City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, come over here. time. I guess it's time. like what a dilemma does nothing. Good evening everyone and welcome. Um I'm calling this meeting to order. The regular city council meeting for May 5th, 2026 uh to order. So happy Cinco de Mayo. Uh let's all stand and proudly recite the uh pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Madame clerk, would you kindly call roll call, please? Yes, of course. Council member Brando Cruz, here. Council member Melissa Lamatina here. Council member David Oro here. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph here. Mayor Pierre Washington here. Uh report on close session and confirmation of reportable actions. Uh Matt.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The council met in close session considered two items. The first regarding conference of legal counsel related to four lawsuits buy and between the city of American Canyon and the city of Valleo. There the council provided direction to staff and council but took no reportable action. Second, the council met regarding public employee performance evaluation for city manager Jason Holly. There the council provided direction to staff and council but took no reportable action. Thank you mayor. Thank you Matt. Uh moving on to proclamations and presentation. Tonight we have five proclamations and no presentations. And we'll be starting with the first proclamation item number three, a proclamation for the 57th annual professional municipal clerk's clerk's weeks uh from May 3rd through May 9th, 2026. And I believe we have three recipients for this proclamation. And I know Teresa doesn't want to walk up there, but she's going to.

That's right. Get her up there with a little bit of encouragement from our city manager. She's walking up there. Thank you. So, I'll read the proclamation. I'll give you guys opportunity to make a statement and then we'll take a picture. And yes, Teresa, we going to take a picture, too. All right. Okay.

So, the 57th annual professional municipal clerk week from May 3rd through May 9th, 2026. Whereas the office of the municipal clerk is an essential part of local government and serves as a vital link between the public elected officials and city operations. And whereas the municipal cir clerk serves as the custodian of official records, administrator administrator of democratic processes and steward of transparency, ensuring access to public information and supporting open government. And whereas the city clerk's office of American Canyon plays a critical role in supporting the legislative process of the city council, administering local elections, maintaining official records, processing public records requests, and ensuring compliance with the state laws including the California Public Records Act and the Ralph M. Brown Act. And whereas the American Canyon City Clerk's Office provides professional service to residents, staff, elected officials, boards, commissions, and committees by promoting civic engagement, preserving the integrity of the public documents, and helping ensure that local government remains accessible and accountable. Whereas a professional municipal court whereas the professional municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administrators administration and the affairs of the office of the professional municipal clerk through participation in education programs, seminars, workshops, and the annual meetings of their of their state, county, and international professional organizations. Whereas municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administration of their responsibilities through education, training, and participating in a professional organization,

including International Institute of Municipal Clerks. And whereas it is fitting and proper to recognize the dedication, the professionalism, and essential public service provided by the municipal clerks to communities across the nation and within our city of American Canyon. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Pierre Washington, do hereby proclaim the week of May 3 through the 9th, 2026 as Municipal Clerk's Week and encourage all residents to recognize the appreciation and importance contributions of the clerks in strengthening uh democratic, preserving public trust and supporting effective government in the local community. Thank you.

Thank you. Any words, Teresa? Thank you. I think we have a great team in the clerk's office and uh I think we get a lot of work done. We're excited uh rejuvenated. Uh last week uh Nicole and I attended the uh the uh municipal clerk's uh annual conference in Southern California and we had some great sessions and we have a lot to kind of talk about and maul over and we're hoping to implement some things that we learned about and yeah very excited. This is Nicole Hall. She's our deputy city clerk, by the way. And Alejandra Zambrano. She is our office assistant.

And you guys do an amazing job. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll be celebrating all night.

Our next uh proclamation, our second proclamation will be for May 2026 as National Bike Month. And our recipient for tonight will be We have two. So, I'm gonna read the proclamation, then I'm going have you guys introduce yourselves. I know a lot of people already know who you guys are, but I'm going to read the proclamation first, then give you an opportunity to kind of give us some feedback. reading May 2026 as National Bike Month. Whereas the city of American Canyon recognizes May 2026 as National Bike Month, which creates an opportunity for our community to celebrate the simple joys of getting out outside and riding bikes. And whereas the bic the bicycling bicycling stimulates fun and inspires the health and active lifestyle for all ages and skill sets. Whereas bicycle riding is an environmentally friendly form of transportation that increases the air quality, reduces air pollution, carbon dioxide and green gas emissions and contributes to the global climate change. And whereas having bikeways are good for the entire community, calming traffic and reducing congestion on roadways, creating a safer environment for people walking and children playing. And whereas bicycling can help improve mental health by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, enhancing creative and productive days. And whereas programs like safe routes to school, bike bash events, family biking workshops, and bike to work and school day provide critical opportunity for both educated and encouraging members of our community to walk and bike. And whereas the city of American Canyon encourages to participate in the Napa County Bike to work and school day on

Thursday, May 14th, 2026, and to and to pledge to ride their bicycles to work, school, or any other destination that that day and throughout the month of May may have. And now therefore, I, Pierre Washington, mayor of American Canyon, on behalf of the entire city council, do proclaim May 2026 as bike month and Thursday, May 14th, 2026 as bike to work and school day in American Canyon.

Good evening, council members. I'm Cara Verer with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition. Thank you so much for recognizing May as Bike Month. I know you have five proclamations, so I'm going to be quick. Um, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that this is a special bike month for the city of American Canyon because for the first time, you've been recognized this year by the League of American Bicyclists as being a bike friendly community and that takes a lot of hard work from uh like so many different departments in your city. Um the infrastructure is changing and coming along and it's a real recognition of how you've worked to make the streets safe and enjoyable. Yes, streets can even be enjoyable um for your community. Um and that includes your um members of your active transportation and sustainability and open space committee which you'll hear from in just a minute. I also just want to say you've had for the month of May, you're you're having um every single one of your public schools participate in bike to work in school day. So very cool. And um you had uh all three of your elementary schools take advantage of our fourth and fifth grade bike um education, traffic safety, and on on bike skills education. So American Canyon is jazzed. You're doing it. You're spending time on bike. Um, and we couldn't be more thrilled about that. Um, we also have a our Energizer station on May 14th is going to be right outside of the Starbucks on American Canyon Road. So, if you drive if you ride by, not drive, what was I saying? If you if you ride by uh from between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., you will be greeted with um greeted by uh Julia Salvador from American Canyon um bike shop and Scott Thomasson of the Sierra Club. They will

have coffee for you and handouts and tote bags and bike lights and really cool things, other cool things, too. Water bottles. It's a good reason to ride your bike. So, hopefully you'll come see them that morning. Um, so thank you again for this recognition, for all you do to make it a bikable, friendly community, and you've been a you've been a great advocate for it, too. So everywhere I go to meet, you're you're preaching about the bike. So I hey, I'm with you. Thank you,

Nance. I'm Nance Matson and Debbie Shiovaria of the Open Space Active Transportation and Sustainability Commission. And I want to say we have wanted to have that bike friendly rating for tw I don't know how long, 20 years. So, um, I'm very excited that the city and the bike coalition have worked together to get that done and I'm seeing more people biking and so we want to thank you for your support of not just our commission but biking in general and American Canadian. Thank you.

Thank you, Nance. Deb, nothing. Deb, no, you're good. Nothing to say. I'm not going to try to put you on the spot, but I but I do want to Oh, go ahead, Deb. I just wanted to say that I'm very excited about this and yeah, go American Canyon. Let's spike some more. Thank you.

I I do want to give props to some of my colleagues because I can say that the vice mayor, he typically walks to city council meetings and so he's really healthy. And then on on the other side of me, council member Oro is constantly riding his bike and so I mean they're living by example, you know. So I think I applaud these two guys for doing those type of things. cuz I'm going to work on my bike skills a little later on. But the city manager, did you have something to add?

Just wanted to also uh appreciate uh Cara and and all the work that that the coalition did. There was a lot of paperwork in the in the application. This was a uh an encyclopedia of information. And so while we've done the improvements and physical changes, uh their effort really um led to the application being accepted and the honor. So thank you. So want to come up take a picture with you. Thank you. Of course.

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, just really quick on the bike part and thank you for acknowledging my bike riding skills, Mr. Mayor. Um, I would have rode it tonight, but I was like, "Oh, we might go late and I haven't put my light on my bike yet, so I need to do that." Plus, it was a little inclement, so I have to have perfect weather. I'll ride bikes better. But for the uh the Napa Bike Coalition, I got to give them props for um and recognize their work in educating our students. Um and I just wanted to say we need to educate our parents. Uh this week, people were complaining about traffic at Napa Junction Elementary School and parents dropping off their kids. There's this thing called the bike that the kids could ride to school, right? and you could ride a bike with them and you will have no traffic problems with cars. And uh until we get to that point, uh we've put in the infrastructure, but until we get to that point to where we have a cultural shift and how we think about getting around town, this mostly flat city that's only about 2 miles by two miles, um you know, we're not going to be there in terms of uh the potential that we have to be a bike friendly city. Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member Oral. Our third proclamation is item number five, a proclamation for the Asian-American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. So, all those who will be receiving this proclamation, if you could come forward, I see a lot of nice outfits. So, all you guys should be up here. Uh, I'll read the proclamation and then we'll take a picture and get some feedback from you all. uh reading May 2026 AsianAmerican and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Munch. Whereas the AsianAmerican and Pacific Islanders have enriched enriched our nation's history with their contri contributions, achievements, and cultural heritage. Whereas Asian-Americans and Pacific Islander Heritage Month provides an opportunity for all citizens to learn about and celebrate the rich history, diverse culture, and in invaluable contribution of Asian-Americans and public islanders, Pacific Islanders to the United States. And whereas throughout our history, Asian-American and Pacific Islanders have made significant contributions to every aspect of our society, including science, technology, business, education, government, and the arts, enriching the fabric of our nation. And whereas Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month presents an opportunity to recognize the challenges and the discrimination that Asian-American and Pacific Islanders communities have faced and continue to face and to recommit ourselves to ongoing work of building a more inclusive and equitable society. And whereas our community is a is made stronger and more vibrant by our diversity. And we celebrate the diversity in many cultures, languages,

and traditions. The historic the histories of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders that contribute to the trans tap tapestry of our shared American identity. Now, therefore, I American I, Pierre Washington, do proclaim 2026 as Asian-American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders Heritage March. And I urge all residents to join in celebrating the contributions of the Asian-American and Pacific Islanders to our community, our state, and our nation. Thank you.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, city council members, and members of our community. My name is Dvet Muhammad. Thank you for this proclamation recognizing Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I am honored to accept it on behalf of our AANHPI community right here in American Canyon. American Canyon is one of the most diverse cities in the Napa region, and our AAN HPI community reflects that strength. We represent a vibrant mix of cultures including Filipino, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Indonesian, and Lao communities, just to name a few, along with our native Hawaiian, Fijian, Guamian, Samoan, Tongan, and other Pacific Islander families. all who bring unique values and contributions that enrich and strengthen our city. As a Filipino American, my story is rooted in faith, family, and service. My faith has guided me to lead with compassion, to serve others, and to stay grounded in gratitude for the opportunities that we have in this city. You can see our cultures come to life right here in American Canyon. from the Holy Festival of Colors celebrating unity and renewal to live music boba and beats at RD Winery which is a Vietnamese business that partners with the American Canyon Chamber of Commerce and also we celebrate traditions like the parole festival hosted by the American Canyon Arts Foundation in partnership with the film community film of uh Philam of

American Canyon where Filipino culture shines through lantern making food and community connection. In American Canyon, our culture shows up through strong family ties, respect for elders, hard work, and deep commitment to our community. You see it in our small businesses, our healthcare workers, our educators, our youth leaders, and in organizations that continue to bring people together. This month is not only about honoring our heritage, it but it's also about recognizing the strength in our diversity and continuing to build build bridges across all communities. American Canyon is special because of its people. And tonight is a reminder that when we honor every culture, we strengthen the whole community. So salamat mahalo and thank you. Oh, wait. And we love everyone in American Canyon.

Nicely said, the vet. Is anyone else going to speak or were you the spokesperson? I guess I said like you were the spokesperson. Okay, we'll take a picture.

All right, lady. I see that.

Okay. Shortest to tallest. Okay. Short in the front, tall in the back. All right. One, two, three. One more video, two Yeah. Thank you.

I guess we do need to like let time kind of go so we get that one speaker. That's right.

My rendition of the history of I know. I know. I can't wait. Just I want to quickly say if you did not receive a proclamation and you would like to get one, please uh give me your name and email. Uh there's a paper on the counter and we'll get in touch with you and send one to you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um our fourth proclamation tonight, item number six, is a proclamation for mental health awareness month. Um, is there a recipient for the uh mental health awareness month? Thank you, sir. I'll have you introduce who you are and give us some feedback after I read the uh proclamation. Uh, reading mental health awareness month, May 2026. Whereas each May, we recognize the importance of mental health and its impact on the well-being of individuals, families, and communities, including children and adults of all ages. And whereas mental health is essential to the overall health and the quality of life. And the community benefits when prevention is made. early prevention and early intervention, treatment and recovery oriented services are accessible and effective. And whereas mental health conditions are among the most common health concerns in California, affecting nearly one in every five adults and one in every eight children with impacts extending to families, caregivers, and broader community. And whereas the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency serves more than 2,300 individuals in 2025 through a coordinated system of behavioral health services. And whereas stigma, limited awareness, the barriers to access continue to prevent many individuals, particularly those underresourced communities from seeking and receiving needed care. And whereas fostering understanding, compassion, and support helps create the community where all people feel comfortable seeking help and prioritizing mental health awareness. And now therefore, I Pierre Washington on behalf of the city

of American Canyon do hereby hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as mental health awareness month and encourage all residents, businesses, nonprofit organizations, clubs, and associations to support mental health awareness. Promote the understanding and strengthen the well-being of our community. Above all, let us all ensure that all children and adults experiencing mental health challenges are treated with compassion, respect, and dignity. Sir,

thank you, Mayor Washington, and thank you, council members. Um, it's an honor to be here to accept this proclamation. My name is Joe Howlet. I'm assistant director with the Health and Human Services Agency here in the county and also, uh, more recently interim behavioral health director as well. Uh, covering that post also. I actually come from a background of behavioral health and um just so honored to be a part of a city council and a community honoring these needs and paying attention. I come from the service provider realm which is one aspect of caring for mental health but what it really takes is a full community of people who care um who look in on each other, our family, our friends, our neighbors who do something about it, who show up and um who allow space to bring awareness to situations like this. So, it's nothing but gratitude. I accept this uh with honor on behalf of HHSA, but really on behalf of the community and those we serve, and I appreciate uh everyone's care and concern for this incredibly important topic that affects us all.

