City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Antioch City Council meeting of Tuesday, June the 23rd, 2026. Mr. City Clerk, could you please take the role? Thank you, Member.

Thank you. Council Member Rocha? Here. Council Member Torres-Walker?

Present.

Council Member Wilson?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Present. Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you. We have a quorum at 6 o'clock p.m. Thank you.

Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Do we have any public comment on tonight's closed session item?

We have no public comments for closed session.

All right, thank you. Mr. Assistant City Attorney, will you please let us know what's on closed session?

Yes, good evening. There is one item on the closed session calendar for today that is conference with labor negotiators pursuant to California government code section 54957.6.

All right, thank you. We will adjourn to closed session.

Meeting is adjourned at 6.01 p.m.

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Good evening and welcome to the Antioch Regular City Council meeting of Tuesday, June the 23rd, 2026. Mr. Clerk, can you please take the role?

Thank you. Council Member Rocha? Here. Council Member Torres-Walker is absent right now. Council Member Wilson?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tempreatis? Present. Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you. We have a quorum at 7.01 p.m. All right.

Thank you. Will you please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, we were in closed session before this meeting, so if I could have our assistant city attorney please report out.

Good evening, there was one item off for closed session tonight, conference with labor negotiators pursuant to California government code section 54957.6. There's no reportable action.

All right, thank you. Moving on to public comments. Mr. Clerk, how many comments do you have? We have eight public comments.

All right, thank you. These are on non-agendized items. Correct. Can we please have Leslie May followed by Gloria Cannon.

Good evening, Council. I just have to say that it's still very disappointing to see that there are serial meetings going on. talking with people about what's going on in closed sessions, because if I'm getting it, it's serial meetings. Also, I also want to comment about the mayor going around to black people, going to black pastors, asking black people, asking black pastors to stand with you while you try to I don't know what word it was, reinvent or revigorate or whatever, Antioch. I said it before, I'm going to say it again. Because apparently you don't get it through your head. We have the house Negroes. Then we have the porch Negroes. So now you're running around trying to find a black pastor to stand with you when you know you have been filed since before you walked through the taking oath of this office. Trying to get them to stand up and be your friends to go out there and be the mouthpiece for you so they can see him or her standing with you when you're at these events. That's not going to work. You know, all that, oh, I got black friends. I got black friends. That doesn't work anymore. We see through that. That's old. And the few ones that you do have around you, the ones that you do have on the porch that run behind you, like puppy dogs, they need to be shamed. We see their white hoods on them, too. We see the white hoods on them, too. But it's really disgusting and insulting that you think that every black person out here is stupid and that we can't see through you. We can't see you throwing educated black women out of the office because they don't fit your criteria. You can't see that we see you trying to put certain black ones into office because they're going to dance or do that tap dance. They're Bojangles. But we're not going for it. We're going to call them out, just like I called you out, just like I called Don Freitas out, just like I called Louie Rocha, and we'll call Monica and Tamisha out, if I feel like they're doing wrong. Well, I see through it, and it's letting you know that this is really insulting. You have become, well, we already knew you're Trump 5.0 for Antioch. But as you can see, he's losing. he's getting knocked down by the courts. And you can, too. By words, by prayer, by a stand, or standing 10 feet, 10 toes down, as the young people say, and steady letting you know that we see through you. We see through each one of you who took oath, lied in your statements what you wanted to see in Antioch, and how you were gonna help the poor, you were gonna get the homeless, you were gonna do this, and y'all ain't did nothing but throw them to the ground. And treat them, you treat your animals better than you treat humans.

Council Member Torres-Walker has arrived at 7.05 p.m. Can we please have Gloria Cannon followed by Edgar Martinez.

Good evening, my name is Gloria Cannon and I represent myself. I have lived in the Diamond Ridge subdivision for 32 years. In case you are unfamiliar with Diamond Ridge, this subdivision is located one block from Lone Tree Way and across from the Events Center on Golf Course. Diamond Ridge has been and still is one of the premier subdivisions in Antioch. When my husband and I were house hunting in 1993, we considered several options. But Diamond Ridge had everything we were looking for. Proximity to outdoor parks and nature, beautiful homes, access to recreation, and to Deer Valley Plaza, which then was a thriving shopping center. And we had a reasonable commute to our jobs. Now we are in our senior years and we don't recognize Antioch as it is today. For example, we frequently see and hear cars racing down Golf Course Road, cars spinning donuts in intersections on Lone Tree, Fredrickson Lane, and Dallas Ranch Road. And even there are sideshows that block the intersection at Lone Tree and Golf Course. Once thriving shopping centers have been replaced with fast food drive-ins, smoke shops, abandoned movie theaters, car washes, and empty storefronts. Throughout the city, there is increased crime and blight. We don't recognize this Antioch anymore. and now it's going to get worse. We just recently learned that Antioch city planners have approved the construction of 10 apartment projects, totaling about 2,000 apartments in Antioch suburbs, including 625 apartment units and three projects within a two mile stretch of Lone Tree between Deer Valley Road and Davidson. Vacant commercial property next to CVS Pharmacy is now being developed for 233 units called Lakeview and whose tenants will be low and extremely low income. Another 245 units are being constructed next to N-Shape along with a car wash and more fast food. Deer Valley Plaza will be redeveloped into 147 units. These projects are already underway. The construction fences are up and the bulldozers are working. We were, my husband and I and many of the residents that I've talked to, were unaware that these plans were underway until they were described in the Antioch Herald. As far as we know, there was never a public comment period on these plans, although they represent a drastic change to the approved general plan for the city.

Thank you, Gloria.

What happened to the commitment to transparency?

Thank you, Gloria. That's it? It's three minutes.

Thank you. Edgar Martinez, followed by Catherine Wade.

So, okay.

So can I just make one thing clear? Is that okay? Is that okay? Three minutes. Three minutes, okay. You have three minutes. All right, let's go. All right, so before I begin, I want to note for the record that the findings I'm sharing tonight are based on my own review and publicly available government data, including official reports submitted by the city of Brentwood to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. I'm a private citizen, not a policy professional. Given the volume and complexity of these documents, I present these findings in good faith and to the best of my understanding, and I welcome any corrections to the record. Good evening, mayor and council members and residents. My name is Edgar and I'm a resident and a homeowner here in Antioch. I'm here tonight because the council is being asked to vote on affordable housing funding and I want to make sure that you have the context for why that matters beyond our city limits. I spent for the past several weeks and months reviewing Brentwood's 2024 housing element annual progress report, official data submitted to the state of California. What I found is troubling and directly affects the city of Antioch. Brentwood was assigned over 1,500 homes to build by 2031. More than 630 of those need to be affordable. In all of 2024, an entire year, they issued building permits for 55 homes. Every single one of those were for a single-family house or a backyard ADU, not one rental unit, not one apartment. Meanwhile, Meritage Homes is actively building 176 single-family homes in Brentwood right now, priced near 800,000. But two rental projects totaling 448 units including the O'Hara apartments and an envelope project sit with no building permits issued and the O'Hara project was approved by the state in April 2024. Eight months have passed and nothing. The same city council that blocked that 33 unit affordable rental project unanimously approved the Meritage subdivision off of Hanson Lane, for example. And I filed public records requests with the city of Brentwood asking why. I've also put together a full findings report based entirely on their own state submitted data, which I'm happy to share with this council in the future if requested. And here's why that matters tonight. Every time a city like Brentwood fails to build its fair share, the pressure lands here in the city of Antioch and its residents, community neighbors. It lands on any ox renters and homeowners on our schools on our neighborhoods and community and on the decisions Exactly like the ones you've been asked to make in the past present and future about funding guiding and approving Affordable housing that Brentwood and cities like it should also be funding in their own backyards I'm asking this council to formally call on Brentwood and other East County immediate cities to meet their RH and A obligations and to consider raising this at the regional level through ABAG or with our state representatives. Antioch has carried this burden long enough. Something has to do and hold these other cities accountable. I'm tired of it. I remember I went to Mayor's Conference 2023. I got told by one of the Oakland mayors, you got what you voted for. I'll never forget that. Thank you. Thank you.

Catherine Wade followed by Rosalba Zendejas.

Hello, my name is Catherine Wade, and I'm here today fighting for the Angelo Quinto's Crisis Center. I heard that there were cuts, and there are gonna be more cuts, and or try to eliminate the program. And Ron Burnell, you've been here for years as city manager, so you already know the story. You were here with Rakim Rucks. Well, first of all, Malad Baldwin got beat 2014. Casey Brogdon was a part of that. 2016, 18, Rakim Rucks, another medical call. Got beat. Casey Brogdon was still a part of that. Mike Morfield was a part of that. And Officer Rose. All of them had had contact with my son also. And Angelo Quinto. These two were crisis calls. There's no way we have people who need help and support in a community, the police come and kill them, but they did do that. So I'm pleading today to keep the Angelo Quinto services open because had they stayed open or if they can stay open, maybe we can save many more lives here in the community who have mental health issues or medical issues versus the police who's supposed to come back crime, which in fact they were criminals. They are the criminals here in this community. And I don't know how you don't understand that. When I looked at that budget pie again, it was bad. About the same thing it was when Lamar was here. You keep funding these polices for bad behavior. There is no way Casey Brogdon should still be on this police force. There's no way Mike Malone should still be on this police force. Hoffman, Stinger, many, many more that I have in my son's medical records where they beat him. Nothing was done until... Council member Torres Walker sat in these chambers and said the admission of the harm they called Mild Baldwin. I'm still hurt. When I cry, I hurt. You guys would never have to feel the pain of us mothers, victims, and survivors in this racist community. and the impact these polices have done to us. You guys would never feel it because you are all in the, oh yeah, I forgot, Tamisha Torres with her young African American sons. This is a damn shame that I'm still coming up here asking for the same thing. I put something to Chief Vigil months ago asking for stuff. I've been putting stuff in since April, asking for police reports, asking for different things. Nothing has been done. You guys are violating SB 1421 and AB 847 because our APOC commissioners are entitled to information about these polices and we are as citizens too from SB 1421. So you guys need to go get some training. And when I go to Sacramento this Friday, I will be submitting a letter to, uh, Rob Bonta, Attorney General Bonta, because you guys are violating state laws still, just while the police keep doing what the hell they're doing.

Rosalba Zendejas, followed by Crystal Law.

Good evening to everybody. My name is . In May 5th of 2007, both my sons were driving on Lone Tree Way here in Antioch, California. Sadly to say, my 15 year old and my 18 year old were pulled over and assaulted by several Antioch police officers who would keep their assault secret for 17 years. And both my sons were meant to believe a reality that was not theirs because When my sons called a month after, I'm sorry, I'm just very emotional. Being beat, we're told that the police report did not exist. It never happened. In April 2023, my sons opened up to me about the terrifying secret that was kept for 17 years thanks to the scandal of the text. Mr. Freitas, I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong. Um... You were a mayor. I'm just gonna let that go You were a mayor in May of 2007 and since 2023 I Wanted to know who the mayor was and finally I have them right in front of my face My kids did not ask to be part of this war. They'd never asked for this. They were good kids they were come they were complying with the officers and There was many other complaints from other kids that were going through the same thing. Prouder's kids were too. Her kids, I don't know what years were her kids, many other kids. The Johnson's case, that happened two months after my kids. But the only difference was my kids were minors and the Johnson's were adults. The same officers that assaulted my kids assaulted the Johnson case. The same way they assaulted Johnson, they assaulted my little baby, Giovanni, okay? Mr. Freitas, I'm sorry, I don't know who you are. Only God knows that. And I'm just asking you to please have mercy on my children that have been suffering so much. on something that they were meant to believe that was not their reality. I ask you to help them now, it's enough. It's been now 20 years of pain. They both are suffering greatly. I don't have enough time to tell you personally, but it was your job to look at all these cases that were coming up and you had to sign either yes or no to the lawsuits. You should have known. My kids suffered greatly, Mr. Freitas. Please help them. Oh, and that goes for you too, Mr. Louie Rocha. You were, I believe you were the principal for the school where my kid was. I wonder.

I'm sorry, your three minutes are up. Can we please have Crystal Law followed by Margie Carell?

I did not write a speech for my public comment because you guys already know what I'm going to say. When we sat down and had the police commission meeting with the city council, and I'm looking at Freitas, Bernal, and Rocha, and I'm looking at you because I'm very disappointed in how you guys treated that meeting and how you guys acted in that meeting. in what was said in that meeting, the things that you voted for or didn't vote for in that meeting. We waited 15 months and longer than that to even sit down and have this meeting. You guys are treating the police... See, it was after this meeting that I realized when Freitas, you put up your authority. And you struck down the fact that we couldn't move three to one and take one off. You didn't want to take number one off. To me, that was authoritative because you didn't even know what she wanted to take it off for, nor did you understand or want to understand. And instead of asking her... what she was taking it off for, you asserted the fact that you just wanted to keep it on because we've been waiting on this for a long time. I'm sorry, but y'all do not care about that police commission. You guys are treating this police commission as if it's up there as a play or a stage. We need this police commission on board for a reason. And we know those reasons, right? Ron Bernal, you were here. You were here in 2017. You were here 18, 19, 20, 21, and then all of a sudden you just disappeared and left like it was nothing to you. And yet you worked very closely with the police department, did you not? Freitas, you were here from 2000 to 2008. You actually, I feel like you kind of structured this whole thing when you kind of had the cat team put in place and you shake your head and nod your head like you didn't. But this is what systemic racism is at its finest. And I know that it's hard for white people to understand what systemic racism is, but that's what this is. And you huff and you puff, and you act like, oh, my God, here she goes again. And I don't know you as a person. And I have nothing against you guys as people. But as the people who sit in front of me, as being the mayor, the Mayor Pro Tem, Member Council Rocha, you had many of things that happened at that school with police officers hurting black kids. So I don't want to hear anything else about you saying, I don't have nothing to do with it, because you do, and you're next on my list.

All right, now.

Margie Carell, followed by Ralph Hernandez.

Sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry.

Okay, I just have about 15 seconds. I want to congratulate you three. I'm talking about here, Nicole Sardenos, three Trump-loving, back-to-blue clan. You're not racist. You guys are racist. And I also want to talk to Chief Fiddle. Remember I told you about to watch your back, how smiling faces? that you guys didn't want him. You and the Back the Blue Clan members and retired police chief, you didn't want him to be here. You wanted to keep the one, because he's not putting up with your guys' crap. So I'm just saying congratulations for being racist.

Ralph Hernandez, followed by Frank Sterling.

Hello, Ralph Hernandez. I've been a resident and homeowner here in Antioch for over 50 years. We have an insufficient amount of police manpower. I am in favor of having as much police as the public is entitled to. Come up here, talk to you guys. We should be at 144 sworn officers. Unfortunately, the council decided to even reduce what they've had, and this is over 30 years. Now, I'm not one to beg and ask whatever. We have a lot of good officers, we really do. I support them. Not all of them, we've had some characters that should be in prison for what they did. Now, exposure. There will be a big, deep exposure. Council people, police chiefs, supervisors, police supervisors, individual persons. It won't be all of them. It'll be some of them. And the exposure is not going to be limited for the city. It's going to include the district attorney's office and the board of supervisors. We're talking cover up. Now you guys know my history. You know, I've been in law enforcement for decades. You know, I know the law. I worked for about 20 different law firms as a private investigator also. My job is to dig deep, come back with the facts, the laws, and report to the law firms. Some of those, you guys have experienced through lawsuits, the result. And the law firm says one. But I'm not gonna come up here and beg for you guys to do the right thing. You need to get your officers up to par and quit catering to the developers, your contributors. The reason here in Antioch we have the problems that we have, including some racial issues, is because the councils past and present have not done what you are supposed to. When the books that are in the process of being put together come out, it's not gonna be nobody that's gonna be happy with it. It's gonna point out people, including Ron Burnell. He was approached regarding some Antioch officers, nothing was done.

Thank you.

Frank Sterling, followed by Robert Collins.

Hey, everyone. I'm here to speak out, and hopefully you all can support the Angelo Quinto Crisis Response Team. Here in Ralph, it sounds like we're down some officers. I would be more in favor of supporting the crisis response team in over adding more officers until you can afford it. We need the crisis response team. I think you've seen some powerful testimony at the last meeting from Angelo's family and I was also one person that stood and fought for the crisis response team. Most of you already know my story. I don't like to repeat it and waste time, but I did get attacked in 2009, kicked in the face, choked unconscious first, and then kicked in the face as I was waking up and I was told this is what you get when you F with the cops. That was over a loud music complaint. So if we had had the Angelo Quinto community response team back then, maybe someone could have just had them come. Instead, we got Rick Hoffman and Chris Kent. I know Hoffman is still in the department. Um, so I feel that the, um, the crisis response teams, it has, um, people have died for that. People have shed blood for that. Many tears have been shed for that. Many hours of work has been put into that. They haven't killed nobody. They haven't, um, used the N word on people called people water Buffalo. In fact, I just saw him like two weeks ago, helping my neighbor when they had an issue in the, in the neighborhood. I've called them for my own family on an occasion. I've seen them out in the streets. So this is a part of community safety that is the non-police part that we need. And I've talked to all the police chiefs. I've had relationships with all of our chiefs, even Tammany Brooks, who I started a relationship with. But Chief Ford, The guy after him, I'm blanking on his name. And B. Hill, all these guys support the crisis response team, the community response team. So I'm hoping that you guys could find it within the budget. I feel like it's beyond numbers. It's people. And the crisis response team is on the ground helping people. They're not killing, beating, racially profiling these people. They come when they're needed. They help. I believe they should be fully funded. Thank you.

Robert Collins followed by Cassandra Quinto Collins.

Yes, good afternoon City Council, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for allowing us to the time to speak. We're here in support of the many reforms and solutions that has come up with in the last few years and hoping that you will find it. I know it's hard to find funding when sometimes single year funding was used or limited funding. But I think as you're hearing from the community, these are important resources for the community. These are important resources for the police officers in our community to allow them to carry out their job. You know, funding and budgets are always controversial, but I think that this community needs these kinds of resources. It also encourages or gives the community the sense that we are moving forward as a community, not backwards, that we're moving toward an inclusive community where everyone has a voice. What I hear repeatedly here is that people felt like that has not always been the case in Antioch. And so all these reforms, many enshrined in the consent agreement that the city signed with the Department of Justice are important things for our community. And I encourage all of you to look at them as solutions and make them better if there's a problem with them, not get rid of them. So in our case, of course, and I know that Councilmember Monica Wilson was working on this way before it was named after Angelo, but these are things that the community has put a lot of effort over a decade. So please find a way to support it. I don't think we need to have these questions about whether we fund one or the other. We need you. to find good solutions. Maybe we need to find more revenue. We need to be smarter about the revenue. I don't know, but we shouldn't be faced with the idea that simply programs that are very, very humble in overall terms should get defunded because there's insufficient funding. A city is spending over $110 million a year. These are minor expenditures in comparison to the overall budget, and they're important for the community. So thank you for that.

Cassandra?

Good evening, Mayor Bernal, council members. My name is Cassandra Quinto Collins, Angela Quinto's mother. Angelo was experiencing a mental health crisis, an episode of paranoia, as we called it, that he'd experienced infrequently since the beginning of 2020. On the night, the 23rd of December, when his paranoia and fear were exacerbated, my daughter Isabella called the police for help. By the time they arrived, I was restraining Angelo in a bear hug on the floor. He was on top of me as I held him chest to chest, and he had calmed down. I think being hugged is what he needed. When the officers saw us, they proceeded to ask who the call was even for, since it looked like I was in control. They even made comments like, mom is strong, before they took him from my arms and placed him on his stomach.

On the way down, he said twice, please don't kill me. And the officers responded saying they weren't going to kill him.

Then as the officers took position at his legs, soon crossing them and pushing them against his back, the other officer handcuffed him and knelt on the back of his neck.

My daughter, Angela's sister, Bella, asked Officer Shipilov if there was another number she could have called, and his answer was, no, you did the right thing. Antioch police officers asphyxiated my son, Angela, to death in front of me on my bedroom floor. Angelo was having a mental health crisis at that time, but was not violent. He had no weapons and was not under the influence of any common substances of abuse. I truly believe that if there was a program like the Angelo Community Response Team in place at that time, Angelo would still be alive today. Please find support and improve where possible this important community service. Thank you.

Gavin Payton followed by Dr. Kimberly Payton.

Good evening. For one, I would just like for all the East County NAACP adult branch members and youth council members to please rise. So, I heard that there was a certain somebody that packs the meeting, the NAACP packed this meeting. We're not gonna continue to stand and debate whether or not if a black woman should be in power or not because she is qualified. Probably overqualified because she's a black woman. And I understand that some people wanna put their heads down and not hear of a black woman. and want to go and combat a black woman. But let me make no mistake. Like I said in the previous meeting, that you cannot disrespect a black woman because a black woman disrespecting her is like disrespecting yourself and disrespecting this country because a black woman gave birth to this country. So when I hear these black women speak, truth to power, the whole world should listen and stop and listen. Because one woman's cry, a mother's cry, is everyone's cry. And these mothers came out here and spoke to you, asking simple justice. So when does a life become profit? When does a life become critical? When does a life actually become over politics? Because right now what I see is politics is way up here, and a life is down here by the dirt. So I want you to look at these youth that are standing here as well. And I want you to look at the people that voted to put you in. Do their lives matter? Or does their political game matter more? Or let me guess, the people that fund y'all campaigns, their opinion is over our lives. I think that's a little bit wrong, don't y'all think? But you know what I know. I'm not in your position. I'm just here speaking my mind, the sense that God gave me, but I don't know where the sense some of y'all came from. In fact, I wonder what y'all mothers would say if they knew that you chose to disrespect another woman, another mother. That's interesting to me. So when you are disrespecting, again, a black woman, you disrespect all of us. You disrespect ourselves. So I'm not here to parent y'all, no. I'm here to tell y'all that I'm disappointed that y'all dared to disrespect a black woman that gave birth to this country. Thank you.

Dr. Kimberly Payton, followed by Wes Nicholson.

