City - Regular Meeting

Thank you for joining us this evening. If I could have you all stand for the invitation, please. Mayor Prom. Father in heaven, we give you praise, honor, and glory because of who you are. We thank you for this day. We thank you for your mercy and grace. We thank you for this assembly here this evening. Father, I just pray that you will give us wisdom and understanding as we move through the agenda that's set before us tonight to make wise decisions for our city. We ask that you bless our nation, bless our country, bless our leaders throughout the United States. And with that, we give you praise and honor in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. like to call this meeting to order for March 18th, 2026. And Commander Meldon, could we have the pledge, please? Aliance 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, if we could have roll call, please. Here. Yamus here. Chavez here. Lewis here. Amil

I am here. First item is consideration of the approval as submitted. If we could have a adopt the agenda as submitted. If we could have a motion a second, please. So moved. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as submitted. Any further questions or comments? I hear any. All in favor signify by saying I. I.

Opposed eyes have it. We have some presentations. Brenda, come forward. So, uh, Brenda is is a is technician one, human resource department. She does a lot of work, of course, for our human resource department, as obvious, but she also does a lot of work for me, too, and the city council. We really appreciate all the work she does for the city for citizens. It's a human resources very important department in our community in our city and it's my pleasure at the certificate of recognition presented to Brenda Sea HR technician one human resource department in recognition of your outstanding performance and dedication dedicated service to the city of Lasanis and for being named employee of the month for February 2026. CONGRATULATIONS THANK YOU. We're very proud of our employees. Blanch, you're up next. So, if you watch our meetings, come come forward, Blanch. You're not shy. I know that.

No, but you did leave me. You guys left me speechless. What a surprise. So Blanch is at almost nearly every meeting. I mean misses one or two very seldom and she dedicates a lot of her time, energy, and expertise to our animal control uh department through the police department. She's I've had uh quite a few communications with residents that have had issues with cats and dogs and we call Blanch because she will take care of it and make sure everything is handled correctly humanely and you take care of the residents and I I have emails that are just thanking you so much for what you do and we can't thank you enough from the city and it's our honor and Ivan had a lot to do this.

Yeah. Come on. Come forward, Ivan. You You got to be here, too. Yeah.

I didn't see you over there. So, Ivan's also in charge of animal control. And between the both of them and the the whole police department, it's work really well together. And it's our honor, the city council's honor to have the certificate of recognition presented to Blanch George in recognition of the dedicated volunteer service, volunteer service at the Los Bass Animal Shelter. Your compassion, generosity, and commitment to the care and well-being of animals have made a meaningful difference in the lives of countless pets and their owners and in our entire community. And we can't thank you enough. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

People like branch make a difference in our community and we can't thank them enough. Let's see. This is organizing professional finance. So Minnie Morano, we have the whole the whole department's here. The whole team's here. So you as you know with your own personal finances how important keeping things in order for our city, all the different accounts, all the audits we do, everything. It's it's so important and and this team right here led by many has done an outstanding job for our city and it's the city council's honored to proclaim recognizing government finance professional week in the city of Lasis. Whereas government finance professionals serve cities, counties, special districts and joint power authorities by ensuring transparency, accountability, responsible stewardship of public funds. These professionals play a critical role in managing complex budgets, complying with state and federal laws, maintaining accurate financial reporting in compliance with government accounting standards, administrating utility rates processes and enterprise funds, and supporting long-term financial sustainability. Whereas California's financial landscape shaped by Proposition 13, Proposition 218, the GAN appropriation limit, and Kalpers's pension obligations and fluctuating economic conditions require expert analysis and sound financial leadership. And whereas finance professionals work diligently, often behind the scenes to provide critical information that

enables informed policy decisions and ensures the delivery of essential public services. And whereas recognizing government financial professionals week during the last week of March helps highlight the dedication, integrity, and professionalism of these essential public servants. Now therefore, be it proclaimed that the mayor and the city council of the city of Lasanis do hereby proclaim the last week of March as government finance finance professional week and encourages all residents to recognize and appreciate the hard work and contributions of our finance professionals who serve our community. Thank you all very much. Congratulations Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's picture time.

Thank you all very much. APPRECIATE YOU ALL. OKAY, NOW WE'LL MOVE ON TO new employee introductions and we'll go to our city manager, Mr. Than, introduce this item, please.

Thank you, mayor. So, the first one we have on the list is going to be with the police department. So, Commander,

hello. Uh, Mr. Mr. Mayor, members of council, it's my uh pleasure to introduce our newest maintenance worker, maintenance one, uh Nicholas Ro. His he's an Army veteran. He came to us after serving as a uh maintenance person for the community of Gilroy for several years. Uh he and his family reside here in the city of Los Banis and we're very lucky to have uh convinced him to join our team at the police department and I just wanted to take an opportunity to introduce him. So this is Nicholas. Thank you.

And then for the next one we have it from public work department. So William,

good evening mayor and city council members. Tonight we have two new public works employees. Um the first is V Virginia Chavez. The uh she's an admin clerk at the F Street Operations. Virginia, she's not she's not here tonight. Um she started on Monday, so it's it's pretty new. Um two days ago, uh not counting today. And then the other is Jose Dwarte. He's a streets mainten maintenance worker one also at F Street and he also started um on Monday. And Oh, come on up. Come on up. We're glad you're here.

Congratulations. And this is Jose, every Thank you very much.

That's all the employees that we have coming up on this for this month, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Don. And we welcome all our new employees. Okay. Next item seven, Merced County Environmental Health presentation regarding unpermitted vendors enforcement by Mark Mens, director of community and economic development and Amanda Durand, direct deputy director of the environmental health division and commander. Is there anything else you want to say on on this item?

That that will be it. Uh I'm also Yeah. Okay. Please come forward. just on behalf of the police department. We're very uh fortunate to have such a strong partnership with our county uh representatives and we're we're glad to see them present here today. Council. Yeah. Thank Thank you both for being here. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and uh council members. My name is Mark Mims. I'm the director of community and economic development for the county of Merced. And in our uh multiple divisions we have in our department, environmental health is one. And over the last uh past the year, our supervisors have made it a huge effort to increase our efforts towards unpermitted food vending. We know this is an issue plaguing throughout the county and the cities but also the state. Um and I'm excited to have Amanda who will be coming up is who's our dire deputy director o watching over environmental health. And she has become a lead in the county but also the state. Other states are looking at her. Other counties are working with her to help combat unpermitted food vending. Before she comes up, I'd like to thank the city manager and the city PD for their help and their support for us and our sheriffs who have to come out and do sweeps throughout um throughout the area to help combat. So, now I'd like to welcome Amanda Duran, our deputy director of environmental health.

Welcome.

Hi, good evening. Thank you for having us. Um I also want to thank Ivan. is great great at um communate communicating and coordinating um all of our sweep events with our staff. Um so I'm just going to start off with some of our authority our code sections that we use. So environmental health uses health and safety code. Um and you could I'm not going to read them all one by one, but it basically gives us the authority to impound food and equipment that's unsanitary or contaminated. It gives us the authority to enter, inspect, issue citations from food facilities or a facility that's suspected to be a food facility. So, someone, you know, possibly cooking and selling food out of a place that's not necessarily permitted. Um, and it also gives us the authority to triple find, um, people operating without permits. Um, a few of the other things I like to bring up, um, especially for the citizens, if you have unpermitted food vendors operating on your property, there is the letter of authority, which allows, um, law enforcement to, um, remove people for trespassing. Um, some of the other codes that we work with is I know Monterey County is using vehicle code and we're currently um, looking into that with our DA's office to impound vehicles that are used um, to commit a public offense. Um, as we have been investigating some of these crimes, we've noticed that this is a larger scale operation. Um, it's ran more like a criminal um, enterprise. And so, we're looking at some penal codes and tax evasion um, currently. So, in environmental health, we're able to, like I said, we're able to triple fine the violators. So, our typical case will go out um, to the unpermitted food vendors. same people every time we go out. They know us, we know them, they know the drill. Um we we write down everything that they have out there, temp their food, there's no refrigeration, there's no handwashing, and so they'll get a typical um invoice that looks something like this. However

many staff are out there, we're able to find them um with our hourly rate times how many staff and then um a triple fee of the permit. To the right, you can see the different operations class and the cost of the permits. And then in the parentheses is the triple fee that we do charge them. So these might you might you know recognize over off overland in Los Banos. This is a typical setup. You could see there's no soap, no sanitizer, um no refrigeration. Typically we find meat in bags. A lot of times the people working at these sites um they've they've drove over an hour um in the middle of the summertime. you're thinking they're traveling through the county or through multiple counties with meat that's not refrigerated. Um, which could cause contamination along with those buckets that have raw produce in it. Um, just open exposed. Um, so just very dangerous for the public health and safety. Um, here's another popular one, Henry Miller and Highway 165. He's also a regular. He's been a regular for a few years now. Um, so they also they coordinate with each other as like I explained, it's part of a part of a more criminal organization. Um, when we stop at one vendor, they're calling the other vendor, hey, they're here. And so they're they're setting up some or like putting their stuff away before we could even get to the other one. Um, typically you'll see a setup, they have it in a trash bag. They're not storing it on ice refrigeration. um what they sell Thursday, what they don't sell Thursday night. They put it in the trash bag, take it home, and bring it back in the same trash bag for Friday night. Um we have found maggots, which I have it circled nicely on that a pack of tortillas. Um so my my staff were out here last week and they were telling me when they pulled up, he grabbed the vertical rotisserie and just threw it in his front seat. And so didn't didn't put it in didn't put it any type of containers, any packaging, just right on the front seat. and I'm

sure he's brought that same meat out the next night. Um, so like I said, it's it's contaminated. It's it's not, you know, safe for public consumption. Um, so earlier in the in the when I was reading the um code sections where I say we could enter inspect citation from food facilities or facilities suspected of being food facilities. This is what we would call commissary. So your typical mo mobile food vendor has to have what's called a commissary to prep their food. It's a safe environment where they could they could prep their food to sell to the public. Um, so you could see there's multiple vans. All those vans, we ran license plates to other unpermitted food vendors, pops up on the side of the road. Um, there was about 30 vehicles out there. And all the food, you can see it's being stored in trash bags outside in a warehouse. Um, this was a hot day, so it wasn't in a warehouse. When it was cold, it was warm. Um, you could see the condition of there's meat inside the refrigerator that was not plugged in. Um over here you could see they're making salsa and trash cans. They have raw meat next to raw onions, produce. Um they had a wash station which was just a hose, no soap, no sanitizer. Um so all those containers that had the raw produce in it was mixed in with um raw meat and they were just spraying it down. And um when I went in there was multiple people which which looked more like a um trafficking type organization. um the way people ran. Um and so that's that's kind of why the um unpermitted food vendor there is some higher level investigations going on. Um so this is I put this one on there. Um when we impound our equipment, we keep it in a storage unit. We keep it for 30 days. Um when we get when we impound equipment, the the operators have 30 30 days to come in, pay their fees or ask for an office hearing and kind of state their case. um they they can get their equipment back. They rarely do. I think

we've had one person in the year and a half come and get their equipment. So, we typically landfill it. We're working with our council on um recycling the uh stainless steel equipment so we don't have to landfill everything. Um one thing I wanted to bring up for Los Spanos, I know we have a lot of um home kitchens here. Um constantly seeing it on Facebook and they post their address. This is where you come get it. Um, currently Mikos is not approved in Merced County. Um, there are other things. I put some flyers on the back table for cottage food. So, if if residents want to sell out of their house, they need to work with the city of Los Spanos and Merced County to kind of get that cottage food operation. But Microenterprise Home Kitchen like this one, which is an actual post, I just blocked out the names. Um, you know, and I would just like to stress to the public, you don't know who's cooking the food, what the inside of their house looks like. Do they have cats running across the counter? Did their kid drop the food on the floor and and pick it back up? Um, we we get complaints all the time. I bought a a milkshake from someone's house and I got sick or there was a fingernail in it. I had I had that one. There was a fingernail in the milkshake and Well, you bought it out of someone's house, you know. Um, but this is not approved. Um there are ways to um cook food in your house if you'd like to do that. Um we're also doing a lot of communication and rout out outreach with the community. Um we we got ourselves a little pop-up so we could do community events, fairs. So if there's any events that you guys want us to come out to, we're we're we're ready. Um, we've been doing a lot of meetings with our business owners, um, presenting at community clubs and organizations, meeting with our city managers and chief of police, um, presentations, and we do have a lot of there's a lot of news articles out there that have been getting some traction. And, um, I left some postcards and some flyers on the back as well that we share with our

business owners if they want to leave it out at their facilities. That's a copy of the postcard. Um, so it kind of just gives the brief, you know, for um the public, how to spot unpermitted food vending, no permit, operating on the roadside, parking lot, no handwashing, no food storage or fridge, um transportation without without refrigeration. A lot of times when someone comes up to me like, "Are they permitted?" I say, the first thing I say, "Did you see somewhere for them to wash their hands?" Probably not. Um, and so the QR codes go to our website. Um, how to fill out a complaint and it goes directly to our emails and then how to get permitted as well. That's it.

Oh, we really appreciate you and telling you what's going on. You going to be at the spring fair? Probably. We can. Yeah. Yeah. Um it almost seems like we're going backwards a little bit recently with all these unlicensed vendors, you know, compared to like 20 years ago, you didn't see them. Um I was hearing that a lot of like you said, they're organized. They're coming from out of town. They're coming to to the surrounding cities in Merced County.

Yeah. So we do um so ours myself and my supervisors have klutz clearance and so we're we're able to work with law enforcement to run license plates and we keep track of all the owners. Um and we have found we we have someone who has has given us information and we have found um kind of a the network of the criminal operation that's going on. Um we are work I work really closely with the DA investigator out of Monterey County. Um, more recently the DA and the director out of Stannis Loss County reached out in the past couple weeks to collaborate. Um, we just met with our DA's office and so kind of just building, you know, our network and seeing just how far is this network going and um like the the commissary that I showed you guys.

So, there was another commissary we had um September 2024. Um we do uh illegal cannabis grow operation with our sheriff's and um we went out to a cannabis grow and it ended up being a large honey butane operation which led to another search warrant at um another property in Atwater that was they had 16 vehicles. They had 18 people and a baby living in one house. Um it was looks like look like this, you know, just food out on the floor. Um and they also had drugs there as well. And so it's kind of tying in um the unpermitted food vending with this drug organization and it seems to be the same people's names just keep popping up, you know, within our county, within other counties.