Thank you for what you do, Joe. All right. Thank you. And our fifth proclamation item number seven is a proclamation for the 2026 Odor American Month. It's for me and um the vice mayor. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'll read the proclamation and some of our seasoned people will be receiving it. Uh May 2026 as older Americans month. Uh whereas May is older American month, a time for us to recognize and honor American Canyon older adults and their immense influence on every facet of American Canyon and our society. Whereas through their wealth of life experience and wisdom, older adults guide our younger generation and carry forward abundance of cultural and historical knowledge. Whereas older American Whereas older Americans improve our

communities through inter intergenerational relationships, community services, civic engagement, and many other activities. And whereas communities benefit when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate in live independently or live independently. And whereas our expanding elder population profoundly impacts every facet of our lives. Redefining our ideals of work, retirement and leisure, alter altering our housing and living arrangements, changing our health care systems, reshaping our economic uh situation, and altering social and public policies. And whereas the opportunity and challenges that await us require continued commitment to the goals and essentials are are ensuring that our older Americans enjoy activities, productive, and healthy lives and do so independently, safely, and with dignity. Whereas American Canyon must ensure that older Americans have the resources and the support needed to stay involved in their communities reflecting our commitment and inclus inclusivity uh and connect connectedness. And whereas the city council and of American Canyon wishes to express its appreciation for the past and the continuing contributions of his older residents to the community and our nation and to recognize that older Americans are a vital and growing part of our city. And now therefore, I, Pierre Washington, on behalf of the American Canyon City Council, do hereby proclaim May 2026 as older Americans Month. I urge every resident to recognize the contributions of our older

citizens, help create an inclusive society, and join efforts to support older Americans choices about how they age in our community. Thank you. I'm Nance Matson and Kasama Lee and Dvet Muhammad from the Seroptimus Club. um our senior committee chair wasn't able to attend, but I will say that that committee is so active. They do so many things for the community. Um and from, you know, picnics in the park where people end up developing new things to do together. Um I want to talk about the senior health fair actually. Uh and Payne is the head of that. Um it's our second one. It's May 20th from 10 to 1 at American Canyon Community Church. There are 25 vendors um from all sorts of walks of the you know resources um transportation all sorts of things. Um and I I can't do justice to all that Seropus does for our older citizens but um I'm just so excited that we have organizations like Soptimus and the American the area um

a what's it called? area area agency on aging um that is helping people you know remain really active in the community and thank you either you want to stay here okay

thank you for what you do and what the SAP miss does that you guys are involved in almost everything and every uh every event that we have out here so it's good seeing you guys out there so I'm getting two the the the vice mayor just told me he had my application for the um older American uh commission. So,

slowly but surely, it's beginning to make a lot more sense. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. I hear you. Okay, let's move on. Um, at this time, I'd like to open the floor for public comment on items that are not listed on tonight's um agenda. And I will turn to our clerk to see if we have any speaker. I have one speaker card, Janette Goch. Good evening, Janette.

Good evening, um, mayor and city council, members of the public. Um, I'm Janette from American Canyon. Um, initially I was going to, well, last week maybe or whenever talk about the high grasses that I see. I walk a lot around here and I was worried about fire. Um, but a friend of mine um told me that not to worry yet because it's not fire season yet. Um, and that what happens in these tall grasses is the animals breed and they have no other place to go. So, it's a good thing we haven't chopped them down. That's um because initially I was going to be ranting, but um so now I'm grateful no one's cut them down. Um the other thing is um a safety thing I think um this has been for a while but on American Canyon Road in 29 when you cross the street you press the button and I'm not a slow walker even as old old as I am um can't even get across that road before it stops you know and I was wondering if and I don't know if I'm in the right place asking for this but um like one of those countdown lights Because I mean there are people well the young people from the schools old people that and disabled people and they don't they can't get across. It's kind of scary when you're looking at all those cars you know. And my last thing is um I don't know if you're familiar with NAMI National Alliance on Mental Illness. And since this is mental illness month, I thought I'd just bring up um I'm a member of NAMI um for years um not active right now, but still I go to their walks and try to do things for them. Um but they're having a walk this May 9th. Um and it'll be this year and it they're in Solano County because we

don't have a NAMI here, but um they'll be doing the walk in Glen Cove, uh Waterfront Park. Um if if anybody wants to know more about it, it's just about a mile long apparently. Um I've never been there, but 9:00 am is the setup. 9:30 check in. Um they'll have a little program and then the walk at 10:30. Um and then there'll be other little festivities along with it. It looks like it's going to go till about noon. Um but if you're interested you could uh contact NAMI Solano County um and they would have they have a great website and this will be on that. That's all. Thank you J.

Uh Kevin Maxman.

Hello chair and members of the board. My name is Kevin Maxman and I am a representative of the North Coast State Carpenters Union. Thank you for your attention to my comment regarding Sites Reservoir. The Carpenters Union is in favor of the sites reservoir project. We recognize the statewide significance and need to increase water storage. Our members want to build this project. Unfortunately, poor management by sites project staff has led your board representatives down a path that is full of problems. California Water Commission, who holds the key to 1 billion in funding, is concerned. The governor even wrote a letter to the sites board reservoir sites reservoir board expressing his concerns. Despite these alarms, the sites project staff continues to move forward. As a taxpayer, we stand to lose big when sites reservoir turns into a California infrastructure boondoggle. And your community stands to lose twice. Bernard Construction does not have the experience, capacity, or connections to local workforce necessary to complete a project of this size. Bernard has a history of cost overruns and project delays. And the fact is that water users in multiple areas where Bernard has completed projects have experienced rate increases. Bernard lacks the relationships with all local area hiring halls and training centers which will be necessary to supply a skilled workforce. All construction trades were not included when the project labor agreement was negotiated. For this reason, the carpenters union will not sign the site's reservoir PLA. There will not be labor harmony on the site's reservoir project. It is not too late for the site's reservoir project to correct course. Your community members rely on you to be responsible.

You have the power to change the story. Do not invest in sites reservoir until a qualified qualified contractor is in control and the governor's concerns are addressed. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. I have no other comment cards. I do have hands raised online. Okay. I just want to check the room. Anybody in the room that want to make a public comment? Seeing none, we'll go to the online. Okay. I'm going to

uh go ahead Karina.

Hi. Thank you. Uh Karina Cerventi Montubino. Um thank you to the um council staff and public. Um, first I want to give a big shout out to public works. Um, two weeks ago they came to the Monteino area, the Eastman uh, and they clear and clean the whole um, the whole hill in Monteino. I want to thank the um, the public works crew for keeping our neighborhood clear and fire safe. So um they that that was uh no easy task. The the weeds were very high. So uh they did a beautiful job and um my other comment is um about the community garden. Uh we have some issues going on right now. Uh and would like to see if we can get him uh you know cover maybe an email. Uh maybe we have our um wonderful council members come and do a tour and come and see the the area. Um it's full is full throttle with our um um you know planting and you know the the plots are looking beautiful, but uh we're having some issues such as stealing. Um that that's an ongoing issue. Um, there's a sign there that says no stealing and there's uh cameras, but I yet to see a camera there. So, I want to see where those cameras are located and if they're being uh monitored. Also, uh we have some issues with some uh neighbors blocking the walkways. Um I sent a a picture and email. Uh I haven't gotten a response.

So that's why I'm coming here trying to see if we can get some followup on some of the issues going on at the community garden. Uh also want to thank um I think it's public works too, but I'm not sure. Uh for uh the wonderful delivery of uh um compost. Um however um I see there's a lot of folks from other um other cities coming and getting the the the compost instead of being for the um for the American Canyon neighbors. Um so wanted to see what we can do to discourage that. Maybe put some signage saying this for um American Canyon. um um you know people that live here in American Canyon. So if somebody can you know do a followup and give me a call that will be great. You guys know my number. Thank you so much.

Thank you Karina.

I have Valerie. Go ahead Valerie.

Hello everybody. It's Valerie Zak Mores, president, CEO of the American Canyon Chamber of Commerce. I just want to chime in tonight and remind everybody that we are one week out from registration for the June Meet Me in the Street. So, if you have not registered, please go into our website and do so. Um, we are experiencing a little bit of technical difficulties with our site. There's a little bit longer of a delay to register than normal. So, please be patient during that process. You can always email us if you're having troubles. We're still looking for sponsorship. It's extremely important that we obtain all the funding we need as we add the fourth event this year. So, if you're considering sponsoring, please go in um and make those donations to the chamber. This is how we put the event on and fund u the comm the largest community event every summer. So, we're really excited to kick off our sixth season, fifth year of Meet Me in the Street event number 15 on June 10th. Um, we're still looking for volunteers and we're really excited to announce that we are partnering with Junth for some really exciting entertainment in the park at the June event. So, hope to see everybody out there. As always, volunteers are always welcome. Um, and we're looking for that sponsorship and registration. So, please go and and do so. Uh, thank you council for the opportunity to give this public announcement. Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie. Right. I have Justin. Go ahead, Justin.

Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. And good evening all say hello. Say say hello all. My two thing is um one is um we're going to be looking for um um uh Nuba site. And the second thing is I notic this my dream when I was outside or something. I think in our like nons way area mean we need to put like water water drain drain water. Um I want the water block plug it up because I think we need to look that see if we can get the art treat work work on it. Thank you.

Thank you, Justin. I have no other hands raised online. Thank you, madam clerk. Um, one more time in the room there any u public comment? Seeing none, I'll close public comment and I'll move back to council for any agenda changes on tonight's uh agenda. Council, any agenda changes? Seeing none, I'll accept the motion to accept uh the agenda. Seeing no other comments, I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar. I second. Okay, we have a second. Madam clerk, can we get a roll call, please? Council member Cruz,

yes. Council member Lamatina, yes. Council member Oro, yes. Vice Mayor Joseph, yes. Mayor Washington,

yes. Okay, next is public hearing. We actually do not have any um items on public hearing this evening. So, we'll move on to the business item where we have two business items on tonight's agenda. Uh let's start with item number 14, uh the public draft parks and recreation master plan. Uh Deputy City Manager Alli Akita. All right. Good evening, mayor and council. Um, we are here this evening to discuss the public draft of the parks and recreation master plan. We started this journey together back in September of 20124. I know that seems a really long time ago, but we've done a lot of work since then. um which has included a comprehensive review of our previous plan um previous efforts uh which included the 2012 parks and community services master plan, the 2015 needs assessment plan, veterans Kimberly and Clark Ranch master plans, Watson Ranch specific plan, as well as the evaluation of existing parks and facility conditions. A key component of the planning process included extensive community outreach efforts through stakeholder interviews, a community survey, and open house with our two commissions. The master plan is organized into four sections with an executive summary. Chapter one introduces the community context and overall vision for parks and recreation. It reflects the community's values, highlights key themes identified through engagement, and establishes the foundation of the master plan. Chapter 2 is an overview of existing parks, facilities, programs, and open spaces. It evaluates current conditions and identifies strengths and opportunities

within the existing system. And chapter 3 outlines the vision for future parks and recreation, including park standards, future park needs and planned improvements guided by community input and the evolving needs of our residents. And then lastly, chapter 4 is identifies the tools and strategies needed to implement the master plan, including funding approaches, capital planning, prioritization, and implementation strategies to guide decision-making over time in a practical and sustainable way. Guiding principles are essential to a master plan because they provide a clear foundation for decision making, ensuring future investments, priorities, and actions remain consistent and aligned with community values over time. Our guiding principles within our master plan are grounded in what we heard directly from our community through outreach, conversations, and feedback. residents sharing what matters most in their parks and recreation system. From access to relevant programs to protecting open spaces to creating places that bring people together, these principles translate that input into clear framework, helping us stay focused on as we continue to grow and evolve. It's also to it's also important to note that while earlier planning efforts initially referenced the 2012 parks and community services master plan, the 2015 needs assessment and um and those documents are carried forward. Those docu those documents are not carried forward into this plan. Instead, the 2040 general plan is the primary document referenced as it serves as a city's overarching policy framework and supersedes prior plans. This approach helps maintain the integrity of the

master plan, ensuring it remains current, aligned with adopted city policies, and reflects and is reflective of today's priorities without relying on outdated information. So chapter one establishes the foundation for the mar for the master plan by introducing the community's context and overall vision for parks and recreation of American Canyon while reinforcing alignment with the city's mission, vision, and values. It emphasizes the importance of creating an inclusive and accessible system that reflects the city's diversity and supports the high quality of life for all residents. The chapter highlights the role parks and recreation play in promoting health, connection, and community well-being while ensuring consistency with the 2040 general plan so that parks, facilities, and programs grow alongside the city. It also recognizes the importance of city's natural environment and needs for the conneed systems of parks, trails, and open space that link neighborhoods and support a more active, sustainable, and livable community. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the city's existing parks and recreation systems, establishing a clear understanding of where we are today. It highlights the network of parks and facilities, open spaces and trails along with programs and partnerships that support recreation opportunities for the community. Together, these elements show how residents experience parks and recreation today and the role they play in supporting health exper health health connection and quality of life. These chapters, this chapter helps identify key strengths and opportunities within the current system which will inform future planning and investment decisions.

