City Council - Regular Meeting

Live from Burbank, the media capital of the world. To participate in the general public comment period, please call now at 818-238-3335. For any scheduled public hearings, please call when prompted to speak if you want the comment to be part of the record. Speaking times will be determined by the total number of public comment cards and callers in the queue at the start of each public comment period. For 1-20 total speakers, each speaker will receive up to 3 minutes. For 21-39 total speakers, each speaker will receive up to 2 minutes. And for 40-plus total speakers, each speaker will receive up to 1 minute. No additional comment cards or calls will be accepted once the public comment period begins.

Interpreters are available for assistance with in-person public comment. Please connect with them if you are in need of services. Hay servicios de interpretación disponibles para asistir con los comentarios públicos en persona. Por favor, habla con un intérprete si necesita estos servicios.

Good evening and welcome to a joint meeting of the Burbank City Council with the Parking Authority on Tuesday, June 30th, 2026. Please join me for a moment of reflection. This moment is intended to begin our meeting with the positive and collective support for our beloved community. The City Council welcomes everyone joining us this evening. We encourage you to take a moment to reflect on our community and the work we will be doing tonight. Although each of us has our own unique reasons for being here, we are united in our passion for our wonderful city. As we pause, let us consider our individual contributions and what they mean to those around us. Let us find solace in knowing that by working together with a shared spirit of community and partnership, we will always act responsibly for the betterment of Burbank. Thank you. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ready, begin.

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.

Good evening, Madam City Clerk. Good to see you. Please conduct the roll call.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Council Member Anthony?

Here.

Council Member Perez? Here. Council Member Rosati?

I am here.

Vice Mayor Mullins? Here. And Mayor Tagahashi?

Here.

Thank you.

There will be five periods of public comment tonight. Members of the public may comment in person or by phone during the general public comment period and must submit cards or call before the general public comment period begins. The first public comment period is for joint general public comment on any matter concerning city business or any agenda item. If you are here in person and wish to speak during the joint general public comment, please submit a yellow public card to address the council over at the city clerk's desk. If you'd like to participate in the joint general public comment over the phone, please call now at 818-238-3335. Callers will be placed in a queue until the joint general public comment period begins, at which time no additional calls will be taken. If you'd like to participate in public comment for the public hearings over the phone, please call anytime between now and the beginning of each public hearing at 818-238-3335. Callers will be placed in a queue until the public comment period begins for each public hearing, at which time no additional calls will be taken. Additional public comment periods will be available in person only following each report to Council this evening. A Spanish interpreter is available in the front row this evening. for assistance with public comment. Please connect with them if you're in needs of services and feel free to walk over and let them know that you're in need of services. We have six announcements this evening.

In case you're counting, the United States of America is 249 years, 361 days, 18 hours, and about 10 minutes old right now. Only four more days until the big 250. Burbank has some exciting events coming up to kick off the special month of July. Starting with some sparkles you can celebrate the fourth of July, with a spectacular drone show launching from the starlight bowl on July 4 at 9pm. This dazzling aerial displays brought to you by the starlight bowl and Community Members are encouraged to enjoy the show from any location with a clear view of the hillside surrounding the bowl. Please note that the starlight bowl will be closed during the launch and no official viewing location will be established to enhance the experience, however, a YouTube link featuring a synchronized music soundtrack is available. Simply play the soundtrack from your viewing location while watching the drones. To obtain the link, visit starlightbowl.com. Another bright opportunity can be found in applying to the Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals. The Burbank City Clerk's Office is accepting applications for one vacancy for an unexpired term ending July 31, 2028. The deadline to submit an application is Friday, July 24 at 5 p.m. If interested, please apply online at burbankca.gov slash bccapplications. As a reminder, any person appointed to fill a vacancy shall hold office for the remainder of the unexpired term. Persons appointed to serve unexpired terms must complete the term before applying to serve on another board, commission, or committee. For more information, please contact the Burbank City Clerk's Office at 818-238-5851 or email cityclerks at burbankca.gov. Words on the street that the City of Burbank is currently preparing the Burbank Rancho Neighborhood Specific Plan, and we want to hear from you. We are hosting a series of community pop-ups this summer to share community design options and hear your feedback. Please join us at one or more of the pop-ups on the date that works best for you. Each pop-up will share the same information and offer the same activities. Stop by anytime on July 11th between 9am and 12pm at Mountain View Park. Saturday, July 18th, between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. at Johnny Carson Park, or July 23rd, between 4.30 and 6 p.m. at Calvary Bible Church. For more information, go to burbankrnsp.com. Are you looking for more information about the Metro North Hollywood Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit Project? The City has a dedicated webpage with project information, updates, documents, and additional resources. Visit the City's Transportation Plans and Projects webpage or scan the QR code to learn more. Calling all sports fans attention, we are calling all sports fans. Join us for four exciting Burbank community outings this season. Cheer on the Los Angeles Dodgers as they take on the Boston Red Sox during Burbank Dodger Day on Saturday, August 2nd at 4.20pm. Then, experience the excitement of professional women's soccer at Burbank Angel City Day on Saturday, August 16th at 6pm. Next up, catch the action at Burbank Sparks Day as the Los Angeles Sparks face off against the Portland Fire on Sunday, September 20th at 4 p.m. Finally, head out to the Burbank LAFC Day to watch LAFC take on Minnesota United FC on Sunday, November 1st at 1.30 p.m. For more information, visit burbankca.gov slash sports. And finally, here's your biweekly reminder about the upcoming elections. The November 3, 2026 City of Burbank General Municipal Election nomination period will open at 8 a.m. on Monday, July 13, 2026 and will close on Friday, August 7, 2026 at 5 p.m. The nomination period will seek candidates to fill the following. Three offices for member of the City Council, one office of the City Clerk, and one office of the City Treasurer. These offices all seek candidates to fill four-year terms ending on December 16, 2030. You will need to check some boxes because a candidate for elective offices of the city needs to be a United States citizen, at least 18 years of age, a resident of the city of Burbank for at least 29 days prior to filing nomination papers, and a registered voter in the city of Burbank at the time of nomination. Qualifying individuals may contact the Burbank City Clerk's Office at telephone number 818-238-5851 during normal office hours Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. If an incumbent does not file by the deadline, the nomination period will be extended until Wednesday, August 12, 2026 at 5 p.m. for candidates other than an incumbent for that seat only. And while America is set to turn 250 this weekend, our very own Burbank is celebrating its 115th anniversary since being incorporated next week on July 8. Sounds like a double celebration to me. Back to you, Madam Mayor.

Wonderful. Thank you. Next up, Mr. City Manager, do you have anything to report?

Madam Mayor, thank you. Yes, I do. I have one item. I'd like to call up our Fire Chief, Danny Alvarez. He has some good news.

Welcome, Chief. Good to see you.

Good evening. Mayor Takahashi, Vice Mayor Mullins, Council, Danny Alvarez, Fire Chief. I'm excited to share with you this evening that our fire department has officially been awarded accredited agency status by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. This recognition represents one of the highest professional achievements a fire department can earn and reflects our staff's hard work, collaboration, and unwavering commitment to excellence. The accreditation process challenged us to take a close look at every aspect of our organization. This process required us to develop a community-driven strategic plan that reflects the needs and expectations of our community, conduct a comprehensive community risk assessment to better understand the hazards facing our city, and evaluate all of our deployment strategies. Together, these efforts enable us to monitor more than 200 performance indicators that measure everything from governance to fiscal responsibility to emergency response, training, fire prevention, public education, and operational effectiveness. This process provides us with valuable data that allows us to not only measure our performance, but also identify opportunities for continuous improvement. Accreditation demonstrates our commitment to providing the highest level of service to our community. More importantly, it serves as a proactive roadmap for the future, helping us plan strategically, allocate resources responsibly, and continually improve the services we provide. The Burbank Fire Department is now one of only five fire agencies in the state of California to hold both an ISO class one public protection classification and accredited agency status through the Center for Public Safety and Excellence. Nationally, only 128 departments have achieved both these distinctions. This accreditation was made possible through the collective efforts of every member of our department, our firefighters, professional staff, administrative personnel, and leadership team. I also want to thank our city leadership, city manager's office, and city council for their continued support and investment in public safety, which made this accomplishment possible. During the evaluation process, one of the glaring needs for the department was a fourth rescue ambulance, and the pilot program, which has now become permanent under this council's direction, played a significant role in the accreditation. While we're proud of this recognition, we view it not as the finish line, but as another step in our ongoing commitment to excellence. Accreditation reinforces our promise to the community that we will continue to strive to provide exceptional service, embrace innovation, and hold ourselves accountable to the highest professional standards. And just on a final note, while we're incredibly proud of this achievement, I have to say as a fire chief, it is the things that are very difficult to measure that make me proudest. Things like our personnel's compassion, the empathy, and the professionalism they show on a day-in and day-out basis. And I think that's really what makes Burbank Fire Department incredibly special. But other than that, that's the end of my report, and I'd be happy to answer any questions for you.

Well, congratulations. I think that warrants a big round of applause for the fire department. Well done. Any comments from council and questions?

No? Just congratulations. You guys do an amazing job, and we're very proud of our fire department. With your leadership, of course, we're able to accomplish these things. So thank you. Thank you.

There may be some challenging topics in our city, but there's one topic we can all agree on is that our fire department rocks.

That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. Mr. City Attorney, will you please report on closed session?

Yes, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council, and for the benefit of the public, the City Council convened closed session this afternoon at 4 p.m. to discuss two items of existing litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9d1 in the matters of Villa Gomez versus City of Burbank, which is a motor vehicle accident case. and the matters of Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority versus City of Burbank, which is California Environmental Quality Act and breach of contract action. In both of these items, the City Council took no reportable action.

Thank you for the update. Now is the time for joint general public comment. I will be calling out the speaker's name as well as the person who is next in line to speak. In order to keep public comment moving in a timely fashion, we have a designated seat in the front row for speakers who are up next. A timer is available on the podium. This is also the last call for anyone who needs an interpreter or that staff will be released for the evening. Persons may choose to use the first period of public comment to address the agendized report but will not be able to speak to address an agendized report, but will not be able to speak on that item following the segment. When you speak, please state your name for the record. Have there been any requests for assistance for Spanish interpretation?

No?

Okay. Well, thank you for being here tonight, and have a good rest of your night. The joint general public comment period is now beginning, and no additional cards or calls will be accepted. Madam City Clerk, how many public comment cards do we have, and how many callers do we have for the joint general public comment?

We have 34 in-person speakers. We have one audience member who would like to turn in a card to opine only, and we have three callers on the line.

Four callers on the line now. So that's 38 callers, so that means two minutes. You get two minutes each, okay? Okay. Okay, first up we have Jonathan Wilder followed by Nathan Adair. Welcome, you have two minutes.

Good evening, Council. I'm here to support the BRT, and we have a lot of wonderful folks out here, as you can see from the signs. We're here. We know that there's not an agenda item tonight, but we felt that it was important to be here because a lot of us could not be here for the Wednesday meeting. Unfortunately, many of us work, many of us are transit riders, And it's difficult to make it out, especially with the short notice. So we are here today to say that we want the city of Burbank to settle this suit. We don't want any money wasted on this, especially when the city is already facing a deficit. It's the county money and our money as city residents going against each other. It's just wasteful when we're fighting a plan that is inevitable. We need transit in the city and we are a regional partner. This is connecting North Hollywood to Pasadena and we need to be a good community member. I also want to talk briefly about the downtown specific plan. I live in downtown and I like a lot of what we're planning, but it's easy to support all that in the abstract. But when we have plans like the BRT, when we have plans like bringing more housing with SB 79, then suddenly there's a lot more resistance. So I think that we need to keep in mind that we have to be proactive about these things. We can't just keep Burbank like a little snow globe just stuck in stasis. We have to think about the future, and that includes better transit, better housing. So thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Nathan Adair, followed by Hunter.

Sorry, I thought I was gonna have like 30 more minutes to panic and get nervous and stuff. So my name's Nathan. I live in the city of Burbank and I'm a member of Strong Towns Burbank. I am here today to deliver you guys a letter. Apparently you'll get it tomorrow since I didn't bring enough. This letter is signed by 12 different organizations who represent people that live all along the North Hollywood to Pasadena BRT route. Burbank is a large employer in our region, and all of our largest employers are located on this BRT route. Many of their employees do not live in Burbank. Many of them live in the region of Burbank. I've been coming to these meetings for several years, and I have found it extremely disappointing to learn how intent our council is on only listening to the voices of one small neighborhood on one small section of this BRT. The truth is this is a regional issue and we need to be listening to the regional voices. This is them and they are telling you with a lot of really fancy words, they're telling you that Burbank is in the way. They want you to drop the legal action with LA Metro and they want you to immediately issue the permits for construction. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. So we're going to do jazz hands for those of you who haven't been here before so that we can move things along. We have a lot of commenters. Also, they can hear their name. So Hunter's next, followed by, looks like it says Des Ruggles. Welcome.

Hi.

Hi.

My name is Hunter. I took Metro's 94 bus to get here tonight. From my understanding, the fiscal year 26-27 budget used one-time sources to balance the $2.7 million gap left by recurring revenue. This means that every penny this council is working with matters, and we need a way to increase recurring revenues quickly since that gap is expected to increase $3.2 million by fiscal year 28-29. I know I'm repeating facts that you already know, just putting it out there. If we were able to gently increase the amount of people living here by centering housing around high-quality transit, we could increase revenues to make sure that Burbank can afford all the great services our residents and businesses have come to expect. SB 79 and the maps drafted by SCAG have already identified areas of opportunity and we now just have to decide how we implement. This doesn't mean high rises next to single family homes, but this might include duplexes or town homes or cute little cottage apartments to let more people live here and experience how awesome of a place it is to live. More people living here means more businesses and economic growth, which means more tax revenue. It seems that the other cities on this regional BRT have gotten on board with this concept and have begun planning, yet we have only delayed. We're now in catch-up mode, and instead of putting our money towards the infrastructure I keep hearing about that we need to upgrade, we'll need to upgrade that whether or not we gently increase our housing supply, we're putting them towards unnecessary legal fees. So please work collaboratively with Metro, find a way to get those dedicated bus lanes in the ground, and catch up with our neighbors so that we can keep affording to maintain all the services that make Burbank special. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Des Ruggles, followed by Ron Bax. Welcome, you have two minutes.

Hello, I'm Des Ruggles. I am a resident of Burbank. I took the Burbank bus pink route to get here. Metro spent around $40 million on studies that would be basically useless if the BRT route didn't open up on time with the infrastructure that it is expected to open with. As such, the city is being sued. As such, the city is being sued. Metro does not, as far as I can tell, Metro does not seem to waste money on frivolous lawsuits. And has won lawsuits against powerful cities with much better funding for legal teams such as Beverly Hills. If we lose this lawsuit, we could be liable for millions of dollars in damages, which could make our existing budget deficit far worse and could hurt funding for the city services we pride ourselves on, like our schools, our fire, and our police departments. I implore you to work with Metro as a member of a regional community and get the bus lanes built. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comment, and thank you for your jazz hands. Next up is Ron Bax, followed by Brittany Roachford.

Welcome. Good evening, council, Ron Bax. I'm addressing the council from the right side of me. Last, yes, last meeting, you appeared that one plus one should equal two, but you thought one plus one equaled A, because I brought forward two cases where tenants were irresponsible And the response from the dais was call out the HEU. Really? Followed by community development talking about issuing code violations. These are not code violations, but rather abuse of my property. Clearly you do not know what it takes to provide housing. And Councilman Anthony, please don't pontificate on your experience of property management. Your last couple of pontifications indicate you do not know. Thank you. Now, I told you also, my wife's father passed away, and my wife has decided to sell the property. Why? Because of all the abuse she's seen from this city council over the last three years when I've been here. Now, I'll give you an example, a couple of examples, of where you can bring out the HEU. When we went to that house, I was fixing stuff up to get it ready for showing, and I looked up, no smoke alarms. The tenants took the smoke alarms down. No, they didn't. They put them in the hall closet. And I don't know how many times at my building I tell people, don't put your couch alongside the vent for the wall furnace. It's a hazard. And yet when I go back in six months, it's still there. Now with the tenant protection ordinance, if I continue to tell it, or if I document it, or if I continue to tell them, or talk to them in a bad tone, they're going to write me up with the HEU and I'm going to get called. What you can do is stop granting tenants rules that allow them to do as they please. That's what the tenant protection ordinance does. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Brittany Rochford.

Rochford.

Rochford. My apologies. Followed by Gustavo Bernal. Welcome. Welcome.

Hello, I'm commenting in support of the BRT. As a resident of Burbank for over 10 years, who also works in the city, it is a necessity to be able to have options for my commute and have access to faster connection to our neighboring cities. My family is from Eagle Rock, Glendale, and Pasadena, so this directly affects me both personally and professionally. We voted yes on the BRT. Metro has already compromised and adapted their plans to Burbank's request. I'm asking not to backtrack on the public's interest and to please drop the lawsuit. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Gustavo Bernal followed by Sarkis Simonian. Welcome. You have two minutes.

Hello. My name is Gustavo Bernal. I live in Sun Valley. I mainly use the bus for transportation. The BRT would be useful for me because it would allow me to get to Burbank quicker. I like going to the movies in downtown and the mall. The BRT would allow for quicker and more reliable transportation into and out of Burbank. I'm sure it would be useful for other people as well. I have one more point here. Buses going into Burbank are already somewhat busy, and this BRT would make bus transit into Burbank even more popular and help to reduce traffic. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Sarkis Simonian, followed by Dean Karasinky. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, and the staff. Thank you. I think you already received my letter, so I'm going to keep it short. It's two minutes. The whole idea was about the election and the sequencing. We suggested another fifth option for sequencing. And the attorney, city attorney, actually, he will give the final if it can go or not. So ideally speaking, if that happens, we're suggesting that the council current members, the terms be extended until 2028 and have the old council members having their election in one election during the presidential elections. From the numbers, you've seen that when there's a presidential election, 70% of the registered voters vote in Burbank. When it's not a presidential, only 47% of the people vote. So that means half of the council is voted in by less than 50% of the voters. Ideally speaking, it might be for the future, but this is not happening this time because of the charter. Maybe in the future we can consider having all city council members be together during presidential elections. So if you guys have any other questions, feel free to contact me if you want. And I'm waiting for the attorney to give his ID, too. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Dean Karasynski, followed by Hilda Avanasian.

Good evening, Council. My name is Dean Karasynski. I want to take a minute to introduce myself as I am applying for the Art and Public Places Committee. I'm a recent graduate of the Burbank RISE program, and that program gave me a lot of interest in being more involved in the city, and after speaking with Mayor Takahashi last week, I wanted to come and introduce myself in person. I'm also setting up Meetings with each of you as well. So there's my time. Hello.

Thank you Thank you for your comment. Next up is Hilda Avanessian followed by Gary Brick Welcome you have two minutes

Good evening, Mayor Takahashi, Vice Mayor Mullins, Council Members Perez, Rosati, Anthony, City staff members, and City Manager Mr. Hess. I am here tonight to provide an update and respectfully ask for your help. First and foremost, I would sincerely want to thank Council Member Rosati for your leadership, follow-through, and willingness to support collaboratively played an integral role in helping us achieve our soft launch. I genuinely appreciate you. Councilmember Perez, during the March 24 Council meeting, you expressed concern that relocating the market to the City Hall parking lot would significantly reduce foot traffic and that it could set the market up for fail. You later came to the market on Sunday, April 26, and personally spoke with our vendors, encouraging them to reach out if their customer traffic and sales declined. Unfortunately, your concerns have proven accurate. Mayor Takahashi, during that same council meeting, you spoke about the tremendous economic impact the cultural market has had on the city of Burbank. Those successes were highlighted in the economic development publication. One of the biggest requests tonight is regarding marketing. I want to be very clear that city staff is amazing. marketing in fact I believe our economic development and communications teams are among the best at what they do over the years cities marketing efforts for the cultural market were exceptional the quality exists consistency creativity and frequency of the city promotions helped establish this market as this destination and brought thousands of visitors to the downtown Burbank cultural market with that in mind I respectfully request that the City Council Direct staff restore, expand, and city promotions support the cultural market. In previous years, the city's social media promotions reached the community consistently and broadly. Today, that level of promotion has significantly declined. To date, I have expanded. Personally, I have invested and absorbed more than $85,000 in cost in just two months, complying with change operational requirements and to keep this market operating. Had I known financially impact would exceed what was previously represented, I would have chosen to remain on Palm Avenue, as reflected the prior correspondence and estimated cost of operating on Palm. Thank you.