Well, we can't Is there any questions from the council? We can't thank you and your department enough for doing this and the sheriff's Merced County supervisors are on this. This is very important because this we people can die because of this. Definitely. You know, it's a very uh food poisoning is very serious. Yeah. And we really do appreciate it. I'm I'm glad you brought it forward so everybody knows how it's being handled and I have seen a lot of postings online and on social media. We we appreciate that too. Awareness. Yeah.

Yeah. I do have a few questions. Thank you uh for coming today. Um, a couple of questions that I have is, uh, we were touching food vendors today, but I've seen vendors out in county area on private property, uh, selling flowers, fruit. Um, but it's it's really kind of hard to tell whether or not uh the vendor is legal, whether they've gone through the appropriate licensing through the county,

um, and those in the city, you know, which is is a different aspect. But, um, I know from the city that I grew up in, San Diego, uh, they have the, you know, the big letter, uh, like you get a A, a B, or a C rating for your license. Uh, and it and it's hard to to tell when you come up on someone whether or not they are legally selling something. Has the county thought about changing its process on how to identify and having a license posted upfront on on their tables or what have you large enough so that the public can see when they approach um the vendor.

Yeah. So, it it is legally required for them to post a picture of their permit up. Um, and any facility could ask, you know, I where I don't see your permit. Where's your permit? I always kind of stress also to the public, I mean, don't get into an argument with someone, you know, get but you can, but but as a as a public member, you could ask like, hey, do you have a permit? And so, they should it should be somewhere where the public could see a lot of the food trucks, they should have a sticker and the permit posted for to where you could see it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it might be something that our county board of supervisors can think about changing in our county is to have something that's more visible uh for the public to see because, you know, a small piece of paper is

uh a lot more difficult to identify than something larger that's posted out front for the public to see. Yeah. Um, the other thing is um fines. uh when when you're coming upon these illegal vendors, uh you're confiscating their property and such, usually the people that are out there generally are being trafficked. So, how do you how do you find these vendors who are doing this um with within the system without legal permitting? So, so we're not necessarily finding the people working

at the at the operation. when we go up and we approach and we tell them who we are and ask them who who's the owner, who's in charge, it's not us. Um, is the owner of the vehicle? Is that who's in charge? Yeah. So, if we so if we send the invoice to to them, that's that's who's going to get this letter. Are they the they're the owner of this operation? And most of the time it's Yeah. And we found that those are typically the owners or they'll give us a name. Every now and then we'll get a name, but we're not just straight to the person operating, you know, the the boots on the ground. It's usually we we do have a conversation when we're out there and try to figure out who the actual owner is.

So, again, is it just the food vendors that uh environmental health is going after? Are you going after the flower vendors or any other type of So, we we don't oversee flower vendors. Okay. So, it's a different Yeah, that would be business licenses if they have a business license. I think code code enforcement within the county. Code enforcement. That would be like a code enforcement within the county. Well, I know within our city how it happens, but within the county when they're out there on county property and you've got vendors that are selling uh food as well as flowers and some are just selling flowers. So, I I don't know if you guys are looking at that as well.

Yeah. If it's food. Yeah. Um, most recently we've gotten a few calls of people popped up in the in the early morning time and so I've sent my um I have a enforcement unit now and I've sent them out in the morning time and they came through Laspanos last week and through the other side of the county um to kind of see where we've heard, you know, people on the side selling the early morning breakfast burritos and stuff like that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for presentation. Appreciate it. I just want to make sure clear that the home kitchens are not authorized.

The mikos, so like the where they're cooking like full-on meals, you have you do have like your cottage food, which is your shelf stable food like cakes, cookies. Okay. Canned goods. Um that is something that could be permitted in the home, but um like a Mikos has not been um accepted into our ordinance. Very good. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah, has a few words.

Yeah. Well, I want to thank the county really for u bringing this up. I mean, since the last six months, this have efforts has start out from the county CEO as well all the city managers understanding the the needs. Um we all have gotten complaints from our community member people's has gotten sick from this and and it's really come down to safety and um public health. That's what it come down first. We want to make sure that people that are doing business within our cities are regulated and they are providing to the safest standard possible. So, thank you for doing that because I know the county went through quite a bit of efforts to increasing staffing in your division so that we can do this because we know that you know some of these criminal enterprise is not confined by geographical boundary. They are going from county to city to city to city. So now in a lot of these efforts we are doing it together with all of the other jurisdictions and a county and it's proven to be very effective. So, thank you very much for for making that happen.

Definitely. Thank you. Great. Well, again, thank you very much for being here this this evening and we appreciate the information. Thank you both. Okay, next item, item eight, is legislative updates. And we'll go to our city attorney, Mary Lerner.

Thank you, mayor, and members of council. Let me just get the clicker and we'll get started here. Perfect. Thank you. So, legislative updates. My plan is to do these quarterly throughout the year. So, we're going to go over some significant laws that went into effect beginning January 1, 2026. So then as we approach 2027, you can see what's coming down, what's being signed by the governor, um so that we can work together collectively to make sure our ordinances are updated accordingly and city policies are in line with um the laws. So each year, California enacts a number of new laws impacting municipalities and residents throughout the state. New legislation for 2026 includes noteworthy updates to the Brown Act, financial training requirements for public officials, housing and community topics, wildfire mitigation and water infrastructure, as well as a number of laws affecting residents directly. In total, legislators introduced over 2,300 bills in 2026 with approximately 900 of those reaching the governor's desk. One of the most significant pieces of legislation is SB77, which deals with a Brown Act update. It's the largest update to the Brown Act in decades. Effective January 1, 2026. All legislative bodies are now subject to new expanded teleconference rules. The law's goal is to increase public participation, improve access for diverse communities, and update the Brown Act for modern technology

technological realities. This was signed by the governor on October 3rd, 2025. It amends numerous provisions of the Brown Act. It also places new restrictions, expectations, and duties upon legislative bodies. And the changes are best understood in terms of what only applies to eligible legislative bodies versus what generally applies to all legislative bodies. And so that most significant change applying to the eligible legislative bodies, we define that term as a city council of a city with a population of 30,000 or more among other definitions um of public agencies that could be defined as an eligible legislative body. But for our purposes, it is a city council of a city with a population of 30,000 or more. So, this Senate bill has specific requirements related to two-way remote attendance and disruption procedures. The outreach that is required, the language translation and interpretation that will be required, rules applicable to legislative bodies in general will include teleconferencing updates, and then other changes that I will talk about. So, starting with the two-way remote attendance, unlike earlier versions of the Brown Act, the new law now requires eligible legislative bodies to offer hybrid meetings. This means the public must be able to participate through a two-way phone or video platform unless the meeting qualifies for an exemption such as an off-site tour that council may take. So honor before July 1 of this year, the city must also approve in open session in open session a policy regarding disruption of the mentioned services platforms and we have to show efforts to restore service within that policy. So,

if a disruption prevents the public from attending a meeting, the city council must take a recess or the planning commission, the body must take a recess and try to restore service for at least one hour. Afterward, it must adopt a finding by roll call vote confirming that good faith efforts were made to fix the issue and that resuming the meeting serves the public interest more than delaying it further. And so we will work as a staff to develop that policy and bring it to council for consideration and approval before July 1. Furthermore, this bill, Senate Bill 707, allows a legislative body or its preciding officer to also remove or limit participation from individuals engaging in disruptive behavior regardless of whether the individual is attending in person or via two-way audiovisisual or telephonic services. And so we often see when you start having the two-way visual or telephonic services, we see Zoom bombers. And so you do have the ability to remove them and I will work with council should that situation occur. The next prong is outreach. So this bill also requires the city to take specific actions to encourage residents to participate in public meetings including providing a system for electronically accepting and fulfilling requests for meeting agendas. Having an accessible internet web page dedicated to information concerning public meetings and how members of the public may participate, including a link to the page on the city's home page, and making reasonable efforts to invite groups that do not traditionally participate in public meetings to attend those meetings, such as outreach to media organizations serving non-English-speaking communities or civic engagement organizations. and the legisl the legislative body has broad discretion to implement these efforts

with respect to language translation and interpretation. The city has to translate the agenda and instructions on how to participate in meetings into any language spoken jointly by 20% or more of an applicable population that also speaks English less than very well according to the American Community Survey. And so I actually have a snapshot of that survey for the city of Losanos. And you can see here I've highlighted the square um for the Spanishspeaking population 21.6% speak English less than very well. That's your percentage that we need to look at. And so you will need to translate the agenda into Spanish as of July 1, 2026. You must also provide reasonable assistance to members of the public who wish to use personal interpreters, such as arranging space for interpreters and allowing extra time for interpretation. As a note, that's always been the law. So, for example, if someone needs interpretation services during public comment and public comment is 3 minutes, it needs to be adjusted to six minutes for that individual that needs the translation services. That has always been the law. The new webpage requirements for web pages dedicated to information concerning public meetings must be translated into any language spoken jointly by 20% or more of an applicable population that also speaks English less than very well. And again, that's Spanish for the city of Laspanos. You have to make a physical location within reasonable proximity to the location where the agenda is posted freely accessible to the public. So the public may post additional translations of the agenda. So perhaps there's other languages that don't meet that 20% threshold. They should have room to post a translation if they wanted to. So

rules applicable to legislative bodies in general. So we have teleconferencing updates. This bill reorganizes and expands the teleconferencing provisions of the Brown Act, adding some uniformity to noticing, disclosure, accessibility, and public comment requirements for certain types of teleconferencing. So for example, this bill revises and restates the existing teleconferencing provisions for states of emergency, just cause and emergency circumstances and expands coverage to include states of emergency declared by the localities and just cause allowances including physical or family medical emergencies preventing in-person attendance and military service. I actually have a chart that reflected the just cause and the emergency and then our traditional Brown Act rules that I will update with this additional information and then distribute to council. In addition, SB77 would allow agencies to permit attendance by a member of the legislative body via teleconferencing as an reasonable accommodation under applicable law, including the ADA. Those attending in accordance with this section must still disclose disclose any present adults and their relationship to them and participate via audio and camera unless their disability prevents such. Other changes copies of the Brown Act. The existing law encouraged agencies to provide copies of the Brown Act to the legislative body SBO SB77 now requires agencies to provide a copy of the Brown Act to any person elected or appointed. And I know the city manager has taken care of that distributing to our appointed bodies and then each of you received a Brown Act handbook that has the Brown Act text within it as well. So that requirement has been met.

So, skipping ahead to the now required financial training. So, SB827, this bill now requires certain local agency officials to complete at least 2 hours of fiscal and financial training every 2 years. This training will be in addition to the AB1234 ethics training that has been mandated since 2005. The bill also expands the categories of local agency officials that must complete the AB1234 training. So, here's where it gets a little technical. Officials who begin service before January 1 must complete their initial training before January 1, 2028. So, if you started before January 1, 2026, you have two years to complete unless your terms of service end before January 9, 2028, in which case you're excused. Officials beginning service on or after January 1, 2026 must complete their initial training within six months of their start dates and thereafter officials must complete an additional 2 hours every two years. So for example, our newest council member was seated last week. So he would have to complete his training within 6 months of being seated on the council. AB 339 city contracting AB 339 requires the city to perform an additional procedural step prior to making a contracting decision by providing 45 days notice to labor organizations about contracts for services that are the same as or similar to work performed by employees the labor organization represents before the city issues an RFP, an RFQ, or enters there's a renewal of or extension to a contract that covers services within the scope of job classifications represented by the

labor organization. Um, I know staff is already working on a policy for this and factoring in that 45 days into the RFP and RFQ process. Some contracts are exempt from this new notice requirement, including public works contracts for construction, alteration, demolition, installation, repair, and maintenance. And then contracts for services that are related to planning, design, administration, oversight, review, or delivery of public works, residential, commercial, or industrial buildings. for all other RFQS and RFPs and contract renewals and extensions that implicate bargaining unit work. The notice to the infected unit must include certain information such as the duration of the contract, the scope of work under the contract, the anticipated cost, the draft solicitation or if not yet drafted, the information that would normally go into one, and the reason the agency believes the contract is necessary. If an emergency or other exigent circumstances prevent the full notice period, the city is required to provide as much advanced notice as is practical under the circumstances. And we're not required to meet and confer over the actual issuance of the RFP. Rather, the new law only requires the city provide the notice to an affected union. However, the new notice requirement enhances the ability of labor unions to provide early input regarding decisions that may affect the employees they represent. And then also, we need to note that if an existing provides for a more substantial notice period, we have to default to theou provisions. And again, city staff is drafting an administrative policy. Um, in fact, Isabelle has been working on that closely with the department heads for compliance with AB339.

SB 634, Housing and Community, Senate Bill 634 declares homelessness a matter of statewide concern, not a municipal affair, and limits a local jurisdiction's authority to regulate activities related to homelessness. Specifically, this bill prohibits a city, county, or special district from adopting a local ordinance or enforcing an existing one that prohibits one, a person or organization from providing support services, this includes legal or medical care, to a person who is homeless, or two, assisting a person who is homeless with any act related to basic survival. And basic survival includes assisting with items or providing items related to eating and drinking, sleeping, protecting oneself from the elements, or other activities and items necessary for immediate personal health and hygiene. Senate Bill 346 provides local agencies with a new tool to address short-term rentals operating within its jurisdiction. Cities and counties can now enact an ordinance that requires short-term rental facilitators such as Airbnb and VRBO to share information about short-term rentals during a specified reporting period. So, a city is now able to invoke the new law to compel these short-term rental facilitators to share information about how they operate within the city. This new state law is not self-executing. A city must proactively invoke the new law by adopting an ordinance. Once the city does adopt such an ordinance, state law imposes a number of obligations on these short-term rental facilitators like Airbnb and VBO, including providing the physical address. The city can also

require the APN, the URL of the listing and unit specific information. The city can require at least quarterly reporting from these operators. The city may audit facilitators. That would be at the city's expense to ensure compliance. And you can also impose administrative fines for violations. AB 671 provides a new procedure for streamlined restaurant building plan approval. After making a request to a local building department, a permit applicant may pay for a licensed architect or engineer to certify that the plans and specifications of proposed tenant improvements comply with the applicable building health and safety code. Then these professional certifiers have um various obligations such as preparing affidavits under penalty of perjury relating to tenant improvements. Um, once submitted, the local building department must then approve or deny the permit application within 20 business days of receipt of a complete application. If it is not approved in that time frame, it will be automatically deemed approved. If an applicant resubmits corrected plans after denial, the building department's review is limited to deficiencies in the initial denial with just 10 days to approve or deny the resubmitted application. So very tight timelines. Um this program or this bill also modifies the Cal Home program which is designed to assist low and very lowincome households in becoming homeowners and it allows for the construction of accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units on properties funded by the program. But it also allows for separate conveyance of those ADUs and the J ADUs.

