City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Calabasas City Council meeting of August 26, 2026. I'm James Visagia, Mayor of Calabasas, joined tonight by Mayor Pro Tem Ed Albrecht, Council Members David Shapiro, Alicia Weintraub, and Peter Kraut. And we are now going to start our meeting. I'd ask Captain Carr from the Lost Hill Sheriff Station to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Okay, I have a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Unanimous, okay. Report on closed session. Pam, do you have any report to make on closed session tonight?

Thank you, Mayor and members of the City Council. We did meet in closed session to discuss the items listed on the agenda, including conference with labor negotiator, an item of potential litigation, as well as the employee evaluation of the city manager. But no reportable action was taken on any of the items.

Thank you. All right, now is the time for general public comment. At this time, members of the public may speak on any item not on the agenda within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. You'll have three minutes or less to do so. First, I'm going to turn to the in-person speakers. If you need to fill out a speaker card, they're in the back. Mark Levinson.

Good evening, Council Mayor. Thank you. Mark Levinson, I live in Los Angeles, member of the Chamber of Commerce. Just a couple of things to report today. As everyone knows, Mayor's Luncheon honoring James Bazajian is tomorrow, and thank goodness we also know it's going to be indoors and not outdoors. I look forward to seeing all of you there. It's going to be a great event. We have a lot of things going, and I know the Mayor has a lot of surprises for all of us as well. On September 8th, our education committee is meeting. It meets by Zoom. And the speaker will be Dan Stepanovsky, who is the superintendent of schools. And he's always good, always great. A couple of years ago, he was elected the superintendent of the year for the state of California. And we're honored to have him. And then a little later, on September 30th, Our women's group is meeting. As you know, that was a fairly new addition to our programs. They were going to be meeting. They're talking about hairstyling, makeup care, demonstrations on clothing exchange. And they have a speaker who has written a book. It's Lisa and Liz, I'm sorry, Finding Diamonds. And it's open to women, not to men. And while we're here, I have someone, is it a member of the Chamber of Commerce that I would like to introduce to you?

Okay, so let me, Wendy Silver-Hale, why don't we give, she's a separate speaker, so just restart the timer.

Yeah, she did fill out a separate card.

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Hello, everyone. I know some of you. I am a realtor for 50 years now, and I have worked and managed before in the wonderful city of Calabasas, which I love, and fortunately, I was able to open up a new office here in Calabasas. It's Innovate Realty, and some of you came to our open house which was just last month. I love Calabasas, and I, to this day, remember when, in 1991, I remember seeing on the news that the city of Calabasas broke away. has been led by wonderful people and done amazing things, and I do believe, and I'm very involved with governmental affairs. I'm past president of Southland Regional Association of Realtors, 11,000 members, and I'm on governmental affairs, and I'm key contact for all kinds of elected officials and that is a big part of what I do with real estate and I believe in serving our stakeholders in our communities and a lot of people could take a lesson from what's going on here. Innovate Realty, very briefly in a minute and 44 seconds. It is, I know a lot of real estate companies and brokerages. I've worked for so many of them in my years. It truly is different. It is owned by a woman, which is one thing that's very different. And we just opened up four new offices. We keep having open houses and ribbon cuttings. And it really is geared to community service. and for truly, truly getting involved, and for giving more for and to our agents and our stakeholders, people we hold very, very dearly. And it is my hope, I have been attending some of your governmental affairs committee meetings, and it is my hope that I can get even more involved. And with that, I'll let you go with 56 seconds to spare. I thank you so much for inviting me.

Thank you. We have other speakers too, and I would ask you to come up and state your name and city of residence. Casey Corbin.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Casey Corbin. I am a resident of nearby Hidden Hills, California. We have a common bond in sharing the zip code, 91302, and much like many residents in the City of Hidden Hills, we regularly shop, oftentimes we work, we leisure here in the City of Calabasas. This is something I've been speaking to my City Council about, and that is the issue of flock cameras. Ladies and gentlemen, Calabasas has been plagued with an invasive species. It's about It's black. It's about 12 inches high, 6 inches wide. It often procreates around intersections. Oftentimes, if you see a dish van coming around, all of a sudden you have what are called flock cameras. And I'm here to try and persuade you to terminate your contract and dismantle any flock systems here. Flock Surveillance Network does not merely capture information relating to criminal investigations. It records and stores information regarding the movements and travel patterns of ordinary law-abiding residents, creating a searchable database that can be accessed and shared among numerous law enforcement agencies, not just law enforcement agencies. This can include homeowners associations and private shopping centers. This is to say Caruso affiliated may have access to the flock system. And in the city of Hidden Hills, covered six are private security vendor. The Fourth Amendment in the United States Constitution exists precisely to prevent this type of broad government surveillance. It protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures and reflects our nation's longstanding belief that the government should not monitor the daily activities of innocent people without due process and judicial oversight. When information about residents' movements is collected, retained, and made available through a centralized database, privately owned one at that, the line between legitimate law enforcement and warrantless surveillance becomes increasingly blurred. California provides even stronger privacy protections. Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution expressly identifies privacy as an inalienable right. Californians do not surrender that right simply because they drive on public roads. The collection, retention, and sharing of residence location data by a private corporation and the network of outside agencies raises serious questions about whether these constitutional protections are being adequately respected. My concerns are heightened by reports of unauthorized access to flock data, information sharing beyond local jurisdictions, security vulnerabilities, and documented instances in which license plate reader data has been used to monitor individuals engaged in lawful activities, including political protests and the exercise of other constitutional rights. I see time is wrapping up, so I just want to make it very clear. In recent weeks, the Los Angeles Police Department terminated its contract with Flock Safety, citing issues with civil liberties. In addition to that, five police officers in the state of Georgia were dismissed from duties for unauthorized access to the Flock Safety system, and the system is accessible by members of Flock Safety, including the CEO, who was previously caught using these systems to watch over a Jewish girl's gym. Just stuff to think about. Thank you for your time, everyone.

Okay, next we have Christopher Hartz.

Good evening. I'm Dr. Christopher Hartz. I'm here with my fiancee, Sarah. I'll summarize our case with the city. Some time ago, a friend of ours died and left her his house in Calabasas. We tried to, they, overnight when he died, they declared the house to be an immediate danger to the neighborhood, even though it's surrounded by empty lots and a forest. They then condemned it and refused to let us sell it. We had several buyers who offered to fix anything but told us that the city refused to talk to them. Next, the city had a court hearing for receivership at a time when Sarah and I were out of the country. We were never notified of that hearing. The receiver took the house, sold it to one of the buyers that we had discovered. It sold it. We never got a penny of the sales thing. Next, they, not satisfied with that, they are now going after us for legal costs incurred by the city, over $48,000. Sarah is 70 years old and works in a grocery store. This is who you're taking this money from. I am in my 80s. This isn't the first time a government has taken my home. I was born a Jew in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The government took the homes away from my family, threw us out in the street, and many of them Sorry, many of them didn't make it. I'm a survivor. So I had hoped that I'd left all that behind me, but apparently not. For the citizens of Calabasas, we had three realtors tell us that this kind of action can be started at over the half of the houses in Calabasas. They can find something wrong and pull this kind of things, secret hearings and whatnot. That's it on me. Thank you.

Thank you, and I'd remind the public that we cannot, generally speaking, with rare exception, we cannot respond to anything. So lack of a response is just because of that. One public comment. Next we have Sarah Baisley.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sarah Baisley. My partner, Chris Hartz, and I inherited the house you spoke about, so you've heard a lot of the issues raised already. We addressed the council recently on August 14th about the hearing to pay $48,699 in legal costs to the city, and the hearing was on August 18th. I was served about this hearing the day after the last city council meeting in June. You were on a summer recess until August 14th. That was my first opportunity to talk to you. I asked the council to delay the action and meet privately about the matter. There are questions and concerns I have to raise about the practices you're firm for this, also the cost of the receivership. And as he said, I never received any proceeds. We attended the court hearing on August 18th about the legal costs. I asked for continuance to prepare an objection as well as to seek reasonable legal counsel. I was denied because I had not filed an objection to the action by August 5th. Even though I was representing myself, the judge said I should have known about statutory law. I received a letter from the city's firm on August 15th about the August 5th deadline to submit an objection. I tried to rectify problems with the property with three different buyers. The first two attempts failed with delays. The third backed out at... escrow with me last December, then went on to buy it from the receivership. He paid outstanding costs on the property, the tear-down permit, and completed tearing down the property. Why weren't the legal costs addressed then? I'm troubled that the judge said in court last Tuesday that the city's firm obviously gave the city a reduced rate for the hours spent. Not sure what that has to do with legal issues at stake. I question the hours spent. For instance, the firm repeatedly sent documents and notices to three different addresses for me when I've always been at the same address in Topanga. The firm has known where I've been since 2019. Some of you have been following this since 2012. I believe we all want to put this behind us and not spend more time and costs in court. This Saturday is my 70th birthday. I want to enjoy time I have left with my partner and not be mired in legal actions and costs. Thank you for hearing me.

Thank you. Next speaker is Joe Fries. Joe?

Sorry, I'm getting a little hard of hearing as I get older. Good evening, Mayor, council members, and everyone here tonight. I'm excited to share the 13th annual Calabasas Film Festival will take place, despite the fact that we lost the theater. And we're incredibly grateful for the continued support of the city of Calabasas, along with our wonderful sponsors, Cadillac of Calabasas, Poppy Bank, and Lavelle. We're also excited to welcome two new partners this year, Las Vegas Municipal Water District and Exbury. Our full festival schedule will be announced next week, but I wanted to give everyone a little preview. We'll open the festival on Wednesday with a wonderful movie called Atonement, which is set in the backdrop of the Iraqi war. Also, we are going to show another film that night called The Leader, which is made and produced and directed by a Calabasas resident producer and festival alumni. On Thursday, we're thrilled to present the U.S. premiere of a film called I Play Rocky by Peter Farrelly, who directed Green Book. And this year, we're also excited to be bringing festival screenings to the Motion Picture Television Fun Theater and Viewpoint School. Saturday, we'll return outdoors for our special crew screening of the classic The Goonies. We have some surprises in store there. Throughout the weekend, we'll also showcase an incredible lineup of short films. And as always, we'll close out the festival on Sunday by celebrating the next generation of filmmakers with our student film program. We can't wait to welcome everyone back September the 23rd through the 27th. We hope to see everybody at the festival. As always, there's a party event after every film. So please come. Please enjoy yourself. It's all meant for the city of Calabasas. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Joe. Before I turn to the city clerk for remote participation, is there anybody in the audience who wishes to speak in public comment on an un-agendized item who has not filled out a card? Okay. Now, the state of California, in its wisdom, has forced cities to bear the costs of doing remote participation, even though they're not allowed to do unfunded mandates. They still do it, I guess. So we'll turn to the city clerk. Is anyone in the audience remotely? Okay, so we can move on. We're gonna go on to presentations. Do you have it down there for the next one? Okay, I'm gonna come down there. And the council, when I'm done, can join for a group photo. Okay, so tonight we're recognizing lifeguards, and I'm gonna read to you a little bit about why we're recognizing them. We're proud to recognize two Calabasas Tennis and Swim Center lifeguards, Shane O'Shaughnessy and Leanne Same. This is for their quick and courageous response during a medical emergency. On July 25th, David Gaudio was playing tennis when witnesses saw him beginning to sway and drop his racket. His knees gave out, causing him to fall and strike his head. Those nearby initially feared that he was experiencing a cardiac emergency. Shane and Leanne immediately responded. Drawing upon their training, they provided aid. directed responding paramedics to Mr. Gaudio's location and helped ensure that he received medical attention as quickly as possible. When our deputy director spoke with Mr. Gaudio the following Monday, he shared that he had suffered a stroke and that the lifeguard's quick actions helped save his life. Shane and Leanne, your preparation, professionalism, and ability to remain calm during a critical emergency made a profound difference. On behalf of the City of Calabasas and the City Council and the entire community, thank you for your outstanding service and your dedication to the safety of our residents and facility members. Mr. Gaudio is with us this evening. At this time, I'd like to invite him to the podium to say a few words and then invite my City Council colleagues to join us for a photo.