I mean, the green lights. There we go. Okay. Next up is Gary Brick, followed by Mark Scroggs. Yep. Welcome. You have two minutes.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor Mullins, City Council and staff. Always a pleasure to come up here and speak. I know what it's like having sat up there for eight years and listening to everybody, so a lot of good comments, plus and minus. I'm here tonight to speak about the districting for the city elections, which I oppose 100%, and I'll tell you why. If this would have been implemented back when I was on council, Jess Telemontes, David Gordon, myself, we all would have been in one district and only one of us could have served. Now whether you liked us or not, I think it would have been detrimental to the city because we all had our positive thoughts and input when we were on council. Regarding the BUSD, they implemented it a number of years ago and I know that Emily Weisenberg, I do not know the lady personally, but she ran unimposed and she got on the school board when there could have been other qualified people, I'm not saying she's not qualified, but other people could have stepped forward and wanted to run. So once again, I do not support and I think this is bad for Burbank. One other note is that a big decision will be coming up on the dedicated and the mixed flow bus lane on Olive. I support mixed flow, not dedicated, and I don't think it's needed. On the way over here from Studio City, I saw a Metro bus with three people on it, and I was pleased to see a Burbank bus with probably 10 or 12 people on it. So that was good to see. The big difference is if it is implemented, Senate Bill 79 will be implemented, and this is a bad decision for Burbank. It's going to bring in high-density apartment buildings within 500 feet of Olive and what used to be R1 neighborhoods. It's going to destroy them. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Mark Scroggs, followed by Louise Gill. Welcome.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Mark Scroggs. The latest with Paramount and Warner Brothers. This morning or yesterday, the British government started investigating, or as their cultural secretary said, because they're British, minded to intervene to make sure that there's no monopolies, which there are. The AGs here are waiting to make their move, but this is going to slow down the merger a little bit. I want to recommend Jared Leota's The Burbank leader wrote a really good article over the weekend about Adam Schiff and other senators conducting a national security review on foreign ownership. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal is spinning off from Comcast. Rumor has it that Netflix and others are interested in merging with them because this is the Trump administration. If you can take a bribe, he'll let you merge. So that's on that part. Also, I just want to say locally, we should recognize the success of Obsession. Much of it was filmed here, including the Green Man Crystal Shop on Hollywood Way, which twice in the last week I've seen people standing out in front of getting their pictures taken. It's a great sales tool for the community. And, you know, the people who created it were Hollywood, New York Film Academy alums. And now they've made over $200 million on a $750,000 budget. Their next film just finished shooting recently in Vancouver, but hopefully they'll have business here and do that, so we need to encourage these people. So you see these little filmmakers going around, you never know who's going to be next, and we really need to encourage that here in order to keep business here so we can keep affording everything here, because we're just a giant for lease signs sometimes. So that's it.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Louise Gill, followed by Diana Pulver. Welcome.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members. My name is Louise Gill, a long-time Burbank resident. I want to introduce myself because I have applied for the Landlord, Tenant, and Heritage Commission I currently serve on numerous boards, numerous organizations, fundraisers, such as the World Children's Transplant, the Hollywood PAL Program, Drug Enforcement Citizens Academy, Glendale CPAP, and have a very strong commitment to the city. I am passionate about serving Burbank. I'm ready to bring my experience, my dedication, and my love for the city to both commissions. Thank you for your time and I would be honored to serve and I'm looking forward for your vote. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Diana Pulver followed by Bridget Underwood. Welcome.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor and council members. My name is Diana Pulver. I'm a housing provider and a lifelong Burbanker. As I was going over my end of month expenses, I considered dropping my earthquake insurance because the premiums have increased by 30% over last year. But with the recent earthquakes in Northern California, Japan, and Venezuela, I decided to renew coverage. I do not want to risk everything that I have worked for when the big one hits. This will, however, affect my overhead expenses. Despite this, I will continue to work hard to keep my rents under market because I feel it is the right thing to do. Rent control would make this impossible. It would drive me and my fellow providers out of business. So please, do not LA my Burbank. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Bridget Underwood, followed by Maddie Ocampo. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you so much. So between 2016 and 2020, the Beverly Hills Unified School District repeatedly attempted to fight Metro over the D Line subway extension, which they sort of fearfully called the Purple Threat. And repeatedly, they lost. In the attempt, they wasted $15 million in school bond funding. That was $15 million that could have gone to actually improving the lives of teachers and students. $15 million that just went down the drain fighting what was a badly needed regional infrastructure project that had already been studied and actually compromised on for decades. Maybe some of this is sounding kind of familiar. Here in Burbank, What we're attempting to do is basically the same thing that Beverly Hills tried, which is delaying a critically needed and heavily studied regional infrastructure project, which we signed on to, which we agreed to, and we even got Metro to redesign to accommodate Burbank's local requests and needs. If anybody here thinks Burbank is going to win where Beverly Hills failed with their $15 million ready to burn, I suggest that you read the lawsuit which is currently being brought against the city. I've read it. we really don't have a leg to stand on. The demand for more environmental study to account for SB 79 is both redundant, they included that in the original EIR, and it's speculative. Upzoning is not actually development. It's not, they're not building anything. It's upzoning and that is entirely speculative on whether or not people might actually privately develop stuff on that land within the next, I don't know, 15 to 20 years. This is not immediate, intense change to our city. It's just upzoning. Per agreements that we signed as a city, Burbank is going to be on the hook for the cost of delays, which could be tens of thousands of dollars a day after construction was supposed to start. I am begging this council, please just settle this suit, get this built, and let us all move on with our lives and not waste money that could be going to our own community. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Maddie Ocampo, followed by Chinmayi Nayak. Welcome.

Hello. Hi, my name is Madeline Ocampo. I'm a utilities engineer. I'm a volunteer with Plant-Based Treaty LA. It's a global campaign to fight climate change through the food system. I want to encourage Burbank to endorse the Plant-Based Treaty because it would strengthen your commitment to sustainability and help fight climate change. Animal agriculture is a huge factor behind greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, water depletion, and water pollution, among other issues. Just last week, we have seen how Europe faced deadly, record-breaking heat waves, which are fueled by climate change. Even locally, the lineage fire in Boyle Heights has a hidden connection to animal agriculture. For over a week, I saw and smelled ashy skies. The cold storage warehouse caught fire from solar panel contractor work, and there was a risk that refrigerant chemicals could catch fire and become toxic. But what shocked me was learning that this warehouse refrigerated tens of millions of pounds of chicken, beef, pork, and fish. In general, animal products require more energy intensive and strictly controlled refrigeration to prevent spoilage. In contrast, plant-based infrastructure is more flexible and less energy demanding. The good news is there is already a solution within reach. A 2023 article in The Guardian discussed a detailed analysis that found that plant-based diets lead to 75% less climate heating emissions, water pollution, and land use than meat-rich diets. Plant-based diets also cut the destruction of wildlife by 66% and water use by 54%. The professor that led the research said, our dietary choices have a big impact on the planet. Cutting down the amount of meat and dairy can make a big difference to your dietary footprint. Evidently, expanding plant-based options will be key for fighting climate change and promoting sustainability. Burbank can lead by example and tap into this climate solution by endorsing the plant-based treaty and implementing plant-forward policy. Neighboring cities such as West Hollywood and Culver City have endorsed, and it would be great to see Burbank join this movement. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next up is Chinmayi Nayak, followed by Samantha Laula. Welcome.

Hi, good evening, Burbank Mayor and City Council. My name is Chinmayi Nayak, and I'm going to be in 11th grade next year at John Burroughs High School in Burbank. I'm someone who's very passionate about helping the environment and the community as a whole. So when I found out last year about how much of a devastating impact animal agriculture has on the environment with its extreme land usage, water usage, and contribution to deforestation and habitat loss, It also contributes to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions from food systems, and that is more emissions than all of transportation combined. Also, many students and people in the community are unable to eat animal products because of allergies, religious restrictions, or dietary restrictions. When I found out about these issues, I knew I had to do something about it. So last year, at about this same time, I started the BUSD Food for Future campaign. This campaign aims to add plant-based options to the BUSD school cafeterias to help our planet, students, and community as a whole. Plant-based food is more inclusive to the needs of students and people in the community because regardless of who you are, most people can eat plant-based meals. I'm currently working with Plant Based Treaty to expand the inclusive and sustainable options at my school and at the district as a whole. The intentions of Plant Based Treaty align with my values as an individual as well as the values of my campaign that got over 800 signatures across BUSD. I believe that the city should partner with Plant-Based Treaty for a more plant-forward food system to not only benefit our community but the world as a whole. I think if the city partners with Plant-Based Treaty in creating more sustainable initiatives, it will lead by example and the school district will follow. Partnering with Plant-Based Treaty not only helps the current generations but also the future. Thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you for your comments. Next up is Samantha Lau, followed by Maxine Hillman. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Takahashi, Vice Mayor Mullins, council members, city manager, and staff. My name is Samantha Lau, and I'm a city campaigner and US liaison for Plant-Based Treaty. We are a global campaign, worldwide initiative to fight climate change and to protect the environment by centering the food system. As you heard from my other colleagues about the urgent need to take action from the environmental devastation of the current food system, and I'm sure you see all the excess heat advisory on our phones and on the news, food system policy is an effective lever to help in lowering global temperatures and carbon emissions. and it also dramatically improves water and land use. Last year, I had the pleasure of participating in Burbank Sustainability Commission, where I presented and spoke with a lot of wonderful commissioners appointed by this body. Thank you for appointing such a thoughtful group who really cares about environment and sustainability initiatives for the city of Burbank. It was an honor to work with them and they voted unanimously to send a letter of recommendation to city council. We've also had the opportunity to table at Burbank's Eco Council Earth Day event where we got to meet with many members of the community and who were really glad to see fun, free, and sustainable event. We received a lot of great feedback for the plant-based initiatives that we promoted. And we're happy to see the leadership that Burbank has already taken on sustainability and climate action. I also had the honor of working with other cities, peer cities in LA and across the US, where we have partnered with them in creating sustainable initiatives that are healthy for both the planet and the community. We help both cities with public information campaign and public plant-based policy implementations. We would love the opportunity to work with Burbank in helping the city to achieve your sustainability net zero goals. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Maxine Hillman, followed by Ben Hillman. Welcome. Thank you.

Good evening, all. We don't know each other super well, but I do have to ask, what are we doing here? I mean, I'll put the headline up front. Put the headline up front. settle the suit. This is some absolutely absurd decision-making with Burbank taxpayer dollars. Metro has compromised, and this city is refusing to meet them in the middle. And an ironic turn, given that the whole issue stems from the fact that we are a city with 107,000 residents in the middle of an impossibly large county and metro area trying to pretend like we can make choices in a vacuum. I hope to begin to know better if I'm lucky enough to begin to approach such a big age as 115. We may be approaching that age, but we certainly aren't acting it. Pushing back against this suit is like a toddler holding their breath when they don't get their way. And like a toddler holding their breath, it's not only a futile effort, but it's only likely to hurt us, not those that are actually making the decisions. Where I'd love to see the city actually take a stand is when it comes to the surveillance systems currently in use in this city. that the Flock contract was renewed a month ago due to this council not listening to calls from the residents starting as far back as last fall is a failure to not just listen to residents, but to look at evidence and to pay attention. And to say that now we've passed the budget and so we're locked in until May 2027 is unacceptable. And by May 2027, I meant June. Flock is a company that has proven its inability to be trusted over and over again across the country. The legality and constitutionality of ALPRs are being questioned and investigated across the country. Eat the costs of the contract and take down the cameras. There is another option. It's a much better way to use the city money and take a stand that actually has moral high ground, unlike the suit. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Ben Hillman, followed by Vinny Castellini.

Welcome. I know you can't respond, but can I bring water in here next time? Or maybe you can just respond in public comment. But my mouth is dry every single time I come up here. So I tend to come up here most of the time and I'm pretty negative, but like, I feel like I'm negative, so I just wanted to say I'm stoked that the community garden got expanded. I think that more of that would be really cool, and I think y'all have done a great job with that. I rode those bike lanes in front of the downtown Metrolink station. I forget if that's First Street or not. Oops. Really cool. Loved them. Those were great. I tried to take the bus here with a couple of my pals, and we couldn't because it was going to be like 15 minutes late, and then we wouldn't have been able to show up here. I'm trying. I'm really trying to take... public transportation options. I'm trying to bike more, but this stuff is just like not really adequate that we have. Like we have a lot of piecemeal solutions and like, I get it. There's like resource constraints and stuff like that, but just like, that's what like really upsets me about this suit with the Metro. And I really want y'all to settle it. I really want those dedicated lanes because like, I know that there's complaints that like, Oh, 90 seconds or something isn't going to really save that much. It will. I might have made it this bus this time. I could have come here on time on the bus. Yeah. I didn't vote for all of you, but all of you represent me. And I want you to look out for the posterity of Burbank. And I can assure you that if you don't, that I will ensure that you are not up there representing me politically. Like, full stop.

So thanks. Thank you for your comment. Next up is Vinny Castellini, followed by Walker Cyan. Welcome.

Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Vinny Castellini. I've been a Burbank resident for seven years. I'll keep it brief. I was here to support the BRT and ask you to drop the suit. I think it's a waste of my taxpayer money. I've lived in Burbank for seven years, renting, and I love the area, but I wish that it had more access to the rest of the region and we had better bus lanes so that I could use them more often than I do at the current moment. I also think that it is a good thing that we could up zone some of our areas and get some more affordable housing because most people my age are not able to afford owning property or even consider it given that the single family homes in my neighborhood are $1.5 million for a three bedroom, which is not tenable for people like me making it less than millions of dollars a year. So thank you for your time and yeah.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Walker Cyan, followed by Eddie Polon. Welcome.

Hello, thanks for having me. My name is Walker Cyan, and I live right on the edge of Burbank and North Hollywood, right along the line that the BRT would take. And I just want to stress that I would very much take this bus. I think it would greatly impact me coming to downtown Burbank and accessing and exploring Burbank. I really love spending time here, but if I'm going out at night, I'm more likely going to go to the North Hollywood metro station and take the bus somewhere or the metro somewhere else. But if there was, this bus would exist. I think it will bring economic activity to the city of Burbank and really allow that access to the city. So again, I support the dropping of a suit and support the building of the BRT. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Eddie Pollan. I always get it wrong. I apologize. And followed by Gerard Deegan. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Eddie Poland. I live in Burbank. I owned a small business for 20 years. I've served on the Burbank Transportation Commission since 2022, but I speak tonight as a resident and a taxpayer. I urge the City Council to settle the lawsuit with LA Metro and move ahead with the Bus Rapid Transit project as planned. And my reason is simple. This is about fiscal responsibility. The City is facing a $2.7 million structural deficit, and at times like this, every taxpayer dollar counts even more. Because every dollar spent on one priority is a dollar that can't be spent on something else. I owned and operated a small business for almost 20 years. I could never afford to run a structural deficit. I had to make tough choices with limited resources. I had to assess risk carefully and avoid spending money on fights that didn't make my business stronger. Our city owes taxpayers the same discipline. People may have different opinions about this project. Still, we can all agree that extra legal costs hurt taxpayers. Continuing this lawsuit encourage real financial costs and legal risks. If the city spends a lot of taxpayer money on this case and the BRT still moves forward as planned, we can't recover that money. Money that could help address our current financial challenges. Good leadership isn't about how long we fight. It's about knowing when to stop wasting taxpayers' money. We need to resolve this dispute and focus on Burbank's future. settle a lawsuit, stop spending taxpayer dollars on litigation, move the project forward, and show Burbank residents what responsible fiscal leadership looks like. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Gerard Deegan, followed by Brayden Day. Welcome.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, city staff. My name is Gerard Deegan and I have lived in Burbank now for 27 years. I'm a homeowner. Obviously I didn't grow up here. I have spent a lot of time in cities like London and Paris. I actually went to university there. So I have actually lived in cities where you have extremely good public transport and you actually don't need a car to function. I urge the city to drop this suit and allow the public transport system be developed because it's going to better us all in the long run. I know people say, oh, it'll create havoc along the route. Well, I live eight doors down from the proposed route. I actually currently, if I'm going to go to downtown LA, I take the subway, but I walk the three miles. to the North Hollywood station to take it. This wouldn't allow me to have a bus route to use it. I also work in the community. I work with youth in the community and I see how they're limited and they can't get around, those of them that don't have cars. So I feel that a public transport system would allow them a certain independence to be able to come to classes that we teach and stuff. We have to wait with parents to pick them up and that's even more cars being used using fossil fuels and that's not good for our environment. Also the money that's been spent on the lawsuit could be used in much greater ways. Having worked for the Burbank Unified School District as a running coach For many years, I could see how the budgets had shortfalls. This sort of money can be used to be put into our youth. So I encourage you to drop the lawsuit and work with Metro to develop a good public transport system that we can all use for many years to come. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Brayden Day, followed by Oliver Androdi. Welcome. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Brayden. I have lived here in Burbank all my life, and I am an avid transit advocate wanting to make Burbank stronger as a city. It's time to build the North Hollywood of Pasadena BRT. Now, that's not just me saying it. That's also our workers and residents saying it. That's also Metro saying it on behalf of everyone else. And now that it's time that we got such a game-changing project in our city, it's inadvisable to keep stalling it out. Metro is actively suing the city of Burbank due to the fact that they don't even have construction permits yet when this project has already broken ground in Pasadena and needs to be finished by the Olympics in 2028. We have a little less than two years to get this project up and running, and right now, while we're playing catch-up, we need to be putting down bus lanes, not arguing about it. We finally have an opportunity for real rapid transit in Burbank, and we have to act now. I urge you, don't waste critical money and time fighting this lawsuit when this BRT is extremely important and must get done, not just for the sake of everyone in Burbank, but for everyone in LA County, whether they're a resident, worker, or tourist. Please don't fumble the BRT. Just drop the lawsuit.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Oliver Andrade, followed by Kit O. Welcome.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Oliver Andrade, and I took the 164 bus over here. I'd like to get this out that this BRT block is a grand waste of time and resources. I will certainly say that I believe that the majority of us share that same idea. I encourage you to please let go of this lawsuit, and we will ensure you that this will be easier for you. But the truth is that BRT will open more opportunities for us to be able to travel at a much more flexible route and make it easier to connect to where we need to go. I use buses and trains daily, whether it be an errand, groceries, a doctor's appointment, or simply to have fun with some pals. We all use the transit in many ways. Not only that, it will make public transport more feasible for Burbank commuters and residents instead of having to rely on external, possibly more costly means of transport when we can have the convenience of using the BRT. If this BRT is done right, it will be a game changer not only for LA, but other parts of California that are building themselves up and looking for examples. So I politely urge you, not just for me, but for everyone else on behalf of the BRT, please stop stalling this out. Instead of fighting Metro, work with them to create a truly excellent service in this BRT. We shouldn't be needing to sue for something that will benefit absolutely all of us. I can hold it to myself and the people that stand for the BRT that I believe we shall prevail. That is all I have to say. Thank you, and I hope that my word was not heard on deaf ears. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Kit O, followed by Craig Hample. Welcome.

