. Uh I served on NBT I think for 20 years and I think our first look at this uh know uh Vice Mayor Joseph and I were on the same team at that point. When we look at the roundabouts, you know, it's the solution for uh Sauso 29 is there, but it backs it all up. You know, the 1229 intersection at airport is backed up all the way across the overpass span on some days during commute hour. And I'm just wondering uh are we creating something like that with roundabouts here? Uh I would be liking to know more about uh timing of what's uh there's far more sophisticated ways of measuring traffic now than we had. I think uh I remember at some point this traffic light system in American Canyon was built back in the 1960s I think and then it was upgraded once uh and to uh the question posed was uh what alternatives are there? How does it measure? I think something that that describes for us that assures that traffic will be moving through it. Uh could you pull up a slide of one of the roundabouts you had there?

Is it what one of my concerns is cross town traffic? That one. That that one there.

So, uh the main one going through I'm sure is the one going left to right. And it's uh high peak hour. Um, everybody's going home and I'm trying to get across that intersection to get over to uh say this meeting for example or to uh get over to uh to Safeway to do some shopping. Uh where's the yield for me coming uh east west because the traffic is backed up to no end. There's no break in the traffic. Uh traffic light I think assures that. That's why we were able to navigate going north before the uh roundabouts at uh Sasel and 29 were put in. But it improved one section of the traffic. Now it makes it worse for other sections of the traffic. So if we take a look at this holistically, uh I think back on it, let's take a look at the alternatives that you had mentioned with the signaling process. See how that maps out. Uh yeah, I avoid that. I uh my secret route was discovered. It's uh called uh Develin Road and now it gets about as much traffic as 29 used to get

because people are trying to figure out how to get around that. Get moving. Get get me home. Thank you. Thank you, Leon. I do have a couple of hands raised online. Uh I think we have more Fran. Oh, okay. Okay. Could you please give me your name, too? Thank you. So, I have just a quick question about Can we Excuse me. Before you start, can you just for the record give us your name? Oh, sure. Michelle Marin. Thank you, Michelle.

My question is about the Q lanes. Um, and if you're going up 29 and you're making a right on 12, there's a far right turning lane. And on the other side of 12, as you're going up 29, there's another lane is partial, goes up. But what happens is cars use that right turning lane to speed ahead on 29. And I've gotten really close to getting clobbered a couple of times because cars are using it as not a merge lane. They're using it as how fast can I go? And so is there a way to to try to prevent that uh as you talk about those Q lanes?

Thank you, Michelle. Um and Beth, go ahead.

Good evening, Beth Marcus. Um I'm not sure what the resolve is around here. I've lived here for 48 years and I remember when the traffic was going this way going to Mar Island and now it's the other way. But um the roundabouts I'm not too thrilled with them. One reason is for especially on uh Donaldson when the kids are going to school. How do they get across? I know there's a mechanism how to do but h I don't know how they get across that way. I'm more for the signals, although I don't like signals either because for us who live here in American trying to get on the highway, you sit there forever and ever and ever. Um, I shouldn't be up here talking because I should have a solution and not complaining, but um, I just don't think that roundabouts. And the other thing I'm concerned about the roundabouts, especially on uh, Donaldson, is the fire department, the police department, um, and all the chases we have going down here and the and the ambulances that's going to the Queen of the Queen of the Valley are going down to uh, Kaiser. I mean, seems like they're going to be around and around and around and around. And if I was inside that ambulance, I'd be sick. So, anyhow, I wish I had a some sort of a solution, but I just think that roundabouts aren't the best thing for us.

Thank you, Beth. Uh, you say we have somebody online? I do. Okay, I am getting ready here. Let's see. I have Justin Hamilton Hull. Go ahead, Justin.

Good evening. Um, thank you. Um, let the transportation uh in in um transportation everybody. Um, yes, I do want to see that more run out and maybe we'll put like safety scallop so people can walk to Walmart. Um, it'll be how many will be out there and I have one more thing. Uh, if you guys can uh give me the copy email copy transportation. Uh I know I sit on the board and listen you guys and I think you all know I think I know copy and back up really of triplication. So I do want copy in my email and um and one one second is how many run out will be it'll be one will be at Walmart and it'll be one over uh caring more and one by way. I think we all can do it. Fil it. Thank you.

Thank you, Justin.

We're gonna call. Okay, we have Karen Fritz. Go ahead, Karen. Good evening, everyone. Mayor, council, staff, public. Hi, Fran and Beth. Um, I have to agree. I think the lights are a better alternative than roundabouts. Um, I still am a little confused as to why we couldn't get an overpass or underpass in at least one or two of those areas. I understand they are a lot of construction, but it sounds like the roundabouts are too as far as I can tell. Um, looking at fairgrounds and all the construction that's going on over there with their big roundabout that they're putting in. Um the speed limit being 35 miles an hour. I'd like to say good luck with that. We can't even get them to tune down to 35 miles an hour in our public streets. Um and uh I certainly hope it is something that can be done. And the bus lanes, I think that's a great idea, but keeping out those road raging commuters is another task that we're going to have to be monitoring. And I'm sure our PD can take care of that. Um maybe cameras or something can assist with that as well. But uh lights I do stand most in favor of uh and opposed to the roundabouts. So thank you for looking at an alternative method. I appreciate that. And uh thank you.

Thank you Karen. That is my last hand raised online. Okay. If there's no more one more, go ahead. I'm sorry. I just had another question for us who live on the side streets. I live on Melvin Road. How's that going to affect us? Because right now we are the uh frontage road to the highway and it's increasingly getting worse all the time. And I just feel that people won't want to do the roundabouts and they'll want to go down all of our side streets and that might create a a bigger issue for us. Thank you, Beth.

