City Council - Regular Meeting

Need anything? Okay.

Breathe. I thought it was in my bag, and it wasn't. I was like, oh, shit.

Okay. If you would like us to have one out.

That would be great. You don't mind?

Yes. No, yeah.

Yeah.

That's not allowed. Okay, yeah. Okay, great, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

If you could send me his info, then I'll put a temporary plate out for him.

Come on, let's talk.

Yes. Thank you.

Good evening everyone and welcome I'll be calling tonight's meeting the regular City Council meeting to order and to order? To order? It's May 19th, 2026, and I'm calling tonight's meeting to order. Let's stand together and proudly recite our Pledge of Allegiance, please. 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. Thank you. And Madam Clerk, would you kindly do roll call, please?

Yes. Commissioner Brando Cruz? Here. Commissioner, excuse me, Councilmember Melissa Lamatina?

Here.

Councilmember David Oro?

Here. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph?

Here. Mayor Pierre Washington? Here. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Report on closed session confirmation of reportable actions. Mr. Summers?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The council met in a closed session and considered several items. FIRST REGARDING EXISTING LITIGATION FOR CASES AGAINST OR BROUGHT BY THE CITY OF VALLEJO. THERE THE COUNCIL PROVIDED DIRECTION TO STAFF AND COUNCIL AND TOOK NO REPORTABLE ACTION. NEXT REGARDING THE AMERICAN CANYON 1 LOC LAWSUIT AGAINST THE CITY OF AMERICAN CANYON. THERE THE COUNCIL PROVIDED DIRECTION TO STAFF AND COUNCIL AND TOOK NO REPORTABLE ACTION. LAST REGARDING AN ITEM OF ANTICIPATED LITIGATION Under government code section 5, 4, 9, 5, 6.9 D two there, the council provided direction staff and council, but took no reportable action. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Summers. Uh, moving to our proclamations and presentation tonight, we have a presentation from the kids commerce followed by three proclamations. And I'll ask kids commerce, uh, Valerie, if you would take the podium.

Hello everybody. I'm Valerie Zizek, Maurice president, CEO of the American Canyon chamber of commerce. In partnership with the City of American Canyon, we have established our Kids Commerce Program, which is a youth entrepreneurship program where we award children business licenses and allow them to participate in our Meet Me in the Street event. So we have noticed a decline in our program a little bit this year. We believe that it is to the difficultness of actually running a business. So as you continue to bring the program back year over year, We have a lot of returning vendors, but we believe word has gotten out on the street that this is an actual business. This really does take discipline and income to get it up and off the ground. So we're really proud of the students that have completed this year and for the returning students. And with that, we're going to be awarding our business licenses to the students tonight. So I would love for the council to come out and shake the hands of the young entrepreneurs as a city clerk and I pass out the business licenses and the certificates. SO IF YOU'RE WELCOME TO JOIN US AND COME FORWARD, THAT WOULD BE FANTASTIC. AND CITY MANAGER JASON HOLLY, IF YOU'D LIKE TO JOIN US AS WELL. FOR THE STUDENTS IN THE PROGRAM, WHEN WE CALL YOUR NAME, WE'LL HAND YOU YOUR BUSINESS LICENSE, YOUR COMPLETION OF KIDS COMMERCE, AND THEN WE'LL SHAKE ALL THE COUNCIL MEMBERS, CITY MANAGER AND BILL HARPER, WHO IS OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE YOUTH AND WORKFORCE FOUNDATION FOR THE AMERICAN CANYON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

Sophia Barber. Isabella Lou, excuse me. Anayla Medell. And then Isaac Merrill. And Robin Geer.

And those are all the participants in the program this year. Unfortunately, they weren't all able to join us. If the two students that received their awards would like to come to the front and if we could get a picture of the group. I don't know if you have a city photographer or if I can send my husband here to snap a picture for us real quick. So come on up, bring your certificates. I'd love to get a group photo for all of us.

and about what the nature of their business is, we give them a chance to...

When we're done taking the photos, we can put them on the microphone.

Okay.

Oh, hi.

So I can speak on behalf of the two students that are not here. So we have a crochet business that's coming. She's handcrafting all of her materials. And then we have a duo pair, Robin and Isaac, who are doing a 3D printing business. So they'll be able to take custom orders, but they're also going to have some popular items that will be for sale at their booth at Meet Me in the Street. So that's our first time seeing the 3D printing, which I think is very unique and an awesome opportunity for people in our community. Come on up, girls. just state your name and then tell me what your business is about.

Hi, my name is Sophia Barber and for my business for me ministry, I will be doing henna designs for people.

Hi, my name is and I'll be doing crafts like bracelets and pins.

So we're really excited to see the henna business, which is the first one of its kind to come to Meet Me in the Street this year as well. And then, of course, we love it when our students do their crafts and their jewelry and really bring their creativity to the program. So thank you very much to the partnership with the City of American Canyon, the council members, mayor for allowing us to waive the fees for the business licenses and really supporting the next generation in what business looks like. City Manager, always great to work with you and to bring new ideas to the table as well. So thank you all, and we hope to see you at Meet Me in the Street. The first event is June 10th, and we will all be out there ready to sell our products to you. So thank you very much.

And Valerie, thank you for what you do. Uh, first proclamation will be item number four is a proclamation for national public work week, uh, May 17th through May 23rd. So any of the recipients for the national public works week, if you could come up to the podium, I'll read the proclamation and then I'll, I'll give you the opportunity to make a statement. So thank you guys for coming out tonight. I'll read the proclamation real quick. Proclamation National Public Work Week. National Public Work Week, May 17th to May 23rd, 2026, whereas 2026 marks the 66th annual National Public Work Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association. And whereas this year's theme, Rooted in Service, Powered by Community. acknowledges that the root of the service run deep in public work and have propelled public works innovation that helped our community evolve into a place where people can lead lives for purpose and possibilities. And whereas some work, like building roads, is highly visible, while other contributions like maintaining water and sewer systems are sometimes hidden from view. Together, these efforts form the foundation of a thriving community, reminding us that every effort in the project, seen or unseen, powers the connection between services and the people it support. And whereas these services cannot be provided without the dedication effort of our public work professionals, from engineerings, managers, the supervisors, the plant operators, mechanics maintenance workers environmental specialist administrative staff and whereas these employees are responsible for building improving maintaining and protecting our city's infrastructure which includes water and wastewater treatment public buildings parks streets and so much more and whereas it is the public's and in the public's interest for the residents, students, businesses, owners, and community leaders in American Canyon to understand the vital importance of public works and to support the success of public works programs in our community. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Pierre Washington, on behalf of the City Council of American Canyon, do hereby proclaim the week of May 17, 2026 as National Public Works Week. and call upon our residents to recognize and give thanks for all the contributions the city public work professionals make every day in advancing quality of life for all. Thank you.

I'm trying to get Norm to speak because I might lose my voice for later in the evening. I'm Eric Amat Smithy, public works director. room full of folks here that support the city every single day, morning and night, 24-7. We're here to help, and they do great work. We have a little video that comms put together that I think is pretty awesome, and I want to play that for you, and I'll let Norm say a few things after that.

We keep your wastewater systems running so your day stays uninterrupted.

We are protecting the environment and the places we all share.

We're making sure your water is safe, clean, and of the highest quality. We're always there for you, building, repairing, and keeping things running. We're here every day to get the work done, day in and day out.

We are planning today for what our community needs tomorrow.

We are rooted in service. We are powered by community.

Thank you, Team American Canyon. Happy Public Works Week.

So Erica wanted me to say a little something. You see all the amazing people that are here. One of the things that's always, that triggers my mind is everything we do in the dark always comes to the light. And You see the stars here, but we got some of the stars who are not here tonight based on family commitments, time off, things like that. So I just want them to know if you're not here, we're thinking about you and the people who are here. Thank you for coming out tonight. Public Works is a community. It's a all venture thing from customer service to engineering to utility supply to. cips everything so um the public works that happens in this city since i've been here in 19 months has been absolutely amazing it's taught me so much about the council about the executive team about the crew that's out here and i personally just want to thank everybody even the parks and recs and people who are sitting out here that we get to because we bump into everybody in public works and thank you all and um thank you our public works team so yeah

I also agree you guys are doing amazing jobs. You guys are everywhere. So I thank you for all the hard work you do to keep the city running. Thank you. And we'll take a picture with you guys up here.

No, I don't have any. Oh my God.

One, two, three.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I'd like to make one quick comment.

Even though they're leaving, I just wanted to say that police and fire historically are viewed as the first responders, but Public Works is the first responders that don't get as much of the limelight. and they are the ones who are there when everything goes sideways. Police and fire are important, but don't forget your public works guys, because they're the ones who get stuff done too. I agree. So I support and appreciate what they've done over the years.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. If I were cool, I would have said it while they were here. Next, we'll move to our second proclamation, item number five, a proclamation on Memorial Day, May 25, 2026. No, we're not doing that one? Oh, no. Oh, the water safety month, that's correct. Why do I have it that way? Is yours different too?

I have Memorial Day and then water safety.

I can call audibles almost football season. Okay, so for 2026 May is water safety. safety month, and you are going to be receiving it. I'll read the proclamation, allow you an opportunity to kind of say some words, and then we'll take a picture as well. May 2026 is Water Safety Month, whereas water-related activities such as swimming, boating, and fishing are enjoyed by residents of all ages in American Canyon and contribute to healthy and active lifestyles, whereas drowning remains a significant public health concern and is a leading cause for unintentional injury related to death of young children in the United States, often resulting from inadequate swimming skills, lack of supervision or unsafe water conditions and whereas swimming proficiencies water safety education and vigilant supervisions are essential to preventing drowning and promoting safe recreation in and around the water and whereas Organizations such as the American Canyon Red Cross, National Recreation and Parks Association, National Drowning Prevention Alliance, and local aquatic programs work to advance water safety through education, training, and outreach. And whereas the City of American Canyon supports water safety and drowning prevention through community initiatives including affordable swimming lessons, lifeguard certificate programs our certification programs and public education efforts at philip west aquatic center and whereas water safety month serves as a reminder for individuals families schools and communities organizations to work together to promote safe behavior around all items all types of water And now, therefore, I, Pierre Washington, Mayor of American Canyon, on behalf of the American Canyon City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as Water Safety Month in American Canyon and encourage all residents to learn to swim, practice water safety and support drowning prevention efforts throughout the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. My name is Alana Ben. I am the rec manager for the Parks and Rec Department, and I am accepting the proclamation on behalf of our Deputy City Manager, Ali Okeda, who couldn't be here tonight, along with the rest of our Parks and Rec team. With me, I do have some lifeguards, a small, small portion of our aquatics team. The rest actually are teaching lessons tonight. So they couldn't be here, but we did prepare a short video I'm going to play.

Every May, we recognize Water Safety Month and the importance of keeping our community safe in and around the water. At the Phillip West Aquatic Center, more than 1,200 kids in American Canyon learn essential swimming and water safety skills each year. Through our partnership with the American Red Cross, we provide water safety education and lifeguard training for our community. Our aquatic staff also complete more than 200 hours of training annually. Drowning is silent and preventable. In American Canyon, we all play a role. Always swim in a supervised area, swim with a buddy, and make sure pools have proper barriers and gate alarms. At home, never leave buckets of water, toilets, or bathtubs unattended around young children. Water safety is a shared responsibility in our community. Together, we look out for one another and help keep every family safe.