Hi. All right. Good evening, council members. I am here tonight to urge the city to settle the BRT lawsuit due to the hours I work. I am one of the many people who was unable to attend the special meeting for the BRT and have my voice heard. Going back and watching that meeting, I often heard a small demographic of people say over and over again, no one rides the bus. Well, I can tell you, I ride the bus. I rode the bus into Burbank for North Hollywood when I first started working in the city. Um, and even after I moved into the city, I ride it regularly and, uh, can tell you firsthand is important resource to the people of Burbank, um, especially the elderly and teenagers. Um, the BRT would allow riders like myself, safe, regular transportation throughout the city. And to get to other parts of the county that I need to travel to for my business Specifically, I need better transport to Pasadena Not only is this lawsuit a waste of city funds and my tax dollars But it is actively hurting people like me who live here and use the bus Times are hard gas is expensive cars are even more expensive And the city is running a deficit Settle the lawsuit. Thank you. I

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Craig Hample followed by Mike Sage. Welcome.

Good evening, Council and everyone. First of all, I'd like to just give some appreciation to the good planning that the city has done and to our planners. They really understand transit. I know they're inspired to do good projects and they like to see things move forward. I'm confident that everyone in this room has probably been in a city or country that has great public transit. And so many people come back from vacations and they go, oh, that was amazing. We got everywhere on the trains, the buses, the shuttles, whatever it was. And that can be here. We can have vacation transportation here that's joyous, humane, We don't have to be in the misery of cars all the time. So, you know, Metro actually supports businesses along these routes too. And I think it's a point that hasn't been brought up enough that there are a lot of options for businesses. We also have options on SB 79 on how we plan around these transit stops. So I'm going to compare this to Chandler Bikeway. If you tried taking Chandler Bikeway away from the neighborhoods now, you would have a riot on your hands. In a number of years when this BRT is in and you tried to take it away from the neighborhood, you would have a riot. This is going to be such a great positive piece for the city that you need to move forward, drop the lawsuit, get those lanes in, and let's move forward.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Mike Stage followed by Bradley. Welcome. You have two minutes.

Thank you. My name is Mike and I'm here to say we need to get the flock out of Burbank. Now I grew up on military bases when I was a kid all around the country and I know what security is and I know for the most part it's a joke. No one cares about the people. I used to talk to some of the airmen at the bases we were at, and they said, no, they don't care about us. All they care about are the rules and regulations. Our rights, what we're doing, just get out of the way. Flash forward now, Flock is the same way. They do not care about you or me. All they care about is money and power. Langley, the guy, the CEO in charge of Flock, He's a megalomaniac on steroids. He thinks he can solve the crime all around the country by spying on everybody. And he's got plenty of, unfortunately, plenty of people in security that will go along with that. Because security can't help it. They're hardwired that way. What they see is a potential for something going wrong, so they need something else. And they need something else. And Flock will just give them all the toys they want. It's called mission creep. And it's going to creep right into our bedroom if we're not careful. We need to get the Flock out of here. We don't need Flock. We don't need to be spied on. And they are going to do that. Nothing else. But you can stop it. I don't care if you're liberal. I don't care if you're libertarian, left or right, you care about freedom, and you care about the people. We, the people, we're the ones in charge, and we do not want the flock. The flock has got to go. Kick it out. Save some money. Give it to the BRT. God knows we need that. There are things we need here in this city, but being spied on by a bunch of looney tunes is just beyond imagination. Get rid of the flock right now. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next up is Bradley, followed by Nolan. Welcome.

Good evening. My name is Bradley, and I'm a vendor at the downtown Burbank Cultural Market. Over the past four years, I have participated in the market and built relationships with customers. Through these experiences, I believe that people choose Burbank as a weekend destination, not only because of its excellent restaurants, theaters, and entertainment, but also because they can enjoy everything in one place. The downtown Burbank cultural market has become an important part of that experience. While families wait for a table, a movie to begin, or simply enjoy a walk through downtown, they stop by the market, support local businesses, and connect with their community. Our market has become much more than a place to shop. It has become a gathering place that brings people together, supports small businesses, and adds to the unique character of downtown Burbank. This location has been essential to the success of our businesses. Since the market was relocated, my sales have dropped significantly. Many vendors are facing similar challenges, and we are deeply concerned that the market may not survive if it remains in its new location. Building a successful market takes months and often years. We have invested our time, energy, and resources into creating something that benefits not only the vendors, but also the city of Burbank, its residents, and its visitors. The relocation has significantly disrupted that success and weakened the sense of community we worked so hard to build. I respectfully ask that the city allow us to return to our original location so we can continue growing our businesses, entertaining visitors, and contributing to the vibrant atmosphere that makes downtown Burbank so special. Finally, let's remember that during the summer, Burbank regularly experiences temperatures above 100 degrees. In those conditions, people are much less likely to walk further to visit the market while waiting for a restaurant table or a movie. Our original location naturally attracted foot traffic because it was where people were already gathering. That visibility is critical to the success of our businesses, We respectfully ask that you help preserve a market that has become an important part of our community. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Nolan, followed by Joe Pamianta. Welcome.

Hello, my name's Nolan. I'm here to talk about Flock. Within the last couple days, Public Records SoCal has published an article based on many records requests that they were able to reach from Public Record. I hope you've all had a chance to see it. If not, I emailed it to all of you, including the attorney, the city manager, the Chief of Police just before this meeting. There's many things in there, but some of the most important. Police Chief Quintero stated in this room that not only do we run yearly audits, but we also run routine audits on the system to ensure what has happened several years ago does not happen again. And on another occasion, Captain Mark Stoll also spoke about audits to the Burbank Police Commission, At the time those statements were made, no audits had yet been completed. We have the public records on this. We also know now that because of audits that were later done, there were three former employees who retained access to FLOC after no longer being employed. So take what you will of that of the chief's intentions or the FLOC representative's intentions. Maybe they were good. Maybe they were just misinformed. Even if they were just misinformed, it shows a gross misunderstanding of the actual technology, of what it's being used to do. It is not good for our community. It needs to be out of here. I did not come here to talk about the bus rapid transit, but since I am here, I will say I do support the dedicated lane. I got a notice that Mayor Takahashi, you were appointed today, at least I got the notice today, to the SoCal subcommittee of SCAG. That's a regional thing. I think if you're going to be representing the region, this is a way that we can work with the region through Metro, through all these surrounding communities that benefit Burbank.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Joe Pimienta, followed by Elizabeth Bax. Welcome.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members, staff, and everybody present in the chamber. I just need everyone to know that right now Mexico versus Ecuador is still 0-0. So I am at the edge of my seat. So let's cross all those fingers. I'm also excited for the July 18th event. But anyways, now what I'm here to talk about today, what I'm here to talk about today is a couple of things. One is that to this day there has still been no public acknowledgment about months of liberty being here in Burbank, and I am a big believer that silence is complicity. Anyways, the big thing that I'm here to talk about today is why there is the need for rent stabilization, or as fathers call it, rent control. I have come here speaking about this for years now, And I continue to say it. Now, as someone who has conversations with various people on several sides of this issue over and over for the past few years, and conversations whether it's inside or outside of this chamber, I'm always fascinated with how the conversations go that like once we actually start listening to each other, there is a lot to be learned from what is going on and how difficult it is to be, you know, the entire housing issue. Now, the reason why I start getting really interested in is when I start listening to what a lot of landlords are saying, especially the mom and pops, which I may just remind you that represent a very small portion of the city, is that a lot of them do say with sincerity that they are not greedy people and that even they don't usually raise the rents. And when they do, it's anywhere between 3% to 5% because that's all they need to in order to keep the property going, in order to keep their tenants. And this is when the conversation gets weird because that's usually when I say something along the lines like, well that sounds great, why don't we just codify it? Like that's it, you're already doing what we've been asking. And that's when the conversation turns and I usually get the comment like, well don't tell me what to do. I don't really have a response for that. Usually that sounds like I guess we better talk about something else, like what's your favorite pizza topping? But anyways, I just want to keep bringing that to the attention because again, we need to keep our neighbors housed. Thank you for your time. Enjoy your evening and be well, Mexico. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is Elizabeth Bax, followed by David Donahue. Welcome.

Regarding the downtown specific plan you talked about this evening, one thing is clear. The city has already identified significant housing capacity through an infill and redevelopment within the downtown area. The TTSP is explicitly designed to absorb upwards of 9,000 units and fund public environment through developers, improvements through developer contributions and financing districts. However, I would still like to know exactly how much local taxpayers will be ultimately asked to pay for this infrastructure, referring to the financing districts. Given the massive planned capacity downtown, I want to thank the city of Burbank for continuing to stand firm against the state and the regional pressures from LA Metro and how SP 79 affects our local government. They threaten to force incompatible density into our single family home neighborhoods. I am here to say no, I'm not here to say no housing. I'm asking for balance. The DTSP protects existing single family residence sorry, existing single-family residential neighborhoods as a guiding principle. When these stable neighborhoods are targeted for upzoning, we don't change just building shapes. We risk losing critical home ownership stock, community stability, and the ability for families to build generational wealth. True equity, and I know you all want equity, right? We all want equity up here, right? We all want equity. True equity should mean offering more than one style of living in Burbank. We can aggressively add apartments and mixed-use housing where planned already anticipates growth while still preserving single-family neighborhoods for those who want that option. I would like to not spend the rest of my life concerned about upzoning in my neighborhood. Please continue to stand strong. Please continue to fight and use the strength of this plan to argue that Burbank is already doing its part with housing and continue to advocate for the policies that keep our neighborhoods protected, not erased. Let's keep Burbank for all residents, renters and homeowners. Please don't settle with LA Metro. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Next up is David Donahue. And I have one card from Bristol Dupre simply stating to support the BRT. And then that's my last card actor, Mr. Donahue. Thank you. You have two minutes.

Good evening, Mayor Takahashi, Vice Mayor Mullins, council members and staff. My name is David Donahue, business owner, homeowner, and the president of Vision Burbank. We're able to muster a pretty good showing. Last time we had a special meeting, we had, I think, over 1,000 emails were sent to council. We had hundreds of people that were involved in the conversation. So part of that, Metro and the BRT is SB 79, and I I heard during the study session that Vice Mayor Mullins was asking staff specifically about how those standards are going to be implemented or not within SB 79, because I noticed on the handout, not the beautiful tomb that you have, Mayor Takahashi, but it does have a radii of around what the main metro station is. I don't see it around where the Olive Avenue and Klenotes intersection that is. We're just right across the street. and how it would affect the standards, because staff did report there are density and height issues in there. And so I would ask if there could be some sort of response to that, maybe not here this evening, but maybe when they do have their community outreach, how that is going to be able to be done. Also, there might be a few people here in the chamber that I want to understand and appreciate the fact that I look that there are Olive Avenue Bridge and the Magnolia Bridge reconstruction in there. beautiful designs and it was also in the presentation. Average cost for a bridge in California right now is anywhere between 150 million to 900 million. Now granted the 900 million is for going over a waterway, but I think that anytime you look at bridges being rebuilt going over a highway, it's gonna be over 100 million. Those are just for each of the bus lane, of the bridges, not the bus lanes. The part that I support the city And the litigation is the environmental impact report. For those who are watching, listening in the chamber, the EIR was done before SB 79 and the high density housing and upzoning was in place. I support the city's litigation and I hope it continues. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. That is the end of in-person comment. Madam City Clerk, do we have callers on the line?

We do. One of the callers dropped, so we have three.

Okay. Please send them through.

The first speaker is Pedro Toscano.

Welcome. You have two minutes.

Hi. Good evening, members of the council. My name is Pedro Toscano. I'm a member of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters. I live in Burbank, and I work and recreate in Burbank in the vicinity of this town. proposed project, the city Burbank downtown transit-oriented development-specific plan. And I would like to ask the council to require the project to be built with contractors that will hire locally, pay prevailing wage, and utilize apprentices from state-certified apprenticeship training programs. The workforce requirements reduce construction-related environmental impacts while benefiting the local economy and workforce development. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate everybody's patience for being on the phone. Thanks.

Thank you for your call. Next caller, please. The next speaker is Charlie Parnow.

Hello, this is Charlie Parnow with United Care Local 11, the Hospitality Workers Union. And I just first wanted to speak on the downtown transit-oriented development specific plan. I want to thank the Council for their questions and the clarification by staff that hotels will be removed from the ministerial process contemplating the plan. I also encourage you to consider a hotel-specific development requirement for hotel uses in the plan area to ensure these projects will not negatively impact the community, the environment, or the opportunity to develop needed housing. This is a requirement that has been adopted by municipalities as varied as Glendale, Santa Monica, and Buena Park. A development agreement will help hold hotel developers to a higher standard to ensure their proposed hotel development is only permitted after the city has adequately studied the project. The project and terminal will not negatively impact the community environment or the opportunity to develop housing. These are an excellent tool with several advantages for both the city and developers. They allow the city increased levels of discretion to ensure the development achieves the greatest possible level of community benefits in an enforceable agreement and that any negative impacts are mitigated. And it also ensures the city can decide whether the hotel is the best use for a site. Development agreements are not new to hospitality projects in Burbank and existing hotels in the airport area, just as an example, were developed with a planned unit development zoning and a development agreement. So we urge the city to add a development agreement requirement for all hotels in the plan area, which can memorialize community benefits, robust TDM measures, and appropriate parking reductions. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your call. Next caller, please. The third caller is Kyle. Welcome. You have two minutes.

Hi, Council. Good evening. I'd first like to congratulate our fire department on their achievement earlier tonight. They're truly fantastic. Earlier today, I was applying for a new passport at City Hall, and I was reminded how lucky we are to have such incredible city employees. From our firefighters to our library staff to our front counter staff, Burbank is filled with people who genuinely care about serving this amazing community. And I just want to thank our city staff for being so exceptional at every level of our city. However, tonight I'm calling to speak about the BRT and asking council to settle the suit. I, like many others, was unable to attend the special meeting due to my work schedule. If you look back, people fought the Chandler bike path every step of the way. There were predictions of disaster, of traffic, of all kinds of unintended consequences, but today it's one of the many things that makes Burbank special, and I think it's hard to imagine our city without it. That's why when I look at the suit against Metro, I look at it with confusion. The city is reportedly facing potential damages of roughly $60,000 a day every day the project is delayed. That's essentially the annual salary of a city staff employee every single day. I'd much rather see our tax dollars invested in dedicated public servants who make the city great rather than spent on Councilmember Rosati and Mullins insisting on gambling on a lawsuit we're likely to lose. You've heard this from so many new intelligent voices from the community that came out to speak tonight. Please settle the suit, invest in Burbank, not in litigation, and also end the flock contract and look more into the article that was recently published about the former police department employees still having access to the flock system. End the contract, settle the suit. Thank you. Have a great night.

Thank you for your comments. Was that the last call, Madam City Clerk? Yes. So I received a card that this was the dropped call, that someone came in person.

So his call dropped, and he came down to council chambers. It's your call, but I feel like he was here in time, and he should be allowed to speak.

That's pretty impressive, actually, that you came down. So yes, you have two minutes.

Thank you. Yes, I was at work watching city council meeting for the last hour. hoping I could get here on time. So thank you for letting me speak. There's a few things I want to mention tonight. First off, I want to address members Rosati and Mullins. and continue to implore that they apologize to our community, Councilmember Anthony and Mike Van Gorder for purposefully misrepresenting the events that happened outside of BAOR. These council members continuously used language like violent and unruly to describe the protesters and even baselessly claimed that someone assaulted someone from the Moms of Liberty event. That is not true. The police investigated the assault and they have not identified anyone who's been assaulted nor have charged anyone. So when we use the word assault on someone like Anthony and someone like Van Gorder who is running for office to take over potentially Vice Mayor Mullen's position, that is a very pointed attack and Language has consequences, so I implore that you apologize to the community as well as Anthony and Van Gorder. Second, I want to mention how much I've enjoyed seeing so many visitors partake in the World Cup activities in Burbank. Last city council meeting, I sat outside for about a half hour downtown and there were so many people and it was really cool to see Burbank alive and people from all across the world enjoying our area. When I talk to people, one of the things they kept saying is they love the area, but it is so hard to get around Los Angeles, especially to Burbank. That is why the BRT, it's not something that just impacts us, it impacts people who come from all across the world to visit our wonderful city of Burbank and all of Los Angeles as a whole. The World Cup is just a fraction of how busy we're going to be come 2028 with the Olympics, and I want to make sure that we are prepared for the amount of people who will be here. Finally, I want to take the last couple seconds to thank Council Member Perez for bringing up the use of generative AI in the World Cup Fan Zone event marketing. They said that they hadn't done the event before. We have so many artists in Burbank. Just hire someone with them.

Thank you. Thank you for your comment. And that's the last comment. Being there, no further public comment. I now declare the joint general public comment period closed. Now is the time for a brief response from city council, city manager, and city attorney. City manager, city attorney, do we have any responses?

Yes, Madam Mayor, I'd like to go first and comment for the community that the metro litigation is active litigation. The city does not comment on active litigation, and therefore I would like to let the public know that the council will be unable to respond to those many comments made this evening.

City Manager?

Yes. I'd like to call up Patrick Prescott, our Community Development Director. He's going to talk a little bit about the marketing related to the cultural market.

Mayor Takahashi, members of the City Council, Patrick Prescott, Community Development Director. Prior to when the market moved, relocated, April 26 was their last day on the AMC walkway, Pompaseo. Prior to that, and then reopened just two weeks ago. We initiated marketing on our social media platforms, both the public information office as well as the downtown business improvement district. Probably about nine to ten times, I think. But that's actually across multiple social media platforms. There were a couple email blasts, newsletter stuff. I'm going to... I'll send the city manager an email tomorrow morning, kind of give you a more precise summary of all the outreach we've done, and he can share that with you. But rest assured, we have done the marketing, and we can continue to do that as well. And also remind everyone that the market just reopened two weeks ago, so maybe there's some figuring that out, the new location. And the A-frame signs are in place on the sidewalk with the directions to the new location and the correct hours, so hopefully that's helping as well.

All right, thank you. All right, council comments, who would like to go first? Councilmember Anthony?

Okay.

I can go, okay. Thank you all for coming down. So first off, Mr. Bax, I do want to thank you for always coming down. It is, you know, by... Every single measure, we are aware that you have been doing this job for many years. Your expertise in this is not questioned. I would just simply ask that when other folks also bring forth facts and figures and their experience, please don't undermine that. My family has been in rental property business since before I was born. So I kind of know what I'm talking about. I've worked in the industry. I bring my own experience. I've never tried to speculate outside of my own experience. I've never tried to ascertain that I have any expertise outside of the work that I've done. But I do appreciate you coming down every week and giving us your input. Because I'll be honest, there are some things I have learned from the data you've submitted. So I appreciate that. Thank you. The city attorney has mentioned we can't talk about certain issues tonight. I do want to say to some of the other folks who have spoken today, there's some emails that we have to read. And I'm going to go through that. There were events that happened weeks ago. I feel like some of them we've moved on and some of them are still lingering. We'll get to them. There's issues and wounds and accusations. It takes time. The public can learn about these things. Elected officials can learn about these things. All of this is a longer discussion. Not everything gets fixed in a single meeting. And then lastly, knowing that things take time, I want to thank the folks from the plant-based treaty coming down. I know there's other cities and jurisdictions that have worked on that. Moving towards a plant-based plan takes time. So buckle up, stay engaged, and keep coming down. Learn from Mr. Becks. Get here every week. Thank you.

I think Mr. Becks might be a super fan. We have some super fans. All right, who would like to go next? Okay, CalTember Press.