Good evening, council. Well, I wish it was a good evening. Last time I came and spoke and asked you guys to work together with the community to support those in need in the community. And right now I'm reflecting on Don Freitas when you ran. You ran because you wanted to support the community. You were tired of the high turnover in staff. You even mentioned homelessness. You mentioned how they were unhoused. You mentioned how there was a disconnect and people were tired of what was going on in the city, yet we're having trouble getting Homekey funded. I'm confused. I'm confused on why we're here now trying to get a new city manager in Antioch when you were concerned about the high turnover and the last one just had more reviews than probably any other city manager in the history of Antioch. I'm confused. I'm confused on where you, Mr. Rocha, Mr. Freitas, and you, Mayor Brunel, have come to really do the work of the citizens of Antioch. I'm confused. I don't understand why we're still negotiating on you working with APOC. Both of you were here at the height of that problem. Both of you were here that saw these mothers that speak lose their children. I'm confused. When do you wake up? When do you get a clue that you cannot sweep this under the rug? Systemic racism, as Crystal mentioned, is here. Are you perpetuating that? What was the point of you running to bring people together if you can't get it done? What was the point of you sitting on the dais saying, the night that you were sworn in, that you were here to get it done and to work with people, but that's not happening? When does that happen? When do you work with APOC? When do you actually listen to the residents of Antioch and the constituents and do the right thing? What does it take for that to happen? And you can look down, you can look away, you can shake your head, do whatever you want, but the fact is it's not happening. The same chaos you ran on fixing is more chaotic now than it was before you sat in those seats. You need to be ashamed of yourselves. You need to be ashamed that you went to a meeting that APOC waited for for so long, and instead of trying to work together, you tried to turn it out. Shame on you. Shame on you. Why don't you go ahead and rethink your process? Go back to what you ran on and see if you can actually implement that instead of working against your own platform. Thank you.

Wes Nicholson followed by Devin Williams.

Good evening, City Council and Mayor. My sister lives in Antioch. My daughter got her family started. I actually live in Concord. I'm here for two reasons. Number one, to state very blatantly and factually, because I've worked with families that have had loved ones killed by the police, that it would be a grave, and I mean grave as in someone's grave, travesty and injustice if the Angelo Quinto emergency response or community response was defunded or it apparently has been already, I'd like to urge you to fund it because this is a program, it's pioneering. It's one of the only counties that even has this thing. And I've been saying for years, we have to have a non-armed response when a family member calls the police. And too many times, A family member calls the police and it results in a death of that family member. So my other thing I want to talk about, maybe you can see why I'm dressed, is I understand you're considering defunding city money from the... Government Israel, which is supporting, I think we know, the new G word. It's not new, but it's been around for a while, but it's happening now before our eyes. Genocide. Just let me take a quick poll here. Excuse me, sir.

Excuse me. There's an agenda item later tonight to speak on.

Okay, well, I'm speaking now, and please don't interrupt me. How many people raise your hand if you're down with genocide?

Sir, excuse me. You're done, sir. Yes, you are. No, you're done on this item. And it's on it. Sir, excuse me. This is on... Sir, this is on unagendized items, and you're speaking on an agenda. I can't be here during that time, Mr. Bernal, so I'll speak now. Sir, sir, please.

I think we know, I think the world, I'll speak to them then.

I think we know, and the world knows, that what's happened to Gaza supported by our government is a litmus test for humanity, okay?

Let me just say that. Thank you.

Devin Williams, followed by Ankit Panchal.

EVENING. I WANT TO SPEAK TODAY ABOUT THE BUDGETS THAT ARE BEING CUT, THE PROGRAMS, THE ESSENTIAL SERVICES THAT OUR CITY NEEDS.

EXCUSE ME, DEVIN. THERE'S GOING TO BE AN ITEM ON THE BUDGET WE'RE GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT LATER.

OKAY. THANK YOU. I WILL JUMP TO OVER THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS, MANY OF US HAVE WATCHED AS OUR CITY MANAGER, FORMER CITY MANAGER BESSIE SCOTT'S TENURE CAME TO AN And more recently, we witnessed Councilmember Donald Freitas publicly humiliate and disrespect Councilmember Taurus Walker by raising his voice. It's not okay to do that. You should be patient, you should show humility, and you should also show respect for our fellow council members. I'll also say that this raises a serious concern about how black women in positions of power and leadership are treated when they challenge the systems they face, advocate for change, and exercise their authority. We cannot claim to support equity and inclusion and reform while remaining silent while black leaders are repeatedly undermined, dismissed, or subjected to hostility in public spaces and workplaces. The future of Antioch depends on our willingness to stand up, speak out, and demand better. And I'm also going to call on our black men to stand up and support and start coming to these meetings when elected officials think it's OK to publicly disrespect our black women. Not all of us have patience. I understand that. But when we are in positions of leadership, and I take accountability for myself too, that we have to show each other respect. Because meetings might reflect the community that is frustrated with our current administration, we do not get to say that people are packing meetings. If people have the free will to come out, If people have the free will to come out, they deserve to have their voices heard. And I'll also say that because home key was a very popular item on the agenda tonight and it was moved to the last item on the agenda tonight. I feel that those voices could be suppressed because people do have to work in the morning. They have had work all day. They come to these meetings to engage in civic engagement. I'm asking if you can suspend the rules, move item nine down because people are here and they've been patient and this is a very popular agenda item. Thank you.

Our final speaker card is for Ankit Panchal. I hope I got that right.

Yes, sir. Good evening, council member and Mr. Mayor. I represent Asian American Hotel Association, which is a HOA. Our members own about 63% of the hotels in the state of California. I'm here to educate you guys why city of Antioch has not had a hotel for more than 30 years. And city of Pittsburgh had three new hotels, and city of Oakley and Brentwood has many new hotels. Number one, we have influx of transient occupants that's coming from outside. And they prefer to stay at a hotel which is exterior corridor for easy access in and out. Antioch only has one interior corridor hotel. Comfort Inn, which is now Antioch Inn, is a perfect place to turn it into Homekey, because that's exactly what Pittsburgh did. They had Motel 6, which was exterior corridor. Once that was gone, they had two brand new projects. Two developers came in, and they have two brand new hotels, which is open. It's bringing more TOTs, right? Ramada N, everybody remembers what the story was, right? They had sex trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, everything going on because of the Axis, right? And that's exactly what will continue five years from now. So I would encourage, these programs are made by, I also represent APAPA, which is Asian Pacific American Public Affairs, and we do a lot of civic work with State legislators and this home key project was done thinking that hotel conversion would be perfect.

There's a item on the agenda later regarding home key. That's fine.

I'll just do education on hotels real quick. Thank you. Right? I mean, affordable housing has been a topic regardless of parties, whether you're Republican or you're Democrat. Every single governor who's running for that position has been saying, that I'm going to do this, that, to combat displaced community. So I'm just going to encourage, as the fellow member earlier said, if we can move up the item from number nine to further up, I think it's a very important item, and we would like as much attendance as possible to hear that item. And I understand, The minute the supply of hotels are gonna go down, you're gonna influx, you're gonna have influx of developers coming in to build more hotels. That's going to bring more TOTs. You just have to incentivize them, right? That's about it, thank you.

That was our final speaker card.

All right, thank you. Moving on to item number one, announcements of civic and community events. Could we please have Ms. Nola Woods come on up about the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District?

First I want to thank you very much for having me here tonight. As you may be aware, the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District has found the invasive and highly dangerous mosquito Aedes aegypti in Antioch for the last three years in a row. We have been conducting door-to-door inspections of properties and working to control these mosquitoes, but they continue to show up in our mosquito traps. And so the district is considering a more innovative approach to deal with these mosquitoes, an innovative mosquito reduction, or IMR. The district has used innovations over our nearly 100 years serving the people of Contra Costa County. That's include using drones in areas that are often not available on foot like large agricultural areas. The district is now considering an innovative method to control invasive 80s mosquitoes. What that innovative method is, and it's used both in southern and northern California already with different mosquito and vector control districts. It would be a project, it's a pilot project that we're just considering right now to release Wolbachia treated male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a limited area of Antioch. The important things to know about this is male mosquitoes cannot bite people or animals. So there's no risk of that. And Wolbachia is a naturally occurring bacteria that exists in many mosquitoes and other insects, including beetles, dragonflies, bees, butterflies, and fruit flies. When a Wolbachia-treated male mosquito mates with the female Aedes aegypti mosquito, it makes the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the female, unable to produce living offspring. The male is basically sterile, and so it reduces the population of these dangerous mosquitoes over time. Wolbachia does not impact people or animals. The goal is to stop these dangerous mosquitoes because they can transmit Zika, dengue fever, yellow fever, and chikungunya from person to person. And we are seeing local transmission of these diseases in Southern California already. The program that we're considering is an EPA-registered program, and it's being used, as I mentioned, both in Northern California and Southern California. This type of innovation is not something new. It's actually been used since the 1950s. There was an invasive screw worm in Texas that was injecting cattle with a parasite that was killing the cattle back in the 50s, and that's when they developed this whole idea. In the 1990s when the California Department of Agriculture was fighting the Medfly, this is what they used, the same kind of innovation. So the district is taking a closer look at the possibility of doing this in a limited area of Antioch. We know that there's a high number of Aedes aegypti near Harbor Park. And so one of the things that we're doing is this coming Saturday we're going to be having a community meeting at Harbor Park from 10 to two. And so we're inviting Antioch residents to come out, have their questions answered, ask any questions about the potential of this pilot project. And then I understand I've been invited back to speak to you at the July 28th meeting. And I can give you an update on where we are if we move forward or what the situation is. So I just wanted to make that announcement of the community meeting and make sure that you understand that we're looking at this potential program. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer or I can just leave.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Director Wright.

All right, good evening. It's almost 8 PM, so I'm going to keep it brief. I just want to start by saying thank you to Public Works, to PD, and everybody behind the scenes that made Juneteenth a huge success. Thank you to the council members that showed up. Thank you to all the residents that made it another positive experience. We use this Placer AI to get the data. We had 3,900 people at last year's Juneteenth. This year we had 5,300 residents come to Juneteenth celebrating freedom. Freedom for one is freedom for all. So I just want to say thank you to everybody that made it a positive event for the community. And it was a highlight on news stations and many social media picked it up. And it was a lot of positivity for the city. Yeah. Thank you to everybody involved. All right, moving forward, the next event we have is July 4th. It's going down at 4 p.m. right here, Old Town, Rivertown. We're going to have the parade at 4, live music at 5, Kid Zone. We have a great band, Fahrenheit 5150 is going to lead us off. And then Kalimba, Earth, Wind & Fire tribute band is going to follow us right before we do the fireworks. We're going to have food trucks. It's going to be a great time. So everybody's invited to come down. and contribute that positivity for the city of Antioch. Following that, we have outdoor movie nights starting July 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th. That's going to be every Thursday in July. We did a survey to the community. They picked these movies. We had different nostalgia, what's new, what's family fun at school age. Space Jam is going to be the first one. What's new is Zootopia II. I love Zootopia. My favorite movie of all time, me and my boys, Daddy Daycare. I could have been in that movie. Acting career's cooked. But it's all good. And then we got Scooby-Doo as a new school classic. So come on down. It's free. It's at the Antioch Water Park Hillside. It's also the food trucks. So if you're looking for something positive to do, make new connections, talk about politics, talk about jobs, talk about growth in the city, you can do that right at the Movies for Free, free popcorn and activities for the community. So thank you so much. Good night. All right.

Thank you. Director Scudero for Antioch General Plan Update. His events are always tough to follow.

But, yeah, General Plan Visioning Workshop, Tuesday, June 30th, and Tuesday, July 7th at 6 p.m. We'd like to see as many community members out there as possible to help us shape the next 20 years for the city of Antioch. There's flyers out front. Tomorrow we're also going to have our online survey posted as well for those who can't make the workshop. That's another way to have your voice heard. It'll be online in both English and Spanish. But yeah, next Tuesday, June 30th and Tuesday, July 7th at 6 p.m. in the community center. We want to see as much of the community there as possible. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Any other announcements? Civic community agent? No further comments. All right, thank you. Moving on to item number two, announcements of board and commission openings.

Thank you. The City of Antioch encourages residents to become involved in your community and any interested resident is invited to apply for the following vacancy. The deadline date is 5 PM Friday, June 26th, 2026. The Sales Tax Citizens Oversight Committee has three full term vacancies which expire March of 2030 and two full term vacancies expiring March of 2028. To be considered for the vacancy position, please complete an application and submit it to the city clerk's office by the deadline date listed. Applications are located on the city's website and may be picked up in person here at city hall. Please email your completed applications to the city clerk's website and you can also drop off your application in the water billing drop off box located in the parking lot just outside city hall. Thank you.

right thank you um city council committee reports and communications council member wilson thank you mayor uh so delta diablo had a couple of meetings uh uh prior to this meeting uh first and foremost we had to do delta diablo had to do its uh yearly assembly bill 2561 report which is the workforce development report Currently, the organization's at 75.5 authorized positions. It has a relatively low vacancy rate of 10.3%, and the average hiring timeline of 101 days. So we have a turnover rate, Delta Diablo has a turnover rate of 2.6%, which really had to give a lot of applause to the HR department there. And most of the vacancies were attributed to retirements versus majority were due to retirements with very few with employee departures. Also, as I've been talking about repeatedly is the board and organization is really focused on capital and infrastructure improvement investments to support the wastewater treatment plants and recycled water delivery. environmental compliance, and long-term system reliability through the region. As you know, Delta Diablo is a partner with Antioch, especially when it comes to the pump station, and so we're tirelessly looking for funding to bring in for infrastructure improvement but also for the pump station, which needs a lot of assistance in just being updated. We continue to go back and forth, having conversations with our federal partners. We travel to D.C. to get funding, where it looks like we're on the list of potentially getting some funding this round, so very excited about that. As a representative on the Delta Diablo Board, I will continue advocating for investments that help both the organization and our city. And next February, we're traveling to DC again, so I look forward to that trip and advocating for some more funds for Antioch.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Rocha? No report. All right, Council Member Torswalker?

No report. The only report I have is that the next Cannabis Standing Committee meeting will be August 5th at 10 a.m. We were supposed to meet a week ago and I had a family emergency. So hopefully we can get August 5th locked in and the community can attend that meeting. The city school standing committee meeting, the last meeting was canceled. I think we're waiting right now on the district to have some conversations on if we're moving forward with those standing committee meetings for the remainder of this year. I do listen to public comments and I do take things down and I have counted how many people have access to move up items on the agenda because the public is present and wants to speak. So at this time, I will request to suspend the rules and make a motion to move up items eight and nine to after item four, which is a public hearing on the Hillcrest Summit Apartments Project.

All right, so we have a motion to move up items eight and nine, I think you said.

I'll second. Eight and nine.

I have a motion from Council Member Torres-Walker, second from Council Member Wilson. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

All right, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem?

Since I am finding out about the new cannabis meeting, just to let staff know, yes, I can attend that meeting. So no other report because the previous meeting was canceled.

All right, thank you. On the 11th, I had a transplant, East Contra Costa Regional Financing Authority and a Highway 4 Bypass Authority meeting where we approved budgets. On the 16th, I attended the Contra Costa Transportation Authority's 11th annual the Redefining Mobility Summit, which was primarily about autonomous vehicles and how they can impact the future of mobility. There was a group there from North Holland, and on the 17th, the day after, we toured the Byron Airport, where there's a couple of companies that are working on drone technology, and so we got to check some of that out. There's a cool little plane that's a single occupant. It takes three days to learn how to fly, and it can take off almost straight up and fly around at about 150 feet. So got a demonstration of that. And then we headed over to the Glideways test facility out in Richmond and saw the Glideways autonomous vehicle that transports folks around without a driver. There's actually a project planned for the Pittsburgh Antioch Oakley Brentwood area that has been in the works for a minute. And they're going to deploy this technology out in Atlanta near the airport. And they also have projects in Dubai and some other places, so that's coming. And then on the 20th, I went to a meet and greet that our assembly member, Anna Marie Avila-Farias, had out in Brentwood, and so got to listen to some of the things that she's working on and the questions that those folks had out there, which was very interesting. Regarding Mayor's comments, I just want to, first of all, I want to thank everybody for coming out to the meeting tonight. As much as folks may not think we always enjoy hearing from people, this is the opportunity for people to come and share their thoughts on what's important to them. I appreciate people doing it respectfully, not using profanity and things like that so that we can make sure that we conduct ourselves passionately and things that we want to communicate, but also do it in a way that shows respect and professionalism here in the council chamber. So I just want to thank folks for following through and doing that. And I look forward to more discussions like that and information like that coming forward. Any... I guess we're moving on. Consent calendar, item number three. Do we have any items to be pulled from the consent calendar by either council or the public? L. I'm sorry?

L, I would like L to be pulled.

All right.

The public would like to pull E and M. E and M. So do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar for all the items except for E, L, and M? So moved. Second. A motion for Council Member Roach, a second from Council Member Torres-Walker. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

All right. Item E, approval of special joint meeting minutes of the City Council and Antioch Police Oversight Commission for June 15, 2026. Do we have a public comment on that?

Yes. Leslie May? Yes.

Good evening, council. I asked to pull this item and I'm asking that the council not approve this because I was there at this meeting. There was a vote taken at the meeting. The meeting was unlawful. I continually called out and read from the state and the federal what the rules were for taking a vote. The assistant city attorney completely ignored it. Everybody heard me. I was right in front of your faces, even closer than I am now. Everyone completely ignored it. Where that vote was supposed to be a combination of the city council and the APOC. First of all, you were very disrespectful to the APOC. APOC is part of this agreement. And believe it or not, there's eyes watching. I actually have a meeting with the DOJ here Thursday. So everybody is watching this. They see this way of trying to get around the agreement, also trying to get around the Burris Agreement as well. You're trying to strip them of finance. You're trying to do everything to them and you disrespected them. And this meeting, the vote was unlawful. I need to say it louder. It was illegal. If you want to know what it is, come to me. I'm sitting right here in front and I'll read you what it said about the vote. So I'm asking that this council not approve those minute meetings for that date because it was wrong. Admit when you're wrong. Admit when you're wrong. I don't care what your title is. Your name is not Jesus. Okay, you're an assistant city attorney. You're an acting city manager. You're also, you can put all the mayor, mayor pro tem, everything. All you guys are council members. You work for us. Remember who you work for. You work for the community. The community wants the APOC. They waited 15 months for this meeting, and you guys ramrodded anything down their throats and ours too. Me, I was vocal because I didn't care like I am now. So I'm asking that those minutes be thrown out. I'm also asking that this meeting happen again and do it lawfully. Like I said, I have a meeting with them right here in town Thursday to go over that and some more things. And believe it or not, I have a second phone. I recorded the whole meeting. But they could look online or look at it and see how you did it. And obviously, coming to town to meet me, that means you guys are wrong. That's all I gotta say about this subject matter.

All right, any other comments on that? We have no further comments. All right, do I have any comments or questions from council? Motion to approve?

Mr. Mayor, I mean, the item, there are no minutes, and the item is to hold this over so that the minutes can be produced. So I would move approval of the recommendation.

All right, motion from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Second. Second from Council Member Torres-Walker. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Item L, adopt a resolution authorizing the acting city manager to execute a third amendment to the professional services agreement with shield protection and public safety. Do we have a question from council? Or is that public? Is there any public comment?

Thank you, Mayor. I pulled this item because it is the third amendment to this contract. And we have yet to get a presentation on if this is effective, is it working, have there been improvements, what's the justification for a new contract? i would just like more of a presentation and a justification for like why we should move forward with a third contract in the event that is that it's not effective and the reason why i'm raising this issue is because i myself and i was also told by mayor pro tem fredis we are receiving calls about the parking lots downtown And people, I mean, I know that the original justification for moving forward with this contract was that people actually wanted to police unhoused people and get them out of city-owned parking lots. And some of those parking lots aren't city-owned. They're privately owned, but we're, instead of using policing services, which we probably are still, we contracted them. I would like this to be held over and for the council to not vote on a third amendment to this contract until we get a full report on if these services have been effective or not.

Yes, City Council. I will come back with additional information for City Council. Okay.

Is there a, yes.

Earlier in the year I asked the same question. I had heard that we had a contract, private security in the parking lots. I have seen some improved security at Smith's Landing when I've been there. but I don't know about the entire downtown and what their jurisdiction is and how effective it's been. So I too agree that it would be worthwhile to have a presentation to learn more about how they interface with the parking lot structures, businesses, and even with our police department to learn more about it. So I agree with you.

I just think the public deserves a presentation because we are spending these dollars not just to provide security for city owned parking lots, but we the city are funding security for privately owned parking lots as well. And we have spent months talking about the budget and budget deficits and how we can't support certain programs. I just think that if we're going to move forward with a third amendment, we should have a justification like we have to justify everything else.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Ms. Cortez, I agree with Council Member Torres-Walker. I know the council will not be in session for the second Tuesday, but we will be in session on the fourth Tuesday of July. Can that item come back at that particular time? Yes. Okay.

So it appears this agreement terminates the end of this month, so we would then be a month without the security service, correct?

That would be correct, yes. It ends June 30th of this.

Okay, so there's an agreement to carry this over to the 28th?

I just think it's important because, and I'm not saying that this is intentional on the part of staff or even the mayor, because I know that you all work on the agenda, is that it seems as though items continue to come back to this council when we're right up against the deadline. Whether it's a contract or a policy, it's always like if we don't do it now, there's gonna be a penalty. If we don't do it now, the contract is gonna end. So I'm hoping that in the future, these type of things could be prioritized far in advance so we don't have to have a pause in services if they are necessary.

Okay. Mr. Mayor. Yes.

On this item, you are correct. We would be absent one month, but I would ask the chief of police to actually have some patrols come down in the parking lots on a more consistent basis until the item comes back to the city council for action. Because I don't want to really leave it vacant for a month, but we would... And one...

But I would... Sir, excuse me.

But I would request... But I would respectfully request, Chief, if you could have some more patrols to come downtown. Excuse me?

Mayor Rotam, are you done? I guess. Okay. Sure.

All right.

All right, so we will move this item

Does the staff want a motion to hold this item over to the second meeting in July?

Yes.

I'll make a motion to hold this item over to the second meeting in July.

Second. Motion by Council Member Torres-Walker, second by Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

All right, item M is approval agreement with Addiction Research and Treatment, BART programs for opioid use disorder treatment and recovery services funded through opioid settlement funds.

This was. Okay, Ms. May, would you like a microphone, Ms. May? Okay.