Thank you. Really, the biggest message that we want to share is that drowning is preventable. You can do this by following water safety rules, practice active supervision, and staying alert. So by doing all of that, we can stay safe in and around the water.

Thank you. And real quick on Allie's behalf, I know she's not here tonight, but just a little history behind Allie. Several years ago, my kids went through swimming lessons through her in Hercules, and she was one of the teachers, just like you in red right now. She taught my girls the safety of swimming, and they're really good swimmers right now, and they know all the safety parts of it. So it's really important what you train and what you teach because it goes for a lifetime. So thank you. Thank you for what you do.

You never know what comes around. That's right. That's right.

Thank you.

Okay, and our final proclamation is for Memorial Day, May 25th, 2026. Am I right, Mr. Holly? You are. Okay, okay. So do we have a recipient for the Memorial Day? I'll read the proclamation and then allow you an opportunity to say a few words. Memorial Day, May 25th, 2026, whereas on Memorial Day we pause as a united community to solemnly honor and remember the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation and to defense of our liberty around the globe. Whereas legacy of our fallen heroes live on, not only in our nation's history, but in everyday freedom we cherish. A powerful reminder that the burden of liberty is carried by a few so that it may be enjoyed by the many. And whereas, as we gather to reflect, we also reaffirm our shared values of patriotism, courage, selflessness, and commitment, virtues embodied by those who wore the uniform and gave their lives in service. And whereas we acknowledge that no words or ceremonies can fill the void left in the hearts of the families and the loved ones of the fallen, our Gold Star families, yet through remembrance, gratitude and community, we strive to honor their sacrifice and ensure it will never be forgotten. Whereas on Memorial Day, we gathered not only as individuals, but as one American Canyon community, united across generations of belief to stand in shared remembrance at Veterans Memorial Park on Monday, May 25th, 2026 at 11 a.m. Through the participation of our local veteran organizations, faith leaders, schools, and civic partners, we create a living tribute that ensures the stories of the fallen are heard, their sacrificed honored, and their legacies carried forward with dignity and purpose. And therefore, I, Pierre Washington, Mayor of American Canyon, on behalf of the City Council, do proclaim Monday, May 25th, 2026, as Memorial Day in American Canyon, a day to reflect remember and honor the courageous men and women who gave their lives in service to our country and recognize the strength and the sacrifice of their families who carry their memory forward. May we honor them not just through words but through our continued commitment to the value they defended. Thank you.

Hello again. So I am up here with our committee that puts together the Memorial Day and our Veterans Day ceremony. So I just wanted to thank our committee for all of the hard work that they do because they really do care and it shows. Um, so again, I just want to thank them. Um, and I hope that people can come out to Memorial day and help us reflect and remember and honor those that have served and lost their lives.

Thank you. Thank you. And we'll come up again, take a picture with you guys. And for the record, uh, I believe council member, uh, Brando, you're a part of that committee as well.

Yes, thank you very much. And I just want to say too, not only do we recognize, we do have some gold star family members up here as well representing. We want to honor you. And just so you know, the mayor read a proclamation for water safety, which included Phillip West Aquatic Center, which he was a resident of American Canyon and gave the ultimate sacrifice in his military career. So again, thank you. Thank you for your service and thank you for what you do.

Mayor and Council, I'd like to say that the city has always supported our veterans, and the John and Dolly West Mycologic Center, they were Marines also. So the city has always supported our service members.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

At this time, I would like to open up the floor for public comment on items that are not listed on tonight's agenda. You'll have three minutes to make your statement, and I would ask that you please begin by stating your name for the record. Madam Clerk, do we have any comment cards?

Yes, we have Janelle Selleck.

Good evening, Janelle.

Good evening, everyone. Janelle Selick, executive director of the American Canyon Community and Parks Foundation. I just want to take a moment and thank everyone who was able to come out to our groundbreaking for the Ecology Center project last week. It was an exciting day. We had groundbreaking as well as a community open house, which we saw a lot of folks come through in the evening. It was a good thing we got those things done because construction began at exactly 7 a.m. the next morning, and they've been going gangbusters ever since. So quite a bit of activity over there at the site. Our staff has moved offsite into a mobile office just adjacent to there. So please, if you're in the area, stop by and say hello. What I really wanted to do tonight was take a moment and introduce a new team member to the foundation. This is Selena Tellez. Selena is an American Canyon native. and we put a lot of thought into our needs of our staffing. So Selina's our new community relationship coordinator. You're gonna be seeing her around town at a lot of events. She'll be taking over sponsorships, she'll be tabling at Meet Me in the Street with us, and she'll be keeping everyone posted on progress related to construction as well as other programs and events in the community. So I just wanted to give her a moment to say hi and hopefully if you see her around town you can come say hello to her as well.

Hello, everyone. I'm Selena Tellez. Like Janelle said, I'm the new Community Relationship Coordinator, and I'm just very excited to be here at an exciting time when American Canyon is very much growing, having its own things going on. I was in Santa Barbara for the last four years, so I see the transition and the difference of the growth happening in American Canyon. I'm just very excited to be part of a community that takes care of one another and looks out for each other. So I'm excited to be here. I hope to see you all around coming out to community events. I'm excited to grow with you all and learn and help represent American Canyon. Like Janelle said, I grew up here and I'm just excited to be able to contribute back to community and meet more people and get involved again. I'm happy to call American Canyon my home and I'm hoping to grow with it.

Selena, what did you major in in Santa Barbara?

I majored in global studies. Are you familiar with global studies? I'm going to be. It's kind of like, I guess a good way to put it is maybe like international relations and econ mixed together. It's a way of understanding like movement and protest and understanding how ideologies and politics are all mixed in together and how they reflect back on internationally.

Okay. Well, thank you, Selena. Looking forward to talking with you.

Next, we have Justin Hamilton-Hole on Zoom. Justin, please unmute yourself.

Thank you, Ms. Cole. It's nice to see you and nice to see you, Pierre. Good evening. My name is Justin Hole. I've been American for 43 years. I was two in 1989. I was going to remind you about a Broadway, Highway 29 is happening in Cedar Hall, May 27th at 6.30 or 6 o'clock or something. So, please come in there in person. The other thing is, I want to see about, do I have more updates on Don Moore, what's Karen's Don Moore I know we're going to get ready in 2027 to put a new sidewalk in there and hope the owner can start to build the house. It's very neat to get that done. So thank you.

Thank you, Justin.

Before I go back to in-person comment, is there anyone else on Zoom? Okay, we have Hugh Marquez.

Good evening, Hugh. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. I have two questions. One is for Erica, is that do we have a timeline when there is going to be a recycled pumping station for recycled water? I know that was sort of on the block. I know the one that was taken, they took the one away from the eco center because it's the eco center. And I was just curious if there's a timeline or a spot where you may have found for a recycled water station. I know that was a thought that was coming through.

And, Hugh, just for the record, we'll get that question answered to you later on, but we're not going to make a dialogue during the public comment.

Okay, okay, okay. I'm sorry. I keep looking at her. The other thing is the Watson Ranch, there's a petition for Watson Ranch, and the other question I have for the council is I remember seeing a general plan where the road came around and ended up at South Kelly, right there at the curve where it was going to be, right there where it hits the freeway. And at the time, there were some properties that the city was dealing with and were trying to figure out. And now I hear the Watson Lane proposal. And I was curious to the council, is that not the Watson Lane? the old planned of bringing it down by the old paley loop to the end is that still part of the plan the city's plan i mean i guess i should talk to the city mayor look at him he's like yeah um is that still i know the watson lane is is a proposal it's something that's that that is is uh There are sides because it's in housing. It's going to go through it. And the other way, it doesn't. It's all open property. So I just wanted to find out if that was still on the city's agenda.

Yeah, and again, we won't open up a dialogue for this, however, because it's not agendized, right? So we will communicate some more information for that. As a matter of fact, I believe on the city manager's biweekly update in the mayor's corner, we kind of address a few things like that as well.

Sorry.

Just give me a call.

We'll chat more about it.

Okay, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Okay, thank you. You got it, Grandpa.

Madam Clerk, anything else? Anyone else?

Yes, we have Karen Fritz online.

Okay. Hi, Karen.

Need to unmute. Hello, how is everyone?

Just fine.

Good. I just wanted to say that I made a trip over to the ruins this past week and I was truly amazed at how much work has been done out there. It looks really, really great. So I think it's coming along pretty well and it's going to be a great thing once it's completed. On another note, we're talking about Memorial Weekend and honoring those that are not here I would just like to say that Dan's out there again on the run for the wall, and it's just amazing. They had an auction for a cheesecake in Cooksville, Tennessee yesterday, and they raised $10,000 for the community, for the Veterans Hall there, and several other nonprofits that they support throughout their campaign. journey back there. So he not only will be going to Arlington and see the Vietnam Memorial Wall this year, they're going to also go to the Sandbox, I understand. I believe that's in Illinois, and that is the Iraqi War Memorial. So in honor of Veterans Day, I'd just like to say that Dan's out there, my neighbor Gino's there, and also our son went this year with him and our granddaughter. So for those that have been in the military and are veterans, we certainly don't forget you.

Thank you, Karen. And thank Dan for us as well.

I will. Is there anyone else? No additional public comments.

Okay, at this time, I'd like to close public comment and move on to agenda changes, if there are any.

Yeah, I have an agenda change. I'd like to pull item number nine, South Cali Highway 29 intersection project budget. Okay. Pulling item nine. Any other items that need to be pulled? No other items are being pulled. I'll make a motion to accept the consent calendar minus item nine, which we'll discuss separately.

I'll second.

We have a second. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please? Yes, just one moment.

Council member Brando Cruz.

Yes.

Council member Melissa LaMattina. Yes. Council member David Oro. Yes. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph.

Yes.

Mayor Pierre Washington.

Yes. Mr. Hollywood, we talk about item nine now.

Yes.

Yeah. Convention would have the items pulled from consent before the business calendar.

Okay. That's fine. So, Council Member Orr. Yeah, thank you.

Just as a simple question, I know this is about increasing the budget and fixing that old thing. I don't know if it's Jason or Director Smithies. Where are we on timing for this, the timeline? When does it go up to bid? And actually when, what's the anticipated, guesstimated date for improving that intersection?

Yeah, I'll start and I'll let Director Smithies kind of fill in some of the gaps. Really what we're talking about is two separate projects. So if you think of this in two parts, the first part being all that stuff out in the Caltrans right away, out in the intersection. There's a plan and a process for that. The second part is, well, I think of it as maybe the local stuff. That would be South Cully Road outside the right-of-way, and now also the addition of Tower Road at the county's request. And that's actually the largest increase in this budget relates to the counties knowing that we're doing some work and wanting us to do some work on their behalf. So I'll let Erica kind of fill in some of the details on those two efforts. They have different timelines and different ways they're going to be implemented, but I'll let Erica kind of chime in on details there.

air comes this book works director as far as a question he received a hundred percent plans uh... that's already been currently reviewing those right now with the county support before we go out to bed timeline i believe we can get out to bed if if it all looks good everything's included in there as we wish we can go out to bed in june We did have some unfortunate news recently about one of our engineers that was leaving this project is leaving their last days next Friday. So we have a bigger discussion to figure out our priorities, but this is still one of the priority projects since that road, as you know, is already... As you know, South Kelly has already deteriorated mess, and Tower is getting more heat now because more drivers are using Tower Road to avoid South Kelly. So we'll see what we can do. One of our ideas I shared with the public works director of the county, asking do they have assistance to help with construction management. Their thought is we extend the contract with the construction management because they want to see this project get out to bid and constructed this starting this summer. So most part, it's a, you know, it's a grind and pay project or, you know, full depth reclamation. I already had an industrial user from Green Island Road that also has a property on Wine Direct saying, are we getting that out August, September? The county's telling us that they had a meeting, I guess, a week ago. I'm not sure if we were invited to that, but yeah. So we're trying to push it along as much as possible. It's not a definitive date, but...