Yeah, thank you. It's so nice to see so many of you tonight. It's nice to see you all here. First, I want to thank Joe for the public service that you're doing by giving us the score in the middle of the meeting. I'm trying to resist, but I wish I was more up to date on the score. So thank you for that. Like my colleagues, I will not be talking about the other issue, but thank you all for coming down. Let's see, for the cultural market, Hilda, thank you for coming down and sharing the experience, and thank you, Bradley, who, thank you, you're still here, for coming to speak on the current status of the market. In the last 24 hours, I've received emails from many vendors and community members concerned about the market and sharing the experience they've had. Quite frankly, this council told staff we would move the market and then do that for the improvements that are happening on Palm. But we also said that we would look at this again. And so I'm looking forward to revisiting this personally. And Mr. Scroggs, thank you for always coming with the entertainment updates and for serving on the task force. It was great seeing you. And I'm glad, boy, every time you come up here, I'm just so glad you're in that room. And stay tuned for everything, council, that's coming on entertainment. And I want to thank the two folks that came to speak for board and commission applications. Thank you so much. You are heard. It's really nice to put a face to the name. And I encourage you to continue reaching out to council. It's the right time. And then finally, I just want to say thank you to Gina Nyack for coming down. I always appreciate when we have our students, especially from boroughs, I'm a little biased, come down and share their thoughts and just be so passionate about an issue. I think that's so important to see. Like my colleague shared, change takes a while. And personally, I'd love to learn about your movement, about the... What is the plant-based coalition? I'd love to learn more about it and see how we can work together and hear more about what you've done in other cities, et cetera. But I just have to point you out individually because for me it's amazing to see a young person stand up at the dais and speak so eloquently, and you finish even before your time. So I just want to say kudos to you and keep going. So thank you, everybody.

All right. Who would like to go next? Vice Mayor?

Okay.

Okay. Well, I'm going to start off by congratulating our fire department again and keep up the good job, and we're very proud of you. I will move on to Sarkis Simonian from the ANCA. Thank you for... engagement and for sending us a letter and coming down to talk to us about the agenda item that we will be discussing real soon here. So I guess stay tuned if you're watching. Dean, applying for arts and culture, thank you for coming down, him and Louis as well. We appreciate you introducing yourself and the processes. We're going to be making the appointment, I believe, the city clerk, if I'm accurate, on July 21st. We're going to be appointing the boards and commissions.

That is correct, July 21st.

Okay, so definitely stay tuned and keep in touch, and we will be making the appointment on July 21st. Hilda, thank you for coming down. And you heard staff. And I'm hoping that we're going to continue helping with the marketing, both you and Bradley. I think he's still here. Yes, I see you. I do have a question for the city manager. And I don't know if you know the answer right off the top of your head. But a couple of things I heard. And I want to confirm something that we discussed during the budget conversation. Hilda mentioned something about being, I should have just stayed on Palm or being on Palm. And then right now, Council Member Perez said there might be another location. I recall during the budget study that we did not approve the budget for looking at an expansion and doing events on Palm. So am I still correct on that?

You are correct as far as the discussion paper related to Palm Avenue. That was not going to be viable for that size of an operation. However, I think one of the things that as part of that discussion paper was to look at other potential sites, hopefully near the downtown and that we could actually have where we could actually have events and different things. So that's going to take some time for public works and a lot of different departments to figure that out. But we hope to bring that back to you. So there might be some other locations that may be more feasible.

Okay. But specifically Palm, what we originally talked about, and that was in the paper for the budget. Okay.

Yeah, that was going to be a challenge that just wasn't going to work.

Okay. Well, I just wanted to confirm, because hearing tonight, I want to make sure it will be an alternative location, not Palm, necessary. Correct. Correct. Thank you. So I guess stay tuned, but hopefully, like Mr. Prescott said, it's been two weeks, three weeks. Thank you for correcting me. Three weeks, and I think we all are looking forward to having that additional members of the public coming and visiting. So we're hoping with the help of our staff, with your help, you do such a great job on social media as well, I follow you, that hopefully that would increase the foot traffic. And then talking about it here tonight to make everyone aware that you are open for business. So moving on. ALL THE OTHER FOLKS. MS. BAX SAID SOMETHING ABOUT FINANCING FOR THE DISTRICTS, AND I DON'T KNOW IF ANYONE CAUGHT EXACTLY THE QUESTION THAT WAS ASKED, LIKE WHERE ARE WE GETTING FINANCING FOR IT RELATES TO THE SPECIFIC PLANS? IS IT FOR THE UTILITIES? THE INFRASTRUCTURE. Just curious if we can quickly answer that. Thank you.

Hello again, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, Patrick Prescott, Community Development Director. I believe Ms. Fax was referring to enhanced infrastructure financing districts was something that was mentioned.

Yes.

It's a method of tax increment financing. You can create an infrastructure district in a given area, and the city can take the tax increment increase as an area grows and improves and apply that toward infrastructure enhancements for the district. That's an option we can pursue in maybe the airport district perhaps.

Is that Prop 218? Is that what you're talking about?

No, it's a separate financing mechanism but it would have to be covered under a different agenda item and staff is working as they indicated during the study session this evening looking at infrastructure and there will be infrastructure plans following advanced infrastructure planning following the specific plans that look more into funding requirements.

Thank you. You're welcome. Oh, and that's it. Thank you, everyone for coming down. I want to do acknowledge our former mayor, Mr. Brick for coming down. We're going to talk about the election real soon here addressing your concerns and our concerns as well. So thank you. It's always a pleasure having you here in the chamber.

Okay, Councilmember Rosati.

Yes, ma'am. Madam mayor. Um, congratulations to chief Alvarez and his department on the accreditation. Um, I think investing in public safety is paramount in Burbank and I congratulate him on was one of five. Um, so that's, that's really something. Um, thank you to all the Strongstown people for coming tonight. Um, Mr. Simonian, thank you for your engagement, your email and being here tonight. And, um, And the commission applicants who have emailed and who also came tonight, thank you for coming. I think, Jinya, thank you for your initiative for your plant-based project. program at your school. I enjoy that initiative that you've taken. Mr. Brick, districts are going to be on the ballot. We'll be talking about sequencing tonight, but districts will be on the ballot this year. And then... With regards to the cultural market, I've been intimately involved with that. You know, I think there was an eight to ten week hiatus trying to figure out how to get up and running. And then they've been operating for three weeks. I know it will work. And the reason why I know it will work is because the farmer's market works and it's further away. And I think it's going to take time. with the promotion, the signage to get up and running. But I think having that lag of 10 weeks or eight weeks, whatever that was, and then being there for three weeks and then closed this weekend, it's just kind of been jumbled. So I think there needs to be some consistency. And I think I encourage all of our council members next week to go to the grand opening for the ribbon cutting. Is that right, next week? So I have it on my calendar, and I encourage, if you can make it, we should all be there to try to launch this. So, of course, we want you to succeed, and I think our staff has done quite a bit to help succeed, and we want to nurture that. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

Okay.

So thank you to everyone who came tonight to speak and those who called and those who sent us emails and had meetings with us since our last council meeting and sharing your perspectives on what's going on in the city. As was mentioned, we can't speak on what majority of the folks talked about, but thank you for coming down and sharing your perspective on it. I do want to say shout outs to those who use the 94 and the pink bus. 94 is my bus every 12 minutes. Yeah, yeah. And then Mr. Simonian, thank you for coming down and sharing your thoughts on that item in your email. We will discuss later. Let's see. For the folks who came down who are applying for commissions, thank you for coming down a little early and letting us know who you are. And just message to the community if you apply for commissions. Please reach out to us, and I would love to get to know you. And then for Ms. Hilda. My apologies. Hilda. Avanessian? Avanessian. I got it. And Bradley, thank you for coming down and sharing. And you've been emailing us, and I know. And I owe you a meeting, so we're going to meet. And thank you for sharing. Thank you for persevering. The cultural market, as I expressed before, is such an important part of our community. So I appreciate your working through this and being willing. You could have given up. You could have said, forget this. It's too hard. And you didn't. So thank you for doing that. At the same time, I recognize that this is this has not been a smooth process. So as we're moving through this, I'm going to do my I'm assuming my schedule is open. So I'm going to come next week to grand opening. And then also, as we move through this, that we give it a fair chance and also be honest about it simultaneously. And so that's, I think, the duty of us all to do that. And continuing, as we had talked about before, to look at, in general, to look at places where we can have events like this. Because we're seeing more and more of these kinds of events in cities all over. And we went to the NoHo farmer's market a couple weeks ago, and it was packed. It's this little thing next to Red Maple. And so communities are thriving, really wanting this to thrive. Let's see. Mr. Scrox, thank you again for coming down with your updates. Success on Obsession. I've been hearing so much about Obsession and how it was. I will not watch it. It's not my kind of thing. I don't think I can do it. I will hear about it. I'll read about it and read a summary of the story. But I heard that it's great, and all of it was filmed in Burbank and on a low budget, and it won awards. And I wanted to ask the staff, actually, about that. Are we going to get a report back? Two things. I have two questions about Obsession making me think about. One, are we going to get a report back about the Film Burbank initiatives pretty soon? Or when is that coming for us? Or the task force? The task force.

I think they just had their last meeting. And that's due. I think it's on the forecast. But I think it's August.

Great. Okay. I think the community has been asking me about it, and we're all looking forward to hearing the feedback on that.

And I want to know, when are we going to have a citywide viewing of Obsession that we can get the mayor to watch?

If we do that, I have to put on... I won't be able to watch it or listen to it. I'll just sit with you guys while you're watching it. Also, Obsession is a movie that was filmed in Burbank, but a lot of movies were filmed here. And is there any way to put in the mix of our... promotion or our film Burbank to highlight the films that we've had here. I think that'd be great to do that.

Yeah, we're doing that right now. And I think there's a list somewhere that has from Jurassic Park, everything.

Okay, PIO, can we put that up on social media? That'd be awesome.

Not too much work direction here. This is a response to public comment.

Now he's doing my job. We're well past what's listed on the agenda.

Well, if you want a fun video format, you can check out the Mayor's Minute from a year ago, I'm just saying. Catch me pointing out all of the filming locations in multiple costumes.

So many. So many watching TV shows. That's Burbank. That's not New York. That's Burbank. That's not somebody new. For Ms. Ocampo and Ms. Lau, thank you for coming and speaking about the plant-based treaty. We received the email from the Sustainable Burbank Commission. I was there at the meeting when they voted on it, and I saw your presentation, so thank you for doing that. I am mostly vegetarian. I eat fish. But I'm mostly vegetarian, so I personally am excited about bringing more plant-based foods into our city and what we can do about that. So please feel free to reach out to me, and I will be following up and continuing with that, looking into that. And then Ms. Nyack on the same topic, congratulations on your first coming to council. You seem like a natural. The viewer didn't seem nervous at all. And it's so nerve-wracking to stand up there in front of this giant dais, and you did a great job. So congratulations. 800 signatures signed, too, at school. Rock star. I'd be curious to hear what you're doing, how that worked at your school. Not just about the signatures, but about the plant-based treaty and what you're doing there. And the signatures. Mr. Hillman asked if he could bring water. Yes, you can bring water into council. I know it gets dry in here, so you can bring water. It's not food or any other drinks. Yeah, water bottle in back. That's right. And let's see. A couple more things. Mr. Deegan earlier mentioned 27 years in Burbank. Me too. Lived in Europe. Me too. Loved the public transit of Europe. Me too. Just saying. Pretty cool. And then Mr. Day, another public speaker from the high school. This is the third time Mr. Day has come out. And such a great public speaker. Whenever a high schooler comes out, I just want to always say thank you and congratulations. And let's see. I think that's it. Let me just double check. One more page.

Nope.

And that is all. Again, thank you, everybody, for coming out. And we will now move on with the rest of the meeting. Okay, now is the consent calendar. It may be enacted in one motion. Meadow City Clerk, please read the consent calendar.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Tonight we have seven items. Item 1 is approval of the City Council minutes of the joint meeting of June 16, 2026 and the dark meeting of June 23, 2026. Item 2 is approval of the parking authority minutes of the joint meeting of June 2, 2026. Item 3 is adoption of a resolution of the Parking Authority of the City of Burbank approving implementation agreements for temporary paid parking during the Fan Zone event in downtown Burbank and providing other parking-related services. Item 4 is adoption of a resolution authorizing an agreement with Sterndahl Enterprises, Inc., to provide as needed roadway signing and striping services for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrian safety, consideration of CEQA exemption. Item five is approval of a multi-year reimbursement agreement with Family Service Agency for the Youth Focused Counseling Services Program. Item six is approval to authorize the general manager of Burbank Water and Power to award the multi-year alliance agreement with Oconite for various material categories to support the Burbank Water and Power warehouse. And item seven is approval of an agreement with the American Public Power Association for the demonstration of energy and efficiency development program grant for the development of power efficient design in utility customer electrification programs in the amount of $77,750. Thank you.

Okay. Yes.

Madam Mayor, if I can ask staff to give us a quick update on what is item number three and what the plan is for the two-day event.

Absolutely. I'll have Mr. Kresge come up and provide a one-minute summary.

I was hoping two minutes. You reduced it down to one minute. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Takahashi, members of the City Council. My name is David Kriske, Assistant Community Development Director with the Transportation Division. and in preparation for next month's World Cup FIFA fan zone event in downtown Burbank, your transportation team has been preparing a parking management plan for the purposes of addressing and responding to the influx of visitors that we expect to the event. We expect it to be very popular and part of that plan will be implementing temporarily paid parking in our downtown garages and The purpose of doing this is to ensure that we have traffic circulation dealt with, that we make sure that folks that are driving have available parking, and also to make sure we spread the demand to all of our garages as best we can so that Folks aren't bunching up in the near-term garage, but are distributed around the entire downtown. In developing that plan, we have been working with all of our garage partners. A lot of our garages are co-managed or cooperated with other entities and private entities, and we planned on using our six main garages to accommodate the FIFA Fan Zone attendees arriving at the event. Three of the garages, because of the way they're managed and the way that they are structured, require an action by the city council acting as the parking authority for the city to approve two agreements for allowing us to implement the temporarily paid parking in those garages and also authority to take some other actions at a third garage to implement the plan. So we are asking you to adopt the resolution for this agenda item number three. that allows us to implement the plan and accommodate the influx that we expect to our downtown for next month's FIFA event.

Go ahead.

I know we're both going to say something, and I think you'd know. If you can explain really quickly, when they buy the ticket for the event, how is it going to... I don't want to say team up or how we, it's like a package deal that they can also buy the tickets for the parking.

Yes, so we are widely circulating the fact that parking is available for people coming to the event. We also, by the way, have non-single occupant vehicle and non-car methods to get here. But for all the folks that are driving, we have linked with the ticket for FIFA to buy tickets for the events, have prominently linked right with that system the ability to reserve your parking in advance. We're hoping that folks will reserve their parking in advance In some garages, you get a bit of a discount if you register in advance, and that allows, again, for folks to seamlessly get to downtown, know where to park, and park without having any friction about paying for the parking. However, people that are arriving and don't buy parking in advance when they come to downtown are directed to our garages. They will be able to pay at the gate. that also allows them to get into the garage to park. We're using our new concept of using the license plate as the credential to park. We've been hearing about that with parking management and throughout all of Burbank and we'll be using a version of that system to allow folks to get in and out of the garages and reserve the parking in advance or at the gate. We are also offering non-car options to get to the event. The biggest one being we're going to be running special pink route service over the weekend to connect folks from the B line station in North Hollywood directly to the fan zone and actually extending the pink route into downtown and stopping pretty much right at the front door. So we're providing that as well. We're also directing folks to use Metrolink and other transit coming out of the Metrolink station, which we have lots of connections right into downtown as well.

And my last question, and I promise I'll make it really quick. We do have some free parking available. And if you can let us know where that free parking could be and if we would have signage directing people to the free parking.

So we have some limited free parking in the core of the event, and that is because our garages require us to accommodate a certain amount of free parking for some of the businesses that participate in the garage operations need to have free parking available. So there is limited free parking right in our city garages. The biggest or the best option for free parking that's not that limited parking is probably the Burbank Town Center. They are not participating in the overall parking system, but of course that parking is available, and that will be the largest free parking. But we are definitely encouraging FIFA fan zone attendees to pay and reserve the parking because that ensures that you have a spot to park and ensures you can get into the parking, out of your car, and to the event as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

And I just want to mention that there's several people asking if they could attend the fan zone, but there's an unpaid portion, there's a ticketless, where they can go without having to purchase a ticket, correct?

Yes, there is a public kind of ancillary area that's open to the public without being part of the paid event. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for encouraging not driving a car and offering the bus as well. Will there be Uber drop-off location indicated as well? And will folks who are coming up the Metrolink get clear direction on walking that bridge, that sidewalk there?

Yes. So for the first question, we are going to be operating a Uber drop off area. We're finalizing that now, but we're hoping to have a kind of a geofenced area off of Angelino to direct folks to use for ride sharing services. And then, yes, we are directing folks via Metrolink with signage, I believe, of course, up and over, but also letting people know that you can take pretty much every bus out of the Metrolink station. get to downtown also so if you don't want to walk over the bridge you have the connection and then like I said the best quite frankly the best connection is the pink route where we're like I said the special service right into downtown you will literally be dropped off at first and palm and just go right in so that's probably the best option for transit unlike most events we're selling tickets to this so do we have an idea how many people are gonna be coming to downtown Burbank believe we are looking at potentially 20 to 25,000 people a day.

And when we had the art fest, how many people do you think attended that? It was similar. Oh, it was.

Okay.

All right. I knew it was pretty jammed, but I didn't know if it was 25,000 jammed. So all right. We can handle it. We'll be ready. We will handle it.

I volunteer him to work the ticket booth.

Yeah, I'll put on a vest. I'll work the parking garage. I'm only 20 bucks an hour. We have that covered. We don't need it. We appreciate it, but we do have that covered.

Okay, I can make a motion to approve the consent calendar. Okay.

Second.

All right. Madam City Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Anthony.

Yes.

Council Member Perez. Yes on everything except abstain on five.

Council Member Rizzotti.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Mullins. Yes. And Mayor Tagahashi. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. This is the time and place now for the hearing on the city's introduction of an ordinance amending the restating Article 3 of Chapter 2 of Title 8. of the Burbank Municipal Code relating to the sustainable water use practices and finding of a CEQA exemption. If you wish to comment on this item in person, please present a salmon public hearing card to the city clerk. If you wish to speak over the phone, please call now, 818-238-3335. You'll be placed in a queue until the public hearing comment begins. Before we begin, are there any disclosures relating to this hearing?

No.

No? OK. Madam City Clerk? Oh, talking. Madam City Clerk, have the notices as required by law been given?

They have.

Do we have the complete file of exhibits, correspondence, including emails and other documents?

You do.

Great. Thank you. Will the representative of Burbank Water and Power please introduce yourself and summarize the matter for us? Welcome.

Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor, and council members. I'm Drew Johnstone, your sustainability officer from Burbank Water and Power. And on behalf of staff, I'm really proud to present the proposed updates to the sustainable water use ordinance. And we're genuinely excited about what they mean for our community. The goals are simple with this update. We want less confusion. We want more flexibility for residents. We have new state mandates to implement. and we want a stronger focus on education incentives that actually change behavior and move the needle on conservation. The ordinance has been in the books since 2008, nearly 20 years, and it's been brought before council roughly 10 times, as a good policy does evolve. And the proposed changes tonight are the next step in that evolution. We're confident that the updated ordinance combined with BWP's marketing programs, sustainability initiatives, and financial incentives strike the right balance for Burbank right now. These updates started with direction from council, actually in August of 2023, driven by three clear concerns. The first is that the existing ordinance's six-stage conservation system with different watering days depending on the season is hard for residents to follow. Second, California's climate has become too unpredictable for fixed seasonal schedules to make sense. We can see record rainfall in one month and a heat dome in the next month. And third, the smart irrigation technology that BWP recommends and incentivizes, like smart irrigation controllers and soil moisture sensors, can't do their job when watering days are locked in by ordinance. There are also two new state laws that added further reason for us to update the ordinance at this time. The first being AB 1572, which bans the use of drinking water to irrigate non-functional turf at government, commercial, and common area multifamily properties. This is a significant water saving opportunity that will require staff time and resources to communicate and enforce. We must add this law's provisions into our municipal code by January 1st, 2027 to comply. The second law is known as making conservation a California way of life, which moves the state away from drought-only responses towards year-round water efficiency. It sets water use budgets for suppliers like Burbank Water and Power that tighten over time. Staying within those budgets will take incentives, programs, and rate structures to encourage customers to use water wisely, all things that BWP is already working towards. These factors together, along with our experience engaging with the community, led staff to recommend eliminating the six stage system and seasonal watering restrictions. In a climate this unpredictable, those seasonal categories no longer reflect reality. The proposed ordinance gives customers the flexibility to water when their landscapes need it, while keeping common sense rules to prevent waste. Removing the stages does not mean we're relaxing conservation. There are 18 measures in the ordinance that remain, And BWP has a full lineup of educational programs, financial incentives that stay in place. Water is still treated here like the precious resource that it is. The following council direction, staff mobilized. We engaged the community prior to drafting the updated ordinance. Input was gathered from hundreds of Burbank residents through survey, public workshops, and supplemented by interviews with master gardeners from the Burbank Valley Garden Club, the Monarch Mile, and the Theodore Payne Foundation. We had a divided BWP board that was engaged thoughtfully with our proposed changes, and that dialogue was really valuable in refining our approach. And notably, when we presented the Sustainable Burbank Commission in March, the proposed changes received unanimous approval. The biggest proposed change is eliminating set watering days. Some may wonder if this means watering is now unrestricted. It doesn't. The Sustainable Water Use Ordinance still has irrigation runtime limits and time of day restrictions and prohibitions on overspray and runoff. But regardless of those guardrails, BWP is confident that years of drought awareness and conservation outreach have established a community norm of responsible consumption. BWP will continue to reinforce the message that emphasizes efficiency over restriction, and using only as much water as each household genuinely needs. In the past, BWP monitored metered data to catch watering day violations, sending warnings and fines to customers who watered on the wrong day. And in practice, many of those notices went to really efficient users that just happened to be watering on the wrong day. Going forward, BWP will shift from reactive enforcement to targeted data-driven outreach. An example of this is that we can use consumption data from our meters to identify households with large landscaped areas and reach out directly to above average water users with saving tips and resources, getting help to the people that need it most. Fines and enforcement won't disappear. They'll be focused on where they matter, like confirmed leaks, overspray runoff, and the new currently unfunded state mandate prohibiting non-residential, non-functional turf irrigation. While this new law requirement represents a significant water savings opportunity, it will demand substantial staff capacity for property owner education and ongoing enforcement throughout the city. So our goal for landscapes is to promote smarter irrigation, not stricter schedules. Rather than telling everyone to water on the same day, BWP wants customers to water based on what their landscape actually needs, using tools like smart controllers, soil moisture sensors, or custom watering calculations that can be found online. The best part is that these things are affordable. Thanks to BWP's partnership with Metropolitan Water District, customers can get $3 a square foot to replace their thirsty lawns with water-wise alternatives and $150 rebates for smart irrigation controllers and soil moisture sensors. And in many cases, those tools are available at little to no cost beyond installation. and our marketing team has prepared a full campaign to roll out alongside the updated ordinance to guide homeowners while also keeping conservation visible year-round. BWP has a lineup of workshops, certification programs, videos, social media content, and landscape transformation programs that all point to the same outcome, which is less water used per person per day. Following, oh, excuse me. Southern California's water supply has always been variable. We have droughts, we have aging infrastructure, we've got system maintenance that can all reduce water availability and sometimes with little warning. When that happens, our community needs to be ready to use less. BWP has storage capacity that does provide meaningful flexibility but importantly, Burbank's residents and businesses have consistently demonstrated a willingness to reduce consumption when conservation requests are clearly communicated and grounded in real supply conditions. The current ordinance uses tiered conservation stages, but the process of advancing or retreating through the stages has proven administratively burdensome and difficult for customers to interpret. The proposed ordinance streamlines this by granting Burbank Water and Power General Manager authority to issue voluntary conservation requests when supply conditions genuinely warrant action, enabling a more timely targeted and transparent response. BWP watches a range of indicators that might trigger such a call for extra conservation. such as the Sierra Snow Pack, State Water Project, Colorado River allocations, the Metropolitan Water District operations, and BWP's own reservoirs and distribution systems. When the conditions warrant it, we'll ask, and Burbank residents have consistently shown they respond when the reason is clear and the ask is genuine. Couple of examples of this, we put out a call to community to voluntary conserve during a two-week pipeline repair, and this chart is clear proof that demand dropped sharply. And before that, BWP put out a billion gallon challenge when there was a severe drought and the state ordered a 25% reduction in urban water use. The Burbank community met that challenge one month ahead of schedule. With that, staff recommends adopting the proposed updates, and my colleagues and I are here to answer any questions you might have.

Great. Thank you for the presentation.

Madam Mayor? Yes. One point of clarification I would like to point out for the record that BWP provided an updated copy of the ordinance for the record. You all have it in front of you with a memo. And so the recommendation this evening is adoption of this ordinance. It is posted on the city's website and is already integral to the agenda packet that people are viewing as an additional document under the agenda item.

Oh, okay. Great. Thank you for the update. We will now open public hearing to any persons who wish to speak on this matter. Each person may address the council on this public hearing item only. I encourage you to state your name when speaking at the podium to assist the city clerk with the minutes. The public hearing public comment period is now beginning and no additional cards or calls are accepted. Madam city clerk, how many public cards do we have for the public hearing?

Madam mayor, we don't have any cards and no callers.

Okay. Based on zero number of speakers, it'd be zero minutes for time for speaking. Um, so we have no public comment period, so we'll go right to, I'll declare the public hearing, a public comment period closed. And does council, we'll start with questions. Does council have any questions for staff? Yes, Council Member Anthony.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanted to go through sort of the reasoning behind the change. I know it's, for a long time, it's been common knowledge in Burbank, you water on certain days and then you don't water on other days. And then depending on the season, the days increase. And then you've got to watch for the city to let you know publicly, wait, no, now you get a day back. And now you get less of a day. I know it's been kind of a headache. And not to mention the enforcement of that gets pretty robust. Are we confident that simply changing it to a tiered system, we're going to see the same conservation levels? Or is there potential for this change to see even better conservation levels in the future?

Yeah, so our recommendation is to eliminate the tiered structure in the ordinance and focus more on educating on using the minimum amount necessary for certain landscapes and putting out that type of education. Yeah, you raise a really good point. It could go up, it could go down. Having the watering days, some folks could, if they have super efficient landscape and they know they've got one day or two days a week to water, they'll water maybe unnecessarily. It could be overwatering because they know, oh, this is the day. So yeah, we really want to focus on watering the right amount. And so there's a lot of education that goes around that and tools available like smart irrigation controllers and weather-based sensors, things like that, that we're really promoting in partnership with the Metropolitan Water District.

OK. And then lastly, the way I'm looking at the setup, it seems as though it's just based on your total usage. not necessarily how many people live at that single meter. And so my only concern is that a large family, if you have two or three kids and a dog and a cat, they all use water, they're going to start to hit a certain level more so than, say, their neighbor who's maybe one or two people living there. And so I just wanted to see if you have any data on this that if a family of four or five with a cat and a dog, if they're going to be able to use the water monitoring and stay under that tier. Because I don't want us to disincentivize people giving water to the pets when it's hot.

Yeah. The ordinance does not, we're not proposing to update any rates or tiers of rates with this proposal. Watering rates are what they are. This ordinance is more about sustainable water use practices and rules, primarily around outdoor irrigation, but also preventing waste with car washes and some commercial entities. So when it comes to families, large families aren't disenfranchised by these proposed changes at all.

I mean, basically what I'm trying to get at is, is there an understanding that people and animals use water at a certain rate, but watering a giant lawn is a large use of water. And that's what we're trying to get at. Correct.

A lot of water agencies, when they develop their water rates, like the first tier, eight HCF here in Burbank, 800 cubic feet, is a typical allocation for a family of four's indoor water consumption. And anything above that typically jumps into higher tiers when you start doing outdoor irrigation or filling pools. Water can get more expensive the more you use.

OK, thank you. That's what I was getting at. I appreciate that. Thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah, follow up question.

Yeah, well, it's kind of like they have to pay for it. So if you're using excess amount of water, more than someone else, eventually, the bill is going to reflect that. And, and the pool, the law, I mean, and our water rates have increased. So therefore, you realize really quickly that, you know, the consumption has gotten a lot higher. But I think on the same kind of theme, How long do you think evaluating the new system and the new way of allowing people just to use as much water as they want, basically, without restriction. How long do you think it would happen? Like over a year, two-year period, where you finally measure the impact and say, well, no, we don't like this program. We want to go back to the old way of doing things. And when would we determine that? If you're giving yourself a goal of the next year, are we going to evaluate this?

I think one year at a minimum and two years would be great. As you may know, Burbank Water and Power has been replacing a lot of the communication modules on our smart meters. So we haven't had a super robust set of data, but we will starting this summer. So that's really exciting. Starting at the end of this month, early next month, we'll have some really comprehensive data moving forward on all the water meters in Burbank. So at least at the end of one year, we'll have some really good data on the impacts.

One year from implementation. Correct. And would we be able... to have an update on a regular basis as this happens, so we know how you're doing and where we're at. And I think our general manager, of course, has the authority to decide, well, this is not working out for us. We need to come to council, and we're going to make the changes again.

So we look forward to giving that update.

And my other question is, are we making this public? Are we advertising what we're doing? Or are we just going to allow it to happen naturally and people using it, they're not going to get that warning again?

Yeah, I think with the rollout, again, we have a marketing team that has prepared a marketing plan for the ordinance update. I think we would not advertise much. Of course, we'd get rid of the watering days. So we'd be focusing on conservation, all the great resources that we have for our customers to use water wisely. That's what would be our focus.

OK. So but you'll send something out saying you're no longer just watering on Tuesdays and Saturdays. You can water every day in the week.

To that effect, I mean, we would have marketing talk about, using water wisely and more efficiently, we wouldn't talk about the watering days anymore. It wouldn't be relevant.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Perez?

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Mayor. My questions fall along the same line as my colleagues. So when we're talking about water usage just at face value, I understand that it's hard to enforce the current program and that we just really want to encourage folks to conserve water. But what, what happens or is there some kind of incentive or something? Let's say I got all the money to spare and I want to water my lawn and use my pool and do all these things. And I'm a high use of like, I'm a high usage consumer and I'm like, well, I'm paying right. It is what it is. Is there anything like a notification? Like, Hey, you're using a lot that automatically goes out to them. Is there some kind of education that's immediately triggered in this new format? And are there kind of incentives that are not monetary-based to reduce their use?

Yes, thank you for the question. As I mentioned, our meters are being upgraded. We have a software called WaterSmart. And I mentioned that one of the data-driven targeted outreach strategies that we will deploy are creating customer cohorts so we can identify, say, all the customers with for people living in the home and have 2,000 square feet of landscape. And then we can determine an average use for that cohort and identify the above average users and then send resources and tips and information about our incentives to those users to hopefully get them to act and be more efficient with their use. And we've got, of course, a lot of great financial incentives to replace turf, pool covers, pool reels, all sorts of water fixtures inside the home and outside the home. And again, we'll be hosting more workshops, certification programs, and a slew of programs throughout the year to get folks to get involved.

And are people automatically going to get kind of those notices? Because I know, for example, electricity-wise, I remember, oh my God, this was way back when, signing up for, this was my first apartment in Burbank. I signed up for the notice because I wanted to know, how much am I using? And to this day, it's really helpful. Like, hey, you're above this many users. Like, tone it down. Or your energy usage is below. So I can be like, oh, what did I do this week that was helpful? So is that going to be automatic? Or do folks still have to sign up for that?

No, that's a strategy that we will deploy internally. We also have leak alerts through that software as well. Awesome. And those have been very valuable. We've saved a ton of water thanks to those leak alerts. And a part of this ordinance is that folks have to repair leaks promptly. That's a measure in our ordinance.

Awesome. Thank you. And I ask as, as a renter, I don't waters through my, my landlord. It's, it's a different system, but the, that's why I talked about the energy meter, but it's good to know that we have that for folks who are homeowners, for folks who are owners as well to, to get that notification.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. So just so I'm clear on what this is saying is that the new requirement would be no more than 15 minutes per station per day. And it would be required to be before 9 or after 6 all year, no matter even during this time of year when the sun's out until 8 o'clock. That's still the same time frame. Okay. And then drip and hand watering is okay any time, right? Okay. And there's no restriction to the number of days per week necessarily? Correct. Okay.

We will encourage what's called a cyclant soak method. So while your irrigation points are limited to 15 minutes per day, in our outreach and education we'll recommend maybe splitting that up into two seven-minute sessions for that day to allow the waters to slowly percolate in the ground and prevent runoff.

Yeah, okay, that'd be great. And then right now in the 311 app, there's a way to report water usage. Is that still going to be available on the app? Will that be adjusted? How can people help in the community if they see?

Yeah, thank you for that question. Yeah, that was one of the measures that we implemented over the last couple years was getting water waste on the 311 app. We did have to recently pause that while our meters were being replaced, but now that the data will be flowing through those meters, we'll look to reactivate that feature in the 311 app so that we can confirm the water usage complaints.

Great, okay. So like if somebody's sprinkler is broken and it's shooting water into the sky and they don't know because it's really in the morning or something. Okay, great. Um, and then, so I understand, so non-residential ornamental lawn would not be allowed to be watered at all or only recycled water.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that question. So the state law does have an exemption for recycled water. So all of our park, yeah. Um, all the city's properties, for example, that have the purple pipe will be exempt from, from the rule, but all the other properties that have non-functional turf with drinking water That's what the prohibition is for.

So those commercial non-residential lawns, they will get some assistance on what to do else besides having water?

Yes, absolutely. And this law has a phased-in approach. So January 1, 2027, it impacts government buildings. And then January 1, 2028, it impacts commercial, industrial, and institutional. So that's our businesses, our schools. And then 2029, January 1st, it impacts multifamily HOA common areas. And so you bet there's a lot of resources available through the State Water Project. There's a website called nonfunctionalturf.org, I believe it is, with some great fact sheets and resources to help customers with that transition.

Okay, good, because I think there'll be questions about that. Okay.

That's where a lot of our focus will be as staff with education outreach on that specific law.

Okay. I think that'll be a huge, huge water conservation there. And then going to enforcement. So part of the new approach is to have... allowance for a direct citation if necessary, but focusing is still on education, right? Definitely. But if there is a citation, what would the citation be for now? So now we have days that they're doing it, or what would potentially be a citation for?

Theoretically, any violation of any of the measures in the ordinance Could be subject to citation.

So longer than 15 minutes after, between 9 and 6. Yeah, there's fewer reasons to be cited.

Yeah, theoretically. But as I said, I think we'd focus on the larger waste items versus maybe overwatering a couple of minutes here and there. We have to prioritize resources on the enforcement.

Good. OK, so if somebody does report on 311 app that the sprinkler is broken, staff is not going to come out and issue a citation right then and there. It's still going to be education forward and support and help to fix and adjust.

Absolutely. We're all about customer service and educating, and we want to enable people to do the right thing first.

Great. Okay. And then my last question is, if extra conservation is needed, if BWP director decides extra conservation is needed, what kind of conservation would be put into place at that time?

we would put out recommendations for folks. So not too dissimilar to what we have in the ordinance today or best practices for folks to cut back water usage, especially during temporary supply issues that we might have. So theoretically there could be, like the pipeline repair, we could ask residents, please take a couple weeks to not water at all or just do hand water your trees and shrubs for this time all this repair is taking place. So we would assess the supply conditions and then make recommendations based on the conditions at hand.

How severe the conservation would be needed. Okay. And that would be a temporary conservation effort for some period of time until the issue is resolved or whatever it is. Correct. Okay. Those were my questions. Any other questions before we go to deliberation? No? Okay. So I now declare the public hearing closed and the council will now deliberate. What is the council's pleasure? Yes, council member Anthony.

Well, first off, I think this is a great move forward. I have, I can't tell you how many times I've been in this chamber on both sides of the microphone and people are absolutely not just confused but upset. that they can water on one day and water on another day and then three months later it changes and it becomes very frustrating. Especially for people who do like want to maintain and take care of their yards and that's fine and dandy if that's your preference. But we are as a city and I think as a larger community in Southern California moving away from that kind of water usage. And so we've implemented over the years very carefully a lot of incentives through BWP and through Metropolitan Water District and the state and the county and everybody's getting together to sort of switch everybody into, you know, local plants and native plants and permeable turf and all of that stuff. And so for us, I think this is the last vestige of that, where it's no longer about trying to shame anybody for picking the day. It's about, well, what is your total water usage? And sort of the line of questioning that I started with is, Well, what about families who use water? And when we use water for what human beings and other animals need water for, we stay under that tier because that's what it's for. And for us, the way the tier is now, it really does signify, to the vice mayor's point, if you want to fill a pool, if you want to water a giant yard, hey, go for it. But You know, you got to pay some money for that. It's going to cost you. Water is a necessary resource for human beings. So I think moving to this, forgetting about which day and which day isn't and changing the days every couple months, I think was just becoming too much of a headache. I think really targeting... the total usage. Going to the meter and just looking at the number and saying, okay, that's where we're going to get the most bang for our buck. So I'm in support.

Okay. Any other deliberation?

No, I agree. I think it is confusing for a lot of people and especially if you have a gardener that sets your timer automatically and they don't know and I've seen that happen to my neighbors and And to myself, and I would have to run out there and say, oh, please, you know, change it because we're on a timer. We're different days.

But the homeowner doesn't know how to change the timer and the gardener's not coming out until three days from now.

Yeah, and they and they maybe don't know about the changes. So I kind of was like the police around my neighborhood telling everybody when but there's that doesn't exist in every neighborhood. So I think it's something that is worthwhile looking at and seeing how it works. And you know, me, everybody has to be responsible for the amount of water they use. So thank you for bringing the report and I'm good with the recommendation.

Any other deliberation? Just really briefly, I'm curious about how this transition to seven days a week being okay to water is going to psychologically kind of, I guess, for people to water the lawns. But I'm optimistic.

Personally, I would... You think there's going to be a watering spree? No, I don't think so.

I think it would be more like a slow creep over time. Yeah, over time. Yeah, it's true, it's not cheap. And just generally, I think that watering lawns with potable water with sprinklers is a huge, it's a huge use of water and so I'm not a fan of that, but prefer that we don't do that. But I do prefer the education and encouraging folks to conserve water versus the citation and the you know punishment model of not being on the right day so for that I do support it and I'd be curious I agree with Vice Mayor to get a report back and see how it's going and you know we've talked about you know using other having other kinds of lawns with native plants and and using less water and how that transition is challenging so keeping normalizing that transition keeping making it exciting to transition, not a chore. One day we will do it. We just don't water our lawn, so we let nature take its course with the watering naturally from the sky. But it would be great one day to have that transition to actually like a well thought out lawn or front yard that's not long. So continuing to encouraging that transition. There are cities that don't have watering lawns at all, and then folks have to switch over, and it looks great. I think it's done well. It looks great. But that's, you know, I think overall I agree with you that this is the right thing to do. So thank you to staff and to all the folks who put effort into making this happen and working through all the different versions and presenting this. All right. Any other deliberation? If not, can we get a motion?

You want to go ahead? Yeah. I move to make a motion, introduction, a proven introduction of an ordinance amending restating Article 3 of Chapter 2 of Title 8 of the Burbank Municipal Code relating to the sustainable water use practices and finding of CEQA exemption 14 CCR 15061, 15301, 15305, 15307, 15308.

Second.

And just for clarification, that's the updated ordinance added to the packet today?

Correct. Based on the updated language that was given to us. Thank you.

Okay. We have a first and a second. Can we get the vote, please?

Council Member Anthony? Yes. Council Member Perez? Yes. Council Member Rizzotti? Yes. Vice Mayor Mullins? Yes. And Mayor Takahashi? Yes. Thank you.

All right. This is the time and place now for the hearing. for public input regarding options for sequencing of elections in MAP 130 for an ordinance to change the city's electoral system from at-large to bi-district elections for electing council members. If you wish to comment on this item in person, please present a salmon public hearing card to the city clerk. If you wish to speak over the phone, please call now at 818. 238-3335. You will be placed in a queue until the public hearing comment period begins. Before we begin, are there any ex parte or other disclosures relating to this hearing?