Today, American Canyon has built a wellestablished network of parks, open spaces, and facilities that serve our community. These numbers represent more than just acreage or facilities. They reflect our long-standing investment in creating spaces where our residents can gather, stay active, and connect with one another. As we look ahead, the focus is not only adding new amenities, but on enhancing and maintaining what we have to ensure it continues to meet the needs of our growing and evolving community. So, as you can see from this slide, we have over 1,400 acres of parks and recreation um inventory. We have two open spaces, 20 parks, three community centers, and one aquatic facility. So, that's what we have currently today. Park classifications are important because they help define the role each park plays within the overall system. They provide a simple framework to guide planning and investment ensuring parks serve different community needs in a balanced and intentional way. A pocket park which we have defined as a small space which is less than one acre in size that provide nearby residents with easy access to outdoor areas for relaxation and connection all within walking distance to a home. A neighborhood park which we have identified one to six acres serves as near serves nearby residents providing spaces for everyday recreation, relaxation and occasional community gatherings close to home. For example, we typically won't have a large community event there, but you will see it every once in a while. Um, for instance, Magic of the Season is held at Shannidoa Park. We've had Junth at Main Street Park, but it's not an ideal location. um you won't really you won't see new events unless it's something

that is been identified by the community as a musthave. Um for instance, Manila Munchies. Um this was a new request from the community to have Manila Munchies at Shannondoa Park this past year. And then a community park which is 4.5 to 40 acres. This serves as the entire community offering a range of amenities for daily for a daily use or large community events that bring people together. This is where we have our July 4th event. We had the wall that heals. This truly community parks are truly the park that serves large community events because they can accommodate that um that that type of influx of those uh large gatherings. And then as you can see we have our total acreage. So total pocket parks we have a total we have three parks total acreage is one uh neighborhood parks we have 12 total acres is 28.28 and then community parks we have five which equates to 42.14. Then we have um our uh open space which includes natural areas that are preserved for environmental protection, conservation and passive recreation. Um, these spaces often include trails, provide opportunities, activities like walking, hiking, and enjoying nature. So, this is where protection and recreation come together. Um, this is where you're going to see passive recreation. So, the wetlands and new open space, this is what we've classified as open space. Um, and then we have conservation lands. This is best described as look, don't touch. Um, these are protected areas set aside to preserve sensitive habitat. um their natural resources, their lands that are not open to the public and do not include recreational amenities. So they they have been set aside. Um this is going to be like the Levvenia area that you're going to see um that for the

redlegged frog protection um where we you can actually have like sheep go into it to graze it, but the they no nothing else can go in there like people can't be in there. So it's fenced off, it's preserved, it's only for nature. And then we have trails and park connectors uh which are um are links to parks, neighborhoods, and surrounding areas throughout American Canyon and beyond together. These paths and trails provide convenient walking and biking routes between parks and cities. Um providing access for residents to experience recreation and other alternatives to get to their destination in a more sustainable way. Together, these connections expand access, support active lifestyle, and enhance our residents experience to our parks, open spaces, and to the region. Don't you just love that video? It's so cute. It's so cute. Wait, make shot. We spent a lot of time evaluating what we have and now it's time to talk about where we're going. Um this process involved extensive community engagement including stakeholder meetings, a community survey and open houses with our two commissions. Um together this input helped shape the vision for a future of parks and recreation, understanding future needs and guided improvements based on what we heard directly from the community. So everything within chapter 3 is directly what we heard from the community. So setting the stage, the 2040 general plan establishes a park standard of at least 5 acres of parkland per 10,00 residents across a variety of park types that includes mini neighborhood, community, and regional park facilities. Today, the city has approximately 1,255 acres of park land. This is calculated by our pocket parks, our neighborhood parks, community park, and community centers, and open spaces because again, it's all accessible to the park to the

public. they can all access it. They all have recreational opportunities. They can all do something there. It all provides recreation. So, looking ahead, we have about an additional 454 acres of planned parkland and um that is coming online. Um and so that's going to actually up our total to about 1,700 acres in addition that that total that we're going to have. Um so with an estimated population by 2040 of 25,000 residents, we're going to see that standard um of park a we're going to meet that standard of making sure that we meet the general plan standard. So roughly um we're still meeting the standards of per what the general plan has stated. This table shown here outlines the planned park expansion. So, we talked about we have an roughly about 450 acres of planned parkland coming online. Um, this is that um the future additions will expand city park systems and help ensure we continue to meet the needs as we grow. So, as you can see here, this is um land that the city already has um that isn't really anything or things that we, you know, don't really have yet. Um, so like Kimberly Park, you know, we have currently right now we have Kimberly Park lower and then we have Kimberly Park upper. That's not anything. Um, that potentially could be something. Then we have Melvin Park. We've been talking about that a lot lately. That's um right um sits right outside um Napa Cove Apartments. We have the Michelic soccer field. We have the American Canyon High School. That's a potential location. and we physically do not own that property, but that has been identified as a potential location um of something that we um could look into purchasing and and developing in the future. We have the kayak launch and walking trails. We have um AC1 Park which is overlo

and new park which is located in Watson Ranch. Um we have Lookout Park which is over by um Oatill Apartments. We have Joerger Open Space and Corey Lake Park. And then um in addition to expanding parkland, we identified future improvements across the system. These projects are guided by community input and reflect the evolving needs of our residents. As you can see, some are enhancements to existing parks. um and um while others are new projects. Altogether, this represents a comprehensive plan with an estimated cost of just under 58 million if we fully bring everything together. So again, we took a lot of feedback from our stakeholders, our youth groups, and we really wanted to um figure out where we can put that plan and put it in motion and where we would put all these great amenities that they that they wanted and needed and where we would bring that plan to life. And so, as you can see, um, we've tried to find a location for each of those needs and put a cost to what that would look like. And again, this is an estimated cost and we haven't fully scoped it out and it hasn't gone through the capital improvement program um, process and it hasn't been fully estimated with um, an actual project scope. But this is a a I would consider a good project estimate um for what we're looking at for the type of amenities that they're that they that they have identified um which is just under 58 million if we were to really make this whole plan come to fruition. And then chapter four focuses on how we're going to get there. It outlines how planned improvements and transition into capital improvement projects along with the process for prioritization,

funding, and ongoing operations and maintenance ultimately establishes the implementation strategies that guide how the city will put the plan into action. It is important to note that the public draft was presented at a joint special meeting of the parks and community services commission and the open space acted transportation and sustainability commission on April 1st. The youth sports organization, Napa Valley Unified School District and nonprofit partners and community members were all invited to attend and provide feedback. That input has been incorporated into the plan that is before you today. Also attached to the staff report is a public comment survey and staff response. This document includes commission and public comments that were received on 41 that were not incorporated into the master plan for your consideration this evening. It is our goal to have this plan wrapped up with final adoption by June 16th. Um and so that's kind of what we are um projecting at um with the with the finalization of this plan. And um mayor and council, this concludes my presentation and oral staff report and I'm here to answer any questions for you this evening. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ally. Thank you for that presentation. Um I will open up to council for any clarifying questions before we go to public comment. Vice Mayor Joseph. Yes. I I have a couple of clarifying questions. Um the first one is uh Lookout Park uh on top of Oat Hill. Does that envision removing the small tank there and leveling it out and having a you know is is that what lookout park is envisioned?

There is the the whole idea of calling it lookout park is to have it it will not have a playground. It will definitely have walking trails and it will have an uh an a place for you to sit and look out at the views. Um, I'm not able to answer to the tank itself at this time. Um, but it will, um, have an opportunity for you to be able to look out into the views and have a walking trail area.

And then my other point, and I brought it up with the city manager about the acreage, there's a part of me that says the almost,00 acres of open space is an incredible amenity, but it's not really the same thing as a park. Um, and so if we excluded that, I think the numbers show we're a little on the on the short end of the 5 acres per thousand population standard. And even with some of the future growth, we get close. But I guess the main point is we are not nearly as parkri as we might think if we include those open space numbers. And so I say that so that we think in terms of we aren't really parkri. So, if somebody wanted to give us more parkland, that would be a good thing.

Absolutely. And um the city manager and I did talk about that. And um you know, the the general plan can absolutely be amended. Uh that was a a standard that we had created. Um and if that's something that we want to change in the future, we we absolutely can do that because we actually did the math and and you're correct. I'll be more than happy to share those numbers with you if you would like me to. Um Vice Mayor Joseph. Yeah. Um so if we were to take out the open space park acorage um with just including pocket park neighborhood and community parks um we actually are at 71.42 acres um currently right now based off of our um our total population by um by 20 which is puts us under we actually don't meet the standards by 37.4 acres. Now, if you include the community center, if you wanted to say, "Okay, well, that that still is like a

part of if we were to It's parky." Yeah, it's parky. Um, we would be a little bit better and we would still be under the standards by 30.23.

Um, and then we do get a little bit better with the planned future, but again, pulling out Jerger, pulling out the um, lookout park because um, that would be considered open space type thing. Um so we would be under again by the uh 2040 population standards we would be under um again just looking at pocket park neighborhood park and community parks we would be under uh by 7.28 acres and then um if we again threw the community center back in we would be under just shy about an acre. Okay. Yeah. that. So, I guess like I said, the main point is we're we could use some more parkland.

We would never turn parkland away. Fair enough. And I that was really the main point. Not as a criticism as much as a you know, we we aren't as in as good a shape as it looks with just the open space. I have other comments, but I'll wait until after everybody else is through. So, but thank you. Any other comments from council before I open up the public? No, I'll open it up to public comment for item number 14. Do we have any um cards? I have I have no speaker cards. I do have a hand raised online.

Okay, I'm going first scan the room, see if anybody in the room wants to talk. Uh Beth, please introduce yourself. Yes, good evening, Beth Marcus. First of all, Alli, it was a great report. Thank you for that. I just want to say that I go out on a trail every day with my dog and it's such a beautiful place. I mean, I know I've said this many, many times, but you can't We're just so fortunate that we have such a beautiful park here and never an issue with the dogs. I never had an issue with my dog at all. Um, but I got to say that I am tempted when I'm out there and it says if electric fence, don't touch.

And I'm wanting to do I'm wanting to do it, but I'm afraid to do it. But then my dog puts her head underneath the thing. I go, "Oh, well, it must not really be on, but I'm not going to find out." But I am tempted. And you don't have to answer. The other thing is you were talking about Lookout Point. I have to share this with you. Um, I used to have a big laugh with Fran because she would get her binoculars out and she would look up there at Lookout Point. So, uh, when you brought that up, I I just had to share that with you. It was quite, uh, humorous, but again, a great job.

Thank you, Beth. Anybody else in the room? I'm Karen Borby. I That was wonderful. I'm very excited. I do have a question about the prior prioritization. Is that something that the community will be able to uh weigh in on with all of those wonderful $58 million projects? Is um that how that goes? Yes. So the way that we wrote the master plan is specifically written in a way that we currently do projects now. So we wrote it in a way that allows for flexibility um because there was a recommendation to prioritize the projects out and you'll notice in the um in the additional sheet it does have the recommendation to prioritize the projects out and we kept the prioritization the way that it is written in the plan. So that way it gives us flexibility to allow us to bring projects forward um and allow the public process to um include the public to be involved the commission and and allow the process to be the way it is today.

Got you. Thank you, Allie. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the room? Seeing none, we'll go to who's online. I have I have Justin Hamiltonhole. Go ahead, Justin.

Thank you, Tracy. Um I have one um see um we have a update from park one. I just know that we need to upgrade the park one. Um new restroom, new playground. Um, and I I don't know. We can look and see if we can upgrade a bait belt big boat. So, there's like a lot of walk there and I want to see if we can put like nice rock, a nice um nice track and new boot seat. Um, so I I want to see I want to see if we can upgrade the part one. Thank you,

Ellie. If you could if you could update them on that.

Yes. Um, I can actually pull up the presentation and we can um it might be best for me to just show that really quick. Yes. So, um, as you can see, um, community park one, which is called Rio Grande Park, um, which is right here, um, we have several, uh, improvements identified. We have removal of the softball field, install athletic grass, not synthetic turf, because we do launch fireworks from this location, and it doesn't make sense to put fireworks on synthetic turf because it might burn it. Um, so we want to keep it grass, uh, improve the walking path, upgrade the baseball field, remove the sand volleyball, um, court, um, and horseshoe pit, and then expand the parking lot, remove the fence, and replace the playground. Those are all the improvements that we've identified for Rio Grande Park, which is formerly referred to as Community Park One.

Thank you, Ally. You're welcome.

And thank you for the question, Justin. Um, any other person online? I do. Let me get her on here. I have Valerie. Go ahead, Valerie. Hello. It's Valerie Zak Morice, president, CEO of the American Canyon Chamber. I just want to say thank you to Ally for a great presentation, really showing how we are prioritizing our parks here in American Canyon. as we know this is a space that our communities love to gather. Um I just want to send out an extra thanks for being included in the process and having the opportunity to really express from the chambers perspective which also includes tourism and not just representing the American Canyon community um in that opportunity. So, I do believe there's definitely work to be done, but looking forward to the kayak launch. And um I just want to want bring one thing to attention that has came to my plate a few times, which is the botchi ball courts um out at Veterans Park. I do believe there is a lack of maintenance that is occurring out there and something that I know is a great need for our community is having these activity areas. So, if that could be prioritized for some sort of maintenance that continues year-over-year to just keep those botchi ball courts um in prestige condition. So, thank you again for um this presentation tonight and allowing the Chamber of Commerce to have an opportunity to chime in on this. Um it's greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie. Any comments to that? No. No. Okay. Anyone else online? I have I have no other hands raised online.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. And one more time inside the room. Anybody else with a comment? Seeing none, I'll close uh public comment on item number 14 and return back to the council for further discussion or direction for staff to accept the draft um which is planning to be back on agenda for June 16th. Uh Vice Mayor Joseph. Yes, I I do have a few comments. Um, first of all, I think Shannondoa Park is really close to a community park is just in terms of classification. Doesn't change anything. It's just how you define the word. Uh, but I do know it has a lot of great amenities and and serves almost as a community park. But that's just fine. Um on on future uh improvements, I'm generally okay with what's on the on the list, but I noticed that on first of all, and this is self-s serving because I'm part of the arts foundation, but MLogic Center um definitely needs a little bit of a TLC investment. Um I

Hey, that's not on you. Boy, that's on you.