This year, then. The goal is this year. That's the goal is this year, yeah. This year with, you know, pavers and shovels in the ground kind of thing. Yes. Thank you.

So just part of the reason that we brought this in a normal sort of situation with our project costs generally being close to what the budgets were, we would go out and we would bring back an award. And if we needed some extra money, it was okay to award the project. We needed a little bit of extra money. In this case, fully... Expanding the scope beyond what the council had seen before and quite a substantial budget adjustment So we're bringing that a budget adjustment to you first because if y'all weren't gonna be okay with that There's no reason to go out to bid with the much larger scope So we wanted to have your awareness of this, but we're ready to go out to bid Okay, great.

And then the other part the Caltrans part as I was reading the staff report. I was a little confused How's that gonna work?

Well, we have a draft co-op agreement where we hand it over to them and say we're willing to pay X amount of money for them to take care of the project and run it as their own project and

But that's the intersection right where it touches 29 So did left turn lane going northbound and an actual right turn lane going southbound to South Kelly so it's conceivable that we would finish the county and the city would finish our work and Couch hands could still be waiting to make their improvements or is it going to be in tandem and

No, it'll be separate because they do have a shop project to repave a majority of 29 beginning at American Canyon road going north. So, um, the idea was like, you guys take it, you're going to be paying that intersection anyways, let's not do it twice. So, and that'll be coming separately when we agree to the draft agreement. Thank you. You're welcome.

Uh, with that answer, are you satisfied to make a motion to accept? I think we got to do public comment now, if there is any. Okay. I'll open it up for public comment on item number nine, if any.

Okay, Justin Hamilton-Hole.

Thank you, Nicole, and thank you, St. Constance. I know this is going to be good. How we Kelly need to work on, and I'm going to hopefully get that done. It's a very long time. I've been on the Highway 29 when I was two. So yeah, I want to see that happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Justin. There's no further comments or...

There is no one else online.

No one inside the room?

Is there anyone else in the room that would like to make comments?

Seeing that, I'll go back to you, Council Member Oro.

Yeah, I'll make a motion to adopt resolution amending the FY 2025-26 capital budget and increasing the project budget from $1,145,000 to $5,605,000 in conjunction with the South Kelly Highway 29 intersection project TR23-0200. I'll second that. Thank you, sir. We have a second. Can I get a roll call, please?

Council Member Brando Cruz?

Yes.

Council Member Melissa LaMattina?

Yes.

Council Member David Oro?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph?

Yes.

Mayor Pierre Washington?

Yes. And thank you, Nicole. Moving on to public comment, we actually do not have anything on public hearing for this evening. So we'll move on to business item. We have two business items. On tonight's agenda is item 11, the fiscal year 2026-2027 proposed budget. We have, oh, I was gonna say financial director, Jim Cruz.

I bet that's- Yeah, Mayor, this is gonna be a two-part. The first part is gonna be conducted by myself, which is gonna be the city budget workshop, and then finance director Cruz will take over the fiscal year 27 budget. So good evening, Juan Gomez, Assistant City Manager with the City of American Canyon. And I wanted to present to the council and to the community a city budget workshop, sort of a budget 101, where the money comes from, how we go about planning for it, how we go about allocating the revenues and so forth. And then Director Cruz will go into the actual next year fiscal budget, which is gonna be fiscal year 27, which starts July 1st. And I'm out of time.

Sorry about that.