All right. I'm a mental health therapist. Also, I've worked in medical. So I have, just so that some of these people in here feel like she don't know nothing. I'm a master's degree in healthcare administration. I have a master's degree in public administration. I have a master's degree in clinical psychology, and I just registered for my doctorate program today, because you're never too old to learn. I have worked in mental health as working with my own family, addictions. I had cousins. There was 14 brothers. They all went to Vietnam. They all came back either addictions or severe mental illness. I know about this BART program. I'm saying the city has no business giving them any money. They've been running that program, making their money, getting grants, doing everything. Why are we giving them $288,052 when we could be taking that money and giving it to our Angelo Quinto Crisis Response Team? And like I said, I gave my background to show that not just that, but working, I worked with the federal and state and county. I've also worked in Santa Rita jail and I have worked with people. Um, there's nothing but problems from this place. People come into this, uh, council and talk about people live around there. The problems coming out there, the, uh, The people sleeping on sidewalks. I've been by there several times where the ambulance is out there picking up somebody from the sidewalk. Just came out of the place. How in the devil are you going to walk out the door, two minutes later you're overdosing? So this is no. I have a problem with the city funding, giving them funds. Now, I don't know, I said opioid settlement funds, so I'm unaware of that, what happened prior to this, but I just had to make my statement that we have no business providing money, because if so, then give it to Committee to Violence Solutions, where I worked before, give it to a lot of these other mental health agencies out here, where people, are getting maybe children recovering from being born to drug addicted parents. If you want to do something like that, that's fine. But just to throw good money to bad, uh-uh. I don't agree with this. Thank you.

All right. Any other public comment on this? Public comment?

Yeah, so I think I kind of was reading this over, kind of know a little bit about what's going on. I would just ask that, When it comes to the BART, there are the reasons why, along with one of our unhoused friends that passed away due to an overdose, why we started our own harm reduction project within Facing Homelessness to try to prevent some of our unhoused friends from passing away on our streets. So with the BART program, though, although I do support it, I do think that you guys really need to focus on them weaning people off. That is like my biggest thing right now with BART. I've seen like even going up there to visit people that are outside. I mean, they even have said that they feel as though the doses that they are giving them is not like weaning them off. And I think that's really, really important. I think there needs to be some research on that. Because as you know, in that area, I mean, you literally for years have seen people out there, and no offense to anyone, but looking like zombies running in the street. And so I think that it's really a serious thing, especially in this area, why we need to really try to figure out what they're doing, how they're weaning people off, how they're getting people in lower and lower dosages so that they can better themselves. Because just staying on that same dose And like I said, there's other issues with the program. And a lot of people love the program, that have went into the program, gotten out of the program, are doing really well. But that's just one of the things that I've found that is problematic, especially in that area, is that they're not doing the best that they can. And we all know if people are on these harm reduction supplies or whatever or things that the county gets paid for as many people as they have that are in there. So we wanna make sure that they're doing the right thing and I think that you guys can do a little bit more to try to figure out what they're doing. I don't know if they need a presentation, you need a presentation or you need to do a little bit more diving into them being able to help more people get off of these drugs, thank you.

All right, any other public comment? No further public comments. All right, it's before the city council. Any questions or anything from staff we'd like to note here? Staff presentation, please.

Yes, we'll have Director Montserrat-Cabral come up and give a little presentation. Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and council members. This item requests approval of an agreement with BART programs in Antioch, utilizing the city's opioid settlement funds to provide direct opioid use disorder treatment, patient navigation, and recovery support services for Antioch residents. Since receiving the settlement funds, the city has prioritized investments that address opioid related harms and improve community health outcomes. After evaluating available remediation, strategies, staff determined that expanding access to evidence-based treatment and recovery services through an established local provider offers one of the most effective opportunities to reduce overdose risk, support, and long-term recovery. The proposed agreement would provide direct services to residents while ensuring the city's settlement funds are used in accordance with allowable opioid remediation activities. I do want to say that we looked over everything and BART is under new leadership under Tracy Hearn. Tracy Hearn, which is the director, is here to answer any additional questions. So I'm gonna bring her down.

Thank you.

Good afternoon and good afternoon community. I first want to say I appreciate the opportunity to speak with everyone today. I do understand that we have had a bad reputation in the past, though I do want everyone to know we did receive a proclamation from the City of Council the beginning of this year due to the turnaround that had been done. And so that's one. Two, I have been in healthcare for 25 plus years and I also have a master's in healthcare and I have been working in mental health. So I want to make sure everyone is aware that BART Antioch currently serves more than 640 patients. When I started, we had 695 patients. I've done a turnaround for BART. I've looked at all of the urinalysis. I've looked at the counseling that had been done. No, it was not being handled correctly. I have it on now. We had discharge patients. I do want to be very honest and upfront. We had to make sure that the program was being completely compliant up to policy and regulations. It is now. And if you drive by BART, you will see that there has been a whole remediation of BART clinic, not only on the outside, but on the inside and for all patient care. we have not only new counselors, but also new nursing staff. So I don't know who in this building has been in there, but I also have my patient navigator in the building who is here for another item listed and she's doing an amazing job. So not only are we doing case management and recovery support services, but every day we work with individuals and families affected by opiate addiction. improving their health, helping them achieve stability, and rebuild their lives. The proposed opiate settlement partnership will allow BART Antioch to expand access to treatment by offering weekend treatment services. currently we do not do that currently we are not open to counseling and primary care services on saturday and sundays we this would actually give us the opportunity to see patients on saturdays and sundays for primary care in opiate And that would be seven days a week. And so that's for Antioch, that's for our patients, that's for our community. And this is also to help support underinsured and uninsured patients. people who don't have insurance. So this settlement fund will help people who don't have cash, who don't have a structured payment plan. And so we've thought of every different way possible to help people. And it's providing dedicated patient navigator, which I have already, but it's giving her access to go out in the community, work with the community members that have already been up here talking. This also is in partnership with Angelo Quintino Community Response Team. So this is joining us together. and working as a team together. And this initiative creates a direct pathway from community outreach and engagement to immediate treatment, access and ongoing recovery and support by reducing barriers to create and providing timely access to treatment. We can better serve Antioch residents who are struggling with opiate use disorders and help prevent overdose relating to harm reduction to our community. So I would really appreciate if you guys can please approve and adopt this and sign it. I also wanna thank the PD because they've done one excellent job with us in communicating with us. Chief Vigil, we email and I let him know what's going on and we've had a reduction of us having to call the PD because of all the work that's been going on at BART. So I do hear the public, but at the same time, I know the work that's going on. And so I appreciate everyone listening, but the past year that I've been there, there's been a lot of work. And that's all. Do you have any questions?

Thank you. Any questions?

Ms. Cabral, this is the Opioid Settlement Funds. Yes, correct. Can it be expended for any other purpose?

No, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. That was one of the things I was going to mention. The Opioid Settlement Funds, the City of Antioch has been receiving for the last six, seven years. and we wanted to make sure that the work we were going to be doing with it was going to be impactful. Last year, we did a screening of the movie Fentanyl High, We also had a community panel. We did a resource fair. And that spent maybe a little under $900. The opioid settlement funds have to be used for specific things. They cannot replace Medi-Cal. They cannot replace Medicare. They cannot replace insurance reimbursements. They cannot replace existing grants. These funds must supplement and expand services, not replace existing funding sources. One of the things that we really looked into, and we are still searching to continue to fund Angelo Quinto Community Response Team with other funds outside of general fund. And one of the things we really considered was using these opioid settlement funds for Angelo Quinto. But based on several conversations, we couldn't make that happen, and this was the next best thing.

And so you're in charge, Community Resources Department, so you actually oversee this particular contract? Yes. And what's your recommendation to the City Council?

My recommendation is to pass it unanimously.

Okay, thank you.

Director Cabral, is this $288,000, is that just a lump sum that's given to BART, or how does that work?

No, it works the way our contracts usually work is that they're reimbursement basis. So they submit an invoice monthly or quarterly, whatever is agreed upon on the agreement. And so technically, although it's up to $288,000, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what they're going to get. It depends on what's realistic spending on a month to month.

And then as far as security is concerned, I understand, Ms. Hearn, you've done a lot of work securing not just the facility and the parking lot, but the area around it, which is...

I have 24-7 security there. I'm sorry.

I have 24-7 security there. While we're open Monday through Friday, I have a BART employee who is security. And then when we are closed, I have security, a third-party security company. And then on Friday to Monday, I have a third-party security company.

Is any of this funding dedicated towards security? Yes. About approximately what portion of it?

15%. 15%. Okay. Thank you.

All right, any other questions of Ms. Cabral or Ms. Hearn?

Yes. Mr. Mayor, if there's no other questions, I'll move approval.

I have a motion by Mayor Potemperatus. I'll second.

I just want to make one comment about it. I live in the area, I live real close to that particular area, and I have to tell you that I've seen significant improvement there, because I would receive a number of calls from residents in the area, both business owners and community members, and the neighborhoods around that 7-Eleven and that Sunset-Davidson area, including the 7-Eleven owner. And I would just say that what I've seen take place in the last, say, four months has been pretty significant. And when you receive the proclamation, I think I said something to you about that, So I do hear what you're saying, I do observe what the results are, so I would just, I support the work you're doing and continue to, because that was the only really drawback that I've heard from people, was just the problems that they were experiencing with people that were kind of loitering and hanging out, and it was creating problems for others who were just trying to either walk to their physicians that are in that particular, because there's a lot of medical offices there, or to the 7-Eleven or the local park over there. So anyway, I just, I do see what you're doing. I do see the results of your hard work, and I would just ask you to continue with the work that you're doing.

I do wanna say one more thing. Just so the community knows, if we have a patient that either has narcotics on the premises, buys near our premises, they are discharged. They have 15 days and they have to go. If they come back on our premises and they have narcotics again, it's done. But once they are discharged, they cannot go to another BART. They have to go to another type of a facility. So I do want everyone to know that.

All right, thank you. So we have a motion second by Council Member Rocha. Please cast your votes.

Thank you.

Motion passes 5-0.

All right, moving on to item number four, public hearing for conduit financing for the Hillcrest Summit apartment project. City Manager Cortez.

Yes, good evening, Mayor and City Council. So this item is the developer of the Hillcrest Summit Apartments Project, and it's requesting the issuance of revenue bonds by the California Municipal Finance Authority. To issue these bonds, the Internal Revenue Service requires a public hearing be held. A public hearing for this item was held on April 14th, 2026, and the motion to adopt the resolution failed with a vote two to two, with one council member abstaining. The item is back before council tonight. And we have Zoe presenting today, our planning manager.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, good evening Mayor and council members. We are here this evening to conduct a public hearing pursuant to the Federal Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act or TEFRA. TEFRA requires that a public hearing be held by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which a project to be financed with tax exempt financing is located. And that the governing body approve the proposed financing. Cypress Equities Investments has asked that the California Municipal Finance Authority, the CMFA, be the issuer of tax exempt financing in the amount not to exceed $50 million of tax exempt revenue bonds to one, finance or refinance the acquisition, construction, improvement, and equipping of Hillcrest Summit Apartments, a multi-family rental housing project located at the corner of Hillcrest Avenue and Easter Gallus Road, APN 052-100-068 and 052-100-069 in Antioch, California. And two, pay certain expenses incurred in connection with the issuance of the bonds. The CMFA is a joint powers authority formed to assist local governments, nonprofit organizations and businesses with the issuance of both taxable and tax exempt debt. The debt to be issued by the CMFA will be the sole responsibility of the borrower and the city will not have financial or legal obligations or responsibilities regarding the repayment of the debt. All financing documents will carry disclaimers that the loan is not an obligation of the city. the city will also bear no cost in the issuance of the proposed debt this is a private loan with the borrower and their bank a tougher hearing for this item was held on april 14 2026 and the motion to adopt the resolution failed with a vote of two to two with one council member abstaining the item is back before council tonight It is recommended that the City Council adopt a resolution approving the issuance of bonds by the CMFA for the borrower. Again, such adoption is solely for the purposes of satisfying the requirements of TEFRA, the Internal Revenue Code, and California Government Code Section 6500. There's a representative from the CMFA who can help answer any questions you have. And a representative from Cypress Equities, the product developer, is here tonight as well. And I'm available.

All right, thank you. Does council have any questions of staff? No? All right, no questions. This is a public hearing. We're now going to open it. Do we have a proponent?

Yes, we have one proponent, Leslie May.

Would you like the microphone?

No.

No, okay. Excuse me, is the applicant the proponent or on this item? Yeah, the applicant is a proponent.

So nobody can speak without it.

That would be under public comment. Then we'll move it to public comment afterwards.

Okay. Yeah. Is the applicant want to make a presentation or say anything?

I'm Garrett Borges with Cypress Equity. Appreciate your time and your reconsidering the item this evening. Not a whole lot to say in addition to I think what Zoe has been able to present so far. Just wanted to make myself available for any questions that you all might have this evening.

All right.

And my name is Jared. I'm representing the California Municipal Finance Authority, the bond issuer in the transaction. I'm available for any questions as well.

All right, thank you. Is there an opponent to this item? Ralph Hernandez?

Ralph Hernandez, I am the opponent. First off, I think that bonds, bonds, bonds, ultimately come back to bite you in the rear. And for the city to get some type of participation in this, it could very well come back on you. And I know the documents say it's not gonna be your responsibility, on and on and on. Within the paperwork, it mentions that the city is gonna get some of the money some money somehow either paying the city for services or trying to mitigate certain things. I'm wondering what that is. How much is the city looking to gain money-wise from the project? There's no clarity within the documents. As the project proposes, I think it's like 164 units, and they call them rental units. Well, that equates to roughly an additional 300 to 400 residents that the city's gonna have to contend with, which is another reason I oppose it. I think we're choking with so many so many residents' growth that we can't even provide for the proper services to serve our community. It includes the city, it includes the school district, overcrowdedness. So there will be impacts to the city, there will be impacts to the school district, as well as other impacts. Now, I did earlier talk about public safety. As you know, the general plan says, and according to the calculations, we should have about 144 sworn officers. The city has done very little to provide that safety to our community. This project, if it goes through and you have the occupancy that would be expected, you're just further requiring a certain responsibility from our school district, our public safety personnel. We can't do it. We keep hearing about the city being unsafe. That's true. The city's unsafe. The city is dangerous. And yet you add more people to our community by projects such as this. You're like shooting our city in the foot by going ahead with the developers. If they want money for their project, if they want their project to go ahead, Fine, go ahead and borrow the money, but do not make it through a bond program. Although I understand there is a bond program that is available to them. But we still don't need more residents added to what we already have. We don't need all of the problems that additional residents will create for years for decades i've come before the council and when i was on the council i spoke about how additional stress tensions crime and everything else comes when you add more people you know I'm not here to criticize them, the developers. I'm here to say common sense, common sense. Our police, as you add more people, you add more crime, you add more crowded schools, you add more tensions, more problems to our community. Is that what the council wants? In order for the developers to have what they want, Now, what kind of mitigation are they providing public safety as an example? Are they gonna have personnel, police personnel, public safety personnel? I'm not talking about a parking lot, which you guys just got through talking about having public safety at the downtown parking lots. What are they providing as far as public safety for their residents? At some point, whether it happens or doesn't, the residents are gonna say, you know what, I don't know if they disclosed the crime that Antioch has when I came and rented or I bought one of their units. They could take the city to court because ultimately your decision making would be part of that. And our officers, Our officers are out there working, strained, under stress, and in some cases, extended hours. All of that, through my experiences, creates a lot of strain. It creates a lot of problems. And you create some officers, unfortunately, under those circumstances, they make mistakes. Or, in some cases, you have some of the officers that do it on purpose. It's like, what the hell? The city doesn't care about me. So there's a negative reaction sometimes that does happen. First and foremost, consider the safety even to those possible future residents. Consider the safety to that particular project because when you have public safety, in some areas, the neighborhoods end up suffering additional crime within that neighborhood, within that area. I don't think there's an immunity there that will not happen. You need to, you need to concentrate on working toward getting your police manpower up to where you are supposed to. That's your responsibility. That's your job as an elected official. I know, I was up there. I was up there, seated up there. And I keep harping about public safety because Antioch has already been, look it up in the internet, Antioch has already been said out there that Antioch is one of the most dangerous cities in Contra Costa County. So how do you like that moniker for our city and for our community? How can you as responsible, hopefully responsible elected officials, Not care, not care about your own employees, your officers. You're putting even our police personnel into danger, additional danger when you keep looking at more and more citizens without addressing what you don't have. What you don't have is a sufficient amount of public safety. our businesses are suffering because people won't go to some of those stores because of lack of public safety. The developers need to think about this too. They need to think about it, how do they respond to their possible future residents that they either rented or sold to them a residence and put them in danger, potential danger. Statistically, it will happen. You will have some negative consequences of additional growth, some of the additional growth. You cannot just continue to avoid it and cater to more and more growth. So getting back to the bonds, no, I don't think that the city in any way whatsoever should be a part of this financing, bonds program, whatever, and then get a cut, a cut of the finances. and say, well, we're getting something for it. But the consequences are far more expensive than I think some people will admit. You might get, let's say, $1,000, but if it's costing you $5,000, $6,000, $10,000 financially, you didn't gain nothing. And the consequences to our community overall and our school district No, you should not be part of this. Thank you.

All right, the proponent has five minutes to respond to or rebut any of the statements or comments by the opponent.

Thank you, honorable city council. Again, my name is Jared. I represent the bond issuer for this transaction. First and foremost, the city is not a party on the transaction. The CMFA is acting as the issuer of the bonds. And to address the payment, the fees that the CMFA receives for this bond issuance, as part of our policy, we just share 25% of our fees with the host municipality, in this case, the city of Antioch. So it's just a CMFA policy. We just give away some of our fees. And again, just to echo what's already been said, the city is not liable, has no legal or financial responsibility or obligation with the repayment. of the bonds that are to be issued. Thank you.

All right. Garrett, do you want to say something else?

I think quickly in addition, these projects pay all of our impact fees as part of the development for the project, which goes to several of the concerns that the opponent had brought up help with the schools and those sorts of things and the impacts that he was concerned with there as well. So we hope that us developing this and providing these affordable units to the community is where the police officers and the teachers and those types of folks within the community that need a little bit of help on their housing can come and be a part of the community here. So hopefully a benefit to the community rather than a perceived blithe.

All right, thank you.

Do we have any public comment? Yes, we have two comment cards. Leslie May followed by Edgar M.

Good evening, council. I hope that you would take a vote to approve this project. This is to help low income, very low income families to get housing. some of the issues we have with the in-houses that they work, some of them work and they're living out of their cars going to the Y or going somewhere to take a bath and change to go to work that day and they get off and they come back to live in their cars. So they're working. If they had a place that they could afford to move into and there's nothing like that feeling of having A roof over your head, doors locked, where you feel like whatever possessions you have will be protected. This is greatly needed. And, you know, I hear the cold, there's cold talking. We don't know what cold talking is. Antioch's got problems because Antioch's got problems. Antioch's got problems because there's been, what... whatever you want to call this place, has been for many years. Some things have been corrected, that's fine. But a lot of the crime and a lot of things that happen here are not even Antioch residents. It's people coming in from other cities, doing their dirt here, and then going back. So, and the other cold word that I heard was, we don't want those folks, black, brown people coming out here. This is called a thing a thing. But we're not the ones going around like this guy did today, shooting up and killing somebody my age and 73 years old today at a library, Jacob Cotillard, because he wanted to do another Columbine. He's bragging about it. He was arrested, taken into custody very gently, and he's now awaiting court. So what I'm saying is this is nothing to me but a an attempt to keep as many people of color from moving out here or trying to do better for themselves and just giving up and going wherever. We need this here. I really am glad it's on here. I was here last meeting when you said you were coming back for the public hearing on it. And I really want you to consider there are people in this city that need housing that can't afford $2,000, $2,600, $3,000 a month for one, two, three bedrooms. I didn't see any, what do you call them? The little smaller ones I think I just read was one, two, and three bedrooms. So this provides individuals and the families a chance to improve their mental health, improve their self esteem, and to do better in the city. So I just hope you guys vote for this project. Thank you.

Edgar M. Okay, he does not wish to speak, so we can move on. Any further public comments? Okay, Mr. Becker?

Thank you, I'll be brief with the three minutes. I thought we were at five minutes for public hearings, but I guess we're at three minutes tonight. So, you know, just a couple of points. Reason for these bonds, I imagine, is you'll probably be pursuing 4% tax credits. And to receive a tax credit allocation, you have to have municipal bonds tied to it. These bonds and these tax credits are government bonds that go out to communities at large in a competitive space. We want to bring these bond dollars to the city of Antioch. But we also have to understand that there is a mix. Now, I'll first say 300 residents here versus the 1,100 units that were approved in the ranch single family housing project that will probably bring 5,000 individuals. The difference is those individuals will pay property taxes. This property will come with property tax exemptions. But that is the cost that you pay to bring affordable housing to your community. And to the point that we will be bringing individuals into our city, if anybody in this community truly cares, go knock on doors in your community and ask people if they're struggling. Ask them if they can afford to live where they're living. Because I'll tell you right now that 60% of your area median income in Contra Costa County is predominantly your city of Antioch income. Baseline. That's where you're at. Historically, people have come to Antioch because it is lower in the market. And when I say historically, I'm talking about over the last 20 years. Before that, inflation was rampant and we won't speak to that. You know, as people continue to get pushed out of market rate housing, there has to be an alternative. I will say... And I expressed this in the last meeting, that this project had zero community engagement. And for a project that is holistically for the community, that is abstract. That makes no sense to me. So I encourage developers to engage with their communities so that disconnects like this don't happen. Work with your cities on planning. worth your communities on receiving that market, that housing stock, because it is needed. So I do support this project, but I always encourage dialogue.

Thank you.

Crystal Law.

I'm not going to take the whole three minutes, but I just wanted to let you guys know that this is why I started speaking at the City Council meetings because my family of five pays over $2,300 just to live in Sycamore Corridor. I live in a crappy duplex that has horrible water, horrible electricity, just a horrible planning of housing, okay? And I paid $2,300. I have been homeless multiple times in the last four years because we could not afford housing in the city of Antioch. I actually moved to Eielton in 2019 because it was cheaper out there than it was out here. So please know that when you guys are voting on things like this, it's not just bringing people from all over to move here, it's helping the residents who are already here who can't simply afford to live here already on their own. So when you're looking at this stuff, look at the fact that the residents are going to be able to to basically be affected by this. Thank you.