Keep it on. acknowledge it. It It won't stop me. Um so just again I think you'll get some sweat equity from the community groups that are there but it's a 71-year-old facility and I can speak with some authority that 71year-old facilities need a little TLC and a little renovation. So I'd like to just add that on the list. Not that I'm acknowledging how long I've been needing TLC. Um, and then beyond that, uh, Main Street Park clearly, you know, it's it doesn't have the priority it had when Junth was out there, but I think it ought to be on the list in terms of finishing up ADA improvements, maybe looking at it as a a kind of a when in need sports or field area. Um, I realize it's it was probably designed more to be a a detention basin than a park, but it it does have a lot of flat turf area and sometimes that might be usable. Uh, but then the last one and probably the biggest one is I guess it's the wetlands park. We used to call it Clark Ranch, but it's really the wetlands park portion. I do think we need to throw in something. We did the the Clark Ranch master plan and a lot of that has changed over the years and a lot of it hasn't happened, but I do think it's a critical park facility and it needs to some of that master plan needs to be plugged back into chapter 3 because it is such a critical park. It has really evolved into being probably one of the nicest assets the city has. And you know, I think it could use um some investment of funding to kind of

slowly but surely implement some of the visions that were in the master plan. Uh and so I think it should be included in some fashion, maybe go through the master plan and pick and pull the things that are still relevant. The last one relates to financing. And I know we're going to talk about a sales tax and if it were to be passed that would certainly provide the funding that we're looking for, but in the event that it either doesn't pass or doesn't get on the ballot, I will return to my 15-year plus soap box. Soap box number one, which is we've got to have some capital set aside funding. We've gotten as far as creating the funds and and infusing it with some one-time reserves and that's good stuff and it's still, you know, we're still working with it,

but ongoing we're going to have to commit to I don't know what I'm going to throw out a number that's probably in the ballpark either a half million to a million dollars a year earmarked towards park renovations. And you know, smart people can refine what that number should be specifically, but we need to look at our general fund budget from the point of view of earmarking that to maintain what we have and then balancing the budget with that as a given, you know, and that makes it very difficult to balance your budget. I know that. But by the same token, that's my line in the sand. we really have to start preserving some income. And again, it could be as easy as passing a half cent sales tax, which is easier said than done. Or it's going to need looking at the budget and and acting as if we're in the middle of a recession. And how do you tighten your belt and we may actually be in the middle of a recession, but not yet. So, at any rate, those are my comments. I'd like to see a little bit of love on on Mologogic Center, a lot of attention to the wetlands park. um and then think about how we're going to finance all this. Certainly a half cent sales tax would be handy, but um if that doesn't happen, we need to have a plan B that that's realistic because otherwise this is an incredible master plan that doesn't have the money to happen. And and that reinforces the cynical view that we spend a lot of money on plans and then do nothing. So for me, the key element is look towards those dollar amounts and we as a council are going to have to think in terms of how do you what do you have to do to get that kind of money squeezed out of a budget. Um and I will tell you that won't be easy. So it's not like we can just sit up here and say make it happen. But that's the kind of

thing we're going to have to deal with um in the absence of any other funding source. So those are my lengthy comments. I could go on, but I won't. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh, Council Member Lamatina.

Thank you. Thank you, Ally, for that great report. I really enjoyed it. But as we move forward and talking about money, um, one in 26 kids are born with autism here in California. So, I just want to make sure that when we are looking at our parks that we're including people who are blind, people with autism to make sure everyone can access our parks and enjoy them equally or in a different way. Build parks with noise and flowers and sound so that others can um enjoy it as well. That's all. Thank you, Council Member Lamatina. Council member Oro.

Uh, yeah, Ally, thank you for the report. Um, I, you know, when we look at the parks, I I kind of agree with what uh, Vice Mayor Joseph has said. Uh, we we actually need more parkland. Unfortunately, I think we have some coming towards to us. Um, the Watson Ranch area is going to be good. Uh, I think the potential around the high school would be amazing. That's a nice flat space that we could do work in that. Um, that could be an addition to what we're doing. And I don't want to discount the open space that we have here because everybody's using the wetlands trail. The new space is also awesome. As I sifted through the report, I was like, I'm going to find something that they didn't think about. And uh I didn't right. Uh

that's so awesome. So I had to think of something else to think about and it's this notion of money and I think we're going to discuss that next. But I I I want to start it here of like, you know, I've been on council long enough to know that the master plan for Clark Ranch was amazing, but there was no money to build it. The master plan for the American Canyon Parks and Recreation is amazing and we'll adopt it next month, but how do we get to even implementing in it? like I I was one of those was actually it was community park one or uh Rio Grande Park was $3 million and yeah, you know, I agree with the caller uh that you know it's it's tired over there really is and um but I'm I look at that and I'm like $3 million I mean I I don't even know where that money comes from, you know, funding from uh the for our streets comes from a special tax as well and and then you cobble together some dollars can and I'd like to see manager or Ally if you could do it just talk to me about the reality of actually making this funding happen and if we don't have what the next item is on sales tax how do municipalities normally go about doing this and what do we need to be doing differently to even get to a point to where we're not just also maintaining but actually building special and remarkable places for third spaces, if you will for people to be at in town.

Uh yeah, thank you for the the questions. I'm I'm glad your efforts to find what was missing were unsuccessful. Um but your your comments and about the reality and the funding and um is is very important. Uh, you know, chapter 4 talks a little bit about implementation. Page 146 of the packet kind of throws out some ideas. Um, these are fairly conventional ideas uh around around funding. Um, clearly some of the need for these parks will be created by new residents of American Canyon new development activity. And so, a park impact fee program. We envision updating our park impact fee and being able to collect some revenue there. But to your point, some of the existing parks are tired and that's generally not eligible for impact fees. That's got to come from another source. Um, Vice Mayor Joseph pointed out, we do have repair and replacement funds that have been at the moment funded through um, you know, onetime contributions. Um, you know, I'm I'm not sure that we have a half a million or a million dollars to sit in the funds uh, every year after we go through that. So, that's a reality check uh, for us. Um, you know, there's always the sort of idea that there might be grants out there, state or federal funding, and in some extent those are successful, but I'm not I always sort of cringe when someone says, "Let's go find a grant. Let's go find a grant." Because that's usually an answer without an actual grant or an actual any sign of specificity. And I and I hate to kind of promise that without any targeted uh sort of realities. So, uh, you know, the revenue measure that you mentioned we're talk about here in a moment, uh, would be a potential source for this. Um, and I think that's a conversation we need to have with the community about do they want this plan to come to fruition because to your point, uh, this plan will struggle to come to fruition in in my lifetime and in your kids' lifetime absent a funding source. Uh, and so there isn't a lot of extra money sitting in the general fund. Park impact fees will do a piece of it. Oftent times what happens in communities is new

development activities builds parks. Uh usually developers think building parks helps them sell houses or helps them sell their project. Uh and so they are more than willing to do it out of their own self-interest. Uh we saw a lot of that in Levvenia uh and in in Vintage Ranch for example. And so oftentimes that's how it's happened and it's kind of defaults to cities to then take care of them. Um, in more contemporary development activity, uh, long-term funding is through assessment districts or CFDs and and that's how the ongoing maintenance will will happen. Uh, in older parts of town, you find, um, not as many parks, right? Just like you find absence of tree canopies sometimes. So, you know, I think, uh, the revenue measure would really be the cornerstone of getting this this plan done. But, um, you know, it comes at the the sort of question is if that's where the community really wants to have this happen. And I think we got to evaluate that. I think we have to ask the community. So um you know I we do need to update this plan and to um to create that vision forward to take what was in the general plan consolidate and focus these particular issues and to give us something to guide towards. But you're absolutely right. um you know without a you know a real specific kind of funding source for some of this then it will sit on the shelf and we'll be left kind of prioritizing um you know one or two things doing some repair and replacement but none of the the really exciting things that are in here. One of the bigger ticket items that's in here is the community center. We don't have a community center. We have the Mcloic Center which is a great community center but it doesn't have any kind of indoor sports opportunities. Uh and so we used to have a partnership with the school district and we use the gym for for that. We still rent it uh for a period of time for some of our um some of our programs, but we don't have a facility like that for ourselves. In fact, the video that that Ally played in her um in her presentation was probably one if not our most popular at least program for for middle school kids or at least our junior warriors uh basketball. And they were correct me if I'm wrong, but they were at the Valkyries uh

stadium. Yeah. So, they were that wasn't the gym they were trying to build. It's a professional stadium or a professional arena that they were in. But that's how popular that program is and and a cool experience for those kids. So, um you know, the big ticket item in this uh you know, in this master plan would be a community center. We think we have a property identified or location identified, but you know, nearly half of the estimated cost of this entire program would be that facility. Uh you know, and so that's an exciting thing, but that that surely isn't going to happen on grants. uh that's not going to happen because a developer wants to and um we don't have that money sitting in 30 years what the budgets to do. So um you know a revenue measure would be key to making that happen. Um and you know we'll um continue to push that forward in this next conversation.

Thank you for the question and thank you for the update on that um Mr. Holly. Uh any other questions? Oh oh Council Member Cruz. Sorry.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. So my question is really simple. Alley, first of all, thank you for that report. Very thorough. Excellent. Thank you. U Skater Park, real quick about that. I know if there was any discussion regarding a perimeter fence around that. Driving past that park several times. I always see graffiti every now and then. I have to call parks or or Jason or whomever to clean that up. Again, it's it costs money. So, we're going to discuss that in a little bit. Is there any discussion on putting a fence around that park? So that's pretty, you know, even when we had a fence around the last skate park, we had constant vandalism issues. Um, so the fence is not going to prohibit the graffiti and it's not going to prohibit the vandalism. Um, we were dealing with constant breakins, constant clipping of the fence. Um, unfortunately, the fence doesn't prohibit the vandalism. um this just tends to be a a chronic issue that we're just dealing with and we haven't really been able to um identify we thought we identified the the individual and we put um I'm sure Erica can probably elaborate a little bit more, but we did put out a camera and um so we are trying to prohibit that way um and work with the police department, but the fence is not going to be a prohibiting factor. Um, unfortunately we were dealing with more problems with people cutting the fence and having to fix it and it was more repairs that way. It was more costly. So, um, that would just be something that we would want to consider.

Understood. Thank you. Thank you. U, seeing no other questions, um, I know we're going to bring this back on June 16th for our approval. Do you feel as though you have enough comments from us to take back and go back to the drawing board if if you will?

Yeah, just to confirm, there was that additional page um that was included with the additional comments. I just want to make sure that everybody's comfortable with leaving those additional comments out um because that was uh there was some recommendations made by staff and just want to make sure everybody's comfortable with with those recommendations um because that those comments were purposefully left out based off of staff re recommendations. Okay, I'll come back to the council to see if you guys have had an opportunity to see those comments and recommendations and if there are any comments on the comments.

Not not really. Um I thought it was a good master plan draft. Um the only comments I have is that I'd like to see some some something discussing where we want to go with Wetlands Park. uh a little TLC for Mologogic Center and and maybe something on Main Street. But uh like I said, by and large, I liked what what I read. Um and those are just a couple of areas that I think ought to be included in some fashion. Um if we need a vote, that's one thing. If it's sufficient direction for staff to just plug it in and and include something. Okay. Thank you for that feedback. Uh city manager Holly.

Uh yeah, thank you, Mayor. Um, I think we have the direction that we were looking for from the council. One of the other things that we're going to be looking at relates to the parkland level of service. Uh, and making those edits to exclude um counting that open space acreage as meeting that um service level standard and then uh potentially bringing back some edits uh or changes to our general plan. I think there's some ambiguity in the general plan as to what counts um for uh meeting that parkland standard. And so we uh we were taking our guidance from the general plan. It probably needs a little bit of clean up to get real explicit about what counts and what doesn't. Uh and then from there um you know we'll be matching it to what this is. So there probably a little there um so that uh we don't include the open space. Uh lastly, uh yeah, we're going to make the changes on on Michelic. And what we'll probably end up doing on Clark Ranch is noting the need to revisit that plan and to get what's in here now is kind of status quo, right? And so what we're we're not proposing to redo this whole plan related to that. what we're going to be proposing is some additional language that says, "Hey, uh, we probably need to take a deep dive on Clark Ranch and and figure out, you know, how we're going to juxtapose that previous plan with what's today." Uh, and and kind of a further effort. So, u, including on the wetland side, on the south side. So, kind of kind of teeing that up. But, um, so that's kind of the direction that we're hearing from from council. And, uh, if there's other comments or, you know, we want to make sure we hit all this in the right spots.

Okay. And do you feel that uh June 16th is a reasonable still good date for us to bring this back? We do. Um selfishly we're targeting that date for two reasons. We like to wrap things up at the end of the fiscal year, but it also happens you're going to have a joint session that night with the parks and community services and this was probably their big ticket work item this year. So it' be nice to be able to celebrate with them. Uh you'll be doing the voting, but they'll be up the DAS with you. And so you know it's nice to kind of have that uh interplay, you know, with them. So um we'll be hard charging to to make that happen.

Great. Thank you. And thank you again um city deputy city manager Ally for your presentation. It was awesome. Thank you. Um our next business item tonight will be item number 15 uh the potential revenues measure. Go ahead. You want to clap? You want to clap? Off the hot seat. Our next business item is item number 15, the potential revenue measure uh polling results. And that will be you, city manager. Um, mayor, I'm gonna look to our our clerk here. We have a special guest who's going to be joining us by Zoom. I don't know that our special guest is is uh is totally ready. So, could we take maybe four or five minute break here? Um, get get our special guest lined up and get everybody on the screen and then we'll uh then we'll come back if that's okay.

Well, we'll take a recess uh starting at 8:14 and we'll be back at what you say 8:20. 8:20. 8:20. Thank you. I did the best I could.