AB130 homeless shelters. This legislation requires inspection and reporting for emergency shelters for California cities or counties and homeless shelter owners and operators as of 6:30 2025. reports are due each April to um housing and community and development which we call HCD. The definition under California law of emergency shelter is housing with supportive services for homeless persons that is limited to occupancy of 6 months or less by a homeless person. No individual or household may be demi denied emergency shelter because of an inability to pay. For city purposes, staff have confirmed that a sanctioned encampment is not considered an emergency shelter under AB130. Then we have wildfire mitigation. On September 29, 2025, Governor Nuome signed into law Senate Bill 254 in response to the January 2025 Eaton and Palisades wildfires. This law seeks to improve wildfire safety, addressing funding and regulation of electrical transmission projects and stabilizing the homeowner insurance market and investor-owned utilities from increasing wildfire risks due to climate change. This bill will strive to stabilize the state wildfire fund after the January 2025 fires and accelerate the state's transition to clean energy. And that California wildfire fund was created through legislation. And the fund aims to reimburse participating utility companies for claims arising from covered wildfires that are determined to have been caused by their equipment. And the utility companies that are participating are San Diego Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and PG&E. SB598 public contracts water

infrastructure. SB598 implements processes to streamline local agency water infrastructure projects. It will allow certain local agencies to use construction managers, general contractors, project delivery method for projects aimed at addressing ongoing drought or climate change related water shortages. There's a lot to this law. that actually follows the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, their procedures that they use. And it's limited to cities, counties, and special districts that are authorized to manage and provide for the production, storage, supply, treatment, or distribution of any water from any source. It can be used for 15 capital outlay projects for each agency and is valid until January 1, 2031 and requires an enforcable commitment from the construction manager that it and its subcontractors will use a skilled and trained workforce to perform all work on the project unless there is a project labor agreement. And the idea is that this will expedite project completion, minimize project delays and budget overages, and reduce risks and costs for the local agency. AB379, human trafficking. AB379 will make it easier for law enforcement to address prostitution and human trafficking. The measure created new charges, including for people who solicit 16 and 17 year olds for prostitution and requires certain businesses to display information about human trafficking. AB379 also increases fines for businesses that enable prostitution and human trafficking, establishes a fund for victim services, and task the office of emergency services with directing funds to district attorney offices to fight human trafficking. And I know that came up in one of the questions tonight. Um during

one of our presentations, I also wanted to focus on additional um legislation that affects the public in general. So AB798 expands the state emergency food bank program to include diapers and wipes for families with young children. AB495 is the Family Preparedness Act and that allows parents to create safety plans to prevent unnecessary separation of children during crisis like deportation, incarceration, or illness. Effective this year, it strengthens legal tools for caregivers and helps keeps helps families keep children out of foster care by appointing temporary caregivers or guardians, especially supporting immigrant families. AB628 is renter protections and it requires working refrigerators and stoves and rental units. AB867 this is non- therapeutic cat decline. It bans non- therapeutic cat decline and tendinctomy in California. This law prohibits these procedures unless medically necessary to treat a disease or injury, aiming to prevent unnecessary pain and injury to animals. And I actually had to look up what a tendinctomy is. It's a surgical alternative to declawing where a small section of the tendon responsible for extending the claws is removed. There's another one AB506 that deals with pet health. And this is a consumer protection law requiring pet sellers to disclose the origin and health history of dogs, cats, and rabbits. It bans non-refundable deposits for these animals and allows buyers to void contracts if transparency rules are violated and mandates seller refunds within 30 days. This law does not apply to a public animal control agency or

shelter. And then we have SB 1053, the plastic bag ban prohibiting all plastic carry out bags at grocery store checkouts, including those thicker reusable plastic bags that we saw before January 1, 2026. And the law mandates that only recycled paper bags or reusable bags are permitted at checkout. And then AB36, it helps smaller rural communities and counties qualify for state housing funds by streamlining the process of designating certain jurisdictions as pro- housing. AB457 extends a ministerial approval process. SQUA exemption for affordable farmworker housing within 15 miles of farm or grazing land in the counties of Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Fresno, Madera, and Merrced. AB1441 establishes an independent citizens redistricting commission in the county of Merced to ensure fairly drawn districts that take into account demographics and communities of interest. And these um align with the 10-year redistricting that's that's required of um a public agency that has districts like the city of Laspano. So this is specific to the county of Merrced and according to the legislation, the county is working with the register of voters to implement. In closing, so far this year, the legislature has introduced 1,798 bills this session, 561 in the Senate and 1,237 in the Assembly. Roughly 600 of those are placeholders. Recently, the legislature held its first round of policy committee hearings as both the Senate and Assembly began acting on bills. Policy committees have approximately a month to hear and refer any bills with a fiscal impact to the

appropriations committees, and we will keep council updated as we progress through 2026. Uh, my legal assistant, Alex, is here. if there's something council would like us to take a deeper dive on. I know that was a lot of information and believe it or not, out of 900 bills, that was it for tonight. Um, so if there's something you do want a deeper dive on, we'd be happy to do that and bring back information to council. I'm also available for any questions or comments.

I have a couple questions going uh about the changes in the city council meetings um starting July 1. And you talked about Zoom bombing and all that stuff. Is there any kind of like a delay or anything? Is there any kind of delay over? No, everything's going to be strictly live.

It has to be live. Um I have seen in my experience Zoom Bombers start out with comments that seem like they're within the jurisdiction of the council and then they turn dark rather quickly. And at that point I jump in and I remind them that their comments need to be within the jurisdiction of the council. Um, and then more often time than not the comments will revert back to something that seems like it's within your jurisdiction and then they turn dark again. And at that point I direct whoever's running the audio video to cut them off. And so what we're doing is we're balancing a first amendment right to speak at a meeting versus you've been given your warning and now we're going to have to cut you off because it's not within the jurisdiction of council. Not because it's such horrific speech simply because it's not within your jurisdiction.

So unappropriate speech is not considered that being cut off if it's not I'm not talking about then jurisdiction of the city. say if somebody's just being crude, you know, really.

So, the First Amendment has has broad arching authority, right? So, I'm going to say it depends. Um, we try to veer the public back to what is within the council's jurisdiction. That's what the public comment period is designed for. Sometimes that takes us when we want to cut someone off because it's not within the jurisdiction. It would require me anticipating like what their next words are going to be or are they going to tie this concept back to what is within the jurisdiction of the council. So that's why I say it depends. It's going to take a minute to see where the comments are going and then I can jump in.

Okay. So I remember about 25 years ago there were people singing with guitars and they were within their five minutes. all that's allowed and had nothing to do with well I mean it had nothing to do with the city council they were just singing right and so at that point I would have to hear the words to the lyrics to the lyrics right so we can sing our comments we can you'd be surprised at some of the things we've had so anyway it that's why it depends I have to hear the words um because what we don't want to see is a first amendment challenge against the city right so we're very mindful of that

going about the teleconferencing by the city council So then after July 1, we would if if I'm not available, I could be on a teleconference in the meeting and considered and my votes would count everything.

Absolutely. And actually that would apply now if you had that two-way system in place right now. You would have the ability to do that. So I think one of the best examples is the city of Clovis had a council member who was very ill for a number of years and he appeared via phone. Now the requirements have changed to where it needs to be audio and visual of you, but we have our traditional Brown Act rules and then we have emergency situation rules and then we have just cause. So let's say you're out sick and you don't want to contaminate everybody. Well, we would make a just cause exception. I would walk the council through how to approve that last minute attendance and then you'd be able to participate. If we're following traditional Brown Act rules, we would post on the agenda ahead of time where you're participating from. We would require that you post the agenda within the same time limits at your location. So, let's say, for example, you're on vacation and you want to attend the council meeting and we have that two-way ability. We would require you to post the agenda where you're on vacation. That location would have to be open to the public to participate and you would need to be on it would need to be on speaker so the public can hear what's going on from that location.

Interesting. Financial training that's about budgets I imagine. So Minnie and I are work actually working on that training together because there's financial components that are required. Yes. Or related to budgets, related to fiscal responsibility and then there's also the legal components. So Minnie and I are working on preparing that training or finding a training for the obligor to attend. Okay. Any questions for the council? Mayor, thank you. Are you considering um Brown Act training for the council?

Yes. And so we can set up a time to do that. Um I do know we have some workshop time coming up. So if there's time there, we can do it there. I can also break it up into mini sessions over several meetings to go over the Brown Act in general. And what it would be is I would do a presentation based off the handbooks I provided to everybody. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else? So, that's one of the reasons. So, come July, we're going to be limiting our public our public uh forums to less minutes because now we might have to double it if there's translation and so it'll probably be going down to you can go down to two. Is that correct?

You can give the public a reasonable amount of time. Courts have found that two minutes is reasonable. Okay. Or above. Yeah. So right now we're looking at three that'll start July. Uh we're also already started slowly implementing some of the new procedures like you'll see me ask the public if anybody has anything to uh on agenda items that we take action on. If you have any comments on these areformational but so that's it. Any further questions or comments from the council? Very good job. Thank you. Very well explained.

Thank you. Okay, with that we will now turn to our public forum. Members of the public may address the city council on any item of public interest that's within the jurisdiction of this city. This includes agenda and non-aggenda items. No action will be taken on non-aggenda items. And right at this time, speakers are limited to five minutes and we need you to state your name for the record, please. Good evening, mayor and council members. Scott Sa Merced County Board of Supervisors representing your district, District 5. Um, first I wanted to say after getting that presentation from your city attorney, I think this is a very good reason why we should limit the number of bills that the state legislature can put out um at any given year cuz I think that there was some really good bills in there, but then you end up with some really not so good bills. So um advocate for that to your state electeds. I have been um just wanted to share with you on Saturday, March 28th, that's still a couple weeks out or a couple weekends from now, the register of voters team will be holding mobile hours um for passport application services here in Lasis. The event is in line with our goal of meeting the community where they are and providing needed services beyond the walls of the main office in Merrced. We have coordinated with the city of Las Manis. I want to say thank you Neuron and your staff for helping to coordinate with that um to set up our register of voters mobile service trailer in the parking lot next to city hall and open to the public for walk up services between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Um the seemingly early in time is needed because there's a lot of paperwork that goes into processing those passport applications. Um, most of the department's full-time team will be on site in Las Manis and as we hope to serve as many passport applicants as possible. Our partners with Radio Merrced will be advertising during the two weeks prior to the event and have a van and tent set up near us to broadcast on location for a couple hours. So again, that's Saturday, March 28th from

8:30 in the morning till 2:30 in the afternoon. I would encourage you guys to share that on across your social media. Currently, there are other places to get passport applications done. Um, you can make appointments at the register of voters's office at the main admin building in Merced for the county. This is an opportunity for folks on the west side, not necessarily to have to travel to the east side of the county to be able to do that. And then just as a side note, on Friday, March 27th in the evening time, they'll be conducting conducting a similar outreach event in the city of Augustine at the Al Gorman Center. So maybe Friday works better for you. It's a little short drive over to Gustine. So, thank you, sir, and appreciate you.

Yeah, appreciate you bringing that to the west side very much. No one else, please come forward. State your name verbally.

Uh, my name is Blanch George and I live in the downtown area. Um, I just want to let you guys know thank you and that all all of you matter and all of you make a difference in animals world and I want to thank you for that. Um, also with us volunteering we are making the commitment to share our most precious resource all of us and that for animals which is our time. Um I just wanted to mention there was a project that was completed and I'll just reduce or reduce the the report but recently um there was a time that we were able to capture a certain amount of feral uh wild cats. 25 of them were um were female and these female for your information the 25 before kitten season made a drastic difference. Um and that's because let me tell you directly that 25 female cats feral cats can produce 450 to 750 kittens in one year. So with that act that was done and capturing the 25 female cats, we were able to prevent because you know they all had spay. They all got spayed. Um that they they could have produced they produce less if they're fed less. um if they're being taken care of, you know, they get that extra vitamin, they could produce as much as 750 plus. So, I just wanted to give you that report. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else, please come forward. Okay, I do not see or hear anyone coming forward. Is there any emails or letters that came to Okay, we did not receive any correspondence through emails or letters that wanted to be read during the public forum. So, I'll go ahead and close the public forum. Thank everyone that spoke and we'll now turn to our consideration and approval of our consent agenda. Item 10. On the consent agenda, Lucy, if you could read them off, please.

Items on the consent agenda are as follows. Warrant numbers 256-569 through 256828 in the amount of 1,99,64261. City Council resolution number 7064 authorizing the release of unclaimed checks in the amount of 30,70.75 pursuant to California government code section 50050 and 50053 to the city of Las Vegas. City Council resolution number 7065 approving and authorizing the mayor to execute the 2026 restated joint powers agreement of the transit joint power authority of Merced County. City Council resolution number 7066 approving the purchase of a GETAC mobile data computers in the amount of $39,442 from PCN Strategies for use in police patrol vehicles. City Council resolution number 7067 approving the revised and restated memorandum of agreement among the Delta Menota Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and the items are to be approved as submitted.

Okay, with that, is there any items that any of the council members would like to pull off before we go forward? Yes, Mr. Mayor, if we could. Uh 10 D. Okay, 10 D. We'll pull that off. Is there any other items that I think council members? Okay. Is there any now this is an agendaized item for approval. Is there any item A, B, C, or E on the consent agenda anyone would like to speak from the public on? Okay. Not seeing anyone coming forward. Then we'll go ahead and if I could have a motion to approve item 10 A, B, C, and E of the consent agenda.