Sorry. So we'll begin. So what is a city budget? So a municipal budget is the city's annual financial plan, a document that says here's the money we expect to receive this year and here's exactly how we plan to spend it on your behalf the public's behalf so there's two budgets that we're going to propose and we propose every year one is going to be the operating budget was it which is a single fiscal year that is what do we need to continue the day-to-day operations of the city The second one is the CIP, which is the Capital Improvement Program budget. We usually do a five-year forecast, and that allows us to see, because projects don't happen in one year. Some of these larger projects take more than one year, multi-year projects, so we want to present the entire picture for five years. So essentially, the budget is our playbook for the next fiscal year. what are the community and council priorities and how do we allocate resources obviously we're a municipal government we don't have unlimited resources so we have to prioritize part of the budget process is prioritizing what is most important to the council what is most important to the community and how do we allocate those resources so real quick just so everybody knows the general fund is the main operating budget it's This current year that we're in, fiscal year 26, it's a $33.5 million budget. The entire operating budget of the city, which includes 59 different buckets, 59 different funds, is $154 million, and the capital improvement program budget is $48 million. So there's a lot of millions out there that we are putting to work. Obviously there are different funding sources, and we'll go into those. SO REAL QUICK, BEFORE I BEGIN, WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE BUDGET CALENDAR. SO TYPICALLY WE KICK OFF IN FEBRUARY. IT'S A FOUR-MONTH PROCESS. THERE'S A LOT OF NEGOTIATIONS BACK AND FORTH WITH DEPARTMENTS. THEY WANT A LOT OF THINGS, AND WE SAY WE CAN'T AFFORD A LOT OF THINGS, SO WE PRIORITIZE, RIGHT? THIS IS GOING BACK TO PRIORITIZING. WE DEVELOP OUR REVENUE PROJECTIONS. WE DEVELOP, WE REVIEW POSITION REQUESTS. And we come to May, which we are now. We did a finance subcommittee. We're doing a council presentation today. And then the budget is adopted June 2nd. That's when we finalize the budget and we put it on our transparency portal. So all of this is transparent. We don't hide the budget. We don't tell you where the money is going. We put it on our transparency portal. If you go to our website and you can see every line item of how the money is spent, where the money comes from, et cetera. So We're proud of that transparency portal and to be transparent and open with the public. So I want to talk about these two slides. These are the two slides that we developed actually with the high school citizens academy when we went out there. THE FIRST TOP HALF IS FINANCIAL EXCELLENCE. IT'S IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE THE CITY, THE STAFF HERE. FOR TEN YEARS IN A ROW, WE'VE RECEIVED THE DISTINGUISHED BUDGET AWARD FROM THE GOVERNMENT FINANCE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION. THAT'S SORT OF LIKE A MICHELIN STAR FOR THE RESTAURANTS. THIS IS OUR WAY OF SHOWING THAT WE'RE TRANSPARENT. OUR NUMBERS ARE SOUND. WE HAVE DATA TO BACK ALL THAT INFORMATION UP. AND IT'S EASY TO READ. that the public can pick up the budget. It is a big document, but we do have a budget and brief, which is about a five page document that kind of gives you the high level of the budget. And then we're going to talk about how American Canyon collects revenues and where the money is spent to provide those public services. As you see below, we spend money on public safety, roads, utilities, parks and recreation, and as I mentioned, there's 59 different buckets. The city budget is not like a household budget. A LOT BIGGER, IT'S A LOT MORE COMPLICATED, AND WE REALLY DO COMPILE 59 DIFFERENT BUDGETS BECAUSE EACH FUND IS SEPARATE. SOME ARE REVENUE, SPECIAL REVENUE FUNDS LIKE GRANTS THAT ARE AUDITED MORE STRINGENTLY. SOME ARE GAS TAX, FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN YOU GO TO THE PUMP. SOME OF IT IS SALES TAX, SOME OF IT IS GAS TAX. THAT NEEDS TO BE ALLOCATED AND SPENT ACCORDING TO ITS PURPOSE. SO WE HAVE TO TRACK IT. REVENUES, EXPENSES NEED TO BE TRACKED SEPARATELY. and not just commingled. So why is the budget important? Why does this all matter to the community? Well, as you can see here, because our residents, we want our residents to love where they live, work, and play. It's important that we have our priorities. We have safe streets. good public safety, that the folks feel safe in this community, that we have recreational programs, that we have open space, that we have our beautiful wetlands there on the bottom left. We have activities. We have community events. Memorial Day celebration is coming up, Veterans Day. We have our Fourth of July event. This is why it matters to the community. Also for our employees down on the lower left hand, there are employees and they, they rely on a, on a paycheck and they rely on healthcare benefits and they rely on pension benefits. My job and, um, finance director cruises and Jason, our city managers to make sure that we're financially sustainable and also with council that they're overseeing our work, that we're financially sustainable, not just for five years, 10 years, but forever. We're, We're an ongoing entity that the folks rely on, the residents rely on this work. So this is why it's important, not just for the residents, but also our visitors. They wanna come here and feel safe. They wanna partake in our restaurants, in our hotels and feel safe and so forth. So it is a lot of stakeholders involved. uh... the fund structure uh... the general fund is the biggest bucket really it's our main operating fund uh... there are very various other buckets as you can see here uh... so real quick i'm just gonna go uh... the enterprise fund there on the right is the water sewer and recycled water utilities uh... and those are designed to be self-sufficient meaning all the expenses that we spend, we need to make sure we have enough revenues coming in. So some folks may say, well, my water bill is so high. Why can't you fix the roads with that money? Or why can't you maintain the parks? They're different funds. They're called enterprise funds. We can't commingle those monies, what I was talking about. The debt service funds, we have debt. For example, the city hall has debt on it. We have to pay for that debt. We account for it differently. The special revenue funds, some of the folks that live on the east side are part of lighting and landscape assessment districts. Those are special revenue funds, meaning the money that is collected in those funds can only be spent for a specific purpose. For example, if you live in Lavinia, the money that they pay on their property taxes and assessment can only be spent in that district to fix the sidewalks, the sound walls, the trees, the parks, et cetera. So different buckets, again, we have to maintain separate accounting for all of those. So as I go into the general fund as our main operating fund, I wanna talk about the revenue sources here for the general fund. In fiscal year 26, our budget is $33.5 million. The three major revenue sources are gonna be property tax, sales tax, and transit occupancy tax, which is also called a hotel tax for folks that lodge in those hotels. So the property tax, there's a 1% rate in property tax. That's based on assessed valuation. Our average property tax rate for properties is 26 cents on the dollar so if you pay for every dollar you pay the city receives in revenue 26 cents and Jem will Jem will explain kind of how that's broken up in in the next presentation, but Not every property gets charged not the city doesn't get the same amount for every property For example in the older part of town. We're up to the 30 cents on the dollar Meaning every every dollar that is paid in property tax We get 30 cents some ago as low as 8 cents depending on the area so it varies but as we average all the tax rate areas is what they're called uh... we get about twenty six cents on the dollar so property tax uh... makes up forty six percent of the general fund revenues sales tax makes approximately ten percent of the general uh... fund revenue so self taxes EVERYTHING THAT IS TAXABLE. GROCERIES ARE NOT TAXABLE. CERTAIN SERVICES ARE NOT TAXABLE. BUT ANYTHING THAT IS TAXABLE THAT YOU PAY YOUR 7.75%, WE GET BACK 1%. AND THEN TOT, WE CHARGE 12%. THAT MAKES UP APPROXIMATELY 6% OF THE GENERAL FUND REVENUES. Other major revenues that we get is support services, approximately 10.8% goes into the general fund. Support services is the city's administrative costs that we charge to other funds. Remember all the different buckets? All the administrative charges are in the general fund. But the water and sewer funds don't have their own city attorney, don't have their own city council, don't have their own city, in that case, it would be a general manager. They don't have their own general manager or finance director. So a portion of everybody's salary is allocated to those funds because if they were standalone, they would need to hire their own set of employees. We don't do that. We kind of cut ourselves off a little bit and charge them to them. So that is support services. Charges for services, we receive approximately 8.5% of that 33 million. It comes from charges for services. That is recreational charges, that is building permits, that is all the charges that we pay for somebody who takes out either registers for a class, takes out a permit, etc. Franchise fees. So I have a couple of pictures down there of Recology and PG&E. They pay us a franchise fee to operate in the city. So the utilities that operate in the city pay us a franchise fee. We get approximately 3.7%. OF THE GENERAL FUND REVENUE. AND THEN TRANSFERS IN. WE GET ABOUT 5.4% TRANSFERS IN. WE GET SOME FROM MEASURE A, WHICH IS A TAX THAT HAS SUNSET, $800,000. THAT IS USED TO PAY FOR SOME OF OUR STREETS AND STORM DRAIN CREWS. AND THEN WE ALSO GET A TRANSFER IN FROM GAS TAX TO THE TUNE OF ABOUT $400,000. So let's talk about sales tax. Sales tax in American Canyon is 7.75%. You can see the various industries that provide. So of that $3.5 million, 24% of that revenue comes from business and industry. The majority of that is warehouses, warehouses that that store and sell wine primarily. If you remember a couple years back, we had a warehouse that was providing a lot of revenue. They since closed down, we lost that revenue. But the largest sales tax producer here is these warehouses that are primarily in the Green Island Road. And then general consumer goods, general consumer goods are your retail. The Walmart across the street, all the specialty stores that you see, sporting goods, bike shops, that sort of stuff, that's where we get 18%. State and county pools provide us 17%. That is when you buy stuff on the internet. When you buy stuff from Amazon, they charge you the sales tax. That money then goes to the state of California. They now send it to the pool, and the city gets a portion of that money, depending on their percentage in that pool. That's also used car sales. If you ever bought a used car, you pay the sales tax to the DMV. gets processed at the DMV, it goes into the county pool. County pool gives us a portion of that money as well. So fuel and service stations, 15%. 15% of that revenue, 3.5 million, comes from gas stations. Four of the top 10 sales tax producers in this city are gas stations. Um, restaurant and hotels, food and drugs, uh, kind of round out the other one. Oh, and building construction, building and construction is your building materials, your lumber yards, your, um, um, uh, stone and, um, uh, rock, uh, shops, et cetera. So how do we compare here in American Canyon to our neighboring, uh, jurisdiction? So I kind of drew a, a radius here about 14, 13, 14 miles. And you can see. We are at 7.75. If I look to the north of us, Sonoma's at 10.25. Napa's at 8.75, Fairfield 8.375. As we go down south, Vallejo is 9.25, Pinole is 10.25, Hercules 9.25, Benicia 9.65, Martinez 9.75. When you want to buy big ticket items, if you can buy them at Walmart, you'll save some money. Buy them in Walmart. Sonoma's going to be your priciest jurisdiction there at 10.25. So why are we so low? Well, other jurisdictions have added a transaction and use tax in their jurisdictions. There are other challenges that I'll go through, but Some of the reasons that they have these higher tax rates is because they have what's called these transaction and use tax. Money dedicated to the agency that doesn't go to the pool, that doesn't go to other jurisdictions. It stays locally in their jurisdictions, and that's why they're a little higher than what we are. Just so you know, the California base sales tax is 7.25%. That's the base. If nobody had a district tax, the base that you would pay, the minimum you would pay in any jurisdiction in California would be 7.25%. We are at 7.75% because we have the measure U, the NVTA, additional half cent sales tax or transaction use tax. So where does the money go? 33% goes to public safety. We have a great relationship with the sheriff's office. We have a good police force. They help keep American Canyon safe. 33% of that goes there. Public works, you saw a lot of our public works teams, streets, park maintenance, storm drains, solid waste. All that 20% of that general fund goes to those folks in public works. Now this is separate from water and sewer. This is just general fund, particularly these divisions that I've mentioned. And then recreational programs gets about 8% of that general fund revenue. They provide sports, adult activities, aquatic programs, special events, outdoor recreation. All these events roughly take up 8% of the general fund. So some of the other general fund expenditures, community development, that is your building inspectors, your planners, code enforcement, about 9.8%, administration, 9%, non-departmental is 6.9, finance is 6.2. Finance gets actually some of their money, some of those expenses back from water and sewer. So what we have in finance, we have a finance division, and we have a utility billing division the entire part of the utility billing division actually gets reimbursed back from water and sewer because really their sole purpose is to bill and manage the utility billing programs and build the customers risk management is about 4.9 that is our insurance programs that is liability property insurance that is workers compensation and so forth 4.9 legal fees is approximately 1.4 percent and then debt service is 1.5 So you can see it's all of these kind of little pies, slices of pie that make up the $33.5 million. So that comes down to our reserves. So we do have, as Director Cruz will show, we have approximately $11 million in reserves. We have that in the bank. Our reserves serve as a crucial financial buffer, providing stability and security for the city during unexpected events or economic downturns, ensuring essential services remain uninterrupted. So really, we need to have this money in our piggy bank, so to speak. If there is ever a natural disaster, an earthquake, something happens, we need to fund those services and continue those operations. It takes a while for FEMA money. It takes a while for insurance money. It can take months for that. We need to be able to cash flow some of our operations That is what our reserves are. That is our safety net. We do have 25% of our general fund expenditures in the reserve. That is by best practice. Not a lot of agencies can say that they have 25%. of general fund expenditures in reserve. We have that. We've actually built that up over the last, I think it's been three years now that we've been at 25%. It's important again, that is a, as the image shows, that is a break glass in case of emergency. That is not used to pay salaries or ongoing operations. That is there just as a security, as a safety blanket in case something happens. So we also have a small reserve of about 4% in unassigned fund balance. That is money that is not yet put to work. That is money that is sitting in our bank account. It does earn interest, but that is at the discretion of the council to assign should they see a need for it elsewhere. Excess funds are strategically allocated to priorities like infrastructure projects, reducing long-term liabilities like pension, et cetera. So again, as I mentioned, a couple of years back, we had a pretty big windfall from this warehouse that we had in town where we got a favorable audit determination, where we got a large chunk of money. We set that money aside. We put that in our repair and replacement plans. We didn't hire more people. We didn't go spending wildly. We put that money strategically aside. And now we're actually been using that over the last couple of years to redo some of our playgrounds, our parks, our streets, et cetera. So we're putting that money to work. Same thing with COVID funds. When we received COVID funds, we've used that money for infrastructure projects. We didn't, again, spend it strategically There was a method to setting this aside, which was good for us. So what are some of the challenges? So maintaining a balanced general fund budget long-term continues to be an issue. I've been here three years. This is the third budget that we've done, and we've balanced every single one. We propose balanced budgets to councils, but this one was the hardest one to balance. We've lost Coca-Cola. They provided a large amount of unsecured property tax revenue. We've lost that. Certain things like the lower economic environment, folks aren't spending as much. A lot of their money is tied up in spending what they need, meaning groceries, rent, utilities. There's less disposable income to buy us taxable items. So our sales tax have been relatively flat. So the rising costs, public safety, salaries, benefits continue to rise. We pay Kaiser premiums just like every other employee. They continue to go up. Salaries, we peg them the CPI. Inflation has been high. It hasn't been relatively low. It continues to remain high. Deferred maintenance costs. We continue to defer a lot of the repair and replacement on a lot of our assets. We patch where we can in a good way, but if we can only defer this maintenance so long, eventually we're going to have to replace offense eventually we're gonna have to replace a vehicle we can't just fix uh... the suspension of the transmission the vehicle is beyond repair we have to replace it uh... pension and retiree obligations again our uh... we are contracted with cow purse and cow purse we've or unfunded liability has doubled in the last eight are unfunded liability payment our annual payment that we sent to cow purse has doubled in the last eight years In 2018, it was $528,000. Now it's $1.1 million. And it all is at the mercy of their investment. Stock markets go up. Stock markets go down. When it goes down, they say, agencies, you've got to pay us more in order to keep us at a certain level. So some revenue limitations that we face. Our property tax is capped at 1%. It can't increase more than 2% per Prop 13. So I found a good example here. It says, imagine trying to run a growing restaurant where you can only raise menu prices 2% a year, but your ingredients, costs, labor, benefits, infrastructure are rising 5% to 8%. We're capped at that. Our sales tax, again, as I mentioned, are relatively flat. And with that, I wanna, Jem will go into a little bit more detail on the five-year forecast, but this is essentially our five-year forecast that we've built here. You can see the first year on the left, fiscal year 27, we are balanced at $34.3 million. As we go out further, so there's a higher degree of certainty in the shorter years, in the next year, in the next two year. Obviously, there's a lot more uncertainty in the outer years. But you can see that expenditures, that red line, continues to outpace revenues. This forecast includes not only our 2% property tax, but it includes developments. We have developments that we expect to come online. We expect a fifth hotel to come online. certain developments, housing in Watson Ranch. So we built that in there. Even then, our expenses continue to outpace. So we are seeing five to 8%. So when gas prices are $6 a gallon, we have to pay that same $6 a gallon. When PG&E costs go up, we gotta use that electricity and pay that higher price to run our pumps, to run our sprinkler systems. All that costs money. When we raise water rates, The city is one of the largest customers of itself. ironically so we gotta pay those higher rates as well so it's just that uh... we are in a time where the expenses are are are really uh... outpacing the the revenues unless we get uh... you know a a godsend would be like a costco right uh... but we can have that we have one in neighboring cities uh... but the certain things like that that bring in uh... revenue uh... would be would be great but uh... certainly were smaller city uh... and we have a lot of competition surrounding. So that is what the forecast looks like. We're covering probably about a half a million to a million dollar gap each year. Again, when we started this budget, we were about a million dollars. We were about $1.2 million gap. We've ended up closing that. We've asked the departments to close that. Can we do that again? Yes. What does that look like? It may mean less maintenance. It may mean a little reduction in services that we provide to the community. Do we want a balanced budget or do we want to kind of have a deficit for a year or two? It all depends. Those are priorities that we need to look in outer years, but this is the forecast moving forward. Again, I showed this slide to our high schoolers. A resident pays about $90 a month for city services. This is again, not including water and sewer, but for $90, what can you buy if you think about it? Well, you can buy probably one month of internet, one month of cell service. If you go to the movies and you take a family of three for snacks, it's probably going to cost you $90. Dinner for two, probably. I did this a couple of years ago, and it was dinner for four. Now it's dinner for two. Dinner for two at a sit-down restaurant is probably $90 with a glass of wine. A manicure and pedicure, I've been told these are probably around $90 for both of them. An oil change for your car is about $90. So you get one of those. You get to pick one of those. But for $90, you get 24-hour police protection. You get safe lighting and streets. You get an aquatic complex. You get paved and maintained streets. They're not all nicely paved and maintained, but the majority are. A well-planned zone community. You get parks, trails, community events for $90 a month. So with that, that concludes my presentation. This is, again, a workshop, an educational piece. I'm happy to answer any questions that the public or the council may have.