No.

No?

Okay. Madam City Clerk, have the notices as required been law been given?

They have.

And do we have a complete file of exhibits and correspondence, including emails and other documents?

You do.

Okay, great. And has the city received any written communications on this matter, and have they been provided to city council members?

We did not receive any.

Okay, great. Thank you. Will the representative of the city attorney's office please introduce yourself and summarize the matter for us?

Hi.

Good to see you in person.

Hi there. I guess I'm that representative, Marguerite Leone, Nielsen, Mark Simmer. has been special counseled to you on the CVRA matter, the litigation. And shall I proceed? Good. As you know, we settled, the city settled that litigation in March. And we are proceeding to comply with the settlement agreement, and this is a step in that compliance. So this is a timeline. The city received a CVRA demand in August of 2022. It passed its resolution of intent to move to council member districts in January of 2023. It then engaged in an extensive process to analyze a transition to district-based elections between March and October of 2023. However, in October 19th of 2023, the city was sued in a lawsuit alleging a violation of the California Voting Rights Act. The case was pending through discovering a number of motions for about 18 months and at a settlement conference the case settled in February of 2026 with documents executed in March of this year. These are selected terms of the settlement agreement that bring us here today. And those selected terms include that the city will place on the ballot a charter amendment to facilitate electoral system changes Now I'm not going to go into detail about that Charter amendment now because that's not the subject of what we're doing here That's going to come before you on the 21st of July However, the council was also obligated to place on the ballot for voter approval an ordinance adopting map 130 for elections in 2028 and 2030. MAP 130 WAS ONE OF THE BY DISTRICT ELECTION OPTIONS THAT WAS DEVELOPED DURING THE PROCESS BETWEEN MARCH AND OCTOBER OF 2023. IT WAS THE PREFERRED OPTION OF THE COUNCIL AND HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO EXTENSIVE PUBLIC REVIEW. THE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ACTUALLY PROVIDES THAT YOU ARE TO DETERMINE THE SEQUENCING OF ELECTIONS IN THE DISTRICTS IN MAP 130. RIGHT NOW TERMS ON THE COUNCIL ARE STAGGERED WITH THREE MEMBERS BEING ELECTED IN THE GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION YEAR. and to being elected in the presidential election year. That staggering will be carried over into the districts of Map 130, but it has to be determined which district is going to be on which cycle. And the settlement agreement accorded, granted the authority to do that exclusively to the city council. That, however, is consistent with the Constitution and also, well, consistent with the Constitution and also consistent with case law. Now, under the Settlement Agreement, both the Charter Amendment measure And the ordinance must pass in order for there to be a transition to district elections in the city of Burbank. That transition would happen in 2028 and continue in 2030. And by that time, there would be a full implementation of the district elections in the city. However, after 2030, the system can be changed by the voters and by this council as well. In other words, this is a transition over a period of two years with no obligation to continue by district elections if that's not the opinion of the council or the opinion of the voters. Sequencing has to be applied to the map before it goes to the voters. That's by law and also by the settlement agreement. And as I just discussed, sequencing means the election cycle on which a particular district appears on the ballot. So this is map 130, which was considered at length in 2023. It is part of the settlement agreement. I have included labels which indicate where the current council members reside. As you will see, there are five districts in map 130. No council member currently resides in districts one and two. ONE COUNCIL MEMBER RESIDES IN DISTRICT 3. THREE COUNCIL MEMBERS IN DISTRICT 4. AND ONE COUNCIL MEMBER IN DISTRICT 5. SO WE'VE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THE COUNCIL DETERMINES SEQUENCING. MAP 130 WHEN IT WAS PUBLISHED HAD TWO ALTERNATIVE SEQUENCING ATTACHED TO THE MAP. YOU ARE NOT BOUND BY THOSE. Even under normal process, you would not be bound by that. So what are the principles that you use in determining districting? First of all, the Constitution gives the charter city exclusive authority to decide the times and terms at which council members are elected. There is a similar provision for general law cities. So your authority fundamentally is constitutional. Following up on that, there are provisions in the transition statute which brings you from at-large elections to by district elections, and there are two provisions. Neither of them have been construed by a court. I'm gonna start with the second one first, that you're supposed to take into account the opinion of members of the district. There is no indication of who is a member of the district. Is it a person who lives there? Is it the residents who will be in the district? And there's been no judicial explanation of that and there's nothing in the legislative history. I think the best interpretation is you have to hold a public hearing and you have to listen to the public. And that's what we're doing here today. Now we're going to back up to the first one, and that is you're supposed to give special consideration to the purposes of the CVRA. Once again, we have no judicial interpretation of what that means. By one interpretation, it simply means that it is an incentive to move cities into by district elections. That's one interpretation. However, looking at the legislative history, there is a suggestion that the racial makeup of a district should be taken into consideration in determining the sequencing and that when there is a majority minority district, that district should not be undermined by placing it in the gubernatorial cycle when turnout is less and your majority district might fall beneath a majority in actual turnout. However, when you are considering these sorts of things in making your decision, you need to bear in mind that under the federal constitution, which is salient right now because of the Calais decision, race-based decision making, is presumptively unconstitutional. And I do want to point out that in MAP 130, there is not a majority Latino district. The best that could be created was a little bit over 30%. So even if we look at the legislative history, that concern with preserving a majority minority district doesn't exist. So moving on, what are other rules and regulations that apply? Well, under your charter, let's see if we can get up here. I'll catch up with myself. Whoops. Under your charter, you have to have five council members, so you can't have a situation where you're assigning districts to have elections which will result in you having six council members or seven. So you have to stick with five and you have to have staggered terms. Now other cities in situations like yours have taken in a variety of factors into account. And some of them look at the incumbents and the opportunity to run. Other criteria look at spreading representation either geographically ARE ON ANOTHER BASIS ACROSS THE CITY. SO ONE TYPICAL CRITERIAN IS THE ELECTED TERMS OF OFFICE. SO AS OFFICES EXPIRE, THAT DISTRICT IS UP FOR ELECTION TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO RUN. THE ABILITY TO RUN is a consideration. So for example, in a district with a 2028 council member and a 2030 council member, putting that district on a 2030 election cycle would make it impossible for the 2028 member to run. So what cities often consider is putting that district on the earlier cycle, which enables the 2030 council member to run. And if elected, that council member would resign from his at-large seat, which would then be filled by appointment for the expiration of the term. And if not elected, that council member would continue in office. So I've been with cities that have looked at concentrations of their council members and felt that this was an opportunity to spread representation geographically. Other cities have looked at temporal factors. In other words, how long has it been since a particular neighborhood has had a council member from that neighborhood elected to the council and tried to encourage participation by the use of sequencing in the district election system. So this is the key to the maps that you're about to see. The maps are also marked to help you understand options here. We're going to present four options and happy to answer your questions about others. So the first option one is the simplest. Districts go on the ballot as terms expire. These maps are shaded in a way that the districts have black lines, but the districts that are up for election are in green and those that are deferred are in red. And if you look closely at these maps, each one of the districts has an indication of who lives in that district, and thus an indication of who runs when. So going to option one in 2028, your green districts are district four, excuse me, I go numerically, district three and district four. Now remember, this is an option that considers the finishing, the end of terms of office. Council members in Districts 3 and District 4 have terms that end in 2028. This option also has the criterion operating that allows other council members who are resident in District 4 to run as well. So every council member who currently resides in District 4 could run for that seat. Of course, only one will be elected. If that person elected has a 2030 term end, That person would, upon election, resign from the at-large term, and there would be an appointment to keep the council at five. But everybody would have the opportunity to run. In the 2030 cycle, then, the three other districts would be up. District five has a resident who would run in the normal course in 2030. District 1 and 2 are represented. They elected you at large. But there's not a resident in those two districts. They would be deferred until 2030 under this option. OK. So option one focused on terms of office and ability to run. The next two options have geographical features. So this one is to diversify geographical representation. And as you can see from the comparison maps, in 2028, a district to the west and a district to the east would be on the ballot. DISTRICT 2 IN 2028 AND DISTRICT 3. THIS ALSO SATISFIES IN A SUBSIDIARY MANNER TO OTHER CONCERNS AND THAT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE NOT FOREVER BUT SOMETIMES SINCE WE'VE HAD A RESIDENT IN DISTRICT FROM DISTRICT 2 ON THE COUNCIL AND DISTRICT 3 TERM ENDS ANYWAY IN 2028. So this would be, but the purpose of this is to have an election in the east, a geographical diversity of the elections. And then in the 2030 cycle, the districts on the ballot would be 1, 4, and 5, which would be the north-south districts. So this is a close-up of the 2028 option. And in this particular option, one of the members in District 4 would be out of office in 2028 because term ends, that district is not on the ballot. So that council member would have to sit out two years in order to run again. Alternatively, that council member could move to an open seat and run there. So then in 2030, The two council members in four would have the terms up and would be able to run. The council member in District 5 has a 2030 term end and would be able to run. And then the vacant seat in District 1 would also be on the ballot. But there's a geographical rotation in how this works. It does have the advantage of having one of the seats without a resident on the council up at the early election cycle, which would be 2028. This next option, option three, is a different way to diversify with a focus on a geographical feature, which is a freeway. And so we have elections north of the freeway and south of the freeway in both election cycles. And so in 2028, Districts 1 and, oh, this is a north-south. Yeah, this is more of a north-south of I-5. So in this option, District 1 and 2, one north of I-5. Is it 5? Yeah, it is a 5. North of I-5 and south of I-5 are on the ballot. There are two open seats. It gives those areas an opportunity to elect a resident at the earliest possible time. And then in 2030, the other districts would be on the ballot. In the interim, the term of the council member from District 3 would end in 2028, but that council member could run in 2030. A council member in District 4's term would end because it's a 2028 term end, but all of the 2030 members would run in their districts in 2030. And then there is this option. And the whole map is green. And this is an option in which everybody runs in 2028. And representation is diversified across the city. All residents have an opportunity at the earliest possible time to vote in the new districts. This option has the feature of unstaggering elections. Your charter requires staggered elections so if you choose this option you must also choose a method of restaggering options, of restaggering terms. This option has the benefit of allowing all of you to run IN 2028, IT WOULD RESULT IN SHORTENED TERMS FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT RUN IN 2026, BUT THAT IS PERMISSIBLE UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. SO THOSE ARE THE OPTIONS. THIS IS A BIGGER MAP. THOSE ARE THE OPTIONS WE HAVE TO PRESENT TO YOU TODAY AND HAPPY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THESE OPTIONS AND ALSO TO CONSIDER OTHERS YOU MAY HAVE THOUGHT

Madam Mayor, if I could. Ms. Leone, could you indicate the method in which, at least in the draft ordinance, we've selected the staggering?

There's a variety of ways of staggering elections. One of them that is featured in one of the codes that I work with frequently is the one that is in the ordinance. And that is... of those elected in 2028, the council members who receive the largest proportion of the vote, and we have to make sure our terminology is right whether it's ballots or votes, et cetera, would have the long terms and the other two would have the short. So let's say in your district you end up getting 45% of the vote. You have a lot of people running. And maybe a neighbor district wins, but wins with 42% of the vote. The person with 45 gets the long term. The person with 42 gets the short term. But there are other ways to do it. You can do it by drawing lots. And you can draw those lots either before or after the election. I have councils who have felt that it's fair to let people know whether they're running for a long or a short term before they file papers. And so the council has a lot drawing party at one of your meetings and say okay, in our 2028 election, pull it out of the hat. We'll figure out, I think there's actually an opinion either from the AG or somebody recently about how you draw lots. And that's interesting. Or everybody runs believing they're gonna get a full term. And then you draw lots after the election. So that's another alternative for doing so.

So Madam Mayor, before you open the public hearing, the one other clarification I would like to make is that this entire presentation and this entire sequencing discussion, although you have to pick a method of sequencing tonight, it only comes into play if both ballot measures, which will be before the council on July 21st, pass in the general election on November 3rd.

Thank you. That's very, very important. There are many, many contingencies before this ever goes into effect.

Okay. We will now take some public comment, and then we will return back to discussion and questions. So we will now open the public hearing to any persons who wish to speak on this matter. Each person may address the council on this public hearing item only. I encourage you to state your name when speaking at the podium to assist the city clerk. The public hearing public comment period is now beginning and no additional cards or calls will be accepted. Madam City Clerk, how many public comment cards do we have and how many callers do we have?

Just one, excuse me, just one caller, just one card.

One card and no callers. All right, so we have one public comment card. We have Arno Dionysian and you have three minutes.

Good evening council and council. This is an interesting one. And I know there's not a lot of wiggle room. Well, there's some areas where the council does not have wiggle room. And there are conditions upon which the council has to make this decision before you tonight. So I'm going to briefly go over my understanding of the law school crash course I was reading in the council chambers over there. It has been ruled. in case law that the city of Burbank will have to put on the ballot one of these measures to meet the settlement reached in the lawsuit against us and I'm assuming other cities as well. That is not within the authority of city council tonight. What is within your authority is to decide whether or not the city of Burbank decides, as we have, to stag our elections every two years in a stable and reliable election cycle like governments across the country and at the national level, or to restructure our city government in a way that would structure elections every four years. I wanted to speak today on why I would strongly advise city council not take that course of action. As the attorney just mentioned, that only would go into effect if the ballot measure would pass. And so I would hope the city council keeps some level of optimism that, as I think all members of the council have expressed, we believe the districting option is not correct for the city of Burbank and is not the best decision for our community. At least was my understanding of your position. That may have changed. There are reasons for staggered elections. We just heard from BWP about how changing standards and terms can be unnecessarily confusing. There is a reason why governments at all levels, including our federal government, have elections that are staggered every two years, six, or what have you, in order to make sure that our government, chaotic or not, exists in some way In the same form it was two years ago. Especially when it comes to city governments, stability is what matters most. And I would hate to see the city of Burbank turned upside down every four years on the basis of us choosing a method of election that most governments have decided is ridiculous for our city. And I'll leave it there. Oh, and also, as the city attorney's office mentioned within the last 30 seconds, it has been ruled, and I encourage council to clarify on this, that you cannot consider race in the basis of districts you're designing. And so the purpose for which you would be creating districts to begin with, which is to represent a community that would otherwise be unrepresented or disenfranchised, does not exist whether or not districts exist. And so this would be a moot point Yeah, it would be moot point to not stagger it to... Will you get the point, counsel?

Thank you for your comment. All right. We have completed... Let's see. There being no further public comment, I now declare the public hearing public comment period closed. Would the representative of the city attorney's office like to make any further comments or reply to public comment?

I will make... Thank you. I will make one When you unstagger your elections and have them every four years, that is a very long time for the citizens to delay voting on their representatives if they do not like what's going on. And that is another reason in addition to continuity of experience and projects. that cities generally opt for elections every two years. I could talk about other ways that it is done to increase the ability for the council to be responsive to the people, but that's just another point in favor of staggered elections. However, it is your choice.

And for clarification on that, so you mean elections every four years in all the districts at once? Because in each district, each district's election is every four years.

That is correct. But at least some portion of the city would be weighing in on policy every two years. But that is an important feature of bi-district elections. that as individuals, voters only vote once every four years. For one council. For one.

So if I could clarify, there's no element of these proposed, of these options, and there's no element in the litigation that proposes to unstagger the elections option for is not an unstaggering it is a fresh start at one point for all five districts but because uh... charter section eight hundred entitled elections requires biennial uh... elect elections every two years uh... and also the manner in which we reset terms in Charter Section 805 when we had to comply with changing the timing of our elections to coincide with presidential and gubernatorial elections. we necessarily will continue to have staggered elections unless we do more charter amendments than we've currently contemplated. I believe the only charter amendment we're contemplating is amending charter section 305, which currently hard codes that five council members are elected at large. And so that's the provision that NEXT MEETING ON JULY 21ST, WE'LL BE DISCUSSING GIVING COUNCIL THE FLEXIBILITY TO INSTEAD OF, IT'S ACTUALLY A CONFLICT WITH DISTRICT ELECTIONS, INSTEAD OF ELECTING AT LARGE, ELECTING BY ANY METHOD THE COUNCIL DEEMS SUFFICIENT AFTER 2030. THAT IS, IF BOTH THOSE BALLOT MEASURES SUCCEED IN NOVEMBER then the charter would be changed to allow council to change to any number of other election methods that the council previously discussed.

Okay. Does the council have any further questions of staff?

Yes, Councilmember Anthony. We settled a lawsuit. and were complying with the settlement. But that was settled in March. And the Supreme Court made a ruling on using race to determine districts and effectively said, well, you can't do that anymore. Does that have any effect on the CVRA, potentially? But more importantly, does it affect the terms agreed to in a settled lawsuit?

The practitioners in this area all agree, whether they're on the plaintiff's side or on the defendant's side, that Calais versus the state of Louisiana could potentially have an effect on the CVRA. We received the first judicial interpretation of that issue four days ago, in which an entity called Southwest Voters Education Project sued the city of Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach, the trial lasted about 10 days, Right after the end of that trial, the Calais decision was issued and the parties briefed its application to the city of Huntington Beach. The court ruled that the Calais decision, and this is trial court, had no application to the case or to the CVRA. So we have at least one judicial interpretation. I don't know for sure. Nobody knows for sure at this point. It's very early. I would anticipate that that will be appealed, but this will be a subject of continuing litigation. So we are in a situation where the law is once again unsettled. We've been here before, and we were here before with the Santa Monica case, and this court reacted to this court. This counsel reacted appropriately to the Santa Monica case in searching for solutions that did not involve districts. And in fact, days before you were sued, you instructed staff in consultation with the plaintiff to study a different method of election, that election being cumulative voting. I do wanna point out that the court in the Huntington Beach case imposed on the city ranked choice voting, and that the city of Irvine is placing on the ballot a measure for ranked choice voting. So there is a movement in the direction of alternative proportional election systems, at least at the court and municipal level. Second question, what does this have to do with your settlement? You're in a binding settlement agreement at this time, and a change in the law at this point does not invalidate the agreement. There was no admission of liability on your part at all. It was simply a method to eliminate the litigation. We studied very closely issues of racially polarized voting. As we had disclosed to you in open session in council, we did not believe there existed racially polarized voting. In the settlement discussions, that was a There's no confession in the agreement that there is racially polarized voting in this city at all, but you are under a binding agreement to place these measures on the ballot. With regard to MAP 130 itself, I think if you look through the record of what you did in 2023, you did a fully constitutional process And all of those districts are neighborhood-based. There's no effort whatsoever to draw a majority and minority district. You can look at them. They're a perfect set of districts. So I think you are not exposed under Calais. I think you must comply with the settlement. I think these measures go on the ballot. You assign some sequencing before you do that, and you let your voters decide.

Madam Mayor, if I could, and I'm sorry, that seemed like a pretty complete answer. If I could follow up on the aspect of staggering and the response I gave on staggering, just to make sure I make the effects clear, because I'm not sure that we did that sufficiently. So under the city's current at-large voting system, while the council members' terms are staggered, the voters throughout the city vote in every single election. Under this new system, the council members' terms will be staggered, but voters will only be able to vote when their district is up, which means voters, although council members will still have four-year terms, voters will now only be able to vote geographically in their district when their district is up for council members except that they will be able to vote anytime there is a ballot measure or statewide or federal but they will only be voting on council members when one of those five districts that they reside in is up. So they will go from voting every two years on whatever policy considerations that Ms. Leone indicated. They want to come out and speak on those policy issues as they are deliberated by you, but they will only vote every four years for council members. And so that's a big change to this system. Again,

I think it's important for people watching this to understand that that's an aspect of by district voting Yes councilmember Anthony yeah just as a follow-up so at a future meeting According to our settled agreement settlement agreement we are looking at potentially placing two ballot measures and on the November election and One is a charter amendment, which changes the language from at large to any means the council deems appropriate or whatever language we have for that.