So moved. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve uh let's see items 10 A, B, C, and E. The consent agenda. That includes resolution 7064, resolution 7065, and resolution 7067. Any further questions or comments? All in favor signify by saying I. I oppose. Eyes have it. Now the one item 10 D. Gianis, you want to ask your questions or

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um the primary reason is to provide a little more oversight information to the public as to why this expenditure is being made. What were the issues and how would this mitigate the issues that the police department is having? Yeah, Commander, if you come forward, please.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, thank you for pulling the items. So, it gives me an opportunity to speak about the technology that the police department has. So, just a brief overview of what we're currently working with. Our current MDC's, the the mobile data computers that the police department has are not standard uh laptops that you can put into service. They have to be specialized ruggedized computers. Currently, we're using a Panasonic version which is extremely large and it does not allow for ease of use when you have multiple individuals in a vehicle. Um, as we know, we've done a lot of hiring recently which results in multiple people sitting in a vehicle. Uh, the larger computer platform prevents the ve uh the vehicle shifter from activating when you have two people in the vehicle. So we've identified a solution which is a G-Tech uh ruggedized computer and there's some functionality of this specific device that's enhanced over time. One of the key components that's identified in this is the the smaller platform. It provides the same level of functionality, but one of the key components is this function to where the top of the device it rotates. So when you're training an individual or uh you know you have two people in a vehicle, one per person's operating the motor vehicle, the remaining person could be handling calls for service or communicating with dispatch over this. Another key component of this device is the fact that you can set it down so it's not blocking any of the visual uh obstructions in the in the vehicle and you can use it as a tablet. So it has multiple functions that uh enhance our operational capacity and it it eliminates the platform the large platform that we currently have with the

Panasonic uh device and it the the mechanism for being able to to seat this in a patrol vehicle is different as well. So So thank you very much for that commander. So you're saying that that was obstructing the selector for the vehicle? It it does when you have two people in the vehicle, it creates a safety hazard. It because it doesn't allow the shifter to fully activate. You have to move the device and and it and it's just so in a a high stress emergency situation. That could be a real problem. It could be a real problem when you have two individuals in the vehicle. Absolutely. Very good. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you, Council. Thank you, Amanda. Any other questions? Questions by the council.

Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. Okay. So, then we have citizen uh city council resolution 7066 approving the purchase of get tech mobile data computers in the amount of 39,42 from PCN strategies for the use in our police patrol vehicles. Any further questions or comments on that? Then I'll entertain a motion. Please. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second for resolution 7066 as stated. Further questions or comments. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Eyes haven't.

Item 11 is a public hearing. You may challenge the proposed action as described herein. In court, you may be limited to raising only those issues. you or someone else raise at a public hearing described herein or in written correspondence delivered to the city at or prior to public hearings. Our first public hearing is to receive public comment and consideration of adopting the 2025 annual report on the status of the housing element of the general plan and progress in its implementation and general plan status report. That first item, we will go to our community and economic development director, Suz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and city council. Um, as some of you may recall, uh, this is an annual report, uh, that I provide to the city council. Um, so I do this each March. Um, and I would like to add that the city of Laspanis is one of two jurisdictions with a certified housing element out of seven jurisdictions in Merced County, which is a big deal. Um, the planning period that we're in, which is the sixth cycle, and you're going to hear me talk a little bit about that as I go through the presentation. Um, but the sixth cycle started in 2024. Um, and there are lots of uh consequences for not having um a compliant housing element, but we in Laspanis are safe and that we do have a housing element, but we are required um as I get into the presentation. According to California government code, uh it requires each jurisdiction to prepare and submit an annual progress report on its housing element by April 1st. Uh each jurisdiction is required um to have the annual annual progress report reviewed by the city council. We're required to submit that annual progress report to HCD, the Department of Housing Community Development, but it does not require HCD's approval. Um, and we're also required to contain the status of the housing element and the progress in its implementation, the progress in meeting the city's regional housing needs allocation, and any action taken by the city towards completion of any of those programs. Uh, the purpose of the annual progress report is to remain compliant with government code and housing element law. It's to update the city council and our community on housing development and implementation of the housing element

and to ensure eligibility for state grant funding. Um that's probably one of the most not only just to uh make sure that the community is aware um but eligibility for state grant funding is key. Um without a compliant housing element, the city would not have been eligible for the encampment resolution fund, which the city was awarded um 11.8 million. That would have been a um funding source that the city would not have been eligible for. and not being in compliant would have potent could potentially have put the city in a in a position where um um even after being awarded where we could have had that funding in jeopardy. Um but now that we do have a a compliant housing element um there is no no worries um in that area and it makes us eligible for additional grant funding as it becomes available. Um, also to note the at the last city council meeting, the city council uh directed staff to apply for community development block grant funding, CDBG grant, we need in order to be eligible, we need to have a compliant housing element. Um so the 2025 uh regional housing needs allocation uh progress is required as a part of the annual progress uh report and uh this is a snapshot of development that has happened from January 1st to uh December 31st 2025. Uh so it does not account to for anything that has happened in 2026. Um so in 2025 um we are reporting um still a shortfall of 2554

units. And as you can see as a part of this uh arena um our regional housing needs allocation it this table in this reporting process uh defines by each income category um which is defined as a percentage of the area median income and that's established by HCD and for Merced County it currently is for a family of four $93,900 and these categories are then used to calculate housing affordability for rental and owner occupied housing. Um so as you can see we started um and it's a little hard but you maybe you could see my cursor. We on this table it's showing that we first started off uh this planning cycle the sixth cycle with 3,132 units. um we got a little bit of credit as a as a move forward um from HCD and then in 2024 we reported 143 units and in 2025 we reported 263 units. Um 12 of these units um are um units that were recently built by uh Merced County Housing Authority. Um, so that was exciting that that helped us in the low income category. Um, and then a lot of these moderate units, which are 28 units, um, are accessory dwelling units that the city was able to get credit for. And then the 223 units that are identified as above moderate, those are your typical single family residential homes and subdivisions. Um, so that still gives us a shortfall though of 2554 units. um as you total up all of these income categories from very low, low,

and moderate and above moderate. Um but we're still in pretty good shape um as um we still have uh till 2032 um to continue to report and provide um those that data to HCD. And we do have oncoming projects that we will be getting credit for um hopefully in 2026. Um for instance, one tree we're going to be able to um count towards in the next income category which is extremely low. We are according to our um housing element in that category to provide 360 units and uh our one tree project which is 58 permanent supportive housing um for our unhoused which are extremely low income. Uh that'll help us accomplish that. Um okay. Um just one more note on this slide. Um this is a new income category with the sixth cycle that was not required in previous cycles of the housing element. Also uh new legislation um is being proposed SB967 which would allow jurisdictions to uh get credit within the arena for emergency shelter. Um and so we are hoping um for the passage of that Senate bill um as um hopefully we'll get that CDBG grant and as the council directed staff to move forward with funding for that project for a minimum of 30 emergency shelters that too would help us in this income category. So implementation of the housing element um we are required to show progress um implementation and progress on um the eight goals that the city has identified in the housing element. Uh the first goal is to provide adequate sites for residential development and alternate

housing choices at affordable costs for all segments of the city. Um, as some of you may recall, um, with our recently adopted housing element, we had to provide adequate site inventory analysis that showed within our current city limits that we would be able to accommodate um, residential needs for all income categories. um and we uh adequately analyze that each year, but we um also identify progress as we we continue to develop within the community. Goal two is to remove governmental constraints um which a lot of those governmental constraints are now state law housing laws um that require cities to for instance accessory dwelling units are ministerial. Um so it completely removes that governmental constraint. Um it's the process that we're going through um right now and updating our community design standards to objective design standards. Um those are all requirements of the state um to remove those governmental constraints. Goal three is to encourage the maintenance, improvement, and rehabilitation of the city's existing housing stock and encourage the maintenance and upkeep of existing affordable housing. Um we um do and we report annually on previous first-time home buyer and rehab loans. So the city continues to maintain those loans. Um and then we look for annually additional funding sources to provide for first-time home buyer and for rehab projects within the city. Um goal four is to encourage the maintenance, improvement, and rehabilitation of the city's existing housing stock. encourage the maintenance and upkeep of existing housing affordability and the same thing on rehab and ensure um goal five is to ensure that all residents have access to housing. Um goal six is to increase the

percentage of homeowners in the city and provide adequate information on all possible housing assistance programs and distribute to homeowners, developers and other residents which we provide resour sources on the city's web page. And then we do have a housing division that also provides these resources and programs and distributes that out uh within the community. Goal seven is to maintain an adequate percentage of affordable rental units within the city to accommodate all income groups and family types. And really this is by encouraging um various housing stock and various housing types within the community um that would allow for affordable renting units um to accommodate all of those income groups and family types. And then goal eight is to encourage new development projects for special needs groups. Um and these groups are farm worker housing. Um it is um special needs for um seniors um um the unhoused community. Those are considered special needs groups um of which we do have new development projects um currently in the works. um general plan status uh report um all elements within the city of Laspan's general plan 2042 um remain in effect and continue to guide decision making. Uh we did have one general plan amendment uh which was adopted uh through North Point and all that it did was a it was a housekeeping item that swapped out existing neighborhood commercial land use designation for highdensity residential again to accommodate uh different housing needs based on income um throughout the city of Lasanis. Um and then that work program for 2026. The goal with the general plan is continued imple implementation of the housing element programs. Um zoning code

updates which working with um our city attorney for consistency with the general plan and state housing law. um ongoing work on complete streets implementation which um one of those projects is the Pioneer Road um project and um preliminary evaluation of long range planning initiatives including annexation readiness and employment center infrastructure planning all things which we're uh preparing and planning for within the general plan uh 2042 forward uh public comment public hearing notices were published on March 4th um in the Westside Express and as of today's date uh no comments have been received. Um so that concludes my report and I'm open to any questions. I know that was a lot of information. I apologize. That sounds good. Now I'd like to open up the public hearing to receive public comment and consideration on the adoption of our housing element. Anyone like to speak to the housing element, please come forward at this time. Okay, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. I do not blame you for not coming up to speak. It's a lot of ministerial information. So, I want to turn it to the city council now with the resolution number 7068 for the adoption. You have questions for staff or

Yes, sir. Yeah. Go ahead. I got one. Okay. Well, go ahead. Go ahead. You start. All right. Hey, mine's real quick. Um, you said by 2032, you had to have uh our number of total units we're under by 2554. Does that change? that that'll be the number we have to get down all the way till 2032.

Um yes, that's the goal is to reach um that original total number of 3,132. Um so what we still have a shortfall is over 2500 units. Um a majority of those units are within the above moderate category which is our single family residential. um um which as long as the housing market continues to stay stable uh we definitely will be able to finish that income category. In the last housing cycle halfway through that planning period we accomplished um that income category. Uh the real challenge and this is the challenge for every single jurisdiction in California is achieving the extremely low and very low income categories. Um because the city we can only facilitate development. We are not developers. We cannot force development. Um and those extremely low and very low income categories, it's extremely difficult to develop. Um many times those projects do not pencil out um because they need subsidies and those projects are waiting for some sort of whether it's tax credits or uh grant funding or assistance from the municipality to be able to pencil you know make those projects pencil out. Um so those income categories will be our most difficult. Showing progress though is what is important to HCD and that we have one tree. Um that we are going to providing emergency shelter units as well. Um that's important instead of just providing a zero each year in those income categories that we are striving and that they can see HCD that we are applying for funding as well um for

those low really to house those lowinccome categories. Um that's that's an important goal as well. Thank you. Sorry, real quick just to clarify on that question. Um Director Elm, so the Reena number that was allocated to us, the 3132, that is not changed in this cycle. Correct. No, that's where you start. So that's where we started in 2024 and we are just not etching away from that each year.

And so I have to report what our shortfall is each year. But it was it has changed in the past because I think you went to the conference I think council know um planning commission went to the council um planning commission academy and that number has changed um I believe was bananas um the other cycle of 2014 to 2021 our allocation was 2480 unit and that has bumped up to 3,132 that's a number you see today um to put that into perspective um Los Angeles um from 2014 to 2021 cycle was 82,000 000 unit allocated and in this cycle their allocation is 456,643 units.

Now that is uh to clarify and I do understand um not understanding the disparities um that is also because the city received credit um as you may recall when we did the housing element update. So, um, that 3,132 is what we're reporting on our arena, but within the housing element, there's methodology and calculation of why the city got credit for additional units. So, I hope that that makes sense.

Thank you, uh, Director Helms. Thank you very much for that report. Uh uh this is I know a very challenging uh topic especially with uh very low and low moderate development. Uh however right now in addressing these this housing uh for lower income folks the taxpayers are shouldering all the expense i.e. one tree. It's very expensive for the city to build these uh these developments and I know I realize that for the developers it's it's not uh economically attractive but I just uh I just want to give word of thought that hope we continue to find ways to build more in the very low to low because as we have folks go to one tree they get established they get to start getting benefits. I think the idea is then to move them off into other housing so that we have a log train of other folks who came from other encampments or homelessness and go into that one tree facility uh through the process. But at this point we have nowhere for them to go. So my concern is that that that we will have a bottleneck at the one tree if we don't have the lower to very low housing for them to transition to. So again it's just uh I just wanted to articulate that uh I I realize that you it's very difficult but because we can't compel uh in this situation but I just wanted to again give uh uh voice to thought. Thank you very much.

You anyone else? So uh nice report Stacy. How how many hours do you have in this and your staff? um I mean neuron knows um it's data intensive and um he knows how much it takes to pull that together. Um there's a lot of analysis that goes within it. Um so it is hours and it's preparation immediately January 1st to be able to provide this report for you on March 18th.