We have no further speaker cards.

All right. Does council have any questions of? Are you going to close the hearing? Oh, I'm sorry. Are we going to close public hearing? Thank you. Any questions of the staff or of the applicant? I do. Yes.

So Ms. Meredith, the question is, for me, it's never been a question of affordability of providing this type of housing. But how did we get to this point? Because I think, and the reason why I'm asking, the public needs to understand what this project may or may not have.

yeah so this project is located in one of our 10 commercial infill housing sites with located within the city and these were adopted in 2022 as overlay districts on commercial properties in the city in vacant or underutilized properties the overlay was part of a grant project that the city did So the overlay allows the underlying commercial zoning to remain while allowing by right development of multifamily housing on those sites. And this is one of the sites. So the site was administratively approved in the fall of 2025. So it is before you for the tougher hearing tonight.

So this property was zoned for commercial, correct?

So it still is. It's housing and commercial. So it can be either. And that allowed the flexibility for the developers for these 10 sites. And that process took place and ultimately was approved by city council in 2022 with the standards.

And so Mr. Hernandez talked about money coming back to the city of Antioch. Do we have an idea what that amount may be?

So did you mean for the bond or the- For the bond. Yeah, I would look to-

It's based off of what the final bond issuance amount will be right now. It's projected to be roughly $15,000 to the city. $15,000.

Thank you. And Ms. Meredith, could the city require police services on this particular parcel?

Yeah, so as the applicant spoke, the developer does pay development impact fees. And then the city has community facilities districts for police.

Roughly how much are we talking about? Would it pay for one officer?

I believe the CFD is about, is this multi-family housing or single-family housing? I believe the CFD is about $300 per unit paid on a yearly basis, but I don't have the CFD document in front of me, unfortunately.

Okay. So could the back room please put the project up on the screen? OK, so this is not the first time this project has come, as the staff indicated. And I just want to tell you the journey I had with this particular item. So I was contacted by a representative from the developer to meet and to discuss this particular project. And so we're talking months ago, probably six to eight months ago. And frankly, I sat down and I absolutely could not believe what was being proposed. It's not a question of affordability, because God knows we need more affordable housing in our community. But there are some issues here that I have problems with and I discussed them. So if you look at the property, What's going to happen is that people are going to take the Highway 4 ramp turn off. And if you've ever driven in this particular area, some of those people come 40, 50 miles off the freeway. If the light is green, they turn and they just keep on going downhill crest at an excessive speed. So for me, when I looked at this project, the first issue for me was safety. So what do we have here on this particular project? The traffic congestion is a level F. And just like high school, F means failure. What this means is people that will be using Hillcrest, East Turgalus, and Shattuck will have complete congestion, particularly when we have our commuters. And so that was the first big issue for me. And if you look at this, there's only one entrance way into this property. Is that right, Miss Meredith?

So you can see, and the developer may want to speak to this, there's Chaddock and then Hillcrest has five ways.

To enter this project, there's one way. And it comes off of East Tregalus, Chaddock, right?

So the developer, again, they're Shattuck and Hillcrest.

I'm just asking you. The way into this project is from Shattuck.

Shattuck and Hillcrest, as you can see.

And the exit is, if you look at the very bottom, look at the parking lot and look at the gray, and the gray goes out to Hillcrest. So cars are going to come and stop and look to their left and pray to God that they can go from zero to 50 to make sure they don't get hit. Level F. Now we're talking about 165 units. Are there 165 parking spaces?

This project has 145 parking stalls.

So there's, and assume that one person or two people that have a car, there are not enough parking spaces here to actually facilitate the people who live there to park there. So where are they going to go? They can't park on Hillcrest. They cannot park on East Tregalus. The only place that they can park is Shattuck. So what's going to happen is the overflow cars are going to go into the neighborhoods. And I can tell you, as I am alive, we will have residents coming down, screaming at us. What's wrong with you idiots? Why did you ever approve this project? It has ruined our quality of life. The other thing is what else is on shadow? St. John Lutheran church. They're not going to be happy because their parishioners are going to have a very difficult time finding parking to come to services during the week and on Sunday. So again, we are creating more problems. The other, if you look at the property, the borderline, that is a gas station with multiple pumps. It is a 24-7, 7-11 store. And it is also a car wash. Notice that wonderful, beautiful green that is being used in this picture. The property line is virtually a couple of feet from the commercial area. So there will be fumes. There will be noise 24-7. Do you think the people living there are going to come to the council and scream at us? Yeah, they will. And from my perspective, there will be children And I don't know about you, but as a parent, I would not want my child to be playing around this particular area for fear that they're going to head off to where the traffic is worse or head off into the gas station. Now, when I met with the representative, I brought up these and a lot more issues on this particular project. And I said, look, I am absolutely supportive of affordable housing and we need it. But there are safety issues here. Instead of building the complex right next to the property line, flip it over. And there is property to flip it over. No, no, we don't want to do that. That would be too expensive. Well, what are you going to do about parking? Because you're not providing enough parking. Well, that's what's required. That's what we're going to do. So this little area that has blue, that is for the children. That little area right next to cars that are going to be parking in that particular area. As a parent, that would scare me. So I made lots of recommendations in the expectation that as a good builder, that they would consider some of those suggestions. And they never, ever called me back. They never said a word. They never said, gee, you know what, Mr. Freitas, we don't like all your suggestions, but we think we can improve this particular project. Never did they come back. Now, how did we get here? It is state law and we did create this and it was improved in 2022 and we are stuck with it. And so when this item came in April and when the council basically said no to this, oh my God, we get a letter from who? We get a letter from the Department of Housing and Community Development from the state of California. basically because we're now dealing with mandates from the state of California to the local jurisdiction that you all need to build a lot more affordable housing. And if you do not approve this, then guess what? You will be out of compliance in your approved housing element. And Ms. Meredith, what impact would that be to the city of Antioch if we did not have an approved housing element?

So if there's no how approved housing element you would be subject to the builders remedy for example Which would allow housing to be built anywhere in the city?

You could be the subject of fines and also increased scrutiny by each CD for example I want to make sure you heard that a Developer can come into the city and build whatever she or he wants and none of us here could raise an objection. None of us could change what they want to build. What kind of projects do you think we're going to get? And another question, how many stories is this building?

So this project is a four-story project.

So could you put the picture back up, please? Here we are, one of the most important entrances to the city of Antioch. You're going to come off Highway 4, or you're going to go down Hillcrest, and what are you going to look? Think about this. You're going to have a gas station, and right behind that gas station, all along the perimeter of the property line, you're going to have a four-story structure. It is so ugly. Is that what I want as a city council member? No, I do not want that monolith there with a gas station in front, 7-Eleven, with a four-story building, and the color scheme is usually brown or a deep, deep gray. It is ugly, it is ugly, it is ugly, and it's not something that I would embrace. So it's not just coming before us and asking us to approve this funding. This project should never have been allowed. But it is. And the state of California basically has said to us, the city of Antioch, local government, responsible to the citizens in this room, we don't care what you like or dislike. If you don't do it, that shotgun that's at your head will pull the trigger. So tonight, frankly, we have no choice. Because the alternative is even worse than this. And that's the tragedy, from my perspective. And I realize the issue is to approve this, but frankly, there's 10 of these project people. There are gonna be 100, if not thousands, of these kind of developments. And I think it's disgusting, and I think it's wrong, and I think, who am I holding responsible? The state of California.

Anybody else want to follow that?

So are we voting to avoid a lawsuit? Do we need a motion? Or what are we doing?

We have no choice.

If the council would like to make a motion, the council can make a motion.

I just have a quick question for Ms. Meredith. So, and I agree wholeheartedly with Mayor Pro Tem, see I got it right. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas, is this even going to fulfill any of our arena requirements?

Yes, so RHNA is based on building permits. So assuming that the developer is able to move forward then and issue building permits, then yes, these count towards RHNA.

And one of the commenters brought up earlier, is it going to benefit Antioch residents, Antioch workforce residents, Antioch residents who are struggling? Or are they just, well, first come, first serve?

Yeah, yes, I would speak to if the developer has any insight into the leasing of their project.

I can say that we try to give priority where we can to Antioch residents. We're obviously bound by a lot of fair housing laws, and those are very strict as far as how we are allowed to give preference, but within the confines of fair housing law, we do try to provide preference to folks within Antioch, yes. I think I heard a question in there. Happy to answer any of the Mayor Freitas' items as well if you'd like me to speak on any of those. You want to speak?

That's okay. Okay.

I just think we got, the city rightfully selected this as one of the housing overlay district sites. This is one of 10 and we were happy and excited to fulfill what we understood was the council's wishes and the city's wishes to bring affordable housing here to this site. One of the items that you mentioned was traffic and access. There is actually two points of entry and two points of exit. They can exit on Shattuck and they can also exit on Hillcrest or enter at either of those locations. As part of the housing overlay district, the city also conducted an environmental study which included traffic analysis for the project and one of the ways that we mitigate those impacts is by paying the impact fees and those fees go to the city for you to improve these public intersections infrastructures roads those that's the intent at least of the fee and we are happy to pay those as part of the project One of the other items that you had mentioned was the parking. Because of our proximity to BART, the state actually states that we don't have to have any parking as part of the project. We, as good developers who will own and operate this, don't think that that's prudent or wise, and so we've fit as much parking as we could on the site. It's a challenging site. It's located on a significant hill, So there's a significant amount of cost associated with building on a hill, including cutting in, retaining, those sorts of items. So the parking was very expensive for us to do, but we were able to manage to do that within the project budget. And you had mentioned the church. I wouldn't want to characterize them as being mad about an affordable housing project coming across the street. Perhaps they are welcoming potential community members to their church instead.

I just wanted to clarify, this item is not to approve or deny the project. This is a TEP for hearing. We are here to really vote in favor of whether we are going to propose issuance of one or more series of revenue bonds. And as stated in the language here, it's not the responsibility, the liability of the city of Antioch with these bonds being issued, if that should happen. My other understanding, just to clarify, should we vote this down as we did last time, They can also go to the county, I believe, or to the state, and get the bonds elsewhere, and we would be subject to the consequences that you alluded to earlier. So whether we approve the approval of these bonds that we are not going to be responsible for, if we choose not to, they'll go somewhere else, get it done. and then we'll be subject to the consequences that have been laid out, which would also probably lean to litigation costs for our attorneys to fight a battle that we can't win. So I'm not crazy about the project for the reasons you've stated, but we are here to talk about the bonds being issued, yes or no, not about whether we're accepting or denying the project. I am in favor of affordable housing because it's necessary and needed. Most of the families that live in our community came here for that reason, including my own. But again, just to clarify, this is not a vote on whether we approve or deny this particular project. It's a vote on the bond issuance that we are not going to be responsible for shall we approve it tonight. I'll make a motion to move for approval and we'll see if we get a second and the votes that are necessary or we'll be where we were before.

So I have a quick question. Ms. Meredith, there was a few things that the city council asked for at the last hearing where had to do with the aesthetics of the building, access, things like that. Do you know if the applicant addressed any of those?

I believe the applicant is willing to work with us some on the aesthetics, including changing the siding and kind of changing the color to be more of a shade of green, like I'd say a neutral, lighter green compared to the gray. And they have some driveway improvements along Hillcrest as well. to try and address some of those aesthetic concerns that you had, along with the traffic.

Do you have a slide that shows the- I do not have that. Okay, all right. All right, that was all the questions I have, so is there- Did you make a motion? I did make a motion. All right, we have a motion from Council Member Rocha.

Do you have a second?

I'm going to second, because I have to. Second from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please cast your votes. Motion passes 5-0. All right, we're going to take a 10-minute break until 9.30. Meeting adjourned.

Recess is called at 9.20 p.m. Thank you.

you you

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So, Thank you. Okay.

All right, we're returning from our 10-minute recess. Mr. Clerk, could you please take the roll? Thank you.

Council Member Rocha? Here. Council Member Torres-Walker? Present. Council Member Wilson? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Freitas? Present. Mayor Bernal? Here. Thank you.

We have a quorum at 9.31 p.m. All right, moving on to item number seven, or excuse me, item number eight, Statement of Investment Policy. I will turn this over to our acting city manager.

Yes, this item is in front of you and it is requesting, this is actually an item that City Council requested that we brought back for consideration and discussion regarding the ethical investing. So we're gonna have Finance Director Merchant presenting this item tonight.

All right, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. As stated, the Statement of Investment Policy was presented for adoption on June 9th. There was a minor change to the existing investment policy. There was discussion from advocacy groups about ethical investing, and city council also identified that they were interested in that as well. The motion to adopt the policy did not pass. It was 2-2 for approval, but it did ask that it come back, and it also asked that the city treasurer meet with the advocacy groups to get their points of view on the ethical investing. One thing that I did want to make clear in terms of asking it to be approved by June 30th is not facing any fines or penalties from the state of California, as we already do have an adopted investment policy. So if this draft is not approved, the existing policy will still remain in effect. However, our current investment policy does require that the policy be brought back to council for review and updates when there are changes to government code, or if council directs some sort of change, or at least every two years. In practice, the investment policy has been brought back every other June, so it was last brought back in June 2024. Hence, it was brought back in June 2026 to meet the policy guidelines being in compliance with that policy to adopt it by June 30th. So what we're requesting this evening is to adopt a resolution approving the statement of investment policy with the one minor change that was recommended by PFM AM. But then also provide direction on inclusion of social responsible investing or environmental social and government investing practices. Should the council say yes, we want to explore ESG investing, it's not something that happens overnight. You don't adopt the policy and say we want ESG investing. You have to determine risk tolerance and other factors in determining what sectors, industries, etc. that you want to include or exclude from the policy. We do have Justin Rosuelo, who's the investment advisor from Here this evening we have a brief presentation for him to discuss these items. So then once he gets through this presentation we can turn it over for public comment and council questions. So with that I'll introduce Justin Wasuelo. Here is the, sorry. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Merchant and Acting CM Cortez, Mayor and Council. It's a delight to be in front of you again. We have a presentation that we prepared at the request of the city. This is with respect to sustainable and environmental ESG type investing offerings that we make to clients across the state here in California. So as you might remember from our prior conversation, the primary requirements of the investments made upon operating monies of jurisdictions like the city are for safety and liquidity followed by yield. It is not general that we would see an ESG type policy or socially responsible investing policy as part of that mandate as dictated by state code. That said, there are jurisdictions that do prioritize those sorts of features in their investments. And in this case, for example, the city of Antioch already does have a socially responsible investing mandate in its policy. As Director Merchant wrote in her memo, you'll see that the current policy includes in subsection 5.3, the city will not invest in any companies that produce alcohol for public consumption or tobacco products. So we do have those sorts of ideas already embedded in the policy, and we can expand upon those. So what I'm gonna talk about today is, again, just the firm, an update there, as well as the offerings we make with respect to ESG and how we kind of get to that. So if you turn your packet and you'll see on the screen also, my presentation begins on page 615. Is it working? Oh, thank you. Switch on the side. Thank you.

Okay, there we go.

All right, so from overview, as you might remember, PFM Asset Management was acquired and is a division of US Bancorp Asset Management, which is wholly owned by US Bank. We only serve public sector entities. That is what we prided ourselves on for decades. In total, we manage about 176 point including over 40 years in business as well as 700 public sector clients across the country. Specifically in California, we oversee about 60.9 billion in public sector money. That includes 177 clients. And for cities specifically, we manage about $12 billion for 68 cities across the state.

So again, we're delighted to be partnering with the city.

Now just with respect to the breadth of resources, aside from me and the rest of the team, I think the main area that I wanna focus on is our credit research. Now I think I spoke about this before, the credit research team produces our approved list of securities that can be purchased by entities like the city. So there's already a pretty narrow focus of the number of sorts of securities that an entity could purchase that would be suitable for the constraints that are described by SATE code. So our credit research team embodies these sorts of folks on the screen. We've got about nine shown here. I believe we have 10. We just had a more recent hire that joined. They specifically only look at credit. They're a separate function from me. They make sure that on a fundamental basis, the securities that are purchased for the city meet the standards for liquidity and safety. Now with respect to the approved list, we conduct fundamental analysis, we look at quarterly earnings reports, we have sort of a risk profile for the sorts of credits that we look to, and then ultimately there's a sort of consensus committee that determines how all these names make it to our approved list. So that's just for a standard sort of investing sort of process, right? So once we have the universe of investments whittled down to this sort of funnel of what we've approved, then we can move on to sustainable and ESG type investing. So again, we're preparing this in accordance with your request from the last city council meeting. And we still defer to state code and state laws, obviously, right? Despite what might be described by any entity's ESG or SRI policy, we still must follow state code. So, for example, if a company or if a client had, for example, said, we don't want investments in Tesla, for whatever reason that may be, that may not already meet our standards for credit risk, and it currently doesn't, so that already is not available for investment by a client like the city. So we looked at the approved list after state code, and then from there we look at your investment policy. So with respect to the investment policy, it was brought to our attention that, and I did watch the city council proceedings and the public comment. We have had instances of company specific screening. So for example, if there was a company like Caterpillar or Chevron or Lockheed Martin that was raised, we could specifically exclude those names from investment by the city. As you may be aware, other jurisdictions have undertaken this sort of process. Now the more thoughtful way that other entities have thought about bringing forth their priorities is through socially responsible investing and environmental, social, and responsible sort of investing. So the second option we have is a negative screening option. So the city already has this in place for alcohol and tobacco. We could potentially expand this to include things like firearms and ammunition, private corrections, oil and gas, coal, nightclubs and the like. Additionally, we have two different ways to sort of attack this. So we have our Bloomberg trading terminals, we have that set of rules that we could implement, as well as Sustainalytics, which is our third party sort of research function or research partner. They offer other sorts of sectors and sub-industries that we could restrict from the city's investment policy. And in this case, that would include energy services, pharmaceuticals, paper and forestry, and the like. At this point in time, there is no fee for this, and Director Merchant had described that in her memo. Okay, so just to be clear, the current implementation as well as any expansions on this SRI implementation would have no fee. With respect to a positive screening, this is called environmental social governmental screening, This would take some time. As I've shared with Director Merchant, we've worked with other jurisdictions, for some it takes nine months, for others it's taken a year and a half, for others they've never arrived at a policy. This does take time to develop, so we'd want to understand, as Director Merchant had said, your risk tolerances, your preferences, the sorts of ideas and the standards to which you want to hold yourselves with respect to implementation of this policy. Because that would change the universe of options for what the city could invest in from what we already have in our approved credit list and funnel it down to what would be required of the ESG policy. this would also take obviously more meetings and just maybe more working group sort of sessions that sort of thing so that you all could so we could understand what what you all look to achieve so that said that really kind of sums up my my sort of discussion you know as a recap there were those sorts of three sort of options that we like to present to clients who want to pursue these strategies company specific exclusions in other words divestment we've done that we can do that Second is an SRI type screening where we include additional industries that go beyond what the city already has. And lastly, ESG type investing where we kind of grade the portfolio and try to figure out what exactly you all hope to achieve through the strategy. Keep in mind, the first two, there are no sorts of fees for that. We are not a broker. We don't charge for trading. That's not our mandate. Similarly, SRI, we do not charge a fee for that currently, and we would not expect to do so if that was expanded. With respect to the ESG strategy, there is specific reporting, some additional sort of complexity around that, the grading and the like to assess, for example, an ESG score that would introduce a fee of between one to two basis points. And again, we would want to work with you over time to understand how you might want to craft that going forward. So with that, again, I just want to remind you, safety and liquidity are really the primary objectives of this investment policy, followed by yield. We're looking forward to working with you to understand how you'd like to move forward with respect to ESG and SRI or company-specific exclusions, and I'll turn the time back to you.

Thank you, Justin. I'll turn it back to council for questions, comments, and public comments.

Any questions from council? Okay, any public comment on this? Or how many public comments do we have?

We have 11 comment cards. Okay. Ms. May? Leslie May? After Leslie May would be River.

Good evening Council again. I'm personally asking the Council to divest from any type of weaponry for genocide. I don't know that he was naming off. I think it was the third slide he had up there. He was naming other things like Lockheed Martin. I also divest from anything dealing with data centers. I would really want an MOU on that, that we don't invest in anything and don't allow that here. Any other companies that are discriminatory, such as Target, Bath and Body, Victoria's Secret. I have my own portfolio, and I had to divest. And yeah, I lost some money, but all money's not good money. And if we're not gonna be, we're worried about them bombing over here, even though we haven't had, we've had terrorist bombings, but I'm talking about any other countries dropping bombs on us. I want you to think about the pictures of the babies, The pictures you've seen of maternity wards, people's homes, schools, just anywhere where people are, I've seen some horrific pictures. I don't watch it all the time because I would be in a deep state of depression. But any corporation, anything that is going to cause harm to someone else is causing harm to someone else, harm in depth. I'm asking for us to divest from those companies as soon as possible. And there was one question that I was wondering, the last meeting was, how much are we making off the investments? You know, I think the public has a right to know how much do we make off our investments. Yearly, quarterly, we need to know that. Because we're in the dark, only you guys know. And I think we need to know how much money this city is making off of these investments. It should be clear without us having to go dig and put in requests and all of that. So that's about it. Thank you.

Can we have River followed by Ahmad and then Linda. I beg your pardon?

I may actually defer a comment card for Akbar.

Oh, sure. Go ahead.

Thank you, City Council. Hi, my name is Akbar Hashimi, and I'm an Antioch resident from District 1. I'm speaking here today in support of my fellow Antioch divest members. I appreciate moving the agenda item up closer so that I can make it. I just want to say that I think it's important that we use the language submitted by Antioch divest as it's very important to us and it should be added to this policy. we should consider the use of the BDS shortlist for policy implementation, and that Lockheed, Martin, Catt, BP, and Chevron be divested from as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your time.

So now Ahmad or River?

