City Council - Regular Meeting

ready. Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026. We are at Carmel by the Sea City Hall and I'd like to call this regular meeting of the Carmel by the Sea City Council to order at 4:30 p.m. City Clerk, would you please call the role? Sure. Council member Baron here. Council member Ber here. Mayor Prom Delves here. Council member Dram here. Mayor Burn here. All are present.

Would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance? I 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.

Thank you. Tonight we will be adjourning this meeting in memory of Don Good Hugh. For those of you who haven't heard, he passed recently and um he was a stalwart in our community and we'll be honoring him. So, as noted in the agenda, if necessary, we plan on taking a dinner break at approximately 6:30, but we'll play that as it goes and I'll let I'll let the group make that call. So, we begin this evening with our extraordinary business section where we hear from our community partners. First, we'll hear from our Carmel High School representative. I believe we have Drew here. Yes. Welcome.

CH just update. Uh this last month on January 12th, we had a senior minute party which means that a graduation is giving getting ever closer. And we re reiterate the importance of a sober grad night on that night. And we had our elective fair, which means that grades 9 through 11 had the opportunity to learn about all the electives offered at CHS. And seniors got anformational meeting on what to expect in their last semester of school. Uh the next week we had our winter rally which was really in preparation for our winter formal which was the next weekend and we had a lot of recognition um prominently in our CCS and honors singers and musicians. Uh we had a lot this year I think around 55 or so. So congrats to them. Um the next week we had a visual and performing arts show and assembly which consisted of all of our VAPA classes coming together and putting on a show with the theme analog. Uh many featured or many pieces featured a blend of classes such as dance and video production and we thank all those that came to support. Um and then this last Saturday was our winter formal which was great big success. Um coming up we have a lot uh winter sports senior nights are coming up in boys and girls soccer and boys and girls basketball and wrestling. We have spring sports which started this week. Um and if you would like to come support we have all of our athletic calendar on the Carmel High website. Uh more senior minute parties. We are spoiled deserved. uh a jazz cafe which features the jazz workshop uh

which is next Tuesday night. Um lots and lots of mock trial competitions. I don't know how they do it. Um kindness week is going to be this next week uh before Valentine's Day and then we have February break right after that. So we look forward to it. Thank you.

Thank you Drew. Good to have you here. So, uh, so is Chris here? I don't see Chris who is going to represent the Living Breath Foundation. He might have got held up. So, hopefully he'll show up, but we're going to skip through that. And I believe we've continued the Monterey Peninsula Airport District presentation till next month. I don't know what came up with Dino, but I can't wait to hear what he has to say because the building's coming out of the ground and it's very exciting. $200 million project. So, sorry about that, but we're going to get to move quickly through our meeting here. Uh, next is public appearances, and we'll now open the floor for public appearances. Nova, could you please read the public appearance notice?

Sure. Members of the public are entitled to speak on matters of municipal concern not on the agenda during public appearances. Each person's comments shall be limited to three minutes or as otherwise established by the mayor. Persons are not required to provide their names. However, it's helpful for speakers to state their names so they may be identified in the minutes of the meeting. Under the Brown Act, public comment for matters on the agenda must relate to that agenda item and public matters or public comment for matters not on the agenda must relate to the subject matter jurisdiction of this legislative body. If a member of the public attending the meeting in person or remotely violates the Brown Act by failing to comply with these requirements, then that speaker will be muted. Thank you. At this time, members of the public may speak on matters of municipal concern that are not on tonight's agenda. How many people plan on speaking? All right, let's get started. Come on up,

Mayor Burn members of the council. My name is Cindy Lloyd. I am going to echo a comment that was made last night's meeting and that is to have members of everybody on the dis to lean forward and speak into their microphones because we in the audience cannot hear you. If I zoom it, I can hear everybody perfectly. But when I come here, I can't hear you except I can hear Bob because he does it. So follow Bob's direction if you wouldn't mind. Thank you very much. We love Bob. Thank you, Bob. Remember, this is for things that are not on tonight's agenda. So, as long as housing's not on the agenda,

um it sort of is. I don't read it on here. Do you want to do you want to do it now?

Okay, go ahead. So, um, a lot of people don't know this, but we had a wonderful plan that the planning department put together for housing and parking at the Sunset Center. And I'm making a guess or an assumption here, but the main reason was that they were worried the builder's remedy would kick in if they didn't have a plan. So, they could do that plan and get it put in place. Then, we put together a group called the AHA group. And the AHA group came up with a plan to get around that one. And so now we got the hotel people who I'm told by Brandon many people very interested. Find me one that will do it. I'd love to meet that person because they won't because it's just the numbers, the valuation. So that's another extension on the housing that won't be done. You won't have housing at the Sunset Center. You won't have parking at the Sunset Center. I know parking's on Jenna. I'm sorry I said it, but the reality is we keep trying to get around things just like last night on the daylight on these laws. Why don't we just try to follow the spirit of the law? And it I'd like to conclude by I understand from a meeting I was in last week, D Alexander called me a misogynist. Was that true? I found your comments towards me were misogynistic and that's what I said.

Right. So because I don't agree with Alexandria and I think that her comments were very foolish and not correct. I'm a misogynist. I'm a factual person. I'm not a misogynist. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Fred. Who's next?

Good to have you back, Maria. My name is Maria Roose and I'm here representing the community activities commission and speaking a little bit on behalf of the chamber of commerce because I have something exciting for you. It's called putts for paws. So for everybody in the back so you can see it. Um who could have imagined I have already we have mini golf and davendorf park. Uh the chamber with the approval and support of the community activities commission has putting together the potting for pause on February 10th, that's Tuesday, with first t at 12 noon. So far the chamber has 36 teams signed up, but we have room for 50. So I see a full room here. I see all the chamber members, and I'm looking for people to come and play. Um uh this is a portion of the proceeds of this will go to the Golden Aldi Senior Cat Rescue and Birch Park. Uh anyone interested in can sign up at the chamber's website. The chamber is hosting this event in an effort to celebrate of course the AT&T ProAm and honor the legacy of a Crosby Invitational with a twist. We have pause instead of movie stars. So the t the CAC has at at least one of the holes. We're going to be manning one of the holes or hosting one of the holes. Um Commissioner Ellen Martin or myself will be there and we also have two other commissioners from the community activities commission participating. There's one of them hosting one hole individually and of course Katie who's here with me in the back. There you go. Will be as well there. So, we're hoping everyone can participate uh and sign up here. I'm going to leave brochures for everybody

to participate. Come on. It's time to have mini golf in our town. Thank you. I'll be there, Maria. I understand there's going to be a shootout with Mayor Smith from PG. Is that correct? Yes. I I said I'd do it. And we're hoping we're counting on you again.

I'll be there. I'll be there. I'll see what I can do. Thank you. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Lillian Barbido and I'm one of the co-founders of the Carmel Dance Festival. When Carmemell Dance Festival was founded 5 years ago, our goal was to build for dance with the Monterey Jazz Festival and Bach Festival have long been for music, a cultural institution that brings the world's greatest performing artists to the Central Coast while also generating meaningful cultural tourism for our region. That long-term vision is now being realized. On February 27th, Carmel Dance Festival will present Royal Ballet principal dancer Natalyia Acipova at the Sunset Center. She's widely regarded as one of the greatest dancers in the world. She performs exclusively or usually exclusively on the largest, most prestigious stages. And in 3 weeks, the Sunset Center will become one of the most important stages in the world simply because of who is stepping on it. No dancer of her caliber has ever performed at the Sunset Center. This represents a historic first, not only for our nonprofit, but for the venue and the city of Carmel by the Sea. This presentation has been three years in the making, and the response has been extraordinary. Tickets are nearly sold out. We have audience members traveling to our region specifically for this performance from across the United States. I want to emphasize that I'm sharing this not simply to announce a performance. Yes, it's important for you to know that Carmel Dance Festival is bringing worldclass dance here, but it's also important context. We understand that the Sunset Center is subsidized by

the city of Carmel by the Sea and we appreciate your investment in the cultural infrastructure and recognize the complexity of stewarding a venue such of as uh at this scale. At the same time, securing this engagement required a lot of persistence and I say that lightly. We first sought to book the sunset center in 2023, again in 24, and again in 2025 before finally securing this date. Because of that, a small group of nonprofit organizations has begun working collaborative collaboratively to prepare a report for the city council that thoughtfully examines how the Sunset Cent's mission might be more fully realized through increased access, utilization, and partnerships with local organizations. We see this as an opportunity. Performance like this demonstrate what's possible when access aligns. strong demand, full houses, cultural tourism, and an enriched cultural fabric of our community. And we also just wanted to invite you and make sure it's on your radar. Thank you for your time and your continued support of arts in this region.

Thank you, Lilian. And congratulations on getting that lined up. So, how soon do you think we need to respond if we want a ticket? Like next two days. You think they're um within a week. Within the week. Okay, good. Within a week. Thank you. Thank you. And congratulations again. Next.

Hi there. Hi there.

Um, so as far as I know, as far as the Brown Act is concerned and what you guys have said in here many times, you're not allowed to respond to us. So I think that Alessandro was out of line hurling that derogatory comment at that at that guy. First of all, second of all, so glad to see you. Awake, Brian. I don't know if you've seen it, but I now know how to make realels. And I've got a compilation of uh a bunch of your naps in here that have gotten 3,000 views. And I've gotten some pretty funny comments about how we should get you a bottle, how you go to the uh Joe Biden school, and that there are clowns like this in every city. So, if you thought that you were going to conceal my evidence and then destroy it 10 days after I filed my lawsuit and I was going to go quietly into the night, I guess you were wrong. Now, I would also like to say that um it was delightful for me to see Chip get up and run out of the room before he could pay the piper and face me. And the whole time I was talking, he didn't even have the nerve to look up. I think he looked up for 12 seconds. And Dale, I heard you warn him as I approached the mic. You do know that it's a hot mic, right? I It's amazing. He can inflict violence on his community with a smug arrogance. And then he can't even face a dimminitive woman when she gets up and wants to talk to him about his entire career. Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about was um this pickle ball debate. So, I don't have any dog in the fight. I totally understand both sides of the position. I know people are getting annoyed with the noise and that other people want to keep playing. Uh and I know DDA has been bringing this up since 2024.

Now, you guys talk about a bunch of ridiculous solutions that aren't solutions at all. And I didn't hear anywhere, Dale, you present the quote that you got from Legend Bane. I've got it here. It's not $200,000. And you were complaining about $50,000 and you're afraid to spend it. Well, you could have gotten a site evaluation from Sarami for 12,000. So you've got an unencumbered account in the police fund which is $2.5 million that you could could have gone into 200,000. You had no problem giving Chip Rig a raise four of them since he criminalized sunbathing. And now you're criminalizing pickle ball while you have no problem being ruthless with your neighbors and my neighbors and obscenely generous with one of your own cronies.

It's embarrassing. Thank you. Was anybody else wanting to speak? It's one hand online. Craig Rose, go ahead. Yeah, I'm making sure you can hear me. We can hear you, Craig.

All right. Good evening, Dale. Um, Dale, you're in that seat largely because of somebody like me and others that have actually told you to do this. I think you told me your wife got a gun or threatened to get a gun if you would actually be mayor. And Dale, you ran one of the most legit nonprofits, but I've seen you fall into the trap with those that you're sitting next to. It's been 13 months, Dale. And you're going to go down as a guy who locked up pickle ball. I mean, we sent Chip Rig out with tears. Dale. Dale, you know he's a Freemason and you know he's a bad dude. You know he hit me. You know what he did was illegal. And to watch you protect him for 13 months and then send him out of the country. I think the people are fed up. I can't wait to come back to Carmel for this dance event because it's amazing this this woman's renowned to think what is coming to Carmel. But then we get there and we have graffiti on the pickle ball court. Here's a simple solution. If you bought a house next to a pickle ball court or a tennis court, you know it's loud. Yes, it got louder. I'm a huge fan of the game and your house is probably worth an absorbent amount more that you could sell it because it's next to a prime spot to play pickle ball. But how you guys approach things there by arguing over the wall, Alexandra? God. um just locking up the beach, arresting somebody like Teresa, and then Dale, I'd be worried if your if your wife actually did buy a gun, like she can't be proud of what you're doing there because it's a disgrace to everything you laid the foundation for before. Release the footage of Chip Rig, of all

those secret meetings. Let's be honest with the public of why you guys stall and let's tell the truth. Dale, you're better than this, but you're sitting now with a bunch of people. And Brandon, you're not off the hook. Brandon, you lied to the police officer when he interviewed you saying that ship rarer that I headbutted him. So Brandon, you're a pawn like the rest of them. We need a We need you guys to do better. And Dale, this is a disgrace. A disgrace, Dale. I hope you hear it. Dale, you need to do better. And when let's save those fake tears for TV, Dale, because Chip Rick, the only one that should be crying is Teresa, and she's standing up there like a boss calling you guys on the goddamn carpet. Do better, Dale. All right. Thank you, Craig. I don't see any other hands up. Last time in the chamber here. Anybody want to say something? Joe does

unaccustomed as I am to public speaking. I can't resist. Um I don't know exactly what to call that. Maybe proof by selective demonstration, but I can't abide listening to someone rant that there's somehow a disgrace being pre played out here in Carmel. It's not a disgrace. Reminds me when the pickle ball advocates attacked the city council and yelled at them and screamed at them and Bob Dell's reminded them that you guys aren't here to make any money. You're here to run a city. And I think the improvement in this city in the time that this new regime has been in place. I shouldn't call it a regime. The new city council is in place is remarkable. And I can't say I'm proud of it because I didn't have anything to do with it. But I'm I'm proud that we elected you and I'm proud of the job that you're doing. Appreciate that, Joe. You You can hold the applause, please.

Lindy Caliori, thank you, Joe, for saying those comments, and I agree with everything you said. Thank you. Thank you for keeping that brief. Anybody else? All right, we're going to close the public comment and next we're going to go to announcements. City administrator, do you have any announcements? No, sir. City attorney, do you have any announcements? No announcements. No surprise there. Um, and now we're going to go to council members. We'll start with Alisandre. Do you have one?

Thank you, mayor. I've got two, um, quick items. Um, I also wanted to mention the loss of another longtime resident. Um, Michael Cunningham passed away last month. Uh, he had been a resident of Carmel by the Sea for 25 years. He retired here. Uh, he had served on the planning commission and the city council. Um, so we're thankful for his service to our community and condolences go to his family and friends. Uh, and on a bit lighter note, I wanted to thank Nova and wanted to let the public know that there is now a second way to access video from public meetings. Um, on the public um meeting agenda page online, um, the second item on the left hand side, there's a tab that says meeting media and Nova has now made it um, so that it attaches directly and you can go to the city's YouTube page. So, it's another way, especially if you're looking up, let's say, a previous meeting, um you can watch the video um through just clicking onto that as opposed to having to search through for it. So, it makes uh things easier and I think it should be very helpful. So, thanks, Nova.

Thank you. And thank you, Nova, for maintaining that system. It's a wonderful system now that we all know how to use it. Appreciate that. Uh Bob.

Yeah, just a shout out to uh something that happened in a matter of uh 12 hours this last night and this morning at 5:28 last night. I was copied on an email from a constituent that was having a problem. It was related to a neighbor in a construction project uh that something wasn't being um being built as had been approved by the planning commission. Uh and I was copied on that. It was an email to Brandon. Um, and I'm I just want to report that by 10:15 this morning, I got a an email from that same constituent uh saying that Brandon had responded um that Marne had responded and that Katherine had all responded um and that the matter had been resolved. And um that is customer service, Brandon, and I know that's what you're all about. And I just want to commend that type of closure on a problem for a citizen.

Thank you. That's great. Hans, it's your turn.

Yeah, I just wanted to um give a quick update on the housing element amendment. It is um we received uh comments back from HCD, which is the state housing agency, and we um the staff put together some uh updates. They're really technical updates. There's nothing particularly substantive. And I was on a call today with the reviewer from HCD and um really didn't flag anything. So they're going to do one more informal review and they think that'll take about a week and then uh we'll do a 7-day um public review period and then we will um submit it again to the state and they have 60 days although they're going to try to expedite it. So that is the timeline on getting a finalized housing amendment. Thank you very much, Jeff.

Yeah, I wanted to sort of follow in Alessandro's footsteps um a little bit and remember Don Good Hugh. I remember um when I'm when we bought our house here in 2005 when I was let's see I would have been 40. Um and Don was at that point 73. Um we met running on the beach. Um, we had a couple of years together as sort of running partners. We ran on the beach. We ran, for those of you that have been with me, up into the Pebble Beach Forest. Um, Don and I enjoyed a number of runs. Um, again with the 30-year age difference up in the Pebble Beach Forest, um, past the Caesar Pouse and up up into the wilds, if any of you know that. And it's a tremendous loss um, tremendous loss for the architecture community, uh, for Carmel and and myself. And so, thank you for closing the meeting in memory of Don.

Thank you. I might just add to that that uh for those of you who didn't know this, uh Don was really a giant in our community. He wasn't just a brilliant architect. He was a true steward of our village in the forest and his work on the commissions and authorship of our residential design guidelines. He quite literally defined the aesthetic that we fight to protect all the time here. He understood that in Carmel, our architecture must always sit in harmony with our natural environment. And he didn't just build homes. He preserved our character. And as we move into our discussion on strategic priorities, let's do so with the same discipline, vision, and deep love for the village that Don showed us every day. And we'll once again, we'll be closing the meeting in his honor. So, thank you, Don. So, we now take on um item No, we have a consent agenda first. I've got it. It's one only one. And uh that consent item consent agenda item is second reading and adoption of ordinance number 20261. Does anyone wish to pull this item on the council? Anyone in the public? All right. Is um is there a motion to wave? Wait a minute. First, we have to have uh the uh city attorney read the uh item.

He won't need to do that. It's on consent. So the motion would be to approve the consent item. Okay, there we go. That's why we have you here. Is there a motion to wave further reading and adopt ordinance number 202601? Yeah. I move approval of the consent agenda. I second. All right. Roll call, please. Council member Aaron. Yes. Council member Bter. Yes. Mayor Promos. Yes. Council member Dram. Yes. Mayor Burn. Yes. Motion carries. All right. We're moving now to orders of business. Tonight we have two items. These items require council discussion, debate, direction to staff and or action. Item two is council strategic priorities postworkshop update.

And I believe you're going to take this on, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Um,

so what Nova is going to do while I'm talking a little bit is she's going to put up the essentially the marked up track changes version of the priorities worksheet and and that's what we're going to work through here. But just a couple of words uh about what the council strategic priorities list do. Um so at the workshop we had recently I use the analogy of a symphony and a conductor. You know the the staff in the city are like a symphony. Each one is an expert at the instrument they play. Uh and the city manager role is essentially like the conductor of that symphony. I know I have to work with my team, uh, help them perform, get their get their duties done, and really play those songs that are the things that keep running the city. Um, your job as a council is to tell me as the conductor of that symphony what songs we're going to play throughout a year. And this strategic priorities list is really what that song list is. Um, it acts as a communication vehicle between the council and myself. Uh it's a tool that keeps us focused throughout the year and pre prevents us from going down roads of shiny objects which all of us including myself can do uh and derailing us uh without the majority of the council saying we're going to change directions. We're going to make something new a priority. As we talked about at the priorities workshop, we have a commitment among all of us to return on a more regular basis throughout the year and talk about this priorities list. And those will be the points in time when we can deviate from what a priority is, add new priorities, change priorities, and give you updates on where we're at. So, what we're trying to do together, my vision for this is trying to build a system that works for future city councils, future city administrators. Um, and and so I really appreciate all the time that's been put into this. We are going to go line by line through this. Uh, we're going to work together. We're going to find the right number together. It might take some time. We might not get it perfect this time around, but I feel like we're we're going the right direction on a system. Uh, so as a reminder, what we did uh to get here, we took a lot of notes from our workshop. the department heads and I added dates where we we

could uh we took notes of what was added and removed and the markups are pink means that it's a complete item and it's done. Green means it was an item that was either added brand new or elevated from your uh future projects list. The yellow ones uh where we just changed the title based on feedback we got from council in the meeting. So the title of the item has been changed but it's not a new item. And uh the red items, there's one of them that has been completely removed from the list by council. And if it's clear, that means we didn't change the title at all. We're just looking for some direction on the priority. So, what do we need from you today? We're going to work through this list from top to bottom. Um and we're going to make decisions as we go along about what the priority level is. You see, we have a column on this list that we talked about at the priorities meeting. What the priority level is for council, level one, 2, or three. And uh because as I mentioned in the staff report, the list is too big right now for a 2026 project list. So as we go along, I would ask council to think about which items might be moved to a future project list that we would not spend any time or capacity on until next year. Um as you know, as attached to the staff report, I did a sample of what this might look like. Um, that is not by any means meant to influence the council on what their decisions would be, but it was just meant to be a guidepost of how you might attempt to to take the list and take some things and put them on a future list and focus on what we wanted to do this year. So, we're going to go through line by line. If it's pink, all I need from you is okay to remove it from the list. You see the first two up here. We're going to just say quickly, these are done. Are you okay if they come off your list? I just need yeses and nos on that. the green items. Uh we want to make sure that the titles are correct because they're new or they've been elevated from the from the future projects list and we want to get from you the priority level. For the yellow items, we just want to make sure that the title is correct because again it's an existing item, but we modified the title based on feedback we received from you at that recent workshop. We also

need to get the priority level on those ones. If it's red, we already know that it's going away. There's only one of them. And if it's clear, all we need to get from you is the priority level or again telling us if you think this needs to go to the future list. So, that was a lot. It was a bit of a windup. Um, I'm going to pause there and see if council has any questions about what we're doing today or if I made that relatively clear. Any questions? I have a question. If there's something not on here that we think should be, how's that going to work?