I knew you did. You did. You did an excellent job. I mean, these are tell him really quick.

Hi Richard, we have you on but we're in recess for just five minutes so we'll be back. I saw No problem.

Yeah, no problem. better. That's the one that you put Can I remember?

women. Stop this video. So we don't I know for I don't write it down. somewhere nearby.

Beautiful.

Never mind. Yeah, exactly. or Yeah.

3,700,000 divided by two equals Uh, we're back in and I will call it back to order at 8:22.

Is it It's not necessary to do a roll call again. Correct. Okay. So, I'll call it back into order 8:22. Uh, our next business item is item number 15, the potential revenue measure, uh, polling results. And I believe we have a guest speaker. If you want to make that introduction, um, Mr. Holly,

thank you, mayor. Um, I'm going to go ahead and start with this item. Uh, and then we'll turn it over to, uh, Mr. Richard Bernard. He's with the firm of FM3 Research who's been doing some polling on the city's behalf. Um, but before uh we get started, I want to provide just a little background, some context about why we're having this uh item tonight. Um, at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the calendar year, uh, we began talking about uh potential revenue measures. Uh, kind of a continuation of the conversation we just had, right? and being able to uh fund some desirable city services, some new amenities. How might we achieve that? What's the community's perspective on that? Uh and so um we began to do some polling uh on that. We wanted to ask the community informally first before we ask them formally on a ballot. Uh the council doesn't have the authority to just raise your taxes. Only the voters can do that. So um the council can put a ballot measure on to ask them if they want to do that. And before we would do a ballot measure, we felt like we should ask the community. So, um, one of our unique kinds of situations, uh, is it's kind of a double-edged sword. Uh, we have done a great job. The council has been very fiscally prudent in the past. Um, an example of that is, uh, during COVID, u, many cities got relief money from the federal government directly, which sort of have never happened before, and it kept the lights on in a lot of places. Um and that just funded their operation because they were so uh you know sort of on the on the very cusp of of really insolveny. Um and for us we had done a good job. We had had some reserves and so we were able to withstand the pandemic and use those capital use those funds to actually make capital investments to actually put them into improvements. And so in in many places nearby Benicia, Napa, Valleo are all examples of nearby cities that have recently had sales taxes. And in those communities, the message from their uh from their councils has been pretty

simple, like we're having financial troubles. We need this or there's going to be, you know, issues, right? We're expecting layoffs. We're expecting to cut this, cut that, what have you. And so that kind of need uh becomes apparent and it takes place over a period of time. They hear dribbs and drabs and years of the these sort of stories that end up in the newspapers and and the community is well aware of a need. In our case, we don't have that. And so we pulled the community what we call this kind of cold start, right? This kind of cold floor. We we literally called community members uh out of the blue and said, "What do you think about this?" And for I'm guessing for most of these folks, maybe they haven't even been following along with what we're doing. Maybe some have, but they haven't been seeing stories of all the things that other communities would have been seeing. And so we knew that was the case and we wanted to really try to establish this floor. Uh and so that's what these these results did. And I'll I'll let Richard really dive into the metrics and the the surveying and and how they did all these things. But um so we we kind of surveyed them there. We took the opportunity to ask them a variety of things, right? A variety of of we're kind of characterizing as budget priorities, a variety of topics. Uh and so uh he's going to kind of outline the questions that we asked them. Uh you know, are they uh relatively important or not important? Uh especially when considering a new sales tax. Um, we also asked them, you know, uh, for a 1% increase versus a half percent increase and and he'll talk about kind of the results there. Uh, and so, uh, in your staff report at the bottom of the the page 159, um, was the language that we tested. Uh, and so, you know, that was, um, part of the the question that folks were asked. And then, uh, we asked them about other priorities. And so, um, just to kind of put a put a final stamp on this, we don't have to do anything after tonight. And tonight, we're not actually asking for a vote of the council to do anything. Um, we're presenting this information to you all.

Um, if there's interest uh and direction to proceed with something this November, there is an election this November, and if there's interest in doing that, June 16th is our last opportunity for the council. you would have to take action and it would have to be no later than June 16th to do that. Um, tonight isn't any kind of a deadline, but June 16th is right around the corner. So, um, it's with that sort of set that I, you know, I think we should be talking about this. And without any further information, I'm going to let Richard uh introduce himself and and kind of talk about the the work that that they did.

Um, thank you, city manager. Appreciate um the setup. um probably in 24 years, I would say that was one of the best setups I've seen. So, thank you for that. Um I want to thank the um the mayor and the city council for inviting me to present the results of your recent uh voter survey. Uh we can uh just bear with me. Can everyone see um a slide? Just want to make sure and you can hear me. Yes, we can see it.

Okay. Thank you very much. Um, we conducted the survey between April 5th and the 16th. It was a dual mode survey, which means a random portion of the respondents took the survey on the phone and a random portion online. In fact, 47% took the survey on the phone and 53% online. We interviewed a random sample of 267 American Canyon registered voters who are likely to vote in a November 2026 general election, the gubanatorial election. Based on their past voter history or if they've recently registered to vote for questions asked of everyone, the margin of error is plus or minus 6.2. In some cases, we didn't want the survey to be too ownorous on folks. So, we took a random half the questions and asked some of them and the other random half asked other folks. Um, we contacted folks by telephone, email, and text. And of course, we offered the survey in English and Spanish, of which 7% opted to take the survey in Spanish. And if you're very quick on math and does and you notice something doesn't quite equal 100% um I blame that entirely on on uh random uh uh random sampling um random error the mo the mood of the electorate. I'm going to start by getting uh a sense of uh some perceptions about the community and then we'll dive into the uh ballot question which was my major charge of this survey. We began the survey by asking if folks thought uh the city of American Canyon was generally headed in the right direction or if they were off on the wrong track. Um one in every two said that d it was headed in the right direction with about a third saying wrong track. And 17% said well I'm not sure either I'm not following or I'm not quite sure if it's the right direction

or wrong track. to place this in comparative uh uh examination. Um my experience having in this election cycle worked for at least 60 to 70 cities. Um 50s and above tend to be markers of really well-run cities in the sense that people are feeling a recognition that things are going well. And some of the reasons why the numbers aren't necessarily higher tend to center around often um affordability issues, the cost of living, uh which is often outside the purview of the city council. Uh but we ask just their general mood. So this is a relatively a good number. If we were to ask about the county or some other cities, you would often see them underwater in terms of right direction, wrong track. Um, and the other conceptual question we asked them was if they felt that the city of American Canyon had uh a need for additional funds to provide the level of city services that residents need and want. And we offer them the option of great need, some need, a little need, no real need, or they volunteered they didn't know. and 64% said that there was at least some need that the city had for additional funds, but a modest 21% said a great need. Now, thinking that my charge is to test a general purpose, which is a 50 plus one measure, and the margin of error is 6.2, we're looking for perceptions that are at least in the high 50s or above. And so, this is a is is a strong start in terms of perception. Of course, we're not asking folks now if they're willing to raise their taxes, but we just want to know if they think there is a need. Um, again, number is relatively good, but that great need is a little bit modest. Um,

and perhaps um some of the setup that Jason provided earlier helps explain that, you know, it's well-run. we are not hearing about financial problems and therefore that only about one in every five uh likely voters say there's a great need. Now I'm going to ask about the 1% sales tax. So I worked with your legal counsel to ensure that this was a legally permissible question. Um it establishes um again the the the council can't raise taxes, but uh by a vote of four or five out of five, you can place it on the ballot if you think it's appropriate to have voters decide whether to uh support it at a 50 plus one or higher. So we tested a 1% sales tax um that would according to your finance folks generate about $3.7 million annually. Um, the ballot question does not read like a Shakespearean pros, but it it is legally permissible. And since it was a general purpose sales tax that uh we tested, at best the city can only provide illustrative examples of how the money could be used. And in fact, if the measure was passed, it would go into the general fund and it would be at the discretion of the council every year to determine how the money was um spent. What we did do is we worked closely with your staff and they channeled the priorities of the council and we tested them around uh public safety around um your parks and open space and trails etc and your recreational programs which I know the community values very highly. Um, in a in a short little while, I will be showing you a question that identifies and isolates each of these elements that we tested to see how people rate the importance of those

elements and that helps understand the results that you get with respect to that ballot question. Um, so we asked this question if they were on the phone or they read it if they were online. And then we said if there were an election today, would you vote yes in favor or no to oppose? And if they said they would vote yes in favor, we asked them is that definitely or probably to try to get the intensity of level of support. And if they said no, we asked them if they were definitely or probably likely to vote no. And again to get the intensity of the percent definitely no. And then if they were undecided, we pushed them a little. We said,"Well, would you lean yes or would you lean no?" If they said yes, we put them in the yes camp, no in the no camp. For this particular ballot title and summary that I presented in the previous slide, 6% said they were undecided. So on the initial vote, 55% said they would vote yes. Uh 38% said no. 6% were undecided. Given that the margin of error is 6.2, two. If I did very basic math, adding six to that total yes of 55. On the high end, the measure would come in at 61. And at the low end, it would come in at 49. Now, I'll remind you, supporters of the measure uh would need 50 + 1 to be successful. Opponents would only need 50%. And if we look a little deeper into the numbers on the initial vote, the definitely yes is 3 and 10. And the definitely no is approximately three and 10. A one:one ratio of intensity. It really splits the voters into definitely yes and definitely no with the remaining voters being soft. Um I thought it might be interesting to look on the initial vote uh a little bit on where geographically uh the support for the measure occurs.

So, we used east uh and west of Highway 29 as a as a marker. I took everyone who said definitely or probably or lean yes and I made them blue. That blue bars total yes on that initial vote. The orange bar is the total definitely probably or lean no. So that total no is the orange bar and the gray are the pure undecided. And you could see east of uh highway 29 that makes up approximately 52% of your likely November 2026 voters. And west of Highway 29 it makes up about 48. So the east side much more likely to support the measure um by a 2:1 ratio and then the folks on the west side are quite mixed at 46 49. statistically not really any difference between level support or not. You may remember a couple of slides back I presented a slide that looked at whether they perceive there is a need for additional funds in the city. Um if one thinks there's a great or some need they are more likely to support the measure by a 2:1 ratio of 65 to 29. If they think there's a little or no real need, they are by almost a ratio of 3 to one more likely to oppose the measure than support it. This is one of the proof points that if uh the the council is interested in moving forward on a potential measure uh using the time frame that the city manager outlined earlier, um it would be our recommendation that um education was part of the effort in order to explain to folks why this additional uh revenue is needed for the city. Now, you'll rec recall the ballot question I showed you had piffy little phrases of items that illustratively could be funded by the

measure. And in this particular question, we gave them a list and it's a list of 33 items that cover four uh slides in this and we randomized it. So, there was no order preference. We asked them regardless of whether you support the measure or not, how important is this to include this use of the funds or this provision in the measure, the dark blue is extremely important. The midcolor blue is very important. I've aggregated the extremely and very important on the right hand side and ranked it as such. The dull blue is somewhat important and the orange are the folks who said not too important. And that sliver of gray you might be able to see in some of the items on the right hand side are the folks who said they didn't know. So in front of you and on the subsequent pages um of the 33 items one is in the '9s six are in the 80s and 12 are in the 70s with respect to extremely are very important. So if I can put the measure aside for a moment I want to say a couple of things. One is the fact that some of these are so high, it suggests to me that the priorities of the council are in line with the priorities of voters. Because in some cities, those numbers are in the 50s and 60s. and I say I have a really limited number of things that I can recommend that you place in a potential ballot measure to try to um inform uh the residents of why this might be uh what might be used by the by the funds in this case that's not true and secondly in other words in it's in favor of the fact that there are a lot of highscoring things and the other thing I wanted to suggest is whether you use decide to move forward on the revenue venue measure or not at some point in June. Um, this is a really helpful guide in budget deliberations. You don't get an a

chance very often or certainly a city doesn't to get the outpouring of your voters in terms of letting you know what their priorities are. So, it would be my encouragement to use it as a data point in your deliberations. Back to the measure, you can notice on the first page that a disproportionate number of those items are all related to public safety. Maintaining 911 response, preventing crime, helping prevent property crimes and burglaries, maintaining neighborhood police protection. Um, on top of that, maintaining safe places for children to play could be translated certainly into replacing aging playground equipment or other elements in your parks to make sure kids remain safe. And on top of that, addressing speeding and unsafe driving and keeping American Canyons recreation and park facilities clean, safe, and well-maintained are among the high items. And finally, I wanted to kind of point out, and I'll return to this a little later, reducing wildfire risk by managing brush and other flammable vegetation, um, is a very strong priority given, uh, where you live. Now, I'm not going to go through every single item. You certainly have this available for you and it's will be publicly available if it's not already, but I wanted to point out a couple of other items. The first thing I want to point out is maintaining city services. That's at 77% uh uh extremely or very important. And if I skip down to the third of the four slides, four from the bottom is improving city services. There is a differential of uh between 77 and 64. Um so uh 13 uh if my math is right, 13 points differential between maintaining and improving. It means they like what

they have and while they may want some improvements, they like what the city provides and they want to make sure that with rising costs that the city continues to be able to provide that level of city services that they become accustomed to. on the lower side. Just to place it into context, you'll notice those dark blues that were in the um 50s and 60s and high 40s on the first slide of items I showed you are now in the mid20s and low 20s and teens. Among the lowest items in terms of top priorities, not to minimize 50% on extremely are very important, but compared to 91 90 87, they're certainly not the leads. If you're considering a potential ballot measure, increasing youth and adult recreation programs, establishing a multi-purpose community center and gym, and expanding football, baseball, and soccer fields, all rank among the lowest items in this list of 33 items. Now, I'd like to move to the educational simulation. So, in effect, what you're watching in front of you is an election. Um, I start with a ballot question. people are not informed before you start to educate and I see where they are today if there was an election called then I simulate education by telling them what the money could be used for and telling your story in a non non-advocacy way since again the city can't advocate but they can educate. So we presented the city, the residents with 10 statements and after each one and everyone heard eight and after each one we said um tell me if it would make you more inclined to vote yes on the measure. We randomize this list as we did the previous one and the dark blue is much more inclined to vote yes and the bright blue is somewhat more inclined to vote yes. And the words in