After 2030.

After 2030. And then an ordinance adopting the map and the sequencing. If... So let's have – there's a couple options here, or there's a couple different possibilities. If both options pass, if both measures go on the ballot and the voters vote 50 plus 1 for both – Then in 2028, we get two seats in a district. And then 2030, we get the other three seats in a district. And then after that point, we have to come back and do by whatever means we deem necessary to facilitate new elections.

Well, let me, no, you can take no action if I may.

Oh, and just revert back to what we've.

No, you can take no action and you will remain in district elections. You will need to redistrict. after the 2030 census. But you can also say, this system isn't working for us. And you can, under the new charter amendment, change back to at-large. We may have a flurry of activity in this county having to do with ranked choice voting. We may have new options coming out of the legislature. So you, if the voters say, let's give district elections a try, for two election cycles. After that, you and the voters, the voters could bring an initiative to change it by ordinance. You don't have to amend the charter anymore. The voters can say, no, we want ranked choice voting. And it would be... provided as an ordinance in an initiative measure, you would have the opportunity to adopt that measure. You don't have to put it on the ballot. You could also put it on the ballot. So it's two and two. To get district elections, both have to pass. If the ordinance only passes, it violates the charter, and it would be invalid. But the settlement agreement recognizes that. Both need to pass, and they're in effect for two years. Now, the charter amendment remains in effect, but the districts remain in effect for two years under the settlement agreement. You're bound to have them for two years. After that, if you love them, you redistrict. If you think they're awful, propose something new.

Okay, so you bring up an interesting conundrum here. If the ordinance adopting MAP 130 and the sequencing passes in November, but the charter amendment removing the phrase at large doesn't pass, you're saying that adopting that ordinance would be in violation of the charter.

Correct.

What happens then?

You remain at large.

So the ordinance just basically slams up against a brick wall and goes nowhere.

It does, yes.

Now, hold on a second.

Okay.

What happens if the opposite occurs? If the charter amendment passes, but the map and the ordinance doesn't?

Then you have the authority to make the changes you wish by a new ordinance that does not need to go on the ballot. So if at that point you want to adopt ranked choice voting, you can do so. Interesting. So having the charter amendment gives you and the voters quite a bit of flexibility on your electoral system. Because of pending legislation, this is going to be very important for you.

Just a quick follow-up to that. If at any point in the future THIS COUNCIL WANTED TO ADOPT RANK CHOICE, WOULD WE AT SOME POINT NEED TO CHANGE THE CHARTER REGARDLESS? AT LARGE SECTION OF THAT CHARTER?

NO. RANK CHOICE IS AN AT LARGE SYSTEM.

OKAY.

BUT YOU COULD DO RANK CHOICE IN DISTRICTS.

OR AT LARGE.

YES. OKAY.

MS. LEONE, ARE THERE OPTIONS LIMITED TO JUST RANK CHOICE?

No, their options are limited to limited voting, which is being another city in California is working very hard to implement limited voting in 2026. We're getting pretty close in that city. There's a rank choice, there's a cumulative, and there's a variety of rank choice voting structures that could be considered within that particular category.

OK, last question. If both options fail, are we, under the new Supreme Court ruling, open up to a new CVRA lawsuit?

Not under the new Supreme Court ruling, in my opinion. I'm not going to talk about this at length. In my opinion, you're safer than you were before. However, there is a new law pending in California which presents greater exposure to you than the current CVRA.

Can I ask about that or we're not?

What are you talking about? I want to know too.

What pending law?

There is a bill called SB 1164 which completely revises the CVRA. It applies to all election systems. So even if you were to go to districts, those districts could be challenged under the new CVRA. And the new CVRA is uncoupled from federal law, and it has its own unique definitions of racially polarized voting, which are much more liberal than the definitions under which we litigated. and they are much easier for a plaintiff to win. In addition to that, it changes the rule of evidence so you no longer have any more privileges as an elected legislative body, and it imposes other obligations under the rubric of voter suppression. that we have not dealt with before under the CVRA. It permits non-voters to sue you, groups to sue you, and possibly even non-residents to sue you for violation of rights. It's an extensive earthquake in voting rights litigation in this state. In other words, what we did for the last three or four years and what we settled is quite likely to disappear in a couple of months. All right.

I'd like to rescind my last question.

Can I finish my comment there? And that is one of the reasons that the Charter Amendment is so important, so that you have flexibility in the event you are challenged under the new law Because it is, while the CVRA is plaintiff friendly, you always had your protections of what we learned from federal law. Those are gone. Okay.

Council Member Perez and then Vice Mayor.

That sounds like somebody can make a career out of this. That sucks. But my question goes back to the rank choice voting piece. So the last we looked at this, and I know this was something our city clerk looked at, our former city clerk looked at, and the county was pretty resistant and would basically end up telling us run your own elections, which is a significant cost to the city. Have you seen, do you have an estimate, Marguerite, in your experience working with cities across the county? Is there kind of a demand for this? Is there a rise for this? Would there be a possible change four years from now?

My guess is that there will be. As we know, in Los Angeles County, Redondo Beach has already implemented ranked choice voting. Now they did so in their districts, but they're running their own elections. There is interest in your neighboring Orange County with Irvine putting it on the ballot. I just told you that as a remedy to the alleged CVRA violation in Huntington Beach, The court imposed ranked choice voting. Orange County has no jurisdiction at this time that uses ranked choice voting. It's only up in the Bay Area. So it is moving down here, and there's a good deal of interest. I think the new CVRA... expressly the new CVRA I'm going to call it 1164 expressly also authorizes proportional systems as a remedy and I think at some point the legislature is going to get in line and say that it's permissible well you're different because you're Charter City but it's permissible even for general law and that the counties have got to be ready to to implement it. The issue in Los Angeles County is it has its own voting system. All of the other systems that are brought in by other counties, not all, but most have the capability of doing it. Because Los Angeles has an in-house system that was not designed for ranked choice voting, it's going to take quite a bit of tinkering to enable the system to accommodate those ballots.

And Ms. Leone is so knowledgeable about this, we could talk about range choice voting until the sun comes up. But I think the council has a lot of work to do just on the sequencing.

Well, it's worth thinking about when you talk about does one pass and does the other not? What happens then? I had one other follow-up, but it escaped me. This is, no, you're fine. It's not you. It's the myriad of options and the myriad of possible lawsuits unending that are stumping me. But Vice Mayor Mullins, please go ahead.

I'm just thinking about SB 1164. Like, how bad could that be? But before I ask the question, I want to ask maybe THE CITY MANAGER, WERE WE AWARE OF SB 1164 FROM OUR LEGISLATIVE FOLKS UP IN SACRAMENTO WORKING ON THIS OR THE LEAGUE LOOKING AT IT?

THE LEAGUE HAS OPPOSED IT. WE'RE WORKING ON A LETTER TO OPPOSE IT. I KNOW WE'RE IN THIS WEIRD SITUATION WITH THE SETTLEMENT.

BURBANK IS A KEY MEMBER IN ASSISTING THE LEAGUE TO TAKE ACTION.

TONIGHT IS THE FIRST.

MS. LEONE IS HELPING US WITH THAT.

Can we submit this meeting for evidence right here?

I know how stunned we are.

I'd like us to get to red and green maps.

Question about an additional option. In searching literally today, looking at what other cities have done, what other choices are out there, City of Sunnyvale, and I think you have experience with Sunnyvale, so that I think you'll know. They have actually implemented the voting, not assigning the district based on where you live, but they did a random assignment by lotto, so each council member who are current incumbent were assigned a district, even though it wasn't directly in the area they lived in. So we have five district, one, two, three, four, five. If I'm a district five, maybe by random drawing, I get assigned district one. And this way, from what I read, separated all the incumbents all over the different districts. Can you talk a little bit about this? Am I reading something correct or it's a little bit far-fetched?

It's not far-fetched. I think it's a mix of context, though. I represented the city of Sunnyvale in that CVRA action, and I worked very closely with them on their charter amendment, which they needed, and also on their districting ordinance. I recently looked at the districting ordinance. I had a reason to do that. and looked at what we did on sequencing or what that city did on sequencing, I was in the files, there was not a random assignment of people to districts. Their ordinance requires residency in the district, just like yours does. The settlement agreement requires that. You have to be a resident in the district you represent. But there is a state law that in the context of a redistricting will allow an elected to represent constituents in a district that they may have represented in the prior cycle or are about to represent in the new cycle prior to that election in order to ensure that everybody has constituent services. And so it's not a situation where non-residents are assigned to represent people. That is actually similar to the system that the city of Sunnyvale was sued over. The city had a system that was called a place system. And you ran for a place, and the place, they had district ones, they had places one through seven, and you ran for the place. So all elections were head-on-head elections. They're not like yours, where everybody's out there running together, and the top two or the top three win. So... The ordinance did not just randomly assign people. Their ordinance is a true districting ordinance. They were sued under the CVRA, and the ordinance is a classic districting ordinance. I think what may have happened in the redistricting with the changes in district lines, a particular district may have lost their representative. and they were then authorized for that interim period of time to assign a member to those voters for constituent services.

To follow up on this concept, because when I read, you know, random assignment sounds, we're all residents of the city of Burbank, and we're all right now at large. And for example, we have district one and two, the hill, I think it's up in the hills area on district one and then two by the airport. Those two districts don't have anybody currently representing when or if we go to the sequencing and we go to the district election.

They actually would have the three 2026 incumbents who are at-large council members.

Yes. Thank you for that. I mean, technically, even though we're on paper assigned districts, but we vote for at-large everything in the city. So it's not like the city of LA, you run for a funding for your own district and you're only responsible for your district, we're still responsible for the entire city. And we will be voting for the entire city. So it is still a large system, but we're boxed into a district. I mean, unless we're LA and we are going to be fighting for funding, fighting for projects in our own little area. And this is why I'm saying, even though we are assigned in a box, but we still vote for at large, so therefore, why this method of random drawing and who, as long as you're a Burbank resident, would not work for somebody like our city? So we can kind of make sure that we are representing the entire city and not leaving two of the districts on the map basically without representation. Just a wild idea, but why not explore it?

I think the answer is because the settlement agreement requires that you live in the district. It's a long explanation.

So that's part of our agreement.

That's part of our agreement. There is no reason that the council couldn't say, look, let's do this rotation. Let's do this election sequence. But we still have that District 1 up there who doesn't have a resident up there. Let's assign Council Member Perez to constituent services in District 1. Completely acceptable. It's not that that she will be the resident. She would always need to run next time in District 4, but at least District 1 would say, hey, we've got a problem, let's go to Council Member Perez.

So I would like to make a distinction. So when Marguerite says constituent services, so in the city of Los Angeles, each council member has a chief of staff. Each council member has at least one planning deputy. Each council member probably has an infrastructure deputy. They have entire mini cabinets for each of the 15 council members. uh... our charter actually prohibits council members from interfering i think it's actually uh... title two of our municipal code council members from interfering with the administration of government very different that the administration of city services it it reinforces the council manager relationship in l a city uh... the council members all have their own staff that many times is negotiating with city staff at kind of parity levels. In other words, it's a completely different, so you don't currently, and this would be a huge budget issue, have constituent services that you provide through your own chiefs of staff. So there might be differences in the structure of Sunnyvale as well.

Yeah, and when I talk about constituent services, I mean somebody that can pick up the phone and say, I got a pothole. out in front of my house. Can you get public works out here? I'm not talking about an LA structure. I'm talking about, oh my gosh, we're electing by districts. Who do I call? Well, we have assigned Council Member Perez for you to call.

And for us, the reason it maybe doesn't sound like logistical, because you call Kylene.

So Sunnyvale, before they got sued, They didn't have districts, they had seat numbers?

They had seat numbers, yeah.

And you just picked one of the seat numbers to run for when you were filing your papers?

Correct.

So that's weird. So like one seat could have like three people running and one seat could have no people running?

That is correct.

That's weird. It's weird.

There were a couple of cities that did that, but both of them got sued.

But it gives me a question. that I'm wondering is allowed under our settlement agreement, and I think we may have brought this up early in the discussion, where we have to go to districts and we have to have the people running in the districts live in that district, but what part of the lawsuit says that only the people living in that district vote for that district member?

The settlement agreement says that.

And how do they word that in there? Because I don't remember if I saw the actual language. It just says constituents in that district or voters in the district vote for their representative?

Well, so the whole system goes to dilution of votes. So the districting is trying to give residents more influence over their geographic area. If you don't have a connection between the candidate and the geographic area, then you're at risk of diluting the votes again. And the reason the reason I said that in a very cumbersome way, Ms. Leone, I'm sure has a better answer.

And I understand that. And it is about the dilution of votes and it is about the representation. But the only reason I ask it now is we no longer have this Supreme Court. We do now have a Supreme Court ruling.

We don't have a Supreme Court ruling on our facts. We have a settlement agreement that binds us to a course of action tonight and next meeting on the 21st of July.

That's what we have. And just to answer your question, Council Member Anthony, paragraph one of the settlement agreement says that we will transition, we will place on the ballot... the proposal to transition to a district-based method in which city council members are required to be residents of their respective electoral districts and are nominated and elected by the residents of their respective electoral districts. Okay. Okay?

There you go. I just wanted to hear that.

Thank you. But the very second slide that Ms. Leone presented was... THE CHRONOLOGY THAT SHOWS COUNCIL'S BEEN AT THIS FOR FOUR YEARS. SO AS SOON AS WE TAKE THESE ACTIONS, WE COULD START THE NEXT FOUR-YEAR PROCESS TO TARGET 2032.

SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE IS A CHANCE TO PLAY MUSICAL CHAIRS FOR OUR DISTRICTS. I DON'T KNOW. DOES THE SETTLEMENT ALLOW FOR THAT?

ALL RIGHT. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? Okay. Then I now declare the public hearing closed and the council will now deliberate. What is the council's pleasure?

Madam Mayor, I'll be very easy on my end. I'm very brief about this. I personally would only prefer either option one or option two. It does two seats. My cycle is easy, 2028, so I'm happy to give that one up at the appropriate time. Option one and option two does both.

Okay. Anyone else want to go next? Yes, Vice Mayor and then Council Member Rosati.

Yeah, looking at option one and option two, there's actually... A little bit of variation with option one. Let me put my glasses on here. So option, to me, option one, I think, is probably more ideal for our current setting on council. And I know this is the election comes up and people have the right to run and it doesn't matter. I mean, we don't own those districts. Even our names are on it. But for the 2026 election, we have three seats, and those will go to 2030. And the 2028 election would allow the two other council members, seating council members, to be able to run in that district in 2032. until 2032 which would actually would be I don't want to use the word benefit but it would be in the long run help the people that elected the council members to these seats to have an opportunity to run if they're succeeding then they're in those in those two districts and In 2030, as we heard from the city attorney and Marguerite, that we have then a decision to make in 2030 after the census, what our election's gonna look like in the future. At that time, then everyone can regroup and look in 2030, okay, here is what we're planning on doing and moving forward. By then, it kind of like fulfills the responsibility of the council that's going to get elected in 2026, and those who are going to run in 2028 are able to do it. If they don't run, then somebody else is going to run in their seat. So I think for me personally, beating this around and looking at you know, which one works best for really our people that voted us in an office. I think option one is simple. We have 2026, we have 2028, and then we'll regroup in 2030, figure out what we're doing. Of course, my biggest hope and I think we haven't really talked about how we feel about districts. We haven't mentioned that And I'll speak for me personally, but I know my colleagues share my feelings because we spend enough time in the room talking about districts. I don't believe none of us really want to have district election. And this is not beneficial for the city of Burbank. We're such a small city. But as the public can hear that we've been sued, we have to settle. We are really challenged in court. Our hands are tied. And I assure you that I be working really hard to make sure people understand the consequences of the district election if they don't understand. Just take a look at our school district and how confusing their election is and that you don't have the right to vote for all the members. And sometimes you don't even know who's running and you don't know what district is up. You don't even understand the boundary of a district. So for those who are listening or listening later, Please pay attention. This is going to be on the ballot in November. You'll see a lot more information. I hope to God this doesn't pass because it will really impact our city and it's going to impact our voters. And that's why I want to go with the least damaging option until we figure out what's going to happen. So with that, I'm done.

So if I heard you correctly, option one, is your preference and the other three you don't want. Okay. Council Member Rosati, you're up next.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So the one distinction that Ms. Leone made was she used the word everyone has an opportunity. And I think that's important. Not any one or two people get alienated from the process, but everyone gets an opportunity to vote for someone the candidate that they choose, and I think members of the public should have that right to vote or not vote for somebody, so I think option one.

Option one for you? Okay. Other ones are no? Okay. All right, Council Member Perez.

I just have to say, Council Member Mullins, I've been waiting to share my opinion. I concur with you. I think when we look at the district piece, no matter which way you cut the cookie, every person in Burbank right now, every election has three votes for council or two votes for council. No matter which way you cut this, you are losing votes. To me, that's undemocratic. It is to the point of voter suppression. You're losing two of your votes in the city, no matter what. And I think that has to be said. I think you know, we all have our opinions on districts and I think we've been very loud and I think there's very few things that our residents have agreed on so clearly other than the fact that they don't want to lose their two votes or three votes given the election cycle. So I do also want to share that this is incredibly frustrating. I actually love the at-large system. You are responsible for representing the entire city of Burbank and Believe me, all five of us up here feel responsible for the entire city of Burbank. And if we go to districts, personally, I will continue to feel responsible for the entire city of Burbank. And if we have to pick, I really thought, and I pondered about this for a while, about the idea of fairness, like what is fair. And at first, option four was really attractive to me because I thought, okay, fair, all at once. And then I got to thinking, and then you start to get into thinking, fair for who, right? Fair for... voters because it's all at once for them, but whatever, it's going to change the next cycle and then that gets confusing. So I honestly am thinking, I don't know that there is a fair option to any one of us up here or to the voters. I don't think there is a fair option. I think the most fair thing is the fact that we are placing this on the ballot for folks to decide. I'm glad we're doing that. I think that this burden behooves us to put this burden on the voters because it's them choosing their votes, essentially. So I got to tell you, I'm open to whatever option you all want. I'm okay with any option you all want because it all is the same to me. It is unfair to the voters.

Yeah, I'm kind of in that same space as well, that there's all the options have a downside and there's somebody that's not going to have a fair first go or they have to wait to get reelected or their district isn't going to be represented. In the option one, the two districts or two of the districts that have no representation will have to wait a whole other extra two years. And option two makes sense from a like, well, we're looking at maybe spreading it out across the city. And there's just no way that all different ways to look at the options, you can find one that is obviously more fair. than the others. However, option one, I think, may be one of the reasons why that got the most. By the way, I made a little graph with happy faces, sad faces.

I'm so glad you said it, because I've been trying to not laugh really hard.

It's so cute. A quick little graph here. And option one got the majority happy faces. But I don't think it's full on smile. It's more like a little smile.

I love that my entire column, where you put NP, my entire column is just like frowning.

It's a straight line. It's just like neutral. I think because it has the closest, how it would roll out is the closest to how it would roll out if it were just a regular at large. We all would do our terms. So I think for that reason, because it's closest to what we would normally expect, we didn't go to districts. So for that reason, I think I marginally prefer option one. But if the rest of the council was on a different one, I wouldn't have a problem with moving to any of them. I'm also in agreement that I am not in favor of going to districts, and we all made it clear in our previous conversations and decisions that we are not. And I've also made it clear in the past that I prefer ranked choice voting at large. For us, I feel like that would be the best, or some sort of alternative voting system. I prefer ranked choice voting, but looking at the other options is also acceptable too. To continue for everyone in the city to have five votes for five council members, that council members who run have to appeal to everybody, but it's still using a system that is better than first-past-the-post to allow for more... fairness in the election cycle. And there's a whole discussion we can have about ranked choice voting, but that's not for tonight. So being where we're at, it sounds like, it looks like option, based on my little graph here, very formal graph, that option one is the majority of what is favored. So, yeah.