Uh, I think, you know, you always, as council, you always reserve the right during these conversations to say we should add something. I would suggest if there's something you think needs to be added and you want to discuss it with your colleagues up here, let's do it based on the blue category that we're in. Just like we did at the workshop, if there's something that you feel needs to be added under the budget clarity header or financial health or as we go through this, you know, please throw it out there to your colleagues as we're having discussions. Um, you know, just like at the workshop, this is not meant to be you only get to say something one time. This is meant to be you all talking to each other and and Nova and I Nova is going to do this real time on the screen as we're going through. And so we will we will take notes, we'll make modifications, we'll add things. So hopefully when we leave this item tonight, uh we have a pretty solid idea of where we're going. But by all means, you guys are meant to have conversations with each other during this.

How do you involve the public in this discussion? Uh I would suggest that we go through each green section through the strategy level uh and then take public comment at the end of all your discussions and comments in each green section. So'll be five five sections of public comment. Okay. All right. Um so that's a clarification Brandon. So um the you sort of starting with the end in mind the outcome we are trying to achieve today is priorities for the next fiscal year for the next calendar year for 2026 and the fiscal year only has six months left in it

for the okay so there's the question right away is this is this for the next fiscal year which starts in July and is the following 12 months because that's kind of how we do business right historically and that might be a conversation as we as we evolve this list together. Historically, the city for the last five or six years has used this list on a calendar year starts January 1st is when the priorities are set at that workshop that we just had and then we work towards this throughout the year.

I'm not going to make an argument to change it other than I that doesn't it doesn't make sense to me because it's February. We're going to be working on a budget starting in two weeks for adoption on June 1st and this should inform that. I guess I just made the argument. So, go ahead. I have another comment related to that.

Yeah. So, I'll add my voice um to to Bob. um you know you Brandon you made the comment historically the council has done this or that or the other thing and frankly historically we do this once a year and then we kind of forget about it and then we come back the next year and we do it and we kind of forget about it. So I'm not sure that the argument can really be honestly made that we we do this December December you know we do this on a December basis. So, I agree with Bob that um we should be looking uh sort of at the fiscal year and I think that this goes with the So, I think that this goes with the budget process um 100%. Um the the other question I was going to ask and I'm sorry I didn't cue this up for you yesterday when we talked was you know the the staff report gives the impression that um the staff report gives the impression that you don't have enough uh you don't have enough staff to do everything on the list which is fine. That's what um that's what uh this exercise is about. But my question for you um and and your staff is you know we we are we constantly hear um from the public right or wrong that um we need to reduce the number of staff we have.

Mhm.

And I think that you know eager eager um eagerness has sort of resulted in this situation where some of us might think that we don't have enough staff. And so my question to you which I'll ask again if I remember at the end of the meeting would be what do we do to increase our capacity to get these things done? You know we have you and I had a conversation about how staff isn't widgets. You know we have planning we have planning staff members and we have public works staff members and administration and those people are not um those staff members are not interchangeable with one another. So we can't simply add, we can't simply say, you know, we're going to do a whole bunch of IT stuff when we only have an IT staff of one. So at the end of the conversation, you know, as we work in our way into the next budget session, you know, I would like to have an understanding, you know, maybe next week or at the end tonight or next week or whatever, how we increase our capacity to do some of these things that the council, you know, it's our decision to hire another person or provide you with headcount. And I'm looking forward to having that conversation during the budget during the budget process about whether we need to whether we actually need to do that.

Yeah. And I can I can answer I can I can't answer it fully, but I'll speak to that a little bit in that I think that this list the way that we're going through this and if we can if we can land on a list that focuses us so we know exactly what we're supposed to doing in a way that actually will help a little bit with capacity because we won't be pulled off into other things. you're more efficient when you're working on something and you know where the the end is. So that's part of it. I think that you know having that conversation as we start to to talk about the budget will be important too. So we can certainly talk about that as well. Any other questions from council? Council member Bter I see you moving to your microphone.

Yeah, I I just will uh echo um what Bob and um Jeff said. I I do think that aligning it with the fiscal year makes sense. And similar to what Jeff said, um I'm less interested in sort of how we can increase staff capacity in certain areas and more interested in a departmental level understanding of capacity based on the list that we come up with. So, we have this staff capacity by department and it'd be interesting for you to tell us, hey, public works is overloaded with what you have here or the administrative uh group is overloaded with what you have here. So,

great. Thank you. somewhat related is there's the whole CIP process that sort of dubtubales in with some of this stuff and it gets a little bit confusing is what's CIP what's the priority and how do you interface that and that is on a on a budget year although we're carrying stuff over now on a fiscal year so it would be nice to have some kind of way to view that in a in a clear way in my mind anyway yeah in pre in previous years what we've talked about is that the you know the CIP is a priority if something defines here

def the capital improvement program. So all the in infrastructures type of projects that are happening seeing the roads and the sidewalks and all that. Thank you. Um we we over the years as a city have have said you know various councils that the CIP is a priority in and of itself and so uh there was a time a few years back when this list actually included all the CIP projects and the decision was made to take them off of here because it's essentially part of the day-to-day business and and will happen uh it should be happening regardless of what this list has on it. So, but I think what you're saying, Mayor, is is important to remind everyone that this list is not an exhaustive list of everything that's happening in the city. There's also the CIP. There's also the day-to-day things, regulatory things that we have to do, like our staff just spent a week with the state u doing an audit, walking around the city looking at storm water things. So, those those are things that have to happen as part of day-to-day business as well.

But you do have some of those on here. That's right. There are some that the council decided to put on here to keep eyes on specifically because they as part of the CIP were so important that they wanted to to keep them on the list. Okay. All right. Got an item I just wanted to add. Um I I know that we're all aware of staff capacity and that's key. But I also wanted to emphasize what Hans mentioned last um meeting which is um just time capacity in general. not only of the council, like we can't just have these non-stop 6-hour meetings, but that's also um unfair to the public as well because we do want to have public participation, but it just sometimes gets to be too much and an overload. So, I think we need to keep all of that um in mind as we go through this.

Great. Any other questions or comments? Thank you. That was all very helpful. Um so then let's let's begin, shall we? Uh so the first two items on the list are both items that we have marked as done. The first one is G1.1.1 which is review and reformulate the approach to reserves and G1.1.2 update and refine financial policies. Both of those were done. My suggestion to you council would be these come off the list. I'm just looking for uh yeses, nos. Thumbs up would be great. Thumbs up, Council Member Dramov. Okay, great. So, Nova, we can go ahead and strike those if you want to do that through the magic of real time without I know, right? We're really fancy here. Just like that, your list is updated. Okay. Uh the next one up for bids is G1.1.1. As I mentioned, green means that this is a new item that would came out of your workshop. Uh so up for grabs here, we'd love to make sure that we got the title correct for this one, which is increase usability and clarity of financial reports given to council. And the priority level that we had in our notes from the meeting um sort of understanding it wasn't a full five, but what we heard from the majority of folks was this would be a priority priority level three. Um so with that, I guess I'll open the floor for you all five to have your discussion about that item.

So is this your kind of you're running you're running the If that's okay, I think that he's in charge. If the mayor's okay with that. No, no, we we already agreed on it. Okay. Thank you. It doesn't make sense to have interfering with your presentation. So my cut on this is um since you're going to limit the number of ones we can have and since I know this is going to happen anyway, of course it's a three. So I'm not going to waste a one on something that's going to happen anyway. G he's gaming the system already.

Gaming the system already. But I think you do you agree with that as a result of financial stewardship work group um we're already on track to be doing something like this by July. So, I I have an issue with the title. I think it this talks about financial reports. I think that there's room for improvement on really all reports that are presented to council. Um there are some reports that don't exist that I think could exist and some that do exist that I think need to be modified. So, I would I don't think just saying financial reports is accurate. Um, and I think for me it's a relatively high priority. Um, I've been on a number of boards and the thing that's hardest to do as a board member is to really understand operations from a board member seat. And that is that is the role of these reports. And I will say um I think as council members we you know candidly we have very little visibility into efficiency of the operation and these reports are the best way to get at that. So some folks call them key performance indicators or KPIs. It's basically metrics about um you know how much is getting done at what rate in certain departments. And frankly I think that I know they have their drawbacks. I know they can be misused, but I think if we do it intelligently, I think that could have a real benefit for how um how we manage the city. So for me, it's a two. Um but again, uh I think it's pretty important. Council member, do you have any suggested language? I mean, that's one thing that we'd love to Sorry, I just Sorry, sir. Yeah, I think we should go around the

room before we start modifying uh you know before we start modifying the scope of what these items are. You know, I think uh Hans is recommending that we vastly increase the the the number of reports that we go through. And as as someone who um some a few years ago, and I don't see Karen in the audience will remember the revamping that I tried to do with the Forest and Beach Commission, the tree reports that we worked on for months and months and months. Um to me, this just seems like a time sync. Um I you know I see Jamie is probably here somewhere. It seems like a time sync for um admin. I appreciate Hans's sentiment um at having these reports, but I feel like I, you know, I can get the operational view that I need in my one-on- ones with you every week um by asking by being prepared and asking not that not that you're not prepared, by being uh by by asking asking questions that are of interest to me and taking an interest. Um I you know when when I saw this you know if Bob hadn't said that this was on the verge of being done I would have used it as an opportunity to just remove it uh remove it from the list. Um I I I have I'm okay with the reports that are that are in the council packet no now and I would I would object to m to expanding the scope to include things that we don't even know about. I'm between a two or a three just because I'm not sure how much staff time it would take to improve them. If it's not going to be that time consuming, I I'd give it a two. If it looks like it's really going to be um a lot of work, then you know, go go for a three on it.

I give it a two. And the title, I think, could be expanded a little bit to include the range of reports that because I think some of these things are just going to fall out. It's just a matter of sucking the data into a system that you've got at this point.

Yeah, I I'll just go back just because I've had the benefit of hearing everybody else. Um, thanks Hans because I think those are just very different goals. Um, and I don't disagree with the goal. Um, and I I don't find the reports we have, they're overwhelming. Um, and they're minutia and they they don't really give me a lot of insight into the operations unless I because they're not summarized. they just have to really really dig into them. Uh that said, I don't know that we can accomplish in the next year a significant improvement in our operational or management reporting. I know we can in our financial reporting. Um on top of that, I think the management reporting is really the domain of pardon me the domain of your department heads. You have new department heads. I I think I would encourage you to challenge them um to improve the metrics which they use to manage their departments. Um but maybe that's more on you than on us. So I'll I'll stick with my three.

Well, and there are AI tools and I'm using them to get the data that I need in just a few minutes. So I'm sure Brandon's on that. So now I'm going to look back to you all. So we're going to figure this out together how we're going to do this. So, I'm going to look back to the five of you now. Uh, do you, the majority of you feel like we need to change the language of this item as the way it's written? And if so, does someone want to offer up some revised language to your colleagues?

I'm not interested in changing the scope of this item. I would remove the word financial. I agree. You council member Delves, mayor, you agree with council member Ber just financial up. Okay. Council member Dramov. Okay.

I again I think that that opens the door for a whole host of meanings of this a whole host of meanings of this line item. Increased usability and clarity of reports given to council. Like we get 10 reports every month. Like which reports? Like I'm not willing to saddle staff with um I would I am not willing is not the right word. I'm loathed to s to to saddle staff with um an open-ended strategic priority that council members can occasionally dip into and say this report isn't good enough. I'd like to work I'd like you to work uh the next few months on revising the tree report or revising the ambulance report or whatever until this is until um until the the list of reports that need revision is um solidified. Um I'm I'm a big no on uh taking that word out. I think Brian, for Brandon, in terms of keeping this meeting moving, I think you're just going to have to take the temperature of the council. Okay. And move on.

I agree. Um, okay. I think I got what I need on that one. Um, 1.1.2 create an online public facing CIP tracking. What does that say? Nova dashboard. So, we have this at a level one priority. Uh, any feedback on the items, the title, the priority level? It's just another one of those, Bob, that you already know what's going to happen. That's what I did. I gave it a three because I knew it was going to happen. It's basically already done. I mean, I actually think the prior I actually think the prior one is more important than this one, candidly.

Um, we get pretty good budget data anyway. Um, but but this is helpful for the public. I think it's I think it's not going to take a big lift. Again, it's pretty much already done. So, we think it won. If it's done, take it off.

Only the people that are using it doing it can tell us that it's done. Hans, Bob, it's done. It's not It's not No, it's not done yet. It's near It's nearly complete, but it's not done. So, you might as well leave a one cuz it's going to be done soon and drop off. Get it done. Any opposition thoughts to that? I I don't think I think number one priorities really need to be if I was going to my philosophy on this would be number one priorities are the things that come hell or high water we have to get done in this fiscal year. And this is just not one of those. So, to me, it's like a two or a three. I'd give it a two. Mr. Mayor. Yes. Can I offer a suggestion?

You're making decisions. The public hasn't had a chance to comment. I think he's going to have that after we get to this point. This is This is We're going to have to test this out, I think, on this first one. And comments are appreciated on that because it may not matter on the reports, but there may be other items in public wants comments. I understand. Maybe we do it by blue section then. Yeah. Rather than green. Okay. I think that would be good. Okay. Let's try it and see what happens. So, let's let's finish up the council conversations on these two then and then um I council, do you have any other thoughts? What I what I took was make make this one a two or three. I didn't hear any comments on the title though. Title seem to be okay. Make it a three.

Okay. All right. So then, mayor, yeah, perhaps and thank you u Mr. Schmidt, we are we are cutting new cloth here. I'm trying a new process here. So, um mayor, if you want, perhaps now is the time. We'll go blue section by blue section rather than by green section to get public comment on these two items. Yep. Let's try it. I'll let you run this part of it, sir. I'm gonna let you run it. I'm It's all I'm I'm a participant. I want to concentrate on All right. Well, I'm going to through the mayor then I would like to invite anyone from the public who wants to speak on the first two items. Uh four items. Four items. Thank you, Council Member Baron. two items that we considered done and removed from the list and the two items uh G 1.1.1 and G1.1.2.

So from now on, we'll leave the two items we're going to delete. Yes, sir. Okay. Any comments? I'll help you out.

Thank you. Um, Maria Roose as a as a member of the community. Um, two items here to just think about as you think of titles. We're talking about budget clarity. That's what we're talking about. So, we're talking about how you're utilizing funds to support projects or operational items like that's what you were mentioning KPIs. So let's reook at when you say increase usability and clarity of financial reports I mean for the council how is that really that useful if it's not making available budget clarity for both you the council and the community so the dashboard which I have never used so if that's really a reality see if that gives enough clarity for both entities try to achieve clarity of budgeting to with one mechanism if those reports exist make them available to both and you will have one line item and I will say that is very important because it shows how transparent you are in managing I'm not talking about financial health I'm talking about budget management and this is about it talks a little bit about how transparent you are in using the money that is allocated to you so that's what I would imagine budget clarity is so think about what that item is that would be my observation thank Anyone else in the room? Know of anybody on Zoom? Doesn't look like it.

Okay. I I had a suggestion, please. Just on Doug's comment, would it make sense for the public to talk on uh a green section first hear what they're saying? On a blue section, do each blue section at a time, I guess. That's what we did last time. Yeah. Okay,

that's good. Yeah, sure. Okay, we we'll try that out. Okay, so Nova, can you put the um spreadsheet back up, please? I have a comment um on Maria's sort of response to Maria. Um I think we and I I do not, you know, I do not mean this personally. Um I think that we often uh confuse the word transparency with detailed. And I don't like, you know, what I'm hearing and what I'm hearing from from Hans and from the other council members here is a desire for more detail. That's completely different than a desire for more transparency. Like we can be sloppy, you know, you can be transparent and sloppy and you can be detailed and not transparent. And I think it's really important that we sort of understand that we agree that you know that you understand Maria understand that what I'm asking for here is maybe a little less detail or what I feel like I'm asking for is a little less detailed. That is not to say that that's not transparent. Like I view those things as being very very different. Um, and I I feel like we have a small staff. We have a small finance staff. You know, there's a limit as to how much detail, like, you know, as I as I've talked to Hans about this before, there's a limit as to how much we can polish the cannonball. Um, and and that's my that's where I come from. Okay. So, we're learning as we go here together. So, I think perhaps we've we finished with budget clarity. Uh, I think I got what we needed here. Thank you very much. Um, sounds like no additional changes from council after that. So, let's move on to uh uh priority area 1.2, financial health. Um,

we'll take council member Berter's suggestion and uh go to public comment first on this one. Um, so any members of the public who'd like to talk to any of the items up here uh on the screen right now uh under financial health. So, it's six items in total. uh recognizing the two of them did not change. The yellow means that the title has changed slightly from what was there before and the green ones are new items altogether. So please anybody Nancy

Nancy Tumi um the item the last two items the green items we haven't talked about enough to know if they belong on the list yet. So, I'm just a little confused um on how we can, you know, are is now the time that we're talking about the toot is now the time that we're talking about pay parking. Um if that's the case, I would say something entirely different. So, I'm just confused about how we work this. So,

it's a process question at this point. I I think the the council member's suggestion was let's go to public comment first so the council can hear from you on all the items contained under financial health before they have their deliberations. So if any of those items you want however we have a toot conversation that follows um this so then this so this is that I prepared for the later topic save those this this is whether or not that item should be a priority for the council and the city. So just focus on whether this item on here should be a priority for us to work on.

All right. Then my so saving my comments on the toot for later. Um I'll on the paid parking I have uh cons a concern about parking being looked at more holistically rather than narrowly in on uh paid parking as an extension to some of the discussion yesterday. Um, so I just I don't know what the intended scope is or should this scope be larger than is represented by what's on the last line in this group. So I'll leave it at that at this point. Nova, I'll just do the threem minute time and leave this up because it's not working.

Yeah, it's not good. Thank you. Thanks, Nancy. Anyone else from the the public want to speak on any of these items? Mr. Schmidz,

Doug Schmidz, Carmel by the Sea. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on parking and thank you for your public service. It's um difficult enough to be home and get phone calls or emails or be working on Christmas, but to come to meetings and be attacked is beyond the blow. So, thank you for your service. One of our previous speakers this evening discussed the living within the spirit of the law. So I want to spend a few minutes on the law regarding paid parking and parking garages. This code makes no differentiation between public and private or public private project. that's either public or private. And it might be a partnership because the city provides the land, but the construction or the application is probably going to be a private commercial project. The city's required by the state to have a master plan 65300. And that master plan, the general plan, is the constitution for development. There have been multiple court cases regarding consistency with the city's general plan. It's at the top of the pecking order. So, what does our general plan say about parking at Sunset Center? A lot at Sunset Center, a parking garage at Sunset Center, and the hotel above it. Object 01-2 limit commercial activity both as to its scope and physical landspread within the present commercial and multifamily districts. Sunset Center is in neither of those districts. Preserve the multifamily district as a residential area. Speaking of the R4, where there's also been discussion of a parking garage. Prohibit new commercial construction in this area.

If you get by the general plan, then you get to the zoning code. Sunset Center is in the public facilities A2 code. A commercial garage, private garage is a conditional use. If you have a conditional use, you have special findings to make one through seven. No use permit shall be granted unless all of these general findings can been made. There's seven of them. A garage commercial conditional use permit garage doesn't meet five of them. Condition number one, the proposed use will not be in conflict with the city's general plan. Condition number five, the prop proposed use will not be injurious to public health, safety, or welfare. Number seven, the proposed use will not generate adverse impacts affecting health, safety, and welfare. Why do I bring health up? Because underground garages require exhaust systems. And I don't want to be the one to tell Andy Carr that she's going to have smoke stacks across from her house. We've all seen them. They look like this at both Sunset Center at the Vista Lobos. These are impairments to any future development plans the city would have for the property. Finally, there will be those who say, "We'll get around the general plan and we'll get around the zoning code by doing a specific plan." Those are permitted by state law. They're permitted by the city zoning code. Carmemell has two of them. But the specifications for a specific plan in our code say it will be in compliance with the general plan.

Doug, could you summarize? The courts have ruled consistently that the a specific plan is subordinate to a general plan. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Right. All right. Nova, you see anybody on Zoom? There's no hands raised on Thank you. Okay. Well, let's bring it back to you, council, then. Um, let's just go from top to bottom if that's okay with you. Uh, start with G1.2.1. Receive council approval and revised investment portfolio approach. did not change the title of this one. Uh we're looking to you for either items to be moved to the future projects list or to give us the priority level. So I'll look for your your deliberation on that, please.

I would move this to the future project list. Um I and we've had the benefit in the finance committee of seeing um the way that some of the funds are invested and it is thoughtful and I don't know that we're going to pick up substantial um you know speed on the boat uh by really digging into it. So I think it's something that we could push to next year given some of the constraints. I agree. I agree. I I agree and certainly defer to the judgment of Hans and Bob as members of the finance committee.