the parentheses that you see on the left hand side, accountability, crime, property values are just the themes of the messages. So I don't have to read 10 messages to you, but it does give you sort of a sense of what that message is. Now, I'll start by saying the intensities that dark blue is kind of modest for this kind of measure. Uh, but the strongest of the um educational statements relate to accountability. Now people don't vote for a measure because there's accountability but they will vote against the measure if there isn't accountability. So ensuring that you have audits which you will have normally with your budget and ensuring public spending disclosure which is something you do right now. I know for a fact because I've done research about your city that 24 hours 7 days a week 365 days a year one could go on your website and review the budget in detail on how the money is spent. That is public disclosure. But most voters and residents aren't aware that that's available to them. Additionally, the concept of crime with more crime fighting tools available or proactive police department made one-third more arrests last year. Most of these crimes are committed by individuals who come from other cities to target our community, including organized retail theft and car burglaries. The funds from this measure could help the city continue to reduce crime by investing in more neighborhood policing to keep local residents, businesses, and their property safe. So, there's a number of statements that we tested. You could see as we go down the intensities in some cases that dark blue starts to decline and so the total more inclined to uh vote yes. And then this is sort of a summary of the themes and how well some of those statements did. And then the

result is we go back and we reask that ballot question that you saw earlier in the evening. On the left hand side was that initial vote when they just heard the ballot title and summary. You saw this earlier was 55 uh 38 yes no with a relatively low definitely yes of 30% and a matched 31% definitely a a 30% definitely yes and a 31 definitely no. After telling them what the money could be used for and telling your story in a non-advocacy way, support goes up four points to 59% within that margin of error. the definitely s rises by six to 36%. This measure is now a little stronger. I would be cautious at this point since we simulated a lot of education, simulated a lot of outreach. I would focus now on the 53% that definitely and probably not the folks who I had to push to see if they would lean yes or lean no. So at that 53% if I added um margin of error six to it on the high end it would be 59 and at the low end it would be 47. Remember the goal is 50 + one. So within the margin of error of passage. No measure goes unscathed. So it's my job not to necessarily give you rosy information unless there is rosy information to give. And so we test we gave we produced some critical statements. Um now nothing is sort of rocket science here. Um these are many of these statements are used in every community. Um but we talked about uh the cost of living uh rising. This was going on by the way the survey during the war when the price of gas has gone up pretty dramatically. Um it talks about a blank check. remember the money goes into the general fund and it's at the discretion

of a council every year and all we're providing in that ballot question are illustrative examples um that they may some would argue that you have the money you have over 11 million in reserve and if you just you know um cut waste and inefficiency you would be able to fund all the things that you're suggesting in the ballot question and some some already are paying for park special assessment the The city should show how the money is spent before they're asked for additional sales tax. And while you do show how the money is spent, not everyone is still aware of that. So with those critical statements uh in mind, we reask that ballot question that you saw earlier in the evening. This is the simulation of an election in real time in front of your fa in front of your eyes. On the left hand side was the initial vote just pallet title and summary. We've seen this a few times. 55 yes 38 no with a week definitely yes support goes up to definitely yes at 36% overall after education totally yes is 59 total no is 33 by now in that survey I would be expecting it to be at the high30s at a minimum and the low 40s uh would suggest a strong measure and then after the crit critical statement support overall drops to 50% yes 40% no But notice that definitely yes and that definitely no have converged again statistically very close. 29 on the definitely yes, 31 on the definitely know 10% undecided. we uh went back and we said, "Well, what happens if it wasn't a 1%, but if it was a h half a percent um which would um obviously generate half of that um half of the the

money, which I will remind you how much it generated, half of 37 million. Um and you'll note support went up even after opposition to 55%. um suggesting that maybe the 1% is a little bit too high for people's liking, but that a half% may have an opportunity to be viable. Now, we didn't vet it throughout the survey. This is negotiating, and in real life, voters don't go to the ballot booth or fill out their absentee ballot on the kitchen table and decide, should I vote for a h 1%, should I vote for a half percent. But it does suggest some movement. And this doesn't always happen in surveys. There are plenty of surveys where there just isn't a movement. But here there's some interesting movement both in terms of intensity and overall uh support. So as you know the uh county is um going to place a measure on the ballot. It's a citizens initiative. So in that case it would be a 50 plus1 measure. And so we went out and we tested after all talking about the city measure, we went back and tested a county measure. Now, I'll just remind you in reality the county measure is always above the city measure in the ballot, but in this case, I was very focused on the benefits of your city. And so this came as a secondary effort. So we read them the current um the ballot language that is currently be con considered by the county and then which would be a 1 half cent. So they're using the same taxing mechanism as we tested and uh it would generate according to them $23 million annually uh for 18 years. And then we asked the B them if there were an election today on the

county measure, would they vote yes in favor and no to oppose? And here folks voted 50% yes. Uh 40% no with um a significant 11% undecided, but again the definitely yes is soft at 29. The definitely no is a little bit lower um than we had seen um through part of your survey. Um, and what's interesting, if you go back in the features that we tested in isolation, um, elements that were in the ballot question with respect to wild, uh, wildfire risk actually scored much higher when they were considering it within the context of your measure. And so, you know, the issue of whether the county measure will provide any local returns really becomes a pressing issue that I'll defer to the city manager if he chooses to refer to it. But here we know that a city measure comes back locally to the city and it's at again the local discretion as to how that money is spent. And folks certainly support uh issues related to brush clearance and dealing with other flammable vegetation and managing brush at very high levels when it comes rel to the the city relationship with the measure. And then we finally asked them having introduced your measure for most of the survey or the city's measure hypothetical measure and the county measure. We said if both were on the same ballot would you vote yes on both? Yes on the American Canyon only, yes on the Napa County measure only, or no on both. And in front of you, you would see 42% said they would vote for either the Canyon measure, American Canyon measure in isolation or in combination with the county measure. 30 36% said they would

vote on the county measure and a combination of both. And 32% said they would vote no on both. and 19% were undecided. So it suggests um now this is after a long survey in which we mostly talked about your measure. It suggests that each measure could hurt each uh the other measure because they would both be on the ballot at the same time. So in conclusion, I want to thank you first of all for your patience. I know I threw a lot of data at you at once. Um but in the context uh one and two have a positive view of the direction of the city. More than six in 10 perceive the city has a need for additional funds. But it's kind of challenging because only one in five think you have a great need. They you know it's a well-run city. They clearly like the city a lot. They want to maintain what they have and they haven't really seen a lot of uh financial challenges um that would make them think there's a great need. With respect to the 1% city sales tax initially supports at 55% which is above that 50 plus one threshold but within that margin of error. But the definitely yes and definitely no are pretty comparable in terms of the percentage of vote they each get. After education, support rises to a much healthier 59% um above the margin of error, above that simple majority threshold. But after critical statement, support drops to 50%. And again, we see that similarity between that definitely yes and that definitely no. when we introduce a half a percent rather than the 1 cent uh 1% support moves up to 55% suggesting that there may be something about the 1% relative to something smaller that might

be more um interesting for voters to come up and support. And again, we tested the county one uh uh the county uh half cent, sorry, it should be a half cent sales tax. um only one and two uh American Canyon voters said they're likely to vote on that with a very modest three and 10 saying definitely yes and assuming both measures would appear on the ballot this would eat in appears to be eating into both measures u but 19% say they remain undecided. So it's possible that both measures could be successful. the city measure has a little bit more stronger support most likely because it's a local measure and there's 100% local returns whereas the county measure that is more uncertain and with that I am happy to answer any questions.

Uh thank you Mr. Bernard I appreciate the data and the survey and all the information that you provided there. Uh one clarified question for me um what I didn't hear is do you have data that provides the demographic breakdown of the survey participants like particularly like the the age groups or the working the general working class.

I do happy happy to provide that with you now. Um sure. So first of all you should know we worked with your county registar to make sure we had all your eligible voters. We looked at their past voter history to identify if they are likely to vote in a November 2026 election. And then we pulled that sample and we made sure that the demographics of that group mirror the demographics of the respondents. So if you'll bear with me, I'm going to do some quick math to give you. Um so 65 plus uh that is 26% of all likely November voters. Um, if I add 50 plus, that adds another 28. So, we're at 54% of all likely voters are 55 plus. The result is that the balance of folks less than 50 are uh 46% with 16% being between 18 and 29. Uh, with respect you're interested in. I'm happy to provide that if I have it. Those were the only two that I I I was interested in. I mean, some of the other uh council members may have that question as well. But I think understanding who was participating in the survey helps provide a better context. Um, I'm also glad that you mentioned the fact that the county measure and the city measure may really confuse people, which tells me that we need to market um our uh our incentive, our our measure uh probably a little differently and educating our community. Uh but before I open it up to our council, I want to kind of give an opportunity for our city attorney um Mr. Summers to if he had anything to add before opening it up.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. I think it'd be helpful to remind the council and the community, particularly the community who may not see this every day of the voter approval requirements. So the state constitution, Prop 13, Prop 62, and Prop 26 effectively require that any city tax be approved by the voters. So the council alone cannot raise taxes, requires voter approval, and it's a two thresholds. If it's a special tax, meaning a closed list of defined services, then it's a twothirds voter approval threshold. If it's a general city service, in which case we can list as seen in the survey a series of purposes for which the money would be spent and other general city services that open list then it's 50% plus one vote approval required. So broader set of services, lower approver threshold um defined set of purposes that higher threshold and then it's up to the council which of the two to select. Um and as noted the counties the county measure at least is presently proposed seeing as they go through the process is using a initiative petition which an initiative petition can access under present law a lower threshold of only 50% plus one for a special tax. Although I would note the attorney general is also reviewing a statewide initiative that would amend the state constitution to eliminate that loophole uh with a retroactive clause. So that may create some challenges uh for that that approach depending on whether or not that statewide constitutional initiative does or does not pass at the state level. So there's some open questions there. There's no question though for a city measure put on the ballot by the council. The threshold for a general measure 50% plus one a special measure 2/3. Happy to answer any questions on that.

Thank you Mr. Summers. So, I'll open it up for u clarifying questions before opening up the public council public comment. Uh vice mayor, just another technical question. A general obligation bond is also something that has to be approved by the voters. Is that twothirds just like a special or a general obligation bond issued by city? I believe there's a two-thirds requirement. Okay. Hence, that's somewhat uncommon.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions? Uh, seeing none, I will open it up for public comment on item number 15. Uh, anyone in the room with a question? Go ahead. Introduce yourself for the record.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Scott Meyer. Um, I encourage you to put this on the ballot for the community to vote for. Um, uh, thank you for this presentation. Do you know how many or you probably don't know, but I'm sure there's a pretty good percentage out there that even didn't even know this survey um, existed in our community. Uh, I wouldn't have known had I not been involved in the process. Um, I encourage to put this on the V on the ballot because um it's a lot less stressful than some of the other options that we had to put to to get this kind of money. And uh even at 1% we're still a lot lower than any of the other cities that surround us.

Thank you, Scott. I'll just reply kind of briefly, Mayor. Um, so the list of people that reside in American Canyon is about 22,000. The list of those who are registered to votes a little more than 14,000. And the list of folks who are likely voters is even lower. It's about 9,000 according to the register of voters. And so I had the same sort of question for Richard 267. I thought, well, that seems like maybe that's kind of a number. How's that work? But what Richard, you can elaborate if you want. He had indicated if he was hired to do statewide polling, like for a statewide initiative, he would only survey about a thousand. Oh, okay. That's sort of interesting. Maybe you want to talk a little about now we get into statistics and and how those things work, Richard, and that sort of thought.

Sure. Well, you you kind of gave it away. Um, yeah, there were 9,922 likely November voters when we began this. Um, and so that was the pool in which we could interview. And um, to the city manager's point, like um, if I were doing like a city of LA, I might do 800 uh, sample, 600 sample. If we were doing nationwide for an election, typically 3,200. So, in a context of a very important city as yours, but a very modest city in terms of population relative to others, um this was a pretty good number. We thought we'd only get to 150 at best. Um and we actually were able to get a little bit more. So, um that was free to the city, but we felt good that we would get any anyone we could get. But it was important that it was a random sample and people weren't informed ahead of time because we didn't want to in any way bias the results. And we feel pretty good if we were to do this survey 100 times, 95 out of 100 times the results would be within the margin of error that you saw tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Manard. Any other public comment?

Yes. Good evening, Beth Marcus. I just want to say that I like this alternative better than it going on our property tax because it was another issue because I remember at the at the discussion at the meetings that um there's a lot of elderly people. I'm not one of them, but a lot of elderly people who um um wouldn't be able, you know, they don't think it's fair that they would be having this tax on their property when um I don't know how to say it, but anyhow, I think this is a better alternative doing it this way, and I urge you to to uh do it as well. Thank you, city manager.

Thank you, mayor. Just one sort of uh comment related to that. Uh if you look at our uh top sales tax generators, Walmart's at the top, our gas stations are fairly high. Uh we also have uh places in town that generate sales tax that from our perspective, SAS perspective, we're not sure American Canyon residents uh frequent. Uh for example, Adobe Lumber, General Plumbing Supply, All Bay Lumber. Uh we have a couple of uh wine warehouses out in the Green Island area where the point of sale is actually there. And you might be buying one or two bottles or even a case, but you're not buying a thousand cases at a time. Uh I don't think you are. And so um so you know of our top generators um so of our of our top generators um you know we know we've studied previously the leakage that we have externally for retail options uh and so many of our residents are are going elsewhere and that's not great and we're not happy about that. But in the context of of sales tax um you know not as much much of this would be paid by others who are coming here or paid by folks who are you know accessing you know wholesale lumber or accessing wholesale wines and that sort of thing. So um to to the to the commenters's point to Beth's point um 100% of the property owners who would be paying the tax would be living here or at least owning the property here um by its very definition. So a big difference.