Thank you, Assistant Manager Juan Gomez. And I think I saw you once at a manicure, so I know you know what it's like. But I got to say, I thank you for the benchmarking of the sales tax. I think that was a good visual. To where we are still under what our surrounding Regional cities are charging for sales tax.

Well, thank you for that with that said I'll open it up for our council to ask questions to clarifying questions vice mayor Joseph first of all, I really want to thank you for that report and for me, it's the last slide When you're talking about 90 bucks a person is what you get all your city services compared to a dinner that that to me is it says it all and unfortunately this idea that revenues are usually, they tend to reflect growth in a community. So as we've grown over the years, we've usually been ahead of that expenditure curve. As we slow down, as we kind of get to build out, the expenditures are almost relentless in their increases. Revenues tend to jump and bounce. This is what happens. So I'm glad you brought it forward. I think the public needs to understand that we don't have a magic money tree. We've just been lucky and well managed in a lot of respects, but lucky because we're growing and we have a few interesting elements that make us a little more successful than the next door communities, but we're still subject to these kinds of consequences. So thank you.

Any other questions from council? For this first section, I'll open it up for public comment to see if there's any public comment for Juan.

Good evening, Beth Marcus. I really don't have any comments on your report. I just want to say how nice it is that Mr. Gomez does a very sufficient report, and it's very easy for all of us to understand, and I just want to thank you for that and appreciate it.

Thank you, Beth. Anybody else in the audience with a public comment? Anything online, Madam Clerk?

Is there anyone online that would like to make comment? No additional public comment.

Thank you. I'll return to council. Council Member Orill.

Yeah, don't go too far. Yeah. the first part was clarifying questions from the council and then public comment and then like the deeper questions here so first of all thank you for your presentation yet it's very clear I I understand uh... the food side comparison on that last slide and I appreciate that you and the mayor understand the pedicure manicure side of that can relate to it um... The question I have, and how worried should we be as we look out in the future? Obviously, those economic trends kind of, if there was a recession here, we'd be eating it in the shorts. I think when we did the last, the Great Recession, we were fortunate enough to have property tax, well, The last mini recession, property tax helped us out, but during the Great Recession, property tax took a big hit. And obviously, we can't tell that future, but LITERALLY, THAT I DON'T LIKE THOSE DIVERGING LINES. I WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE CLOSE THAT GAP. AND I IMAGINE, AND I DON'T LIKE TO HEAR CUTTING SERVICES, DEFERRING MAINTENANCE. ARE THERE PLACES THAT WE CAN GROW AND DO? AND LIKE, YOU KNOW, I'VE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS A LOT. The reason why cities build auto malls is for the sales tax. You get these big ticket items. I don't want an auto mall, right? I want that big warehouse populated back that we had back over there. But what can we do? And this comes to the economic development. Where are the opportunities for us to generate more income?

Sure. So one, if there is a great recession, I think everybody's in trouble, right? The fortunate piece for our budget is that 46% of our revenues comes from property tax. That is a stable revenue source. When you get a mini recession or a greatest recession, people really tighten their belts and stop spending. It means sales tax drop off tremendously. TOT money goes, virtually disappears during COVID. Again, I mentioned this. Some of the jurisdictions up north, when COVID hit, they got zero, they relied on 60, 70% of the revenue, but to close the gap, um, you know, a warehouse that attracting businesses like a warehouse that produces a sales tax, meaning that is the point of sale. Uh, it is, it is not a last mile warehouse where it just funnels through and we get no sales tax. Uh, but some, something like that, uh, uh, a sales tax measure, a transaction use tax measure, as you saw, Our our sales tax was 10 percent bringing in three point five million dollars a year. Our gap is four hundred thousand to one point two million. Those are the gaps that I'm seeing there in the next couple of years a a a one percent. As I mentioned, as we saw the comparative agencies around the area, a 1% transaction use tax would bring in $3.7 million. We would close that gap immediately. Again, that is something that the voters have to vote on. You also have, you also, it could increase a little bit on the TOT tax. We're at 12%, we can go up 13%. It's not gonna bring in a whole lot of revenue, but your most bang for your buck would be a half cent, one cent sales tax that is relatively much easier to achieve than attracting a warehouse that is going to be a point of sale.

Does your figures, so obviously a point-of-sale warehouse is going to be tough. It's one of those things that warehouse sales are mostly logistics rather than point-of-sales. We have the Broadway corridor here, which is developing. I think we could probably squeeze a few more retail on the Broadway plan, but retail is tough these days. And I think considering what we have with Walmart and Safeway and our neighbors to the south not having anything, they're almost like FOOD DESERTS IN TERMS OF WHAT THEY MAY HAVE, WE ATTRACT A LITTLE BIT OF THAT. I THINK THE HOTELS ARE GOING TO COME ONLINE EVENTUALLY. BUT WHAT ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THE NAPA VALLEY RUINS AND GARDENS OR THE RUINS PLACE? HAS THAT BEEN CONSIDERED INTO THAT? I KNOW THAT THERE'S PLANS OBVIOUSLY FOR EVENTS AND TICKET SALES AND BEER, ALCOHOL, AND FOOD. HOW DOES THAT WORK INTO THIS?

SURE. I HAVE FORECASTED SOME EVENTS GOING ON THERE. tapering up what we have here in this forecast for next year is 2025 events, tapering up slowly every year up to higher events. Obviously, when I did this forecast two or three years ago, we had a hotel, we had an amphitheater we had concerts we had restaurants we had all this that's kind of delayed a little bit so uh... there are events happening there if there's sales of merchandise uh... food uh... wine and beer those are all taxable sales as more events come online there obviously we're going to get more more sales tax from that as an if another hotel comes so i do have in the forecast in in fiscal year twenty nine i have the hampton inn they have their permits they have their THEIR ENTITLEMENTS. SO I HAVE THAT IN THE FORECAST. I MEAN, IF IT TAKES, YOU KNOW, THREE, FOUR YEARS, LIKE ONE OF THE HOTELS THAT JUST RECENT UP, THAT'S A LITTLE LONGER. BUT WE HAVE THAT IN THERE. WHAT WE DON'T HAVE IN THERE IS ANY TOT REVENUE YET FORECASTED FROM WATSON RANCH.

OKAY. THANK YOU. MR. HAWLEY.

YEAH, THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST TALK ABOUT KIND OF OPPORTUNITIES AT YOUR Second meeting in July on the 21st, we're going to be having a joint session with the Planning Commission. We're going to be talking about the Broadway District's plan. We're going to be talking about opportunities there. One of the really interesting things, Juan mentioned tax rate area. The entire Broadway corridor, part of the original incorporation, enjoys a relatively high tax rate area. So it isn't just potentially retail and the sales tax there. what is also potential there is the properties redeveloping themselves, the property tax increment. So the shopping centers that have already redeveloped, they went through that phase. We enjoy a good amount of property tax from those properties. The others are mostly held by longtime owners and mostly at a basis from the 70s and the 80s. And are very low assessed value. So there are many small fragmented ownerships. There isn't anyone who owns a bunch of properties. It's mostly fragmented ownership. So strategies to seek the assemblage of those properties and the redevelopment of those properties could generate some sales tax. But even if they were to just generate in new housing, the property tax increment from that new housing would be substantial because the tax rate area is very favorable. Some of the tax rate areas that we have over in Watson Ranch are much, much lower than that.

uh... as we look at the different properties and what things are coming online having sent an eye for those uh... disparities amongst the tax rate areas as a strategy look out uh... vice mayor yes uh... uh... just kind of expanding on what both of you just finished saying i think what i have seen is a lot of opportunities are out there and it's the timing uh... giovannoni is a classic case in point uh... you know that was going to be a substantial amount of revenue wearing my fire district hat it was going to be a whole lot of revenue and it's all coming but it's coming about three or four years longer in some cases that's because of goofy litigation issues versus economics but you know it the good news is that those projects will happen they're just happening further down the road and that makes it a challenge to balance the budget One other item, and it requires a vote of the people and probably some negotiating, is an admissions tax. As the ruins becomes more and more of an event venue with support from the developer as well as the voters approving it, we could have a $1 or $2 a ticket tax that theoretically could show some real strength going down the road, and those are funds that can also be putting back into the general fund. But I do think it's worth recognizing that it is important to try to beef up the revenue side of the equation. In the absence of that, you know, what happens when things get tight? Some of us have seen it. We sit down with our employees and try to work through, you know, voluntary arrangements where they will take time off without pay. We have negotiated arrangements in which we don't lay people off but we're cutting back on the hours that they're working. We have cut back on services. We've deferred things. For some of us, we've been grumbling about we've got to invest in that deferred maintenance and we haven't been able to get to and now we're getting further away. You know, it's this constant relentless effort of how do you go through and find little bits and pieces to balance it. It's an adventure as a former budget person, as a former finance director. You know, I certainly appreciate what finance has to do because I've done it a whole lot of times myself in good times and bad. So it isn't easy and it's going to be tough and it won't get easy. But other than that, a great report.

Yeah, seeing no other questions, part two of item 11. Jem?

Hi, good evening. Mayor, city council, and community members, I'm Jem Cruz, the finance director, and tonight I'm presenting the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget. So we've seen this quote before. You can do anything but not everything and this is very much aligned with the budget process. We have many opportunities and needs as a city and we can do a lot of things but with limited resources we cannot do everything. So this budget reflects our priorities focusing on what matters most for our community. The general fund is balanced at $34.3 million. The revenues are growing modestly at 1.7%, while expenditures are increasing slightly at a faster rate of 2.8%. Transfers into the general fund increased by 8.8% this year, largely due to support services cost allocations. which are charges to the enterprise funds like water, wastewater, and recycled water for services that they receive from departments that are housed in the general fund. Transfers also include transfers from special revenue funds such as the gas tax, Measure A, and the COPS grant. Property tax remains our largest and most stable revenue source at 46% of our general fund revenue. We're projecting 15.8 million this year representing a 2.7% increase and this reflects a moderation compared to prior years as market growth begins to normalize. It is also important to note that the city receives on average 26% of each property tax dollar, with the remainder distributed to schools and other agencies. And depending on the area, that amount can range from 10% to 44%, as Mr. Gomez mentioned earlier. Okay, over the last eight years, property tax revenue has grown at an average of 5.6% annually. However, we're seeing slower growth trends, and so it's down to 2.7% this year, and this is consistent with broader shifts in the housing market. The median home price is now $720,000, reflecting a smaller increase compared to prior years at 3%. Sales tax revenue is projected at $3.5 million this year, which is 100,000 more than the adopted budget of fiscal year 26. And this is a modest 2.9%. This continues to reflect the loss of the major taxpayer in 2025. which impacted 2026 revenues as well. In addition, inflation and high interest rate have reduced consumer spending, limiting growth. This is an area that we're monitoring closely as it remains sensitive to the economic conditions of the times. Transient occupancy. Transient occupancy tax or hotel tax. It's projected this year at $2 million, growing by 3.7%. And a new hotel has recently come online, which contributes to this increase. The city average room rate in calendar year 2025 was approximately $130 per night, slightly lower than the prior year, while occupancy increased by 2% to 72%. So our TOT tax is paid by the guests and the city receives 100% of the 12% TOT that is paid on the rate. Other revenues. So permits and fees are essentially flat with increases in franchise fees, licenses and permits, and miscellaneous revenues, but decreases in investment earnings as we are anticipating lower interest rates of .5%. The transfers in increased by 472,000 due to increases in transfers in for support services and transfers in from Measure U and A. And the charges for services are also anticipated to remain relatively flat as well. So overall, the revenue sources provide diversification but are less predictable than taxes. This is a revenue composition of our revenue sources and it provides a full picture of the general fund revenues. Property tax makes up nearly half of total revenues followed by transfers, sales tax, and service charges. This concentration highlights both the strength of property tax and the importance of economic stability. Since property tax doesn't fluctuate, as quickly as the other revenues so even in even during economic slowdowns property values tend to adjust gradually and not suddenly. Moving on to the expenditure side personnel costs total eleven point three million representing approximately one third of the general fund. Salary increases are primarily driven by cost of living adjustments, position changes, and the addition of new roles. This year, the budget includes two new full-time positions, a chief building official and maintenance worker in parks. The cost of the chief building official is largely offset by a reduction in professional services previously paid to consultants, and the maintenance worker position addresses growing park maintenance needs associated with new parks, expanding playgrounds requiring additional safety inspections and increased restroom facilities. Additionally, the engineering technician position has been reclassified to an engineer one, two, three series to better align with the city's increasing demand for project management capacity. And the benefits are arising moderately also due to healthcare and pension obligations. Okay, the major expenditure changes include police services increasing by nearly 8%. This increase includes one additional officer coupled with insurance and salary increases. Supplies and services anticipates an overall decrease due to lower contracted services. As mentioned earlier, with the chief building official, we're anticipating a reduction in the contract building services. and others as well. And internal service charges show a slight increase. So these are payments to internal service funds such as fleet maintenance, building maintenance and IT. Those funds service all the departments in the city and therefore each department including the general fund pays into those services provided.