That's great. You guys are doing great. Okay. Number 1.2.2. Uh complete internal review parenthesis checklist of city's readiness to take on bonds or other financing. Again, this is an unchanged title. Looking for direction on priority level and or whether or not this should stay here or move to a future projects list. I'll go first. I think that this is an item uh I think this is a sounds like a a big scope item, but I think in fact it's a small scope item in that it's a pretty project dependent. Um you know the the one example that we have coming up is the police station. you know, when we decide how we're going to finance uh how we're going to pay for a 15 or $20 million building or however much the building turns out to cost. Um and I think that this I think that um this will happen naturally as a as part of that process. Um you know, I can imagine this being part of some staff report at the beginning of next year. Um, and I think we could make the decision then we could have this discussion then rather than single rather than calling it out and a year before it's sort of ripe on the tree.

Um um so to some extent I do agree with Jeff. you made this point um last time too that it's it's difficult to really dive deep into a bonding measure unless you know what you're bonding uh for. And um so my inclination is to maybe combine this with 1.2.4 develop a menu of potential revenue sources to close cities funding shortfalls which is a bigger more strategic um item. It's because to to me bonding it's not quite revenue um but it's money in the door and if you think of it that way um it it is and um again as part of the financial stewardship work group working with Hans um really one of the things we've teed up as a priority for that group um immediately really is um quantifying our deferred maintenance which we've started and are well along on and we've already been talking to that in recent meetings um just as it being a very large number and then finding ways to close that um because frankly a just a general obligation bond is is another tool that you have. So you know I I think educating ourselves on all of these things. Um you know the the new book from the League of Cities on revenue sources just came out. Um although Brandon and Jamie and I and Hans may be the only people in the world that actually care. Um hoohoo. New book's out. Um but as as I said to Brandon this morning, I I can't read that book and become an expert. We need some expertise. We need to find the people out there that are advising others right now like the city of Monterey, like the city of Marina um on the very same problems that they're dealing with in real time so that they can give us

advice. So we avoid so we can talk about avoiding those problems. Um so my inclination would be to just combine these into into into one item. I agree. Yeah. I definitely agree with everything that that Bob said, but I also think it would be um important when we get to the discussion for the police department financing that it also be incorporated in there. Yeah, I'm in I'm in favor of collapsing it with um with uh G.1.2.4.

Okay. I see Council Member Baron shaking his head, sir.

Well, I'm not I don't I like it's it's fine. I'm I'm okay not getting my way, but um I think that uh bonds to me are not like I I hear Bob talking. I hear Bob's words about bonds being a source of revenue, but um you know, history has I think shown that cities that rely on bonds for you know to cover financing to cover operations as a source of revenue um that's the road to somewhere bad. So I so I I think I think it should be draw I do not think it should be pursued except when it comes to projects. Can you come?

Yeah, it's a it's actually a good point. So, um

if you think about it, putting it under there, I wasn't thinking about it in that way, but that's true. We're not thinking about taking out a bond to float operating expenses. So, it's a fair point. Um I guess I go I agree with Jess's point, which is basically when it comes up, we're going to naturally work through it. The question I have for you, Brandon, is is there any kind of long lead time item on this? And I'm thinking about known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Like are there any known unknowns about this process? Like are do you know right now that there are some things that you need to get smart on or that we need to do to get ready for this process? Or is this an unknown unknown situation where it's like hey we there could be something out there some bogey that we haven't thought of that we get down to that point and say hey we we wish we would have thought about this 12 months ago. I think it's lar I mean it's been so long since the city has done a bond that I think it's it's largely an unknown unknown. Um and we we just need to get generally smart on this. There's resources out there and so I'm not I'm not afraid of I'm not afraid of the unknown because we know where to go find that information but we really we're not smart enough on this as a city because it's been so long

with Yeah. Sorry.

Please. I would say, you know, with respect, we refinanced, you know, a number of years ago, four or five years ago, we refinanced the the city's Sunset Center bonds. Um, we hired, you know, a bond house, you know, one of the one of the three or four m, you know, Wall Street municipal bond houses. They came in and they did all the work. They were paid for it um with commissions on the bonds. That's just how that market works. Um, we did it in, you know, for right or wrong, you know, we did it in two council, we did it in two or three council meetings that took 20 minutes. Um, you know, I I just don't think that the process of the process of issuing municipal bonds is not something that we're ever going to be experts are experts at. There are experts at it. We did it. Um, it's, you know, it's it I agree that it's an unknown, it's a it's a sorry known unknown or whatever whatever whatever verbiage it is, but it's just not in the end, you know, it's like uh deciding what you know,

I think I agree with that. I mean, why don't we why don't we just take it off the board and say it's going to happen as a matter of course as part of the police station project. So, I actually said I was the chief operating officer of a um and I was actually a board member of a metropolitan district in Colorado that issued municipal grade bonds. And to say it's easy is I think a gross overstatement, Jeeoff. You ref you, you know, you refinance some existing bonds, it's a different animal. I'm just saying let's get some expertise in here in the next year so that we're smarter a year from now. That's it. We're not going to issue any bonds in the next year. Um, but I think we could just be smarter and that could go anywhere on this list you want it to go.

You could change it from menu of potential revenue to uh maybe a subset of that would be expertise as well. I mean, it's just a whole it's a menu of all kinds of things related to revenue. That's all. Yeah. I I think it's important that we we keep it in um and do it as quickly as possible, not wait till the police project. I think it's smarter to know early on. and the unknowns like like Han said that we may encounter. So I guess I'll look for I kind of I'm going to do some some reading here. So I've got Council Member Dramoff says leave it on as is. Is that what you're saying? As as a standalone item.

No, if we need to tweak the language so it's not viewed as revenue but keep it as something that we are going to look into as part of 1.2.4. So your your vote is to compress it with 1.2.4 but make it clear that I I think that's it. Just get rid get rid of 1.2.2 as Jeff suggests. Leave 1.2.4 as is. And just know that bonds are part of it. Just part of the discussion, the education. Maybe instead of revenue, call it funding. Okay. Just funding sources. That's fine. That does it. I see three heads at least nodding. Okay. Four. That's great. Okay. No, you got all that clear as mud.

I think I think I got that one. Plus, we have the benefit of a video, so we'll be okay. Um, but essentially, no, why don't you mark next to 1.2? Good. Remove. And then, uh, we're going to modify 1.2.4. So, we'll just we'll remember that. Actually, no, we're not going to modify it. We're going to leave it as is. You're going to change revenue to funding to funding.

Yep. We're going to change revenue to funding. Great. Thank you. Okay, on to 1.2.3. Uh, yellow means this is not a new item. It means that the language has been changed. The underline is what has been added. The only thing that's been added to this item previously was that implementing a new HR. We added the word finance and payroll management system and then parenthesis ERP. Uh, so I'd be looking to council if that language is acceptable to you and what level of priority you would place on this item.

So I have a I have a question. So my requirement my personal requirement of staff is that you uh manage people's HR needs uh pay them and manage the finance of the city like that. like this states this item states what I need staff to do and but I have no way of knowing whether you need a new ERP system like I don't like maybe this proves Bob's point earlier about visibility or what whatever um I have no way of knowing and for me this is an item that um I need you you know as the own as the conductor to tell us like how desperate we are for a new ERP system.

We're pretty desperate and the reason is we have disperate systems uh HR, payroll, finance that don't often play well together. Some of our some of our customers, this is not just an inward-f facing set of systems. That also includes our interactions with our businesses downtown, collecting their taxes, uh sending out bills and invoices. We have a a system that is that is clunky at best and it probably get a couple of nods up and down. So, is this a one? Uh, for me, for my staff, this would be a one. Yes. But I think but that's but that's not that with respect. I mean, that's not really realistic. I mean, ERP systems take a lot of time to implement. It seems unrealistic that you're going to get this done in a year.

We won't get it done in a year. But I I think that the conversation we need to have is that a one a one doesn't necessarily mean it has to be done in a year, but like meaningful progress needs to be made in a year. how expensive and how big a project is it? Don't know that yet. We haven't spent any real time. We've just been, you know, looking at some new vendors um looking at some new vendors um and starting to explore the cost, but we need to work with someone to really define what our ERP system would look like because it's different for every organization. I won't know that until we make this a priority and really start digging into it. But you're telling us you're struggling at this point?

We're making do. You know, we're getting by, but we would we would be a much better city. you know, this dubtubales in with one of the other items on here that you said is a priority, which is, you know, customer service. I think that this a new ERP system will help us provide better customer service.

So, um I'm with Jeff that I really don't know and but if you think we need it, I have a lot of experience with ERP systems and I know when you if they're 20 years old, you need you need it. If they're disparit, you need it. Um we have another item later on about a um permitting um system. I also am aware that in the in the public sector space there are ERPs that expand and include um things that are useful in the planning world as well. And um I would if you think it's a one I'm going to agree with you um that you need to get started on it because if you don't get Jeff's right if you don't get started on it you won't finish it. Um, and it's a lot of work. And what when when you're ready to do the implementation, there's going to be you're you're probably not going to have another priority that year because implementation will probably consume your admin function completely.

All right. I'll echo the comments of my fellow council members. I mean, I truly don't know enough about it and and what it entails. Um, I was going to say two, but I mean, if it's sounding like it's something that's more urgent, um, then I guess it gets a one. Again, I would just say a one really needs to be like we desperately need it. So, if you're sitting there, I know you had it on your list as a two. Mhm. And so, is it like it's a one? It's, you know, it's it's between a two and the reason it was a two is because we haven't started on it yet. I mean, if if we start on it, then it be it kind of elevates itself to a one because Sorry. Go ahead.

Do we have to trade one of our ones to for you to make this a one? This is a new process. It's a good question. It's It's a wonderful question. Marissa, what do you think it is?

Marissa, what do you think it is since you're right in the middle of it? Mayor, since you're asking, um, internally it's it's a it's a one for us because we what we're using is is extremely inefficient which requires a lot of staff time even for the reporting. You know, I was listening to to um council members speak about reporting. Um, it's precisely because we have such an old system that reporting is is also not not effective and not efficient. So, internally it's it's a big priority for us. And I had asked for counsel uh for this last year, but last year was a really busy year. It was just a busy year. We had major recruitments for three directors. Uh we have the city administrator's departure preparation for that. We just never had a chance to tackle it, but it's it's been it's been a priority at least for us.

You think Jamie would say the same thing? Is he paying attention? I mean, you're the you're the users. I yeah I've asked the staff and it is a priority for all of us finance staff um administration payroll HR and myself and yeah okay you had me at efficiency

all right no let's go ahead and put a one in that one uh on to the next yellow we we basically have talked about this one already this was a modified language we have further modified it to add the word sources uh develop menu of potential funding sources is the new word oh just clicked somewhere else in this the sheet for me if you would. Thank you. Del menu of potential funding sources to close the city's funding shortfalls. Uh period. Um we took this as a one from the meeting with you. Um so please let me know council if you have any changes to the language or the priority level.

I have a suggestion on language. Um instead of saying to close city's funding shortfalls, I would say to pay for capital projects. And it's more than menu. It's actually

Well, I'm not sure that that's I'm not sure that that's um I'm not sure that um I would be I'm not sure that narrowing the scope of the wording here is is correct because we have so for example we have an unfunded actuarial liability um which very which is not a capital improvement project which is not a capital project and varies you know according to the vagaries of the market every year. Um, and it's important. So, so I would I would prefer to keep the scope on this one. You know, I think there's stuff outside the CIP that matters. I I would just counter that. I think that obscures the the main reality, which is we need an extra like $6.5 million a year to fund, you know, the $10 million a year of capital improvement projects that we want to have. So, you know,

oh, so I just think the magnitude of that I think it's clearer to say um capital projects. What do you think? Um I think I'm going to stop trying to wordsmith um and um try to get through this. You know what? And I agree with Hans. He's trying to make the point, right? And I agree with the point. Mayor, it's also more than a menu. its menu and and we already talked about gaining expertise, but I think you know what we're after here. I just want to give you all a chance to to weigh in. I I I agree with Hans.

Okay. Thank you. Um on to 1.2.5. As you know, this is green, which means it's new. Provide council a presentation on placing tot increase on November 2026 ballot and receive direction. Uh level one priority. Uh we are talking about this later tonight. So I'm assuming keeping this at a level one is fine with you because all all this item is is to provide you a presentation uh to get an increase on the November 22 ballot. So any comments on this language or level of priority given that we're going to do Yes sir.

Last one is provide council with a presentation on options for paid parking. This is green. This is new. Um what we took away in our notes from the priorities meeting was this was a level two priority. Um, I'd love to hear all your thoughts on the title and also the level of priority, please. I I agree with what Nancy Tumi said. Um, we really need to be looking for a more holistic approach and for example, I think enforcement is a key aspect that we need to address and that's not included in this. It's included later on under streets and streets and sidewalks. So, I'm questioning putting it there. Um because I think like she said, you you need the really big picture here.

I'm fine with the two.

Just to go in the opposite direction. Um I hear you, but um we spent we parking will consume us for the rest of our days if we keep talking about it in an open-ended fashion. And um because it it's it's an amorphous beast that has multiple solutions. We talked about the whack-a-ole effect. Um and I don't know how to do all or nothing, but the the all puts all the options on the table and um it's just a complex thing and we I don't want to start it if we're not going to finish it. Um I I was interested in talking about specifically paid parking because paid parking makes money. Um, and the town needs money done is kind of where I was at on parking and really not belabor the conversation um with a parking garage and with all sorts of other reformations of um of the behaviors. Let's just get to paid parking and see if it works.

Yeah. And it's also it also includes enforcement within that obviously. I can exactly I would say paid parking and enforcement um because I I agree that enforcement if we did more enforcement tomorrow we things things would change whether they improve or not they would at least change. So I'm with you on that one. So my question is, are we going to include enforcement in this line for G126 increased enforcement? And as council member Dramov pointed out, increased uh enforcement, parking enforcement does show up later under streets and sidewalks. I'll let Mike

I think they're distinct items. Um, I'll I'll reiterate what I said during the priorities meeting, which is my preference would be to have a holistic discussion about the menu of revenue options. You know, the staff has a menu that we haven't had a chance to daylight to the council or to the public and we've assigned specific dollar amounts for the revenue that we can expect from certain options and none of that has been put out there. So, I object a bit to sort of zeroing in on specific revenue options before we've had a chance to have a strategic discussion and see the menu. I was okay with the toot one because I know it's timesensitive, but paid parking, it just feels like we're sort of grabbing at something before we've had a chance to look at the full set of options. So, I personally would just wait on this. we could add it as a priority once we've had that discussion, but I also heard a majority of the council, so I don't want to, you know, anyway,

I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, I would, you know, I've been talking about this forever and sort of the interesting thing is I've never called it paid parking. Um, I see Carrie in the audience. Um, we called it parking management. Um, you know, I I appreciate that. I appreciate Bob's um Bob's focus on revenue and I think revenue is is an important part of a parking management program, but I think what's been missing um with this title is that uh a lack of understanding that paid parking is by far uh the most valuable tool to use to reduce congestion. And we have heard lots of comments. We've heard comments from Fred who talks about a garage. Um, we've heard lots of comments about the congestion downtown. Um, and I think that I continue to believe that the congestion downtown is in part caused by people moving their cars after 2 hours. Um, and and a paid parking program would a parking management There I go. A parking management program would be a a really valuable way of of of reducing the congestion downtown. and and I believe that that's as important. Um the downtown congestion, the the cars circling around the block is as important as the money is as important as the money. And so what I would ask is that the words paid parking be replaced by parking management parking management program. And of course that would include enforcement. So, I'm looking around to all of you council.

Again, my my concern is that I'm I just said I wouldn't wordsmith um about paid parking management. Just I don't want to make this um the box too big and we just get lost again because we start bringing things everything back in about talk about parking. How many of How many of you want to leave it the way it is? Well, now we're talking about two different things because in one aspect you're talking about a revenue source and in another thing you're talking about parking management and the holistic larger picture. So, which one do we want in here? Perhaps I could suggest what if the title was uh paid parking as a management as a parking management tool. Sure, let's go. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So, and then council, you want to keep this here? Level two priority. Thumbs up. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Um, okay. Um, I I'll just say that I would make it a one, but I would ask for my one from uh your ERP system. Um, this is this is exactly where I would where I would spend it. You're the boss. Doesn't sound like I'm going to get a lot of love on that, but um Okay, so that's that's a two Nova two. Thank you

to Council Member Baron Sugar Gritten. Okay, we are on to the next blue section. We're we're doing okay. I feel like we're hitting our stride a little bit here. Uh beach infrastructure repairs and maintenance. Uh this includes 1 2 3 4 5 six items. Five of which have not changed at all. One of which is new. Uh let's go ahead and do mayor if you're okay opening to the public first again. So let's open for public comment on these six items under beach infrastructure repairs and maintenance. Any members of the public in the chambers wish to speak on these items? I don't see anyone getting up out of their chair. Nova, anyone from Zoom? No, there's no

Okay, thank you. Uh let's bring it back to council then. We'll just take them item by item. Uh G2.1, the name has not changed. Uh just looking for a priority level here or and or if you wish to move this to a future project item.

I'm happy to start. Uh I think it's an absolute priority number one. Uh and I'm almost in going to the beach wondering if that's not even higher than doing the stairs. Although I do know from Ken that the bids did come in. So I I think we're stuck in that order of doing them. But the erosion just keeps getting worse and worse. And there's people that are constantly going off around the sides and it's just really um wearing everything down which worries me because it's going to end up being more expensive to to fix it. Um I I believe this is in the CIP now. Yes, sir. Yeah. I mean it's Yeah, it's a one. So one I I hear everybody thumbs up for one. Okay, great.

Can we agree that anything that's already on the cap is a one automatically? If you five of you can agree on that right now, then I can go down the next four items and put a one on them. Is the council in agreement that anything's on the CIP right now is a one thumbs up.

I would I would say in reference to the next item, um you know, I asked uh um I've I've been talking about the Fourth Avenue fall, as you know, since certainly since you've been here, and the risk that the risk that that piece of infrastructure poses. Um there was a conversation at the planning commission forest and beach commission meeting. Um there was a comment by David Rell who was talking about uh designing resilient infrastructure. So a piece of infrastructure that um could make it through more than one phase or more than one phase of sea level rise or climate change or could serve another purpose. Um, and I wouldn't have caught it except for the fact that he I wouldn't have caught it except for the fact that he made specific reference, I think, to the Fourth Avenue outfall repair replacement. I know I talked to I gave Ken a heads up about this last night. Um, and I'm wondering um, you know, I know that I know that staff has talked about um, a couple of different options for either encasing or tearing down and rebuilding the outfall. Um, and I'm wondering whether um maybe making it a two would provide a little breathing room um so that you could have a conversation. So you could follow up on my follow up on my observation and have a comment have a conversation with David Rell or whoever it is from uh integral and and just make sure just kind of make sure that we're on the same path and then do what and then and then do with the forest and beach commission the planning commission or us um however you need to validate. Um

it would give us that breathing room sir. Yes. So if your if your colleagues are okay with that approach I'm seeing one. Yes. Council member Bter, I watched that. They were talking about things like maybe we need to plan for a stairway at some point. Yeah, I think that's what that's what I I couldn't remember if that's what the comment was, but it was something like that. I'm seeing consensus here on that. No, let's make that a two. Uh, and then the 10th Avenue stairs and 12th Avenue stairs. Um, I believe if the agreement is anything that's on the CIP, let's make it a one. So, let's make those two number ones.

Yes. uh complete maintenance repair of bluffer vet. I believe what I recall council from your meeting was that this should actually be an ongoing item, not a priority level. But correct me if I'm wrong please on that. It should be a very high priority ongoing item. We can't I mean it's that's just what the nature of it. Okay. But we should be doing something every year. Mhm. There's a there's a document that Yeah. that was well written that tells us exactly what to do and it's not in the CIP. That's right.

It's sort of an operating manual. So Nova, let's let's mark that as ongoing one, please. Thank you. Okay. And then the last one uh to speak about is a new item implementation of coastline related items from climate action and adaptation plan. This was added uh as a nod to comments that were made about there's there's notes within this priority list of implementing the housing element and the forest management plan. Um, so there was a request for a a nod to the climate action adaptation plan with items related specifically to the coastline. Uh, this is our first swing at the language. So happy to take any notes on the language and the level of priority.

I've just got a question. For some reason, I don't remember that discussion. And my only concern is we have so many top number one priority things right now that maybe that might be something that we put aside till we get those big projects finished and then focus on it so it doesn't take away time or resources. One of the challenges I have with that is is that's a great document. Thank you, Jeff, for the incredible work you put into it. But it has sprinkled all over the place. Like, we need to keep on this and we're spending a lot of money right now with consultants to help us. I' I'd say a three just we just need to keep paying attention to it. But

yeah, I I kind of agree with Dale and I have a couple questions. Um, you know, the the the priorities document calls out the climate action adaptation plan. And it also calls out the housing the housing element but we have other plans too that have recurring uh that have recurring prior. So my first question is we have other plans too the shoreline management plan the Delmare or North Dunes master plan. We have a mission trail nature preserve master plan like where do the tasks you know I hear Allesandre but um what I would say is those tasks are you know you revised 2.1.5 to say one ongoing and there are tasks in in those things that are as critical as a bluffer. So for example, one thing which we have a haphazard uh record of doing is pushing sand up the up the main slope to uh to mitigate the effects of the flow not to mitigate people trampling the sand down towards the beach. Like that's real damage caused by that's real damage caused by visi caused by residents and visitors to the beach going down the dunes. um that becomes increasingly difficult to becomes increasingly difficult to mitigate. We're probably 10 feet below where we should be because we have not we have not been pushing sand up the slope like like the shoreline master plan and the climate plan specify. So where does that stuff fall in? Where do all those you know maintenance tasks that you describe as ongoing fall in? And maybe this is a question for the five of us and I'm looking at you but really I'm really talking to everybody. um where do all those tasks fall in

because that's real damage that uh we're doing sort of sort of plays right into your department. Sure.