Good evening City Council. My name is River and I am a District 2 Antioch resident and I have lived in Antioch all of my life. Seeing multiple members on this council and who have dedicated their lives to this city and the Antioch neighbors behind me who know that it is our diverse community The art, the culture, and our passion to uplift each other and our voices is what brings life to Antioch, not bloodshed. This city is invested into companies such as Chevron, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, and British Petroleum, all of which have been known to inflict major human rights violations, including the destruction of our environment, Israel's apartheid of Palestine, and the pillaging of their people. Just last week, caterpillar vehicles were used to completely destroy villages within southern Lebanon, only recent examples of events these companies have profited from. By establishing an ethical investment policy, it sets the standards of what Antioch values are. And to Mayor Pro Tem Freitas, Living here all my life, you have been a mayor and a mayor pro tem in multiple economic crises, as the cost of living has only gotten more expensive. And you can see that... There are other alternatives for an ethical investment policy, alternatives that we can invest into our people, invest into our community, a city in which residents' tax money is not invested into bonds that are companies with a record of being complicit with apartheid and genocide. And it's a shame that the recommendation tonight is to keep these bonds until they no longer present a loss in our books. Doesn't that make us just as guilty of trying to profit off of human suffering? With these alternatives that you have seen, that we can invest in our people, we can instill other investments that can still continue to grow and develop and empower our voices in Antioch and to see our city grow rather than the thought of a childhood that is ended early by bombs and bloodshed. So city council, and to my neighbors, I urge you to push for your city's values and get blood money out of Antioch.

Thank you. Linda, followed by Gopal.

Good evening, Council, and good evening, community. My name is Dr. Linda Bohara. I'm a health care worker, an Antioch resident in District 2, and I'm part of Health Care Workers for Palestine and Doctors Against Genocide. I'm speaking today to urge you to add ethical investment language to our investment policy so that the city of Antioch stops investing in companies like Caterpillar, Chevron, and Lockheed Martin, who are profiting off of genocide and war crimes in Palestine. Last year, I spent six weeks volunteering in Palestine in the occupied West Bank. I witnessed caterpillar bulldozers be used for terror. The Israeli army would park a line of bulldozers at the entrance of a village for hours, purposely terrorizing residents so that all of them would wonder whose home is going to be demolished today for hours. Can you imagine that? And finally, they would demolish a home by giving the family maybe 10 minutes notice maximum. Caterpillar bulldozers are used as a tool of Palestinian land theft, which is recognized by the United Nations as a war crime. Atrocities there are status quo. I witnessed an Israeli soldier pull crutches from underneath an elderly Palestinian amputee with one leg. I listened to his screams of pain. I listened to his screams of pain as Israeli soldiers kicked him on the ground. Then they lifted him like a sack of potatoes and threw him into a truck. What was his crime? Sowing seeds on his own land. Sowing seeds on his own land. When they took him away, his family shared with me why he was an amputee. The previous year, he was shot by a soldier in the leg, again, for trying to plow his land. And then they blocked the ambulance so that he couldn't get into the hospital in time to save his leg. And then, of course, in Gaza, The bombs and missiles made by Lockheed Martin are still dropping. They're targeting tents, schools, journalists, health care workers like myself, hospitals like those that I work in. Israel to this day is blocking food, medicine, shelter from entering Gaza. while residents are trapped there, succumbing to disease, starvation, and exposure. The list of war crimes goes on, and as a healthcare worker, I cannot sit back silently. As a resident of Antioch, I would so much rather my city invest in the betterment of our own community. rather than in never-ending war crimes in Palestine. I know it's not an easy or quick process, but I beg you, I implore you to join other cities like Richmond and Dublin and commit to divesting from war crimes. Thank you.

Gopal, followed by Abu Bakr.

Good evening, Consul.

My name is Copal. I'm from the Antioch in District 2. I strongly urge you to divest from the companies that are complicit in the genocide and the war crimes committed in Palestine by the Israeli government. Thank you. Please do that. Thank you so much.

Abu Bakr, followed by Ayas.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Abu Bakr. I've been a community leader here for a while. I wanted to remind you of probably maybe why you got into politics and leadership for your community in the first place. Our words and actions have a lasting impact. that echoes into eternity. My father was an imam for almost 30 years in Oregon, and he's buried on a hill in Oregon in the community he nurtured, right next to his dear friend Joseph Winemaker, who is a Holocaust survivor who converted to Islam. I was called to come serve in California and have served this community for 16 years, which is the entirety of my adult life, dedicating to working with people and growing and building this community on ethics and morals, designed to make our lives whole and to make the world a better place. Look around at actually this very room. This very room was built from the ground up by my own brother, who headed the renovation project here a few years ago. I want you all to consider what history will tell about you and what impact you will have on future generations. Yesterday, you were in a very difficult position. The political climate was such that most people were not aware that we as Americans were enabling and funding oppression, apartheid, and genocide. Yesterday, we stood here and had to make that case that there was a genocide going on in Gaza perpetrated by our unfortunate ally, Israel. Today, it is documented and known. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. Arrest warrants are currently active for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court on November 21st, 2024 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The United Nations Secretary General officially added Israel Armed and Security Forces, the IDF, to the annual blacklist of state actors who committed or are suspected of committing or being responsible for sexual violence in conflict zones. They have made it a policy of sexual violence against prisoners, targeting people, leaving emergency food lines and shooting them and killing them, telling people to evacuate and slaughtering them as they comply, as well as many more horrifying realities of genocide that you will hear in the next few minutes, not the least of which is the intentional targeting of children by snipers, children who are siblings and friends of these children who are asking you, to take this necessary step that I hope you're about to take. I dare you all to watch the documentary about Hind Rajab and her call asking for help and begging for help before 300 bullets slaughtered her and her family. If you had told me as a child I would have the opportunity to stand and speak against Caterpillar who bulldozed Rachel Corey, I'd be amazed and I'm glad the political climate allows for that today. Thank you very much for your time.

Iyas followed by Robert.

Is it possible that I can pass a few pictures for the city? My name is Iyas. I'm Palestinian. My family comes from the West Bank, where currently they reside. And I'm confident that you guys, over the past two and a half years, you've heard enough of what's going on in the Palestinian territories, whether it's in Gaza or the West Bank. I'm going to be trying to be as fast as possible. Just going to hear from a personal, because the personal connection that I have with my family in the West Bank and also I run a nonprofit called Project Hope for Palestine where we provide very much essential help to the Palestinians of Gaza. That's how I'm in day in, day out with the people in Gaza since the beginning of this genocide. I want to show fast what these companies do, specifically the Caterpillar and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin makes the F-35s and the F-16s. This is just very quick. I'm not going to go all over what they manufacture. This is a picture of a building in Gaza. This is what the F-16s and F-35s do in Gaza. This is, I think it's a refugee camp, rubble.

Rubble. This is what they do.

more damage, more trouble. I'm going to show you this picture. This is actually in my own town. Like imagine you wake up here in Antioch and you see a bulldozer that's made by Caterpillar that we're trying to not to do business with them. This is what I wake up or actually my family wakes up to see a bunch of settlers. They just show up with a bulldozer made by Caterpillar.

This is actually my hometown. This is my land.

And start tearing things apart. Again, bulldozers in Jenin. This is Jenin refugee camp. In the middle of a city, what the F they're doing in the middle of a city, they're destroying properties.

They're destroying properties.

We pay for this. Gaza. D9s.

Look.

Bravo. More D9s. More D9s. They estimated that they destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes. And in the end, I want to, actually, my team in Gaza, they had these, if you can just rise it up like more. These are people in an orphan camp in Gaza. They're telling you, they're addressing you, Sadiq of Antioch, please stop investing in our genocide. Thank you so much.

Robert Schnitzens, followed by Frank Sterling.

Good evening, City Council, and thank you for considering this measure. I don't really have a whole lot to add to what's already been said, except that I support this measure. I feel like, as a concerned world citizen, I have an obligation to stand up to injustice, and so I'm here to support this measure, and I hope that you seriously consider it and all that has been brought forth tonight. Thank you.

Frank Sterling, followed by Casey.

All right. Hey, everyone. Thanks for hearing us again tonight. And I hope I'm really moved by the poster Iyaskat and for Abu Bakr to come out and speak as being an imam in the community. I've kind of communicated to all of you on some sort of level, whether through email, a conversation, a meeting. I feel like this is something that aligns with Antioch. You heard from the investment guys tonight. They've already worked with stuff like this. This is something that we could do to benefit the city. It's something that's not going to cost the city, and it's something that... Your community wants and I feel like that you want it to and I'm basing a lot of this off of I know only some of your public persona. Louie, I spoke to you before I went to the reach program when you first started it back in the 80s when I went there. um everything that we're asking for aligns with what you've all presented and um and represent for our city so i don't even want to take up all my time if i don't have to i feel like one thing i do want to say is that these um the esg and the sri that they've created is a good baseline but we need the language that we have submitted and added One thing that I did learn about ESG and SRI is that they came after the South African apartheid in that the the massive boycott divestment and sanctions thing that Ended apartheid in South Africa such as the longshoremen in Oakland refusing to unload cargo and all the other things that went on around the world These came after that I think as far as I've been learning to weaken real boycott divestment and sanction policy so I'm just encouraging you all to use the language that we submitted that talks about human rights, that talks about war crimes, that talks about these other things that we included, and that your guy mentioned about the prisons and stuff like that, to please make sure that that is included in your final draft, and to please divest from these companies as soon as possible. And we look forward to you all getting a unanimous yes vote to adopt an ethical investment policy. Thank you.

Casey followed by Devin Williams.

Hi, my name is Casey. I'm here with the Contra Costa Divest Group and Contra Costa branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. The community came here two weeks ago demanding an ethical investment policy and divestment from Chevron, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, who are all well-known actors aiding an apartheid and genocidal state as it commits the worst atrocities. All these companies are documented in the boycott divestment sanctions list. We came here two weeks ago demanding an ethical investment policy in solidarity with Palestinians being bombarded with cruelty after cruelty. Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in a military court. Not Israeli children, of course. Israeli children are allowed to keep their innocence and retain their childhood. But Palestinian children face a much more stark reality from an early age. They are robbed of the carefree joy every child should be entitled to, as they are terrorized, harassed, displaced, shot at, and all too often killed. Everyday Chevron partners with the genocidal Israeli government to extract fossil fuels from Palestinian land, denying its indigenous population the rights of sovereignty, as well as aiding its abusers in raking in profit. Everyday videos can be found of Israeli soldiers using caterpillar bulldozers to carve stars of David into the once thriving fields of Gaza and Lebanon. Every day, solar panels are being torn down by the IOF as it continues to invade and occupy greater swaths of land, the south of Lebanon, the Golan Heights of Syria, the ever-encroaching safety zone surrounding Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine. And every day, the devastation increases as Israel uses Lockheed Martin fighter jets to indiscriminately carpet bomb innocent children in Rafah, Tehran, and Beirut. I'm deeply troubled that the industry jargon SRI and ESG are now being offered in place of meaningful controls on the city's investment policy, and this definitional discrepancy has been noted. My concern is that the city might continue to be complicit in human rights violations, environmental degradation, war crimes, and genocide through loopholes and lax guidelines. A government should have no business investing in human misery. A city's job is to safeguard and ensure the well-being of its people, and this can be done through investing in public projects like Project Homekey being spoken about today. While we would love a commitment tonight to divest from all the companies on the BDS list, we would like to start with our current request, to divest from Chevron, Caterpillar, and Lockheed Martin with a commitment to further divest from any company not meeting the guidelines outlined in the ethical investment policy. There are fantastic performing funds that help rather than harm, and this is where the community's money should be entrusted. A Palestinian civil society has asked every individual of conscience to please divest from companies complicit in their murder and erasure. I'm pleading with the city council because I object to our community's hard-earned money being... Ooh, okay.

Anyway, thank you.

Devin.

Good evening. Again, to our community's money being used to fund a genocide.

Is that what you were going to say?

So this is a topic that is very touchy for a lot of people. But I believe on my values that all life is precious. And I believe that there are some hard truths that we face. I believe that we are all children of God. And I can't stand for civil rights in America if I can't stand for civil rights everywhere else in the world. We cannot shield behind religion and dollars. I wish I was more educated on this matter, but for the last four years I've heard the conversation. When the military industrial complex takes precedent over the voices and values of this community, I have to further my dissatisfaction and disappointment with the city, if you guys choose to go in that direction. If we attempt to stand for justice here and we don't stand for it anywhere else, we have a deep issue of putting our political presence before human rights. How can we allow ourselves to continue to immerse ourselves in a national political environment of death and disregard for people who don't look like us or for people that do, who one nation considers them human animals? How can we allow special interests to shape our human interests? I grew up as a Christian, and I was taught to love. And to the people on their phones and their tablets who find it convenient to look the other way because it solidifies their placement in the realm of I don't want to see it and I can't hear it. So therefore it does not affect me. There's only so much I can do. My heart goes out to the Palestinians and the Jewish people who do not condone this. Thank you to myself and everyone being brave on this issue. And I'm sorry I wasn't aware of it before to fight alongside everyone. But I'm here now. We should also look towards removing CAT or no Chevron from purchasing order agreements if that impacts the city of Antioch. Impact drives empathy. And I'll say this, because it's very unpopular. What this state that we support across the seas is doing is wrong. They have free health care. They have free education. And we invest in that. Wallace, we're being taxed. Our gas prices are going up. Our houses are unaffordable. Our voices are not being heard by our representatives. So what do we do? What do we do? I think this is a start. But I don't think it's the end of it, y'all. Thank you.

I just want to make sure Ahmad has had a chance to speak.

Good evening. Appreciate it. I think my name was called first and then I got shuffled around.

There was a shuffle. I just wanted to make sure you guys heard. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael.

You're very welcome.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, Council Member, and community members, and our allies that are standing with us. Thank you very much. So my name is Ahmad, and I'm a local resident from District 2 as well, along with other local Antioch residents here. And as I'm sure you've all heard now, we're all here talking, asking for the city to adopt a clear and enforceable ethical investment policy. Our public dollars, our tax dollars, our local tax dollars should reflect our public values. That means we need more than broad language about socially responsible investing or ESG principles. Those frameworks can be useful. But without specific standards, exclusions, and public accountability, they can also become too vague and lose their meaningful guide where the city funds are invested, our funds, city tax dollars. So as residents, we deserve to know that our city is not financially tied to corporations whose business practices are contributing to war, displacement, environmental harm, and human rights abuses, as we clearly saw pointed out. I'm also of Palestinian descent. And this is not a symbolic issue, it's a governance issue. Public investment decisions should be transparent, accountable, and guided by the city's ethical standards that the residents can understand and evaluate. I do also recognize that the city has a responsibility to protect its budget and fund essential services, but the returns from these corporations that are tied to harm are not the answer. We should be willing to ask the hard questions about how our budgets are funded, And why are cities being pressured into the trade offs and how we can align our financial practices with justice, sustainability, and community care. So I do urge this council to move beyond the general ESE language and to commit to real ethical investment policies with clear divestment standards, public reporting, and accountability to the residents of this city. So in short, we had passed along a short list of companies that we want to begin divesting from that I'm sure you've heard over and over again. And these companies are Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, BP, and Chevron. And in conclusion, I do wanna say there are definitely greater other projects that we want, like the Homekey project that has been talked about, where we need to be pooling our money and our resources into those investments that really benefit the city and not doing harm in this city or anywhere else in the world. Thank you.

We have no further speaker cards.

All right, thank you. This is back before the city council for any questions or comments.

I did.

I don't think there should be a problem. I think we need to realize that the litmus test for our humanity is what's happening in Gaza. And we're funding it as well as Israel. Israel's been called like our... carrier air force carrier kind of in the middle east but we have to realize that antioch has a choice a chance to lead the way in something like this i'm from concord and they voted it down right away and i was there you guys have a chance to show leadership of immense importance and ethical. I mean, this is a chance to really shine. And I don't think anybody, any of you, I don't know you personally, but I don't think any of you support the killing of children. Like this lady said today, they sniper, they target children to sniper. And if any of you ever listen to KPFA, you'll hear details about this. So I would just urge you to, let's see if the litmus test, if we can save our humanity.

Thank you.

All right, it's now before the city council.

There was a question that came up from Ms. May, and I think we should answer it. Looking at the page 57 of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026-2027, it indicates that we will be receiving from investment income and rentals, so I guess there's two sources of revenue, $2,130,000. So roughly, the question is how much money comes from investments.

Yes, and that's just in the general fund. All funds have investment income, but I will say it is very transparent. Every month the city treasurer submits a treasurer's report that lists all the investments, the security transactions and interest for that month. And then there's a presentation twice a year from our investment advisor which gives our portfolio earnings to year to date and across the benchmark and from inception. So that information is provided to council monthly and then a twice a year presentation.

And so tonight we actually had a report on the treasury. So if anybody wants very detailed information exactly how the money is invested, you can look at our agenda tonight.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yes, Council Member.

In the staff report, so to Mayor Pro Tem's question related to investment income and how much goes to the general fund, the staff report states that the total, I'm assuming this is cash value, of I think it's page three where it says Caterpillar, Chevron, and Lockheed Martin. As of June 17th, the four investment, if the investment were sold, it would be sold at a loss of $25,000. a little over $25,000 with one investment will provide a small gain of $2,262. So what is the total amount that the city is making from these three investments? I don't have... Is it significant? Like would it be a significant loss?

Well, that would be if it was sold, because that would be what the market value is versus what the trade price would be. So it would be a realized loss of 25,000 off that investment to maturity. I don't know what the maturity dates of those investments are.

So that would be the loss if it was sold. What is the market value currently?

I don't know if Justin Rosuelo has that information. Sorry, thank you.

Thank you for the question. So there are two specific holdings for Caterpillar. The par value of each totals about 1.6, a little over 1.6 million, and those mature in August 2028 and February 2029. Those currently present losses of approximately 1,274 and 17,103. The two Chevron positions, one has par of Well, both have par of a little over 1.3 million. One matures February 2028 and August 2028. That essentially has a net loss of about $500. And then the last position is one holding with Lockheed Martin that matures August 2028 with a par of about 600,000 and a current unrealized loss of about $5,000. So these are all, again, within that three-year and end strategy. We're pretty close to maturity. I mean, I think as part of what I would suggest, as you look to your investment objectives, section 2.H, it just speaks to the prudent investor rule. This is kind of how you all are dictated. It's great that you all are taking in all this information, and then from there, we'll act as you all prefer. I think our preference is still that The holdings are not sold at a loss, but if it is the case that that is what the council wishes to do, we will act at your decision. We take your advice. We are your fiduciary.

So, for example, you're saying one of them is $600,000. If they were sold now, we would lose $5,000 out of that.

So Chevron at 600,000 par that is maturing February 2028, that is currently at a gain position of $2,262 as of maybe about a week ago.

And these amounts can change daily as activity in the market.

That's right.

I just think the question is, is the loss significant enough to not consider? Is the question.

That's up to council discretion. I mean, me as a finance person, any loss, no matter what the amount, especially in our financial position. However, if council decides that selling the investments is more important and wants at least, you know, to not have these particular investments at this time. And Council Gipps wants that. That's what we're going to do.

So rather than... So under the section where we already have excluded tobacco and alcohol, right? And whether it's any company that is either selling, producing tobacco and alcohol, we will not... invest in those companies that is already in the policy. That's correct, that's already implemented. Right, and so people are saying that is it possible to add additional language? And I think this has come up to say that we will also not invest in companies that are involved in war crimes.

The one, you know, we have received the language, however, for the analytics that is used by investment companies. There's no metric to say this company is involved in war crimes. They're not gonna search the internet because an article pops up that XYZ company is involved in war crimes. In terms of the other language, like it talks about apartheid, there's no investment metric where they would be able to identify that. So that's where it gets a little bit tricky. I can say at least for the policy this evening, it would be very easy for this evening to add, council could direct, adopt the policy to at least get started. But of course, come back with further metrics. You could say add a section four that says the city will not invest in Caterpillar, Chevron, and Lockheed Martin. And that would be one start to at least getting that in there. And again, decide if you would wanna state that these would be held until they're not a loss or just direct that they're sold upon adoption of the policy. But again, that's up to council discretion. And then of course, come back if council wants further metrics by going with either an SRI, exploring that option, or an ESG and bringing that information back with a more robust policy. But again, as I mentioned, it's not something that happens overnight. As Mr. Westwell has mentioned, it's been months for some agencies, up to a year or longer for other agencies to dial down on these types of investment strategies.

I would just also add and agree with Director Merchant. I think the one other piece, if it sounds like you all are leaning toward divestment, there should also be language that clearly states and dictates to us, we should no longer invest in those companies specifically going forward. So in addition to the sell, we would also suggest that you include that language if that is the wish of the council.

And I'm not saying that that will be the direction of the council, because it's been a year, and people have been coming for a year asking. And so I don't want to assume what the council majority will decide tonight. I think people are asking us to make a decision, whether it's to immediately divest, which is what people are asking, is to immediately divest And I think what I'm hearing from yourself and staff is to give that it might be necessary. You're recommending that we take more time to actually create a policy that will get us to the point where we can divest when the asset matures. That's what you're recommending.

Well, it's not to create a policy when the asset, it's just whatever policy ends up coming forward, whether you just make a minor modification this evening or if a policy is brought back in four months, five months, whatever that is, that the recommendation would be to include language that investments that no longer, that fall from an exclusion list are held until either there's no loss or maturity, whichever occurs first. Thank you for clarifying.

Mr. Mayor Pro Tem.

So on this particular issue, I do like to thank the advocates for coming forward. And one of the last speakers actually, don't leave, actually articulated what I think is really part of the challenge for the city council. And you stated to quote unquote adopt a clear ethical investing policy. that we need to establish standards. We need to have accountability. The word that I would use is making it doable. I sat with Contra Costa Water District as a director for 16 years on the retirement committee. back then in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Apartheid was an issue. And the approach that we took is that we need to articulate very clearly what the standard is so that it can be followed. Because accountability is extraordinarily important. And sometimes one person's opinion is not necessarily factual. And so you have an investor. The investor needs to have clear, articulated standards. so that she or he does not get crosswise with the council and that time and time again, people would come and it's their interpretation of some of the things. Some, it's very easy to understand what the situation is. But I think Ms. Merchant, you articulated, and Mr. Rosello, you also, and it was my experience for 16 years, this is not an easy policy. It's not finger pointing and saying no to you, yes to you. It's much more difficult because as a city council, we have a legal and a fiduciary responsibility with regards to investments in the city of Antioch. So frankly, I believe from my perspective, when the gentleman talked about adopting a clear, ethical investing policy that has standards and accountability, and from my perspective, doable, that really should, in my opinion, be the direction to city staff, to PMF, and I think that divest should identify two or three people on a periodic basis, that there are discussions, So we hear some of the concerns that are articulated, and those are taken into consideration for what? To develop a policy that we can live with. And I can tell you with regards to South Africa and apartheid, You know, there are lots of companies that, frankly, that came out that across the country, across the world, people stopped investing in. And so I do think this is a situation that we need to take a look at, but we should not do it quickly. I think we should do it methodically. I think it should be inclusive. And if council is ready, I mean, I'm ready to articulate you know, motion, because I think this is a very, very important issue, but other members may want to chime in.