Yes. Yes, good evening, and thank you for inviting me. I've been a resident of Woodland Hills for 33 years, but I've been also a member of the Calabasas Tennis and Swim Centre for several years. And on that Saturday last month, yes, I was playing and suddenly just collapsed. And basically it was very fuzzy and hazy for me for the next hour or so. I basically woke up in the hospital having been told that I had had a stroke And it was because of the swiftness of the help of the lifeguards and everyone else around me at the time that they got to me very quickly. And as a result, even though I had had a stroke, I suffered basically no ill effects. So it was quite providential. And I wanted to thank them in person since I don't really remember who they were when it happened to me. So that's it. Thank you.

Okay, well, are Shane and Leanne, are they here? Could they just come up? If you'd like to say something. Would either of you like to say anything? No? Okay. Well, we're going to take a group photo, so why don't the council come down here, and the three of you can come over here, and we'll take a group photo with your certificates that we have for you.

with the phone, okay? Here we go, everybody. On three, here we go, one, two, three. Stay put, we're gonna do another one. One, two, and three. Last one. Let me get some with the phone, please. All right, everybody looking at me on three, one, two, three. We're gonna do one more, and last one.

Okay.

didn't have any other public speaker cards on that one so we'll move on we're going to recognize our 2026 city retirees tonight we have the opportunity to recognize and thank a very special group of employees who have recently retired from the city of calabasas and now i'm going to go down there and call them up and then we'll take the council pictures individually and with with them as a group Okay, I'd like to call up the following individuals and they can stand at the podium for now. Excuse my raspy voice, by the way. It's been gone for like a month and I keep talking and it never comes back. Ruben Flores, our Senior Code Enforcement Officer, 24 years of service. I don't know if they're all here. Okay. Barbara Lockwood, our city librarian, 19 years. Tom Bartlett, city planner, 22 years. Monica Schinder, permit center supervisor, 23 years. Kathy Milbrand, Recreation Coordinator, 19 years. We have a few who could not make it tonight. Ron Ahlers, our chief financial officer, seven years. Sparky Cohen, building official for 20 years. Johnny Ray Agee, maintenance inspector, 20 years. And Jeff Campbell, deputy community services director, four years. So while each of you has taken a different path, served in different departments, and contributed over different lengths of time, you share something very important. A commitment to serving Calabasas and helping make our city a better place. Please know that your work has touched all aspects of city operations and ultimately the lives of the residents and people we serve. Our retirement marks the end of one chapter. It also gives us a moment to reflect on the difference you have made during your time with the city. The success of an organization is built over time by people who show up to do their jobs with care, support their colleagues, and remain committed to serving the community. And each of you has been an important part of that success. On behalf of the City Council and the City of Calabasas, We extend our sincere appreciation for your service, your dedication, and the many contributions you've made throughout your careers. We hope you leave knowing that your work mattered, that you made a lasting difference, and you'll be missed by the colleagues and community you've served. Congratulations on your retirement. We wish you the best in this new chapter of your lives, and thank you for everything you've given to the city of Calabasas. I'd like to, before we take our photos, if anybody, if you'd like to say a few words upon your retirement, any of you, please feel free to take the podium. And if not, then I'll invite my colleagues down here and we'll take, we're going to take individual photos and then a group photo.

No, the individual photos .

All right, everybody, I'm going to take a couple, and then we're going to take a couple with the phone real fast, okay? One, two, and three. We're going to do one more. One, two, three. Last one. One, two, and three.

Two phone lines.

All right, everybody, same drill. Here we go, one, two, three. One, two, three, and last one. One, two, and three. All right, everybody. Same drill, looking up here. Here we go on three. One, two, and three. We're going to do another one. One, two, and three. Last one. Stay put. All of our technology. Here we go. Look it up here at me. One, two, and three. We're going to do another one. And last one. One, two, and three. All right, everybody up here, look at me. One, two, three. One more. One, two, and three. Last one. One, two, and three. Here we go. One, two, and three. We're gonna do another one. One, two, and three. And last one. One, two, and three. All right, everybody. Looking at me. Here we go. One, two, and three. We're going to do another one. One, two, and three. We're going to do one more. One, two, and three. All right, everybody. One, two, and three. One, two, three. And last one. One, two, and three.

Doing it with the whole group?

Yeah.

All right, everybody. Here we go. On three. One, two, and three. We're gonna do another one. One, two, and three. We're gonna do one more. One, two, and three. All right. One, two, and three. One, two, and three. Last one. One, two, and three. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay, we're going to go on to our next item, which is the Calabasas Rotary Club Annual Report. Who is, Beth, are you giving that? Okay.

I'm trying to say goodbye to these lovely people that have helped us. But I just want to say good evening, members of the city council, members, city staff. Thank you so much for having us here today. And I have a presentation, if it's there, I hope. And because I really want to speak to you today about... an amazing program that we work with the city. Where is it? Oh, keep talking. All right. Yes, I will keep talking. I don't have a copy of it in front of me, so it really helps to see it. But this is an amazing partnership we have with the city council. And my name is Beth Hall. I have the honor of being the president of the Rotary Club of Calabasas this year. And I'm actually standing in on behalf of Manny Fernandez. He truly wanted to be here, but he's out of state today. And he is actually the founding member of the Rotary Club of Calabasas, executive director, and the chair of our charitable foundation, which covers this. So, thank you. We're just going to talk, and I will talk as fast as I can, what the Neighbourcy Needs Program actually is, the types of grants there are, how it's administered, which is really important, why it's needed, and who the recipients are. So what is it? We call it NIN, just fondly and short. But this is a program that was put together by the city of Calabasas. They saw a big need. And that was around 2006. A program came into being. In 2007, when they put the program together, the city council saw that there was a need for it to be administered by an outside resource. They came to the Rotary Club of Calabasas, and we happily said yes. And if you see, it's almost 20 years now, which is a long time. So they partnered with the Rotary Club. We're all volunteers, and we gladly took on this project. Not realizing how long and how involved and how important much it did evolve. But part of the reasoning is to take away from the city the possibility of conflict of interest, and it also avoids that. potential embarrassing situation where an applicant is actually known to the city and it also shows anonymity to the applicants. So we're asked what types of grants. There's a few different types. One of them is the outreach grant. This is the simple one. It's the smallest one. It's the newest one. And this can be granted pretty much immediately. And I will state, and I will state it a few times, there's certain criteria for any of these grants that we are scrupulous in. in insisting a part of them must be a Calabasas resident for at least one year. But this grant could help a family who can't put food on the table. It could be a medical need such as the need for equipment, maybe crutches or something. They just don't have funding or really expensive prescription. It could be the potential immediate loss of the utilities using water, losing their water supply. electricity, et cetera. It could be for a bus or train pass to get a student to university school or someone to work. Vehicle repairs such as a tire replacement so that people can keep working and don't end up further in a bad situation or education needs. The one we get asked for pretty much most of the time is the emergency grant, and it's for immediate need. Again, it could be extreme medical expenses, it could be the immediate loss of housing, someone's facing an eviction notice being put on their property, disconnection of utilities, it could be a whole bunch of these things. But that is the one that requires very quick movement on our part. Thank you. The support grant is very similar, but this one, it's around the same amount in a grant, but this one It's given over a few months. And it's really to fill that gap, the gap that's been created because of a situation that was unforeseen and someone's fallen into a hole. But it's to prevent them. getting evicted, losing their home. And that one's probably the second most used of all. And it can be for the same reason, but the situation is such that we will offer them the support grant and spread it out. How it's administered is, as we said, City of Calabasas created the partnership with the Rotary Club of Calabasas. The applicants reach out to us, and as I said, and I keep saying this, there are certain requirements that must be met. But they contact through a variety of ways. Sometimes they're referred by a city staff member. We've had this a couple of times recently. Sometimes it's word of mouth through a previous recipient. It's through our website or our telephone number. And we have had cards prepared that we've left at city areas, Sheriff and Fire Station. I meant to bring some tonight and I left them at home. School districts, offices, Boys and Girls Clubs. And we've received... Notice from all of these, we've had people referred. So thank you all for taking it seriously. This is how you reach us, our website. And that bar in the middle, click on it, and it takes you right to the forms and the information. Or to reach someone directly, call this number. That number actually is forwarded onto my phone. So you do get a voice on the end, and I hope it's a friendly voice at the time. When I see Rotary Club of Calabasas come up on my phone, I do. I respond as fast as I can. And I say 24 hours, but it's usually faster. Because we know. It's taken a lot of courage for people to call us. And it's very needed. The thing I try to get people to do, if you hear of someone in need, you know somebody's struggling, please don't wait. Just reach, tell them, reach out quickly. Because once that notice is posted on the door, that's something really hard to undo. Please, if you know of someone, I just beg everybody, please refer them to us. This is one of the biggest things, confidentiality, and city council members can back us up on this. We take this extremely seriously. All... applicants are absolutely short of complete confidentiality. And there's just a small group of us, very small, usually three, that are trained to interview the applicants and take all the information. No names are ever shared with anyone. anyone outside that very narrow group. We do send a brief description of the need and the amount of the grant to our board, our foundation board, because they have final say. It's okay, you can move it on. Thank you. You will see a typo on your printed, but it is correct here. We're often asked how many people we've helped, and it's 200 plus families and individuals, all, again, Calabasas residents we've helped. Variety of reasons, as we've talked about, rent relief, medical bills, car repairs. loss of utilities and we've also assisted a few community organizations but that's a very narrow field because they need to be based in calabasas and working within calabasas and calabasas residents unfortunately we're seeing an increase in need and requests and i'm sure All of us are aware of what's happening around us, and we're anticipating more. All of our costs are rising, and it's rent, groceries, gas, utilities, insurance, all the necessities of life. And I would say, honestly, it's the bare necessities too to keep us all going. Fewer companies are hiring. More jobs are being eliminated. It's harder for people to find work if they lose their job. And the biggest thing is more living, paycheck to paycheck, and that safety net does not exist anymore. So, I'm gonna give you a few examples. Obviously, no names, no petrol here. But the situation, and I want to make a shout out to one person, he's not here, but Gabriel Graham, who works with you all, you all know him. He's wonderful. He reaches out to me. In fact, I got to the point where he called to say, what's up, what's happening? He said, no, I'm just checking in, make sure you're okay. So I worked with him. And he is such an asset. I can't say that enough. But a situation. Young mother with young children escaping from domestic violence, even though she had a restraining order. And it was getting her a place to stay and take care of her. She was Calabasas resident, long-time resident. Single parent experiencing the loss of housing due to recent unemployment. These things come up, and it's harder and harder to find work. She was struggling. We helped her with the grant, but we also helped in other ways, such as resume repairing. I think you took me on fast. Do you want me to speak faster? It's okay. But there's good stuff, too. It's like a recipient who had experienced job loss And that created a temporary inability to keep up with bills. And he was able to receive a grant. He got a new job. It prevented house loss. Recent hospitalization of someone, they were trying to get disability, fell behind with their bills while waiting. And I'd encourage anybody, if you know you've got to go for disability, start it early. It takes a very long time. A resident behind again temporarily out of work due to disability needed assistance with an emergency grant. Car repairs, which by a grant being given, this person was able to continue to work and not lose their housing. So rising costs again created a customer, huge drop in a little business and the person, long time Calabasas resident. We were able to assist that person. And same thing with a single mother struggling. You don't see all these, we do. So these are a handful. Please go. There is something that you need to know. There is nothing. At times, we go to one of these situations that we do not tell them. This program is thanks to the incredible city of Calabasas. We always encourage them to reach out and say thank you, but it's difficult because they really want to remain anonymous. That's why we're saying it for you. to you, for them to you. But thank you. It is an incredible rare program. These, I won't read all these, but they're there for you to see how how you continue to change people's lives. And you look at them, thank you so much for making, helping me maintain our life here. This one, how they spent the holidays. Not in dread, but in hope due to the help. They saved the house. They got back on their feet. So, please, thank you. And there's a few more. And it's how the people are saying thank you. And it's truly coming from the bottom of their hearts. And it's hard... I wanted you to have copies of some of the thank yous we get. People say thank you in different ways. One of them tried to feed me a massive lunch that ended up feeding six people. But it was his way of saying thank you. Thank you for taking care of them. And we get called angels so many times, but it's not us. It really is not us. It's hard. You don't know how many lives you do touch every day. And this program continues to do that. And it makes just a few people's lives a little easier and easier to go on. And as I said, we get to see this. We get the thank yous. But really, you need to get the thank yous. And you need to see this. It's such an amazing program. Thank you. And thank you with my fellow students. Rotarians is here. Thank you for allowing us to do this. So with that, if there's any questions.