Thank you. I was like sitting at the edge of my seat. Thank you for that great question. Uh when I look at these adaptation and and plants, I look at these plans on how do I incorporate it in the CIP projects that we're already doing. We're doing stairs repair and I'm thinking forward thinking about climate. I'm thinking about erosion. I'm thinking about the effects when I create my design. So, some of these things are things we're already doing is kind of incorporated. If I look at that climate uh for example, climate action adapt adaptation plan, urban forest maintenance and improvements. Well, that's part of the work we do pretty much every day and and the fuels management work that we've been working on. The the collaboration with Monterey Fire, that's still part of that. It's work we're doing already. Uh, so when I look at that as a line item, I'm not sure if that's a line item line line item that should be pulled out as a priority or just incorporated in all the work that we do. Just my thoughts. Did that help answer your question at all?

Yeah, my response would be I'm happy to. So this 2.1.6 is a reference back to everything in the climate out is reference to everything back in the plan. Correct. But what I would know what I noticed was that for what I noticed was that you removed all the dates. So the packet you know the the the the you know there was one version and I'm sorry if I if I'm misspeaking but there was one version of right

um there was one version of the spreadsheet where all the dates were um all the dates that are in the reference section. So at the end of this list that talk about that are the dates from the climate. Sorry, sorry for not leaning forward. The dates from the climate action and adaptation plan. Um, one version of the spreadsheet had all the dates removed. Um, and it said sort of TBD, one of the one of the three versions. Target goal completion. Yes, you're you're right. Sorry, I apologize. That was that was an error. We do have dates on those. It must have just been a an error in the list. Okay. Yeah. So, you you had you you went through and put the Yeah, I went through them. I went through and put dates. Yeah, they're in there still.

So, I my my preference would be to so I like the way I like the way that this line references sort of things in the back. So I think it gives sort of visibility to things in the back. But um my preference my preference would be to incorporate all the plans and we had this conversation to incorporate all the plans in this document as sort of appendices in the back. Yep. and say the plans say the plans say that we're supposed to be doing these things on these dates.

Like a lot of work, it's not just, you know, I appreciate Dale's comments. Um, thank you. Um, but a lot of work went into the development of the shoreline master plan, you know, years ago and the forest management plan, which, you know, we're seeing how troublesome that is. And presumably there'll be uh tasks there'll be tasks uh those too. And I think it's important to if not service them to the front part of this document to service them to the back part of this document so that so that you so that we the council can say yeah staff is working on these things and so you staff have visibility into into the things that you know either our council or some previous council decided that uh thought that you should be working on. Okay. So it sounds like that doesn't need to be in here, but all the tasks within it need to be sec documented somewhere and it sound and and that goes back to Ken's department, which is a lot. So what what I heard um is all the plans all the plans are appendixed to the end of this. That's the big long list that we didn't go through in the meeting and we're not going to go through today. But I think council member Baron, you're suggesting that wherever it was appropriate for, you know, like the housing element implementation to show up, that would that would show up just a line like this just references it up in the main list that that's something that's an ongoing project priority

provides visibility. I mean, there's there's some things like this this particular item, implementation of coastline related items. There are items in those climate plans that are not coastline related, right, that I think that I that are still in the plan, right? Right. But I think that this provides visibility into this provides visibility into um into the entire plan and to to the question I asked you earlier which was um you know at the end of this process come back to us and tell us what staff you need to uh to do these things. um you know that's ammunition for you or not to say you know here's what here's what you know the environmental group inside Ken's department is working on this whole list of things and then we can make a decision about whether we're going to do those things or not.

So Brandon tell us what you're going to do so we can vote on it. Um what I hear what I what I intend on doing if the council's okay with it is is creating a a subline like this for every plan that exists as an appendices just so that there's visibility on it within the priorities list and then you work with your department head to make sure you've got a plan to do that and if you need more resources you come back. That's right. What about if we did it in a different color? We can do that. Let's do that. Certainly. Okay. The council is okay with that. Thumbs up from everybody.

Yeah. And I think um I think sort of to that point, you know, I'm I'm I'm not I'm struggling with the word to and I see I see Nova making the change to ongoing and I think that's what I would have asked for. Yes.

Um that it says ongoing and then if you're if someone is really interested in the the items related to the climate plans, they would flip to the back of the appendix and there are specific dates called out or however it is for each plan, however it is that those things are called out. And we we will we can note that in the item of description as well that it's appendix item number whatever so that you have a direct tie back to that. Okay. Thank you council. That was very helpful. Um on to section 2.2. Uh the big blue section is wildfire mitigation and prevention. We have a total of seven lines on here. One of the you will note is slated for removal because it's done. Um so mayor with your approval we'll open up for public comment. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Do any members of the public want to speak on any of the items within this list here?

Hi Christy Ramers. Um regarding the forest uh management plan, um I feel really strongly that it doesn't have enough science um in it and not enough protections for our rare pine forest. and I ask that we have a little more time to get it right. Thanks.

I like getting it right. Anyone else in the room? That's an for those of you in the room, that's an active ongoing process with some pretty reasonable schedules on it. So, I think in if if if that's what you want to do, make sure you show up and make that heard at the meeting rather than here tonight. Correct, Ken? Okay. Nova, anybody on Zoom? Their hands up? There are no hands raised on Zoom.

Okay. Uh then council, I'll bring it back to you. Let's hit the first one, which is not a new item. Um as you can tell by the no coloring, the title has not changed. It's the adopted updated Caramel forest management plan. Uh that's to city council. I'm going to I'm going to do something a little different here and note the second item, which is certifying the LCP amendment for the updated Carmel Forest Management Plan. These two are related to the same item. They're two steps of the same process. One is your adoption and one is the Coastal Commission's adoption. There was a little conversation at your priorities meeting about compressing these two things. I didn't feel like we got clear enough directions to do that before bringing this to you. Uh but for what staff's recommendation is worth, I think it would be uh good to collapse them just for clarity and and cleanliness of the list. But I'll leave that up to you. So let's take these two items if that's okay together because they are the same item just different steps in the process.

So what are you suggesting? Just having a January date. just having just having one item that's the the LCP amendment that's the ultimate outcome. So I will lead off. I support collapsing it. And another comment I had was um I'm not sure that this item fits neatly under wildfire mitigation. It's really a holistic document about the forest and wildfire mitigation is sort of one small part of that. So, um I know we don't want a proliferation of blue sections, but it does feel a little bit out of category. And then my other comment was again I'm trying to limit the number of ones we have. I think I would probably give this more of a two. Um, there are certain documents that we have like the housing element that have deadlines. This has no particular deadline on it. We don't want it to drag on, but there's also no rush. We don't want to feel rushed to complete it. Um, and I think we'd rather get it right. So, for me, it's a two.

I agree. I agree.

Council member Dram. Okay. Uh, I'm going to lose this battle. Um, um, you know, this has been in process for years, not years, but a couple of years. And, um, you know, I think that putting it off, I think that this is a project, you know, when I think about when I think about holistic project management, I think this is a project that's just going to expand and take the amount of time allocated to it. And I think that reducing the priority on it um you know I think that reducing the priority on it like in if in essence is going to in the date is going to um result in the project uh stretching out another year. I think taking taking the foot off of the, you know, disconnecting uh let me say turning off the cruise control on this project and letting the car coast for a little bit is just going to is just going to be generally bad for the project.

Brandon, what date what date are you suggesting? January.

Um I also I also, you know, with respect with respect to sort of collapsing these things, it's I'm okay with collapsing them. I hear what you're saying about it taking up two items on the report, but I really think that if we're going to collapse them, the item that should be on the report is the first one. Um I think the I think the thing that uh the target goal like you know we h we had two things on there we had the coastal commission line on there to sort of provide visibility that you know we had to do one thing and then there's this thing that we don't really have a lot of control over that's going to happen in this case you know four or five months later. Um, I think that the deadline for the city to like according to this spreadsheet, the important deadline here is September of 2026, not January of 2027. And if we're going to have one date visible on the spreadsheet, I would I think it's right to uh to have the the first date visible on the spreadsheet. Um, you know, we can always say, "Yeah, we're just waiting for the Coastal Commission." But I think that, you know, I think that the date that we we all agree on in terms of should be should be the first date, not the second date.

Council, are you okay with that making it the council date, not the coastal wishing date? Because that will come up two or I think two more times in this document. So that might make the conversation easier in the coming items as well. Council member Dramov, I still my preference and I think I'm going to be in the minority on this was to keep them the two separate items, keep them separate, not combine them and then keep the two dates.

I would so I agree with that. Like if I wasn't like I I I agree that I also think that we should keep two separate dates. But my comment was if we're going to collapse it to one date, I would prefer it be the first date and not the second date. Like I do think that that visibility of it's not that it's not our our it's not the certification isn't ours. I do think that that is something that is worth um worth including in the document, but that's not a ill that I'm going to die on. Okay. So, we've got two votes for for leaving it the way it is. Do we have a third? Yes. Okay. Okay. I'll vote for it, too. Great. Okay. Thank you so much.

We're done with that. Okay. Do we want to talk about the like there was some conversation about priorities and dates related to this item and right now the spreadsheet still shows September 2026. Is that where the five of us are? Is that what is that the the goal of the forest and beach commission and the planning commission and whoever else is involved in staff or are we going to push that date out? I'm looking at Ken. He's he's on it. I I think you we'll probably push it out a little bit if we're making it a two priority to kind of slow down and

right uh that was best estimate for September to have that take place. We still got to go through the sequel process. We got to go through the different commissions that uh review and recommend going forward before it comes to council. Council reviews a couple times. This was like the best aggressive date, but according, you know, to Brandon, it it could be pushed out too, but and we'll keep you guys informed. Give us a date. Give us your best date right now. I'm going to save you from doing that. Don't do that going. So, I think Mayor, if it's okay with you, what I'd like to do is because we're we're rebalancing this list. We're making some changes. So, let us after we get the priorities set and what the items are, then let us go back through the target date list

with your with your department heads with my department heads. And then when it comes back next month as part of your monthly reports, you'll see dates on shiny new dates. Okay. Perfect. Okay. All right. Thank you. And we'll have this discussion as part of the consent calendar next month if you'd like to pull it to have that conversation. Yes, sir. Yeah. And and you'll track changes. So we'll be able to see Yes, sir. We'll have an old version and a new version. Yes, sir. Okay. Yep. Uh that gets us through 2.2. What happened to the other? Did we blew some lines there? No, she did. She wiped out the wildfire stuff.

Uh, you hid some lines there. It looks like 35 through 41 are hidden. Can you on the left hand side unhide those for me, please? So, scroll down to You're going to need to select 35 down through 41. So, hold your cursor there. Okay.

Uh, so we're going to go to I've got it here thankfully on the side. Uh the next item should be an easy one. Uh was G2.2.3, which is adopt local fire hazard maps. Uh we had that marked as done. Council, are you okay with us removing that from your list? Yes.

Great. Those ones are wonderful. Uh and look at that. Just like magic. Okay. 2.2.3 is a yellow item. That means that it is changed language. Uh not a new item. Uh what has been added here is to add some clarity. One of the things council mentioned in your workshop was to add some clarity to what this was adopting additional city wildfire and prevention measures. The example allowed materials, building code, etc. Uh so looking for guidance on the language council and then also level of priority. So I hear Bob about not wanting to spend too much time on the on the language, but I do think words matter on this so we understand what we're talking about. And the language here was kind of a holdover. So, we had a couple very specific point andoot things like adopt fire maps on the version from last year and at the end it was this catchall of adopt additional citywide wildfire prevention measures. Um, and then we just sort of added the piece here that's underlined. I think what this line item really should focus on is updating rules relating to home hardening and defensible space. So my suggestion would be to collapse this with 2.2.5 and to change the language to um to lean into the home hardening and defensible space aspect of it because I think that's what we're actually going for especially since they put the materials and all that in there.

I defer to Hans on this. He's really dug in on it. Me too. I feel the same. Council member. So, we're talking about condensing 223 into 225. Is that 225 into 223? I'm just basically making this an item about, you know, considering modifications to city rules to facilitate home hardening and defensible space.

So, it's not it's not anymore going to be create and distribute. It's going to be it's going to be I think there are changes to city rules. I'm asking I'm asking this specific question because one of the comments I've gotten from a couple people um is I don't know what to do to make my house safer and 225 which is something that we've talked about before and which is create and distribute home hardening rules to the community. I've always assumed that that is like a, you know, a tear sheet. Here are 10 things you can do. Like don't plant green bushes under your windows because that causes windows to explode. Um, stuff like that. So like really basic like that's the stuff that I've received a couple of queries about. And I would hate to see that. I would hate to see that like what I thought was going to be just a fairly simple exercise and just putting together a list of things to mail to everybody or whatever or publicize. Um I would hate to see that disappear off of the priorities list.

So I would say there's two different things. There's home hardening rules. that's the city um that requires certain things to be done and then there's sort of uh home hardening best practices that somebody could do sort of out of their own valition and so we're creating a firewise group here that I think can help with educational outreach about things that you could sort of choose to do but um in terms of home hardening rules you're going to run into home hardening rules the city's going to tell you what you have to do because you're going to come and you say want to do something and they're going to say you got to put in this kind of vent or you got to do this with your eaves or so. I'm not sure that uh I'm not sure I I think it's important to to educate people about home hardening. Um but I think that'll happen as a matter of course.

I'm fine with the original proposal made by Hans. Me too. Me too. Okay. Thank you, council. Uh we've got uh yellow done 2.2.4. Uh complete all, this is another new one. This came out of the meeting. Uh complete all tasks on the list of prioritized fuel mitigation projects. And as a reminder, the uh wildfire group that council member Berter has been working with did work with the fire department to create a specific list of tasks uh for fuel mitigation. And so this was a nod to making the completion of that list a priority. Um, and we took the note down from you that that was a number one priority.

Is is is the item says complete all the tasks on the list. The item doesn't say approve the list. So is it complete all the tasks on the list that no one has seen or is it complete the list? Approve. Get the list approved. uh as written the list the item is to complete the list.

Okay. So that's my so so I was going to ask where this list is. Um it's not in the community wildfire protection program. So if it's not if it's not straight out of there then I'm wondering how this list gets you know what the vetting process is for this list before we dedicate city resources to it. I mean, it's a it's a fair question. Um, you know, I think that the way it was messaged to me by a couple of city administrators was this is stuff that we do anyway. And so we're adjusting the um we're adjusting what's on the list of stuff that we do anyway and trying to tighten it up a little bit with additional um feedback on prioritization and best practices from the fire department. So the city ostensibly has done some level of uh you know fuel mitigation work um in the past and I think we're amping it up but you know in the past I think we haven't approved specific fuel mitigation things. I'm not opposed to to

having it come to the council and have us talk about it. Yeah. And to council member Booter's point, it is a list that was created, you know, out of the community wildfire prevention program. Some of the tasks were do fuel mitigation. The list was created in partnership with the fire department. Um so, but certainly we can bring it we can bring it to the council for approval before we start working on that. If if the council majority of you want to change that language to uh get the list approved and then complete all the tasks that's

well if you wanted if you wanted to change the item to say complete all the tasks in the like above complete all the tasks in the community wildfire protection program and then that was an appendix like we talked about before which I assume it would be like that would be okay like that would be sort of okay as written but if I'm going to you know evaluate your performances as the administrator for example example on whether you know your staff completes all this list. Like that's something that the five of us should do, not um not something that should be sort of created out of whole cloth. So I'm I would be okay with either one of I'm not really okay with that, but I would be okay with either taking it off or or my my preference would probably be to just say Either I'd be okay with either approving a new list or just referencing the community Wi-Fi protection program list.

Uh it's just uh yeah, I think it's a good practice for us to bring it. We could do a real quick presentation on it, get public comment on it, get council comment on it. I think it's going to be relatively non-controversial, but I think it's good. I think that's a good practice. I think it's a fair point by Jeff. Okay. So, we'll make we'll make it a a point to bring a list in the future and keep this then. So, assuming that uh whatever the list ends up being that the council has approved it, are we okay with the language as is council member Baron? And it sounds like yes, if it's a list that you've approved,

complete all tasks on the future list on a future approved list of prioritized fuel mitigation projects. How about we just say complete all tasks on the approved list of priorities that that way once once we have an approved list it will be accurate. Is that okay with you sir? Thank you. Sure.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Uh on to uh we we did 2.2.5 already. The last one is 2.2.6. Execute a citywide evacuation drill. Uh the chief has already been working on this been working with our partners around the area and is on target for May 2026. This is a new ad. That's redundant. This has been added to the list. Um, any comments on the language or the level of priority from council? Council member Dallas is saying no. Council member Dramoff. No. Are you going to bring this to us before like in April before we do this drill in May or are you just going to announce to us that we're doing a drill?

April 26th. We'll bring it to you 4 days before the drill. No sir. There will be the chief and maybe the chief can speak to it a little bit. He's he's been he's been building a plan with our surrounding partners and and most certainly he'll be bringing something to you and the community. Give them a heads up of what's going on. But chief, I agree. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I I was going to bring it to council, but also offer some training beforehand for council through fire and department of emergency management that's related to it. It's only a couple hours max.

Okay. Thank you. I was going to say I know we have the the presumably we'll have a cell tower item on next month's agenda, but at some point next month, maybe the month after, we could do a um I mean March would be preferable to April as you just mentioned. We could do a like a wildfire committee report out some of the items that have come up. So, sure. Got a question. Since it's 6:30, are we going to maybe take a break because we've got a lot ahead of us. Well, maybe even a bigger question is this is tedious as hell. Yeah. Um that's a statement and that's my opinion. I can't believe what these guys are going through. U a lot of people are here to probably talk about toot. Do we want to readjust?

I'll leave that up to all of you. One option you could you could say we've done some good work. We want to table the second half of this discussion to after the toot item or or or another time. It's up to you completely. Uh you could take your break now, come back and do the toot. Uh it's up to the council. I I would suggest we take a break, do toot, and come back and finish this. Yeah, I was thinking that earlier, but now less tedious. Now, we we just completed a blue section before we move on to the next section. This will be a wonderful time. Your other question was, should we put this off to Well, we can decide. You can decide. We can decide that after the after toot because it's just going to be us at this point. Yeah, let's decide depending on how long.

So, we're taking a break. Seven. Seven. Come back at 7. It's 25 minutes from now. We're

We're getting ready to get started. Okay, Nova, are we ready? Um, I'll Yeah, I'll check if we're ready to go. Uh Reys, are we ready to go?

Yes, we're ready. Nothing. All right, we're back in session. We'll now take on item three transient occupancy tax toot discussion and direction on potential 2000 2026 ballot measure. This is an important and complex discussion for Carmel. There's broad agreement that the city will need additional revenue sources in the future to maintain public services and infrastructure especially. I think the question before us tonight is not just whether we need revenue but how we pursue it and at what pace. So, I think Marissa's going to be doing the staff report. We'll get started.