Fran are fine, but people don't know how to use them. I find that a lot of people don't think I for our city. We're not big enough for you five inter.

Thank you, Fran.

Well, I'd like to close public comment on item number seven and return to the council for additional statements or questions for tonight's presentation from Napa Valley Transit Authority. As I mentioned earlier tonight, uh this is an opportunity for us to get uh and give feedback and a dialogue on Highway 29 quarter improvement project off uh council member Oro. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh Grant, thank you for the presentation and the information. I felt like it wasn't enough though. Um there's no data to provide that. We just got a bunch of letters and grades about that. What's the data behind it? What were the numbers of vehicles that were moving through there? How did you come to the conclusion of that? And is there a deeper report that wasn't presented here that you guys have stacked or online that we could pull down and look at to understand how this study was done? Yes, there was a significant effort before towards modeling. In fact, the model that is currently in place wasn't effective for the corridor. And so we actually drilled down and did a sub area model for the uh for the corridor itself and the surrounding areas in American Canyon. That ISOPE uh analysis is formalized in a report uh and can be made will be made available as we progress our uh traffic analysis. We'll be performing what's called a tour or a traffic operation analysis report which is a required document engineering document as part of the project approval. has not completed yet, but will be completed uh probably by late summer this year. Um I'm gonna look to Ravi, our traffic lead on this, if you wanted to add anything to that. uh we have provided a extensive data

collection like in the morning we collected the data from 5:00 a.m. to 9 9:00 a.m. and the PM we collected 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. So we collected extensive data then we use that data to analyze the intersection level of service hour by hour. Then we came to the what the level of service for the what for the ISO purpose we selected the worst of the worst hour because we are comparing the same hour of the data for the intersections to the roundabouts. We use that data. That data is available and that data was generated based on the information by the city general plan land use. All that information using that data we projected the 2030 and 2050 we have all the data that data is once we go through the calrans cal is very extensively reviews the all the data and we reviewed after reviewing that data only we came to the conclusion what data was presented summary what we was presented

well that that's fantastic um it's a great methodology but what is the data are 50,000 cars going through here a day. Can you give me an idea of actually what you were studying and what c at what point did a roundabout break the model and give us an F service grade? And why was that? Like that that's the detail that we're not actually understanding here. Because here here's the here's an issue I think and I've explained this for years for years and it's hard to get across to residents because American Canyon is a developing city. When I arrived here we were probably about 15,000 people. We've grown maybe okay let's just say I'll give you 10. We've doubled that population to 11. That's from 2005. Okay, that's 20,000 people. Let's just say 10,000 of them are adults and the rest don't have a license, so they're children. If I took 10,000 cars and drove north to Napa, that still wouldn't equate to the numbers that we see coming through town. Meaning that the traffic being coming from here is not the result of making American Canyon what we want it to be. Schools, housing, parks, a town center. It is not our fault. It is because Up Valley is not building enough affordable housing for their workers. So they're coming from American Canyon, Vallejo, Salano, Benishia, and other places to get a job up valley. It is a regional issue. So I would say to the residents of American Canyon, we get to build the town and the city that we deserve, the ones that include a

beautified highway, parks, open space, housing for all, and services that we need to be able to stay in town. Unfortunately for us, we have a highway that is an economic lifeblood to the rest of Napa Valley. So let's not point the fingers at ourselves but about a regional issue around here. So I want to make that clear. So what you're not telling me is what numbers were you studying at? What data did you have? You told me how you gathered it. I get that. What data what did you see in your preliminary reports? Um the preliminary data when we forecasted for the 2030 what you pointed exactly correct the 29 provides the two type of one is the residents of the American Canyon the other one is a regional traffic who is going from uh going to the Napa or going to the Sonoma all those things. What the data what we used was when we did the forecast for the future or for 2030. So we selected the area within the American Canyon what kind of a land use what are the information we did we focused that area in along with that area the development and what type of the development is happening next uh 2030 or 2050 we look at that is the first thing we look at.

Do you have a number? Yes, we do have the number. There is a Okay, we do have a number. We don't have it in front of us today. I'd be happy to share the results from the traffic counts to give you the peak hour volumes uh following this meeting. But but you're making a recommendation today that you proceed with alternate one and we don't we don't have any numbers.

That's correct. But the level of service uh that were presented at the table demonstrate the volumes that were running through that run through the corridor and equate to uh the delays that will be experienced by the vehicles traveling the corridor uh which the delays result from the high volumes of vehicles and I can't give you a number exactly what the number of uh vehicles moving through the corridor is. Yeah. It also makes a recommendation that we proceed with number one. who actually gets to approve that recommendation.

Uh, pending feedback from this board and the feedback we received from, excuse me, from this council and the feedback we received from MVTA's board last two weeks ago, um, we're going to pull all this together, present it again at the NVTA board on December 18th, and request uh, the board approve the recommendation to screen out alternative 2 and proceed with alternative one. I'm sorry. The date again was uh February 18th. February 18th at 100 p.m. So NVTA makes that decision.

Uh NVTA as the uh California Environmental Quality Act uh lead agency, yes, does make that decision. Ultimately, we are working with Calrans as well as the uh National Environmental Protection Agency lead agency um so they're the federally uh the implement of the federal environmental document where NVTA is the implement of the uh state environmental document. So we coordinate together. Uh we will be working with or we'll be meeting with Calrans uh on February 8th I believe next week at our regular monthly meeting to present the findings uh the feedback that we've received from our board and this council and the public uh seeking their concurrence to also make the re recommendation the final recommendation to NVTA's board on the 14th.