Can you add to that a working group?

It seemed like you almost were there, but I want you to... Well, two weeks ago, I suggested the city manager, the director of finance, PMF, and representatives from Divest. I mean, that was, to me, a working group. I didn't include PMF, right, in that? PMF would have to be a party to this. And so that would be the working group. City manager, city finance director, PFM, sorry, and several, I don't know, three members of Divest as a working committee. So they know what is happening. Questions can go back and forth. And I have to believe that a good workable policy will come back to the city of Antioch.

Mr. Mayor? I don't know if I heard city treasurer in there, but I think city treasurer should be a part of this collaborative. And I would like to know, as with the group that you referred to, to dig deeper and look into what makes the most sense for the city of Antioch that aligns with what we've heard tonight from a number of our speakers. I mean, there's the SRI option, and then I look at the ESG option, and they both, one's more complex than the other. I think having a leadership committee of the people that you've mentioned would be helpful and getting some direction. My understanding, I wasn't here last week, I wasn't able to be here. My understanding was that what was proposed for us was the treasurer's report to accept or adopt that particular report but that we are open to hearing and looking into adopting some of the policies that have been discussed tonight. So I would think that we'd wanna do a blend of one, adopting or approving what's been recommended with the understanding of what you just stated. So I would ask that you consider that language in your motion.

I'd like to ask if Treasurer Rojas could maybe give us his thoughts on the policy and I noticed in the staff report you met with the Contra Costa Divest group and then I believe- Good evening. I'm sorry? Good evening. Good evening, good evening, I'm sorry. And then the quote that was added to the staff report in italics is what your understanding is of their request, correct?

That is correct.

And then what is your thoughts on what we're talking about?

Well, we have the two options from BFM, which he was able to recommend. And we never said anything regarding potentially adopting an ethical investment policy. But pretty much, council is the one that makes that decision. So it goes both ways. We either could wait for maturity dates, take the loss right now, and go from there. But like I said, at the end, you guys are the one that makes the decision on that.

What would be your, I hate to put you on the spot, but I'm going to. Sure. What would be your recommendation, being that the last staff report, it was recommended we approve the policy, and now we have a variation of that. What would you recommend?

My recommendation would be to adopt the policy that was recommended at the last meeting on the investment policy. And like Louis was saying, take a look at it and Ms. Merchant and Justin Resuelos was saying also that it's not one day for another day, so get back to it, revise it. Perhaps, like you were mentioning, having that committee that we can take a look at it, maybe perhaps every six months or so, and then go from there.

All right, thank you.

Sure.

Thank you so much. No problem. And I know you met with the community.

Yes, I was able to meet with them. Yes, that happened within a couple of days. And I do appreciate them trying to get a hold of me. We were on it. It was forwarded to city manager. Ms. Merchant and Justin, and they came up with that too. So that response was pretty fast. I actually spoke to the representative from Contra Costa Digest, I'm sorry, Divest, afterwards to explain a bit of what could happen, especially if there's a waiting period to it.

A waiting period to change a policy is not required by the state, but it's just the city requires per our own ordinance?

No, more as of explaining... what will happen if we do it right now or we were to wait and regarding losses for the city, especially now that we're doing budget.

But then also the fact that it's not overnight, that it will take a while to build the policy, if I can clarify for the treasurer.

Yes, I don't, yeah, thank you for clarifying that for the treasurer. I think I heard that as well. I think, so, I do appreciate Mayor Pro Tem Freda's comments. Also getting a sense from the community, it was like, we're under the gun. We need to pass this right now. We can't do this. And I believe the council was made to believe that there will be some outside penalties. And that was clarified that there were not any outside penalties and that we do have discretion. um i do agree that the language that we really want and i hope the community agrees with this is that we actually do move forward with the recommendation we passed the policy because it's the city's ordinance and we can change it at any time, I'm assuming. Is that correct?

Well, the policy is not an ordinance, it's a policy, but yes.

No, we have an ordinance that directs us that we review the policy.

No, it's the city's investment policy itself. The existing policy requires us to review it at least every two years.

So the existing policy is that we review it every two years, but there's nothing prohibiting us from modifying the policy. That is correct.

You could modify it every month, every other council meeting.

That's the clarification that I was trying to get at. And that's what I was saying is there's no ordinance. There is no legal requirement to do that. That's just the policy that's drafted into the policy that we have.

So there's no legal requirement to have it.

There's a legal requirement by the state to have a statement of investment policy with guidelines that meet state mandates. So that was, you know, the investment policy's been in effect for however long. But it's the actual, how the policy is crafted and when it requires it to come back to a council, a board, or whatever. So that's what we're meeting the two year mark is because our existing policy requires that to come back every two years.

I think, I do agree with putting some group together. I also agree with passing the policy as is, while this group works together. What I will say is that government often pacifies people with ad hoc committees and work groups that lead nowhere. And we can be back here in a year, two years, three years, with still no investment, no ethical investment language, no ethical investment policy, and with no intent to ever have done so. And that is not a process that I wanna agree to tonight if it is not something that city staff is gonna commit to move forward and actually work with the community on, because it would be doing a disservice to residents and the public who showed up here tonight if we just do a vote and nothing happens. So I guess I'm curious to understand like, is there an intent to come back with a timeline, something, you know, that we can understand that things will start to move so that the community can understand that things will start to move and that this is not just a way to get them out of the room.

So, Mr. Mayor, let me just take a crack at it. Number one, I would move that we adopt a resolution approving the statement of investment policy, and I believe there was just one correction or addition. Number two, that a policy committee comprised of the city manager, the director of finance, the city treasurer, the PMF representative, and at least three representatives from Contra Costa Divest come together and start developing a policy, and I'll use the words of the gentleman, adopt a clear ethical investing policy where standards and accountability are a part of this, and that within the next six months, we as a council receive reports quarterly And at the end of the six months, it comes back to presentation to the city council. Where are we at? What are the issues? And how do we move forward? I think your comment's valid.

Can I just offer something friendly?

Sure.

Well, I am going to second it. I hear six months. I'm wondering if we can split it up where we can have some sense of where things are going in 90 days. Well, quarterly.

That's what I meant. Quarterly. Thank you.

Because I'm also just, I'm not in the public, but I can feel people like six months, this is not okay.

And once you get in, you'll see how difficult this is. No, I was trying to be sensitive to what you're asking. Six months, but quarterly, there would be a report given to the city council. Where are we at? What are some of the issues? How do we move forward? Yes.

I'd like to second the motion.

All right. So we have a motion from Mayor Pro Tem Freda, second from Council Member Rocha. Any other discussion or comments on that?

I guess my comments now are for the community. Select your three folks and immediately, I mean tomorrow morning, send an email. to say these are people, these are representatives, and we would like to meet. Do not let this sit on our desk, because you will be waiting.

And make sure all your contact information is there.

Yes, thank you.

All right, and I'd also like to thank Treasurer Rojas for his work on this.

Thank you.

Yeah, we were a group. We were moving fast.

As well as Ms. Merchant and Mr. Rosello.

Yes, thank you.

All right, so we have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Yeah, before we move on to item number nine, can I get a motion to move this meeting past 11 o'clock?

I'll make a motion to extend the meeting till midnight.

All right, we have a motion till midnight. A second? Second. Second from Mayor Pro Tem Freitas. Please cast your votes.

This motion passes 5-0.

I came ready to fight y'all till one in the morning.

All right, so we're on to item number nine, which is the Homekey Plus award consideration of acceptance or declination of state funding.

Yes, good evening, Mayor and City Council. So the next item is the consideration of whether- Sorry, hold on. So the next item is the consideration of whether to accept or decline approximately $34.9 million in state Homekey Plus funding for the proposed mahogany housing project. I will invite our director, Cabral, who will do the presentation on this item.

Good evening, it's me again. Before you this evening is a policy decision regarding whether the city wishes to move forward with the Homekey Plus Award for the proposed mahogany housing project. The state has awarded approximately 34.9 million to support the acquisition and rehabilitation of the former Comfort Inn into approximately 84 to 85 permanent supportive The staff report outlines both the benefits and the obligations associated with acceptance of the award, including the proposed $750,000 capital contribution and the potential for future operating subsidy requests that would remain subject to annual council approval. Staff is presenting both options for your consideration, acceptance or declination of the award, and is available to answer any questions.

All right, thank you. Any questions of staff?

Do we have any public comment on this? Yes, we have eight comment cards.

All right.

Can we please have Leslie May followed by Lynette Hart.

Good evening, Council. Once again, I'm here asking you to accept this state funding. The only arguments that I'm hearing is, I don't want it in my backyard. I don't want it in my backyard. That's all I'm hearing. Now, if it was down in District 1, the land was down here, there would be no problem from the residents. because it's not in their backyard. And they figure, oh, District One takes anything. It's like the old commercial, well, you're probably too young to remember what he used to say. Let Mikey try it, let Mikey try it. Okay, and that's the way I look at this. To me, that's discrimination. I don't care what color you are. You're discriminating against the poor poorer than you. A lot of us think that we have way more money than what we really have, and that's a shame. That's how we think, a lot of us, not me. A lot of people think that way, but you know, It has to do with what you choose to spend your money on, even your own self. What do you choose to spend your money on? What is frivolous? What is unnecessary? What is squandering? Well, it's the same thing here. We have people that need... A place to stay. These are the people that are walking around the streets. These are the ones who Angelo Quinto, the core team, the police, all of them have to deal with. This project has been laid out, described. It's not like we're going to stick them in a hotel and keep it moving. No, they're going to have services. Some of those units at the bottom are going to be complete wraparound services. for these individuals. And this is what they need. And there's also going to be parameters around that. I mean, we've got the county saying they'll help with whatever they can do. So to just say, I don't want to do this and I don't want to spend any money on that, but you're the same ones that want to take Fluffy to the darn groomer and pay $150 for Fluffy to get groomed once a month. Okay, you want to rescue every animal off the street because they're precious to you. But you better think about this, and I know what I'm saying is going to sting a couple of people, but you know what? There is a book called the Bible, and in there it says you're supposed to take care of the infirmed, the elderly, and babies. Okay? So you need to... Dig down deep into your soul and figure out what the hell are you going to say to the Lord when you meet him if you mistreat the poor and humble now.

Lynette Hart.

Good evening. I'm a 34-year resident here in Antioch, and I'm speaking to you today because of the potential long-term impacts Project Home Key could have on Antioch neighborhoods, quality of life, and community resources. Antioch is already facing significant challenges and is working to rebuild. The project represents a 50-year commitment. The city would reportedly contribute approximately $1.2 million annually for the first 15 years. THOSE FUNDS COULD OTHERWISE SUPPORT YOUTH PROGRAMS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES AND YES, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. RESIDENTS DESERVE TRANSPARENCY REGARDING BOTH THE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF PROJECT HOME KEY SITES THROUGHOUT CALIFORNIA. THE CITY OF OAKLAND AIRPORT CORRIDOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COLLAPSED WITHIN THREE YEARS AFTER SITES OPENED. notably the in and out that made nationwide news closed because of the robberies of folks in the drive-through by the residents of some of the sites. The project could affect neighboring communities and regional partnerships. How will this project improve quality of life for current residents, and what is the opportunity cost of committing those resources for the next 50 years? economic development. The proposed location could negatively impact Antioch's efforts to attract investment businesses, hotels, employers, and redevelopment. The site is located near one of Antioch's primary freeway entrances. It creates a first impression for developers, retailers, investors, employers, visitors. The project sits near the auto center, regional retail centers, the Pittsburgh city boundary. Antioch is still trying to attract economic development while neighboring cities continue advancing quality of life initiatives. The waterfront and Riverwalk vision are a major economic development priority. The location could conflict with Antioch's strategic plan to promote redevelopment and attract investment. Economic development depends heavily on public perception, safety, neighborhood appearance, and investor confidence. Question, is this the best location for a Project Homekey site if Antioch's stated goal is attracting investment, redevelopment, and economic growth? Lastly, public safety and liability. Other Project Homekey sites have faced scrutiny regarding drug activity, theft, public disturbances, increased law enforcement calls. Some Homekey operators have faced allegations involved mismanagement, fraud, operational challenges. The proposed facility will house individuals with significant behavioral health, substance abuse, and mental health needs. The hotel will continue operating with rooms available to the public. For some of the folks who are here supporting this project today, would you allow your loved ones to stay in a hotel after this conversion? My concerns are not about whether we should help vulnerable people. My concerns are whether this specific location, this long-term financial commitment, and the unresolved public safety and liability is the best interest for Antioch.

Thank you. Crystal Law, followed by Elizabeth Levasse.

I don't need my notes. We're at $34 million for $1.2 million of Prop 1 money, mind you, that we deserve to get back for this community. We already pay over a million dollars in just cleaning up these sites, these encampments, and yet you want to argue all this extra stuff. I understand in a way, right? However, when you have people who are out there dying on the streets, there's absolutely no question in my mind. Yes, we need this site. Yes, we need to do this. Yes, we need to do this for people in the city and the residents of Antioch. There's absolutely no question in my mind when we're paying already over a million dollars, but yet you want to take that $1.2 million that we would be spending on that and you want to give it to City. CITY EMPLOYEES AND INCENTIVES. COME ON NOW. WE DESERVE TO HAVE SOMETHING FOR THE RESIDENTS OF ANTIOCH. IT WILL HELP TO CLEAN UP DOWN HERE. IT WILL HELP TO GET BUSINESSES GOING. IT WILL HELP TO GET PEOPLE OFF THE STREET. IT WILL HELP TO GET PEOPLE HEALTHY AGAIN. THEY'LL HAVE CASE WORKERS. THEY'LL HAVE MENTAL HEALTH WORKERS. THEY'LL HAVE THE ABILITY TO ACTUALLY MOVE FORWARD. AND THIS IS PERMANENT HOUSING, NOT TEMPORARY HOUSING. SO IT'S NOT LIKE THEY'LL BE IN AND OUT AND GOING ALL OVER THE PLACE. I want to call Jay up here. He is a proponent of this. However, he's my friend and he owns a 7-Eleven right there across the street. He just didn't want to put in a comment card. I said what I had to say.

Good evening. Sorry, I actually don't do all this. I'm just a working person. I'm a 12-hour shift person, and I actually recently invested in here about three years ago. And I did everything in my mighty power to clean this place up. It's turned over a lot now. but I am actually just a little scared of the traffic that it's going to be bringing in. I'm doing everything in my mighty power there every day to stop the theft, to get people off that property. That's just my only concern, and I'm invested in it, and I don't see it turning over just yet, and not until another 20 or 30 years, and hopefully 7-Eleven decides to renew the lease by then, but we'll see what happens. But yeah, it's just those little bit of people that come in and give us a little bit of hard time, and right now I'm actually struggling with employees, the turnover. Employees don't want to work there due to those issues. And yeah, that's about it.

Thank you. Elizabeth Levasse, followed by Devin Williams.

Liz left. Oh yeah, she left.

Devin Williams.

Good 10.52 p.m., everyone. How y'all doing? When I saw the video that Tamisha, Nicole, and Andrew filmed a few months ago, I was very happy to hear that Homekey was coming to our city. I believe that there are solutions that can be made for our unhoused community that provides them with wraparound resources and they don't get to be looked at like criminals, animals, a travesty, an eyesore. When people have food, water, and shelter, we know those are the three essential needs in anybody's life. When you have addiction issues or you have financial hardships, those things are, let me say, sometimes those things are not your fault. But sometimes when you have no solutions, you have nobody to call on, you don't have nobody to help, they worsen. And I believe that if we get this, I think it's $37 million, $34 million, then we can find those solutions. It's not a one size fits all. It's not a complete fix. But it's a start. And I think it's something that Antioch can do that will lead us in a better direction. If I was on council, I would support this. Okay. I think that people in the community that are here tonight and that's those who couldn't be here because our meeting started at seven o'clock and people are closing their garage doors at seven Oh five. I believe that they would be here supporting this too. And I believe that leaders like Nicole Andrews and Misha and others that I can't name right now because I can't think of their names, but I know they're out there. I believe that this is something that we should be pursuing and to turn it away would only put us back more. I think that our last council city manager was a proponent of this. And then again, Anna, don't let them bully you into not doing something that's right. And I appreciate you and your service at all times. So I really do think that we need to analyze this. It's not a rush. I think it's common sense to really vote for something that's going to help our community, and especially when y'all ran on it in 2024. So I really...

Don, why are you shaking your head?

You ran on it. Ron, you ran on it. You worked on, you ran on economic improvement development. I'm just saying the truth is the truth. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

Joe Mitchell followed by Sandra.

Good evening, Council.

I'm not in favor of the project due to the city's current financial situation. estimated monies that are needed to support the facility beyond the purchase are a minimum of 1.2 million a year. And there's no guarantee that that will cover the necessary support for that facility. So it's a long-term commitment. The city is not up to par with our police department. You guys had to cut basically do magic last year to get the budget down to where it was, and still we're facing a $12 million deficit. So monies that are needed to help the city function can't spare anything right now. The revenue stream, sales tax is going down. Los Raleys, Rite Aid, Sherwin-Williams, Hidden Dragon, Sales tax isn't going up. Our revenue is not going to go up, and we can't overcommit. So I really support efforts to help the unhoused folks, but our city's in bad shape, and we can't afford it. Simple and plain. We need a full-funded police department. Right now, our police department's the lowest paid in the county. Dispatchers are the lowest paid in the county. We are approaching a perfect storm for a disaster. So I think that it would be a mistake to make that long-term commitment. If we were in more solid footing, I would say consider it, but right now I don't think we should. Thank you.

Sandra, followed by Manny Solis.

Can I also please ask the audience to refrain from commenting while people are speaking?

Okay. Good evening, City Council and Mayor. I am here tonight to respectfully oppose the proposed Home Key project because of the financial and public safety challenges our city is already facing. In 2024, Antioch Antioch faced an estimated $54 million budget deficit. At the same time, our city of about 118,000 residents has fewer than 100 police officers. Even with planned hiring over the next two years, Antioch is expected to only have about an estimate of 105 officers. For comparison, Richmond, which has a similar population, has about 177 police officers. These facts matter because Antioch is already struggling to provide the level of public safety and city services that residents need. Adding new demands on city resources before solving these existing problems raises serious concerns. The city council approved the commercial infill housing overlay district in 2022, which has already set the stage for significant growth. Between now and 2031, nearly 3,000 housing units are expected to be built throughout 10 projects across the city. This could bring an estimated 10 to 12,000 new residents to Antioch and increase the demand for police services, roads, parks, code enforcement, and other city services. At the same time, the proposed Homekey project will require Antioch to spend $1.2 million each year for the next 15 years. This is a major financial commitment for a city that is still recovering from budget challenges. In addition, Antioch taxpayers would pay these costs even though the project will serve unhoused individuals throughout Contra Costa County, not just Antioch residents. Our cities, other cities will benefit without sharing the long-term financial responsibility. I want to be clear, homelessness does not mean someone is a criminal. Many people experiencing homelessness are hardworking individuals facing difficult circumstances, and they deserve compassion and support. However, some individuals struggle with serious mental health and substance abuse issues that require extensive treatment and support. These challenges can increase demands on law enforcement, emergency medical services, behavioral health providers, and other city resources. The issue before us is not whether we should help vulnerable people. The question is whether Antioch, given its current budget challenges, limited police staffing, and expected population growth, is in the position to take on this additional responsibility right now.

Thank you. Manny, followed by Ahmad.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. I just wanted to make a few comments about this issue. I want to state first of all that I'm speaking on behalf of myself. I was recently appointed to a commission. However, I'm speaking on my own behalf as a citizen and long-term resident. I don't think that the city can afford this program even though I am absolutely an advocate of trying to find a solution. and I do have one that I'm gonna follow up with here in a moment. But I think based on the fact that the city would be committing itself to over 1.2 million for perhaps the next 15 years at a time when we are facing a catastrophic budgetary crisis that was not created by this council. But I don't think that we should be subsidizing a role that would be best performed by the federal, state, and county governments. In fact, I think that we should be working very hard to try to rejuvenate that relationship with the county. We had a piece of property that was available that was set up to build a housing facility and provide wraparound services. It's a vacant piece of property still owned by the city of Antioch and was proportioned over to the county for that purpose. There was a lot of monkeying around that went on and the facility never took place. That's been over 10 years. IT WAS WHEN I WAS ON THE COUNCIL, JUST 20 YEARS AGO. SO I DON'T WELL, THE 34 MILLION IS A VERY ATTRACTIVE AMOUNT OF MONEY. OUR COMMITMENT IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS. OUR SHARE OF THAT. WE WOULD BE GETTING 34 MILLION, BUT WE WOULD BE ON THE HOOK FOR OVER A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. If you're going to invest in the community, I say take some of that money and invest it in the Angelo Quinto program. That would be money that would be far better spent. The other part of the problem is that under the stipulations of this program, there could be people occupying the proposed facility that would not be Antioch residents. They would be coming from anywhere in the county that could qualify to live there. So saying that they're for Antioch residents only is not correct. They could be coming from anywhere. If we're gonna support this as taxpayers, let it be for people who are Antioch residents, not for people who are coming from somewhere else. Local businesses in the area are up in arms over this project. I do know that. I've also heard that there's a possibility that the owner of the property may be having some financial difficulties. You need to look into that. Thank you.

Ahmad, followed by Frank Sterling.