Well, let's, would anyone else like to speak on this subject? Any of the other members of the Rotary Club who are here?

Do you want to say something, Sherry?

Well, Sherry, you have to come up because no one can hear you in the audience. And just state your name.

Well, I've been a member of this Rotary Club for 30 years. So I've been around here for a while. And I've never, ever heard of the compliments that you are getting as a city. So I'm very proud of all of you. Thank you.

Okay.

Any questions? There is one with me and with many. There's very, just the three of us, the seven, the committee to interview the people. And Todd, did you want to say something? Because Todd is on the foundation board that has the final signature and listens to me nagging, quick, get it done.

Okay, just state your name.

I'm Todd Gervais. I'm one of the foundation board trustees. And I'm the one who gets to cry each time one of these comes through. And I'll just echo thank you to the city of Calabasas for giving us the honor of being your representatives for this program.

They're going to make me talk. Danielle Delagala, a teacher. So on behalf of students, I'm going to say thank you of all ages. I know the stories that they've shared, little kids, high schoolers, they all need so much, and the panic in these families' faces when they need something. So I just feel so very proud to still be a member of the Rotary Club of Calabasas and know that this group that I get to spend time with is taking the time to go through those applications, meet the people, and really find exactly what they need. So you are servicing your community in ways that you just have to feel really good about. We just get to do a little piece. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Any virtual? Okay, so we're going to turn to council comments. David, would you like to start?

Sure, I would just say thank you for that tremendous report. We miss Manny, but I know he'll be back. I know how much all of you do and how incredible the Rotary Club of Calabasas is, not just with regard to the Neighbors in Need program, but everything you do year-round. It's... For the love of doing good, that's really, that's not the motto, but it's something that you do. And this is a tremendous program, and you do alleviate a lot of what could be issues for this council, or at least very difficult decisions. And we thank you so much for continuing to do such a great, great job administering this program and all you do year-round. Thank you.

Ed?

Eddie, that was a fantastic report. And I think the name, the city really wants to say thank you also. You do so much. I think it's way beyond just Thanksgiving. It's every day when something happens, you never know when it's going to happen and you're there like a beacon of light. So thank you for all you do and for your entire membership.

Peter.

Yeah, thank you. I have to echo that and as much as we appreciate you sharing those thank yous with us because it's always nice to know the good that this program is doing, we recognize that those thank yous are to you because we're handing out a small check and you guys are doing all the work You guys are the ones that are interacting with the people that are in need. You guys are the ones that are maintaining the anonymity that they're looking for. You know, we could not possibly do this without you, so thank you.

I just wanted to echo everyone's thoughts. Thank you so much for doing such an amazing job with this program. We're very grateful.

And I would especially like to thank the Rotary Club. You've taken on many things. You're very visible in the community. And I actually remember when we gave you the Neighbors in Need program, there were problems with the grant allocations because they weren't being done properly by the council. And it's so great to have an outside group willing to do this on a voluntary basis. I've heard, too, from many people who We're very grateful and thank the city and the Rotary Club. I don't know if you get all the, I'm sure you get some as we've seen in the brochure here, but we get some as well and it's very well received and appreciated. So thank you for your hard work and for the presentation tonight. It's been good to have you here in Calabasas. Okay, so we will now move on to item seven, which is the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department report. We have with us a special guest, Captain Dustin Carr of the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station, and there are other deputies here as well. I don't know if they're gonna participate, but welcome, Captain Carr.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem honorable city council members tonight. I come before you, uh, partially to, um, answer any questions, but first and foremost to address our traffic efforts on the Holland highway. I understand there's a lot of community concern regarding enforcement on the Holland highway. speeds, modified exhaust, things like that. So I wanted to address them and then let you know what we're looking at in the future as well. So if we can go to the next slide. So first and foremost, the city of Calabasas has that speed measuring trailer that's rolled out to various locations in the city. The city was kind enough to share with us its data from that Mulholland stretch there. And generally, it's taken from where about Gelson's is all the way to Calabasas High School is what we're looking at. And they gave us the top 25 times and dates of violations. And in analyzing that data, one, the average over speed limit violations between 14 and 15 miles an hour on any given day. But if you look at the times too, other than the Saturday nights, most of the times are commuting hours. That's some of the information we can draw from that data. However, you can't ignore also the speed violations that occur on the weekends. So when we're looking at this data, I do want to state that sometimes people are late getting home, they want to get home quickly, and they're speeding. We are enforcing out there, and we're going to get into that in just a second, but That's just what the data tells me, is generally how fast they're going over the speed limit, which is 40. So we're looking between 14 and 16 miles an hour on average. How many violators, so in a two-hour period, you go from anywhere from about 24 miles an hour over the, or I'm sorry, 24 violators, and the low mark is 17. If we can go to the next slide. So since January 1st, we've issued 74 speeding violations on that stretch of Mulholland Highway that I just mentioned. That may seem like a low number compared to the numbers that come from your speed trailer, but there are a lot of things involved in that. One is when we're doing enforcement on Mulholland Highway, we have to have the person there to do that enforcement. The speed trailer can catch everybody, and everybody knows that speed trailer's not going to issue them a ticket. I think they know what the purpose is for that is to slow drivers down. It's one of the speed deterrents that the city has rolled out. And a lot of times it does work, but enforcement also has to be behind that. So we are enforcing the law there. And now, like I said, 74 seems low. And I'm going to bring Sergeant Aarons is here with me. He's our traffic sergeant. I did send him out on a couple of occasions on Saturday nights to see what's going on out there and to see what we can do better because accountability is part of of improving ourselves as a sheriff's department. So if we can go to the next slide. So breaking down the numbers of the violations, we issued a lot of cell phone violation tickets and about seven speeding tickets and there are other. If you see the equipment violations, that's when we're talking about tinted windows, modified exhaust, things like that. The things that wake you up at night, especially if you live off of Mulholland Highway. So there's another number I wanted to share on a different slide about those equipment violations and we'll get to that in a minute. So going past Calabasas High School up Mulholland Highway, we issued an additional 27 violations between Calabasas High School and Stunt Road. Again, that seems like a low number, but I am going to get into our canyons operations in a second, and you'll see the actual numbers of what we're actually catching. And one of the things I wanted to mention before we get into our Operation Safe Canyons operations that we conduct on a very regular basis is that these violators generally start around here. We do catch them up the road as we head towards the snake and areas like that. So I did want to point that out that even though they may have woken you up, when we do these operations, we're catching them down the road and we're enforcing the law. So if we can go to the next slide. This is just a breakdown of our numbers. You can see once they pass Calabasas High School, speeding is the main violation that we're getting them for. And then there's some other miscellaneous, but speeding and equipment violations are the two highest numbers as far as those citations that are issued. Go to the next one. So the other thing that I wanted to mention is, are our deputies out there monitoring traffic on this stretch of Mulholland? Sergeant Ahrens did a search of instances of us monitoring traffic. Now, deputies are not required by policy or procedure to put these observations in, but we have asked them to, if they happen to be monitoring traffic on Mulholland Highway, to do so, just so we can kind of track how often. So this is just an example incident. You can see it's occurring during key hours. They start at about 9.30 at night, and they They ended about 10 o'clock. And for the reason for the end could be they caught a violator or they got a call for service and they had to leave that area. I mean, we'd have to look at the logs to know the reason for leaving, but they are spending time. If we can go to the next slide. Since January 1st, we've located about 48 times that deputies have been sitting out on Mulholland Highway, putting in these traffic observation TRAFFIC WATCHING OBSERVATIONS. NOW, THAT DOESN'T INCLUDE THE TIMES THAT THE MOTOR IS SITTING OUT THERE. THEY DO THEIR OBSERVATIONS GENERALLY AFTER THE STOP BECAUSE THEY'D HAVE TO HAVE A MOBILE COMPUTER PULL IT OUT EVERY TIME AND PUT IN THE OBSERVATIONS. IT'S NOT PRACTICAL ON MOTOR ENFORCEMENT. BUT MOTORS ARE OUT THERE AS WELL. So if we can go to the next slide. So these are the numbers I wanted to show you. And these are our Operation Safe Canyons numbers. And this is for one year of enforcement throughout our canyons. And we pay a lot of attention to Mulholland Highway. Sergeant Ahrens could probably tell you that I'm always talking about Mulholland Highway and PCH with him. Those are our two major thoroughfares that we're concerned about. And Topanga Canyon is starting to tick up as well. Overall, in our operations, and this is the Canyons, we've issued 1,631 citations. One of the numbers I do want to focus on is modified exhaust, 34 citations, other equipment violations, 235 citations. And I want to mention, sometimes people have exhaust that spit out flames and just kind of very, very odd modifications to their vehicles that's highly illegal. And one of the tools we have is we have three deputies on motors that are trained to send people to the state referee. The state referee, what happens is if you get sent to the state referee for an equipment violation is you have to drive your vehicle to that office. The state referee has to inspect your vehicle to ensure that that modification has been resolved and is brought back in compliance with the law before that ticket can be paid and it gets signed off and goes away. So we have three deputies that are trained on that. And looking further, I met with Captain Perry from the California Highway Patrol. They're going to open up more classes for us. And my goal is to get all our motors trained and then everyone that works traffic trained in the future. So people will be able to send people to the state referee. And when you do that, you ensure that these violations are corrected on the vehicle. It can be very expensive depending on the vehicle as well. So it's to ensure compliance with the law. Then we want to point to the speeding tickets. 822 of those are speeding tickets, many of them on, you know, up Mulholland passed into the county area. Now, like I said, I understand that we're talking about the county area and not the stretch of Mulholland and Calabasas, but I want to, again, reassure you that these drivers start somewhere, and a lot of times they start here in Calabasas. I know we catch them up the road, but these laws are being enforced, and they are to the benefit of Calabasas when we do these enforcement operations. As a matter of fact, speaking of operations, as we speak here, we have an operation going on right now So we then and this was not actually time for the council meeting, believe it or not. He brought me a date and I said, well, that works out very well for me. But so it was just by coincidence that it happened to be tonight. If we can go to the next slide. One of the challenges we are starting to face, and this is a new phenomenon, but if you've ever Googled maps somewhere, sometimes it asks you questions along the way, like, are police still there? And this is actually from Sergeant Aaron's shift Saturday night. Again, you know, we want accountability, so sometimes I like a sergeant out there just to see what's out there. And within about 15 minutes of him being out there, he was tagged on Google Maps. And this is a screenshot from him being tagged. So I wanted to tell you that when people are doing street racing, things like that, a lot of them are technology savvy. And they may or may not know that we are already there sitting there. He still caught some violators. So not everyone's savvy enough to use this. But this is a new phenomenon that's been occurring. And it just presents an additional challenge, and it's just something I want you to be aware of. But I do want to turn it over to Sergeant Ahrens, because he has worked a couple of times on that stretch of Mulholland. And I just want him to share his general observations, how many sites he was able to issue, and how long he spent on Mulholland Highway. So Sergeant Ahrens, if you could just briefly speak.