That's fast. That's good. A lot of work. We appreciate everyone working on that. So before us we have resolution 7068. What is the council would like to do with this resolution? I'd like to make a motion to approve uh resolution 7068 as read by title or as submitted. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second for resolution 7068. Any further questions or comments? All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Eyes have it. Next item is consideration adoption of the city resolution number 7069 approving and authorizing the city manager execute the second amendment with image way more LLC for media content capturing and production services. With this we'll go to our city manager than good evening mayor council member of the public. Um, I'll try to keep this one short considering that um, Director Elm has taken all of the times including our city attorneys on the law today. So, what I have in front of you um, this evening is for your considerations to extend or to approve the second a um, amendment with Imagine Waymore LLC. Um, as you might be aware um, imagine way more has been our content generators um, for a number of year now. They originally came to us in 2024 when we realized that um the way we outreach to our community need to evolve with how our communities are consuming contents and how they are going to perceive and want to get informations versus in the past people come to bulletin boards and also looking for mailer nowadays and quick information updates and two sentence um social media updates. So we want to be flexible and be able to accommodate those. So in 2024, we issue an RFP um to select a media generator or content creator to help us get there. Uh Imagine Waymore was um solicited. They have since produced quite a few content for us. Uh all of which has will be shown in a little bit. Um so we'll play all those video in a second. I'm just kidding. I'm not going to play all this video. Um um with that, we did extend the contract was for a uh um two-year contract. Um it was expired in April 2025. Um it was then extended by the former

city manager. Um and we realized that you know we continue to need those service as those content and more information need to be pushed out to our resident including projects as well of initiatives and programs that we should be uh pushing out. So with that you know we are looking at revamping our entire public engagements uh um pursuits. One of which is content generations where we're posting at social media as well as our home base which is our city website. As you can imagine now day if you want to go and shop for something or you want to call Comcast you typically go to Comcast website or you go to Amazon. For us it's the same. We want to make this accessible. If you need informations about the city we should be able to go into the city website and be able to find all of those document and not have to go just through the P process. However, in order to do those and keep it engaging, we need a content generator, people that are able to capture video, pictures and help us in those front because it is fairly technical and with our limited staff hours, we are unable to do those in-house. So, this public engagement overhaul then will includes you know very timely update as you can imagine on social media or on a website. We need to do those very regularly otherwise we lose our audience you know uh our our resident will find other uh outlets like you know for example the commuter connections or some other overhaul when they don't get their timely information from the city. Uh so that's the first step. Second is to modernize those like I talked about you know we can no longer send pigeons or mailers uh to city um to to residents house anymore. those need to be more instant. Um those instant notifications, signing up for city website, um email express, those kind of thing. That's where we want to get to to be able to provide our resident with the most up-to-date policy changes, program, initiative, as well as emergency and also to be able to receive public input, right? Um um public input and transparency is very important to our city council. So this is that one step toward that. Um as you can imagine that

see the pictures on the right there. Um we starting to solicit knowhow uh how to do uh video. Um our speed cushions uh how-to video has got 3,300 view up there. And that is the steps and the pilot that we are wanting to initiate with this program is to not just shows what projects are being worked on, but also to provide um an educational portal for our resident to be able to go to this is how you sign up for an online utility bill. This is how you sign up to get a police report. this is how you do a public request for information or this is how you sign up for a business license. Those kind of content and video and narrative are important and that is going to be the next priority for uh for staff again. So um with that it changes the scopes of how it was um originally awarded. Originally when this contract was awarded it focuses on solely on social media content and videos and pictures. Now that's going to be structured. This contract will now be reporting to the future public information officer uh positions to where it's going to be directed. There's going to be narrative. So, it's not going to just be video with just some music in the background. There's going to be narrative of why the project was happening, what was the important and why it mattered to the community. Uh give a little bit more context and narrations and again focus on the how to and and the why. Um there's going to be deliverable uh that set up on this contract. So there are contents, there are pictures and there are events that already pre-programmed for us to cover. Um and also to you know provide a higher levels of of of quality. I know a lot of agency have reached out to us. It's like who did we use for our videos and content because they want to do the same things. I know city of Merced has just recently did that. So and I think we are heading on the right tracks. Um all of which um we are able to do with a reduced cost as well. original contract was 7,500. That is now being reduced to a more structured contract at $5,000 per month. Uh and this is meant to be for a

two-year contract with no um CI uh CPI escalation. So there we we'll be realizing a $2,500 uh per month saving that will then be used towards a future public information officer uh um positions. That's conclude my presentations. Uh I'm happy to answer any question. Okay. Before we get into a lot of questions, I want to offer the public a chance to speak on this resolution 7069 authorizing the city manager to amend the image way more contract. So, please come forward. Neil, please state your name for the record.

Hi, my name is Kathy Ballard. Um, Neuron, good sales pitch. Um, but I still have a problem with it. I had a problem with it when it first came out at $7,500 a month. Um because I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Tik Tok, I'm not on Instagram, our city website sucks. So you you have a contract that you're looking at for um Mid Valley it might solve one of the problems in regards to your website. I still think 5,000 is too much. Um, only because um, number one, I haven't seen all these videos. I wish you had played them because I just get screenshots from residents and people that see it. Um, I know that when they were doing roads, it basically look like the same photo, the same thing over and over again. It's a street. We're repairing it. I understand our public works does tremendous job, but seeing a video over and over again, now we're on Kadosa. Now we're on Birch, now we're I really It doesn't do anything for me. Um, so in seeing events, it's usually after the event. It's not something to prompt people to go to that event. um such as yourformational items for we want your input like for the homeless and for stuff like that. It's not advertising that to go to it. It's just showing you after the fact and then people are saying, "Oh, I didn't know about it." Again, a website would would help that. I I I've seen other um websites that use um I don't know what they're called. Um, you can grab photos and of a road and you can grab whatever and you can do

your narrative along with that. Do I really need to purchase at $5,000 a month something that I can get and grab from someplace else because it's public information. Um, I know when it first started, and I've had people tell me this, there would be all these videos they got and they all got dumped at one time for things that had been done a long time ago. Um, and I'm like, "Oh, what a waste." Um, and we I was told by the a city council that we're doing it to make us look more attractive to developers, to get business, to get um large jobs. I don't see anything. So, in two years, have we gotten any nibbles? Just wondering. Your Facebook, I had to ask somebody. you have 8,000 followers. So, I'm paying $60,000 and I've attracted Well, actually, I paid a lot more than that. I paid $180,000 to get 8,000 people following on Facebook. Seems quite a big price tag for that. Um, so I just wanted you to let you know my opinion in regards to this. I've heard other people tell me that it's beneficial for the growth of our city for transparency, for emergencies, but we are building a fire department that would be able to handle that. If you get a new website, some way to notify these people um years ago, they used to have um a monthly newsletter that came out, but again, that was all after the fact. This is what we did last month. if you could do a newsletter that could go out to people's emails that said what we're

doing next month so that they can attend those functions or watch a city hall meeting. I know everybody doesn't have the time to come here. So that's basically it. Thank you. We appreciate your comments. Appreciate your opinion. Please come forward. Please state your name again for the record.

Yes. Blanch George Downtown. I want to let you know how I use it. Um, on not I'm not a heavy social media individual, but I do dabble and I do answer questions. Um, I am on the Next Door app and when somebody asks a question, um, I quickly download I download the the video and I send it whether or not it is your dollar. Someone's talking about, you know, our dollars and how it's spent. I'm able to download all of yours. I was able to download the the Easter egg hunt and the uh they had did the video on the next one coming up and who was preparing it. It introduces the city employees so people know who to ask for. The just the other day, like two days, two days ago, somebody mentioned about uh Rare Earth Coffee that people should try that new business that opened up. I was able to download uh the grand opening of it, you know, and and it it was helping a business and people that had questions. I've been able to download uh the police department when they're going to be doing a DUI and what are their different aspects and one of what are their different jobs. So I push it to individuals that won't read may not read paper, you know, um you know may and I mean paper by like newsletters and things like that. They don't they they can't they leave here at 3 and and they don't get home till 8.

And so we need to h somehow capture them. This group also, you know, when when anybody pushes me back about the shelter or about what we're doing, I'm able to download the rabies shots and the microchipping events that we had did, the adoption days. I was able to download that information and send it out and and let them know how they could find it. So to me personally, this is a really big thing and and why I sometimes you know um I think the value of reaching people is instrumental for our city and not only isn't instrumental for our city is vital for the city with any kind of plannings any kind of buildings the roads that are being done, how they're being done, what was the problem on West I Street, that was all covered with those videos. Any of the meetings that we've all had, it was covered with those videos. So, that true connection is really vital. And to me, sometimes if I want a specific something um to eat or snack on, I I I may not be able to go to one grocery store that's more inexpensive, but the value of going to another grocery store that has one item, that rare item that you really want is valuable. So for me and all the people that follow me, all the 19k people that follow the shelter, yeah, it's increased from 16 to 19. All those people really enjoy getting informed and I think that that's um what's really important. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. Anyone else, please come forward if you would like to speak on this item. Okay, I'll go ahead and thank you both for commenting and I'll turn it back over to the city council for questions or discussion.

Thank you, mayor, and I appreciate uh the community that's come forward on this. Um some of the things that um Blanch George has me mentioned. I think a lot of that will be taken care of once we revamp our new city website uh to have for it to be moreformational about shelter, about our police department, about public works, all of our department agencies, the things that they're doing, uh projects they're working on and date, you know, dates to be completed. Those are things that will be easily found there. um what people discuss on next door personally among themselves is a whole different uh avenue compared to what we will be providing here as a city uh to our residents in Los Banos. Um I had a lot of issue with this contract when it first came to us at $7,500 a month. I'm not a Facebook person. I don't do social media. So, I wasn't able to access what my tax dollars had to pay and what your tax dollars had to pay uh as residents to to view something that may have been multiple in in its visual aspect. Um, I think $5,000 is still a bit much to pay for these services. and how much are we going to be putting out there as content uh that our new website as we move forward to develop it could be posted on there. Um I I I know I I understand what the city is trying to do. Um, I just think it's still a bit costly uh to our citizens to have to pay this amount of money uh for

contracting videos. I I just don't know at this particular time if we're going to have that much content that needs to be put out there. And certainly if if we get to the point where uh we're putting more content out to our community, perhaps at that time, you know, it it it could be re-evaluated as to whether or not um the cost of doing it is warranted. Um so that's my take on it. I I'm just never really been enthusiastic about this. And um as Kathy has indicated, I I had a few people send me some snippets that they were able to download from social media and sometimes I can open them and sometimes I couldn't, but it was the same thing over and over again. And I just think that duplicity is a bit much. You know, people are encouraged and want to know um the streets that are being repaired. we're going to have uh, you know, major street repairs coming up here soon. Are we going to be doing videos of every single street that's going to be repaired? I think people are more interested in the fact that we're getting it done and that we're going to put a list out on our website indicating uh what streets are going to be done within a certain period of time. Certainly, I think it was in 2025 and May or somewhere around there, we approved all the streets that were going to be uh rehab during the 2526 budget. So, that information is out there. It may not be easily accessible to find, but I think that's where we can cure things um as far as the revamp of our website to have that information posted so that the residents can go there directly and be able to access it and know that their air their street areas are going to be taken care of. Um so

that that's my take on it. Uh I do uh have some things here that I noticed and and I didn't go back and review the original contract. I I think some of it was posted. I was trying to read it right quickly, but um this is proposed to be a two-year contract. Um, but I I didn't see I thought in our in the original contract that it was kind of like on a monthto monthth by uh uh authorization of the city manager and also uh perhaps um in the um see what is it called? um the content uh production and media capture services. When it talks about billing, it talks about uh monthly billing. And perhaps my question is uh my question about how soon does the bill have to be turned in. That might be something that's under another policy within our city because I I don't see it here in the contract. But I um I did notice that um there was nothing in this contract about whether it's going to be month-to-month or if we're just locked into a two-year contract and if things go sideways, how do we get out of it?

So, that's my answer that. Yeah, Mayor Prom, I think that's a great point to answer your last few questions. Um this is based off our standard professional services agreement. Um it is a two-year term contract. However, it is built in with a termination clause. So both party can initiate terminations um with a 30-day notice. So at any time within those two year we can give them 30-day notice and terminate the contract. So does that have to be in you know in this uh professional agreements that that we have here? No because uh it's in the original agreement. So um on item number uh three there it say all term of condition of the agreement and the first amendments not modified by the second amendment shall remain in full force in effect. Yeah. Well thank you for clearing that up.

Yeah. And then if I may um mayor just to clarify it on a few more points. Um I and I think that was a well uh timed comments in regards to um you know our resident and how they consume content. Um I do agree that not everybody are on social media. Um but I did just double check our police department's Facebook has 22,000 follower. We are a residents of cities of 50,000. So pretty close um to to about half there. um yes not um the formal contents that was produced before highlight projects there's not a lot of narrative there's not a lot of what do I get out of it right however that is what changed in this contract um and for me it's not personal one way or another it it's up to council and expectations of what you want to see when we push out these contents right and that's why I highlight one section was one of the video that we post out in regards to speed cushions that was a videos that has narrative how you get it, what does it do and what impact is it going to have on the community. Those are the kind of contents that we are actually going to be focused more on with these kind of contract. There is a lot of different business that we do from utility buildings down to city attorney offices. All of which has its own little quirk and process on how to do them. Not every one of our member of community know how to do them. And that's why we want to retain this service to be able to produce those how-to videos and link them back to our city website. Currently, we do not have social media linked to our current website. But that's why one of the strategic plan on our website revamp is to go onto a website platform to where all of those social media contents are combined into one part two platform under one account to then be put back on the city website. So even if you don't have a social media account, you will be able to go to the city website page, homepage, and then you can scroll down to the bottom to where all those notification will be and you'll be able to click on them without needing Facebook's, Instagrams or or informations. The only thing that I

would just kind of warn against is that we are coming to an, you know, an information technology multimedia age to where a lot of the new generations are no longer even asking Google how to. they're going to Tik Tok looking at these short uh uh video reels, right? So, as we are preparing to put these contents out, what are our uh who are our our audience? Um and that's kind of the thing that I would like to to, you know, get some better directions on.

Well, uh have we done an analysis uh with with that last statement as to who our audience is? Do we know that at this point? One thing I know though is that our website does not track um traffic. We do not have traffic datas on website content. So we don't know how many people's actually go to our our website and currently as its current status um how non-intuitive some of the features are. I can't imagine many people do. Um we actually don't know how many people that we sent letter to actually read the letter that we sent. We don't know how many people actually read the newspaper off the notice that we put in. However, on the social media content, we can see there's 3,300 view of that videos. There's 2,000 people view. Um, some of the PD events has 10,000 view on those. Um, in term of demographic, um, those we can dive down and um, fortunately for social media site as you post those, you can start to look at, you know, accounts and whereas that you know, which people like it, who people's comment on it. So, that's give better data than how information was pushed out before through you know, mailers or or newspapers and such. And and that's that's the point I was making and I I didn't say that it I was making a particular point to social media. Do we have the data uh as to the demographics of age and you know interest and things like that uh based on what we've already received um or or just the social media that's out there with our various departments.

Uh police department, you know, I can understand that there would be a a large following there. is probably one of our lo largest followings within the city. Um because everybody needs their service at some point just as fire, you know, you know, they they should be rather popular as well. But my point as a council member is

uh dollars per service. And yes, it makes me happy that at once we get our new website going that it'll be easily accessible to anyone. uh who has a computer and uh may not be connected to social media in any way to be able to have the same information that other people have when it talks about our city and the services that we provide. So that that's the point um you know where I'm coming from. dollar for dollar. If we're talking about social media and bringing this into our city and putting it on the website, do we have enough data to justify, you know, the dollars that we're spending?

Yeah. Comments? Oh, I'm sorry. Did have a comment?