Microphoneing at the same time. So uh the purpose of this presentation is to uh get c get council's direction on whether to pursue an increase in the city's toot uh the amount of that increase and council's preference on election timing. Uh this is going to be a two-part presentation. I'm going to handle uh the first portion of it toot rates and then I'll let the expert handle uh the election process. So why is this item before council? Uh both the financial stewardship work group and um just before this item, the strategic priorities u workshop or list uh council identified revenue shortfalls falls and a long-term fiscal sustainability as a priority. Uh and this is because expenses continue to outpace revenues due to raising cost um in different sections such as uh employee compensation, general inflation, deferred maintenance, which is a priority for council, and unfunded pension obligations. Um we want to of course ensure that we meet our obligations and prevent any budget shortfalls such as those experienced by neighboring agencies. So pursuing an increase in toot um was identified as a potential additional source of revenue. Now what is transient occupancy tax? This is a tax paid by visitors on short-term uh hotel stays. It is authorized under California revenue and taxation code 7280. and it was designed to compensate jurisdictions for the increase uh public services that come with um additional tourism and it is collected by hotels and remitted to the city. So this is the history of the toot in

Carmel. It was established in 1975 at the rate of 6% and then increased 3 years later uh to 8% and about 20 years later it was increased to 10%. And that rate of 10% has remained unchanged since 1998. So although um this source of revenue can fluctuate based on economic conditions, it is still one of the city's top uh three revenue sources and it is projected to decrease to 9.1 uh from 9.56 on this fiscal year. Uh these are toot comparisons. Um the chart on the left is is Monterey Peninsula jurisdictions. So leading uh leading the chart is city of Marina with the 14% toot and everybody else is about 12%. So it's an average of 12% uh in Monterey County. Uh the chart on the right is similar uh coastal communities and that's uh half Moon Bay at the top with 15% and the rest of them are about an average of 13%. So Carmel uh Carmel Carmel's current rate as you can tell from the chart on the left uh sits below uh from everybody from both the Monterey Peninsula jurisdictions and the comparable coastal communities. So this is what uh potential anno revenue impacts would look like. If there was an increase of 2% from 10 to 12, it would be approximately 1.8 8 million and of course uh twice that 10 to 14 would be uh 3.6 million. So this is again a volatile revenue source. Um actual revenue would be subject to economic and and tourism conditions. Now toot is just one component of total lodging related charges. Uh many jurisdictions impose additional

assessments uh that are intended for marketing or tourism type services such as the one we have for Carmel Hospitality Improvement District. Um Monterey Peninsula does have a Monterey County Tourism Improvement District uh that most agencies participate in. This is a flat rate of $1.70 to $7.90 per night. Uh the city of Monterey has a conference center facilities district assessment uh for any hotels within 100 ft of the conference center. So that's about 4.15%. So uh total uh lodging assessment uh per night would be a little bit higher than 16%. And similarly the coastal communities uh on the bottom chart show how they they also have business improvement district assessments. So again, Carmel kind of sits at the bottom of of those rates. So um as summary for this part of the presentation, the city's DOT rate has not been changed in nearly 30 years. It is lower than most Monterey Peninsula jurisdictions and it is lower than comparable coastal communities. So I'll let uh Nova handle the legal framework and election process next. Okay. So, in order to to have a ballot measure, um because that's what's required to change the toot rate, um you have to submit it to the voters. Um California Elections Code section 9222 allows council to submit a proposition to voters without a petition. Um and also the city's current 10% toot revenue contributes to the city's general fund and is a general tax. Um general law cities such as Carmel by

the Sea um we follow the state guidelines. Um so we have to comply with the requirements established by Prop 13 and 218 um which was created in 1978 and created a distinction between general and special taxes. So a general tax is um a tax that may may be used for general governmental purposes. The revenue is deposited into the general fund. Um, twothirds of all members of city council must authorize a measure to be placed on the ballot. Um, I'll get into that also when I talk about the special um tax. It requires um just a simple majority of voter approval, so 50% of the vote plus one in order to pass. And it um must be on a a regular um scheduled election year, which is an even numbered year in November. The difference between that and a special tax is that a special tax is one that's dedicated for a specific purpose, not for general use. This requires only three members of council to approve adding this type of a measure. Um as opposed to a general tax, you have to have four out of five council members approve that. Um this does require more of the voters for approval, though. It requires 2/3 voter approval to pass and it may be placed on any election ballot. It could be even numbered years or you can hold a a special election an oddnumbered year if it's a special tax. So there's a few different options that we'll go over as far as election timelines. Um for the first option that we'll cover is if we um added a ballot measure to this year's election in November 2026.

um the timing of what needs to happen. We have enough time to do that. Um and the election deadlines are set by the California election code. So this is what the timeline would look like if we were to move forward with this year. Um between now and May, um the council could develop and review draft ballot measure language and take this time to get additional public input. By June 2nd, that's when we're adopting a resolution just to call for our regular municipal election, which is for city council, two members and the mayor. So that's we're going to do that regardless in June. July 7th would be the final date for council to adopt a resolution regarding placing a ballot measure before the voters. Then between July and October, that would be any time to do public outreach. Um but it should be noted that the city is limited to providing educational information that is factual, impartial, and balanced. Um then August we have the filing period for primary ballot arguments, um the city attorney's impartial analysis and any rebuttals. And then the election day would be November 3rd. So there's pros and cons to this option. Um, the pros would be there's a higher voter turnout anytime it's a regular scheduled election and an even numbered year. There's a lower cost to doing a ballot measure when we're already doing an election anyways. Um, it would add about $6 to $10,000 to what we're already paying to hold an election. And in a even numbered year, it could be general or special tax. You have that flexibility. The cons is that obviously these timelines are coming up quickly. Um, so there would be limited time if the council wanted to retain a consultant for a feasibil feasibility study. Doesn't mean it's not possible.

It just means we would need to start sooner rather than later. The second option would be um next year. So an oddnumbered year. The pros to that would be we would have that timeline I just went over plus another year to prepare which means more time for stakeholder engagement, more time to explore consultant support. The cons would be in an odd number year your only option is a special tax. You can't do a general tax which also requires a higher voter approval but there's generally lower turnout on these standalone elections that are like a one-off. Um, there's also a much higher cost for a standalone election. Just to do a ballot measure with nothing else in an odd-numbered year would cost 15 to $20,000. Um, and that's with consolidating with the county. It could be higher or lower depending on if anyone else in the county is also having a special election at the same time. Option three would be um, November 2028. Um the timeline would be the same again as as I mentioned before. Um except you would have two more years to prepare. So even more time to get input. Um and again the election cost would be much lower because we're already going to be doing an election in 2028. So it would just be adding on to what we're already paying. Cons are obviously that's couple years away and there's a delay in potential revenue. Um, so now we're back to the council's direction. Um, this is where I'll leave this slide for um, council questions and discussion. So if anyone has questions for me about the election part, I'd be happy to answer.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Nice job. Alisandre, you want to start with questions? I don't have any at the moment. Okay, I have no questions. Hans, Jeff. Wow. No questions. I have one for you, Nova. Realistically, how much work is it to do the ballot measure language? Like, how long is that going to take you?

Well, that that would be written by Brian. And I don't think it would take very long because I think we kind of talked about this two years ago and he had kind of prepared with somewhat of draft language. Um, so we would probably come back to you in probably April, would you say? Would that be a good That's realistic. Yes, realistic. So come back in April with some draft language. You could still get input. You could even bring it back in May for more input, but then we would need to know like definitively by the July meeting. But you really think it's going to take two months to come up with language? I mean, it just depends on how much outreach or input you want.

Mayor, if I could add to that. So, I've actually been involved when I worked at the county in drafting ballot language. And it sounds like a simple exercise, but you'll find that if we do put ballot language in front of the full council that there's a lot of work that goes on, not just this council, any council, board of supervisors, that was not meant to be disrespectful. It there's a lot of work that goes on in changing one word here and there. You get your attorney involved. Um there's considerations with public outreach. So, it's not a although it seems like an simple simple thing to do to write some ballot language, there's a lot that goes into it. So you're doing public you can outreach while you're doing the language. You certainly can. Yeah. Okay. So So it really is two months. I I think that that's a So April. Yeah. Yeah.

If we made a decision tonight, it would be April at the soonest. I I've seen it. You know, the admittedly the the ballot measure I was involved in had to do with cannabis in Monterey County. And so, you know, that was very contentious, but it can go it can go several months. And then you need to turn this in. We would need council to um adopt a resolution by um July approving the ballot measure language so that we have time to give that to the county so that they can add it to the ballot that they're doing for the entire So you have we basically have five months from now.

Yeah. I gave this presentation in May of 2024. So at that point we were really close to the timeline. This year we're a few months ahead. Okay. So, we have time. Yeah. Okay. Is this Yeah. Is this language we're talking about the language that's going to go on the ballot, right? Not the language of the resolution. I assume the language of the resolution that places it on the ballot with the exception of like the actual ballot language which is presumably a part of it is just a matter of art for you, right?

Well, there would be a resolution and then within the resolution there would beang the question that would be presented on the ballot to the voters and that's what this discussion that's why you're that you're talking about the language of the thing that everybody's going to see. That's right. And you also you also have to write all the things that go with a ballot measure like a no vote means this. There's it's not just there is a comp through this Carrie will remember like Carrie and Jan and I and Bobby and Dave went through this back in 2020 20 beginning of 2020 or at the end of 2019 we we we bantered about it for hours. So yeah

actually I do have a question now. Okay, go ahead. Nova, um, you had something in the presentation, um, that the city can only provide impartial balanced information on it, and I'm assuming that also applies to us as council members. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Well, building on that question, I mean, we like as a council member, you can campaign for a ballot measure. You just can't use city resources. You cannot use city resources. So, we're not the five of us wouldn't be limited in what we can do, what can campaign for or against the ballot measure. You just can't use your city email account or your city phone or correct or whatever.

And your your city staff cannot go out and do it during working hours and things like that. Okay. I have a question for Marissa. So the analysis that you gave us really just shows the percentage which in our case if you're a customer with the uh CHID percentage is 12% right now when you check out you're paying a 12% correct tax in essence even though two of it is self assessment.

Yes. Uh plus the Monterey County Improvement District which is a flat It's a flat amount of1 $1.70 to $27.99$27.90 I'm sorry uh per night which is again most jurisdictions in Monterey County um participate in this program or assessment that's not shown on this chart um it's in the third column so if you're looking at the top chart is the third column Monterey County Tourism Improvement and that just says who participates in it the breakdown wasn't is not in there, but um but we're paying that uh hotel guest. Hotel. Okay. But it's not shown on this chart.

The what what effective percentage would that add to it, do you think? It's a $1.70 to 790 a night. There's a there's a a tiered. Um Jamie, do you recall what the tiered is? Approximately seven 70 basis points. in the uh so 7 it's in this it's in the it's in the packet on page 63 right but the public's might not have seen that so in essence we're paying the customer when they check out is paying 12.7% 12.7% which in is in effect our current toot rate for the customer if you we don't get it we don't get it but they're paying it

correct did you do any analysis in terms of for instance and and I know others have um you probably have looked at it the per revenue revenue per night that we're getting versus just the the flat percentage. I'm going to hand this off to to Jamie.

So what what you're asking for is what the room rate is that we get. Well, this all comes down to how much money can we take in and the percentage doesn't really matter to me. It matters how much money are we taking in. Yes. If our if our hotel rooms are more expensive.

Yes, they are. So, and one of the things we did is we compared us to another city to see if we could tell how that behavior might uh happen when we tried to get that comparability. So, because like we said, everybody's got the MCT $1.70 to 790. So, um and everybody's got that base rate of toot. So, we're going to pull up this slide. And it's funny because we looked at many different ways to look at this and we came down to just this one slide. And basically, uh, you know, the, um, the timing of the what we've got here is that there's Monterey in the top slide and Carmel bottom slide. These two cities are not apples to apples. The rate is different. the number of rooms is different, but the occupancy behavior is the same. Uh these graphs look at the room rental volumes and the room rates. You know, the average room rate that somebody's paying on a per night basis. And remember, that's an average. Um and what we see is the occupancy and the rates changes are consistent across the two cities. So, we were trying to see if there's pricing pressure causing people to make different decisions. And what we're seeing is when we look at the behavior of prices, what price can hotel years get and fullness of rooms are are they getting all their rooms full or not? The behaviors of pricing and fullness are the same in both cities. So that's how we're trying to um uh control for the difference in the volumes. They obviously CM has a tremendous number more rooms and their average price is creeping up but the average is still less than our average. At the same time we do see that the the behavior seems to be the same.

How's that? Go ahead. What's the right What's the number on the right hand side? If the number on this these charts on the left hand side is a room rate. What's the number on the right? $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000.

You know what? Those aren't supposed to have dollar signs on them. That's room number room nights. So, it's occupancy. So, you're looking at u how how full were the different uh the hotels. So, that's that's occupancy. So is that that's a so on the left is a dollar amount and on the right is number of month rooms or Yeah. Let me check. Let me check my source. The thing on the on the left describes the solid line. The thing on the right describes the dotted line, right? Yeah. And the dotted line is the number of rooms sold in that month.

So Okay. So that's a pro that's another way of looking at occupancy or occupancy percentage. And basically another way to look at it is the occupancy percentages for the two cities average very close to the same. Well, that's hard to tell from this chart because the Okay. Yeah, you're right. I started with seven charts.

So So tell us what this means to us as decision makers. So as decision makers, the concern is that we will push people who are coming to stay into a behavior that's different for our city than what it's been in the past. And so we said, well, how can we know uh what kind of pressures this puts on? And so we looked to see what's Marina doing, what's Pacific Grove doing, what's Monterey doing? We could get monthly data for Monterey. And what we saw is that both cities had similar percentage of occupancy, similar number of fullness of the hotels. um and that they had similar uh pricing uh behaviors across time. So we what we we did not see what looked like people were coming here instead of going there because we had cheaper rooms. So that's what we're trying to get a hold of.

And your theory is we have cheaper rooms. No, but but the theory is is we're not seeing that people are making different decisions about where to stay based on the toot. They're probably looking at availability and they're looking at overall price um of that listed room, but the the room tax appears to be in addition to that. Do you have a theory on what would happen if we increased our toot by 2% after watching it for a number of years? Am I allowed to make opinions? I mean, the mayor's asking me your opinion, I suppose. You're you're looking at these numbers all the time for years.

Yes. Um, the general consensus that we have in looking at the data is that we couldn't see that uh that when people are looking at the pricing that they're going to go in, put the grab the tot. What we're seeing is we're we're kind of maximizing our use of the rooms in this city even as the rates are increasing again and again and again quarter after quarter, year after year in this city. And so right now what we've seen is there's more rooms coming online in the city. We're seeing the prices are going up in the city and those things are not uh reducing each other. So so this city is able to absorb all those pressures that have already occurred. So, our our best guess is that this would make no difference to the people using rooms in this city and the choices they're making to come here. Keep in mind, we're talking about a 100 room versus 5,000 rooms. I mean, a thousand rooms versus 5,000.

Yeah. The the assumption you're making there is that that 2% which is coming to us couldn't be used for some other purpose by the hotelers to increase their room rates, their service level or something else which might encourage more people to stay there. And and one other question I have, we we have the disadvantage of each hotel cuz I've tried and failed to get individual hotel toot numbers for for privacy per reasons for competition or whatever. We have a lump number, but we don't have the individual hotel numbers, but you do.

Yeah. So, you're right. This is a blend. Um but our we we are not we are not able to say that there's I could say it's a blend that's it's a valid average so we don't see any difference in behaviors the population is behaving consistently but you have seen probably significant increases in total toot for hotels that are reinvested in their hotels and I don't get to see that I I I think we got to protect the integrity of Jaime who sees these numbers I'm not I'm not asking her to give any particular hotels. How do we know they're just general trend? I haven't done that analysis. I think this is like I agree with Yeah, I think we should I think we should this is like verging on like

Yeah, we we should I think we should vering on let's go to public comment then. Yeah, there you go. I will comment that. Okay, every once in a while a hotel year comes up here and tells us how much money they've paid.

Good evening. Thank you for all of what you do. Nancy Tumi, this time speaking on behalf of the CRA board of directors. Uh even with the time constraints of this possible ballot measure uh for this November, we do not support taking the next steps for a toot increase as covered by staff. Please seriously consider the data and findings as presented by our village hotels that you will hear from shortly. Uh that quantifies the negative impacts for a potential toot increase. Our request as a CRA board requests um to it to for an an initial introductory discussion um on all possible incremental income uh with with those options represented including revenue potential um and all estimated. We understand that uh estimated revenue per year, pros and cons and rough implementation effort and cost. that is the way that we would prefer to approach this decision at this time. So, as a whole, look at all of the the potential income uh opportunities for the city to cover the costs uh that we're incurring and want to kind of do some catchup. So, we're in full support of that uh but want to look at it holistically and not take action on the TOT at this time. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. How many people are going to speak? All right, we're good.

You could do exhibit A. Good evening, council members. Mark Watson with Ins by the Sea, also the treasurer for Visit Carmemell. Thank you uh for this opportunity to speak. We all share the same goal here, stable, reliable funding for the city we love. The hotel community understands the city's fiscal pressures and we want to be constructive partners. But the staff report before you feels incomplete to us and it does not meaningfully engage with the business community that actually generates this revenue. That's why we provided a packet with exhibits for tonight's meeting. These issues can't responsibly be explored in 3 minutes and they could shouldn't be rushed to a vote this evening. In my rush to prepare these exhibits, uh, I made an error on exhibit B and B2. I've provided the corrections here tonight, but I'm sorry that that was distributed before the correction was made. Looking at exhibit A, this shows what we were just talking about, how much revenue each of these jurisdictions produces. And this slide shows that while the staff report focuses on tax rate, the more meaningful measure is the toot actually produced per hotel room. At a lower tax rate, Carmemell generates 25 to 37% more toot per room than neighboring cities. That outcome is driven by pricing power and reinvestment, not by charging higher tax percentages. Exhibit B, which was um in response to the Halfoon Bay 15% tax rate. This case study shows that what happens when cities assume that raising the rate automatically produces more revenue. The staff report notes that the city of Halfoon Bay's toot rate is 15%. And

that's true over three years it rose from 12 to 15%. And when the postcoid demand normalized, REFPAR declined and toot growth flattened even at a higher tax rate. Carmel's stable tax rate produced comparable per room results, tax results with less volatility. And a little um micro look at that. Exhibit B2, I operate property in Halfoon Bay, but it's in the county. It's just outside the city. and the Hap Bay city council report they indicated that their 8% drop in physical 24 was primarily due to a decrease in tourism to the coast. And this slide examines this question of whether visitors left the coastal region. They didn't. A comparable hotel just outside the city, the one I mentioned, taxed at a stable county rate of 10% increased revar and toot per room in fiscal year 24 while the city experienced a decline. Demand may have shifted within the market toward more price competitive jurisdictions. In closing, how much time do I have? God. Raising the TOT now doesn't necessarily protect the city's finances from the long-term fiscal impacts. Stewardship in our view means taking a little more time to ask the harder questions, engage stakeholders, and fully understand the potential impacts before moving forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark. Good evening, Carrie Ty, both a resident and a hotel owner. Two for one. Um, I'm here to say that the timing is not right for this. Okay, this is the worst possible timing for a toot increase. We need a broader look at revenues for the city and a time in time to make a rational decision. Much like what Hans and Nancy said, within the Monterey Peninsula, within the next two years, we're going to have a thousand new hotel rooms added. I was just over at the Kimton. They have 99 more hotel rooms. They are expecting $1 million in toot for just that hotel because it's brand new. The issue for us is that it's a very it's a very like hotel. It's boutique. It's a Kimton. Um it is definitely competition for us and we need some competitive advantage by offering a lower toot so people come here and stay. We don't want to turn them into day trippers. The residents already complain about how many day trippers are here. We focus on the overnight stay. New hotel rooms mean we'll have more competition for overnight visitors. Will create a downward pressure for the hotel owner to decrease their prices and it will could possibly affect occupancy and rates. And it is fierce competition for us.

It's tough out there. Our marketing is very targeted and it is very difficult. Monterey is a completely different market. They have group business. We don't have group business. We're leisure. There's a big difference between Carmel and Monterey. And so it's completely different thing. So, it's really hard to compare those two cities in a just a data way. As Mark said, our effective room price is high, which is allowing us to gain more toot, and we're the highest in the region outside of the Monterey County. Monterey County has big su hotels. A higher toot compounds the premium that we get on our higher rates. So people are looking at it. More and more guests are asking about the total bill. What is it? We just don't quote room rates anymore. We quote we have to quote the total. Our guests are more price sensitive and the internet makes it easier to price compare. We do not want to encourage visitors to stay elsewhere, which a higher toot could do, because then they become the dreaded day tripper. We lose out on toot. We could also lose out on sales tax revenue because we know that the person that stays in our hotels buys more because they have to go and eat. They enjoy our wine tasting rooms and they like to shop. The day tripper who's worried about a two-hour parking gets in his car and leaves and doesn't find another parking spot. So, you're losing out on the whole point of focusing on the in and the overnight visitor

for for perspective. Just one more thing. We have 40 ins that are generating 40 businesses are generating $9 million in revenue. 40. And what you're looking at today is you're affecting those 40 ins. Raising toot because of new room supply floods the market and could have an effect on what we're doing every day for not only the hotel owners but the city of Carmel. Carmel doesn't need to rush a tax increase. It needs rigorous analysis, stakeholder engagement, and a strategy that protects what already works. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Good evening, mayor, city council members, and city staff. My name is Siguel Lis, and I serve as the chair of the government affairs committee for the Carmel Chamber of Commerce, and I'm a resident. I'm here this evening to briefly summarize the perspective shared in our recent letter regarding the city's discussion of a potential increase to the transit occupancy tax. The government affairs committee represents the interest of a broader business community including a significant number of local hotels and inkeepers. We appreciate the council's willingness to engage on this topic and recognize the importance of evaluating long-term fiscal sustainability for the city. Based on a preliminary review of available information, revenue

projections associated with the potential toot increase may not fully account for possible changes in demand, occupancy, the length of stay. In a market like Carmel by the Sea where lodging inventory is limited and pricing sensitivity matters, those factors can significantly influence overnight visitation. Carmemell also operates within a competitive regional environment. This affects total lodging cost and may influence visitor decisionmaking. analysis suggests that even a modest increase in toot could absorb a substantial portion of the projected future hotel revenue growth potentially limiting reinvestment capacity over time. Historical experience in comparable markets show that sustained tax pressure without adequate reinvestment flexibility can affect the lodging quality and long-term revenue performance. Additionally, reductions in overnight stays may offset anticipated toot gains through declines in sales tax revenue and broader business activity, particularly in visitors shift if visitors shift to neighboring communities and visit Carmel primarily as day trippers. Given these considerations, the government affairs committee respectfully encourages the council to proceed thoughtfully and to clearly define and and to clearly define

processes and timing before advancing decisions or ballot considerations. Additional data development would be helpful, including analysis of total effective lodging cost, potential changes in visitation patterns and broader economic impacts. equally important in early and meaningful engagement with hotels ins and other directly affected businesses so that decisions are informed by those closest to the impact. We value our uh collaboration collaborative relationship with the city and appreciate the opportunity to share this perspective. Thank you for your time and your continued service to the Carmel by the Sea community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council,

council members. My name is Susan Dampier. I represent Lia Hotel and Hotel Carmel. I am also a resident. Behind every room night are people. Shop owners, hotel workers, restaurant tours. All of our livelihoods depend on overnight visitors. Research shows that a 2% effective price increase reduces demand meaningfully. In upscale and luxury markets such as Carmel, the projected impacts are not theoretical. $2 million in annual hotel revenue losses, 1.5 million decline in merchant spending, reduced sales tax that offsets the toot gains. Over time, the city would be capturing more than half of all future hotel revenue growth, while costs like labor, insurance, and utilities raise faster than inflation. This doesn't just pressure our balance sheets. It pressures wages, hours, and local businesses that give Carmel its character. A healthy hospitality sector is not a special interest. It's a cornerstone of Carmel's community and fiscal health. Thank you all. I appreciate being able to come and speak to you.