And these changes reflect both operational needs as well as external cost increases.

Okay. So this slide shows how expenditures are allocated across all the categories. The share of contract is the largest expense followed by personnel costs. Supplies and services also represent a significant portion of the budget and this distribution reflects the city's focus on public safety and core service delivery. Our total fund balance is expected to remain steady at 11.4 million. The contingency reserve meets our policy target of 25% of expenditures and serves as our emergency reserve. intended for use only under defined circumstances. The unassigned fund balance provides flexibility to manage fluctuations in revenues and expenditures throughout the year. Okay. As we go into our five-year forecast, we'll take a deeper look at the numbers. So going into, as Juan mentioned earlier, the certainty is clearer as we're closer to the year. In fiscal year 28-29, we anticipate the Measure A transfer into the general fund to... to be depleted and so that caused a huge gap and a slight, the revenues are still increased but not at the same rate as expenditures. And in fiscal 2930 is where we see the, well we anticipate the Watson Ranch and another hotel coming online. So the next slide kind of shows the numbers part. So as we go into fiscal year 27, 28, the revenues less the expenses, so the deficiency will be about 400,000. And then in fiscal 28, 29, where we don't see the transfer in for measure A, it's one million. And then at 29, 30, where we anticipate more revenue from things opening up, or being completed, the deficiency is at $589,000. And as the years move on, the revenues just aren't at the same pace as expenditures are anticipated. Okay, and so before we move on to the other funds, I TAKE ANY QUESTIONS ON WHAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED ON THE GENERAL FUND SO FAR.

THANK YOU, JIM. ANY COMMENTS FROM COUNCIL? COUNCIL MEMBER CRUZ.

HEY, JIM. THANKS FOR THE PRESENTATION. I HAVE A QUESTION ON THE TAX BILL, THE DOLLAR THAT WAS SPENT AND HOW IT'S SPLIT UP TO THE DIFFERENT PLACES. THERE WAS A 4% OTHER. WHERE DOES THAT ACTUALLY GO TO?

SO THOSE ARE LIKE THE MOSQUITO ABATEMENT. and things like that for the smaller things that you see on your property tax bill that don't go to a school or. OR THE COUNTY.

OKAY. THANK YOU. ANOTHER QUESTION. SO WHEN YOU SHOWED THE PIE OF REVENUES COMING IN, I DID SEE OBVIOUSLY PROPERTY TAX WAS A HUGE CHUNK AND SO WAS SALES TAX. AND BEING THAT IN THE EARLIER SLIDE, WHAT PRESENTATION OF JUAN SHOWS THAT WE'RE LIKE WAY UNDER REGIONALLY. WE'RE AT 7.75, SOME ARE AT 9, SOME ARE AT 10 EVEN. Hypothetically, if we raise it up a half percent or even a full percent, where would that bring us to the revenue as far as how much would that add to it?

Yeah, so as Juan mentioned, the full 1% would bring in 3 million, 3.7 million, and half percent would be half of that. And then, you know, looking at the gaps in the future years, like for fiscal year 28, we anticipate about 400,000 gap. And then in fiscal year 29, I think it's like a million without the transfer in for measure A for the storm drain services. So, yeah. And then so that would definitely help.

Thank you. And one more thing with that. So as a resident here and it was, say, proposed, I would wonder how would that affect me as far like property tax or is it just sales? Who would mainly be paying for these this increase in sales tax? I know as a consumer, if I were to order from maybe Amazon or something, it would affect me. Can you tell me more about how it would affect the regular resident here if we bump that sales tax up?

So it would definitely affect online sales, because then that is based on where you live, what sales tax you're charged. But if we have people coming into our Walmart from other cities, that would be not paid for by, it would be paid for by the visiting people.

So technically, you're saying like if, say, I live in an area where I don't have to spend on sales tax if I want to just be humble, stay at home, not spend money outside of things that are taxed. Does that make sense? Does my question make sense?

Another thing, though, too, is like when people car purchases. So no matter where you buy your car, it is based on where you live as far as the sales tax that you're charged as well.

Great, okay, thank you, Jim.

Thank you, Jim.

Any other questions from council?

Seeing none, I'll open up a public comment for any questions for Jim for this first section. I don't see anyone. Madam Clerk, anybody online for any questions?

There's no one online with questions.

Thank you. And so, Jim, I guess you could continue with just third part.

Okay, so let's move on to the special revenue funds. So in your packet, that's like the the funds that go from 200 to 299. Special revenue funds support specific programs and projects. Revenues come primarily from grants such as the COPS grant. They also come from Measure U, gas tax. The LLAD assessments are part of special revenue funds. And these funds are heavily focused on capital improvement and includes major road and infrastructure projects. So Measure U funds a lot of the infrastructure projects and gas tax as well. So the special revenue funds fund 11 million of the capital improvement projects and significant ones are the Green Island Road construction, the citywide pavement rejuvenation project, and then East American Canyon Road guardrail. Other expenditures of the total 14 million are the transfers to the general fund, such as the transfer from Measure A, the gas tax transfer, and the COPS transfer. For capital improvement funds, this includes impact fees, the parks, traffic, civic impact fees, and there's also a capital projects general government fund. Of the $39 million in expenditures, the capital improvement program anticipated for civic facilities, parks, and traffic total 25.5 million in fiscal year 26-27. These projects are funded by a mix of impact fees, grants, and enterprise funds. Impact fee expenditures make up the rest of the 13.8 million. And moving on to the debt service funds. So debt service remains manageable and stable. The city has two primary obligations, the city hall debt and the energy efficiency project loan. The city hall is on track, is on track for full repayment by 2034 and the NG loans anticipated payoff is in June of 2036. The Water Fund continues to show strong revenues with higher expenditures primarily driven by one time capital investments. Fund balances remain healthy and are intended to support these capital needs. Investing in infrastructure remains a key priority to ensure the continued delivery of safe, reliable drinking water. So as the years go by and we're implementing the current rate structure that ends I think in 2029, we'll see the CIP and all of the infrastructure type projects taking chunks of the undesignated fund balance, but as we go through the actual operations, there are some, there is a surplus of revenues to expenses as far as operations go, and then the capital improvements are using the undesignated fund balance until we do a new cycle of rate study. For the wastewater fund, it's experiencing higher expenditures due to major infrastructure projects as well. These investments are critical for maintaining system reliability and regulatory compliance. So for the wastewater fund, the operations is, the gap is smaller as far as the excess of revenues to expenses. But as we go through these next two years of the new rate, then that'll help with the operations and fund all of these CIPs. So this year in the wastewater CIP fund, there's $5.5 million in CIP. And there's also a portion of the wastewater capacity fund that's for the Broadway sewer rehabilitation project as well. The Recycled Water Fund is currently operating with a deficit. This is due to declining usage and high fixed costs. This fund will require continued monitoring and discussions with this. The revenues weren't what we anticipated in fiscal year 26 because of the decrease in consumption that we saw.

ask where did we see the declining use? I mean, I envisioned revenues because we reduced the rate, but actual consumption is down?

Yeah, it was down. I think, so our parks had a big decrease in the consumption. I think it's maybe because they might have fixed some leaks.

That's correct, Jim. We had some leaks over in Lavinia. We actually- Okay. We're leaking, and we fixed the leaks.

Yeah, well, that's a challenge because that saves us money, but doesn't make us any money.

But I think with the Little League coming online, maybe that would help with the recycled water. And we just have to kind of see how it comes in the coming years as far as usage. Okay.

And I know that there's a Tower Road water line extension that hopefully will generate some good recycled revenue and reduce our potable water revenue at the same time. So in a way, they're a little competitive. The more we can promote recycled, in some instances, is at the expense of our water fund. So it's a juggling act.

Almost done. So now we're moving on to our internal service funds. So the internal service funds support core city operations such as facilities and fleet maintenance and IT and general legal services. These costs are increasing due to technology investments and maintenance needs and these funds ensure departments have the resources needed to operate efficiently. So yeah, so the IT supports all the service, servers, software, and software for the whole city. Financial asset management, procurement, meeting and agenda software, all of that resides in the IT ISF and also supports the IT contractor and maintenance of all devices and the laptops and peripherals. The fleet has 63 vehicles, 40 are leased, and 13 hybrids, so 59% of our fleet is leased. In building maintenance this year, it will fund a city hall fashion improvement CIP project. And so over time, these ISFs do build fund balance to cover the ebbs and flows of when we need fleet replacements, when we need computer replacements so that not in any one year we're having a big jump in what all of the departments will pay into doing those replacements. So this year there is usage of some of the fund balances that were built into those ISFs to complete some of the improvements needed in the building ISF. So this concludes the presentation of the 26-27 proposed budget. The final budget will incorporate any changes that come from tonight and be brought forward for public hearing and adoption on June 2nd. I also want to recognize the efforts of all of the departments for their cooperation and commitment to meeting critical deadlines throughout this whole budget process. I know they're probably tired of hearing me follow up all the time. I'd also like to extend special appreciation to our Antonio, our senior budget analyst. He's been working long hours and his dedication in bringing this budget together is, I'm really thankful for that as well. So yeah, I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

Thank you, Jim, and thank you, Juan, for both the budget and the educational piece of it. So I will open it up for council for any clarified questions before asking for a public comment. Seeing none, I'll open it up for public comment on item number 11.

Is there any public comment in the room? Is there anyone online who would like to make comment? We have no public comment.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. We'll all return to the Council for item number 11 for further discussion or direction for staff or just a simple acceptance of the summary.

There's a part of me that wants to say, you know, we see this oncoming gap and what can we do. So I guess other than in general terms, you know, begin exploring other types of revenue enhancements, you know, that were outlined. Certainly sales tax, TOT maybe, admissions maybe, a targeted industrial project, all of which I mean, they're all somewhat easy if you can get the voters to go along. It's all very easy. But otherwise, just kind of monitoring where we can go, where we can come up with some bold ideas for revenue enhancements.