Yeah. So, as far as, you know, the social media stuff, uh, I agree with what Kathy's talking about. You know, it's something we've done. It's passed. It's already happened. We need to be ahead of it. We need to, you know, to invite people to what we're doing, get people there. And I think in speaking with Neuron and understanding his vision with the uh public information officer, that is the plan is to do stuff like that. And uh you know, what's what's the narrative? What are we trying to to tell people? And he wants to educate people and do things like that. I think it's good. The times have changed of how people consume information. And you know, as far as analytics, there's a lot of analytics between uh behind Facebook. I don't have Facebook, but I work in this arena. Instagram, Tik Tok, uh, websites, driving traffic, the analytics of impressions, clickthroughs, how many people have viewed. Um, and you can get all those analytics from accounts that have actually people that are signed into profiles, and that's where you get your demographics, you get the age, you get the ethnicity, and all this other stuff, people that don't have that stuff. Uh, it's just an open account and not with the profile. You won't get that. Um, I will say as far as, uh, what we're paying for, we're we're we're getting a pretty good deal on it. The reason I say that again, where I work in the private sector, I'm dealing with this. I've gone through the I I I just went through this process, but where I work and it's expensive and because to make it work right, um yeah, if it's not being done correctly, you're wasting your money. But I think that's why he wants to make the change that he's talking about. He's talked at least with me about that. I think it's a great he's got a great plan. He's got a great idea. I think uh you know where he's going to lay it out is how we're gonna you know get to people what is it we want to tell them and he's got all that already laid out to do that tying it all in. Yeah. You you tie in and and that's where all this stuff comes into play because you start tying it into the website, the Facebook, the Instagram, all that stuff works together and you reach a lot of a lot of people. Um and you can see who's

actually getting the message and not like you said about the paper. You don't know and we don't know. Um, I will say in my household it's probably perfect because TV is dying. It's in my household, wife and daughter, they really don't even watch TV. We only have cable because I watch the news and uh this has taken over. Everyone has this in their hands like a minicomp computer and the information is going there and people consume it differently. People uh want to get their information they want the way they want to consume it. I think with all this you've got it all covered. But as far as the price, it's it's a pretty good deal. Uh for what we're getting it at, I think uh it's pretty good you're able to negot negotiate that neuron. I think that's a good deal there. Um and I know it sounds like a lot and we are responsible for the money that we're spending. Um but I'm telling you right now, uh I wish I could get it for this price. That's all I got. Thank you. Any comments over here?

Um I also want to add just like you said, Marcus, I do agree that it is a good deal. I myself did social media marketing in the past and video editing the um um the equipment that they used it can get expensive. It takes time. I know I use certain systems to even do the video editing itself and I chose to pay extra so I can get those extra um you know the better edits and better captions things like that. So I know it can get pretty pricey as well and it's very time consuming. Um, I did um I have spoken to you on as well and I do like the changes that are being made and I think it'd be a lot better to get this content out faster and I know I understand a lot of people don't use social media but the reality is we are in a social media age. I know um I would love to see more participation and it that means for everyone right and we do have to start thinking about the future um you know the younger generations unfortunately that's just what they do they get all their news and their information from social media so um I think we have to find a balance right people that don't use social media yes I think it's important to revamp our website um but social media it's just how a lot of people um get their information and I think it's also providing a good platform for residents to interact. So I've seen residents commenting and then others commenting back. So I think it does provide a good platform for residents to interact with each other and you know inform each other about things and even make connections with other people. So I I do appreciate the social media and I think it's a really good change.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I got a couple questions. Are there any other costs to the city such as mileage reimburseables, expendables, equipment reimbursements, things like that?

Um, no, council. This is it. This $5,000 a month. Um, one of the things that I I know that uh we had a recent uh incident at one of our local employers and there was a big gap in providing information and uh I think that this will help fill that gap to provide timely information to our residents especially of an emergency nature and I think that the public information officer could fill that role will fill that role hopefully. However, with this $5,000, it does seem high to me. It does seem high to me. Uh because would not the public information officer also have kind of a dual role in providing some of that content, some of that information, some of that video uh to go along with the information that that individual will be putting out. So, if we then have here at $5,000 and then we have the additional cost of another employee with benefits, I I would assume, then the package of this is is going to be well over 100,000 plus.

So, it seems like a lot of money. Um, and I just I don't think that we have the mechanism, we don't have the capacity right now to justify that large ticket. Um, I think that we're going to get there, but I don't see us being there right now. Yes, you know, information is uh readily available. You're absolutely right. Correct, Councilwoman. Um, but I'm looking at the costs and right now, are we going to have the impact? you know what what metrics did we use to see how effective this uh contract was in the last two years? Do we have that information? I know that would help kind of soften the blow in my opinion. So that those are my concerns.

Okay. Well, all very good comments from the council. I I have a followup if I may. Um I I keep hearing about you know interaction of social media and people you know this is the Adrian I do realize that I I don't think if I'm understanding this correctly this is not a a platform where people will be interacting and commenting about stuff or is it going to uh with us putting social media from the videos that will be posted from this contract is this going to be something that's interactive or is this going to be like news information that's being put out uh to the public on a much faster basis?

Um to clarify that questions, councilwoman, when we post out content or post on to social media, the the member of the public can comment on them. We do not restrict comments. So they can share those video. They can come in and add comment to each one of those. Um so a lot of our um video that comes out, I actually read each one of those. However, we do not have a legal obligations to read those comments or respond to them. Um, in fact, it is not one of those um, as much as the public can comment and communicate with one another on them. We are not obligated or at this stage plan to use that platform to respond back to every comments on every questions um, on one of those. We don't have that resource yet. And that's why it's needed for us to have um we will be bringing back um um a discussion items on the public information officer. So right now this the way we use social media is a one way out to distribute information not to collect feedback

and and that's what I thought this was supposed to be. And so in regards to uh um uh Council Member Rafugio Yamez, um that's how I saw this to be is information getting out to the public via the the content of this contract and a potential information officer and you know pulling videos from various departments that uh are um trying to get information out to the public. not necessarily a a conversational event uh between as normal social media would happen. I thought this was supposed to be more us pushing out information to the public more quickly uh and allowing people who aren't on social media to be able to see it as well. I I I guess I didn't view this as being something conversational back and forth because then it to me that starts to get a bit messy when you when you have so much public input about something and I'm not saying that they shouldn't be able to comment thank you for sharing or whatever like something of that sort but I don't I don't want to see the city getting into a situation where we're having to defend ourselves over and over again behind one issue on social media as it is today. You know, that that just seems to defeat the purpose of us trying to push information out to the public. And again, I I thought this wasformational only and, you know, not a situation where there's going to be public interaction back and forth like this. And maybe that might be something in the future uh that we can look at, but I just I'm still struggling with the dollar amount to do what we need to do. uh as far as just getting information to the to the public and how much is it, you know, going to cost us? I mean, are

we going to be shooting everything that's out there or what? You know, this is this is not about for me, even though I stated I don't have social media, this is about the city getting information out to the public much quicker and allowing everybody to have access to it, which is the transparency part. It's not about uh us engaging with social media kind of thing. It's about us taking information that this company is going to provide to us and put it putting it out there uh so that it will be on a social media website I guess continually but also as as well as posting it on the city website so that everybody has access. So that that's my take on it and and I I still feel it's a little bit expensive at this point for us to do because we need to build up to where we need to get. We need to get our information uh public information officer and if at some point uh it's going to cost us this $5,000 to do it um then maybe that'll be justified. But right now to me this this seems to be a little bit expensive based on what we need to provide and we don't have the website set up at this point to provide it to the public to be able to access what media is going to be put out there. Whether it's something that's already happened or something that futuristically is going to happen. Whether it's something to help people uh figure out how to apply apply, you know, for something at our building department. uh what they need to do when they're pulling a permit to start a business, license, all of that stuff. That's it's great. I I'm really 100% behind that. It's just that

um is is the cost of us providing this particular service matching up what what we need to push out to the public because you need to only do those kinds of things once. And if something changes, like the policy changes, then we push that information out. But we don't change the policy up here every every time we have a council meeting. Um there there are things that we can encourage our businesses to do like, you know, following whatever ordinances we have that may be uh sliding a little bit in our community. those kinds of things I see helpful um as we move forward uh with with these videos. But I I guess maybe I I just needed to have a more um dollar cost to what we're paying for with taxpayer dollars. Not that the future is social media. That's neither here or there to me. It's what the city is pushing out to get information out to the public uh for this particular contract and the cost of it uh for the city. Thank you, Mayor. That's it. Okay. Um very good comments from the council. Um I think this is uh well, we've all noticed the last couple of months we've pretty much gone dark on social media. Um, I'm This company does a very good professional job. I want our city to be viewed out in the public professionally. I don't want any kind of videos that get described as secondhand or something like that. I think it's really important. An image is very very important. So, it has to be done professionally. And this is not in even in my world in my restaurant. This is not my cost isn't this, but in comparison to a hundred million dollar

budget and my budget, this is a pretty good deal actually. And I think what we all have to keep in mind that this is a there's a 30-day clause that anyone can get out of this contract. So, if it's not working for the council, you can talk to our city manager and we can get out of that contract. But this what it's all about what what's been the really in the last two or three years not last year but before what's been the problem that people have said to us when we weren't on the council or whatever you were on the council is that they don't know what's going on. There's not enough transparency. There's not enough accountability. Accountability means communication. And if we can spend hours up here making decisions and if no one knows what we're doing, that's pretty sad. And I think this is the first step. The the website's the second step. And we have to push out what we're doing because that's the only way we will get reaction from the community that if it's good, bad, what they want or leave that alone. And I think we just keep in mind that we have a 30-day clause. So if it's not working to our standards, then we can we can end it. And uh but I think this is very important. I think the the city this I don't want to jump the gun, but this is the first step. And how do we know if it's ever going to work if we don't do the first step? If we go black in the dark, I mean in in communication and we have a we build a beautiful website. Now what do we do? you want each each department head with their camera out there, you know, and so we, you know, when I was dealing with the college, when I was keynote speaker, they have a crew of like 12 people on uh Segways running around the college

videotaping. And then we went to Kais, we went to Sutter and they had their little crew there. And everybody has it cruise because they know how all these corporations and other governments know how important communication it is. I know it's different. A lot of people don't get newspaper anymore and that's also an after-fact thing. So I think it's really important like has been said up here is that we're announcing what's taking place next week, next month, what's coming up. That's so so very important. and then videotape it like we have the Easter egg hunts and things like that to show community pride and development. We can't build pride unless we tell our story. Now I know in my business I can go to my IT person, he could tell me how many people see this video, what their age brackets are. Uh they got we had one video that went over a million views because my one of my employees threw some whipped cream in the face. was all planned in the face of another employee and then we got a Espa has got a 1 million views. Think about that. This a little Las little little restaurant and it was all over the nation and that's that's crazy stuff. And I know it's so different than it used to be. But it's a it's a new year. We have to we have to figure it out. But I think we need to take this first step to know if the next step of this the website and I agree a lot of my my wife's not on social media either. I am I got on social media because my business many many many years ago but she's not on it. So I explain to her and I show videos of the city and stuff like that because and she's not going to get on it. That's why it's so important that that then gets put onto our website so people that aren't on social media can get it. But

we have to remember the way you get people to your website is through social media. That's how you get them to your website. There has to be a mechanism that you put out there that's a you know that go to uh the website and you'll see how to I ho how to uh ask for speed bumps in your on your road how to ask for a pothole to be filled on your road you know things like that so we still you still need both of them they work hand in hand that's my thoughts on it

mayor if I may clarify two things um just because this contracting in front of you um you can make modification to the contract as it is and we can go back to the the contractor but I think there what I'm hearing is there's appetite for definitely accountability um if it ease your mind um we certainly can bring this back in six months to you on what has been produced um with this new amendment and then let council decide at those period to say well it's worth the money or it's not worth the money. Um, and then while I'm up here, um, might as well put on my IT hat a little bit. Um, we have Mid Valley IT here in the back as well. So, Corey, I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but may I I ask you to come forward real quick? Um, Mid Valley IT manage our current website as it is. Um, but I believe Corey, please correct me. I'm wrong. If we are to create a content or video tomorrow, say about applying for a business license or um to sign up for a utility bill online, can that video in an MP4 format be uploaded to our website viewable without social media?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So, you can create a post and then embed the actual um video right into the post and then people can go and see it. In fact, um, previous mayor, I think it was, uh, Faria would post his, um, videos on there as well in the mayor's, he had something called mayor's corner that he would post. So, that capability can be done now and and that's something that we can take direction from council tonight as well.

And certainly for me, again, I'm not disputing anything that we need regarding getting that information out to the public. All of that I agree with. For me, the transparency part is we don't have a nexus as to we're starting all over now again. And what are we going to be putting out now, 6 months, a year, and is this cost justifiable for right now? That's that's the point I'm trying to make about and that's all about transparency, too. We're asking the public to pay $5,000 a month for something that we haven't given them any nexuses or, you know, any information to go on that, yeah, this is good. You you guys are making a good decision. Let's spend the $5,000. And that's the hard decisions that we have to make up here as council people. But for me, I don't I don't have that information to tell me starting off again since the mayor indicated we we've been dark for a while. We're starting off at $5,000, but you know, could it be like, you know, $3,000 worth of work that's going to be done over the next six months to justify whether or not we pay five or do we have a contract that gets escalated over the two-year period of time based on how much information is going to be put out there to the public? That that's my position on this. and and it's kind of taken me a bit to get around to to that. But I'm not disagreeing that we don't need the information out there because in order to get it on our website, we have to have it. But is the price that we're paying now justifiable to the content that's going to be put out there to the public.