Thank you.

Evening everyone. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Mark Stillwell, 35 years in the hotel industry, mainly with Pebble Beach, but the last decade or so in Carmel. My wife's family opened Tradewinds in 59, so 67 years there. We have a bit of history here. Um, I stood before you two years a not even two years ago, and said, "What are you thinking of raising toot for? I just invested a small fortune renovating my hotel. I'm going to generate tons of additional tooot without a tax increase. give us time to do this work. Our our inventory here is aging. It needs to be replenished. And so I'm standing here today. I don't I feel I mean yeah disappointed, angry, shocked a bit, but I'm also thinking what I really feel. It's like it's like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when she went in that store and she said, "You're about you made a big mistake. Big huge. You're going down a road that I really feel is going to hurt the overall industry here long term. Um, our rates are higher than anyone's other than Pebble Beach. Pebble Beach has Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spy Glass to sell. They can leverage it. Their rates are artificially high for that reason. You have to stay to play. You don't have to stay to here. You come and you pay the rates and our rates are generating uh 20 30% more than these comparable cities you're just focusing on the TOT for. Um, and let me you asked about a specific example. I don't mind giving our example. Okay. We our last full year 2019 before co okay before the renovation we paid the city $160,000 in toot and that's that's that excludes the 2% all the other stuff 160 this last our first full year this year $752,000. Okay, that's a that's four and a half times what we paid before we put everything in our family at risk with additional debt and you know and it's not like

you you you take the top 10% without any risk. You don't have any costs. You just take the 10% of our gross. Well, my my insurance went from 20,000 a year to 150,000 a year. My staff went up and my rates went up and my FNB went up. um everything and of course property insurance of which you get a share went up but the only one bad I mean so you guys got to I said this last time your rate of return on your investment is infinity because I had to pay you 100,000 150,000 public works improvements and fees and stuff in order to generate for you $750,000 this year. Um so I ask you this is this it just bothers the heck out of me that I don't know what more I can do and I you're going to hurt my business. you're going to cut into my margin. I'm thinking of doing trade wins next, okay? Cuz it needs a renovation. Not to the extent we just did, but I'm going to put that on pause. And I'm going to tell every other hotel owner, put that on pause until we see how this plays out. Cuz you're cutting into my actual income and my occupancy. And I mean, the the the proof is there. It's such a simplistic approach. Let's raise more money. It is not I've heard this term lowhanging fruit. It's not low hanging. It's poison fruit. Okay, you're going to hurt our guests. They're going to drive them into cities with lower rates. Okay, they're going to pay much less. You go and kayak now and it lists how much you pay per city. They don't even break out the toot now. It's just in your rate. So, people are going to know that information is out there. And um I just don't understand it. I don't know why we don't focus more on business development and and and improving our inventory and making our services, you know, helping us make our services better. we will raise. You have a built-in inflation factor. Every time I raise rates 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you get again cream on the top. You get 50, you know, 10% of that without any risk. So, I I urge you not to go down this road and I urge you

if you're even thinking about it. Give us more time to explain this to you because this I thought there was coming maybe would come up in a month or two and suddenly it's like, oh my god, they're going to consider this again. Um, I've done what I said I was going to do. I mean, a $552,000 TOT increase, one hotel. My combined hotels pay a million dollars now. 70 rooms. That's better than the one in just opened PG. And it's it's because of how we've invested back in the community. Um, so I'm really struggling with this. You can tell I'm very emotional about this because, uh, we have a lot, you know, really a lot invested in the city over, you know, my wife's family over 60 years. And um I just don't feel we've been properly engaged, listened to, and understood that this is not a simple low-hanging fruit issue. This is an issue that can really hurt us, hurt our guests, force them elsewhere, hurt the city long term. Okay, that that's the end of my spiel. I appreciate you're listening to me. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mark. Anybody else? Anybody online? There's no hands raised on Zoom. Okay. Someone just raised their hand. Kelly, go ahead.

Hi, this is Kelly Brazoski. I'm a resident. Um, while I fully support all of the uh, dissent that's been raised this evening, I would just like to say that I hope that the council will still take the time to thoughtfully consider this. In some ways, it feels like this is an area, additional area of deferred maintenance in our city, particularly if we're behind the market in this area. Um, I would not encourage taking a rash decision, but I spent uh many many years working on price increases um at Proctor and Gamble back in the early days of my career and we did debated many many times, you know, pennies of increases on toilet paper and paper towels and household products. And while hotel rooms are not that, I think it would be surprising to see that uh a small increase in toot to bring us back in line with the rest of the market in the peninsula would have an ill effect on our occupancy and our uh revenues. Particularly, I think some of the early charts that were showed by Jamie suggest that we're we're tracking in terms of occupancy very very similar to our our counterparts in the area. So, I would just um as a resident request or would be interested in the the council keeping an open mind on this topic.

Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. All right. Anybody else? Nope. There's no more hands raised.

All right, let's bring it back for discussion. Let's start with Jeff this time. Start with Jeff this time. Um, you know, a couple of years ago, we, you know, when Mayor Potter brought this back in May, I'll take Car's word for it, I think. Um, there wasn't enough time and now we're bringing it back in February and there's still not enough time. And I don't know, you know, I don't know how to have I don't know how to have the conversation. I mean, I think that I think that the arguments that we you know that you know that um I think there's I'm not sure there's an answer that will ever satisfy Carrie and Mark and and and and Mark. I I don't know how to I don't know how to um engage in that conversation. Like it seems like every time the conversation comes up, the sky is falling and there's nothing. There's no like it seems like the conversation has started with a no. And so I don't know like I don't know like I'm open to suggestions about how to have the like I personally would be open to suggestions about how to have the conversation if you would commit that the answer is not no. But all I'm hearing all I'm hearing right now is no. you're hearing.

All I'm hearing all I'm hearing is Mark All I'm hearing

is there's no there's no number that's going to work for us. And so I'm prepared, you know, I don't know how to have the conversation. Um if there's if there's a way to have that, I would be interested in having that with the, you know, with the target date at, you know, of November 2026. um as Nova put out like I'm interested like we have a schedule there are deadlines associated with this and we can go up to the deadline like we did with measure measure C or measure D whatever it was in 2019 um but we need to move towards the date so that's my that's my belief okay Hunts

uh Um, okay. So, I will break my comments into some some comments about process and then some comments about substance. Um, I'll start by saying that I would have preferred that the process have been handled differently and you know, I've sort of said that from the beginning. Um, I understand the sense of urgency, um, you know, about getting this on the ballot, but I would have preferred to start with sort of a more strategic, wide aperture, um, approach that looked at all of the revenue options just because I think that's a more systematic way to do it. Um, it doesn't mean I think that this is the wrong option. So, I think that that was maybe a little bit backwards. You know, Mark Stillwell said, "I don't feel like I've been properly engaged." I heard that from some of the other hotel owners. I think that that's fair. I don't think that um I my understanding from them is this was a surprise for it to show up on the agenda and I think we probably could have done a better job of um doing some outreach because they were scrambling to sort of put their information together. And candidly, a lot of their information is really good information. Mark Watson, I worked with him on AHA. He's a really smart guy and uh I benefited from looking at the information that he put together. it was very high quality and supplemented what the staff put together. Um, you know, at the same time, Bob and I have been reviewing the full menu of revenue options with staff in our finance committee um, for the past two or three months and a toot increase for a variety of reasons consistently has floated to the top of the list as one of the least bad options. So, you know, process concerns aside, substantively, I I do think that raising the toot um to 12% to just bring it in line with the rate that other

communities have is the right move. Um, you know, at 10% we are well below our neighbors and comparable jurisdictions. I sort of view it as it's just at that point it's really an equal playing field. Um, and we need revenue. I mean, I'm going become a broken record on this, but last year we adopted a policy of allocating 10% of revenue for capital uh capital projects. And with $35 million in recurring revenue, that gives us $3.5 million a year for capital projects. We just have discovered the staff has gone through this and our we're getting pretty close to a pretty tight estimate. We think we need $10 million a year. So we've got functionally a $6.5 million a year budget gap. Um so you know it's not all doom and gloom. I mean there there is a benefit to reinvesting in the community. Um and some of this will have really immediate tangible benefits. New sidewalks, higher quality roads, right? Um a municipal building that's going to house half of our city staff that we can actually be proud of. upgraded beach revetments to make sure scenic road doesn't wash away, potentially undergrounding the main line of our power grid. Um, so just to name a few. So $6.5 million a year is a pretty big gap relative to the size of our budget. Um, and these investments like they're just going to require some shared sacrifice. And um, that does include the business community. You know, I say that as somebody like my parents ran a bed and breakfast for 37 years. And not like a big bed and breakfast. They ran one that was at times as small as 14 rooms. Um, you know, sometimes up to to 25 or or 30. But it's a tough business. I mean, Carrie mentioned this. It is it is a

tough business. It's capital intensive. Your leases are one day long, right? Like my dad used to get up at 4:30 in the morning to cook breakfast every morning. So, it's like it's I get it. It's tough. Um, that being said, ultimately, you know, having looked over all of the available revenue options over the past two or three months, it's pretty clear to me that raising the TOT to 12% to be in line with these other jurisdictions, I think, has to be part of the equation. Um, so really quickly, some additional observations. Um, first I think that the hotel owners are right to point out that the $1.8 million uh in projected revenue gain from increasing the toot will be offset by a reduction in occupancy um and a slight reduction in sales tax. So I think that is a really good thing to point out. At the same time, I do think that, you know, Mark mentioned this paper from MIT in one of his appendices and it talks about um it talks about the impact of raising rates and I just feel like those are sort of generic numbers and you know a place like Carmel does have um the price elasticity of demand here. it's just um it's just more inelastic because it's the opposite of a commodity. Um so, you know, maybe instead of two steps forward, one step back, it's like 10 steps forward, one step back in terms of, you know, you're losing some to uh sales tax and and decreased document. Um but I do think that the notion that somehow toot revenue is just going to collapse, to Kelly's point, um for me doesn't hold water. So, and Nova, I don't know if you can bring up that slide.

So, Mark Watson put together and visit Carmel sort of a helpful um a helpful slide on uh in a white paper that they shared with the council on Half Moon Bay. And you know, I I shared that one of the numbers was off with Mark and he helpfully adjusted that so that what was presented tonight was accurate. Um, but you know, I will say that when I look at these numbers, because I the first time it was presented, it was like 6 million for fiscal year 2024. And I was like, that just doesn't feel right. So, I called their finance director and he gave me the numbers. And so, the, you know, for the last year, they were, they started off, they they dropped obviously off a cliff like everybody in CO. They came roaring back with revenge travel in 22 and then in 23 and 24 it was like maybe a little bit off but apparently I don't know which of the years but they told me that the Ritz was down for renovations or at least partially down and that played into this and then in fiscal year 25 they're at 9.6 million. So when I talked to them they said look we're actually really happy with where we are and I asked like did you have any regrets about the TOT increase? And they said no. Um, so they they they raised their toot from 12% to 15%. Um, and we're talking from going 10 to 12. And then if you go to the next slide and then I just kind of compared that with, you know, Carmel, initially it was 10% plus a 1%, you know, for the hospitality improvement district. So it was sort of 11. And then in fiscal year 22 it became 10 + 2. And you can sort of see how these track compared to Half Moon Bay. And it's actually interesting in the teeth of this 12 to 15% toot increase. Um Half Moon Bay actually

outperformed Carmemell from the NA year in COVID until through actuals of fiscal year 25. They basically doubled um their toot revenue and for us it went up like 82%. So, um I think for me the bottom line, like just like when I look at this, again going back to Kelly's point, like if your ADR is $385 a night, a 2% increase is like $7 and change. Like to me, I think this tracks with my intuition that the bottom is not going to fall out of the tub um if we do that. So to wrap up here um you know I think it's important to me as an additional point that if we did this any incremental revenue be devoted exclusively to capex rather than to to fund continued growth and operating expenses. So I would do it as a general tax just to try to answer all the questions you posed here. I would do it as a general tax 50% plus one, but I would get right up to the line in terms of ensuring that the money is is functionally earmarked for capex. Um, and my understanding is that as long as we don't include that language in the actual ballot measure, um, but we could adopt as a council a policy to say that this these funds are going to be used for capital expenditures. Um, and that's that's what I would want us to do. And then in terms of timing, um, you know, we need the money. So, um, my vote would be to put it on the November 2026 ballot.

Thank you, Bob.

Uh, thanks, Hunts. At this point, I'm kind of at the same point in terms of an outcome. Um, but let me unpack that. Um, uh, first off, we're here in February because actually, I I give Jeff credit. Both Hans and I were were saying, "No, let's let's have a a bigger conversation about all revenue sources first." And I think Jeff in our um priorities meeting last month just reminded us of the ticking clock and that if we don't get started soon, we will run out of time. So, at this time at we're we're ahead of ourselves uh this time, meaning we have time to make a thoughtful decision. Um and not necessarily a rushed one. I think between now and June we can educate ourselves quite a bit and I think we will have that broader conversation which can inform this one further. Um Hans I want to I want to thank Hans for showing these numbers on Halfoon Bay. Interestingly I did the same exercise but with different sources. Um so I just went back and looked at their audited financial statements um for well all these years except 2425 my and the numbers are the same. Um, and I just talked I talked to the Ritz and understood that they were uh they renovated 265 rooms during that same uh uh 23 24 period. And then it was actually a newspaper article that told me that in 24 and 25 they had recovered to more than they've ever collected before. So um it it gets to um Hans's point about elasticity of demand and you know Mark that was kind of the argument you're making is that and this is you know econ 101 I guess that would be microeconomics but um you know to to what extent does your product behave purely like a an economy a commodity where it is highly

elastic you know uh sensitive to price changes uh versus not and so far I'm not convinced um that um necessar that raising your rates and or raising um toot which I know means you either need to raise your rates or lower your margin and I I'm a businessman I understand I mean usually sitting on that side of the table uh that lowering your margin affects your ability to reinvest in your product I I I do understand that and I'm sympathetic to it and I'm certainly open to continuing to listen um as we as we go forward. Um but so far actually neither Jamie nor you have convinced me um that um raising toot um will as Hans said cause the bottom to fall out of the bathtub. Um happy to continue on that. I've also done a little bit of uh research beyond um you know our competitive set on the peninsula and regionally um Hildsburg 16% St. Holina 15%, Kalistoga 16%, Paso Robbel's 14.5, Pismo 14.5, Losiva is 14. Um those are inclusive of um improvement districts. Um and so competitive similar and I think those guys are in many ways as much the competitive side um as your neighbors here on the peninsula. understanding with the thousand new rooms coming on that that does change that I think a lot of those rooms are more competitive probably with Monterey um um than here um but there's no doubt that we that our product continued to to need to improve um I applaud the fact that that the lodgers took it upon

themselves to uh create Visit Carmel um with your 1% I applaud that you did 2% um and that you know you are um helping yourselves by charging your customers uh to invest in your marketing. Um and I think it's a huge success. I I mean I think you're doing a great job. It's a great business decision. Uh and you also freed yourself from the chaos of trying to do marketing in, you know, in partnership with the government cuz this is somewhat managed chaos. You know, there's five of us up here and we change every two years. So that that was really smart um of of you all to do that. Um but that was a private sector decision that you all made and Mark your product is awesome. I put my son up there at Thanksgiving and it was it's it's lovely. Um I know what you have done and what Carrie wants to do is exactly what needs to happen in this community. Um and I'm I we need I know we need more of it. Um, and those were but those were private sector decisions that you made. We now have to make public sector decisions. Our product is not keeping pace with your product. It's deteriorating. I mean you you across the board um the hotel product is improving. I think it improved a lot in the last five years. It has a long way to go, but you are ahead of us and our infrastructure and Hans and I are just laser focused on this. Um, in many ways it's just decrepit and uh it's it's I don't think it's the product that's worthy of your customers and I think we need to we need to turn this ship and it's going to cost a lot of money uh to turn the ship. So I I understand all the impacts on you of raising the toot. Um at this point I'm inclined to move

forward with that. Um we will not have to decide that until June. Um and we will in the meantime understand um paid parking as part of that. We will understand I mean the other path for this we we don't Proposition 13 just shut down all so many avenues for local governments to raise money. Um, and I don't think there's any coincidence that the lodging tax came into existence about the same time that Proposition 13 came into existence because that basically took away all of our property tax control other than what you know some remnant that we still get. So, cities had to look for new things and um toot was a low fruit because it was one of the few doors that Sacramento left open. Um and um the only way to open some different doors is ultimately to become a charter city. Um because that could open some other revenue sources for us. Um but that's also a path that goes through the voter. Um and let's not forget that the Toot path has to go through the voter um as well. Um and that's kind of what's going on in my mind. I'm actually a fan of getting on with the charter so that we can open more doors. I want to be less dependent on the tourism sector here um and not more dependent. But to get there um is a more arduous uh journey. Um I'll leave it at that. But that's kind of what where I'm at today. Uh and I don't think we're making a decision. We're not passing a resolution. Um and I'm going to continue to do research. Mark, I'm happy to sit down with you and um I started doing this with Hillsburg and St. Elena already trying to see kind of exactly this set of numbers that Hans put together um for those cities because I think it it's just more data points that help us understand really what has

happening recognizing that this is all historical and I can't predict where what the future um will look like. You know we all lived through 2008 9 10 11 12 um and and 2020 you know so we all know those things can happen again. Um I the one thing I will close on is I completely agree with Hans. Um I I believe that we really really really need to focus all future revenue on our deferred maintenance problem. Um and really be very serious about that and we have to get get a lot of things in writing so that that transcends city councils and the chaos that happens because we have an election every two years. Thanks.

Thanks Alisandra. Thank you. Um I am in agreement with what I'm hearing from my fellow council members. Um I would be in favor of a ballot measure. Um have it for be for the general fund, not for specific use. And on the November 2026 ballot, uh it just feels that the time has come and that it's long overdue. Um Jeff and I were on the previous council and I feel that we fulfilled our agreement to give the hotel owners two more years, which they had asked for um when it came before the council previously. Um, we've been at the 10% since 1998 and as we saw in the presentation, that's literally almost 30 years. Um, and we saw how surrounding communities in the Monterey Peninsula have higher rates as do similar coastal communities. So, I would be in favor of a 10% to 12%, which is the 2% increase. That would bring in 1 um 8 million or so because we really do need it as a city revenue. and and as we've heard, just think of how much better our roads, our streets, sidewalks, CIP projects would be to have that additional 1 million per year that we could spend as a city. And um ultimately, this will be the decision of our 3,000 voters in town.

Right. Sounds pretty clear, but I have some questions. Carrie, can you come up, please? Certainly. Can you tell us the difference in toot that you'll be paying the city once your hotel is completed, your new one roughly in orders of magnitude? It's probably going to be It's probably going to be around $900,000. Mhm. Which is 6x what it is now. It's probably um a lot. Okay. Yeah, it's somewhere in that magnitude. Yeah. And uh thank you. That's all I needed. So that's the point.

You can make a statement if you want. Yeah, that's the point is this major renovation is driving the room rates and it's driving more toot. So that does a 2% increase which really puts it at 14.7% for us which is roughly 15%. So that's like the high end of any other city if you add in all the components that we have. That's right. Does that 2% as a business person change your perspective on anything?

Oh, certainly. I mean, it's, you know, I I find it interesting because we're all hotel owners, so it's hard for you not to sit behind the desk or greet the guests, be on the phone, whoever. Everybody's asking about price. So it, you know, it's a completely different scenario than sitting up here and just looking at a toot increase. I think what we're offended about is we're paying our fair share, one-third. Why aren't we looking at other new revenue sources that would bring in more than 1.8 million? That is what is offending us. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Mark, I have a question for you. Which Mark? This Mark. This Mark. Oh. Oh. Oh, I'm re I'm reopening public comment. All right. Sorry about that. Sorry. Um, what are you doing with your hotel Wayside in? Pardon me. The hotel on the corner. We're doing a $2.5 million renovation on a 22 room property. What's that going to do to toot? It's going to raise the toot. Well, it's $100 a room, so I'd have to I can't do that math in my head, but

it's probably going to increase 33% of the our contribution to tot.

What does 2% increase do to you? Well, I'd like to expand upon that point because if projected long-term revenues are considered in terms of visitor spending to be 4%. And the city's going to take two of that 4%. That leaves us to grow our revenues at 2%. Unless we make reinvestment uh happen and take risk because the C CPI, the cost of goods and services is going to continue to rise higher than 2%. And so we're going to be less profitable overall. So we're either going to have to drop our rates to meet the demand fall, which is going to mean we're going to have to make cuts in spending um or we're going to have to well that there's just no way about no way about it. When you take that 2%, you're really taking it out of our pocket. It it's it's earning potential for us. And and I also want to comment on this chart here. You know, the reason you look at the 2024 25 toot revenue compared to Carmel and that it did better. Well, the rate went up three points. You know, our rate did not go up. That's why it's higher. You know, it's it's 50% higher than our toot. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was, you know, there the luxury market is more impacted by tax increases. That was the study. It was at University of Massachusetts actually and and it showed that the luxury market is more impacted by increases in toot meaning uh it has a you know a bigger incremental increase in cost and it causes uh visitors to perhaps make other choices. So I'm sorry I'm taking too much time. Do you have another question?