So I think that we accept the summary. So thank you, Jim, for your presentation and Juan for assisting with the educational piece of it. We'll move on to our next item, item number 12, engineer's report for citywide LAD fiscal year 26-27. Presenter will be our public work director, Erica Amon-Smithies.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, community of American Canyon, Eric Ahlmann-Smithies, Public Works Director. I do have a little few slides because I think there were some questions that came up regarding the new LAD assessment. This is our annual engineer's report. uh... meeting to approve the budget in the engineers report which you just heard a great backup of all the increases going on over the past few years uh... and then to set a public hearing date for hopefully june second we do have a new consultant on board uh... we had harris for almost about ten or twelve years and we went another direction this year, went out for RFPs, received two and went with NBS who's also done our rate studies on others. So there were some little changes in our report and one of the feedbacks I got was where's the trend page? We showed prior years how we drew down and where the itemized expenses were and I missed that when I was reviewing the report. We got new folks in and so we're trying to make this work before this meeting and We missed that entire sheet, so I've reached out to them today to see if we can have that in time for the next meeting. They did also recommend that we do an audit to see where we're at on some of the items just to make sure we are. There was discrepancies between our numbers and the prior year numbers, so just making sure we're capturing everything in the budget. So with that being said, MBS did propose that we raise the, increase the rates. They had a first jump of i think thirty one percent and thirty five percent for some ones in the zone to leaving zone three alone uh... worked with the system city manager and finance director on uh... reducing those numbers to uh... uh... slight increase stories you know be great to some folks seventeen point four five percent which is an eighty dollar proxy dollar increase for some one and ninety one dollar increase for some too uh... in my Slide show you can see here the budgets for the past. I want to say ten years, but they're not it's about the past eight years and We didn't really do a whole lot 1819. We just cruise along at a base rate and never did any increases and then we started actually doing some needed playground replacements tree removals and replacements bathroom improvements zone two especially which is the the yellow line and Um, significant increase the past couple of years because we had projects that we wanted to do at these, these parks. Um, there's also deferred maintenance that did not really happen in prior years that are now happening, such as tree removals and planned tree replacements. If you haven't been on flaws, then they're doing a whole length there of tree replacements. And there was significant, significant, um, leak repairs in the past couple of years, um, in zone one. And then we had the irrigation controller project, which I believe was in year 23-24. It may seem like a big jump from $80 and $91 for Zone 1, but look at the increase. Our maximum assessment is still 700. We're still a lot lower than the maximum assessment. And then in Zone 2, we're still very much lower, just over $400 projected assessment, $400 for this coming fiscal year, but the max is $1,138 that we can go with the assessment. So we're still way below the threshold, but there's still work to do at these parks and the fields and all the landscaping and walls. I know we have the project we have planned on Newell especially for Zone 2 that's a refresh of plants and trees. Just similar to the graphs we've seen before, we've been running at a deficit over the past six years. Even though we were flat lined on our increase, we didn't even do CPI increase prior to 22-23. We stayed at the same amount from 18-19 all the way up. I could have gone back, but it was just a straight line. We didn't increase any rates. Some of the significant changes that are moving forward, you can see the big jumps. The dashed line is the IS THE WORK THAT WE STARTED DOING, DEFERRED MAINTENANCE AND PARK IMPROVEMENTS. ZONE 2 IS THAT HIGHEST JUMP, WHICH IS THE BATHROOM. WHAT YOU SEE HERE IS OUR REVENUES. THE REVENUES ARE PRETTY MUCH FLAT. WE INCREASED THAT CPI BEGINNING IN 22-23, WHICH WAS A 5% CPI. THEN THE LAST TWO YEARS, A 2% CPI. AND THEN THIS YEAR, A 17 AND 25% CPI OR 25, 17% AND A 25% INCREASE TO KEEP UP WITH SOME OF THE WORK WE'RE DOING. what we've been doing to to cover these balances and get to zero which i don't show that's why we should show the slide that we get to zero beer bag taken in our we're dipping in our reserves we're using unrestricted reserves every year to to to offset the increases needed uh... in the assessments for someone in zone two we still have a lot of work to do in zone one in particular if you haven't been out there i'd be able as you know that was a comment that came up one of these fences being replaced we have post holding up fence posts because we haven't put in the money to do the improvements out there And we need that. We had six people, approximately six people come to the zone, one pop up in the past. They were not happy people. This year was the first time I've seen smiling faces. They're excited about seeing sheep out there, seeing the playground replacements, seeing, I mean, it was a packed park that night too. They weren't here to see us. They were here to ask, They were there having barbecues and participating in the playground. It was just really fun to see. But the six folks that did come up, they were asking about the tree replacement, and they really liked what they were seeing at Villa Bellagio in particular, and as well as on Flosden, but it was finally, they're seeing progress in the past two, three years, so they're happier. Zone two we didn't have anyone show up. We were concerned about all the new programming happening for the park fields at Silver Oak and in Shenandoah and again no one showed up. In the past we've had one or two folks show up and if there's two it's a couple. So I think that's generally a show of improvement. At the time we didn't tell them that we had increases but We didn't have the reports yet, but I'm not sure how they're going to take the $80 increase or the $90 proposed increase. But as you can see from that margin, we can't keep running in arrears or we're going to lose our reserves in these areas. Zone 3 has a very healthy reserve. The big dip that we've shown in 25-26, that was the Main Street Park improvements, it's not been done yet. So we didn't propose any increases above CPI on that area. So I welcome your input that you have or feedback on this and hopefully adopt the resolution to set the public hearing for June 2nd.

Thank you, Erica.

I did miss one thing. One thing that we did capture, 26-27, we did not include staff time. We have contract employees. You know, Brightview is a contractor that does all the maintenance. What we have not provided in the budgets in the past was capturing maintenance workers that are actually going out there doing certified playground inspections, repairing the playgrounds, Um, doing the irrigation repair controller repairs when it's not bright views contract. So there was those increases of, I think one, 100, one 50 and 50. I can bring up that sheet in here where you saw the, they have the general repair contracts. And then you had a line that sets actually city staff maintenance that are actually doing other repairs that Brightview is not under contract for. So that was something that was not captured in the past. It should be because. you have city personnel actually working in those LODs doing work. Gotcha.

Thank you for your presentation. Erica, questions? Vice Mayor Joseph. Nope.

Okay. Well, thank you for the report. And I raised some of those questions with the city managers, so I appreciate getting that feedback. And I'm glad because I noticed the staff costs that were rather substantial. And if those reflect what we've been doing and just haven't charged, that's better than one way of balancing the budget is you start figuring out where you can charge things. So I'm glad to see that that's a reflection of of history versus a new thing. The other one was just that notice. In my world, when you have an increase of 17 to 25%, you usually bank on a lot of people showing up and being grumpy. So when we had such small turnout, my initial reaction is, did we tell them these numbers were going to be a lot higher than in prior years? And it sounds like they didn't know that because we didn't know that. I am a little concerned that when the people get their invoices or their tax bills, they will react poorly. And then at that point, it'll be, unfortunately, it's too late. This has been levied. You've got no choice. So there's a part of me, and this is really how I'm torn. There's a part of me that wants to see us collect as much money as we can because we just heard that revenue enhancements are the best way to maintain service. The other part of me says I don't want our customers to feel like we said, you know, everything's okay except for the big, whomping increase. So is there a way that we can communicate to people that they should at least look at these numbers and if they want to show up on June 2nd, this is your opportunity to to point out how you feel, because it could be that they understand. We're getting better service. It's like anything else. If you want something really cheap, you'll get something really cheap. If you want a quality product, you're going to have to pay for it. It may be that our residents over there are OK. But I'm concerned if they didn't know it, whether they're going to feel like somebody should have told us and that whole thing. So that's my biggest concern. How do we educate our residents so they know what they're getting into? And if they want to come down and talk to us, they can.

A rhetorical question, I guess. That's a great question, Vice Mayor Joseph. At this stage, staff's looking at having a public hearing on the 2nd. ADDITIONAL COMMUNICATIONS IN THE PAPER FORM IS PROBABLY UNREALISTIC, POST CARDS, MAILERS, THE TIME TO PREPARE AND SEND IN THE MAIL, GETTING IT BEFORE THE SECOND IS PROBABLY NOT GOING TO WORK OUT. WE COULD DO ADDITIONAL DIGITAL COMMUNICATION, CITY MANAGERS UPDATES, MORE TARGETED COMMUNICATIONS TO FOLKS, LETTING THEM KNOW THIS PRESENTATION, FOR EXAMPLE, AND MAYBE SOME ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES. WE CAN SHARE SOME OF THOSE DIGITAL FORMATS. you know, we, yeah, I'm happy to do that. That's really not too much of an effort.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it's important, but thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Council Member Orrell? Thank you for this. If you look at that chart that's on the screen right now, you know, I joined this council in 17, so fiscal 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 was probably the year I was like, okay, there's inflation, we should probably increase this because costs do go up over time. My argument at the time was, you know, particularly in Zone 2, those residents also are paying more taxes than anybody else in the city because they're paying for American Canyon Road. IT'S PROBABLY $400 A YEAR OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT ON TOP OF ALL THE OTHER TAXES THAT ARE ON THERE FOR THE SCHOOL. THIS IS ACTUALLY THE HIGHEST INCREASE I'VE EVER SEEN. AND IF YOU TOLD ME THAT, YOU KNOW, FOR ME TO APPROVE SOMETHING THAT HAS A 25% INCREASE FROM 350 TO $450, I'D LOSE IT. I'M LOSING IT NOW. AND I THINK IT'S VERY HIGH AMOUNT. I don't, and the fact that the notice that I received said that it was going to be a meeting but it didn't have anything in terms of including what this increase would be gives me great pause. And I think the city manager says that, you know, we have this meeting on June 2nd, we can't get a mailer out. I think that's disingenuous. I think you could write a letter and saying that we're gonna have this meeting and there's 750 homes in the Vintage Ranch area. You can get 750 letters out in that time to let them know that this is coming. You could do the same for zone one. This is not an entire city mailing. You should be able to assign somebody to say that here's what it is. You already wrote the staff report. You can redo that. I'm concerned that I'm going to have to pay this. I think others are going to have to pay it as well. Once people see these numbers, this is way beyond inflation. And maybe we should have been raising it in CPI over the years. which we didn't do um but to take this hit in this economy when gas prices are like six dollars a gallon um you know we're just kind of hitting residents over the head on it even though i really do appreciate the llad uh did i say that right well the landscape lighting assessment district I really do appreciate it. I kind of wish it was all over the city because, you know, you could have a lot of things on that. So not communicating that and then just tossing a meeting on June 2nd, hoping that people would show up on June 2nd, I think you need to communicate everything that's coming at them. And so that would be my direction for you guys, and I hope you can meet that. I mean, you can mail them out by the end of the week and they'll be there.

Thank you, council member Oro. Any other comments? Seeing none, I'd like to open up the public comment for item number 12, if there are any in the audience.

Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make comment? Is there anyone online? There are no public comments.

Okay, I'll close public comment on item number 12 and turn back to council for further discussion or a motion to accept this resolution setting up the public hearing.

WELL, I THINK COUNCILMEMBER ORO MAKES A GOOD POINT. AND I CERTAINLY AGREE WE NEED TO DO WHAT WE CAN TO COMMUNICATE TO OUR RESIDENTS IN ZONES ONE AND TWO IN PARTICULAR THAT WE NOW HAVE NUMBERS AND THEY SHOULD BE AWARE OF IT AND HERE'S THIS OPPORTUNITY TO COMMENT. I'LL DEFER TO STAFF AS TO HOW TO GET THAT WORD OUT BUT I CERTAINLY WOULD AGREE. There needs to be a very concerted effort above and beyond the normal. And with that, I would be happy to find the item and then.