I will say for this, when I got tagged, I tried really hard to untag it. Couldn't figure out how to do that. So yeah. I stayed there for a while. I was actually there for two hours. I got three citations per speed. And that was it. It was pretty much most of the time I was sitting there doing this. Because there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. I was also looking for modified exhaust. No cars went through. I'm sure anybody that was there on Mulholland heard my siren a couple times. It had one of the newer sirens that had kind of a growler kind of thing on there. But I only got 16 miles over was the highest speed. Everybody else was roughly within the 40, 45, something around there. So it took a while for me to just get three citations just sitting there. And I was in the Calabasas High School where the football field is. It's blacked out. I was in patrol car. Kind of tucked away, but yeah, somebody saw me and tagged me. I work these stretches at nighttime as well as during the day multiple times. It's very difficult to get speeding, especially for me in a car. You know, it's hard to find a place to hide and then also to safely get out on the road, et cetera. You know, so that's kind of the problems that I'm seeing. I did go further down the road. We did have an accident, a fatality accident that occurred earlier this year further down over by Dry Cane and Cold Creek. So I was working that area. And I think I only got one citation during that time frame. In my entire time that I was working out there, I ended up with ten citations, and I was out there for a pretty long time. So that's basically my observations. I am working it. My motors are working it. We have our dedicated motor, Deputy Bresciani. He is doing the best he can with the vast areas of the city, juggling the schools and and things like that, and also hitting Mulholland in addition to. So we're going to continue doing our operations as much as we can. I plan on trying to do an e-bike operation coming up very soon, which I'm not going to tell you the date because I don't want it to be published. But we have some innovative ways of trying to get them. The issue is... When we have kids on bikes and they take off from us, we're not going to pursue them. That's just the reality of it. We're not going to put somebody else's life in danger to try to catch these bikes. So we're trying to work on innovative ways to be able to do that before they can take off from us. I'll leave it back to the captain.

Thank you and thanks for starting on the e-bike operations as well. We're going to be expanding our technology on the e-bikes operations and also some successful things we did on our last operation was the utilization of our dirt bike train deputies and they became very handy in certain situations there. So we will continue to use them to our advantage as long as we have them. So we're gonna continue to do speed enforcement operations on Mulholland Highway. And we can even do modified exhaust operations as well. I know when someone has modified exhaust, it sounds like they're speeding, even if they're doing 30 miles an hour, and it is definitely disturbing to the public, which is why, you know, one of the reasons I am pressing to have all those deputies uh... that we can train to send people to the state referee because that is the most effective way you can cite for it all day long but if you're not trained to send people to the state referee you can't send them to the state referee you have to have specialized training and know what to look for on those modifications in order to do so So once we get them trained, then that provides more accountability to that driver to get that fixed. Now, while it may not solve every modified exhaust on the roadway, it is, again, another tool in our tool belt we can deploy to help reduce this problem. Other things, possible DUI and driver's license checkpoints. That's something we're looking at. We have the grant. We have the grant already, or it's in the process. We do get DUI grants, and there's certain parameters we have to use for those. It has to be applied for every year, so we should be getting an answer soon on those. The other thing I do say is this does have to be a team effort with the city and the Sheriff's Department, and even the public in general. when you're looking at what happened with PCH and how we had such good results on PCH, that was how things started rolling. We partnered with the city, we partnered with the public and ourselves, as well as CHP, and there's something good happened there. And that's something we wanna look at, maybe look at in some kind of scale with the city of Calabasas. is together, maybe we can help not eliminate this problem, but reduce it. Because even with all our partnership on Pacific Coast Highway, still we do catch people sometimes going 100 miles an hour. And that's not even an exaggeration. You know, we catch 102, 106 sometimes. So even with all those efforts, while we've reduced the number of collisions, reduced the fatals down to the lowest they've been in years, you're still going to have some issues. And it's not going to 100% eliminate the modified exhaust and everything. But we're willing to work with anyone we can to make the problem better and to improve the quality of life of people on Mulholland Highway. So I believe social media campaign is going to be a part of it because that was a part of it on Pacific Coast Highway. And, you know, things that the city can share that we post whenever we get, you know, you know, reckless driver arrest or something like that. So definitely willing to work with the city on that. And again, working together is the way forward on this. That's the way we're going to make this problem better.

If we can go to the next slide.

The last thing I wanted to mention is we have a traffic tips email that goes directly to our traffic team. Please take a picture with your phone, lhstraffictips.lesd.org. and that goes directly to our traffic team. So whenever you realize a lot of problems, please pepper that email with whatever issues you have, because that's gonna help us understand what's coming from the public and where to direct our patrols in the future. And with that, I'm here to take any questions, whether it be from e-bikes, Mulholland, ALPR cameras, whatever you need, I'm here for you.

Why don't we do this first? We're going to start with public comment. So maybe if you just step aside just for a moment, and then we'll have you come back, because I know there's going to be other comments, too. So we'll start with Mary Guevano.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. And I see the timer started, so I'll speak fast. My name is Mary Luevino, and I am a resident of Calabasas Hills, and I'm speaking on this agenda item specifically because there was an incident that happened that some of you may be aware of. On the night of July 4th, at approximately 10.45 p.m., I was startled, as were my neighbors, to hear what sounded like gunshots, very loud noises that sounded like they were right in front of our houses. It was so loud that people came out, and within seconds, my phone was pinging from neighbors saying, what's going on, what's happening? From outside we could see, I'm on Calle Largo in Calabasas Hills, we could see the school, Bay Laurel Elementary School at the end of our block, that there was what I would only describe as a professional level fireworks display. The kind that you would see at Disneyland, not the kind that you see in neighborhoods around the area. Not only did this terrify me and my neighbors, um, that the idea of someone setting off fireworks display in our area, knowing what the wildfire risk is, is just unbelievable. Um, but for those of us living with elderly family members, disabled family members, young children, or pets. The idea of having to evacuate during a wildfire, which I have already had to do, and I'm sure many of you have as well, is not something that I want to do again. As a result of the fireworks display that occurred, there was a box that caught on fire in the parking lot at the school. I happened to go down to the guard gate to try and find out what was going on, and the fire department had arrived to put out the fire. But my neighbors and several other folks, including our guard, were trying to reach the sheriff's office. I know that the phone lines were very busy because there were a lot of people calling but unfortunately no one was able to reach anyone and have a car sent out to find out who was doing this and what was going on i sent you all an email and i want to thank mayor bazajian and council member weintraub and city manager meek for responding to that but i have a few simple questions as a follow-up And the first is, why was it so difficult to get a response from the sheriff's office? I know that they were busy, I know that there were other things going on, but this was a pretty serious incident and I want to make sure that it doesn't happen again. And I wanted to know what is being done to find out who was responsible for this fireworks display. We know that there were lots of people out there. There were people probably from our community standing out there, people with cameras that probably caught some of this. I know it's not an easy thing, but I would like to help in trying to figure out who did this. And lastly, how can we work as a community and with the sheriff's department to ensure that this does not happen again?

Thank you. I think what we'll do is we'll have the sheriff just take those questions under submission and respond all at once when we get all the public comment. But thank you for your comment. Next, we have Mark Silverman. Welcome, Mark.

Hello, everybody. My name is Mark Silverman. I've been a resident of Calabasas since 1965. I'm on the Historic Preservation Commission, and I was on the Volunteers of Patrol for the Sheriff's Department for 20 years. Just a little background, I'm now working for the CHP. And as a side note, we worked together with the sheriff, and I can tell you, we slowed the traffic down. It's unbelievable. But anyways, I'm not going to share my dirty laundry. I spoke to the sheriff, the captain yesterday. while before he entered the meeting was kind enough to talk to me. And I, I explained to him my concerns. I don't want to air, you know, my dirty laundry in front of them and you folks, but I, I think, I think they heard me and I heard them and I just wanted to give you my two cents. So thank you.