Thank you Mr. Holly. Uh, back to um public comment. Anyone else in the room? Do we have anybody online? I do have someone online, Chris. Go ahead.

Good evening, council. Uh, this is Chris Chiego. I live here in American Canyon. Uh, first for the poll itself, I was delighted to see the detailed results in the presentation here. That highway 29 divide is fascinating. The cross tabs were great and I appreciate the efforts to get a representative sample. I did think the poll was a little kind of awkwardly designed. Um all those separate educational questions. I think there were five or more of those with positive arguments than just one negative one at the end with lots of things stuffed into one long paragraph. Might be a little unbalanced on this, but was glad to see both sides were included. I do think that the revenue measure itself as described just had a whole bunch of wonderful things promised. Um, but it was kind of a grabback approach. And I think that could be an issue. Just listing lots of nice things might not be as convincing as a separate set of more clearly defined needs. And I think, um, you know, this is mentioned earlier, but I'd also urge to council to just avoid taking on any of these long-term costs without a very clear way to pay for them. Uh, I think Vallejo has mentioned before, Benicia, too. Now, uh, kind of a cautionary tale. Benicia, I know, bragged about being a fullervice city for a time, and now it's fighting with its citizens over a bunch of big tax hikes. And I'm glad it hasn't been the case in American Canyon, I'm glad to see the good fiscal stewardship so far. So I hope it stays that way. So in, you know, American Canyon's case, coupled with the county coming after us with another tax increase may not be the best time for this measure. And I I like the idea someone said earlier of starting with saving more each year for some of those most desired projects. That might be a better starting place along with kind of having a clearer sense of what's really needed rather than just a kind of a laundry list of nice things. So hope you take that into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. Anyone else? I have no other hands raised. Okay, I do another look through the room, see if there's anyone else else. Anyone else with a public comment? And seeing seeing none, I'll close public comment. Um, and I'll return to council for any additional comments. Council member Oro.

Uh, the last commenter, Mr. Chego who came in actually sent an email and I been meaning to get back to him but his arguments were so clear in particular I wanted to have a big discussion about it with someone I figured we do it now. Uh Mr. Bernard if you don't mind ask uh explaining why the questions were framed in that way. It they they seem to be leading I think is what he was saying.

Right. So, um my job is to kind of simulate an election over time. And so, um uh typically, um education starts, right? The the city comes out first to try to explain the needs, what's going on in the city, and then followed by uh typically some opposition by folks who feel like this is not the right time. you have the money, cost of living, we're overt taxed. And so if we sequence it like that, the city gets and the community gets a sort of a a true view of a simulation of what an election will look like. Again, the city can't advocate. It can only educate. So I'm simulating educational efforts up until uh and if the c the council, I'm not trying to get ahead of you, places a measure on the ballot. And then there will be folks, be it a large number of folks or even a small number of folks, who will start to say, I oppose this for these reasons. Asking that ballot question along the way allows us to test conversation in the public square both from a supportive side and an oppositional side. So we're not sticking the the thumb on the scale. And in fact, you saw that when the me when the measure was confronted with oppositional statements, support dropped. So this wasn't a leading I mean I you know I'm not giving you uh if I if I may share again I'm not giving if I can find the the the the survey. Hold on one second. I'm not giving you the results of a situation in which it's a slam dunk. It's very very challenging. I'll I'll just uh I'll Oh, here it is. Sorry about that. Um uh bear with me for

one second. Uh this was the final vote. It was 50 50 yes, 40 no. Um I I don't think I'm coming out here and say, "Ah, well, you know, it's a slam dunk." There's a lot of work to be done. Um, and I think this is a a good reflection of where your community is now before they're informed as to uh the likelihood of placing something on the ballot. Um, so if if if I would say anything, I would say this is taking a temperature of your community. Um, there's no there's some very good things to learn and some challenging things for the city to consider at the same time. I hope that answers the question.

Yeah, it does. Thank you for that context and that background. Um, I'm I'm going to I have several comments actually after this, but I need to ask the city manager a question. Half cent versus full cent sales tax obviously 3.4 I think it is versus 1.2. Um, geez, we could do a lot with that money. My and you know, I think you know the way that this measure was this question was asked combined police and park maintenance. Um, my listen, I'm not I don't want to ask what we could do with 1.2, what we can do with 3.4, but I I want to ask about bonding because that's how we build things now and pay it off in the future because with sales tax, you can actually bond it and then get 30 million today and build something worth 20 million and improve another 10 million. talk to me about the difference between if we went half sale full sale tax.

Sure. Um, so we estimate it would be about 3.7 if it was 1% uh you know about half of that one point I guess eight um 1.875 uh if it was uh you know half a percent. Um and so you know what we went to uh is to say okay sales tax itself isn't something that the marketplace views as stable and and the market isn't going to uh issue us bonds based on it. What they would do is look at the city as a whole and go city's credit rating pretty good. We don't have other debt. Um you now have this sales tax measure so you're even in better standing. Your credit rating is higher. We would do what's known as lease revenue bonds. we would uh pledge our other assets to say look we promised to pay you back um and ourselves we would need to know that we've now taken on uh these obligations uh and we could in our mind go okay uh we've seen an increase in sales tax or projecting these increases in sales tax we can now see that line item that shows up uh in our debt service uh charts the obligation to pay that uh and so if you do a sort of onetoone correlation there uh you know current bond rates are about 4.25% 25% you start ending up at some numbers. So maybe a half percent would roughly be able to bond you about 31 uh you know and double that if we did the 1% 30 31 million 62 million with the 1%. Again keeping in mind we wouldn't be using the sales tax revenue. What we would be doing is telling ourselves pretty sure general fund is going to go up with sales tax. We've just taken on uh you know this uh this debt and this obligation to pay that debt and we use city property as the as the security for that. So it's um different than in for example property taxes where the land itself can actually be used as um as collateral. So there's there's some differences there particularly like in CFDs. So um you there's some nuances but hopefully hopefully that answers the question.

No. No, it does. It does. And I actually didn't know it was a lease sales bond or something like that. I had that that is new to me and I guess this question can either be for you or Mr. Bernard. I you know I think going into this I think the council had talked about let's explore how we fund our parks. Uh the questions that were asked were about safety and parks. Um and it wasn't a special bond or special tax that require 2/3. Talk to me about the reasoning behind that and why we did that approach. Um, and why didn't we just go with like a special uh sales tax just for parks or something like that?

Yeah. No, it's a it's a great question and we had a a pretty good dialogue in January. Um, what staff took away most from that dialogue in January was bring us back something that could pass, find something that could work. Um, and in looking at general and looking at special, it's I think it's counterintuitive to be totally honest. I think um to one of the commenters point of a very specific list of dedicated things you would think that would be easier to pass in a lower threshold but we have things in my mind sort of backwards in California if you say I'm only going to do a limited amount of things with this money and I promise taxpayers we're going to do that you actually need to get twothirds of their vote if you say it's a whole laundry list of whatever you need 50 plus one which seems opposite to me but you know looking at something for parks that would be a special that would be a twothirds um you know and Richard can talk a little bit about his research uh There aren't examples in California where cities go, "Let's pass a special tax for parks and get a two-thirds approval." That people aren't doing that for sales taxes. It's not um it's not enough of a priority. It's uh and it is an extraordinarily high lift to get a two-thirds approval to begin with. Uh and so we we wanted to bring back something that uh bundled all the things together to say, "Look, this could pass. This is this is reasonable. Uh the community might support this." Um I don't know Richard if you have some estimates if we if we had uh pulled a special just on parks where that number would have landed roughly but I know it would have been nowhere near 2/3.

Yeah the data suggests if you looked at the four slides that I presented earlier on the lower side were many of the items that were parkreated and in fact if this measure does pass the emphasis has to be on public safety because that is the top priority in your community. I'm not suggesting that parks are not important, but they don't rise to the 2/3 uh level in your community. Um, and that I think is suggested both in your individual data that that you have and will be available certainly to the community if it's not already, but uh those those items are scoring much less. So 50 plus one seem to be appropriate. Um and the city manager is right. There rarely are there cities that have come out and been successful at a twothirds measure for parks. I do know there are a number of park districts uh that have been successful, but typically what's interesting is those park district twothirds measures tend to center around um public safety protection if it's near water, water protection um and safe places for kids to play. So all those kind of themes of public safety, gang related protection um ends up um selling those park uh part twoirds park measures. So

So that's not unique to our community is what I hear you say.

It it is not is not unique and and I think the city manager uh we had these discussions too. I know you folks did and it was our sort of estimation even though it was clear to me that your your community is you unique in so many ways in a good way in the sense that if it values its parks it values its trails and all that but they have them they think you have the funds for them they have they're happy with what they have and their concern is maintaining disproportionately public safety be it prevention of fires or um safety with respect to crime. Those are your leads.

Thank you. One last question, then I actually have comments. Sorry, council. Please bear with me. This is an important good question subject. Um the uh and so this would be a general fund sales tax because it's going to be 50 plus one.

Talk to me how. So this is my worry. I'm like, okay, I'll give voters voted for it for safe public safety. Uh we've got needs for parks. How do I know that 3.7 million is going towards that? And it just sounds like it's going to be left to future councils uh to allocate that funds on budgets. Do we have to create a if if we're here and on the other side of this table uh next year in January, can we create a policy like, hey, $3.7 million is parks and public safety for sales tax? do how do we ensure that this money goes to what people are voting for?

Uh it's it's a great question, kind of an existential question, and it gets to the the heart of a of a general and special. And so, um generally, we wouldn't be able to limit a future council to a specific list that would be considered a special tax needing a two-thirds approval. Now, that said, there's a couple of things I think that we have in our favor. We talked before about this cold start, this cold floor. Uh there is not an expenditure plan. We didn't test an expenditure plan. Um, and we could develop an expenditure plan. Oftent times that's maybe done ahead of time. There's no requirement that an expenditure plan be done ahead of time. In fact, we could have uh the council or even uh a citizens committee, for example, develop this expenditure plan. So, um, that would be one way to kind of develop this and kind of test this, right? Because the second thing we haven't done is updated our parks master plan in a long time. In fact, we're pretty close to being able to do that. So part of what the community is is kind of seeing and hearing uh for the first time tonight was a park and recck master plan. These things are sort of colliding. So it might be um with some additional education and through the development of this uh probably a citizen-led uh expenditure plan there might be increased awareness, interest and excitement around stuff that's in the park and rec master plan. And so using that group to say look here's uh the development of this expenditure plan. Here's what it should be spent on. Now, that's not necessarily going to be binding, right? And so there's you have to be really careful on how we're going to kind of craft that language. But, um, that might be a a way to do it. Um, you know, the other, um, the other aspect of this, should we get to the point where we would want to do, for example, something debt service related, um, although it wouldn't be a one for one tying the sales tax to this because those revenues aren't bondable, you would be limiting future councils because if if a council has agreed to take on debt service for the next 30 years, um, given what we know about our our fiscal situation, you know, and then you have money coming in that happens to match that amount, um, you know, future

councils would be left with two decisions. Either keep going on that path, you would they'd have to pay the debt service. And so, um, and they would use those funds to presumably build what we've, you know, been calling for in all those documents. So, their hands wouldn't be like completely tied around what you'd see in a special. Um, but, you know, you would have, for all practical purposes, for a council to go a completely different direction, they would have to alter the budget pretty significantly, right? You would have to change our program and go a different direction. So it it locks them into the to the bond holders and what you're locking in as payments without any other sources. You're sort of sort of locked in there.

Yeah. Well, it's kind of like this city hall. We we bonded this for this city hall. We're paying for it. It's part of the budget. I'm not really going to change it because we still got to pay the city hall off, right? And correct. I'd like to be here in a couple weeks, you know,

instead of having the bank own. So I that that is one way to lock it in. And so if this council was here and we agreed to it, you you you bond it, you build it, and then you're paying that off for years. Great. Thank you. Now, just a really quick comment. Uh you're right. I'm going to agree with you. These special tax measures are backwards, right? The general fund should be 2/3 and the special ones should be 50%. I've never thought about it that way. So, uh now to my comments. Uh surprising fact. Oh, surprising honestly because I've heed for years, we need sports fields, we need this and that. and they ended up being the lowest thing uh on there. Um and so to the members of the community who go who come to me with a lot of more sports facilities and parks and stuff, I I'm surprised. Uh I'm not surprised by public safety given our our neighbors to the south and and the and and the investment that we put into that. I could see why this uh we've married two issues here that are important to the community. Um and we're leading with public safety, which is important. Uh there's this thing that I've admired about Steve Jobs for years, his ability to give you something that you didn't think you wanted. If you look at the iPhone now that we have today, there was Blackberries with keyboards and they're like, why would you do a touchscreen? There is no more Blackberries. Like, nobody wanted a touchscreen phone, right? As I look at this report, I I think of the these finds. I I think of Steve Jobs. I'm like, "Oh, they would love a modern community center with basketball courts and improved parks. they just don't know that they need it or want it. Now, anytime I visit a community that

has a community center that is modern, new, uh there for the community uh there and engaged communities, I'm I'm absolutely jealous. Right. Civic center, civic pride moves a city forward. And if you were to build that today and say, you know what, this was done with a tax measure, every one of them would say that was absolutely worth it.