Thank you. Now, and then just so the public understands because five of us here are elected officials and we take the heat for traffic that we don't cause, right, for a road that we can improve. What happens next after that approval process and give us a timeline when actually something can be done here on this highway?

Yes. So, uh, pending board, uh, yeah, board approval on February 14th, uh, we can proceed with alternative one, screen out alternative two. It'll great, greatly reduce and streamline the effort necessary to move, uh, obtain environmental clearance and project approval. Uh, we're targeting the end of this year. Uh, that allows us to remain uh, eligible for this next cycle of grant funding that's coming out, um, which we are currently applying for. uh as long as if we complete and our plan is to complete the uh environmental phase by the end of this year, we'll move into design which will take approximately two years uh take us to 2029 uh where pending available funding if we can obtain the grant funds we're applying for and organize funding uh through other means. Uh we can begin construction as early as late 2029 or into 2030 with an 18-month approximately construction timeline. I I would hope that timeline is met. I'll tell you why. Before I was on city council, I was elected to the I was I volunteered to be part of the SR29 corridor study which uh looked at the highway from 37 all the way up to Trunkus. It was actually the greatest group that I've ever seen come together. It was business citizens, uh hotel interests, local government officials. Uh that was in 2012. We presented a document to NVTA to CALR saying do a three-lane highway, beautify the corridor. A lot of the focus was right on here. Remind me what year Oh, it's 13 years later. We haven't done anything. Your previous director came in here and said you can't do three lanes. And then we talked about roundabouts. And when I remember coming in here, I was like, I don't know if roundabouts is going to work with 50,000 cars uh coming through here. And now we're going back to two

lanes and improvements. Let it be known today that David Oro was always right. We're going to mark that down.

Mark that down because that's what I thought because we you pointed out that there's no there's no multiple uh roundabouts anywhere in the state of California. Like sort of oneoffs in little intersections here and there. I would love to see it work, but not with these volumes. And during that time, since 2013, we've heard that you don't need to expand the highway because autonomous vehicles are going to rule the world. Uh we're going to do multimmodal. Uh give us another $250,000 to do this study. Do another We got to wait for this. We got to get in line for that. Kind of tired of hearing about it. And so I would hope Grant that you and NBTA could get this to the finish line before the end of this decade. Thank you,

Council Member Lamatina.

Thank you for the presentation. Um, a question about the new technology. So, um, I drive to Napa in the morning and that's quite a commute. My the office I go to in Napa from my front door is 10 miles, but it takes quite a bit of time. But my question is um the signals on let's just say from Iola all the way up to Third Street on Sawll there. Um are those the new technology that you're talking about? Like because in the mornings sometimes I have to speed and to catch that stream of traffic. If I can't catch them, then I'm stopped at every single light and it takes me 10 minutes longer. So, I just wanted to know a little bit more about the technology and if that's kind of what you're talking about. You keep them green during commute time and then what happens on the weekends because we do have a lot of tourists. Is that system shut off or how does that work?

It's a great question. Um, so specific to the example you're speaking of, I don't know this exact signal control, but my suspicion is that it is coordinated, but um, not adaptive. So it's not seeing real-time data, read real, you know, reading real-time vehicle volumes and adjusting uh, to the conditions that are currently on the uh, on the streets you're referring to. The plan to or alternative one would implement adaptive signals that would be able to assess current traffic conditions and adapt based on uh what's actually happening and you know change signal phasing and and improve vehicle throughput and that would be like 247 monitor

247 yes uh be operating at peak uh efficiency during the peak hour u but it wouldn't turn off uh especially considering the high level of tourist volumes that we throughout the county. Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mayor Grant. Thank you for that presentation. So, regardless of the alternative we do, whether it's one or two, just saying it looks like one's a winner. Um, one thing that we can agree upon is the safety and mobility of the pedestrian, the cyclist, the driver, or whatever the case. Now, you talked about that would be how that would be improved. One thing I've noted, I've been here since about 2001 in American Canyon. No one can walk from basically American Canyon uh let's say on the east side Safeway to Walmart. Who would be in charge of say that that pedestrian uh sidewalk? I know there's three entities. There's CALR, NBTA in the city. That's something I like to discuss with the constituents because sometimes they don't understand it. They think that we could build it or they could think CALR, but who would be in charge of that? And also uh what uh former mayor Leon mentioned, he talked about east to west access. Is there any discussion about some type of pedestrian bridge or I heard tunnel undergrounding? Has that been discussed on how we can improve that safety for pedestrians, cyclists, multimmoal and of course vehicles?

I'll start with your first question about maintenance responsibility of new improvements on the corridor. Is that right?

So that hasn't been confirmed yet and it will be coordinated with CALR as we work through the design process. I will say now that CALR has shifted gears on how on their practice on assigning maintenance responsibilities for new highway facilities, but there's an active push from uh local transportation area agencies in the Bay Area to stop that practice and ensure that CALR rightway maintains on uh m CALR rightway maintenance maintains stays with CALR. Um I can't make a promise one way or the other. There may be some uh shared responsibilities of maintenance but it's too early to tell. Understood. Thank you.