Next we have Rochelle Blanken.

Hello, I'm Rochelle Blanken. I've lived in Mountain Park for 22 years now, raised my boys, love Calabasas, love our neighborhood, but I'm very concerned. I've seen a significant increase on the hazardous driving on Mulholland Highway in the last probably two to three years. I probably witness it daily going up and down the hill, constantly cars speeding, going well over the speed limit. passing on blind corners, and most recently the crash in June with fatalities. I also see on a daily basis illegal U-turns in front of Viewpoint School by parents into oncoming traffic. So they are supposed to take a right and head down the hill, but they don't want to. They want to go left and head back over towards Malibu. So they just flip a U-turn right on a blind corner. I see it almost every day because I'm often getting my children from school. On weekend nights, we have noise right outside of our gate. It's usually cars drag racing or doing donuts, and you can go and see the skid marks the next morning. It wakes you up in the middle of the night. Dogs are barking. Kids are crying. It's almost every weekend. So I was rather surprised to see that more speeding tickets haven't been issued from the Sheriff's Department, and that makes me wonder, is that just... how much time they spend up there. What can we do differently to change what's going on before more people die, before our children driving up or down the hill have accidents? So I do invite you to come park right outside our gate. We have a ton of room there, and you have a place to park and hide from the cars, and you'll get so many speeding tickets because they're coming up and down our hill almost on a daily basis, especially on the weekends. I just wanted to say I'm very concerned. I want to know what very concrete changes are going to be made. Thank you.

Thank you. Do I have any other people in the in-person audience who would like to speak? Just come up and when you're done, fill out the card afterwards. Just give us your name and your city of residence.

My name is Eric Litoff. I live on Mulholland as well. We live a little bit further down. By the way, thank you. Truly thank you for the work that you're trying to do that hopefully we will get better at. My son actually had an accident. He didn't have an accident. He was hit by three guys racing in cars on Mulholland, right, turning left turn into our house. So they T-boned him. They were racing so fast, totaled our car. That was three years ago. I respect what you're saying about being out there, but I am very much with you. This is insanity. I stand out on my street corner. I don't want to get my address here. I've offered the same thing the day that the highway patrol was there to deal with the accident. I said, please, park in our driveway. uh... it's well over a hundred miles per hour saturday sunday mornings and evenings i've seen you guys out there but not on the days that they're out there i get that issue with the tagging that's a real problem i don't know how to solve that uh... that that's horrible please i want to make sure you know that i really support you guys you guys are going to be the savior of what's going on out there but it is so incredibly dangerous uh... we foster a dog every once in a while i try to walk her out there at even nine o'clock at night and the racing is going on. It is again well over a hundred miles per hour daily. I respect also your opinion on the sound of the exhaust makes it seem louder. Well I'm standing on the street and I've been around, and I was a reckless driver when I was a kid. I'm 55 years old now, so I recognize it. It is incredibly dangerous, and like I said, my son already had his car totaled. Fortunately, since the work that's been done recently, you have been out there. My daughter was driving to dinner a week ago on that stretch, and two cars passed on that blind turn over the double yellow, and you guys were there and actually gave out two tickets, and that is fantastic. amazing thank you guys for doing she called me and said you guys got them and that's amazing so it means there is stuff being done but there is so much more to be done i'm glad you shared that email address i said to my wife wow i'm going to just take videos and send them to that email because it doesn't line up with what you guys are seeing so i'm not questioning whether or not you're doing your job just saying that that i'm not having the same experience also There is the King Gillette Ranch events that go on. They're wonderful for the community, but they are releasing traffic into Mulholland from the events. They're the October and the Christmas events, and they're not diverting people away. So at 10 o'clock at night or 11 when they close, it is just pure mayhem going into the neighborhoods, into where we live and then across to the schools. I think you know which area I'm talking about where we are. And equally, if you'd like to come out, I could give a tour of the skid marks that are just littered all over the highway. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate the time, and thank you guys very much. Thank you.

So, Madam Clerk, do we have an audience? How many do we have? One? Four. Okay, so I guess we're going to take them one at a time. When you get on the air, could you please state your name, city of residence? We'll take the first one now.

Thank you and welcome to those who are attending remotely. Speakers are reminded that they are allowed three minutes to speak, must use a raise hand feature on Zoom to be recognized, and will be prompted to unmute only when it is their turn to speak. For those calling in, you will need to press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your microphones. Please speak directly into your microphone and clearly state your name and city of residence for the record. We'll now begin taking remote public comments. The first speaker is Joe Chilko. Up next will be Jolie Fowler. Joe Chilko, it is your turn to provide comments. Please unmute yourself and state your name and city of residence for the record. You will have three minutes, which begins now.

I'm Joe Chilko. I'm a Calabasas resident. I had a question about some of the statistics that Captain Carr gave us. When I looked at speeding, December, May, and June amount for 367 of the 822 citations issued. That's 44%. So that's pretty high. At one point, I thought I saw on a screen crossing guards, and there was a nine beside it. Now, the print was kind of small on the screen, so I'm not quite sure if I really did see that. But if I did, what does that mean? People are blowing through crosswalks? In any event, you could explain when you get to answer the questions. And finally, when I saw an article in the Acorn about the use of flock cameras, I went to Council Member Albrecht, and I also spoke with Sergeant Cienfuentes about it. And I said, you know, people need to know how we use flock cameras in Calabasas, if this is different than what that acorn or letter seemed to suggest. And I believe the gentleman who might have written it was here tonight. So I'm very concerned because I have a different opinion about it. I know that the flock cameras have been effective in particularly preventing some crimes and solving some crimes. So I'm not anxious to see them go when we only have three patrol cars. And I want to remind everybody that if they've got a cell phone, they've got a GPS locator on it, and people can know where you are with that as well. So privacy seems to come up as a big issue with regards to this, and I think that it's reasonable to look at those things. But also, you need to be reasonable about how much of your privacy you've already given up. And that particular tagging feature on Google

should not be allowed i mean that that's unbelievable thank you very much i appreciate the answers to my questions thank you okay just we'll keep rolling into the next the next speaker is the next speaker is joely fowler followed by uh courtney tarbox joely fowler it is your turn to provide comments please unmute yourself and state your name for the record in city of residence you have three minutes which begins now

Thank you so much. My name is Jolie Fowler. I've been a resident of Calabasas community for almost 30 years. I apologize that I'm not there in person. I'm having to work. I want to thank the captain and the sheriff for all their work for attending tonight and everything they do to serve us and to keep us safe. I am very, very concerned and think it's critical that we pay attention and correct the kind of driving on Mulholland Highway, the speeding, the passing on the other side, the blind curb passing, even the running of the red lights at Old Topanga and Mulholland. I hear the screeching cars. I hear the THE REVVING AND THE RACING, AND I DON'T WANT ANYONE ELSE TO DIE. A COUPLE OF THINGS, I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHAT THE STATUS OF THE DECOY CAR IS. I UNDERSTAND THE CITY, I KNOW THE CITY HAS ONE, WHEN IT COULD BE USED, AND HOW LONG THAT WOULD TAKE TO BE USED. There are ways, as far as Google Maps goes, you can untag someone by several people, approximately three people, saying this officer is no longer at that intersection or that position, and that person will be untagged. So that could be something that could be worked on. I would, as far as the... SPEED RADAR AND DATA. I UNDERSTAND THAT PEOPLE SPEED ESPECIALLY DURING COMMUTING, BUT THAT'S NOT THE MOST OF THE CONCERN I HAVE. THEY'RE MAYBE GOING, AS YOU SAID, 14 MILES OVER THE SPEED LIMIT. HOWEVER, THEY'RE IN TRAFFIC FOR THE MOST PART, AND IT'S THE 30 AND 40 MILES OVER THE SPEED LIMIT THAT'S WHEN I REALLY SEE THE BAD life-threatening behavior. I'd also love to know what Captain Carr sees as the biggest hurdle to stopping a much safer highway, and what the city and the residents can do to support this enforcement and improve that safety. Captain Carr, if you could let us know what you see the biggest issue is that could be changed. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker is Courtney Tarbox, followed by Kim Egerstrom. Courtney, it is your turn to provide comments. Please unmute yourself and state your name and city of residence for the record. You have three minutes, which begins now.

Thank you. My name is Courtney Tarbox. I'm a resident of Calabasas in the Mulholland Highway and Dry Canyon Cold Creek Road area. And first, just yes, thank you for making the time to speak about this topic. It's incredibly important for our community and something that my neighbors and I talk about frequently as it's incredibly dangerous and we see it on a daily basis. I'm wondering how we can take more meaningful action together and really address this problem. I live on the Dry Canyon Cold Creek and it's used as a cut through where racers come down from Mulholland Highway and speed down our street where there are no sidewalks and it's a very common street used by cyclists as well. I don't even know how many times I've seen cyclists almost get hit. I have seen some presence there in monitoring, but not on the busiest times like someone else mentioned. Wednesday evenings, so tonight, and then all days on Saturday and Sunday are just incredibly problematic and so, so dangerous. My neighbor walking her dog was nearly hit to the point where a racing vehicle screeched to a stop and swerved and very nearly hit her. And as we know, there have been serious accidents, including fatalities there on Mulholland Highway. And it's just gotten completely out of hand, especially given the popularity of cyclists using our street, which should be a lovely, lovely thing. We have pedestrians, again, with no sidewalks, and cars just coming around these curves at speeds that leave just zero margin for error. And it's very scary. We have families living, of course, these are residential areas. So I appreciate all the steps that have been described, that have been taken, and I'm just really curious how we can more comprehensively address this problem and what the community can do to help. I appreciate that email address being shared, and I'm curious if more documentation would be helpful. I have lots and lots of videos of racers coming down our street. If we can submit those videos to that email address, if that will help to bring about more change or change

PRESIDENTS TO REALLY ADDRESS THIS ISSUE BECAUSE IT'S JUST SO DANGEROUS AND WE'RE SEEING MORE AND MORE ACCIDENTS THANK YOU THE NEXT SPEAKER IS KIM EGGERSTROM FOLLOWED BY JORI WOLF KIM IT IS YOUR TURN TO PROVIDE COMMENTS PLEASE UNMUTE YOURSELF AND STATE YOUR NAME AND CITY OF RESIDENCE FOR THE RECORD YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES WHICH BEGINS NOW

Hi, this is Kim Egerstrom. I am a resident of the Molewood area of Mulholland in Calabasas, a longtime resident, and I do live and work in Calabasas. I walk or drive along Mulholland every day. My kids walk to school when they attended the LVUSD schools. And over the years, I've seen the speeding get so much worse. It's a widespread problem, I know, and I don't know how to fix it. What I do know is that we can focus on local measures like those that Captain Carr's talked about to improve safety in our city. whether it's the decoy cars or increased patrols or on the city sides, things like the recent tree and bush trimming that has improved visibility along the Mulholland Highway. I have personally had close calls as a pedestrian many times, both by speeding cars and distracted drivers, most of those in the crosswalk at Eddingham and Mulholland. So I do appreciate the upgrades the city made to that crosswalk a few years ago. And reading the report about the crossing guard violations, I can imagine where most of those had happened. I do hope that in the future we can upgrade that crosswalk to be similar to the one on Highway 27 to Panga Canyon at De La Osa, which has much brighter lighting. to help make it more safe for walkers and students walking to school. Thank you so much.