This is this is important. So the the uh and the the idea that we haven't raised toot in a long time and we should just raise it because it's been a while with that mentality we'd be at 100% someday. There's no reason the tax rate should necessarily be increased especially since we've increased the toot 125% of the CPI. uh we've taken it upon ourselves to self assess market the destination responsibly and we have increased revenues for the city whereas it had been flat for the prior 10 years with the CPI if we had continued on that course with the CPI TOG revenues for Carmel today would be 7 million but they're almost 10 million so that's another reason we feel like we've done our job we've make s sacrifices we've volunteered our time to improve these numbers and to get hit with a tax increase that comes right out of our pocket. It's just it's hard for us to swallow. Now, we want to explore the city's issues. We're, like I said, we're in this together, but we feel like there's been a little bit of a rush to judgment that it's almost an entitlement to raise the toot, and we feel that perspective is wrong.

Yeah. Thank you. But we are here tonight discussing it. Um, thank you. Okay. You know, another another point I'll make is I'm seeing this type of investment all over town. There are some significant hotel renovations going on and that costs a lot of money and and I thank the owners for doing that. Cypress in is making major improvements and they're going to make a lot more. our bears did. There's this every time that happens, we're we're talking two to three to four to five times X of which dwarfs in the long run raising 1.8 million with a risk that it could be 1.6 or 1.5 if if the revenue goes down. As a business person, I always go for growth. I always go for reinvestment. I always go for improvement. Um, I'm not on the team to look at tax options. I mean, Bob and Hans have a big advantage there, but I see I see all kinds of things around town. We were talking about charging for sidewalk improvements for the businesses. Let them share a little bit in this. I think if we spread it around, I I'm not I'm not for this certainly without a lot more discussion, but we've got four votes here tonight. So, if you're looking for four votes to say that you think this could pass, I certainly see that this could pass. That's what you were looking for direction.

Yes, sir. We're looking for direction as to whether to proceed proceed forward with working to get on November ballot. As council member Dels pointed out, there's time between now and when you would have to adopt that resolution for the ballot language where more research can be done. You can ask more questions. We can we can we can learn more. But tonight's tonight's request from you uh for you is should we proceed uh towards a November ballot? Should I would you prefer a motion?

That'd be great. Thank you. So I would make a motion that we uh proceed at this point with exploration and ask and ask uh staff staff to come back at the April at the April council meeting with um language for the resolution and sort of a template well language for the resolution and possible battle language. second. And I'd like to speak to my motion. Go ahead.

Um I'm I'm serious about what I said uh what I said earlier. Um you know, there's a lot of time between now and the time that the council um takes a final action to put this on the ballot. So I think there's a lot of time there's a lot of time for um discussions between the council and theos and and and you guys or between us as individuals and you guys. And I hope that we could uh use that use that time effectively. And I mean that with all with sincerity. Thank you, Jeff. Anybody else like to make a comment?

Seeing none, take a roll call. I'm sorry. Is there a second? Who made the second? Second. Okay. Council member Baron. Yes. Council member Buddh. Yes. Mayor Prom Delves, yes. Council member Dram, yes. Mayor Burn, no. Motion passes 41. Okay, I guess that is the end of that and we're going to back up. Let me go my notes. We're going to go back to item two. So, if you want to clear the room, anybody that wants to leave,

it's a good time to do it. We're going to take a fiveminute bio break while the room's being cleared.

Reese, sir. Oh, we're back. Okay, we're back at 8:30 and we're going to continue on with our strategic priorities list. Brandon's going to run the meeting for the most part.

Thank you, mayor. I'd like to pull the council. I heard some side conversations during the break. Uh there was some conversations about setting a curfew for your council of 9:30. Let's get through what we can this evening until 9:30 on the priorities list and then uh set it for the next possible meeting recognizing that the priorities list, you know, isn't something that has necessarily a deadline on it. Um so I guess I'd look to the council before we get going so we can kind of work towards that. Council member Dramov is saying she prefers that. Delves is yes, Bayer's yes. Booter is a yes. Doesn't matter, I guess. Sorry, sir. We'll start from the right every time. Story of my life. I'll start there next time, sir. Um, okay. So, we finished 2.2. Nova, could you scroll us up just a little bit, please?

Actually, I was wondering, can I get clarification on 2.2.3 or maybe you guys as a priority level? Yeah. Did we get a number on that? Uh, this was where the council you guys uh you guys combined the two items. Um, did you decide that this was a level one, two, or three? This was combined with 2.2.5. I took this as a I took it as a two, Nova, just based on the way that the the conversation was going. Yeah, I gave it a two.

Okay. Anybody? Okay. Good. Okay, we're going with two. All right. On to fun stuff. 3.1, public safety. So, once again, we'll take the blue items all at once. So, members of the public, if you'd like to comment on 3.1.1 through 3.1.3, uh, with the mayor's approval, I'll go ahead and open public comment. Any public comments on the public safety section 3.1? Nova, anybody's hands up online? There's no hands raised on. Okay, so there's one now. All right. Wonderful. Uh, Shirley Moon, go ahead.

We can't hear you, Shirley. Shirley, go ahead. We We can't hear you, Shirley. Okay, we'll we'll try to come back to you, Shirley. See if you can get your microphone figured out. Um uh and then text you can text me if you want and let me know when your microphone's ready and I can we can go back to you on that. So, uh, it's the benefit of most people in this town having my cell phone number. Uh, 3.1 through 3.1.3. Uh, oh, that's out in the hallway. Sorry. Uh, bring it back to council. So, the first item up for bids here is a pink item. Um, complete the transition to ambulance service monitor fire. This is done. Just looking for your approval to take this off your list. I see everybody's head moving up and down. Thank you very much. On to the next item. I'll I'll take it off as long as you can guarantee us that the uh mutual aid situation with AMR is is starting today or retroactive.

It I can't guarantee that. That's that's what's going on right now is we're working on the contract the contract is not done yet. Like I mentioned last night that there there's some language between the county of Monter. Leave this on until that's done. Um the transition to ambulance services and that's a big deal. That's a lot of money. that transition to ambulance services to monetary fire is done. Uh the contract language with AMR is what we're working on right now. I think it should I agree with Dale. I think it should be rewarded and left up there. Okay. I mean that that is a part of what we asked Yeah. That's several hundred,000 minimum. Great.

And and that was a commitment given to us as a council the night that we approved that transaction. But we great. We'll trust that it is going to get done quickly. Okay. So, let's make that a one. Nova. Thank you. With a date.

Today's February 3rd. Uh March 1st. Thank you. Okay, next item. Implement a street address program. This one's clear because we did not change any of the language. All we're looking for here is a priority level from council. One about that. Okay, easy. That was easy. Good job. 3.1.2 Create a plan to improve the resiliency of the city's power grid and present it to city council. This is green, so it's a new item that we added. looking for input on the title of the item and a priority level. What What level of effort is it? What's that?

What level of effort is this? Um, who does it? This is going to be a combination of of efforts between the administrative office, so myself and Marissa and our our team and the public works department. Um, obviously we're going to have to interface with agencies like PG& um Well, you don't have any idea of what's involved. Those are just words, right? Yeah. until we start working on the plan. I don't really know. We've never done anything like this before. And then I've got a question. Are we specifically referring to Dolores and second? Do we want to include that in the title or that would be part of the overall plan to improve the resiliency. Um we can include whatever the council likes in the title though.

I would just leave it broad enough that it's because it is kind of still a learning process. I think we have learned that that main line's a great one to underground, but we might also learn something else as we talk to them about how our grid works. And I mean, I I agree with you that we don't want to make this some massive, you know, fishing expedition. Do we just start at three just so you can start sticking your toe in the water to see where where we're at? I'd make it at least a two. Two. Okay. I would I would appreciate being a two, sir. Something we got some momentum on. I think two is good.

All right. You got twos. Awesome. Uh 3.1.3 complete the city's rule 20A project at Delmare parking lot. This was another ad from our recent meeting. Uh just looking for either new language, put it on a future items list or give me the priority level. Any combination of those things. I've got a comment on that. How are we going to complete it when it's entirely up to PG? It could be years from now. Well, it's not I mean

Well, it didn't sound like it was something that's coming quickly. Well, I think it's to me it's, you know, the city is the project manager and PG is the implementation device and it's up to us to like it's up to us to sort of start the ball down the hill. That's correct. We uh what we would need to do is we would need to work on those doing plans uh engineering all that and we submit that to PG&. So there there's a level of staff involvement as essentially think of it like a CIP project.

Well, what what what work do we actually do? I mean, doesn't P isn't PG& going to do all the plans and engineering? I mean, that's what No, my my understanding um is that we we have to engage like our costs are covered under like we have a reimbursement essentially like for this project, but we we have to manage and get the plans and drawings and then we submit them to PG. We'd hire Wallace Group to do it probably. A question for you, Brandon. you you in your sample had this as a deferred as a future item. Can you just speak to Were you just looking for stuff to cut or

I was looking for things that if we didn't get to them in the next year, we're we're not going to blow up, catch on fire, appreciably change how the city functions. This is one the 2A project undergrounds power lines, which is wonderful, but the area that's being undergrounded is really about a scenic impact. That was the 28. It's not like a high risk area. It's not a power line in Mission Trails Nature Preserve. It's down at Delmare. Um, and it's not going to happen fast. No matter. It's not going to happen fast. No matter what we do. Yeah, this was one that I did in my sample point as a future project. I would punt.

Yeah, I mean I agree. I I agree just because I think everything that at least I learned Jeff and I when we were on the ad hoc committees, it really seemed like it was going to be balls in PG's court and we have to be on their timeline. So, um, I I don't see it as considering everything else we've got going on. Also, the Carmel Cares project is going to get started pretty soon. Hopefully, if we can ever get the encroachment permit, but I think it's approved, but um we're going to learn a lot from seeing that happen and we'll have some data points.

I don't know. I I just have this feeling that if we just wait and wait and wait, you know, we're going to knock on PG's door, PG's door, and PG is going to say, "Okay, there's a two-year line. Go get in go get in line and we're just going to miss the boat." Like I just feel like that's a big unknown. Like that's an unknown that you know feels like if we get in line, we can hold our plate. We can get up to the front of the line and sort of delay and delay and delay and hold our place in the front of the line. But if we don't ever get in line, then we may find out that it's too late. And I know that those rule 2A funds have a deadline on them.

So Ken could do a little research on that. I can help you with that. And we can come back whenever we have our next update on this. I mean, I would make so I so in other words, I would make it a three and then next time 3 months when we have an update for you again or 6 months or 9 months or whatever. Okay. I would favor an update especially because Javier was the project manager and he's not even working here. So, um if Ken could get us an update at least and maybe then we can decide if we push it off. It's okay. It's okay Ken. Not a lot of time. Please understand. Did you PJ talk about a time suck

as a three? I I recognize I mean I the numbers are going to mean something to me and all of us on this as a three that means when we have a little window and we can make a phone call we'll do that but this is not going to be something we're focused on. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Three. Three. Everybody agree. I think I saw everybody give me a three on there. Good.

Okay. Wonderful. So we're on to uh 3.2. City buildings and property. Uh notice please that this blue line, this priority line is highlighted yellow, which means that we added and property to this line because this included conversations about Rio Park. Uh that was the intention of this line all along was to be and city property, but it was just written as city buildings. Um so we're looking for uh public comment on these four items, 3.2.1 through 3.2.3. um through the mayor. Then I'll ask if anybody in the public would like to come speak to these items.

Hi again, Christy Rmmers. I want to make two points here today. The first point is that I'm genuinely concerned about the direction we're heading with parking and the use of our public land. Before we consider taking the major and irreversible step of selling public land for parking structures, we should do what we can with the parking we currently have. And that means getting serious about parking enforcement. Right now, we're enforcing parking less than 15 hours a week with only one enforcement officer who can't cover the whole downtown herself, which means most of the time our rules aren't rules at all. This concern is also directly addressed in our general plan, which calls for the city to continue strict enforcement of parking regulations. When there's no enforcement, parking doesn't turn over. I see it every day. Loading zones are used for hours. Employees end up parking all day in two-hour spots. Residents, businesses, and visitors all get frustrated. Not because we don't have parking, but because it isn't managed. To really manage what we already have, it seems like we'd need three to four parking enforcement officers to be able to continually continually canvas the whole downtown, seven days a week, 11 hours a day. I also want to say that a metered system isn't really the answer on its own because even with meters we still need the enforcement. Without that, the same problems remain. The second point I want to make is that about our 30inut parking spaces. Many of these were created to align with ordinance 96 and were intended to serve residents for their quick local errands. picking up a prescription at Caramel Drug or Optiques, buying a present at Thinkinger Toys, or picking up pasta for dinner at Pasta Pallet. These spaces are what are what allow our commercial areas to function for the people who actually live here. And I urge you, the council,

to consider restoring some of these 30inut spaces to better support a downtown that serves local residents with paid parking. I'm also concerned that the downtown would be even less available to the residents, asking them to pay for the for the time they want to do a quick errand. Full stop. I don't think people will do it. To end, before we make permanent decisions about public land, I'm respectfully asking that we first fully enforce the parking we already have and see how that works before selling one of our most valuable public assets. And determining the value of them is a slippery slope to selling them. Thank you.

Thank you, Christie, and thanks for sticking it out. Anyone else in the public? Nova, anybody on Zoom? Um, there's no hands raised on Zoom. Shirley's still out there. Shirley, if you want to try again, can raise your hand. You can also call Brandon on his cell phone and she certainly can do that. If she wants to just say what she wants to talk about,

I can I can make sure that I take that call. Um, city buildings and property. So, we're going to bring it back to council then. Um, council, I'd look for this on this one to start with. Uh, the main header 3.2 to uh the blue line. If you have any questions or concerns about an property in there, please let me know. But then let's take 3.2.1. Uh this was just a name change. Conduct condition assessment of all. We added the word city, city buildings, determine values and develop maintenance plan. This came out of a comment that we need to determine the values of our of our city buildings. Uh so we put that together with this item to try to make one cohesive item that had to do with condition assessment values and that maintenance plan. So

why um because we did I sorry I don't I thought it was I thought it was you know that was the note we took it was we when we were talking about 3.2.1 the note about needing to determine values of buildings came up. So I thought it was logical. We can easily create it into two items if you'd like a separate item for just determining the values of the buildings.

As I recall, this actually came up a year ago. I think it was Alisandre was saying we ought to know what they're worth and have them assessed. Meaning, and I'm sorry if I'm remembering that wrong, Alisandra, but that was 13 months ago. Um, and I think I know I agreed was like, yeah, I'd like to know what they're worth. Um but then also what is what have them assessed has what what's wrong with them and what's right with them. Um I would say since then I mean I I now know that we've done that. We have lots of reports on the buildings. They're not that old. Um and uh so I I mean I I I I don't know that this needs to stay on here.

Do we do we have a maintenance? Do we have like so the other things maintenance plan condition assessments and maintenance plans? So we're pretty close to finishing that stuff. So I'll let Ken speak to that to the level of you know if if I guess Ken the question for you would be do we have a condition assessment of all city buildings? I don't think the answer to that is yes. Do do we know the value of all city buildings and do we have a maintenance plan for all city buildings? No. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I was hoping come back. I tried. Yes, sir.

Yeah. I'm really hoping for speaking only for myself. I would say I was really hoping for a slightly more detailed answer. Sure. We have a uh uh from I think it's 2023. We had a condition assessment report on four of our bigger buildings. City Hall. Um, Fesal Lobos. Uh, trying to think of the other one. Other two. Sunset Center.

The Sunset Center and one other one. Uh, I think it's the library. Uh, and we have a whole list of work that has to be done. So, uh, my maintenance guys have just been taking pieces every year and try with the budget we have and accomplishing the work, uh, out of that out of that uh, maintenance uh, requirements for those four buildings, but we don't have it on all the other buildings. If I include the restrooms that we have, it's about 18 buildings total we have. Uh, and we don't have a condition assessment on all 18 buildings. But some of those buildings and facilities like the Piccadelli, is that right? Piccadelli restroom. Uh is on our plan to do an assessment of that building to make a design. Uh it's on my CIP. So it's like a separate piece of work that I'm doing anyway.

I'm pretty sure all five of us could do an assessment of the Piccadilly Park restroom. Yes, sir. Um so so you have assessments on the big buildings and mostly not the little buildings which would be easier to do. Yes sir. We don't have values. Um but we do have some maintenance plans that you kind of chip away at. Yes, we do. Like for for example the just this past year the public works and uh police department work that we were doing the uh repairs and modernization for those buildings were based on our assessment and it was a plan of things that we were tackling

like do we have a maintenance plan for let's say the outbuildings at Sunset Center to use when to use buildings that constantly come up as being in need of maintenance and we have like a written list of like every 5 years check the window seals or whatever it is. No, we don't. We must have some cuz we're spending significant money to fix the windows, put a new roof on them. We put projects on the CIP, but as far as a like a detailed maintenance plan on a revolving schedule, we don't have that for correct for those outuildings. Correct. And you think you could get this done by September of 2026 if it was a one priority?

I'm not I'm not I'm not going to put a one by it. So that's somewhat of a theoretical question, but not realistically. No.

Shouldn't that be part of your deferred maintenance study? Yeah, I think I think uh our goal was to do an assessment of all the city buildings so that we could have a full picture of deferred maintenance and with you know with not having so a condition assessment like a proper condition assessment and Ken can speak to this better than I can but a full condition assessment is a process like you hire someone to do that it takes time to do that. So, with the financial stewardship work group, we're using information that's available to us right now, getting feedback from Ken and his department um to to get our best estimate of what the deferred maintenance costs are, but that that exercise hasn't been done off of formal condition assessments.

So, this is really just giving you a budget to hire somebody to go out and do it. That would be in in part of it, yes, to do it. uh determining those values and then developing a maintenance plan is something we would do based on that information. Cle I think I'm trying to remember what I said a year ago.

I think um I was probably more focused on perhaps if there was a city building that we were interested in selling whether Scout House or Flanders, it wouldn't make sense that we would waste our time assessing the value of city hall for example or something like that. So, um, maybe we need to take that off so we don't get caught up in in calculating things that that are just going to waste our time. But certainly, I think the condition assessment of the buildings plus the maintenance plan tied into the deferred maintenance cost and how much money overall um, whether it's the 80 million or whatever number comes up with. I think that's the key. What she said two say two. what what she said a two.

And and so you were saying take off the determine the values. Yes, I think so. Okay. And I give it a two as well. I'll vote two. I would put I would put a two on it, too. And I would I would uh put a date on it like of December of 2027. Okay. And I would So I would give you two years to do all that work. Thank you. Appreciate it. Prior prioritize the don't wait until November of 2020.

Understood. Pursuant to a conversation we had. Yes, understood. Uh the next item up is uh an item that's done. Uh just for clarification on this one, make the police public works building safe before remodel. Had to do with the the quick repairs things like replacing the hollow corridor at the police station, putting in card readers, putting in some plexiglass at public works. This is not the big, you know, million-dollar redo of the roof of public works where it rains inside or the major remodels to the infrastructure of the buildings. Um, so this item, uh, is done. Um, and so with your blessing, we'd want to take this one off the list. Roger.

Okay. Thank you. Next item, 3.2.2, provide a presentation to council on the process required to sell scout house and receive direction. This one was added, as you can tell by the green highlighting. uh we heard this from you at the the priorities meeting that this was a property you wanted to at least understand specific to this one how the surplus lands act would relate to it. We have a lot of that information already because of when we talked about with the scouts it would be slightly different because this would be selling the property but we can reuse a lot of that information that council um Brian Pick gave us um last year when we talked about this. So, I'd be looking for language modifications, priority level modifications. Um, council,

I'll go first on this. So, um, I do not, uh, I don't agree with the language. Um, I don't think there's been a decision made to sort of sell the scout house. Certainly, that was 2 years ago that we had that discussion. Um, I continue to believe that the property underneath the scout house is ills served by having the scout house on it. and the scout house could be effectively moved to another piece of property. Um, so those are things that I've said before that I believe why I think the language is wrong. But what I what I really think is that, you know, we had a pretty short meeting yesterday and we could have had this discussion for an hour. And I think that this I think that that's a thing that's, you know, sitting out in the background that's like moderately important, not timesensitive. And I think it would be really useful to have a couple of these things, you know, that were sort of queued up ready to go for a council meeting so that when Dale and Bob when Dale and and Bob have a um an agenda setting meeting and they discover that, you know, the Monday meeting is only an hour and a half long, they can say, "Oh, well, we have this scout house thing that's kind of queued up, you know, and with a couple of days of work or one day of work, you know, it could be slotted in. It could be slotted into the agenda and we could have, you know, we could have a productive Monday meeting. And I think that that's like the perfect example um of something that could fit into that into that model. Um not too important, but you know, eventually we're going to have to have the discussion and we should do something with it. and you know we can be sort of opportunistic about you know what we've talked about before which is the limited amount of council time that we have.

So I would like to see you so I would put a two on it. I would change the word at me if it were my thing. I would change the wording and say talk about the scout house or whatever it is and have you either present the same staff report you did a couple years ago and just dust it off and figure out where to go or something like that. So I am I am quite confident that I'm going to be outvoted on this. But my uh I still have the same concern about it just being a time suck. Um, you know, Jeff's comments notwithstanding about the one light meeting that we've had all year. Um, you know, in general throughput through this group of people is it's just a it's just a challenge. And like we we've seen it is a it is a constraint and I just think when this if this came before us, we would just have people come out of the woodwork to talk about it and it would be in the pine cone. And I just I just worry if it's it's sort of a distraction. I think it's a worthy thing to I always want to have discussions, but this is one where if we're looking for something to put off for a year, I would consider this one. I know that's probably not a

It sounds like sounds like a three. No, mine is mine would be to put it off for a year. To the future parking lot future project TVD. I've got a question, Brandon, on on this. um when we were or actually Hans may also know this too. Uh when we were putting together the housing element and I've had people ask me this many times, why was Scout House not included?