And your second question, sorry. Do you mind rephrating it? Well, I did talk about the um access. We were talking about possible pedestrian bridges and and sort who would be responsible for building that if that were to come to fruition. Uh so that type of improvement is not considered under this project. if it were to be taken forward, uh that would likely be an initiative at the city level, the local level, uh to uh you know, design and construct that facility. Great. Thank you,

uh Vice Mayor Joseph. Okay. Thank you for the presentation. Um and I I want to do a little bit of background on this. Um, Council Member Oro is correct that this has been like 10 or 15 years or probably 20 years in the making, but in in all fairness, a lot of that has been because CALR and NVTA and the city of American Canyon were at odds over the basic concept of we wanted a six-lane highway and everybody else said it wasn't going to happen. So a lot of the about 10 years of nothing happening was just two entities bumping heads. About five years ago um we were persuaded to say all right let's not pursue six lanes because after all it may not even be that much of a bucolic uh highway. It'll just be a busy highway with six lanes. So it's only been in the last four or five years that we decided to okay let's do four lanes let's go through the process that CALR likes and quite bluntly we have certainly not been going at lightning fast speeds but we have in the last 5 years gone from a concept to the environmental review to two years from now we'll have the plans and specs and we have funding for that so we are making good progress and the reason it's taken so long quite honestly honestly is we spent about 10 years, you know, going toe-to-toe, not backing down, and nothing happening. So, I I want to remind everybody that it's something I've used to say, you know, it's going to be 10 years from the time we decide what we want to do before you'll see it. And if you take 10 years arguing, it'll be 20 years. So, that's my little uh sermon on that one. Let me now focus to a couple of

things that are important. I think the adaptive signal certainly sounds good, but I've been around long enough to see all kinds of synchronized signals not working. If this includes cameras and sensors and AI computer technology, then I'm willing to believe that it might be something akin to the traffic cop at the intersections being able to look in real time and say, "Okay, you cars can go and you guys can't." That's also a reference to something that was like 70 or 80 years ago. So maybe I'm, you know, people don't know what I'm talking about. But I'm kind of okay with synchronized signals. I was always apprehensive about roundabouts, especially a six-lane roundabout. And the fact that no one's ever done it like this, you know, is good enough for me to say, "Let's go stick with signals." So now we get into some of the weeds. I is all of is there going to be cabling that has the you know wiring and all that so that um we start at say American Canyon Road and all the way up potentially to South Kelly because what I'd like to see is even though that's outside the project area if this really does synchronize the traffic flow then we need to consider it all the way to South Kelly. So, I would hope that we can figure out a way to at least get the conduit all the way to South Kelly. Um, because I think it will, if it works, it will be incredible. The second part is I' I'd really encourage that we defer adding two new signals until we can see what this synchronized signaling works for the ones we've got. And in particular, the two signals at Rio and Eucalyptus, those are so close that originally they weren't supposed to be there. It was

supposed to be one or the other, but not both. We just never did anything. But it now presents itself as a good case study. If you can have those two signals synchronized so that you don't have bottlenecks, then I'd be impressed and be gung-ho to add two more at Crawford and at at Poco. But for now, I think if you can get, you know, I I think if we can use the existing ones and show how they work, then I could see adding two more. Uh but to just go gung-ho and then cross your fingers is just too much for me to to bite off on. So that's my I'm okay with alternative one. I'm okay with signalized intersections. I'd like to defer the two extras until we see everything work. And that's why I'm hoping that you can design this so that you literally just kind of plug in new signals and you don't have to do a whole lot of additional engineering or or modifications. The last couple of comments relate to the 35 mph. Is part of the reason the traffic will slow is because the lanes will be slightly narrower so that you feel like you shouldn't go as fast or is it just relying on enforcement?

That's correct. The lanes will be reduced from uh two to 11 ft. Um and so you know the narrower lanes encourages slower speeds. Uh we'll also be excuse me working to as part of the project uh installing I guess preemptive speed zone uh signage at either end of the corridor alerting drivers to reduce speed. Um and I will note that I said it a couple times the goal is to get to 35, right?

35 would have been uh the speed limit that we use should had we move forward or if we move forward with roundabouts. signals is a little different. Uh we are still modeling how if traffic can move efficiently through the corridor at 35 miles an hour. It's possible it could be 45 miles an hour and that's pending analysis coordination with CALR a few other things.

Okay. Uh the final one is for our local concern and that is we are going to have to contribute something towards this project. the bulk of the funding, I think, will be state or federal, but we're going to have to pony up something. And so, it it would behoove us to start thinking about how we can start generating some of that revenue. Tweaking our traffic impact fee is certainly one option, but we've also talked about have charging uh development along the corridor. Um well, we've historically conditioned people along the corridor to underground utilities or s the power lines. It it may be better for us to say just give us a dollar amount and don't worry about it because we know in a couple of years CALR is going to come through and do it all. But the more money we can put in our bank, the more we can underwrite either the next phase or matching for construction. Um, and it would expedite development on the corridor if people didn't have to go through all the herang of of undergrounding power lines when Calrans is going to do it in a more comprehensive, you know, systematic fashion. So, off-topic but related, we really need to pursue some kind of inloo fee for uh undergrounding uh certainly along the 29 corridor because I think it makes more sense to collect the money now and have Calrans take care of it all at once later on. So, those are my long-winded comments. Thank you.

Any other comments from council? Uh, seeing none, madame clerk or madam attorney, um, for clarity and and for the record, since this item was noticed as a presentation, a receive file only, can you confirm the proper way of closing this item? Sure. For a receive and file, you don't really need to make a motion to receive it. it. Uh the item was not agendaized for action, just to receive the presentation and uh provide any input which has been done through public comment and through council comment.

Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Grant Danielle, thank you for the presentation and council, thank you for your dialogue.