Mayor, there are no additional remote participants.

Wasn't there Jerry Wolf?

His hand isn't raised anymore.

Oh, okay. All right. So we're done. Next in order will be...

Looks like Jory Wolf just joined in. Oh, okay. Jory, you are our final speaker. It is your turn to provide comments. Please unmute yourself and state your name and city of residence for the record. You have three minutes, which begins now. Jory, have you unmuted your microphone?

We can't hear you. I'm a 35-year resident of Calabasas and a resident of Mountain Park. I do experience these infractions on a daily basis coming and going to my home and work. And I don't understand why there's only 27 incidents from Old Topanga to Mountain Park Estates up the hill because I can, if I was authorized to cite people, I could triple that amount, maybe even more. I have been passed on the highway several times, multiple times, almost every other day. And it doesn't necessarily happen only on weekends. there is a fun zone on cold canyon dry canyon coal creek that was mentioned earlier by another resident where they like to play with the turns uh on that uh on that road um and when i did an ai uh review uh of mulholland highway and car enthusiasts it says mulholland highway and has served as a legendary playground for Southern California car and motorcycle enthusiasts since the 1920s. And please know that all of us who live on Mulholland Highway can attest to that. The return of the snake for weekend drivers has brought back classic performance cars and Porsches, but also renewed friction and local residents over reckless driving, prompting a heavy Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department presence. And of course, also, there's the famous gathering spots for enthusiasts, which is the rock store that everyone heads to on the weekends for car enthusiasts. This needs to really stop. And I have two issues. One is we need better enforcement. There is only one speed logging sign in either direction, and it's at Viewpoint School, but there is nothing anywhere else. So there needs to be more speed sensing signs on Mulholland Highway. And I am also very concerned about the condition of the payment. The pavement has a PCI, which is a pavement condition index. By public works of about 30 a ranking of 30 most of the streets in calabasas have a ranking of. John Gerstle, 80 or above, this is a very dangerous highway, especially at park South across from viewpoint highway, there is a bulge in the road and most of the cars going over that bulge are almost thrown to the right. and it's a very dangerous location. So I please ask for the Sheriff's Department to increase enforcement, to look at signage, and I look to the city to provide investments in the roadway. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Are we done with public comment?

There are no additional participants.

Captain, why don't you come to the podium and you can address.

Can we make our comments so then he can include those?

Well, I thought it'd be easier for him to just answer these right away while it's fresh in his mind.

Okay, I just want to make sure we have an opportunity. Oh, you're going to have an opportunity.

Okay. Okay, so I will start with the fireworks incident on July 4th. That was the first public comment, so I'll try and go in order for Mary Lovano. So the Sheriff's Department did respond. Deputy Sanfuegos followed up with the responding deputies. They were on scene within eight minutes. They did go through the parking lots with the fire department. They didn't find the burn box. Deputy Sanfuegos subsequently followed up at the school and again didn't find whatever burned there either it was cleaned up by somebody or taken by the perpetrators but in both cases um i understand that the fireworks went off i i was in the area until about 11 p.m on july 4th around here i did see some fireworks going off in the area so i know these things um occurred um but you know they go from fireworks call to fireworks call generally on fourth of july that's It's one of the busiest nights to work and it's all fireworks calls. So I do understand the public concern, especially with our high fire danger, but I do want to assure the public we did respond and we did follow up subsequent to that. And I believe there were efforts to contact Mary about this incident for any information she had since we're still willing to partner with her if there's any further evidence we can gather from this incident. see on the next one so on the hazardous driving illegal u-turns outside viewpoint um oh i understand that there's an enforcement issue now viewpoint We do have a deputy there that directs traffic outside of viewpoint, but they're there to make sure that buses can make a safe turn out of the viewpoint school. Cause otherwise there's not going, they provide a traffic break for them. So otherwise that bus isn't going to be able to get out and it's going to create a public safety danger. So, um, in so far as enforcement there again, uh, those things, you know, would be good for the traffic tip line since we're here, we're going to pass it onto our traffic team. and have somebody monitor that area. I do wanna state though, as I go through these traffic issues, that our traffic area, our traffic department in our station is the busiest part of our station. We have natural disasters, traffic, and burglaries that are our three busiest top things in our station. So they are our hardest working and our busiest. They do all kinds of operations. Almost on a weekly basis. So there's just a finite amount of personnel, but we're going to use them as much as we can. And as much as that, you know, is practical while they're still doing their normal duties. All these operations are in addition to their normal duties. and i do want to make that that clear um there's a lot of uh comments regarding um going continuing up the holland highway outside of the city limits the primary law the primary traffic enforcement outside the city limits is the california highway patrol well you've seen we've issued a number of citations these are all operations that we get special money to conduct and we use that money as much as we can um to help the situation so um i did talk to like i said i did talk to captain perry he's willing to partner with us on these operations to make them more effective however the general patrol there unless we're driving through we see a violation on general patrol days our our primary areas are inside the cities And I did want to make that a note. And then the CHP generally handles traffic issues outside the city limits up the canyons. That's why when they talked about the traffic collision incident, CHP was handling it because they do handle the traffic issues outside the city limits. We talked about the status of the decoy car. Well, our decoy car isn't in good repair, and right now we do have a fleet shortage. We're starting to catch up, but we just don't have enough cars to put one of our general patrol cars out as a decoy car at this point. So, well, I do think, yes, it could be a good deterrent. The fact of the matter is I do need those cars so deputies can go on patrol for now. If we do end up getting a surplus of cars, which I don't see in the near future if I'm going to be straightforward, then we can look at that. But right now, the decoy car is in disrepair. We've tried to use it before, and we had to get it back to fleet because it had so many mechanical issues. So I did want to comment on that. Regarding the speeds of 30 to 40 miles an hour over the speed limit, most of our citations are over 20 miles an hour of the speed limit. So they are stopping the high speed violators. That's really what they're looking for. They're not looking for five or six miles an hour over. However, that is illegal still and a citable offense. We are looking for the most egregious violators. Our biggest issue regarding making Mulholland safer, I don't think I can just pin it on any one thing. A lot of it is we have to have a change in behavior in the public is really what we're looking for. And that's gonna be a combination of possibly looking at what we can do with the roadway, cuz there's a six mile stretch where there's just no traffic controls. And there's, you know, also, you know, we do have our personnel, our personnel issues as well. And again, many other factors. And then we have people that just, you know, they like to drive fast and show off their cars and changing that behavior is going to be very difficult. A lot of that's going to have to do with forcing them when they get cited to modify their car back into compliance with the law. So there's no one silver bullet that's going to solve this. It's going to be a team effort, but it's also going to be trying to change the behavior of the public, which sometimes gets a little bit more difficult. I'm not talking about the general public. I'm talking about the people that are violating. Changing their behavior is where we're going to run into the difficulty. Let's see again, either we had more issues, dry Canyon, cold Creek area again for the other than the operations that we get money to perform on these canyons, the general patrol, the general traffic enforcement is done by in that area. Let's see. And then we talked – there was crossing guard violations. We do do street crossing operations. So when he's seeing those, he's probably referring to how many violators we catch not complying with the laws regarding crosswalks.

And then –

see we have the question on flock cameras um so overall i'll call them alpr cameras we don't endorse a specific brand of of alpr cameras those that the cities that choose to avail themselves of this service they can choose from any number of vendors to provide this service flock up until recently was connected with los angeles police department and then many of the other cities avail themselves. How we use it at the station, I think is very important to address. One is, is not every deputy has access to the FLOC system. You have to be a supervisor, or you a detective, or work in our real-time watch center. So not every, not the general patrol deputies, unless they're a detective working overtime, they don't have access to that FLOC system. That's one. Two, there's a need to know when they access that. FLOC has put up some more parameters. I don't know if they've done the software update yet. But more parameters like you have to have a case number, you have to enter a case number, which is similar to when we look up other county related systems. They request information from us that's pertinent to a case. So they know we're not just generally looking for someone's booking photo or something like that. We have to have a need to know. And so Flock has put up those and they've reduced the retention from 30 days, I believe it's now seven days. So Flock and its system, and I'm addressing Flock just because that's the brand this city avails itself of. But I will say this on its effectiveness, when you look at the string of robberies we had, very dangerous, a lot of very serious crimes. One is the city purchased cameras that we are able to access through our real-time watch center. Those helped by being – there was a person arrested originally, and those helped identify that person as innocent. We were able to get them out of custody very quickly once the detective got a hold of the video. So that's a positive. SECOND, THE FLOT CAMERAS REDUCED THE TIME IT TOOK US TO INVESTIGATE THIS ISSUE SIGNIFICANTLY. IT MAY HAVE BEEN WEEKS BEFORE THIS PERSON WAS CAUGHT IF WE DID NOT HAVE THE AOPR CAMERAS IN PLACE. THOSE CAMERAS REDUCED, I MEAN, WE HAD INFORMATION VERY QUICKLY AND WE WERE ABLE TO, YOU KNOW, help solve this case very quickly and take a you know and make the city safe again and that's what's important and that's what the flock is used for so again at our station one two you know up to this date i have no knowledge of any of our flock information um or any well really the city owns the information but any of that information being shared or leaked at this point. Two is we have a need to know basis. It has to be investigatory. You have to have a reason to access it. Now, there are some hits that come up, you know, if Flock indicates a stolen vehicle. Three is it takes a picture of the license plate in the back of the vehicle. These systems don't take a picture of your face. And what people should know is if you're in public, for instance if you're standing outside city hall on the public sidewalk and somebody's filming everybody in their cars leaving that's completely legal and the law enforcement can't stop them from doing so i know it sounds scary and dystopian but that's the truth so um i want to say that you know we do our best to keep your information um you know we use this system in a responsible manner and And we want to always garner public trust when we are availed of these tools. So other than that, I think I addressed just about all the issues. Some of them were kind of repetitive regarding the same concerns on the same areas. So I want to give counsel the chance to ask me any questions.

So Ed, we'll start with you.