Hello again, everybody. appreciate all your time and I definitely want to speak to the home key. I sort of mentioned it a little bit in my previous talk. Um, I definitely understand this is a hard decision for our community. I live here, my kids live here, and we understand that there definitely is gonna be a lot of work involved with this project, but there's also a good amount of money on the table to make it happen. I know folks in the community mentioned policing. I actually don't think it's the policing that we need, it's all the wraparound services that come with it. A lot of folks that are experiencing homelessness, and I see it when I drive around our town, and it really breaks my heart. And it's even hard to explain to my children when they ask me what is going on. It's hard for them to sort of wrap their head around it. So we actually need to be investing. I do agree we need to be investing in police and safety for sure. But actually the folks that are needing these services need mental health services. They need those sorts of treatments which we should be investing in. And I definitely get it that there's going to be folks from other counties that will come and partake in these services. But as a city of Antioch, and we spoke earlier about funding, these are the things that we actually want to fund, things that are going to better the people that are living in the city or coming to live into the city. And I think people will get out of that situation that they're in and then begin to sort of pay it forward for the city of Antioch. So I'm definitely a proponent of this. I also don't understand that there's gonna be a lot of work involved in it. And if I can help, I'd be happy to as a local Antioch resident. So I hope you take this into account. Thank you.

Frank? Followed by Sarah.

Hello again. I'm here to speak in support of it. I hear a lot of the cost about policing and stuff. That might have to deal with the project but a lot of the people that are living on the streets you got to think of the cost of What's happening and certain police calls for people that are on the streets now that are living out on the streets? I think if you all remember the big encampment that was right down on right up by Lou's bar down in the Tom's Field area you all remember the big old one along Wilbur Avenue and out there that they put all the rocks and stuff. This, I feel, is gonna be another one of those places that gets the people off the streets. I heard Devin say about food, clothes, and shelter, the three things we need to survive that are human rights. getting someone into a house first gives them that chance to better themselves gives them that chance to get healthy and gives them the second chance of life many of us have friends or family who died on the streets i've lost a couple of people i went to school with on the streets i have a friend now that comes to my house three or four times a week i'm watching him disintegrate and lose his mental health. He's getting even skinnier than he's been because he has nowhere to go. I've also watched a couple of my other friends get into housing and watch their lives totally change and watch one got in because he had such bad health on the street that he almost died and he got into the hospital and they got him into the I forgot what the ones called the old Motel six in Pittsburgh. Totally changed this guy's life. He was living right down here by the Alano Club in the doorway of one of those places down there. Had two dogs. Almost died out there. Had a heart attack. Now his whole life has changed. He's got a place over here by the Enterprise Car Dealership. He's saving his money. He's about to move to L.A. to be closer to the only family that he's got. This is all made possible by the types of programs that you guys could have a chance to fund tonight. We get a lot of the nimbyism, the not-in-my-backyard stuff. We had those trailers for a while that people were going to park in the old police department parking lot, and that never happened because people complained. I lived right by that. Sometimes you have these fears that what may happen, but I think what we've got to do first is get people off the street, give them a house, give them this chance at life because they might die on the street. And this is a chance to prevent that. And again, a lot of those costs that people are talking about, about policing and having to keep an eye on this, that's already happening on the street, cleaning up the camps, policing people that are unhoused on the streets when something's happening. Those costs are already happening. Anyways, I'll leave it there. My time's up. Thank you.

Sarah Dorman, followed by Rosa.

Hello, Council. My name is Sarah. I'm here to speak in support of the Home Key Project. I'm not sure what led you all into public service, but I imagine it was something around wanting to take care of your community. And I would think if I was a council member, my primary responsibility would be to make sure that everyone in my community has food and housing. Those are just the basics, and I'm sure that's why you were called to public service in some way. So I think that this project seems pretty straightforward in that it is providing housing and the other services people need. And that is a good thing, pretty straightforwardly. And it is, I believe, your responsibility as a council to provide those services. And the cost is a consideration, but first of all, it's just the right thing to do. And second of all, this is already money that taxpayers have spent that needs to be returned to the community for the most important of services. I've heard many people bring up the issue of public safety and making sure there's enough money for public safety. And of course, safety is the ground for all of us. That is what we need. And it's really, really unsafe to be on the street. It's so easy to die when you're on the street. And a lot of the money that is spent for policing, police are going out to calls that mental health professionals could much better you know for a lower cost and i mean cost not just in terms of money for everyone involved handle the situation better and this this is funding those people that would be best suited to deal with the issues that are really causing the lack of safety for everyone in the community not just safety for people in houses but safety for everyone in the community because we affect each other and our safety is intertwined So there is a lot of reasons that I really hope that you will do the straightforward thing and use this money for Project Homekey. Thank you.

Rosa, followed by Grant.

Hello, my name is Rosa. I just want to keep my comments brief. I think all of us who live in the Bay Area understand the severity of issues, social issues that are facing people who are unhoused, and I want to urge you to embrace a program like Homekey that will act to better people's lives that are in crisis. I think housing is the beginning of safety and security, as everyone here has said, and it's a human right. So thank you very much.

Grant, followed by Gavin.

Yeah, good evening members of the council. My name is Grant. I am a Bay Area resident who is deeply invested in seeing our communities thrive and in seeing such an initiative like Project Homekey that means to provide resources and access to those that are most vulnerable amongst us. I believe that it's particularly as was raised in the previous item with regard to where the city investments go toward. This represents an opportunity to directly invest within our communities and ensure that those who would otherwise be left behind are not. So thank you so much.

Gavin, followed by Elizabeth.

So, home key. I think it would be a really good idea if we did honor this because, again, I think our lives are more important than some political game. Also, Homekey, why can't we just have it just to help the homeless? Why do we need to not help the homeless? Confused, because there's children out there starving. This is one of the issues that we need to focus on versus trying to deal with a whole bunch of nonsense. And I'm kind of a little bit confused where why we wouldn't support this. Because if you look through Bay Point all the way through here, there's a whole bunch of empty buildings. I'm not sure if the city or the county owns them, but it's a lot where businesses used to be. Let's start with Homekey. let's start with something there because I don't know why we can't have something there because there's a whole bunch of businesses that we should be pushing to come out here. Like, why is John Muir so far away? Why is Kaiser so far away? Why is Adobe so far away? They're in predominantly cities where they're thriving. We need to be advocating to push them out here. So let's start with Homekey and start turning the city around and maybe helping our other cities that are also hurting in the same area, turning it around versus trying to put some data center in Pittsburgh that nobody seems to want. Not just that, but instead of talking about, oh, we need to focus on the police, the police, the police, but yet I have yet to see anybody talk about why can we not protect youth services? Why we can't protect Homekey? Why we can't protect the homeless people and the youth? The youth are just as homeless out there as just any regular person. So you're just gonna arrest them too? Are we going back to that? What are we gonna do? Because we can't keep arresting them. Or are you just gonna arrest me too because I'm the color of my skin? Do we need to go through that rabbit hole again? I didn't think so. I know y'all tired of me. I'm tired. But, you know, it's time that we make a change. Thank you.

Elizabeth, followed by River.

Good evening. My name is Elizabeth LaVasse. I'm a special education advocate and I'm the founder, CEO, and president of We Get It Foundation. Sorry, I'm very tired tonight. There has been a lot of noise around Homekey, including from people on social media who are not even from Antioch, pretending to speak for the city and telling our residents what they should oppose. But we are not them. We are Antioch, and we need to think about our city, our people, and our responsibility to one another. The unhoused are not strangers to us. They are our own. They are part of Antioch, too. They include families. They include disabled and neurodivergent people. They include people who deserve dignity, support, and a real path forward. Homekey is important. It is an answer today. And it is more than displacement, more than deterrence, and more than treating human beings like a nuisance to be pushed somewhere else. If you move forward with this, as always, I'm pledging to come in gratis. I'm willing to help do the work. I am asking this council to do the right thing tonight. Do not let fear, outside pressure, or the constant dehumanization of our unhoused make this decision for you because we are Antioch and we take care of our own. Thank you.

River followed by Andrew.

Hi again. Regarding Homekey, I strongly support for the city council to push for the Homekey initiative. As I said earlier about, it is about values. Values are what this city stands for. And that is putting forward people first programs. And while recognizing my own privilege as well and our family's economic struggle, I think being here in Antioch, I have met and have had relationships with some of our own house people that have been here in Antioch, Oakley, et cetera, this area, having conversations with them, becoming friends. And people really do forget. People really do forget how quick things can change. A lot of these people, a lot of my former friends that I don't know where they are because encampments have further pushed them out. Who knows where they've been pushed? With the conditions they've dealt with, with the hands they have been dealt with, illness, addiction, no access to services. A lot of these conversations with these unhoused residents, a lot of them lost their job one day, and they had to live in their car one night. Car breaks down, no money for gas, no money to fix transmission, other repairs, et cetera. And then they're trapped in some lot, further being pushed, nowhere to go. and have to fend for themselves. And people forget on how close that us as regular people can get to that moment. Something happens. We lose everything. Life majorly changes. And I miss my friends. I hope they're OK. as well as that Homekey using this property with the money that has been allocated to it is only going to show that value that we put people first. And it will be very beneficial to people in preventing these conditions and these people to suffer through this. So for the city of Antioch to continue to reduce this pain that people have to live this human experience. Thank you.

Mr. Becker? Okay, then Nicole.

Good evening, Nicole Gardner, homeless advocate. So I feel like I'm like deja vu something, I'm going crazy, because I could have sworn that we already talked about this. You guys already talked about this whole process. You guys already knew that we were in a deficit when you voted for us to move forward with Homekey and apply for the grant. Now you guys, with all that's going on right now, I don't even know if y'all realize how difficult it's going to be for the state to even grant us a grant. You're with CDBG, right? You understand that point system. So to my knowledge and my research, We've 40, 50 points just knocked off already. The state is not going to work with us. or we had city staff, we had the state pushing the application through. And y'all talking about reversing all of what we've done and bringing, I would have had more respect for y'all had at that time y'all said, you know what, this is not, we're not gonna be able to do this. Instead of going through this whole process. Now one thing I must say, and I have to come to you, because one thing that irritated me is when you was just talking about the BART and you were talking about how, oh, okay, yeah, they cleared the parking lot. Those folks still have to go somewhere. Those unhoused folks, yeah, because you don't see them, they still have to go somewhere. You need to take advantage of the fact that your district is a mess, a hot mess. Right on the border, there's the Comfort Inn where all those unhoused people that are all over your district with businesses closing. Y'all talking about businesses, they're complaining. They complaining about this hotel. They been complaining. They trying to get unhoused people from out in front of their businesses and off of the streets. So this is very disappointing to me. I don't know what's going on. It's very weird to me and strange how I think back at the last mayor and how he fought so hard to get a grant before he left the city to make sure that we kept that transitional housing project up and running. And yet we have a mayor and we have a council that wants to give back $34 million. And y'all already know because of studies that we've done in the past, how much money, millions of dollars we spend every single year. on moving people from one street corner to the next. Makes absolutely no sense. And how in the hell do we get competition between city staff? Who came up with that narrative? City staff trying to give money to city staff or house the unhoused. And we gonna remember you too during the campaign season Because I hope you don't bring up nothing that got to do with homelessness, veterans, youth, none of that. Because y'all don't give a damn about what's going on in that neighborhood right now. Off of Sycamore, the back end of Sycamore, the homeless that's over in that area, I don't see y'all fighting for them, ain't fighting for the business owners or nothing. But want to come up here and say that now all of a sudden y'all worry. Because we trying to house people. Please don't mention nothing. Please don't mention nothing about homelessness. I won't see no flyers when you've campaigned. Homeless is nothing.

That's right. Mr. Becker?

Thank you. My last comment? My last speaker? Looks like I might close this out. OK. So just a couple of clarifications. This will be 85, 84 units with an on-site manager. There will be no hotel housing. There will be no transitional housing. This will be a multi-family apartment complex, permanent supportive housing. Another misconception I heard, and this is really the staff. Who wrote that staff report? An average of $1.2 million? I don't even have a college degree, and I know what average means. Average is above and below, and what's the middle? But your own city resolution says up to 1.2 million. So where did average come from? Because that means it might be less. So if we're going to use your word, average might mean something lower than 1.2 million. And that's an important distinction because when this application was submitted in May, the developer who for the community, I wanna say, was not even invited here, was not even told that this meeting was happening. That's respect to your city staff. The property owner took the time to drive out here to be here because of his commitment to this community. up to 1.2 million dollars to receive 35 million dollars that reminds me of a story that i read in a book called the bible okay does anybody remember the story about how jesus gathered with the community that came to him and he healed the sick and a young boy came with five loaves of bread and two fish. And his disciples said, send these people away because it is getting late so that they can eat. And Jesus said, bring me that food and we will feed them. And 5,000 people were fed. The state of California said, bring me what you have and we will house these people. The difference between the Bible and reality is that Jesus, who did this and does everything, everything, is that that $5,980,000,000 in all of the rounds of home key That's state taxpayer dollars. The last time I checked, I pay my taxes to the city of Antioch, Contra Costa County, the state of California, and the United States of America. And I am entitled to every single dollar that they will give me back. So that was my three minutes. I will finish with saying that those 84 individuals represent 33% of your unhoused community. And if you have any additional questions, because you didn't invite the developer, and I've been involved in this project for six years, 4,000 hours, at your housing consultant's cost, $360,000, but I did it for free. Thank you. You can invite me back up at your discretion. So if you have any questions, please feel free to call me back.

We have no further comment cards. All right, we have no further comments before the council.

Thank you to everybody who showed up and spoke tonight. Here's what I want to say. I, rejecting whether we accept or reject home key tonight, like, These political stances on the backs of poor, hurting people, it doesn't hurt me, right? You're not gonna prevent me from getting a win. This is not what this is about. The biggest challenge I'm having is that we have been waiting 18 months for the mayor to come back with an ad hoc committee to talk about solutions to homelessness, and it still has not come back to this council. We have community members who have offered solutions, staff time that has been invested in a possible solution, and some people have been working on this for more than six years and addressing issues around unhoused folks. And then you see people finally, for the first time, because they want to have a good video for social media to use during their campaign, come up here and say, we need more police. We in a budget deficit. We do care about unhoused people. This is not that we don't care. There just have to be other solutions. And then not offer one solution. And then to say, well, I didn't come to offer a solution. Of course you didn't because you haven't had a solution for the more than six years that I've been here. Well, you want to show up against a solution when you have none. There's a claim that this isn't a great location. What is it gonna look like for people driving into the city? I drive around District 1 and District 2 all the time. You want me to tell you what it look like? I can tell you what it looked like because I drove around and took pictures myself just so I could be reminded of what it looks like. The old America's Tires building that got burnt down because it was abandoned by America's Tires because it was a huge encampment that was so large that they couldn't even do business. And they left. And because that building sat empty for as long as it did, people who are living on the streets need to seek shelter. And guess where they're going to seek shelter? They're going to seek shelter in those buildings that are empty to get out of the elements. And this is not the first fire that has happened in the city, in these buildings that sit unoccupied by residents of Antioch who are living on the streets. Nobody's being bused in here from San Francisco. I've talked to people who have said that they have lived on the streets of Antioch for 30 years. They grew up here, they mama here, they cousins here, they brothers here, they aunties, they uncles. These are not strangers to Antioch. And you never see people show up with a solution, but you stand against something, but you at the same time stand for nothing.

Absolutely.

I have seen people taking photo ops with Team Jesus because you give people food. You're serving these people so that they can eat in the community, but they still don't have any shelter. Amen. And then what happens is we talk to residents, residents call and residents email because people don't have anywhere to take the food, to cook the food, to prepare the food, and then the food ends up on the streets. And then people are asking us, why are the streets filthy? Why is there food all in the streets? Why can't we have clean streets? Maybe because we're trying to feed people who don't have anywhere to take the food. So, I mean, I... I mean, I haven't been homeless for years, but I know what it felt like to be unhoused. People are saying, oh, the city of Richmond has a larger police department than the city of Antioch. We're also forgetting that the city of Richmond has Chevron money. We also forgetting that the city of Richmond just settled with Chevron for $55 million a year. We also forgetting that the city of Richmond is in West Contra Costa where they have over seven homeless shelters. Shelters for families and children and all of that exists. We also forget that the city of Richmond is on their fourth home key application and they're on their sixth encampment resolution application. We're also forgetting that they just opened up housing supported by the county to get people off the streets in West County. People are talking about the city of Oakland by the airport. I remember that because you know why? I travel a lot for work. And it wasn't Homekey that devastated that community. It was all of those RVs and tents and no real solution to homelessness and the many villages where they were just They would call it an encampment and they would put these tiny homes on a lot. And you know what Oakland would do? They would just pull all the homeless people from everywhere in the city and they would dump them all in the same spot, regardless of their condition, regardless of disability, regardless of mental health. That was Oakland's first solution and it failed. Because there was no real wraparound services or structures surrounding it. And of course those hotels shut down and they left. I would too. If every time I hit a corner, it's seven blocks of RVs and tents and then people are afraid to come to the hotels and come to the businesses. And someone came here and said, well, the city of Oakland rejected Homekey. Antioch could reject Homekey, too, if we had three organizations that got awarded Homekey in the city of Antioch so we didn't have to take Homekey. But we don't have three organizations that was awarded Homekey outside of the city because we don't know how to partner well. So it's just odd to me that, you know, Mr. Solis, I appreciate you coming up here tonight. I don't know how many, what business owners you talking to, but the business owners that's calling me is tired of stepping over people every morning just to open up their storefronts. having to clean feces and urine out from in front of their stores before they can even invite anybody in. I'm talking to business owners that have actually decided to just make friends with the people that are living in front and behind their businesses because they know that the city isn't going to do anything about moving them. So now they've got to move them themselves, they feed them themselves, and they move them along so they can do business and then they let them come back at night because there is no real solutions. Those are the businesses that I'm talking to. I don't know what business. as you're talking to. We're saying, oh, what is this hotel going to look like? What is it going to be? I mean, the executive end, I wasn't a big supporter initially because I figured, why are we going to put more poor people on top of poor people? Like, this is not going to work. I was also afraid that it was going to create unsafe conditions in the community. But having Opportunity Village on Cavallo and East 18th has actually made it better. The resources are there, the structure is there, and people are getting served. And God forbid we didn't have somebody who took the risk to say, let's do this, or else we would still be trying to figure out how we was gonna get people off the railway, which, by the way, we still haven't done that effectively either. Schools have come here and said, please help us because people are camping by the schools and we feel unsafe and there's all of this activity. Help us. They haven't gotten any help. Churches are asking for help while they're also helping and they haven't gotten any help. I drove down. I'm in Sycamore all the time. There are large encampments on the railway. You can see it when you're driving down L Street. So when you're talking about you don't want to see this when you're driving into the city, drive into the city, drive through the city, you're going to already see it. It's so odd to me. But you know what? I know Ms. Hart doesn't see it because she don't live in a community. She doesn't live where I live where I have unhoused neighbors. maybe Mrs. White would also see it if we started busing people to District 4 and District 3 and dropping them off there so then you could see it because in District 2 and District 1, we have to see it, deal with it, and navigate around it and find solutions every day that aren't even supported by this city.

That's right.

And so it's just like, the issue for me is like, This, like doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is a definition of insanity. And not coming to the table with any solution after people been asking one for more than 18 months, I don't understand. I'm just trying to figure it out like everybody else is. We have 13 months even before the first payment is due to support with wraparound services. And it's up to $1.2 million. Not even the potential of the full cost, but because you want people to fearmonger you based on a budget rather than not having lazy politicians that don't want to do the work to figure out how we do cover the cost while reducing burden on the general fund just baffles me. Because we can get creative. We have CDBG coming up for the new funding. for a new five-year cycle, there is housing and homelessness funds in there. If we could give one million of that money to over one million of that money to outside organizations to help with homelessness that aren't even based in Antioch, we could give that money to this project. We can get 1.2 million to Habitat for Humanity, but we can't find shelter for people with that CDBG money when we have a new five year cycle coming up? We could figure out how to do this and reduce the burden on the general fund if we didn't want to be lazy. Regional conversations, all we've been hearing for 18 months is regional conversations, regional conversations. I haven't heard one report from a regional conversation yet. where we could find out regionally if every city is willing to kick in, but you got 13 months to do it. county conversations how do we get in partnership with the county how can the county reduce the budget well it will it would be amazing if you actually did the work of having conversations with the board of supervisors and the county to figure out how we can get support but no you just complain about how the county don't support but you never reach out to anybody in the county to have a conversation and you know how i know what happened because i've reached out to them You know how I know that the mayors of Brentwood, Pittsburgh, Oakley, and all of that have not been called and contacted to have a conversation about regional efforts is because I've talked to them. Because I'm not speculating here. I'm actually making phone calls to see if the work is being done that was promised, and it is not being done. So what are we going to be left with? You're saying what you don't want to see? That building is going to be blighted. That hotel is not going to operate as a hotel, and I'm not going to say forever, but for many years after this. It's going to have a fence around it. People are going to start breaking in, and people are going to be living there whether you want them to or not. Without resources, no wraparound services, no funding, they're going to be there, and they're going to be living there whether you provide services or not. Homelessness is not illegal to not be unhoused, but it should be illegal to allow people to be unhoused. And so this might not be the solution. It might not be, but I haven't heard one. But what I can't do, somebody said to me, politics isn't a place where you care. You care too much about people, which is why you cannot play this game of politics. And now I get it because I'm seeing people who I haven't seen in years come to this council and electioneer off the backs of poor people and people in poverty. And then they're going to run on that campaign when you ain't seen them not once go to an encampment and have a conversation. Right. with an unhoused person about what they need or want. That is so sad. You got people up here who got elected because their very campaign platform said they were going to address homelessness. We've been waiting 18 months. So This is where I'm at. I know District 2 and District 1 is overwhelmed with unhoused folks, and we don't have clear solutions to get people off the streets. I know the city has spent millions of dollars on police, code enforcement, contracts, clearing contracts, abatement contracts, security contracts, that we are going and clearing private property. We spend thousands clearing unhoused people off private property. Well, money that we won't get back from these owners unless we litigate it. Which is going to cost us more money to fight them to give us the money back to clear the blight than it will be for us to just address the issue up front. So, I mean, I think there was something that was shouted from the community is saying, like, don't. I think what is being asked is to, one, not reject it, but also table this discussion to the next council meeting to give those who actually want to do the work an opportunity to figure out how to relieve the burden off the general funds. And if that's not what you want to do, then just reject it today. Well, what I will say is that I have no problem, no problem, and I've said this to the council, I have no problem renting vans and dropping people off in front of your homes if we don't get a solution.

I'm from Rocha.