Thank Okay. Thank you for coming forward. All right. Okay. With that, is there any further questions? So if we have a motion or what's the Yeah, mayor like to make a motion to uh approve resolution 7069 as read by title

and second a motion and second for resolution 7069 as stated. Any further questions or comments? The only comment I have is I not necessarily want to put in the contract that they have to come back, but let's have a just uh in three to six months, whatever you decide, just have a review. Okay. Okay. All in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. No. Okay. Whether no or I

I Okay. One. We have four eyes and one no. Thank you very much. And now we'll move on to item 13. Consideration adoption city council resol resolution 7070 approving a three-year managed in service agreement with Mid Valley it and Mid Valley IT and authorizing the city manager execute the agreement. And with this we'll go over to our finance director Moreno. Good evening, mayor and council members. Tonight, I'm presenting the proposed three-year managed information technology services agreement with Mid Valley IT along with the SB77 compliance upgrades for the council chambers. As you've heard from our city attorney quite a bit, this item ensures the city maintains stable secured IT operations and meets new state requirements for remote public participation. Staff is requesting approval of the agreement and authorization for the city manager to execute the contract. This agreement provides comprehensive IT support for the city, including unlimited remote and on-site assistance, regular stopby service, and both standard and emergency response times. It also includes network documentation, capital planning, and enterprise level anti virus and monitoring tools. This monthly cost for core IT services is 12,877 plus 2380 for managed backup services. Additional subscriptions based tools such as anti virus, two factor authentication and email filtering are build based on actual usage. The agreement this agreement includes a standard 3.5 annual cost of living adjustment. SB77 requires all public agencies, as you

heard tonight, to provide the public with the ability to participate remotely by phone or video conference. Our current AV system is outdated and includes end of life components which limits our ability to reliably support hybrid participation. The proposed modernization ensures we meet the legal requirement and improves the overall quality, accessibility, and transparency of our public meetings. The modernization project includes several key upgrades. a dedicated Zoom Teams video conferencing PC, optional VO backup, new staff and clerk tables with microphones and monitors, replacement of the main chamber displays, and fully updated production switching and graphic system. It also includes new wireless microphones, improved streaming and recording capabilities and replacement of the end life Crestron system with a modern video over IP platform. The total total cost for the SB77 compliance and AV modernization projects is $358,273.80. The fiscal impact includes the monthly maintenance IT services and backup services along with the subscriptionbased tool tools build by usage. The onetime cost for the SB77 AV modernization as I stated was 358,000. Funding is available in the current IT budget as well as account 212410752 supported by the Sanwaqin Air Pollution Control Board grant and PEG franchise fees. Staff recommends that the council approve the manage IT services agreement, approve the seven the SP77 AV modernization project and alsoize the

city manager to execute the contract. I'm here if you have any questions. Okay. With that open city questions, comments? Yeah. What are uh backup services? What's that 2,380 paying for? What's it covering? We have our IT

page 27 people. Hello.

And my name is Joy Alexander. I'm director of sales for Mid Valley IT and I've been actually with the city of Los Benos for a long time. And so your backup services that means everything in all of your servers um especially for PD who has a large amount of servers um is getting backed up in the cloud. And people are like what's the cloud? It's really um what I would say like data centers. Um there's about six across the United States that we use. So if something fails here, it's being backed up in Chicago. So we got California, Chicago, Texas. It's on the East Coast. if there's some an earthquake um that California location, it'll bounce back to Chicago or something like that. So, all that information and recently that price did go up because the PD's um data is so large and they have to keep it for for a large amount of time. So, if something goes down right now, their server crashes, there's a fire, we're able to pull up because those backups happen um twice a day, I think. Or is it twice a day? Twice a day. um whatever that last backup was. So if it was at midnight and this server has crashed at 5:00 am, we could go back to whatever happened at 12:00 midnight and pull that information up and it would just be a matter of time. Like it's not automatic. We'd have to get a new server in place and then we could pull all that information up. So it's really the safety of all that data that you have here in the city. So, I'm assuming a lot of the it's very data intensive as far as the uh I'm assuming the cameras that are all the video that's getting uploaded constantly.

Yeah. Uh probably have to let because he's the camera guy. He does more of that. I'll let him speak.

I'm Cory S. Vera. I'm the director of um engineering for Mid Valley IT. Uh so a lot of that data is um all the files uh snapshots of the actual um virtual machines that make up the servers. So this the both city and PD have a stack of servers that we um put in a stack and then we virtualize off of that with the resources and then those individual servers get backed up and then the actual files get backed up as well. So like normal um flat files like word documents and stuff like that. If there's any changes, any concurrent changes, those get backed up as well. So that way we have usually about five revisions or so that we can go back for files and then as Joy mentioned uh two backups a day for the actual fit the virtual servers themselves. Um the great thing about the city about um that both city hall and PD have is that if say a server were to go down it actually has a failover where it fails over and it's in doesn't even act like if there's anything wrong with the network. It's the users won't see anything. We will see something and then we will actually have to work on that and say okay this physical server is broken all the other virtual servers. Yeah. It switches it over.

You guys didn't see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty scary if you guys were to see that those blinking lights and all that, but uh that way you can keep continuity not just with PD but with uh city. Thank you. Yep. I did. Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Um so the total project is 358273 358 273,000 and change. of that portion. What portion uh uh what is the cost for the chamber upgrade? Cuz I I see they're different. Um there's a project table here, but I'm not sure exactly what portion of that belongs to the chamber. That is the chamber upgrade.

So this the whole 36 58 is the chamber up. Okay. Yeah. And part of it's being funded through the grant and part of it being funded through PEG fees. Well, since you said that, I want to uh give a shout out and thanks to um airport, the San Sanwaqen Valley Air Pollution Control District for the $150,000 grant, which is uh a almost a 50% offset to this project for the city. Yeah, we were very fortunate uh to be granted that money to help us out. Yep.

Well, any other comments, question? I want to thank Mayor Prom because I know you twisted a lot of arms to get that grant. you talked about it a whole year before we got it. So, second time around trying to get it. So, we need another 150, but thank you for doing that. And I I guess there's no more questions with that. So, thank you two for coming to the microphone. So, with that, we'll uh the council uh would entertain a motion for 7070 resolution. Yes, mayor. I'd like to make a motion to um let me get my glasses here. See what number are we on? 7070. 14. 13. Okay.

13. Oh, 14. I'm sorry. 13. 13. 13. We'll go really. Okay, I got it. I'd like to make a motion to adopt resolution number 7070 as read by title. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second uh for resolution 7070 as stated. Any questions or comments? I'll just say that um this is being pushed by SB77 that Mary just talked about earlier this evening, but I think it's all going to work out better for everybody. More access to our city. I remember back in 95 when we wanted to put us on TV was such a big deal back then and we had to make deals with televisions. I think it was television at the time.

Yeah, there was something. Then we got the school board, then we got the county, then we got MCAG. And so anyway, now we're 2026. Good thing I'm not getting any older. So anyway, with that, all in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Eyes have it.

Mayor, real quick, just to clarify, now that that motion is passed, now I can let go of the little cookie. Um, this is a massive project for us. $358,000 worth of chamber upgrade. There will be some impacts and interruptions to council chamber as the AV equipments and stuff getting impacted. So we will likely see an impact on our May council meeting. Um so for May um for maybe the last meeting in April and the first meeting in May, we will probably have to find an alternate locations or cancel one of those meeting to allow them the time to actually rewire and redo all of our AV equipment. So just for information, thank you mayor.

Thank you. Next item 14, consideration adoption of city council resolution 7071 approving the cooperative agreement for local improvements between the state of California acting through its department of transportation referred to as CALR and the city of Lasanis for the cost of safety improvements at the intersection of State Route 152 and West I Street in the city of Lasanis and authorizing the city manager execute the agreement. With this, we'll go to our public works director, Mr. William V.

Thank you. Uh, good evening again, uh, mayor and council members. Uh, I have a presentation here that that, uh, covers both this item and the next item on the agenda. One one relatively short presentation. So, I'll I'll uh go through this and I I will be available for questions afterwards. So, uh, the item before you tonight, the items before you tonight, uh, have to do with, uh, Calrans pavement, uh, anchor project on Highway 152. And the these are the limits of the project. So, you can see the dark line there with with the big arrows pointing at it. That's the actual construction. And that's basically about halfway between the college and Badger Flat Road is where it starts on the west and it goes all the way out to St. Louis Street, just a little past St. Louis Street on the east side. So, they're going to do a pavement rehab all the way through town, both lanes in in both directions, and they're going to be adding some sidewalk in in certain locations. and they're going to uh upgrade and add uh ADA accessible ramps uh through throughout that corridor. And this this uh project is they're they're currently in design with CALR. We've had multiple meetings with them um to get to to this point where we're at tonight. So, they're keeping us updated on this. It's scheduled for construction tenatively right now for the winter of 2027 uh 2026. um and probably be completed late spring, early summer of 2027. Um the the first item for the cooperative agreement has to do with this intersection. And what and what that agreement says is that the city will contribute a certain amount of money, in this case up to $200,000

to pay for a portion of the improvements that aren't necessarily related to the rehabilitation of State Route 152. And in this case, that's the West I Street intersection. And you can see on on the photo on the left is the current state of that intersection. And you can see on the on the bottom of the photo um going northbound on I Street, there's a a shared left turn and through lane. And then there's a dedicated right turn lane. And it's just a there's no left arrow. It's just a green signal. And the signal is the same on the other side going southbound, but there's a dedicated left turn lane, a through lane, and a right turn lane, but there's no signal on that side either. That that uh no left arrow signal. So that what's proposed is to restripe the northbound lane to have a dedicated left turn lane and then have a a shared through and right turn lane with a a left turn arrow in both directions. So, it will be a controlled left turn like all of the other signals through town are, which will really improve the safety of this intersection and keep traffic moving because currently what happens in in some situations is one car car is waiting to turn left and then everybody behind them's waiting or they're trying to swing around them to to avoid waiting for them and then you have another car turning left and then you got a you have a conflict there which can cause a lot of accidents. So, this is really going to improve the safety and the functionality of this intersection. So, what they're going to do is the restriping and then they'll they'll hang those um those two left turn uh arrows on the on the existing mast head. Also, as part of this intersection is where the next item comes from, which is the

the dedication of a portion of our rideway to CALR to upgrade the ADA ramp at the southwest corner of that intersection. Uh, the local contribution, here's just a short explanation. The cooperative agreement outlines the financial responsibilities of the city with a not to exceed amount of $200,000 for the improvements. And that's not just the improvements. It's also paying for a little a small portion of the engineering and design of this project. The total project is estimated, the last estimate I heard was about $23 million. So, we're paying a very small portion and it's most and and $200,000 for the restriping of that intersection and the signals. It's a It's a pretty good deal and it the entire project's going to benefit the city of Lasanis. Uh and we've requested major V regional funds uh to be able to c to cover those costs associated with this project. Uh the rightway contract is um as I mentioned before is the subject property at the southeast the southwest corner uh updating that ADA ramp. Um and they require the acquisition of a highway easement deed for that partial number in connection with this project. Um, the contract sets forth the terms and conditions of the acquisition and the agreement states that the state shall pay the city of Laspanis the total sum of $4,800 as compensation for the property interest conveyed. The compensation amount includes full settlement of all claims related to the property and the proposed highway improvement. So the recommendation is staff recommends that city council adopt the resolution authorizing the city manager

to execute the cooperative agreement for f for the local improvements. Uh and the financial obligation is estimated not to exceed $200,000. And staff is also recommending the city council adopts a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the rightway contract and corresponding documents between the state of California acting through the department of transportation referred to as CALR and the city of Lasanis for parcel 17875-1 identified as APN 0271820001. And I'm available for any questions. Okay, before we ask questions, is there anyone from the public would like to speak on the city city council resolution 7071 as stated the intersection I and Pico? Okay, we'll turn it back over. Thank you. We'll turn it back over to city council and questions or comments.

I have a comment, mayor. Um, I was really happy to see this project uh move forward uh because when I'm traveling on uh north on West I Street, there are times I'm number one at the red light and as soon as it turns green, the people traveling south in the left turn lane, they they turn right in front of that first car. And we we've had several accidents out there because people just can't be patient anymore. So, uh, this kind of enforces patience of people, uh, traveling north and south. And, uh, I'm just really grateful that that, uh, Calrans is partnering with us to, uh, restripe that road so that we can have a better control and lessen the ability of people having accidents. So, thank you, William, for working on that and thank you, Neuron, for making sure that that project goes through.

Any other comments? Can I entertain a motion then? I'll I'll do it, mayor, since it's in my district. Sure. So, I'd like to make a motion to adopt resolution 7071 as read by title. We have a second. I'll second. Okay. Motion and second for resolution 7071 is stated. Any further questions or comments? Not hear any. Not hearing any. Signify by saying I. I. I

opposed. Eyes have it. Next item, uh, consideration adoption of city council resolution 7072 approving a right-await contract and corresponding documents between the state of California acting through its department of transportation referred to as CALR and the city of Lasis for parcel 1887-1 located at 1301 West I Street and authorizing the city manager to execute that contract. William already talked about that one piece that we have to deed over. Is there anybody from the public would like to talk on that deed over parcel? Okay. Any council comments, questions, then I'll entertain a motion. Mr.

Mayor, I'll make a motion on this one as well to approve resolution 7072 as read by title. Second. Okay. Motion and second for resolution 7072. Mity and and with that any further questions or comments? All in favor signify by saying I. I. Eyes have it. Motion carried. Thank you, William. We'll go start off with our city department reports and we'll start off with community and economic development director Stacy Soua Elms.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, first I want to uh update the council um and that the planning commission did attend the planning commission academy. We had four commissioners. Um, I had my planning technician there, myself and our city attorney attended. Um, there were a lot of sessions on um, housing laws. Um, and we learned lots of new information. Um, and it's just a great academy to go to, even for seasoned planning commissioners or even seasoned staff and that you're always learning something new. Um, so we appreciate the council's investment in our planning commission and being able to attend. Um, next is um letting the council know that uh the city of Laspanis has been awarded $134,500 for the HAP grant from Merced County. This is the homeless housing assistance and prevention program. Um this is an item that we've been sent a letter of award, but the actual award would need to come to city council for approval. I just wanted to let you know that um that the Merced County um has identified the city as an awardee. Uh this funding would be used for rapid rehousing services um which would look like deposits, application fees, and rental assistance to help with one tree. Um so that item will be coming to you in the future. I also wanted to update the council um on the one tree project which is the 58 permanent supportive housing units. Um grading has begun at one tree. Uh so it's looking like a construction site. Uh lots of activity happening there. Um and next step after grading

will be um installation of infrastructure. Um, and then after that, we're going to start to see uh the modular units delivered and some vertical builds happening. Um, so all super exciting. Um, and that concludes my report. Thank you very much. Finance Director Minnie Moreno.

Good evening, Mayor. Um, just wanted to let you know, uh, budget cycle is starting again and it's almost been a year since I got here. Um, it's really close. So, we're going to be, um, working with our city manager tomorrow to um, get the dates and the schedule updated and um, so we know when all of everything is due with the departments and um, getting that put together for you. Um, we might be having a Cinco de Mayo, uh, workshop where we might have some tacos. Um, so, uh, we're looking forward to creating that schedule and, um, we're still assisting all of our residents with, um, shut offs. So, if anybody has any hardships or anybody needs to make a payment arrangement, make sure you're giving us a call before you actually get shut off so we can work with you. or even if you've already been shut off, um staff is willing to to make those arrangements and they're working really hard towards that. And I also want to congratulate my staff for finance uh government finance week next week. Um they do a great job for the city of Laspanos and um I'm really appreciative of of our team and and thank you for that proclamation. That's all for me.