Questions and comments? Well, I'm gonna try something different. I'm gonna defer to Alicia. And the reason for that, I'm in Greater Mulwood, I'm a little higher than she is. Her house is right on Mulholland. So I hear the echo noise coming up and we could have gotten somebody in Mulholland Heights to be here tonight, but it would be the same noise. She's right there. I'd like to follow her and please take the lead on it.

Is that okay? Thanks. Thank you for being here and thank you for being open to hearing all of this. This is a conversation that we start with every captain, and we always think we're making progress, and then it stops. It is such a huge issue. We've always said, like, someone's going to die on Mulholland Highway, and someone did outside the city limits, but it is people's street race, the donuts. It wakes us up in the middle of the night. You can look at your call logs. My whole family, like, your number's on speed dial, not yours, the station. I mean, our neighborhood chat, is all about street racing and just how dangerous it is. And it's not the times of day that you're out there. I don't think you're picking up the severity of this. It's night times. And on Saturdays and Sundays, the street clubs or the racing, whatever it is, there's never law enforcement out there. And I'm out a lot. Some of the callers, I see them constantly on my walks. I do a lot of work on phone calls. So I'm out. looping Mulholland and it is just, it is so dangerous from my backyard. You hear it. We call all the time. Another issue is you call and sometimes the people answering the phone are like, where is this? No, that's not lost Hills. They'll say like, you need to call CHP. I'm like, no, I identify myself. I go, I know this is lost Hills. So there's like a delay in response, but there truly is no law enforcement presence out on the weekends. or at night in this stretch. And it just, we have to do better. People call the station, they make reports. I echo what, I don't know if it was, someone said, you go out the next morning and you see where the donuts were in the street. You see it, there's physical, physical proof. But we just, it's in addition to the modified exhaust, which I understand that's a conversation my husband and I had this past weekend. because I was trying to video it. I'm like, are they speeding or does it sound like it? But there is just so much activity on the weekends. It's constant. It's so unsafe. And I just want to read real quick from a resident who couldn't be here. There was an HOA meeting tonight, but she just wrote, one of our residents was supposed to attend, but okay. she was a witness during the accident on mulholland highway a few weeks ago she spoke to an officer on the scene at the time and wanted to give her statement but was told they weren't interested in hearing from her that seemed a little harsh and also not very efficient in dealing with the incident the other issue regarding speeding on the highway people don't understand why there aren't more police vehicles on that stretch of highway giving out numerous tickets that to me is the only way to deter people from speeding so i just i really ask if we could put someone out there on the weekends to see. You are invited into our gate. You can get a great view. You can come to my backyard. I know everyone that's here tonight has offered their homes, their driveways. It is such an issue for this community. And I'm hoping that you're the captain that can solve it after all of these years. So I have great faith in it that we can really fix it this time around. So thank you.

Are you done with your comments?

Yeah, just we need help. Okay.

Ed, did you want to comment further? Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to double up on what Alicia said. It is relentless. But on the good side, from what I hear on top of the hill, it's slowed down a little bit. I'm not sure what. Mostly at night during the week. The weekends, still it's loud and noisy. The invitation of having, when you're at mall hall, If you have a vehicle you want to show off or a motorcycle club, this is a great place to come on the weekend and air it out. You make the left turn on Mulholland, it's a two lane, it comes down to one, so now you can do your thing. And it's a beautiful scenic roadway, it goes for quite a while. And then you have the return trip, which is just as much fun because it's just as long. You got your hands full. We all have our hands full. I wish we could help in some way, except point out to you the areas that really need to be serviced. Just one thing. I heard you say that the retention on the flock is now down to seven days.

That's what flock announced, yes.

Is that going to hurt a little bit? I think so.

Short answer, yes, but we have to work with the tools we have.

Okay, well, I'm not going to reiterate what everybody said. Thank you for taking the heat tonight.

Absolutely. Peter. My pleasure.

Thank you. First of all, I want to say we appreciate the Lost Hill Sheriff's Department and all the work that you're doing here. We love you guys. We know that you're the ones that we call on in the time of need, and I want to express my gratitude. With that, I'd like to dig a little deeper into some of these numbers because I see a problem here. In the enforcement priorities report where you gave us the statistics on page two here, they're sorted by 50% volume and 50% speed. What that means is this list is the highest speeds of the most number of cars at the same time.

Was that the second slide? Yes, it is. Okay, that was from the city's speed data collecting.

Yeah, so speaking of that, we as a city had some speed trailers, but we were told that they couldn't aggregate the data, so they were of no use. So we actually spent some money and bought some better trailers so that we could do this. In the top right-hand corner, just above the blue bar, you'll see rank results by 50% volume, 50% speed. That's why none of these numbers are drastically high speeds. I'd like to see this list. Does this list get printed by you guys or by us?

It's provided by the city.

Okay. So if we could sort this list just by speed, I want to know what the highest speed is there. And I want to know what time the top 20 highest speeds are, because I think if we do that, we're going to find it coincides with what the public is telling us, that it's Friday and Saturday night between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. And Wednesday night. And Wednesday night. I don't know what it's going to say, but... We've got all of this great data here, but I don't think we're sorting it correctly. So let's look at it as just the highest speed. Now that means when you guys go out there, instead of getting five tickets for people doing 55, you're going to get one ticket for somebody doing 80. maybe that's what we need to be doing now to to really stop this street racing to send the message that we're looking out during the times with the street racing is happening In looking at some of these other numbers, I'm really shocked. Our little stretch here in Calabasas, 22 speeding tickets, 101 violations compared to the rest of the canyons project, 822 and 1631. We're like less than 5% of what's going on out there. How big is the canyons project?

Well, that goes through the canyons. You're looking at Topanga, Mulholland, going down to Malibu Canyon. Stunt, there's Canaan. And, you know, sometimes we go further west, but it's not as often. But that's what you're – the main concentration is this area. mountainous area in this general area surrounding Calabasas. That's really our main focus. One thing I did want to mention on those numbers is the numbers we gave you are just the city limit stretch of Mulholland. And the numbers we gave you on the Safe Canyons were our Safe Canyons numbers when we're doing those operations. That doesn't account for the entire city and the enforcement in there. You'll find that when you look at your crime reports we provide monthly, that your total number of hazardous citations is far greater than that. And enforcement's being done in some other areas of the city as well.

Okay, so I'd ask our city manager then, could you share with us at some point what percentage Of violations, these 101 violations represent compared to the same period of time since January for across the entire city. I mean, what we're trying to do, what we're begging you to do is to focus your enforcement on this little tiny stretch of land. And I know you've got a lot more to patrol, and it's good to stop speeders everywhere. but we're hearing a big problem here and we've been trying to get the focus here for a long time and we're just going to keep asking until we get it uh... you know we do have a motor deputy assigned to the city of calabasas and you know uh... there's obviously lots of roadways to cover we're just emphasizing to you that this little stretch of road is our priority You also mentioned that the enforcements were over 20 miles an hour over the speed limit.

Most of them. Most of them.

But what this report in front of us is showing us is that most of the violations were about 15 miles an hour over the speed limit. So what we're finding here is the wrong time of day to be enforcing this. We're looking for the worst offenders. Because I think if we looked at any street in Calabasas, we would find a similar set of statistics that most drivers are driving over the speed limit. But that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for the very dangerous events, the things that are hazardous to our residents pulling out of their driveways. That's enough of a tirade here. I do want to say I appreciate what you're doing. I just think we're focusing our efforts in the wrong spot. And I'd ask our city manager to work with us and get the right data in front of us so that we can quantify where this street racing is happening. I will say for the flock cameras as well, was not expecting to respond to the earlier public comment, but the agenda item that's in front of us is, if I can get the title of it here. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department report, so I think I can respond to it. It's part of what's in here. Almost a year ago when the flock camera issue started showing up, I reached out to our city manager and city attorney for some more information. And then I did so again about two months ago now. And for the public, what I did learn is There's California compliance rules and regulations for automated license plate readers, which are far and above the stories that we're hearing about other parts of the country. Those include that the devices have to be coded with the organization type, and ours is a government organization. It is not an HOA. It's not accessible to an HOA. It's got to be tagged with its location of California, meaning that it has to comply with the laws of the state of California. Hard-coded into these devices are the requirements that there's no user interface, there's zero administrative overrides, There's source code has got to be reviewed by two peers before it's locked into the device of two peer agencies. And there's an interagency share block in these. These, again, are the California requirements for automated license plate readers. Participation requires the exact license plate match and its mandatory search features must be filled out in order to do a search on it. I'm sharing this with the public because I too have read a lot of newspaper articles about problems in Atlanta and problems in New York. I am probably one of the most Least likely person to vote for a flock camera. My location is turned off on my phone. I search in incognito mode. I don't like being tracked. I would be wearing a tinfoil hat except for they're not allowed with the dress code here. but as far as the flock cameras in our city, I see them as doing good, and I believe the safeguards are in place, and I certainly respect the LA County Sheriff's Department and the way that they've been operating with our flock cameras, and I would suggest that we continue to do so.

Thank you. Okay. You've made your comments, Alicia, so we'll turn to David. David?

I'll shorten mine as well first by thanking you for being here and for the report and for the information and hearing the public and our comments as well and hopefully coming to some new ideas new solutions if we can do that together and it's not just the sheriffs it's the city it's the public it's CHP as you mentioned joint programs my colleagues comments were spot on I'll say I'm not going to repeat them I'll just say it's obvious this is such a an important safety issue for the city it's not about it is disturbing I can tell you I was one of the people who might have been one of the 878 1808 calls on July 4th because fireworks were going off for quite some time many many many minutes it wasn't just a a minute or two, and they were pretty disturbing. And there's a lot of people you've heard tonight, and all of us, I hear going up and down Parkway the same noise or the modified vehicles, or maybe not, just speeding late, late, late at night on a regular basis. And it's all throughout the city. And it's not just the disturbance, it's the danger, it's the potentiality for a loss of life or just tragic consequences. And that's what I think I'm hearing as an overriding concern. I know it is for all of us here. So it is important. Just a couple quick questions and I'll stop. I know the decoys have not been working for a while, not been prevalent. I won't make a joke. What about the use of, and are you allowed to, do we have them, do you have them, unmarked cars, rather than having them immediately identified so you see the little hat and the uniform on an app?

You mean insofar as enforcement's concerned? Yes. We have to follow certain provisions of the law, and in general, unmarked cars, um don't do traffic stops because they're not all equipped with the provisions of the law so um unless there's certain exigent circumstances that you can use an unmarked car right but for the most part we're prohibited from doing general enforcement in an unmarked car right i was so chp's new fancy cars have the absolute bare minimum that is required for this enforcement i mean you can barely see that law enforcement symbol on the side of their car. So I know everyone has probably seen them around, but we don't have such a vehicle at this point on our department.