I don't think that's reflected in the findings here today. But here's what I do know. I think we should move forward with this soon and try to get it on the ballot measure in November. I think we should go for 1% and let the community respond to it. Let the city begin to educate. We have to give it a try. I've been here for nine years now and you know I think only recently have we uh by the good work of uh director Aikita, we've been improving our parks. This council has done a good job of taking the limited funds we have to improve those parks. But we have some big things to put together over the next 10 to 15 years that require this. Um I know there's a competing measure on that and I'd like to speak to that. I spent some time this next week. It's I think it's called safe resilient Napa and that's that countywide measure. Uh the difference there is it's controlled by Napa County. If we want any of those funds, the $28 million for fire protection, we have to go in front of the board of supervisors. During the all those fires that we had, we were the safe zone. Do you think any of that money is going to come our way for any fire prevention? It's going up to it's going to go up to Up Valley. Um, I'm coming out against that measure right away. I think I need to speak for the city of American Canyon and the people of American Canyon and build something that we can have control over. And that's why I'm urging us and I would urge this council to vote for that. In terms of the 1% uh we are currently at 7.775. We are the lowest in the area. Our

neighboring city where I shop sometimes because I don't have everything I want here of Fairfield is 8.375. Napa is 8.75. Valo, I didn't know this. I might have to stick around here a little bit more often. Is 9.25% sales tax. Incredible. And we have better roads. Um, so I think we can do this for the community of American Canada. I would love to see it come before us June 16th for a ballot in November. Thank you. Thank you for your comment there, Council Member Oro. Uh, Vice Mayor Joseph.

Okay. Um, thank you for the presentation and the numbers. They have been very helpful. Um, a couple of comments. I was very impressed that you kind of did the westside east side numbers and it's it was surprising but not really surprising because the west side are primarily older population on a fixed income who aren't going to be as responsive to recreation because they're older and their kids are gone and on a fixed income so taxes are going to scare them. The east side, I think, is younger, more affluent. Probably it's in their best interest for more recreational. The the interesting element is most of the people who live in a lighting and landscaping district are on the east side. So when I read the survey, I my first thought was, yeah, LLDDS, you know, we're we're really going to get dinged, but the people who are most likely paying those extra assessments apparently are also supporting a sales tax. So some of the negative arguments may not resonate as much as you might think. But be that as it may, I'm also amazed at how low, just as council member Oro said, I was struck by how low community centers and some of those facilities ranked because that's kind of the not so hidden agenda of what we're trying to accomplish. And so that makes it sound like we're really in a pickle. Some of that might be because a lot of people have always seen the community the the middle school gym, you know, we've described it as the community gym, the community gym. So to a lot of people, they're probably thinking we already have a community gym, you know, and not realize that it's not ours anymore and it's not really particularly available.

So it really gets me to the real point here. We are all living in a bubble whether we acknowledge it or not. Uh the people you interact with, the people who are the most engaged, who know what's going on, probably know that we have a very safe community, that our police department is very wellmaintained and very effective. We don't have a lot of park facilities and the park amenities that we need, we don't have the funding for. So in reality, what we're proposing is a tax measure to fund recreational facilities is really the most important thing we need because all the other critical things are more or less under control. But to the general public, the 80% that aren't as engaged, they're doing generic responses. Public safety is important. Parks and wreck not so important. You know, less tax better than more tax. And so we're getting a response that basically says, you know, if I don't know anything about what's going on, this is how I'm going to react. And unfortunately, that's the bulk of the voters. Um, so where I'm ending up with is it, you know, because I don't want to go too much down the rabbit hole of a general obligation bond. If you're really talking talking about financing facilities, a general obligation bond's your best bet because it is on your taxes, but it's a fixed amount that over time will actually go down because as we grow, we get a bigger tax base. But other than our assistant city manager and finance director, everyone else is going to say, "What the heck is he talking about? I don't understand." So, I won't go there.

Uh to me, I think we have two fundamental options. One is to pursue the a half cents. We can arm wrestle over half or 1 cent. I would say half cent. If we do that now, we need to recognize that we're going to have to beef up Chief Greenberg's budget because if we tell you it's about public safety and then not spend it, we're not going to be viewed as a nice community the next time we do a survey. So, we need to come to grips with the fact that we're going to have to earmark a lot of that money to public safety. The chief isn't here. He probably would be writing me thank you notes right now.

And then figure out how do you deal with the budget when you earmark some of that money, you know, and there is ways, but we won't go there either. But I think we have to either commit to public safety if we go forward with a half cent sales tax or 1-cent sales tax and deal with the consequences or we pull back and wait till 2028 where we hopefully won't have a competing sales tax measure and we'll have a couple of years to build the case. As the manager said, we just are presenting the the master plan today. I mean, there isn't there hasn't been anything that says we need $60 million and we ain't got it, and here's how you can get it. And if you really want all these nice things, this is how you get it. We can certainly try that over the next three or four months, but the downside with a cold start is it's a cold start. And I'm my concern with these numbers are you're just barely over the threshold and not even that within the margin of error. So my concern is if we try to pursue it now we have a better chance of failing than succeeding. Now there's no harm in trying once and trying again other than you're spending a lot of money. But for me I I'm kind of leaning towards let's focus on 2028. Let's start building the case for now as to why we need these things. You know, like I said earlier, if we tried to squeeze a million bucks out of the general fund, I'm willing to commit that no one's going to say that can be done without a lot of pain. But it gives you a year or two to say this is what it would take to make all these things happen on our own. Do you want to give up a couple of cops in order to finance a community center? Hugh and Cry would say no. So that that

leads us to then you need to do this measure because that's how you finance these things.

So in my head the safest option is build the case for a 2028 election in which your odds might be a little better than a cold start in three months. I just think the odds are greater that it'll fail than it'll pass. And that's my reservation. Beyond the politics of it all, I think we need 3.7 million a year to finance parks and other amenities. It's just getting there is the challenge. So, those are my concerns and observations. Um, I wish it I wish the numbers were better, but on the other hand, I don't think Mr. Bernard is going to say, "Okay, give me 10 minutes. I'll jerryrig them." That would be wrong. So, so we we got to live with what we got. One thing I just wanted to note, um, Mayor,

oh my goodness. Um, so tonight we don't need a decision tonight and so we don't have doesn't have to be yes, doesn't have to be. We have full optionality and so June 16th becomes a thing for for November. So one scenario is you start thinking about our next uh meeting. We weren't thinking about May 19th. We have actual budget. We wanted to go there on the 19th. we're thinking about June 2nd of um on our schedule already. We would bring conceptual measures back to you, right? And then at that point you go, okay, bring us back the final thing on the 16th, you know, and and so as you're sort of deliberating, uh, and you all make great points, and I'm sure there are other comments if we're thinking about it in terms of what might I want to see on June 2nd to really, uh, dabble into that conversation as far as ballot language, if there is anything, meaning I I don't think we need to decide yes or no tonight, unless you all are ready to do that. Um, what kind of are we wanting to tweak some of the ballot language? Are we wanting to uh or do you want to see, you know, two or three options on ballot language? Um, do you um want to maybe list the park and wreck stuff ahead of the public safety stuff but still have them in the ballot right as we start unfolding some of this? Um the other kind of point is if you go back and kind of look at the questions um you know yes we will see increases with our contract with the sheriff and yes we're um you know going to be adding additional officers and everything else as our population grows and as our property tax increases. We don't have a master plan. And part of the benefit of having the contract with the sheriff's office is we don't have a master plan equivalent that says, you know, build new uh police station or buy new two new helicopters or or any of those things. It's part of the the benefit of that of that contract. Now, we know the contract is going to go up and it it increases, you know, rightfully so, but we we don't have um public safety is valued. We don't have questions like we want to double the size of our police force or

we want to kind of do those things. And so whereas on the park side, yeah, I mean there's particularly with the community center, we are talking about creating something we don't have. So there's not the same sort of correlation there. So would it make some sense to see some language where the the um you know the the order of those things listed, but how how does that play, right? Um, and what does it mean to honor what's in that ballot language as far as maintaining those public safety things by continuing to do what we've been doing uh while still uh potentially taking on some debt service for these other things that we want? Can we wrap our head around that that scenario? So, I didn't want to cut anyone off, but I wanted to kind of I don't think we need to feel like we have to make a decision. You all have to make a decision tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Holly. Um, I I just want to mention real quick because I don't see that there's no other comments or my light's not blinking for comments, but I kind of want to at least share my thoughts that um I actually I'm in agreement with uh Council Member Oro where we are right now and in order for us to get this measure to pass and and although I agree with a lot of things you said too, uh, Vice Mayor, uh, we have to take some ownership as well. you know, as a council members, we we hear from the community about what they want, you know, and to Mr. Meyer's point, you know, he's on a commission. He knew about this stuff. He understands the importance of it. So, we need to we need to leverage our our commissions. We need to le leverage our staff. We need to leverage our council, including myself, to go out and explain to our communities. Maybe it takes a town hall. We we love the town halls, right? town halls where we sit there and if they see hey all five of our council members and I'm I'm just speaking now that all five would be in favor of it to get out there and advocate for for this because like like council member Oral said you know although this has a public safety thing and my heart goes to public safety you know that's part of my career but I know leveraging that will make the community understand a little bit more of the importance but now sitting down with the community and explaining to them in detail not just hoping that we wait for a ballot to come out for them to sit there and call a friend to say, "What should I do?" No, we should take some action now, get this on the ballot for November and do our part in educating because that's the key thing. And I've heard that several times tonight, but it's easy to sit behind the DAS and say this is what we want to do or vote on what we want to do. But where are the leg work? You know, we have to do that leg work. get out there and and start talking to our groups, our little, you know, silos if we have them, you know, uh, and educate the the community and and put our commissioners to work. Um, not say they don't work. You guys do

work, but I'm just saying get out there and educate no more. So, I didn't want to take that out of line. Um, but that's my my closing statement. I know you have a comment to make and I'm going to ask Mr. Summers real quick before we move forward. Um, do we need to formally make some type of acceptance? I know it's not we don't have to make a um motion, but do we need to make some type of acceptance that the results for this potential um measure is something that we want to move forward with for the June 16th, we're going to do that anyway. Correct. So, there's no need for a formal vote or action tonight. It's the receive and file of the survey and then if there is any direction provided to the manager to go forward. Okay. Uh, Vice Mayor,

just real quick, Mayor, um, uh, in the packet, pages 162 and 163, we have a consultant already selected, um, as far as the education. So, we've put together some of those steps, some of those sort of time frames. Um, and, uh, you know, in our mind, uh, the Chamber of Commerce will be hosting four events this summer that everyone in American Canyon is going to be at. And so, um, in our mind, the meet me in the street venue is probably perfectly set up for education, clearly not advocating, but education. Um, and we think there's a tremendous opportunity. Certainly other things like town halls possibly, but we we kind of felt like there's a captured audience there. Um, particularly younger people. So, um, we we felt like, hey, that maybe that's a place to educate some of the 80% maybe that Mark, you know, mentioned that maybe not fully informed. So, thank you.

Okay. Good idea. Good idea, Vice Mayor. And I only wanted to emphasize or or I wanted to emphasize that I am in support more of a half cent than a full scent. But I support the sales tax measure. My reluctance, my hesitancy is just the practical side. You know, how do you get it accomplished? And I think it's a tougher row if we do it this fall versus 2028. So, you know, if it comes down to a vote, I'm probably going to be supportive, but I'm just saying in my heart, I think we had have a better shot in 28 than 26. But, you know, we'll we'll make a run for it no matter what. Um, but I'm just looking at it from the perspective of what's the easiest way to to make the case. And I think taking some time to build it is the way to make it. But, you know, there's no harm in trying on the short run either.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Oral. We have 6 months to make that case if we decide to do it. Here's my issue, Vice Mayor. I don't know what's going to happen in 2028. I know what's in front of me today. I know there is a competing tax measure there that is um not going to benefit the city of American Canyon. Uh maybe we might get a million bucks out of it to graze some lands that we're grazing already. Um I know that two years from now is really a 5-year delay. Uh the sales tax comes in, then you have to figure out how to bond it and do this and that. Next thing you know, 2031, we're maybe getting a plan in place for a community center. If we began that today, we could begin in two years in 2028 with actually building something. That's my thing. It's like, you know, there's never a good time to ask for increased taxes. Um, but there is always a great time to fill a need within the community and go about giving it a shot. That's how I feel about it.

Thank you, sir. Uh, with that said, we'll just How would you like me to close that properly?

We didn't uh open a public hearing. There's no need to to close it. Directions been given to staff what the council can expect on June 2nd. Uh, it's probably some options around some some ballot language. Uh, we'll see if any of those resonate with you, if there's some final uh misogyny language you want to do and bring it back on the 16th. If if we're not ready to do any of that, then we'll understand that uh on the 2nd. Um, in in the meantime, uh, you know, recognizing November is right around the corner, we're starting to think about what the education was. We're starting to meet with the consultants, starting to line some things up as far as what the ed, you know, the educational materials would start to be, uh, you know, having the the parks master plan, having that content becomes a big piece of it. So, um, but there are other aspects too that we're going to need to to bring forward.

Okay. Including putting our commissioners to work. Okay. I just had to throw that in there. So we'll close that one up and um now we'll move on to sorry Richard my apology forgot you were right there. Appreciate the presentation. Appreciate u the data. U but myself and the vice mayor are really big data geeks so you know I like data. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Good night. Good night. Uh now for our management and staff oral reports. Mr. Holly, do you have any department head? I think we've done enough for the evening and we can probably just move on to the the council updates.

Good. Okay. With that said, I'll move on to the mayor and city council comments and uh committee reports. Starting with you, vice mayor. Well, as you know, I submitted my report, but I do want to do a shout out um to the ukulele jammer. Yeah. Uh session that we had last Friday at the multi-purpose room at the mic center. We actually had a full house. Um, and not just because there was like 25 ukulele players, but there was like 50 or 60 people in the audience. Great turnout, great food, everybody had a lot of fun. Ukulele playing is a thing now. It is. It is. Go figure. Thank you. Uh, Council Member David Oro.

I think Steve Martin also plays the ukulele if Who's Steve Martin? Yeah, Tiny Tim. Yeah, Tiny Tim. Uh, no, I have nothing else to add. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Uh, Council Member Lamatina, nothing to add. Thank you, madam. Council member Cruz, uh, nothing to add. Okay. I also have nothing to add. I did submit my um committee report and let's move on to future agenda items. Starting with you again, Mr. May Vice Mayor, nothing at this time. Council member, nothing. Council member Lamatina, nothing. Council member Cruz, nothing. With that said, we have concluded our business for this evening and we are adjourned. Good night, American Canyon. Thank you.