Thank you very much, Fire Chief Paul Tua. Chief, good evening, Mayor and Council. Uh, got a couple updates. Um, doing some firefighter and some engineer testing this week, uh, coming up. And then also this past weekend, we did the Sunday alarm event. We installed almost 110 smoke detectors. We focused our area just north of B Street in the in the Santa area. So, uh, the, uh, cooperation with Red Cross and County Fire and our folks did a really good job with that. And uh my folks are pretty impressed because they had a really rough weekend last weekend with uh plenty of uh fire activity. So, and we've been super busy. But that's all I have to report.

Thank you, Chief. Human resources interim director Isabelle Carlos. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. We were happy to facilitate uh the new hires that were presented earlier today. We congratulate them. We welcome them to the city team and we'll have more new hires to present very soon to you. Thank you. That's my brief report tonight. Thank you very much. Park and rec Director Joe Heim.

Hey, good evening. Um so the big one is the egg hunt coming up on March 28th. Um it's our fifth annual. Uh we hosted at Olivera Park. Um starts at 10:00 a.m. Again, that's uh March 28th, uh Saturday. So hopefully we get some good weather and um it's one of our favorite events. It's it's really really well attended. So, um, if you have a chance, stop by. Uh, otherwise, wanted to give you an update on Sunrise Ranch Park. We finally got the Pioneer out there to put the meter in, so it's electrified. Um, there are a couple tiny steps such as we're looking to get a photo cell in order to get the lights on a timer. Uh, but otherwise, uh, I stopped by the other night and it looks really good at night. They're um, lit up. Um, we are also registering for a number of programs such as Easter baking class. Um, and the last thing I uh wanted to announce was we just recently released our um spring summer recreation guide. Um, and I know I left a copy with you guys, but if you would like to, you could stop by the community center and get a copy or find it on our city website on the parks and rec page. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Joe. The police department commander Mel.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. So, a brief update is uh we just uh placed officer Vanis Warren. He was a school resource officer for Valley Community uh school. He is going to be moving. He was selected as a motor officer. So, come April 1st, he'll be transitioning over to a full-time motor assignment. uh we're very excited to uh support him in that role and excited to bring that level of service to the community as as they've exercised their thoughts that traffic is u in need of increased enforcement efforts. So, uh you will see him out on the motorcycle very soon and we're excited to have that happen. In in addition to that, you all met Nicholas today. He's a maintenance person for the police department and we are very excited to have him there. He's already taken uh a huge load away from our staff, taking on several maintenance related issues that that the new facility had. And I just wanted to thank you all for for that uh providing those resources that we're we're all using now. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Amanda. Public Works, William, Director.

Uh thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um a couple couple of updates. Uh we have a meeting tomorrow with our uh consulting engineer uh Goa Engineering uh for the 2026 um phase one if I remember correctly uh road rehabs um which include uh a large portion of West I Street um and then some of the streets in the Snow Goose area um which includes uh ADA ramp. So, we have a meeting with them tomorrow um to review 100% plans. So, that should be out to bid probably the first half of April if everything goes good in that meeting tomorrow. So, uh construction is should be set somewhere the first or second week of June to begin and should be completed uh by September if everything goes well. Septemberish. Um the other one is I just wanted to mention and this is one of the things that will be helpful when we go live when when everybody can watch from home is is when we give some of theseformational items. I just wanted to remind everybody that spring has sprung. I think everybody has not notices that. So everybody's sprinklers are probably coming back on. Um, so just as a reminder, the water days, if your address ends in an odd number are your days are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And if they end in in if it ends in an even number, it's Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. No watering on Monday. And the hours are between uh no watering between 11:00 a.m. and 700 p.m. to try to reduce some of that evaporation. Um, if there are any issues with the um with your timers, if they need to be reset with the time change, maybe something's messed up, um, you the

the public, anybody can call uh, the public works yard uh, at 827-7056 and set up a time and we'll come and reprogram your sprinklers for you to try to re to keep you on the proper schedule. And that concludes my report. Great. Thank you, William. City Attorney Mary Ler.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to thank the entire council for the opportunity to attend the planning commission Cal's conference. It was informative. Um, as Director Elm said, a lot of good sessions on housing, but I think for me it was also um important because I got to spend time with the planning commissioners, got to know them better, got to know staff better through meals together, and we even went to Downtown Disney one evening together, and I think we got back pretty late for me. It's like 10 o'clock. So, anyway, 10 o'clock pretty late. 10 o'clock. Pretty late for me. Anyway, it was it was it was really good to connect. So, I appreciate that. Great. So, thank you.

We're glad you could do that. City Manager Neuron that mayor, I'm all report out. Um, last one to to to give a notice. On April 17, we will be hosting PCO High School um for a mock city council. So I want to make sure that all council member are invited um to play the role of the member of the public and ask the students as they will be um acting on your behalf as the mayor and city council member to really understand how our government work in a local agency. So we're very excited to be hosting them from the government class from Pico High. So I think we're looking upward about a 100 student or so. So we'll be packing our chamber. Thank you mayor.

Fantastic. Okay, we'll start with our city council members report and we'll start with Mayor Prom Lewis.

Thank you, mayor. Um well, first of all, I'd like to start off with uh this past Friday, the uh Valley A Partners and Sanwaqin uh Air Pollution Control District and the California Air Resources Board um sponsored an event which was called Farmers Funding Success Showcase at um an iron crushing facility in Fresno called Bruno's. And uh this this showcase um was representing farmers who uh had received funding to replace their tractors, but as a result of receiving the funding, they'd have to give up their old tractors uh to the facility to be crushed. Now the the wonderful thing about this is that uh for me I had an opportunity to crush a tractor and it was really cathartic to just you know lift a tractor up in the air. Smash it first and then lift it up in the air and drop it. You know I understand people go to certain places and smash things just to get energy excess energy out and pay to do that. So, um it was of

Well, actually,

I had one of the uh board of supervisors uh supervise it, but I think he flipped my camera over to slow-mo. So, uh staff did did record it. So, they're going to send me a copy of what they had. But I had a little small tractor and when I crushed it, I guess there was water in the radiator and it just went all over uh the young man who was helping me with the joysticks. And then, you know, I had they he told me to bring it all the way up in the air and just drop it. So, that was that was like the big issue, you know. No, everybody else was just crushing tractors. So, I I had a a little bit of an opportunity to do something different. So, it was really fun. And um I'm just really thankful that these farmers were able to get their new tractors um uh by by the funding through the state of California. I wanted to just read something here from our CEO in regards to this program and this is in regards to tractor replacement. He says we have over 630 million pending applications representing 6,500 applicants from of farmers. We're not taking any new applications at this time due to the number of applications that are already that we already have and we only have 60 million left in the program. So 60 million uh versus needing 630 million is a lot of it's a big difference. So the the tractor replacement program was very successful. Uh unfortunately, you know, because of budget restraints, uh the money hasn't come down through the state of California, but um again, uh uh you can see that farmers are still waiting in line to get new tractors uh via this program. And I had an opportunity to sit in one of the new tractors. Uh I felt like I was climbing the Empire State Building to get in it. But, uh, very

nice equipment, you know, all air conditioning, uh, all the programmings inside of these new tractors, uh, to help them do their rows and all the stuff that they need to do. So, it's it's very, uh, computerized, uh, for these farmers to operate these tractors. Um um if I I'd like to make a request uh at our next meeting. I I know we have a weed abatement program that's coming up and if we can get um our our fire department to give an update on that. I've gotten a few calls from uh residents in in district 4 uh reporting areas and and I've assured them that we're on top of that uh to get this program going, but every I think people are feeling a little bit nervous uh now that the heat is uh ramped up. Those weeds are are drying up uh rather quickly now. Um, and one of the things that I've noticed uh as I drive around uh town and especially in in my district that garage sales are increasing. And uh when we passed the garage sale ordinance, I think this was back in the mid teens, 2013, 14, somewhere in there. uh it was passed because um there were people having garage sales every weekend and as a income supplement and of course you know no business license were pulled to do this. So the city uh had a uh a mandate that you can have I believe it's four garage sales a year and you have to go online and pull a permit to do so. Uh, and I've noticed that some some homes have already had four garage sales within one month. So, I'm not sure if,

you know, if we can uh figure out a way to help the community uh understand that they need to go online to do that. And perhaps with this new program that you're developing, uh we can um get that information out to the public and get it online at our website. But I I think people, you know, I don't know if they're ignoring it or that they just don't know what to do, but the garage sales are increasing and uh there are some people that are having way more garage sales than the allowable within our city ordinance. Okay, and that's it, mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member Perez. Um I have nothing to report. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. Welcome, Council Member Hian, for your first full meeting, I should say.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Again, I want to give thanks to the council uh for your show of uh confidence. I greatly appreciate this opportunity. Um, and I also really appreciate I give thanks to the uh city staff, the very warm welcome this past year as we uh conducted the administrative processing which comes with this position. Um I look forward to uh meeting with the department heads when we schedule that uh to uh get uh more in depth reporting and understanding of where we are with certain projects. Uh so I look forward to that scheduling uh shortly. And also I will be scheduling a public uh engagement meeting. Uh not sure what the proper terminology is for it, but I'll call it public engagement meeting uh with the public to reintroduce myself to district 2. uh and more importantly to allow the or provide an opportunity for members of district 2 uh and it's going to be open to anyone but to get uh more information and be able to ask questions in a uh more permissive environment uh questions such as uh public safety uh roads uh large projects small projects etc. Again, it'll be a more permissive environment. Won't be some of the restrictions that we have here, unfortunately, at the city council meeting. Uh well, so want to know if uh we had any thought into uh city public recognizing the uh 250th anniversary of the founding of our republic. Uh it's a very significant event. Uh and I was talking to you, Mr. Mayor, about it. I think it's the most important event in world history as it changed the relationship of the government and the governed uh before you were subjects and basically didn't have any rights and now it kind of turned that on its head. So hopefully we can if we have time to somehow recognize that. I think it's uh again very significant in uh world affairs.

And that's all I have. Thank you again. Okay. Thank you very much, Council Member Chavez. Uh yeah. William, real quick, quick question. A lot of people call for the sprinkler uh setup thing. Just curious curiosity. Um I don't know about a lot, but we do get quite a few requests throughout the throughout the year and usually at this time of year when when there's a time change and then it it's also spring, so those kind of collide at the same time. Yeah, we get uh we used to get quite a uh uh a lot more in the past, but um it's still it's still a service we provide and we'll do it for for anybody who requests it.

No, that's great. I think uh again adding that to the list of items to get out to people, you know, and I think, you know, as far as putting that stuff out there for getting the information out there on social media, I think we got to make sure we also include Spanish, too. So, English, Spanish, you can I know you can do them both at the same time. Um, so people get that information and not just in English. Uh, I want to give uh thanks to Joe and his crew, Parks and Recre Always Arbor Day. That went off pretty good. So, always do your a good job. Very well organized. And uh, also shout out to Mid Valley Disposal for the cleanup event we had on March 7th. Rick and his crew always do a fantastic job out there. And uh, I don't know if this is more so I was approached on this one. And I don't know maybe Neon or or maybe Commander Melvin or somebody can comment on it. I know they're talking about o overland and Santa and um what do you call it Santa Ana they say people run the stop that's uh before Santa Ana or yeah Santa Ana before that on Overland. So just uh west of 165 and they're asking for speed bumps and stuff like that. said they were turned down and uh it just because it's a major, you know, road for police and fire and I and I told them I that I believe that to be correct. I just want to verify that since they were asking me that stuff, but I know we can patrol that more, but I think we can't put speed bumps there. Correct. That's a major access road and that's why we don't do that in that particular road.

All right. Let me take a look at the application. I'll get back to you. Okay. All right. They were just asking me that question. So, I just wanted to put that out there. And then, uh, yeah, definitely uh, last thing is parkside chats coming up here pretty soon out. The weather is getting better, so you'll catch the mayor and I out there real soon to get with the district, the residents of district 3. And that's it for tonight. Thank you, sir.

Okay. Thank you very much. Um, well, first of all, we have a full house. It's good to see a full council. And we have our city treasurer, Lucy Lawrence, over there. And city clerk, Lucy Melanie. Good to see everybody here. It's good to see a full council and staff. Um, just reminder everybody, I think when Gary was in city manager, I sent out the 250 year logo to everybody. If you want me to do it again uh and then I think a week ago, I got I got a banner. They told they called me up and said there's something parcel post that came in and it's a banner for 250, but it has my name on it. But I guess because I I um signed up for that so we could get the logo and everything that came in. So if you're needing that resent to you because we're supposed to put the 250 logo on all our um all our correspondence this year. Um on April 14th we're going to have a state of the city at the community center. like to invite everybody to come down and and listen to the state of the city. We're going to be talking about what has taken place this year, what's going on right now, and then what our plans are for this council's plan and staff for the the future. I think it's very important to communicate and get this out. Um, we only going to have, like Joe said, he only going to have 500 seats, so come early. But anyway, uh I'm looking forward to that and I appreciate staff working on it. I think I wrote my speech already 10 times. I've changed it. But anyway, I appreciate the council's involvement. It's all of us. It's not one person. It's all of us up here together working on it to make this uh this city better. Um I have MCAG tomorrow. I'll be going

over to Merced. Meetings at 3. Um, I do want to consider a change of ordinance or modifying Mary on 6057 which is brought up. It was brought to my attention just a week ago that u I don't know 10 years ago or something. The council created an ordinance 6057 that says each council member is limited to one interaction with the public at a public facility. Is that a reso? It's ordinance 6057, right? It's a reso. It's a reszo. Yeah.

Oh, reszo. Sorry. So, um, so I wanted to look at changing that because that sort of stifles my plans of parkside chats going around to everybody's districts. And I I understand maybe the the reason why it was done is if a council member wanted to demand staff there and and and rent buildings and, you know, could cost a lot of money if you're going to have five or six of these things a year. But I think that in but it really goes against everything that I know we're communication with the public and as you can see you know we have to go to them they don't come to the city council meetings hopefully they watch them on TV but or on YouTube but uh I think we got to look at that and allow some leniency so we can go to each each uh district and have our park side chats different than what you're talking about and uh so anyway, I want to look at that. Um Arba Day was great. Shop local. I think it's very important. I'll say that for many. And then um my daughter says that I talk too much now that she's a local residence again. I talk too much about the past about when I was mayor before and she says now I have to talk about now and the future. So, I'm going to try to work on that because she sort of controls me. So, uh I think that's all I have. Our next meeting is April 1st at 6 PM in these chambers. I appreciate everybody that spoke during the public forum and for the agenda items. Appreciate staff. This meeting is adjourned.