And again, you've heard all the questions and the requests to do more of the pleas. And please, we look forward to updated, exciting plans on e-bikes when we hear about them, additional safety joint. work with the city and chp but whatever we can do to come help come up with some new ideas or new suggestions to help solve this problem would be tremendous thank you thank you

I just have a couple comments. First of all, I very much appreciate the Lost Hills Sheriff's Department, the Sheriff's Station, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. This community has always been among the most supportive. In fact, all the cities here in the Conejo Valley are very supportive of law enforcement. I know firsthand as a career prosecutor what You guys go through all you have to put up with. You get a hard time from the media, particularly the Los Angeles Rag, formerly known as the Los Angeles Times. And you know, you don't get thanked enough.

I have two points, questions and points.

One is a question I get a lot. What's the most effective way for people to express to the Sheriff's Department, hey, not a particular crime, but just in general, there's speeding on my street, or there's problems with kids at night, or there's e-bikes accumulating and drag racing. How do they convey that most effectively to you

in a long-term way rather than just a single crime there's a couple of ways um one is we we did establish the traffic tip email that's one way but the other way is i have people from every city on the community advisory committee we usually open up for additional members in october which we will again this year but though the the people that come we try to get leaders hoas or other concerned members of the community and we invite them to come and they get, you know, we do quarterly meetings. They're usually about an hour or hour and a half, but they have, I go over, GENERAL CRIME TRENDS, I GO OVER, YOU KNOW, WE TRY TO GIVE THEM A PRESENTATION ON THE FEATURES OF THE DEPARTMENT, BUT THEY ALSO GET ONE-ON-ONE QUESTIONING WITH ME FOR THAT TIME. AND, YOU KNOW, A LITTLE BIT OF BEFORE AND A LITTLE BIT OF AFTER AS WELL. SO I THINK THAT'S ALWAYS A NICE EFFECTIVE WAY OF ADDRESSING THESE THINGS, BECAUSE ONCE I GET THIS INFORMATION, JUST LIKE TONIGHT, YOU KNOW, I HAVE A LIST OF THINGS TO GO OVER WITH MY STAFF. um they give you know i pretty much look at everything and see what we can do about each one of the issues that they're bringing up and try to be effective in that way so community advisory committee is definitely another way we that is effective in getting us on top of calling the station when individual incidents occur so um again uh our community uh What is it? I'm sorry. I'm losing my train of thought today. Our community relations deputies will be reaching out to the communities once October hits to see if anyone wants to become a new member. We do have a sign-up roster. We do have a limit just because of space and everything. But, you know, we have a good advisory committee. We have about 20 people on it. and that's a very healthy committee for the area we have. So we do have a limit number of about 25, but again, I always try to welcome people from every city that we serve to come serve on this advisory committee and give me their genuine, unfiltered feedback, because that's what I'm looking for.

Okay, the other thing is, Some of us up here have talked about getting additional law enforcement services, additional patrols, We have some funding to do that now through Measure K. But we've been told by the sheriff's department and I've been told by the sheriff that they don't have the personnel to give us. Contract cities cannot purchase additional services at this time and that they're working hard to get new deputies through the academy and ready to go. So do we have any kind of estimated time for when that might be available?

I don't have an estimated time on when the growth board moratorium will end frankly, but with with the measure K money, and we may be able to find another way. Like, we do the safe canyons operations. Those are in the county areas. We may be able to see if we can utilize that money for operations on your stretch of my Holland. and use that money to concentrate there so there might be even though i can't offer you another full-time deputy i may be able to depending on the provisions of measure k um offer you know maybe some operational uh operations on the weekends or something like that that we could utilize uh that fund those funds for

How about in a very technical sense, we recently annexed some territory in Craftsman's Corner, as you know, that you used to patrol for the county, but now it's city land. Is there any exemption for that kind of situation where we acquire new territory? Do we get the opportunity to get additional services?

Not at this time. Right now, because of our staffing issues, now I will admit that our station has made strides. We've solved about half of our staffing shortages on the patrol front. um but we're still short 18. so that's what we're looking at right now so until we get to a healthy level of staffing i don't think this moratorium is going to be lifted so even if you annex you know additional additional land um you know um i i would not be able to say that we would be able to add additional services at this time okay um please let us know

when that might be available, or better yet, what opportunities there are for us as elected officials to lobby for that, if there are meetings or forums or agenda items or something that you have, because I think there is interest in the community.

Yes, sir.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

No, thank you for having me. I actually appreciated this. We appreciate all the feedback from the community. Thank you very much.

So we've been going over two hours. Let's take a 10-minute break. Is that good? And then we'll come back and we'll discuss which items we might have to defer because it is getting quite late. Thank you. We're gonna move on to the next item, which is council announcements. Ed, do you have any council announcements? Thank you.

A couple things. I had the pleasure of being at the Palisades Village Ribbon Cutting Caruso Shopping Center a week ago Saturday, and it's quite amazing. I'm sure ours is going to look equal or even better. It was nice to see the community come back to life, and it looks like the Palisades is beginning to. I'd only been down there once or twice, but it was just awesome. A wonderful developer and we're fortunate to have him in our city and pretty soon we'll have our own ribbon cutting. So that would be exciting to participate in. The Calabasas Community Foundation is having, as I mentioned last council meeting, a golf tournament. It was scheduled for November 9th, and that's moved into May 15th to be able to give the committee an opportunity to make it much more of a splash event. And they're excited of doing it. We've got a lot of sponsors coming in. So I'll be constantly being a nag about that and reminding the public. I think it'll be a wonderful moment. If you can't even play golf, you want to come by for the meal afterwards and meet and mingle, that would be great. And also, my last announcement, we bid farewell to our city trolley where all of us took pictures on it. It'll be a little bit of history. And it was nice to see that, giving it a nice farewell. Those are my announcements.

Yeah, just wanted to add to that. The Foundation, which benefits Las Virginas Unified School District, is having their annual carnival coming up September 4th through September 6th. It'll be at the Wisden Center. So come on out, bring the kids, have some fun, and help benefit our local school district.

Alicia?

Nothing at this time.

I don't have any additional ones at this time either. Let's move to our consent calendar, which is items 8 and 9. Is there any no comments? So moved. Second. All right. All those in favor? Aye. 4-0. Next, we have item 10, a public hearing, accessory dwelling unit ordinance update. And...

who's giving the report.

We're gonna forego our PowerPoint. Correct. But that is gonna be placed online for the public. So just give us a verbal opening for this.

Yeah, and it's gonna be very, very quick. It's just, it is an ordinance to completely rescind chapter 17-12-170 and replace it with a new chapter to bring our accessory dwelling units ordinance into compliance with state law. I do want to recognize that Tom Bartlett, who was recognized tonight retiring, did the legwork. So I don't want to take credit for his work. He did a lot of work on this, and he did a great job. So all the analysis is in your staff report, and I'm going to end it there. If you have any questions, let me know.

I don't have any comment cards from the audience. Do we have any comments online? Okay, we don't. So Peter, do you have any comments? Questions?

No questions.

Alicia?

No questions.

Ed?

No questions.

Okay, well I have a statement to make and it's just a very, I'll give a short version of it. It is my good faith belief that we're no longer bound by the housing element, which means that I analyzed this when I reviewed it independently of the housing element. and I felt it was too restrictive of our own municipal ordinances and our own city rights. Many things such as elimination of parking requirements, those are things that vastly affect our community and we cannot sustain it. The reason for my belief that we're no longer bound by the housing element is twofold. One is a continuing drop in California's population, which is now just hovering over 39 million, down from 40 million in year 2000. There is no need for, there's no nexus now between the housing laws and the reality. Second one is, in 2020, when Measure M was on the ballot, the Housing and Community Development Department of the state illegally funneled state money into the Yes on N campaign It amounted to theft of state funds illegally used for political purposes. Chief among those violating is a thug named Zachary Olmsted who really should be in prison for what he did and hopefully someday will be. But in any event, he was promoted after he did that. and therefore, there being no other remedy other than disqualifying HCD from enforcing the rules here within our city limits, that is what my remedy is. I will now, seeing no other comments, is there a motion?

So moved.

Seconded. And this is to adopt the ordinance update, correct? correct is that correct okay all those in favor aye and i am opposed that is a nay so it's three to one and then christy could you read the ordinance for us i'm sorry i didn't do that

The ordinance introduced was ordinance number 2026-426, waiving the full reading of the text, rescinding section 17.12.170 of the Calabasas Municipal Code regarding accessory dwelling units and replacing it with a new section 17.12.170 regarding accessory dwelling units to align the provisions with current California law.

Okay, and I did forget to mention that Council Member Shapiro had to leave during the break. All right, so it is past. We're going to go on to one item of new business, and that is the Senior Center Advisory Committee. Kendon, do you want to give a short report?

Thank you, Mayor. As noted in the staff report, the City Manager's Office and others have met repeatedly and often with members of our Senior Steering Committee to hear their concerns about potential development in the parking lot adjacent to City Hall. AT OUR MOST RECENT MEETING IN JULY, THE RECOMMENDATION WAS BROUGHT FORTH THAT WE MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER AN AD HOC COMMITTEE CONSISTING OF TWO COUNCIL MEMBERS, MEMBERS OF THE SENIOR STEERING COMMITTEE AND ALSO MEMBERS OF STAFF, BOTH THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE AND COMMUNITY SERVICES. specifically looking at any effects to programming accessibility and other matters to the senior center and in general to the Civic Center so at this time council if if you are so willing we'd like to have a discussion on an ad hoc committee and then if there is a recommendation to have two council members appointed to that committee okay Christy is there any public comment

There's none. So I will start. I would like to be on this committee if that is okay. I don't know. I haven't talked to anybody about this, so I don't know what interest level there is. We'll start out with Alicia.

I would be interested.

Peter.

I will defer to you, the two of you. Ed.

I'd be interested. To the three of you.

No, I mean, you'll be, you would have priority. If you want to do it, I'm fine either way. We can flip a coin.

Okay, so then the motion would be for myself and Ed to be on the committee.

Is that correct?

Okay, would someone like to make the motion?

So moved.

I'll second that.

Okay, all those in favor? Aye. It's 4-0. Council Member Shapiro asks that we defer item 12, which is getting late anyways, which is fine. So can we just defer it without a motion? Pam, I'm assuming.

You can do it by consensus and just provide the date to which you're referring the matter.

Okay.

What is the next, September 9th?

September 9th is our next scheduled meeting, and we will work to make sure that it's not a crowded meeting. We'll look at either September 9th, but that would be preferable.

Okay, September 9th, and that is the end of the agenda verbal reports.

Ed, do you have anything?

economic alliance tomorrow at eight o'clock and beyond that uh not much until we get into the month of september okay uh peter nothing to report alicia nothing to report you know i do not kendon do you have a c manager report at all nothing to report tonight mayor and council members okay so the next meeting of the city council will be on september 9th and we are at 9 35 adjourning

Thank you.