Yeah, I do. That's tough to follow. I have some questions. I just want some clarifying questions. I don't know if staff can. I think I heard Council Member Walker state that the actual up to 1.2 funding, when will that actually be expected from us? Is that right away or is it at the end of the year? That's one question I have. Another question that's come up, so I'll ask, there's two questions. The other one is, I've understood that as we as a body move forward with Homekey, that future city councils Mayor, I don't know what the situation is with future city councils if they choose to, because I believe this is in five year increments, up to 1.2 per year. Overall, if it goes the full 15 years, I believe it's 18.75. So for me, what I'd like to know is one, does the actual commitment of general fund dollars of up to 1.2 have to be kicked in to move forward, and two, If this city council makes the decision to move forward, what happens in four years if another city council chooses not to? I don't know how that works. So a couple of clarifying questions.

Thank you. The answer to the first question is the 1.2 would happen next year. So right now we use the 750,000 to acquire and then moving forward 1.2. The reason why it's up to 1.2 is because for the first five years it's 1.2. Then in year six it goes down to 750 or 800,000 for the next three or four years. So it fluctuates for the maximum of about 1.2 until year 16.

and what was your second question oh well the reason why and i've heard andrew don't mean to single you out andrew but i've heard that there's a timeline for construction i think it's 12 months i believe and and and so this payment would be due like in say summer of of um 27 is that am i hearing that correctly November of 27? Okay, so I'm just trying to get some clarification because one of the things, I definitely have supported this from the beginning on the application, not knowing where we would be in the budgetary process. We just overcame 54 million from our general fund over the last two years, but yet looking forward, it's like we're faced with another 54 million or so in the next three. And so should we move forward with this particular project, which addresses long-term services for our unhoused community, something's gonna have to go along the way. And so I'm just saying, I'm talking about services and programs that we may not be able to afford moving forward. So whatever we choose to do tonight, if we do move forward, I would hope that the audience, the constituents out there, understand that it's gonna come at the cost of some other general fund dollars and services. I just wanna make that clear.

Thank you, Councilmember Rocha. I think like, A lot of the programs that people have been advocating for to not be cut are outside funded anyway. They're not even funded by the general fund. The question around the Angelo Piton Crisis Response Team eventually having to be paid out of the general fund, that's only if there aren't new outside dollars that could come in to continue to support that project. These initiatives have never been pushed forward with the understanding that they could survive on a general fund. And we pushed to hire a ground writer, and we have this group, Townsend Affairs, who has been helping, right? This group has greatly supported Ms. Cabral and her team to continue those dollars. So just like from a community concern, if those efforts continue and those dollars continue to exist, like I'm expecting they will, then the community don't have to worry about that i think what the community is saying is um no like the concern around slight of hand right where we're gonna say we can't afford 1.2 million annually for this but then we add eight more police officers to the budget we can't afford 1.2 million for this but then but then we're still in conversations like the mayor and count and the Mayor Pro Tem mentioned at the last meeting, that we're still in discussions about COLAs, right? So people wanna say, if you're saying this is gonna be a true savings, don't put it somewhere else, make it a true savings, right? I think that between CDBG, regional conversations, and true dialogue with the county, because I know the only people talking to the county is Andrew, the developer, and the property owner. I don't, and I've talked to the county, nobody from the city has talked to them. I've gotten several emails from HCD asking, what is going on? Like, can we get some commitment? Nobody has talked to even the state about what's going on here. I had to essentially email acting city manager Cortez and say, can you at least respond and tell them that they gotta wait for another response because this looks very, we just ghosting the state. My biggest concern is that HCD will see us as a liability in the future and it can prevent us from getting future dollars. 13 months before up to $1.2 million need to be paid with CDBG coming back around for five years, conversations with the county and regional conversations, I have been assured that if this council is committed, really committed to doing the work, that can get down lower.

And I know that through the CDBG with the substantial amendment, we were able to reallocate funding for the acquisition, which does not come from general fund. So again, I'm just trying to look at how we can best be stewards of our general fund and continue to strive to meet the needs of our community.

For the first five years of Home Key, it could be fully funded by CDBG.

Any other comments?

I didn't want to go right after Councilman Torres-Walker. I was like, wow. Yeah, thank you for sacrificing that. So first of all, thank you for all that have come out tonight and spoken either for or against. Thank you for those who have been in our ears for years. Thank you, Andrew. I know, Andrew, sometimes we don't see eye to eye, but thank you for coming out. You know, I've seen firsthand that housing alone isn't enough. But I've also seen that services without stable housing are often not enough either. So we have to think about that. Most of you know I work with survivors of human trafficking. I work with an organization that has safe housing with wraparound services for survivors of human trafficking. Years ago, people thought that population didn't deserve help, that they should figure it out on their own and that they should make different choices. What we learned from what we did at Love Never Fails is that with stable housing, healthcare, counseling, job training, and legal support, create a pathway to long-term success. I know I'm talking about human trafficking survivors and we're talking about unhoused, there's a lot of similarities and there's a lot of overlap. While the population served by Homekey is a little bit different, the principle is similar. When people are facing significant challenges around housing combined with services often produce, significant challenges, housing combined with services often produce better outcomes than expecting people to solve those challenges without support. And that's important right there. Because I hear it, I see it on social media, I hear it every day. How come they need to go get a job? Oh, I do a hand up instead of a hand out. So people need that support. That experience is one of the reasons, and my experience working with that population is why I'm interested in understanding whether Homekey can provide a more effective solution than the cycle we see today. Because what we're doing now is definitely not working. Where we spend resources responding to homelessness without creating enough pathways to permanent stability. And Council Member Torres-Wager, you made a lot of great points. We hear people up here, well you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, and a lot of times we don't hear any solutions. Never hear solutions. People love to complain because it's easy to complain. It's easy, I don't like his bike, I don't like the way she look, I don't like that food, but we'll never come back with, you know, I don't like that food, but I know over here, this place has food I like. I don't like the way she's dressed, but you know what, let me go help her out. She may be having a hard time, and maybe I can connect her with resources. I think it would be a huge mistake if we don't invest in this, because what is going to happen if we don't invest in it, you're right, that hotel's going to close, it's going to become blighted, and we're going to get the emails every day, oh, there's an encampment here, there's an encampment there, I saw somebody here. Oh, every time a sweep happens, they're all on the sidewalk with nowhere to go, and you just need to get them out of sight. We need to come up with solutions because if we don't, Mr. Mayor, I wanna know, I haven't heard a solution from you, to be honest. Mr. Mayor, I respect you and things that you say and things that you do, but I've been sitting here waiting for that solution to come. Bessie, and I'm sorry, Ms. Cortez, you're doing a great job, but we had a city manager that was making outreach to county, that was reaching out to federal partners, that was getting us in front of people that can find us money, that got us connected to Townsend Public Affairs, who finally got us connected to different departments back in Washington, D.C., and now this year we're being considered for funding, because in the past, they weren't hearing from us. In the past, nobody was, we weren't going out there. We weren't getting in front of them. And a lot of them are like, this is the first time we've heard about Antioch. And I know in the past, I was begging, because you remember when you were city manager, I begged, we need to get a lobbyist out in front of our federal and our state partners so they know who we are and what we need and what we need to do. I am in agreement that if we pass on this the state is not gonna look favorably on us in the future and we may not get this but we might we might we can take that chance but I have a feeling if we pass on this the states can be like you know what Antioch is not that serious so let's go to let's let's go to the other cities that are out in front of us so right there I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to put a comment right there, because I know this discussion is a never-ending one. But I'm going to leave it right there.

Can I make a motion to extend the meeting to 1 AM?

I have a motion to extend the meeting to 1 AM. I have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes 5-0.

I'm going to go first since you brought this item forward. So there's been a lot of, this is obviously a very emotional subject because we're dealing with people and we're dealing with vulnerable people. There's a need to fund whatever we do in this city. stepping into a $54 million deficit with no regard to how we were gonna sustain it, except we're gonna ask for more money from some other agency. The feds aren't giving it to us. The state isn't giving it to us. The county has a failed bond measure, because they can't afford to do what they're doing. So we've been working for the past year and a half to take that $54 million two-year deficit, $27 million a year, down to $4.5 million this year. Last May, when this came before us, we had a $13 million deficit, and I was the only no vote on it, and I'll sit right here and say it, because we could not afford it. This was one more unfunded mandate that we were taking on that we could not afford. And so I voted no, and in the past year since May, we've had a year to go talk to county, talk to our neighbors, talk to everybody else, and nothing's happened. So here we are today saying we need to go out and talk to everybody and figure out how we're gonna get help on this thing. Apparently, Andrew and the applicant and the hotel owner and the nonprofit have been talking to the county I don't know of any results that have come out of that. So the bottom line is we are facing next year, this year we have whittled down to 4.5 million because, I'm just talking about money because this is what it's about for me right now. We cannot afford this. We whittled this down to 4.5 million. Next year it goes back up to 14.5 million. That's without cost of livings, getting our contracts up to date. It's probably closer to 16, 17 million, 18 million dollar deficit. That's a million and a half dollars a month we are going negative in the city. We cannot afford or sustain that. So to take on a $1.2 million a year, whatever it's gonna come down to, who knows, but up to $1.2 million a year for up to 15 years, that's our maximum commitment, I cannot sit here and support committing money that we do not have right now as we sit here. No matter how important the issues are, we can't spend. I cannot in good conscience spend money that we do not have and hope that we're going to get money down the road through grants and different things we spent. ERF funding, the encampment resolution funding, $6.8 million the city received in that resolution funding to house 30 to 50 individuals in an encampment through the process of moving them from the encampment into the housing, into the interim housing, and into permanent housing with all the support services. That was 30 to 50 people. That's happened in the last year. Our point in time count numbers went from 240 to 250 last year. We went up 10 individuals last year in our point in time, basically stayed flat for all intents and purposes. A $6.8 million investment did not result in our numbers coming down. Granted, it helped 30 to 50 people, which is awesome, getting them off the street and doing that. What?

Point of order. Point of order.

I'm sorry, Nicole, I shouldn't have said what. So my point is that I just want to reiterate my position from last May, from when we voted on it again in October or November, the fact that we are no closer to answering our financial problems. We have 10 or 15 frozen positions. We have... four million dollars in roofs to fix we have pools we we have so much unfunded liabilities that we aren't even addressing and i and i'm just going to keep this there's so many other things we talked about i'm going to keep this focused on the on the finances of this we cannot continue to spend money that we do not have when we have when we have an ability to see our revenues right now our revenues 99.9 million dollars this year 99.9 million dollars proposed for the next years $100 million and $300,000 for the year after. Our revenues are going up $300,000 in two years. That is not enough money to fund all the things that we need to do in this community and to keep ourselves going with a vibrant staff that's gonna support all the things we wanna do. It's not gonna be able to help us jumpstart economic development that we desperately need to do. And so we're at a tough spot. I'm gonna admit that. But by spending or investing up to $1.2 million for up to 15 years, plus 750 that's gonna have to come from somewhere, hopefully CDBG, I cannot vote for that, as good of a cause as this project may be, because I don't believe that we can sustain that. So that's my comment.

Mr. Mayor. So, wow, this has been an extremely emotional night on so many various subjects. So I did ask for this to come back to the city council for reconsideration. And the problem is this, I voted for this. And as we moved off from that original vote, the problem I have with this project is the rumors, the hearsay, the finger pointing, people accusing, people ripping us to pieces in public, making false accusations, lies, distortions, and on and on. After I proved it, come to find out that 85 of the units are for the unhoused. The other, I don't know, 40 units, whatever it is, will be for retail. That's not... Excuse me. You know, it's not appropriate, Andrew. You know, so let me finish. And so this is a problem. Staff says one thing to us. Andrew Becker says another thing to us. And we're sitting there saying, what's true? What's accurate? What is factual? And for 18 months, I think there has to be unanimity here. We don't know everything. What we asked, we read in the newspapers, the Chronicle, and I think the Oakland paper, Bay Area, that the property went into foreclosure. I mean, how many times have we asked what is happening, what is the impact, does that impact the grant? We have asked this question for months, and we still don't have an answer. And that is an important question, and we still don't have the answer.

Go ahead, what do you want to say? Get it out of your system. No, ma'am, please, thank you.

I mean, anybody else want to blurt out why I'm speaking?

Please.

We don't do it to you, but go ahead. So a problem I have with this is that we have asked questions repeatedly for 18 months. And we get conflicts. Andrew screams, rants, and raves at the city manager, and the city manager makes accusations to Andrew. It's an ugly, ugly thing that has existed for 18 months. And so why I brought this back is that we, each and every one of us, have a legal fiduciary responsibility. What are the facts? What is the truth? What is our financial exposure? This didn't come up tonight. This has been long term. I've asked, well, wait a minute. The state of California, quote unquote, has awarded us? Well, what's the next step? Where are we at? And I don't think my questions are out of line. I will not support something without knowing the facts. And I would say to each one of us on this council, it is wrong to approve something. All the comments tonight about homelessness and the emotionalism and the humanitarianism and the religious issues, they're all right. Nobody would disagree with that. particularly and supposedly in a civilized society. We should care for the worse. We should provide housing and food and shelter and education, things of that sort. But there is something that we are responsible for, and that is our budget. When I look at the document, this is why I really had wanted the budget to go first before these, is to frame the question. It's not just $1.2 million. When you look at what we did this fiscal year, we took $5 million out of reserves. What are we doing this next fiscal year, 26, 27? We're taking $5 million out of reserves. What does it look like? It looks like we are going to start July 1st, 2027 with at least a $15 million budget deficit. And you have to take a look, we only have $100 million budget. That's 15%. So what department are we cutting out? We're gonna cut out recreation They only spend about $5 million, so okay, let's just eliminate recreation. How many people have complaints about the streets and about sewers and water? Well, let's just cut out another five to 10 million there. And our quality of life will deteriorate and deteriorate. This is not a simple solution, but I would suggest that before anybody makes a decision, we have to articulate the questions and get the factual answer. And that means going to the state of California and bringing them to a meeting and saying, okay, what does happen? A future council after five years after spending at least $6 million, at least $6 million, what happens when a future council says no? What happens? What is the exposure to the city of Antioch? These are not simple issues. This is not, I see a problem and this is going to solve them. This will not solve all the homelessness issues in the city of Antioch. Let's not kid ourselves. It may be a step forward, But it's not going to resolve anything. And I agree with Councilmember Timisha Torres. This is frustrating. We have been dealing with this for 18 months. And frankly, I think we're more confused about where we're at and where we're going. And the $1.2 million does not include all the administrative issues that the staff report has articulated. So let's be real about that. So I understand right now if I had to vote, I would vote not to go forward because I don't have the answers to the questions and I am frustrated. The human stories, the emotional stories, the tear jerk stories, they're real. I see it every day in this city. And it tears my heart out. But I do not want to make a problem worse for our community. And that's what I'm appealing to the mayor and to the city council and to our staff and the advocates and the community. Before we go out there and start ripping people to pieces, making accusations, outright lies, my suggestion to you is stop. Stop. We are trying to respond to this issue as best we can, and unfortunately, our best is not good enough for the last 18 months. So my feeling is... to give a one-month, you know, bring this issue back, but there are so many unanswered questions that none of us have answers, and I doubt that the staff has the answers. They have to be researched. So, Mr. Mayor, I know that time is late, but, you know, as I said, if I had to vote today, I would vote that we rescind. But I believe in hope. And without hope, why live? And so from my perspective, and Ms. Cortez, I know this is a baptism by fire, you know, and I want you to know I appreciate the fact that you step forward and are the acting city, is city manager, but sometimes I have to believe you're thinking, what did I do? You know, so... So, members of the council, members of the public, members of staff, this is not ripe for prime time. We need to understand what the exposure is, and we need to challenge ourself, because let's face it, it is always an issue of money. Okay? But we have no plan. We have not articulated deadlines amongst ourselves. What are the policy questions? What are the financial questions? What are the operational questions? In the public testimony, I think somebody indicated that if we went forward, it's going to be kind of a slum anyway. Well, that concerns me. And I hope that we can be proactive versus reactive in our community. If we make this investment, We can't afford to have this facility deteriorate. And so I think all of us are frustrated, all of us are anxious, but I do think that it's an obligation upon ourselves to move forward in a responsible manner, and we're not there.

Can I offer a motion?

Sure.

So I know that there were some challenges because HCD has been in contact with the city and there are deadlines. Deadlines that we already missed and the council wasn't informed of. I think it is unfortunate that the developer wasn't invited today. That should have been something. that I think staff should have reached out and had because we wouldn't have so many questions the owner of the property is here tonight with I don't know if it's the broker or whatever but they weren't included on the agenda for us to ask any questions um and so I think What I was going to ask tonight anyway was that we table this to the next council meeting so we can get those questions answered, do some more investigating, and see what the potential is. That's what was going to be my request.

And I was just going to say, along with that, that I've been asking the question since I think March. that we have to have a deadline to some degree to give us clarification on points that you've brought up that are still unanswered. And here we are in June and we still don't have those answers to our questions. So I concur with you. have these questions answered we need to get the developer we need to get the owner we need to get that information so then we can make an educated decision on what's the best interest for the city of antioch moving forward so i concur with you and hcd is waiting we need more time for a response and i will say i have met with california supportive housing they have projects

All over the region and the state, none of those projects are blighted. None of those projects look like dumps. I don't know where people is getting their information from, but maybe it's because those cities did partner with this particular organization. Again, my motion is to table this to the next city council meeting and that staff have conversations with HCD to figure out timelines because they've been left on read and get some answers from the owner and the developer so that we can make an informed decision moving forward. That's my motion.

On the motion. Ms. Cortez, is it really a question for the city manager? I don't mean to put you in a bad place. But if we support this motion, how are you, you're gonna need to know what the questions are. And the only way for you to know the question is for us and members of the public to articulate some of those questions. So I don't have a problem holding you off a month, but I don't wanna leave you in a lurch saying, yeah, oh yeah, you're supposed to answer all the questions when you don't know what the questions are.

I think you mentioned some questions tonight. The public have, and I definitely have questions of my own I'm willing to send in.

Well, I think, you know, in some respect, I'd like to see the owners in the room. Okay. I mean, not in this formal situation. A more informal situation. And I'd like to see some of the state representatives and what we can do with CDBG and where is the county. I mean, these are big issues. And, again, I don't know how to tell the city manager, you know, oh, you got all the questions? No, she doesn't have all the questions. I mean, Tamisha, clearly you have more information on some of this stuff than any of us. Okay, we don't have the same information that you have. And so it's like we're kind of at a loss. But that's part of the reasons why I want to know what those questions are and what your answers are. So all of us have the same information to render a final decision. So I think, frankly, It's 12-15, we still need to adopt a budget, but I think maybe to have a council meeting, a more informal process to bring some of the players in the same room. I'd like to hear what HDC and others, hear from them, hear from the administrators of Home Key, say, What's happening? What's wrong? What do you need from us? Otherwise, this is just going to be, instead of 18 months of frustration, it'll be 19 months of frustration. And we'll never get closer to resolving this issue. So from my perspective, I agree with your motion with the understanding that maybe we meet next week and invite everybody around table and start asking some of these questions. I don't know how to put my hands around it, but to invite the players, you know, council, staff, and regulators, and everybody else, and have a discussion. I don't know another method, and God knows I'm open to it, but I don't know another method. So I would just suggest, the maker of the motion, that somehow you can articulate that. Good luck.

Could that be framed like a study session? Sure. We can have a study session.

So we do not take action.

We host a study session. sometime between now and the next council meeting. Now, that means, Councilwoman Wilson, if you had any plans to travel, because we're supposed to have a break, don't go anywhere. Well, we can find a date. Because I know I have plans, but I'm going to stay behind for this.

Yeah, you got three days, too. Right. We all do.

We stand behind for this. That we can try to schedule some sort of study session with all the players at the table before the next meeting. I think it might be a little more difficult to get the state representatives here. And that's what I was going to say. Anybody. Because they have been communicating for weeks. And so now that they finally got a response from you, we can have a conversation with them about if this is doable and doesn't violate any form of the agreement or state policy related to this funding for them to come into a public space and have a conversation.

Yes, I can reach out to see when they're available.

Ms. Cortez, do you have any suggestions or Ms. Cabral?

I do think that maybe a study session would probably be a good idea, so that way everybody will be in the room and can answer any questions you may have. You are right. As I'm trying to piece everything together for this past 18 months, it's been really hard for me to even understand the full. I know of staff who've all been working together, and I think it would just be better to have them all in the room.

I also want to add that I am not aware I didn't receive the conditional award letter but there's a deadline so I want to make sure that if we decide to meet that it happens sooner rather than later.

Ms. Cortez received it and they've been asking for it to be signed for three weeks now.

What is the deadline?

i don't recall seeing any deadlines they reached out and they said we have sent the agreement we would like to know what is the hold up and they emailed and asked that somebody get back with them because there was a deadline and i forwarded you that email and i believe miss scott was also copied on that email so it it would need to be signed by the city manager so that's probably why i didn't come to you miss cabral thank you

Don't bite my head off. How about next Monday, the 29th?

What does the letter commit us to that we're talking about signing?

So the ones that I have seen is a relocation certification. And again, I apologize, but I do not see any deadlines listed anywhere in that communication. And I had responded to them to say I had just gotten in the role. I did respond to say I need to review this and I will get back to you. So I did respond. And then the second time I did respond, I did respond today, just saying that we are still.

They didn't give any official deadline, but they're pressing us like it's a deadline. So we should just act. Here's the situation. So we should get some clarity on that.

Get some clarity. I'm suggesting sooner rather than later. So Council Member Wilson and I, we're both available on the 29th. Are there the other three?

Yeah, I'm available the 29th.

Okay, what time? 6?

Five, six, whatever.

Five? I don't care.

Well, I mean... Six, because I'm leaving work in West County that day. Six will work better for me.

Okay. Ms. Cortez?

Does that work for staff, 6 o'clock next Monday the 29th? Yes, let me check with you.

It does work, but I wanted to ask a clarifying question. Is this meeting, do you want everyone here, like HCD or other people? Everyone. Yeah. Okay. Whoever you can get.

Thank you. And you're asking a great question. It's like, yes, I want HCD here, because I want them to clarify to us what is happening. And what will happen? What is our exposure? I mean, I, you know, when, yeah.