So, we'll close item number seven and we'll move on to the management and staff oral reports. Uh Mr. Mr. Holly, I do see item number eight as the open gov presentation and recommendation. Uh yes, Mayor as uh staff is going to start funneling up here to the podium. Uh the purpose of this item is a bit of showand tell. Um we are and have been using now the open gov software platform uh for a variety of things and more recently have started to use them in our community development department for building permits but we use it in a in a bunch of different areas and we thought it would be good to showcase uh what we've been doing. So um with that I'll kind of let staff take it away.

Thank you. Good evening Mayor. Good evening,

city council, fellow staff, and community members. Um, I'm Jim Cruz, the finance director, and joining me will be Norman Woods from public works and Julian Gilfus from the community development department. And tonight we're jointly presenting our open gov use case. So, OpenGV is a platform designed to make our budgets, permits, and projects easier to understand and more accessible for both the public and council. This presentation will briefly walk through why transparency matters, what challenges we had before, and how open gov improves access and understanding. So why transparency matters is essential to building trust between the city, the council, and the community. Residents and council should be able to easily see how decisions are made, how public uh funds are used, and where projects stand without needing to sort through complex reports or requests of information separately. When information is open and easy to understand, it strengthens accountability, improves communication, and increases confidence in local government. So what wasn't working before? Um before open gov we had our information existed in multiple platforms which made it harder for both staff and public access public to access and understand. From a finance perspective, budget information was available but not easy to explore or visualize without significant effort. Internally it was difficult uh to navigate multiple spreadsheets across the different departments and trying to gather all of that and compile it into one place. The same thing for assets and purchasing records were spread across the different platforms and files uh and files making them difficult to share and manage

for the from the permitting standpoint. Applicants often had difficulty tracking the status of their permits and understanding what the next steps are, resulting in emails and extra phone calls. These challenges weren't about the lack of data, but access accessibility and clarity. So what OpenGV improves, it brings all of the information together in one centralized user-friendly platform. Budgets, budgets, assets, projects, and permits are now visible in one place and use plain language and clear visuals. For staff, this means more efficient, more efficient workflows. Task and approvals move through clear, trackable steps, reducing delays, and follow-ups. For council, it means clearer, more accessible information when reviewing budgets, projects, and financial data. And for the public, it means easier access to city information anytime without needing to request it or waiting for staff response. So in finance, we primarily use the budgeting suite and transparency reporting. Uh open gov allows budget data to be presented in a way that's easy to read and easy to navigate. Um, I'm going to show a demonstration of where you can find that on our website and how you can um, view the budget data. Oops. See that?

Okay. So, at the end of this presentation, um there will be a direct it'll show a direct link on how to get to this page on the city website. Um all of the transparency um websites are on here. And to get to the finance um website, it would be this button here, the receipts, dispersements, and fund balance. When you click on that, it'll take you to our transparency portal. And on the side, there are um the receipts, dispersements, and fund balance. That's where you can see where we are at in the um in the current year and prior years as far as budget versus actuals. Um you can also see our online online budget book where um so this one shows our current adopted budget but as we go through the development process um and it goes through the different phases of the proposed budget they actually appear on here in in real time as we start um adding proposals to to the proposed budget year. Um you can drill down into here. Um like for example, this is revenues and so it'll show like all the different revenue streams and you can see that property tax is our highest revenue um stream there. You can also um look at the different uh other budgets such as the enterprise funds or the water by just clicking on here. Well, let me see. Actually, let me go back and then clicking on there. And you can even just type water on here if you want to see that. And then if you want to look at water operations, you can just

click on that and then it will show um let me uncheck the so it'll show um so this is the current um adopted budget for water operations. And then you'll see like expenses are higher than the revenues. And if you click there, um, you'll be able to see that there's 5.7 million in capital projects. So the operations would be a balanced budget revenue versus expense-wise, but there are also like the capital projects that make it make it higher. Um, and then you can go through all of the different um, budgets that way. Um just a little thing about the receipts, dispersements, and fund balance. So here you'll see like this was our 2526 budget. We're now in February. And so this shows you um where we are cumul cumulatively in the um in the fiscal year. And that was something that um we weren't able to see before we had um open gov. Okay. And so now we'll move on to the public works portion and how they use open gov. gonna actually remember to move this up this time. All my uh co-workers always leave it down and they put me after Jim for a reason. So I would not uh so I'd have to duck down and actually have to do this. So So I am Norman Woods, assistant of public works director, building on what uh Jim had said uh what

she just recently presented. I'm going to give a real brief overview of the three primary uh main points that we use for uh the public works division which is uh as you can see uh tracks equipment replacement and repairs all one place essentially that's our asset management uh simplifies our procurement uh that is more of non Thomas' area right there and the last one is integrates public works and community development permits all in one place. Uh, I was prepared to give a demo, but I'd have to log out of this platform and log into another one. So, essentially what you're seeing right here is an asset management page. You see the blue lines right there? That's a representation of some of our water lines. The yellow line right there is a representation of our recycle water lines. On the bottom, you can see our uh our assets, the non-assets, and uh the activity level, whether it's traffic control, repair, or investigate. Those lines signify an asset that the city of American Canyon has within the city. We also have other representations like hydrants, um, park benches, open areas, um, all throughout the city of American Canyon on various different pages, but that's just a a representation of the asset management. And this right here is our procurement page. Um, it places all our procurement services in one place. Our requests for bids, proposals, and quotes can all be quot uh all be posted on that one platform which allows the city to respond to inquir inquir inquiries, sorry about that. Uploads and uh upload addendums and other changes and the city can also report issues that can all be tracked in real time. Essentially, what it does is provide a lot of transparency. I don't want to click this. Okay, I'll leave it alone right there. And that's essentially the end of the public works

uh presentation. And if you need a demo for that, we'll come back later time. I don't know how to get rid of that. There's nothing on here. This button here on the TV.