Vice Mayor, if you would, for a second, I got Councilmember Lamartine that I want to make a statement real quick first. Council Member Lambertina.

Thank you Mayor. Thank you for the report. I'll just say that this morning I was at a chamber event invited to speak with the board and residents and we had a really robust conversation let me tell you. But it was all good. But one of their biggest complaints was timely communication so that they know where to be, what to expect, details, that kind of thing. So that was the loudest complaint just in general with our city is communications and timely. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lamartina. Council Member Orrell.

Yeah, I'm hesitating on this is a June 2nd, a hard date. If we gave you more time to reschedule this meeting so that you can communicate it, could we do that? Uh, sir, is there a gating? Is there a factor that why we have to hit June 2nd?

Um, not necessarily a factor. There's no, uh, no June 2nd deadline, but the last page in your packet, um, talks about future agenda items. So what we have tried to do is to create a calendar of future agenda items through the end of this fiscal year and into July. So currently scheduled for June 2nd would be the 26-27 budget, the LID budget, quarterly update for CIP, and then a five-year CIP, along with draft ballot language for the sales tax measure, and a couple of proclamations. what's planned for the two weeks later, June 16th, is a somewhat complicated set of events. Typically, our second meeting in June, what we do is have special meetings with our commissions, meaning PCS and OSATs, and those commissioners have already RSVP'd to come and sit with you all for special sessions, one at 7.30 and one at 8.30, where they will work on their work plans for the year. PCS has Parks and Community Services Master Plan we'd like to have the council consider approving with them, being that it was kind of their work product for the year. It's kind of a nice synergy there. As well, at 8.30, the county, the MDTA active transportation plan, they're planning to be here, and we're looking at that general plan amendment for the active transportation plan with OSAT. So those things are teed up to happen. We are doing something a little bit unusual on the 16th at 6.30 in having, because of the election coming up, we're looking at calling and consulting the municipal election as well as having what might be the final conversation on the local sales tax. So the idea from before was June 2nd, you all could consider some draft ballot language, make a decision, and then we would bring that back to you on the 16th for final discussion ratification. So June 16th already has a lot of things on it. It's not to say that we couldn't put this, there's nothing that would prevent the council from putting the LAD public hearing on June 16th, although I do have a question for the clerk. Did we already send out the notice for the public hearing, do you know, on the 2nd, or is that, we're still holding that ready to, pending tonight, probably?

No, the notice went out for the budget.

Okay, so, and that's fine, we can, what I would have you do is continue the public hearing. If you wanted to do that, we would continue it to the 16th. But there's nothing procedurally that would stop that. We can go back, I don't have at my fingertips The comparative deadline. So we're dark July 7th. So there is no council meeting on July 7th. And then after June 16th, it's five weeks later that we meet again July 21st. So July 21st, again, something special they're doing. It's a joint session with the Planning Commission talking about Broadway District Super Plan. We are planning to have, that'll be at 7. We are planning to have a very brief council meeting at 6.30, recognizing Park and Recreation Month. We're also going to be doing a proclamation for Fran Lemos. there's an upcoming memorial that weekend. And then we did have an update on our municipal code related to backflow devices, not a time sensitive matter necessarily. I don't know whether July 21st is too late in the tax year to get the role to the treasurer tax collector. It's close and we're within like days. And so I don't have that calendar at my fingertips to know whether July 21st could be at play. I can, and I won't be able to find that out on the fly here. We have in the past been able to use a later meeting in July to do the LAD budget. It does make it a little bit awkward not having, not beginning the fiscal year without an LAD budget, but it's really the levies that we're talking about. And so having the council approve the levies for the next property tax roll, I just, July 21 is late in the calendar year because the 7th is the latest date that a first meeting can happen. So I just honestly don't know how close to the cutoff it is for the property tax roll.

The alternative is for you to mail something out immediately. It seems like you already have the list, the names for all of that and to give them an update in addition to a full court press on your digital communications today's nineteen tomorrow be the twentieth you know by twenty first hopefully it's local mail here pretty quickly uh... early next week would probably middleton early next week

AND IT IS NOT A LEGAL NOTICE, IT IS JUST AN INFORMATIONAL NOTICE. SO WE ARE NOT BOUND TO GIVE EVERYBODY X NUMBER OF DAYS. GETTING IT TO THEM NEXT WEEK IS CLEARLY ENOUGH TIME BEFORE JUNE 2ND, I THINK.

I IMAGINE WE HAVE THIS LIST IN SOME SORT OF DOCUMENT WE CAN DO A MAIL MERGE AND START GETTING STAMPS AND PUT TOGETHER A LETTER.

THE OTHER OPTION, WHICH I'M SURE NO ONE IS EXCITED ABOUT, WOULD BE TO LOOK AT JUNE 9, THE SECOND TUESDAY, AS A SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING THAT COULD EITHER BE THAT COMBINATION COMMISSION COUNCIL OR SOMETHING.

JUNE 9, I THINK, IS THE TUESDAY.

I'm not suggesting anybody's going to be excited about that, but... Oh, sorry, the second Tuesday, June 9th, yes, correct. But I'm just throwing it out there. Or we recognize that we might have ourselves a long meeting.

Yeah, I think, you know, in taking a look at this, probably what I'll do tonight is go craft up a letter, and then we'll find a way to get it in the mail, you know, before the end of the week, so we can hit our... I don't know where this list came from, our utility billing. I don't think this came from our utility billing. We'll have to figure out exactly where this list came from, but I'll go craft a letter tonight, and then we'll get it in the mail as soon as we can. And then, yeah, it'll hit. But again, to the Vice Mayor's point, This is informational, so when people get it, there's no legal requirement, so it's informational.

Thank you, Mr. Hawley, and thank you, Council Member Orr, for bringing it up. Vice Mayor, are you still planning on making the motion?

Well, either myself or... Councilmember or I think we had that ironed out now.

I want the mailer so that being said I Move that we adopt a resolution sending a public hearing for the fiscal year 26 27 annual engineers report for the landscaping and lighting assessment district to prove the budgets within the engineers report confirming the assessment diagrams and annual assessments amounts and authorizing the levy and collection of annual assessments for fiscal year 26 27

I'll second that.

Thank you. We have a second. Madam Clerk, will you do a roll call, please?

Council Member Brando Cruz?

Yes.

Council Member Melissa LaMattina? Yes. Council Member David Oro?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph? Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington?

Yes. Thank you, Nicole, and thank you, Erica. I hope you feel better. Uh, now for our management and staff oral reports, Mr. Holly, are there any reports from your department heads?

I think we're all talked out and our, um, our main cheerleaders is away. So, uh, the one with all the information about the events is in here. So, um, I think we're all talked out there.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Holly. Moving forward to our mayor and council comments and committee reports. We'll start with you, vice mayor.

Well, I submitted my report in writing, so that's that. I do want to remind people that if you're excited about drum circles, you can come to room five of the Micologic Center this Thursday between six and eight. THE ARC FOUNDATION IS HOSTING A DRUM CIRCLE. I'M NOT EVEN 100% SURE WHAT A DRUM CIRCLE IS, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF FUN AND A GOOD THERAPEUTIC WAY OF GETTING YOUR RHYTHM GOING. SO THERE.

THAT SOUNDS GOOD. THANK YOU, VICE MAYOR.

COUNCIL MEMBER ORO. I HAVE NOTHING TO REPORT BESIDES MY WRITTEN REPORT. THANK YOU, SIR.

COUNCIL MEMBER LAMATINA.

I HAVEN'T GOTTEN MY WRITTEN REPORT IN BECAUSE I'M Super busy. But anyways, I wanted to announce that tomorrow at the American Canyon Community Church from 10 to 1, Seroptimus International is putting on a senior resource fair. So put it out there and all you seniors come and get some information. It'll be a great resource fair. We have doubled our vendors. So I hope you can come and check it out. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Council Member Cruz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a reminder, on Monday, the 25th, attending Memorial Day, I believe it's 10 to 12, 11 to 12?

11 to 12.

11 to 12. Excited about that. One of our keynote speakers is an actual American Canyon resident, so I look forward to that. Also, we'll be having some dogs being grilled by the Lions Club, and yeah, we look forward to that event. Just a reminder to the public to please, please attend. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Um, I have no additional, uh, comments from my report and I submitted my report as well in writing. Uh, let's move on to future agenda items. Uh, vice mayor, nothing for the vice mayor, uh, council member oral.

Yeah, I do have one. And as you guys know, there's been a lot of conversations recently about traffic circulation and access throughout American Canyon. And I believe it's time for a broader public discussion on that. It's been a while since we've had it. and i know we're busy but uh... you know i i would love to have at the next council meeting just a quick overview and study session on citywide circulation or traffic flow emergency access and long-term connectivity planning uh... so that the public can truly participate in the conversation we've seen a lot of that happening on line and all that conversation had me thinking recently that We've had the right of way for the Newell Drive extension since 2019, yet we've made very little progress on it. We've talked about it, we've contemplated it, but we've never given staff or looked for any places to fund it. An insight came to me recently that on the east side of town, THERE ARE ONLY TWO PLACES TO ACCESS HIGHWAY 29. AMERICAN CANYON ROAD AND DONALDSON WAY. THERE'S 10,000 PEOPLE THAT LIVE ON THAT SIDE OF TOWN. AND THE FACT THAT WE AREN'T ACTIVELY INVOLVED OR THAT WE'VE SAT ON THE NEWELL EXTENSION FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS IS THE REASON WHY WE'RE GETTING THESE CITIZENS INITIATIVES to find a northerly access or an east side connector to happen. And I'd like to bring that up EVEN IF IT'S A QUICK UPDATE, NEXT COUNCIL MEETING. REGARDLESS OF WHERE PEOPLE STAND ON THIS PROPOSAL OR THIS ADDITIONTIVE, THE BIGGER ISSUE IS ACTUALLY URGENCY. IT'S BEEN SEVEN YEARS. WE'VE HAD THAT RIGHT AWAY. TRAFFIC, CIRCULATION, EMERGENCY SERVICES. IT'S CHALLENGES THAT WE'VE ALL TALKED ABOUT, BUT WE HAVEN'T BEEN DOING ANYTHING. SO WE NEED TO DO THIS NOW, NOT YEARS FROM NOW. SO I WOULD REQUEST THAT THAT BE AGENDIZED AT LEAST IN THE NEXT CITY COUNCIL MEETING IMMEDIATELY. That's a tough request, but we've accommodated these requests in the past. The last one was an urgency to have an environmental hire for our office. And so I would like to bring up this traffic circulation issue and have staff come back to us with an update and a report on that.

I would be happy to second that because I agree with you. This has become urgent because nothing's happened. And so I fully agree.

Thank you, sirs. We have a motion and a second. Can we get a roll call, please?

Just one second. Council Member Brando-Cruz?

Yes.

Council Member Melissa Lamatina? Yes. Council Member David Oro? Yes. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph? Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington?

Yes. Any other future agenda items? Council Member Lamatina? Councilmember Cruz? No, sir. Okay, good. I have no future agenda items either. We've concluded our business for this evening. We are adjourned. Good night, American Canyon.