I would like to say one quick thing and then ask a question. First off, I think option one if I had to pick one or the other, gives the voters an opportunity to find their constituent and their representative and continuation of government due to the fact that Council Member Rosati and myself will be ending our terms in 2028 and not allowing even a portion of the voters to be able to reselect a council member that they voted for previously, I think denies not just three other districts, but also denies the people in those districts. So I think it's the least amount of denial.

Yeah, it's the least worst.

And then second, I'd love to ask, are we bound to the numbers? Can we change the numbers?

That's what's special about the options, the numbers.

No, no, no. I mean the numbers of the districts.

Like he wants District 1.

No. Here's why I ask. Yeah. We had not picked the sequencing yet when the numbers were put together.

So don't change the numbers for purposes of tonight. Because we need everything to match. Okay. You mean later when it's published, you're saying there might be some stigma with what the number is? Yes. Here's the reason.

Here's what I noticed.

Can we use letters if we wanted to?

Well, no, no, no. I don't want to use letters. It's even more confusing. Here's the issue. Here's the... Colors?

Yeah.

There we go.

Sorry.

I thought we were close.

Almost there. Geometric shapes.

The... The cycle previous to this one, the school district was in districts and we were not. And people kept asking me, which districts are up? And I had to keep going back and looking because I couldn't say the very simple thing that at least Los Angeles figured out, which is odd numbers in one year, even numbers in another. And they do that both for city council and for school board. So I would like to first propose option one when we get to that point. But then when this comes back for the full adoption to the November ballot, the two green spots, I mean, the easiest thing for me looking at option one is to change two and three, the numbers.

Yes, so if you make a motion for option one, it gets seconded and it gets adopted and provide that you want the... Two district cycle to be the even numbers and the three district cycle to be the odd numbers. When we bring it back on the 21st, we can have the renumbering done for when you actually adopt the ordinance or adopt... the resolution to put the ordinance on the ballot. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

That's a good idea.

I thought you were going down to a different path. I was like, wait a minute. Go all the way down.

For clarification before any motions, you would be selecting attachment to a two a is the resolution in your packet starting on

What page is that?

Well, so we had an additional item agreement added and it probably threw all the numbers off. So the current packet 2A, the packet that's currently posted, 2A starts on page 693. However, in your packet,

I see 683. Is that right? No, 681. Are you looking at attachment 2A? This one?

Yes. Yes. Attachment 2A. 681. To the staff report. Sorry. The numbers changed this morning. Right. So, yes. So, in the currently posted at 693, in your packet, it's 681. 681.

attachment to a the resolution right okay so so the motion would be so where's where does it say option number one on that page it doesn't say option number one if you look at page

if you look at the fourth page of the resolution where the mayor's signature is, the top line, So if you look at actually the last line on the third page, it says the sequence, the city council of the city of Burbank resolves number one, the above recitals are true and correct. Number two, the sequence of election in the districts depicted on map 130 shall be the following, go to top of next page, districts three and four on the ballot in 2028, and every four years thereafter, and districts one, two, and five on the ballot in 2030 and every four years thereafter. And we will correct those to be even and odd consistent with option one when we bring it back on July 21st.

Okay. And that would be option one in the PowerPoint presentation.

That's correct. Right before you make the motion, you sure you don't want to be the council member from District Parallelogram? That'd be fun.

Okay. So you want a motion? So...

Yes. Yeah. So I'll move that we adopt a resolution of the Council of the City of Burbank setting the sequence of elections for an ordinance adding a new Article 3 to Title II of the Burbank Municipal Code to change the city's electoral system from at-large to by-district elections with respect to electing city council members and establishing district boundaries to be submitted to the voters of Burbank at the November 3rd, 2026 consolidated statewide election and making certain findings pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act using attachment 2A, map 130, and the recommendations to bring back changes when this gets adopted.

Second.

With option one filled in the blanks for the district sequencing at the bottom of that list.

Yeah, for the maps to be option one in our packet.

Okay, we have a first and a second. Let's take the vote. Councilmember Anthony?

Before I vote, I just want to say, personally, I'm not opposed to districts. I believe at a certain point, every city gets to a size where a district is needed. I'm not certain that we are there yet. Yes.

Thank you. Council Member Perez? I guess so. Council Member Rosati? Yes. Vice Mayor Mullins? Yes. Mayor Tagash? Yes.

Thank you. All right. Here we are, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Look at that.

Okay. And for clarification, this was just to place it on the ballot.

Yeah, well done, all of us. This has to be a whole election. All right, we have two reports to Council this evening. After staff's presentation, the City Council will proceed with in-person public comment only. Speakers will be allowed to speak on the item at the conclusion of the presentation, as long as the speaker has not spoken on the item during the first period of public comment. Please be sure to submit your public comment card now, as no additional public comment cards will be accepted once the public comment period commences following staff's presentation. The first report to council tonight is a consideration of the Burbank Cultural Arts Commission recommendation to excuse the absences of commissioner. Welcome Kimberly Clark, city clerk, to please present the report.

Thank you again, Madam Mayor, Kimberly Clark, City Clerk. Tonight, I will be presenting reports to Council. Item number one, consideration of the Burbank Cultural Arts Commission recommendation to excuse the absences of Commissioner. Commissioner Jackie Brenneman was originally appointed to the Commission by Council on July 13th, 2021, and was reappointed on July 15th, 2025. to serve a term ending on July 31st, 2029. According to the attendance report, Commissioner Brennaman missed the following three meetings, September 11th of 2025, February 12th of 2026, and May 14th of 2026. On June 11, 2026, the Commission reviewed the absences of Commissioner Brennaman and voted to recommend that Council excuse them. Commissioner Brennaman attended the meeting and explained that her absences were the result of professional obligations related to arts and entertainment industry advocacy. After discussion, the Commission voted to recommend that the Council excuse Commissioner Brenneman's absences, as stated in the letter from Vice Chair Eric Conner. After consideration, Council may excuse the absences, remove the member, or take any other appropriate action deemed necessary by Council. At this time, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you for the report. Do we have any public comments?

We do not.

Okay. Council, do you have any questions? Okay.

I'll make a motion that we excuse the absences.

Second. Let's take a vote.

Sorry, that was your second?

Just a quick discussion. Jackie has a lot of time left on this term. Can we, I don't know how, Council would feel about this, but I know she does a lot of work, and the scheduling is tough. I know we make the decisions to appoint people, but I personally would like to recommend to Jackie maybe Let somebody else fill the seat when she's up for her reappointment.

Well, you can individually do that, obviously. And then the policy is if she missed one more, then she's automatically removed, right?

Fourth absence would trigger removal. She does good work.

It's just, you know, we want people in the seat.

So if she's got another obligation, even if it's art-related or not, it still will be the automatic removal. And commissioners are let... They're informed of this. They know. So, yeah.

Okay. Absolutely.

Okay. All right. So, okay. And let's call for a vote, please.

Council Member Anthony? Yes. Council Member Perez? Yes. Council Member Rosati? Yes. Vice Mayor Mullins? Yes. And Mayor Tagahashi? Yes. Thank you.

The second report to council tonight is the adoption of a resolution approving a memorandum of understanding with the City of Burbank and the Burbank City Employees Association from July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027, and the adoption of a resolution approving a citywide salary schedule. I welcome Ms. Betsy McClinton, Management Services Director, to please present the report. Welcome.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Betsy McClinton with the Management Services Department. So I'm here tonight to request Council adoption of a resolution approving a memorandum of understanding between the City of Burbank and the Burbank City Employees Association, as well as a resolution approving a citywide salary schedule. The City's current MOU with BCA expires today. Staff began negotiating with BCA for a new contract last October. I'm very pleased to report that over the course of 17 negotiations, meetings, staff and BCA came to a tentative agreement for a one-year MOU covering fiscal year 26-27. The agreement strikes an excellent balance between fiscal responsibility with the need to maintain competitive compensation to attract and maintain excellent employees to deliver the city's high quality services. The agreement provides a 2% salary increase for all BCEA employees as well as a 5% increase in the city's contribution toward employees' medical premiums. Now the City Council may wonder why the proposed MOU is on the agenda as a report to Council this evening instead of on the consent agenda as has been the usual practice in the past. It has recently become clear to staff that it is the position of the California Public Employees Retirement System that all employee compensation must be considered by the City Council as part of a staff report to ensure that the compensation contemplated is counted toward employee pensions as appropriate. So I want to conclude my presentation this evening by thanking the City Council for their leadership and providing direction for negotiations for this MOU. And also thank you to the BCEA leadership team for a productive and successful negotiations process and their ongoing partnership. Finally, I also don't get to do this very often, so I want to take a moment to thank the Management Services Labor Relations staff who is here tonight. Julie Trides, Joy Casucci, and Joseph Aligio. They're sitting in the audience, and obviously all their hard work went into getting us to this point as well. So with that, I recommend the City Council adopt the two resolutions as recommended by the staff report. And of course, I'm here and available to answer any questions that the Council might have.

Great. Thank you so much for the report. Do we have any public comment cards?

No, we do not.

Okay. Does council have any questions? Yes, vice mayor.

Oh, no, I don't have any questions. I do want to thank our director, management services director, Betsy, for doing a great job. Thank you to all the staff. I know we have seen you in our closed session meetings after meetings talking about the contract and all your hard work. And I do want to acknowledge, I know the BCA President Griselda was here earlier. Our meeting obviously ran late. So I do want to thank her and her leadership and all the city employees really for their hard work. Well deserved. I know you're going to be back at the table real soon. This is not over. It's starting all over again. So I'll be seeing you in closed session soon. Okay.

Yes, Council Member Rosati.

I just wanted to say thank you, Ms. McClinton, for your hard work and the men and women of BCA for the jobs that they do. We really respect that they go out there and give 100% every day, so thank you.

Any other comments?

Ditto. Thank you all for the work you did. I know it wasn't easy. And thank you to BCA. I know Griselda had to leave. It's kind of a late night. But from what we've heard, it was mutual agreement. It's all signed, which is great work. We love when we can find that understanding.

So thank you.

I'm just glad we got it under the wire. This is like... 11th hour.

Yeah, I ditto reflect the same comments of my fellow council members. I also... This is now required to be on our regular agenda, not on consent now. And I'm actually glad that it is in a way to be able to have an opportunity to thank staff for all the hard work, thanks to BCA for all the negotiations and coming to the table and everything that you do for the city. This gives us an opportunity to say that. And so I do appreciate that. And thank you for staying so late for this short item after going through all the, hopefully the other items were interesting for you to witness. But thank you for staying this late and for being a part of this. Yeah, okay. So no further ado, we can do make a motion.

I move to make a motion to, I need to put these glasses, I'm going. Hang on one second. You have it, thank you. Adopt a resolution of Council of City of Burbank approving a memorandum of understanding MOU with the City of Burbank and the Burbank City Employees Association, BCA, from July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027. Also adopt a resolution of Council of City of Burbank approving a citywide salary schedule.

Second.

Thank you.

All right. First and a second. Let's get a vote.

Yes. Move.

He's ready.

Council Member Anthony.

Yes.

Council Member Perez. Yes. Council Member Rosati. Yes. Vice Mayor Mullins. Yes. And Mayor Tagahashi.

Yes. Thank you. You're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting if you want to. A couple things. We're almost there. Okay. Next up is we hear Council Member comments, including reporting on council committee assignments, attendance at conferences, regional meetings, and community events. Who would like to go first? Council Member Rosati has his hand up.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On Wednesday, the 17th, I watched the police commission meeting. On Monday, January 22nd, I attended the planning board meeting, commission meeting. Tuesday, on June 23rd, I attended the Jensen Schmidt Tennis Academy for Down Syndrome. And I think it was like their 22nd or 23rd year, but just tremendous activity. outpouring of people and support. We had students there that were helping coordinate the event. So I just want to give the tennis center a big kudos for putting that on. Everyone seemed to have a great time. I threw out the first pitch that night at the ponytail softball three and four grade all-star game. It was a lot of fun. On the 27th, I attended The Burbank Police Foundation Ice Cream Social. A lot of the officers were there having ice cream with our residents, which was nice. And then on the 28th, I attended St. Robert's Bellarmine Classic Car Show. I think that was their first classic car show. Very well attended, and I was very impressed by the band. They had some great music. The hamburgers and hot dogs looked great, so it looked like a fun night.

Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to go next? I can go. Council Member Perez.

On Tuesday, June 23rd, I attended the APPA Policymakers Council call in preparation for the APPA big regional thing that we're doing in D.C. So I'll be flying to D.C. next month. And then Wednesday through Friday, I met with various applicants for the Board and Commission meetings, or for the Board and Commission appointments. And if you are somebody who is applying for one of our board and commissions, please feel free to reach out and let's set up 15 to 30 minutes of chat. And then on Thursday, June 25th, I attended the Berman Creative Industry Task Force meeting. So that was one where they really kind of tightened up the options that are gonna come to council. So I'm really excited to make sure you all see those and I can't wait for that meeting. Um, and then, uh, that's it.

That's all I really did. Okay. Who would like to go next? Council Member Anthony.

I, uh, yeah, threw out one of those first pitches. That was fun. A little high. A little high. Went over the head of the, uh, kid. That's all right. Made it over the plate. Um, on, uh, the 25th, I went to the fourth annual, uh, Olsen Housing Symposium. This year it was in, where did I drive to? Pretty far down south. But it was talking about regional housing, changes to state law, transit, all kind of stuff. And it was an excellent discussion with a bunch of lawyers and experts about best practices, some things that are new that aren't really working, some things that are new that really are working. Yeah, it was a really good discussion. One of the things that they've been talking about right now is this new transfer tax thing that some cities have been doing to generate affordable housing. And then, yeah, that's pretty much all I did. I have a kid home for the summer. I spend nonstop with that.

All right. Vice Mayor, you're up.

Well, the vice mayor was home recovering. Yeah, so unexpected. Supposed to be on vacation. That was canceled. So it was fun just recovering at home from, I can say it publicly, I don't care, gallbladder, emergency gallbladder removal surgery that happened right after our council meeting, last council meeting. So I do want to thank everyone who texted me, called me, and sent me wishes. I really appreciate it. But I'm all good. I'm back. And, yeah, couldn't do anything. But thank you all for being out there representing the city.

Glad you're feeling better, and it's good to have you back.

Yes, I'm glad you're feeling better.

You look great. So you look like nothing. I rested for three weeks. Nice.

I slept in for three weeks. Four, four.

All right, Wednesday, June 17th, I did an interview with CSUN. They have a podcast, and so I did an interview about sustainability and the things that we're doing in the city for their students. And then the 18th, I went to the chamber board meeting to do our city report. And on the 23rd, went to the Jensen Smith Tennis Academy programming. And we did, did you mention that we did the obstacles course together?

I did it, but that was a lot of fun.

Yeah, we did an obstacle course. And that was not easy. It was really challenging. And threw some balls around. That was fun. And then on the 24th, I went to the LA County City Selection Committee meeting. On the 25th, I went to the Valley Economic Alliance Board Director's meeting. And then on the 30th, which is today, today I met with a group called Her Story. It's a social media education program for girls on how to use social media in a healthy way. And that was a great program. I'm really excited to see it coming to Burbank. It's going to be good. And then met with applicants as well for the different boards and commissions, met with Abundant Housing LA today as well, and Unite Here today. So today was a busy meeting. That is it. Yes. Oh, and then tonight we're all wearing red, white, and blue. So happy July 4th, everybody. I sent out the memo. I actually sent it out to you guys. Happy 4th, everybody. You got the memo. Okay. So that's done. And we're on our last... no two two more things so consider next up is a consideration of previously introduced agenda items as a reminder this is council's process for adding additional agenda items there are two requests tonight from the june 16th council meeting council member who introduced each item will have two minutes to provide a brief explanation of the request along with how the request ties to city council goals after that council will vote on whether or not the item should be added as an additional agenda item for consideration at a future meeting if If needed, Council may provide clarification or additional information to staff regarding the agenda request. So the first item is Council Member Anthony's request for a letter of opposition to propose statewide ballot initiative 256A1. But that one, I think, got – is that one getting removed or – yes.

I can go through it. So I'd like to split this up into two letters, one in opposition and one in support. So that ballot measure got removed. It's been replaced with something called ACA 22, which is basically the same, except it doesn't retroactively go after any prior taxes that have been passed. It does, however, still increase special taxes from 50 plus 1% to 2 thirds. And it may or may not affect us if we want to go forth to do a special tax. I know we talked a little bit about special district-based tax incentives for infrastructure. I know the school board or the school district may affect something that they do for the future. So I would just... like to bring back a letter of opposition to ACA 22. It's that simple. And then the other part of that letter was to try to find a workaround around it. At the time, the bill that was being presented as the workaround was Assembly Bill 736. And this is a bill that basically codifies and streamlines transfer taxes. I know I mentioned it twice already tonight. It's a new process that's been coming out the last few years about how to increase a It's basically a larger development impact fee. When you transfer the sale of a property, you can actually tax it higher than a development impact fee. And it has been really useful in cities like Oakland, and I believe Cerritos, and then other cities have written it in ways that it drops off at a certain point and actually disincentivizes growth because there's no universality to it.

I think this is a completely different agenda item than you asked for.

Oh.

All right. That's not a transfer tax or a bill regarding a transfer tax.

736? Or no, what was my?

Whatever you're talking about with development impact fees An infrastructure.

So the bill that I was looking at was a fix to get us out of the So the problem is that – You were talking about a Howard Jarvis bill. Yeah, and that got pulled.

That got pulled and replaced with something else.

Right.

And you want to do an opposition letter.

Yes.

So this other thing, though, sounds like a different topic.

Well, that was the deal that was made with that. So, yeah, maybe I do need to do it as a different topic then. Yes. Okay. So let's just stick with this one. So the Howard Jarvis tax measure, that got pulled. It was replaced with ACA 22. So I'll just leave it there, opposition to ACA 22.

And they're essentially the same thing with a different number?

It's just it doesn't go backwards in time and undo previous taxes.

Oh, I see.

But it does move forward anything new. One, it's not retroactive, and it doesn't have to do anything with property transfer tax. It just deals with the threshold as far as the two-thirds. So we would be opposed to that as well. So both the withdrawn, Howard Jarvis, was not good. We would oppose that. This new ACA 2, we also, this is not good for local government. We'd lose our, it would be a higher threshold for us to do stuff. So we would be fine if the majority of the council wanted to do a letter to oppose that.

Okay, yeah. Do you want a thumbs up, an actual formal vote? Would you prefer a formal vote? Heads up, seven up. Heads up, seven up. Oh, my gosh.

I'm totally good. This falls very in line with the legislative platform. So I think the only thing that I would ask is would you like all five of you to sign it or you just want it on behalf of the council from the mayor?

Okay.

Okay.

That's fine. I'm fine. Yeah.

Okay. I'll wait for that element.

Okay. Wait for the additional agenda item. Okay. And then the second item is Councilmember Rosati's request to invite California State Senator Menjivar and Assemblymember Schultz to attend a meeting to state their position or comment on SB 79 and SB 1361. Councilmember, you have two minutes.

I don't need two minutes. It's pretty clear what I was asking for. A number of people from the public have reached out and asked me, and to be honest, I don't know what their position is. So I thought it would be a good idea to have them come and discuss it.

Okay. Sure.

Just a question. We tend to invite them from time to time anyways, right? So can we do this as our typical invite and just ask them questions? hey, can you include this in your? Include that as well as, yeah, sure.

Kill two birds with one stone. Sure. So I guess my question from staff perspective is how soon, so normally they come either at the end of session or at the beginning of session, which is kind of the start of the year. So as far as time sensitivity, I don't know. I think we have Assemblymember Schultz scheduled for October, which is kind of end of session. So I don't know if there's a time sensitivity as far as the request.

And SB 79 is already approved and passed. And SB 1361 is still in the middle of committee. And there's still two committees or three committees left before it's going to make it through the process. So I don't know how soon.

There kind of is some urgency to that. Okay. I mean, I guess I ask to see what their schedules are like.