Oh, okay. Thanks. Okay. In community development, we use OpenGV's permitting and licensing module, which has significantly improved communication and transparency with our applicants. Applicants can view the real-time status of their permits, pay fees, and download a copy of their permit card, all from a single platform. This reduces the amount of time staff spends responding to emails and phone calls. Applicants also no longer have to come down to city hall to make a payment on their permit since they can do it from that from open gov. Um to further assist applicants, we've created a brief instructional video

step-by-step guide on how to apply for an overtheounter.

Um to demonstrate how to navigate and set up an account online. The video is available on our website and I'll play it. permit through the city of American Canyon's new online system powered by OpenG. This platform makes it easier than ever to submit applications, track your progress, make payments, and even schedule inspections, all from one place. Start by visiting the City of American Canyon's permit portal. In the top right corner, click login or sign up. Choose sign up to create your open gov ID. All you need is an email address and a password. Once you log in, you'll notice the top right corner now shows your name. This is your dashboard where you'll manage everything related to your permits. Next, you'll see a list of departments you can apply with: planning and zoning, building, public works, fire district, and code enforcement. Each department lists examples of the permits that they handle. For this tutorial, we'll walk through applying for a residential building permit over the counter. Click apply online to begin. The application walks you through a series of steps. Let's go through them together. Step one, confirm your contact information. Your name and email will automatically fill in. Step two, enter the location. Start typing your project address. The system will suggest matches as you type. Select the correct one and property details will appear automatically. Step three, applicant information. Choose your role. Property owner, authorized agent, contractor, or other. Step four, permit information. Answer questions about your project. Fields with the red star are required. Hover over any question marks for helpful tips. Step five, workers compensation declaration. Choose the option that applies to you. Owner builder declaration. Select your response and sign electronically. Step eight, owner's acknowledgement and verification. Read carefully. Check all boxes and sign.

Smoke and carbon monoxide compliance. California requires you to confirm how many detectors you have when doing residential work. Step 10, share drive for attachments. You can share documents with collaborators here. Attachments. Upload all required files. Anything marked required must be included. When everything looks good, review your application and click confirm and submit. After submitting, you'll be redirected to your dashboard. Here you can view every permit you've applied for, see updates, track progress, and communicate with city staff. Click on any permit to view its details, including your permit number, attachments, and messages. If you need to make a change after submitting, contact city staff. They can help update your information. You can also add guests, maybe a contractor or family member, by entering their email and clicking grant access. They'll receive an invite to collaborate on your application. Each step of your permit process is shown with a color icon. Green means complete. Gray means skipped or waved. And blue means it's the active step. Click on a step to read notes, see reviewer comments, or leave a message for city staff. When your permit reaches the payment step, you'll see an itemized list of fees. You can pay online by credit card. Please note there's a small processing fee, or by echek, which has no fee. If you prefer, you can also pay in person at city hall. Your payment information is secure. The city only receives confirmation, not your bank details. Once payment is complete and your permit is issued, you can print it directly from your dashboard. Under permits and documents, you'll find all issued documents available for download at any time. To schedule an inspection, go to the inspection step and click add new appointment. Select your preferred date and time. Choose who will be present and leave any notes for the inspector.

The status will say requested until confirmed by the inspector. It'll change to scheduled once confirmed. After the inspection, you'll see results like pass, fail, or needs corrections. Once your final inspection is approved, your permit will be marked complete, but it will remain visible in your dashboard for your records. And that's it. With Open Gov, applying for permits in American Canyon is faster, simpler, and completely online. If you have any questions along the way, our city staff is here to help. Just use the message feature in your application or visit the city's website for contact details. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in OpenGV. Open Gov has transformed the way residents interact with city operations. Residents can track permits, check budgets, and follow the progress of city projects. This makes city work more accessible and transparent, helping the community understand how decisions are made.

Thank you. Any questions? Thanks, uh, Julian. Quick question. That video is also on there, too. So, when you need to look at the video again to get Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Lamatina, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Um, a question. So, say someone wants to get a new roof and you start going through the process, but you want to know how much it costs before you hit submit. Is there a way to figure that out before pulling the trigger?

Right now, we don't have that estimate option because it has to go through the permit tech to assess some of the fees. Most of the fees are automatically calculated, but there are a few that still have to be manually assessed. Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor Joseph. Well, thank you for the report and the presentation, and it is exciting. Um, one of the things I'm wondering from a management perspective, um, it's important to be able to track any open permits or open requests or whatever. How does that work? Do you generate a listing of everything that's still pending to make sure it's all resolved or how does it work?

Yes. Well, Open Gov has an extensive uh reporting options. You can narrow it down to specifically solar permits that are still open or different types of work. But I do run those reports and then I send out notifications to homeowners that their uh permits have not been finalized and that it needs to be final before such date or they will incur fees.

Okay. Um is there any supervisory review of permits that are still outstanding jumping from solar to like building permits or other types of activity? Where I'm coming from is to try to get a sense of how quickly we go from somebody submits a permit to it's completed so that we're tracking, you know, is it two weeks, six weeks indefinite.

That's a great question, Vice Mayor Joseph, and I don't want to put Julian on the spot here. I'm happy to answer your question. First, I want to commend Julian. She's been instrumental in getting uh this transition over to Open Gov. This is the newest of the three uh in our uh migrations over to Open Gov. And I think we went live in December or sort of mid November. Uh October.

October. Yeah. So we're still um we've gone live now. We're still test driving all the all the features. You bring up a good point. Uh part of the reason we wanted to switch to this platform was the the availability of that sort of information. Uh and so you know as as staff will get together and look at what we can analyze with that and look to see are there any patterns. Um, one of the things with the development process, both entitlements and building permits, is there's only sort of two options. The ball is either in our court proverbially or the ball's in the applicant's court, right?

Um, nowadays the electronic submitt means it's not in migration in between. Uh, before when we used to have paper in transit, there would be weeks where big boxes of files and paperwork was just going from one place to another. We've eliminated that. So, it really is ball in city court or ball in developer court. And that's one of the metrics I'm most interested in because if it takes six months to issue a permit, my question is how many of those days was the ball in the city's court versus the applicant's court. We have time frames involved in a lot of things that we're doing. Whereas applicants don't. They can work on it when it's important to it and then submit uh and then give it to us. We give it back to them. They could wait six months, eight months, whatever it's convenient for them. So this software will give us the opportunity to analyze that data. We've just migrated to it, so we're still kind of test driving out what its capabilities are. Okay, good. And and you're right, that is where I was headed is, you know, what kind of management data can we get? And you're right, if the ball's in the other guy's court, that's great. It's a free country. My anxiety is if it's sitting in our court for too long. So, thank you. No other questions? Thank you for the presentation.

Yeah. Thank you for the whole team for pulling that together. Yeah. Yeah. Uh we have a couple more updates. Mayor, uh, Deputy City Manager Aikita has a couple of updates and as does assistant manager one. Thank you.

Thank you, Jason. Um, I have a couple of updates. Um, coming up on February 25th, we have our State of the City Town Hall first meeting at Canyon Oaks Elementary School in the multi-purpose room starting at 6:30 p.m. And then the following day on February 26th, we have our Save the City Town Hall meeting at the Adult Activity Center at 11:00 a.m. And then um you kind of already heard already, please don't forget to um nominate a very special someone who has um who embodies the spirit of American Canyon who has really shown that volunteer spirit um and that should be the next Gateway Award winner for this year. We will be recognizing that person at the upcoming community recognition dinner on April 25th at the Double Tree Hotel from 5 to 8:00 PM. If you have not gotten your tickets yet, they are on sale. Um we hope to see you there. Thank you.

Thank you, Ally. Uh wait, what's the deadline for Gateway Award nominees? Oh gosh, you're putting me on the spot. Um I believe we are giving you until March 1st. Okay, but don't hold me to that. Get it in earlier. Is it Is it correct? All right. Okay. Good. We'll hold you to it then. Thanks,

Juan. Good evening, uh, mayor, council, members of the public. Uh, Juan Gomez, assistant city manager. I wanted to provide, um, the council and the community with a recruitment update. Um, you'll have a more in-depth presentation from our HR manager, Scott Corey, in in March, but uh the city has 82 full-time uh positions allocated. We have two vacancies, which is a relatively low uh vacancy rate. It's only 2.5%. Uh we recently hired a new recreation coordinator, Riley Patton. Uh we'll welcome her uh February 17th. Um, we also I also wanted to update council on our sustainability analyst and where we're at in that with that position. So, currently that position closes uh Sunday, February 8th. We've received uh 62 applications.

Uh, of that uh 45 have passed uh a system generated uh minimum qualifications. There are now in a humans uh review uh to review and move those to u uh the next step. Uh so in general uh we're proud of the amount of applications we get for every position, not just this position. Uh but as you know, the sustainability analyst is a position that will allow the employee to advance uh the city's sustainability goals and objectives. So we're happy with that and um um as mentioned before um we're happy with the qualified uh applications that we get and also that uh a lot of them happen to be residents of American Kenyan. So 32% of our employees that work here are residents of American Canyon. Uh 85% of the those employees that work here are residents of Napa or Solano County.

That's great.

So um we continue to to work on that and um proud of the the team that we have. So also wanted to mention um for the community that we also have an open plant operator position which closes uh February 16th. uh that is at the water treatment plant and we also opened just yesterday uh seven service worker positions. As you recall, the service worker position is a part-time temporary position that's designed to provide additional help to streets, parks, water, uh and um uh sewer. Um of those, um we've had several employees actually sort of graduate from part-time to full-time positions. So, this is the pool of employees that we've we've uh pulled from uh for full-time positions when vacancies have occurred. So, we're we're again proud of of that program. It's working good. Uh the summertime is usually the the the time that it ramps up. Uh a lot of construction, streets, parks, etc. So, just wanted to provide that. Oh, we also have a building maintenance uh vacancy in in the service workers. So, that opened up yesterday. Six applications were received. We continue to see good interest. So, um, we're happy that folks continue to want to work, uh, for the city of American Canyon and we welcome everybody. So, with that, I'll answer any questions that you may have.

No questions from me, council. Seeing no questions. Thanks, Juan. I appreciate the presentation or information. One last thing, Mayor. Um, agenda will be going out tomorrow for our strategic planning workshop uh, on Friday over at the Holiday Inn at 9:00. We'll be posting that agenda uh, tomorrow afternoon. and everyone's invited to to join that meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Holly. Uh moving on to our mayor and council member comments and committee reports. Uh Vice Mayor Joseph. Um well, I just wanted to make a couple of announcements. Uh February 19th in room five of the Mologogic Center. The Art Foundation will have their first third Thursday event. It's an art exhibition, so it's free to the public, but um come on down. And then uh March 7th, the Kuanis will have their annual crab feed. We've already sold five of our six VIP tables. Um so, you know, if you want to be special, you need to hustle because there's only one left. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh, council member Cru uh, Oro. Uh, I attended a laughco meeting yesterday and I will put that in my next report. So, but no, nothing impacting American Canyon at this time. Uh, but it'll be in my report. Thank you, sir. Uh, Council Member Lamatina. Nothing to report right now. I'll get my report in online soon.

Thank you, Council Member Cruz. Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, uh, the mayor, the city manager Holly, Lamontino, we all attended the, uh, the Cal city's uh, mayor and, uh, council member academy. That was great, very informational. I had my first meeting with the public safety regional committee, which was very fruitful. But I have my full report on that for the next uh, for next meeting there. And um, that's all I have in board. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. Uh, future agenda items. Uh, vice mayor.

Yes, I have a couple. Um, number one, uh, harking back to the public comment, I I would like to ask the council to go ahead and have a resolution of support for H um, joint congressional house resolution 46 uh, if if the council's so inclined. U, the other one is I would like to bring back some discussion about uh, inloo fee for power lines on 29. try to get that ball rolling to you know again to generate revenue for uh the ultimate 29 corridor project. So those two items if we could. So is your resolution for 46 a motion?

Uh yes that I would like to have uh staff come back with either some additional information or at least a resolution to support uh Thompson's House concurrent resolution 46. C can you give a brief description of that? what that is.

Uh this was the one that's talking about um the formal resolution is that Congress recognizes its obligation to future generations to restore a safe climate, declares the climate restoration along with achieving net zero CO2 emissions or climate policy priorities, and calls on the president, secretary of state, and US ambassador to the United Nations to take actions that will restore the climate and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at pre-industrial levels. So that's what I'm asking us to endorse um by resolution. Yeah. Did you not get one of the things from um Miss Bit earlier today? She gave us all the handout on it.

Oh yeah, I didn't look at it. I wasn't reading that. Right. I'm not going through all the My apologies. Okay. Okay. Cutting to the chase. That's I was going to look at it later. Thank you. Fair enough. We have a motion. Do I hear a second? A second. Uh, we have a second. Madame Clerk, may you do a roll call, please. Council member Cruz, yes. Council member Lamatina, yes. Council member Oro, yes. Vice Mayor Joseph, yes. And Mayor Washington,

yes. And thanks for bringing that up. And then the other one is to bring back it not immediately I'm sure but bring back something about um kind of an inloo fee for undergrounding the power lines along 29. The good news with that vice mayor is it's kind of embedded in the conversation for Friday. Um okay as part of our traffic fee uh traffic impact fee update. It's one of our work plan items. And so uh in my mind that's that's sort of buried in there. I don't um depending how our conversation on Friday goes, I definitely can see an item coming back. I I don't know that that's separate and standalone and different from what we're going to be talking about Friday. If I if I may actually, you know, based on my my comments tonight,

figure out what we actually can control on that part and that's what we should discuss, right? And so if power lines are part of that, if if we can control some of the rideways or whatever it is that we need, that would be a great strategic discussion and bring that back to the public in a meeting like this. And that would be not necessarily a power line discussion, but a Broadway corridor update and discussion buried in the in the Yeah. Then never mind. We'll talk Friday. Okay. Okay. Any future items? Uh, council member Oral? No. Uh, council member Lamatina? No.

Council member Cruz? Yes, I do. Uh, last week I was at opportunity to meet with the Napa Youth Council who gave me a basically a presentation about reducing tobacco use amongst amongst youth and uh they'd like to come out. I'd like to invite them to come and give a pres presentation at a future uh city council meeting. How can we go about doing that?

Um, yeah, we I mean that's a fairly simple thing. We can get them scheduled. if you'll just send them my way and let me have a sense of what um what they want to present on then yeah that's that really won't take a council action we're talking about a a presentation from a an interest group so um just if you'll send them my way so I can get a little clear sense on how it would be relevant to American Canyon um then yeah we'll get them scheduled as one of our presentations at the beginning of meeting sounds good thank you thank you council member Cruz and

just for the sorry feel like maybe some distinction is there for items that are going to take staff work, preparation, analysis, a staff report, all that sort of thing. We do want to memorialize that with with the votes. We track that. This sort of thing will be me talking to someone for a fairly short period of time, figuring out what they're doing, and hey, we'll schedule for meeting. So, it's it's not a large lift or a new work of staff. And so, that's why we don't need to go through the formality of a vote. I just want to make sure everyone was kind of understand that.

Okay. And for me, it's not really an agenda item, but I I was approached by a couple of residents who told me they're going to be watching tonight's uh council meeting. They were curious and actually one painting contractor who was curious about the paint in front of city hall and if we have any plans on providing any um uh refurbishing or refreshing to our city hall and I figured I I told them I'd ask you tonight, so I'm asking you tonight.

Yeah, it's a it's a great question. I um love our building. We have the best city hall um in the county in my opinion. Even I think better than the county admin building to be honest. Although from my perspective, the outside of it, we did the roof, but the outside of it, it's looking a little dated. We now have sort of three really nice corners. Uh they all kind of match. Uh and we don't sort of match anyone. We were we were here first. Now we don't match everyone. So um you know, we're preparing a capital improvement program for 2627. Um you know, assuming you know, the council doesn't have any sort of objections, one of the things we'd like to do is uh to bring we'll have a variety of proposed projects. Um, you know, I think, um, painting, uh, some of different aesthetic treatments on the outside be something we could bring forward for council consideration as part of the CIP. Um, you know, it was already, it's been on our mind. Uh, we wanted to get the roof done first because we didn't want to leak anymore, but it's been on our mind. So, um, sort of fortuitous timing there.

Thank you, Mr. Holly. I appreciate that. Um, there's no other future items. We've concluded our business for this evening. We are adjourned. Good night, American Canyon. on your toes. But I might mention to Jason about