Um because we thought that it was just going to be a political disaster. It was just going to be too too the juice wasn't going to be worth the squeeze. Um and that being said, I think that housing's a good option for that site. Um, you know, so but anyway, that's that's the answer. Okay. What what does everybody think? Put it off. I can wait a year. I can and and we had some people write us and say, "Please do that." So, it's not going to be dram.

Um I I would see moving it down to a three as far as priorities. Um but yeah, you're right. It will be contentious and there uh will be people um that get activated by this issue for lack of what do you think? Diplomatic choice of words, ma'am. Brandon, what do you think? Oh, I'm not going to vote on this one, sir. It's it's three or put it off is what we're Yeah, it's three to put it off. I what I do hear is a majority of the council says let's put it on the the future project list for a year. Um if if we Yeah, that that's what I hear is let's let's put it on the future project list.

Is that a three? Uh that would be a move it down to the future projects list. It will not be on your Oh, so move it off here. That's right. All right. No, wrong one. Yeah. Up. There you go. And then I don't know what number we had there. Nova that I had taken from I think it was a three though. Thank you. Okay. So the next item is uh provide coun again this is brand new new language so no no authorship pride here. Uh provide council with a draft agreement between the city and friends of mission trails nature preserve for a Rio park project. Uh you did receive a presentation at your workshop about this. Um

no no it was very quick. Sorry presentation. Presentation is the wrong word. I I'll take a public comment.

Bob and I, you know, they came to us with the presentation. Bob and I had a meeting with Laura Bowling, who is here. She she she didn't make it this long into the meeting. Um she there's they're like halfway ready to go. We told them to cool their jets until we got it onto the priority list. So, it's made it onto the priority list, and I think it's ripe for uh them to come talk to the council and tell us what their vision of the park is. So I don't see the first step as being I don't think the f I don't see the first step as being particularly staff involved like the first step is sort of driven by the friends and they'll come to us with a proposal and then at that meeting we could decide we could decide what um you know we could have a discussion about the future of the property and what we wanted to do. So, I don't think it's particularly staff intensive at the very beginning at least.

I agree. I agree. Yeah, I'd like to see their finances and how much they really think it's I think they were a little bit low on what they thought it was going to cost, but I'd love to hear about it. So, council, then would you I'm sorry. Council member Dov, did you want to comment?

I actually did have something I wanted to mention. And it's something that uh we Brandon and I discussed uh in our weekly meeting is I feel some of this has just sort of been a public relations blitz and we haven't really thought through uh items such as safety and security. I mean just three things that come to the top of my mind is you're now opening up an area by a river that's kind of isolated with trees and you could potentially start getting a homeless problem. Uh, second of all, I still worry about the safety and security of young kids walking on their own, unaccompanied, uh, in an area that's wooded near a river that, you know, you're not going to have necessarily an adult keeping an eye on them. And third is, um, well, actually three and four. Um, is our police department going to have access to patrol that area or is that county sheriff? Like, how are we going to arrange a a patrol just to keep the area safe and especially nighttime patrol if there could potentially be homeless? And then furthermore, if this expands over Dolores above the tennis courts and all the way to the river school, that is really not safe for young kids to be working walking. And so, how are we going to arrange for their safety? So, there's a lot more that needs to be thought through before we just go, "Yay, this is a great project." And and these are concerns that I want answers to before I I think we should be moving forward on it. I think that's the reason to let them come and talk to us so that we can tease those out. Um, yeah, if this is that's really all we were asking for is to get on it, get it on the

We were just trying to be respectful about there's a process to get something on the agenda. So then, council, would you I'm asking all of you now and please all of you answer my question. Will you then suggest that we change this language to something more like um you know have council receive a presentation from the friends of mission trails nature preserve. Yes. On a potential project on Rio Park and then just leave it at that. So then we can work staff can work with the friends and coordinate with the mayor and the prom to get it on agenda in the next say two to three months. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is a step too far. Okay. Excellent. It's not a bridge too far but it's a step too far. Well and just remember that's an important point. This is not the bridge to everywhere, right,

project. This is a sort of a reboot of that to just just a park. I would just say before we move on that um I would I and I don't know I would prefer to make it a two that the difference between this one between the scout house and this one for example is and I said it before is you've got a group of people that are energized and so three to me is like we'll get to it if we can get to it. One is like come hell or high water we're going to do it. Two is like we're sort of planning to do it this year. So for me it's a two because um it just seems like the moment is right. It's ripe and and so and we we can keep their presentation as short as we could give them whatever. Thumbs up for two. Yeah. I'm still two. I'm still three, but

number. Okay. All right. Uh excellent. Okay. We're on to the next blue section. If you scroll up just a little bit for us so it's top of the screen. So, we're on to city building singular police and public works. Uh, this is, uh, as you recall, this one's an expanded item. So, you have five steps along the way for the police building project. So, we're really just talking about the police building project here. Um, so through the mayor, I'll go ahead and open up for public comment. Any members of the public want to speak on the multiple steps of the police building project or just the police building project being a priority in general? Seeing nobody make their way up. Nova, can anybody on Zoom? There's no hands raised.

Okay. Thank you. I'll bring it back to council then. Um council, what do you think? I didn't we didn't change any of the language on this. Just looking for a priority level. If I was going to guess, you would tell me it's a priority one, but um I'd love to hear from you. Thank you.

I think the whole thing's a priority one. I think we're maybe ahead of ourselves to be talking about construction beginning and employees being fully met moved back into the building. Um at this point, I think it, you know, we did the first thing. We've got an RFP on the street. we do need to select an architect and then we need to finish a project um and decide what we're going to do. Um I had the same comment. I would collapse this down to just 3.3.2 and 3.3 and remove the first one and remove the last two. Agreed.

I agree with those. I just wanted to add um I know Ken said he was going to get us a new date for the uh selecting of the architect uh for the timeline and then um furthermore I would like us to talk about the financing sooner rather than later. So if we can u maybe do that earlier uh I think that would be smart because we need to get the community uh involved on how we're going to do that. No, I don't. Are we combining? I don't think council said to combine. Select the architect. Maybe I missed that.

No, I think 3.2 3.3 stay. Uh, and then we get rid of 3.1 and 3.4 and 3.5. Is that what I heard from council? Yes. Okay. Thank you. We're through. We're through and priority level one. So, I have a question. Where did where did the Harrison Library project end up on this whole thing?

So, the Harrison the uh it's a great question. So, uh we had a we had a priority item on here um that was removed once we got the agreement in place with um the CPLF and all that theou we got the architect uh for the library design. At this point, we're we're essentially treating that like a CIP project. Um so, it's not on your strategic priorities list. Um, I did talk to the CPLF and explain that to them. They were perfectly fine with that example. In a lot of ways, they thought that was actually better because with all due respect to five elected officials, when it's on this list, it's your list and so it takes it out of play. It takes it out of play. It's it's on mine and Ken's list of projects that we're actively working

that they were. I spoke to Alex and Marcy both. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. What about the the things in the contract that call for council involvement? We will come back to you for those. Those are those are programmatic and they're in they're in the agreement with us and CPLF. So when we get to uh and on top of that things that require you know planning commission review they'll be design things that have to go to planning commission HRB and they jump automatically to one. Yes sir. Yeah that's we took that as this is this is our top priority project. That's why I'm attending the the working group meeting still.

Okay. Uh on to 3.4 and we're doing good. We got 26 minutes left before curfew. 3.4 for digital infrastructure. We've got two items here. Uh uh the mayor's blessing. I'll open it up for public comment on digital infrastructure. Anybody in the public have any issues with Okay. Uh no anybody on Zoom. There's no hands raised on Zoom.

Excellent. Okay. I'll bring it back to council. You notice both of these items are cleared. No language has been changed. Nothing has been added. Uh looking for priority levels or moving things to the future project list, please. I guess this is a little bit like the one Jeff mentioned before when we were talking about ERP that I I don't know what the state of RIT is um at all. I really just don't. So I don't know what to other other than I'm I suspect it's old and could be better. Um I actually suspicion

to be to be fair to Joel our IT manager he does a really good job and you know he spoke to that a little bit at that meeting. He he's very proactive especially in the cyber security realm. It's something that keeps him up at night and so throughout the years he has actively put multiple redundancies on the budget and got them implemented. And I said that wrong because I to me it is it's a it it means different things to different people. Um I guess I'll just stick with the point without the qualifier. What do we need to do is

Yeah, the the audit I mean the audit would be would be the thing. I mean I I I I take the point that um this probably does dovetail with the ERP conversation because a lot of the things in that ERP bucket fall under IT infrastructure and that that was more behind my comment about the quality. Um, you know, it's the it's the enduser part more than the infrastructure part. It was a cons consulting contract, right? That's right. We we had we have some money in the budget for that. That's right. So, how far is that? How far

how far along is the audit process? Um so Joel Joel has uh is in the midst of doing a survey that he created with his um intern team that is out with all the department heads getting an understanding of what the technology needs are in all the departments. So that's the first level of the audit. Um and then our um insurance carrier has a program where we can use uh someone through them to do a cyber security audit. Um, so we're we have all these things sort of started, which is why the date on here is from is from Joel of May of 2026. So, so what I'm thinking about is, you know, we haven't we have someone come and audit Jamie.

Mhm. And Jamie still there. Um, doesn't really have any control over who that is. Sheldon comes and does whatever it is Sheldon does. And I really need from from my chair I really need that to be true of that audit too. Okay. So I need the audit to be overseen by the five of us not by you. So you know I assume you know you sort of manage Sheldon but Sheldon I always think of Sheldon is sort of reporting to us. Yeah. And so I need so this is really important to me and I need that IT audit to come to the five of us

and so I don't know you know maybe the contract with the audit can show up on our council agenda however it is or we have a selection process or whatever. Um, but this is really important to me and it's really important to me that it happened with the five of us and not with you or Joel. Some of that should be done in a closed session, right? You wouldn't want to like you can do some of that. Maybe if it's about cyber security stuff, but um we would do what was appropriate. Systems. Systems. Okay.

I I had a question. How much you is this one where I'm thinking of sort of departmental capacity? Um, is this mostly a Joel thing? So, it doesn't seem like he's overloaded with a lot of other things on this list. So, are we a little bit less constrained by that? I I think both like both of these items he he felt comfortable having on his like his priorities for this year. Yeah.

So, you could you could make them both ones. That's realistic. Yeah. Um, I'll I'll talk to Joel because I think if if the rest of the council doesn't have opposition to council member Bear's notion of a larger sort of audit that's comes to you that might expand this D. I think it's a really good idea. And what I think is that the scope of the audit needs to be developed by the auditor, not by Joel. Got it. So I don't want Joel to tell the auditor, no offense to Joel, wherever he is. I don't want Joel to be telling the auditor what he can ask. I want the audit, the security auditor, and I'm thinking about security mostly. I want the security auditor to tell Joel, "This is what I need to see from you."

I also want I also think that 342 like I I also think sort of in line with Bob, I think that 342 sort of goes with the ERP thing. Like I don't know whether that's really the case or not, but um it seems like those projects should probably happen. Maybe should happen together. Well, it would make sense if I mean we we put a one on the ERP. Um you guys were kind enough to give me a one on the ERP. Yeah, the that was your one one. That's right. Thank you. All right. You've got two ones.

Yeah. Okay. Um, wonderful. Okay. Thank you, council. Um, any other comments? Nope. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Moving on to 3.5, streets and sidewalks. Um, four items here. One of which is highlighted red because we marked it as done. Uh, with the mayor's blessing, I'll look to the public. Anybody in the public want to speak to streets and sidewalks? Hey, we got a customer. Fantastic.

We have a customer. Yeah. Um, I just have a simple comment. Um when we talk about financial health, we had parking a parking something that says options for paid parking. When we are in street and sidewalks, we have significant increased parking enforcement. Uh we also have in the housing element reduced parking requirements. What about if you just think about putting parking all together in one section? back to your comment Jeff earlier about parking management or whatever, but instead of having it all spread out in as different priorities, different sections, why don't you consolidate it and look at it as a possibility of source of income, something to bring order through the city and other alternatives and more parking management because right now you have it spread in five sections. So that's my recommendation to you.

I think Bob's point was we lose focus. Say that again. We lose focus and just talk without accomplishing anything as soon as you say parking in general. I think we've seen that.

Well, but or if you just say you want to put it in your financial health as a source of income, which is one of the things that you were considering right now. You're considering you have one item that says look at options, all the different sources of income, and you have now separated POT and parking. So, make that parking overall. So maybe it's the shuttle used, maybe it's parking locations, maybe it's facilities infrastructure of the city has for parking and you can put it all together because right now why do you have it here in street and sidewalks as parking enforcement then you have also parking on the top. That's my that's my thought and it's also in the housing element.

I don't think you lose focus but I think you put a focus on it. Well, wait. You see? Thank you. Any other public comments of anybody online? There's no hands raised on Zoom. Thank you. Okay. So, bring it back to council. We'll start with 3.5.1 council. Um, just looking for you're okay to take this off of the list. And as we mentioned at the priorities meeting, tree wells is not meant to mean putting trees in tree wells. It was just the tripping hazards associated with them. You're there's this is not done. Uh we have assessed the condition of all the sidewalks. It's ongoing at this point and created a maintenance plan.

I think I think we did the lowhanging fruit, but like there's 35 tree stops that need to be taken out now and it's just going to keep going forever. Yeah. So this item initially when council put it on was to just assess the condition of all the sidewalks um and the tree wells to and create that maintenance plan to get current on the repair. So that was the the survey done by Precision Concrete. The survey was done, but this this is going to continue forever. We have complete repairs to get current on all sidewalks and ADA improvements, which is ongoing. That's the next item on there. I'm saying even assess condition. I sent three pictures to Rob today. It's just it never ends. So, I I think it's important that that's a priority.

Every time we miss something, it's a somebody trips and falls. I don't know, Ken. How would it help you as in the first? Yeah. Do do you want us to keep keep a priority on this or do you think it's covered and you're happy? Is it sort of like I think the assessment was very helpful and it helps me lay out a plan of attack. We already have the 1400 uh areas that are getting hit right now. In fact, I think they're going to be done this week with all those areas. Uh that's their goal. Uh but then it gives goes back to us with the budget you guys give us every year what we're going to tackle. But I'm just saying assessing it like

so the assessment part is I think is is solid because the items you're talking about are on that assessment. I think now we should work on doing the work and completing the repairs on the sidewalks and any ADA work. So I think that's what the goal was why we wanted to remove that first item and just relabel it. now implement all the assessment. Okay. It's just a moving target. It's It's always a moving. The things I found today weren't on your list. Right. Okay. I can take any other council thoughts on this one.

I've got a question for Ken while you're up here. Um the work that's being done, the shaving or whatever the exact definition of it, but um will it blend in more because right now it's like very obvious in a different color. You can always tell. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Over time it does blend well after a while. That's my one concern. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Just good question. Thank you. Dog boot. Okay. Take it off.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Honda 3.5.1 complete repairs to get current on all sidewalk and ADA improvements. This is sort of the next step in what we just talked about. We didn't change any of this language. Just looking for a priority level uh from you council. Um, two. Thank you. True. I've got two twos. So, I have three three twos. All right.

All right. We're on. Okay. Excellent. 3.5.2. Complete modeling work of street condition to optimize use of CIP funds for maintenance and replacement. I know that is a mouthful. This is one that you added. I tried my best to write some language for this. This was an item that the council put on there. The gist of it is we need to figure out when we should be um doing maintenance and repairs to our roads to make sure they don't go off that cliff and how do we best do that? This was a conversation about bringing somebody back in like uh the street saver folks that came and presented to us to help us optimize how we address our roads. Um so I'm looking for feedback on the language and a priority level. So, you you cut this. Um, is that because you were just looking for something to cut or do you feel like it's going to be a a substantial time commitment?

Um, I think I I for the same reason as before. Um, it's important. I cut it because it's something that if we don't get it done in the next next fiscal year, it's not a huge change to our operations and not a huge impact to the city. Um, I think that, you know, this one probably if I was going to pick the ones that I cut would be probably one of the first ones I would bring back because there is there is a nexus to the budgetary work that we're doing. Um, so even if I did move it in my in my suggestion to the future projects list, I would absolutely bring it back next year. One of the question I have is there is there sort of a slimmed down version of this that's less time inensive at least for this year like possibly something like create an intentional road maintenance plan. Um, I know that you guys have a obviously you're going through looking at Street Saver and you're saying, "All right, we've got this amount of money. We're going to do the best we can with it." But just to take a different approach to it like we've talked about and say, "Hey, we have these streets that um, you know, that we that could be candidates for preventative maintenance and maybe just map that out over the next 5 to seven years, which is kind of the cadence of those things."

We already do that.

Yeah. So, we do already have a street maintenance plan that comes out of that street saver program that we have, but if I'm hearing what you're saying, council member, we could we could make the item to revisit the plan and see if there's opportunities to optimize it or uh take a different approach. Honestly, it might just be more of a budget discussion item. Really, it's about money. Um because we have we do have an approach. The problem is we don't have enough money allocated to do what we know we need to do. And so maybe it's just something that comes up in the in the budget when we decide what you know what what are the um the minimum standards that we're willing to accept. Basically like do we want to make it a priority to actually do the preventative maintenance to extend the life of every applicable road over a 5 to sevenyear window like we're supposed to or not?

We found out it was more than 10x if we wait too long. And I that's my my memory of the problem is a little different. Um I my impression is we already do that stuff like we already do. So we already do I mean basically at the at one end we have what we did in the San Antonio intersection. We just rip up the whole intersection and rip up the whole street and start over. And so everything we do, everything the city does in terms of road work that's short of what we did on San Antonio is preventive maintenance, right? Like not everything the AC overlays.

Yeah. We this discussion was we had this discussion with street saver and I think the three of us wanted to do my impression was that longer term forecast

was that the discussion was about what to do with roads that have fallen over the edge like there are roads like you know especially up in the norththeast quadrant of town that are in just terrible shape like They're they're just ghastly. And so there are roads up there that need to be like torn out. And we don't do it because it would be too expensive to to tear out a road because we shouldn't spend $100,000 to tear out one intersection where we can spend $100,000 and save six segments. And that's all good from a that's all good from a theoretical perspective of saving the city money. But it really impacts the 10 people that live near the road. That's really faking awful.

I don't think that's what this is. So I thought that that's is that what I'm saying is I thought that that's what this was. No, that's that's what we do now. We just made the decision not to do those roads. Well, what I thought this was was to address that. That's what I mean to to address my issue or to address to address your issue that Han this is more Han so I shouldn't even speak but um as he keeps saying it's um it's a the word holistic keeps getting used a lot tonight but it is not just taking what street saver tells us to do because street saver will also always tell you the most bang for the buck and they let those one it just might let those go over the edge um turn into gravel.

Yeah. And what I've heard Hans say is, you know, it maybe we need four or five different categories and we need to make progress in each of the five categories. Um, and I'm not going to try to tell you what those categories are, but other than that, um, over the edge is one of those categories that at some point the people that live on that street need to know they're going to get a new street.

We can't just keep pushing it off forever. And it is and and then on top of that, it is to try and achieve and we've talked about, you know, a score across the town of 80. The beauty is we have street saver which is an analytical tool which is unlike anything else we have that you know it it will it can give us answers. So I I thought that's kind of what this was and um I I sort of agree with you Brandon. I don't know that I need it this year. I mean we're going to be talking again that we'll be talking about a budget next fiscal year. Yeah. um to do some paving and that I would rather it was informed by this. But yeah,

the only other thing I would say is some of this is already something that we feel like we need to do to this is honestly one of the biggest items that we need to do to finalize the deferred maintenance budget that we're talking about. That item right now is a little bit of a swag, like $30 million. But what we one of the things we've been talking about is do we need to bring in Nicholls engineering to give us some a better estimate and for me that is saver. Um, yeah. I mean, basically it's like Rob Culver coming up with, you know, the estimate. Like, I think to have Nicholls Engineering come in and say, "Hey, here's

a menu of like three different levels of service, like sort of the status quo, you know, sort of a budget option, a, you know, a base case and sort of a premium option." And to to Bob's point, I think there's some different dials that you could look at. And you've talked about averages obscuring reality. I think that's totally right. So the average, we probably want to move up the average, but um for me there's two other pieces. One is I I would suggest we have a minimum PCI score uh and say, "Hey, look, if you get below this, we're going to take action on your street." That that would in turn increase the average. So those things are linked. And then lastly, making sure that we're doing the preventative maintenance at the intervals that are prescribed. It's sort of like, you know, if your house needs to be repainted every x number of years or your roof needs to be replaced, it's the same thing. We're basically stretching this stuff longer than we need to. So for me what I would love to see and I think it dovtales into the work we're doing like we need this data point to finalize this is I would want we could have that discussion among the five of us about what do we think what do we think an appropriate level you know what are the right criteria um for for roads and then have somebody who really is going to be able to give us a solid number give us a few give us a menu of options and then we can decide based on what's available in the budget sort of where do we want to land so that is my vision for for this.

So if I'm maybe maybe what I'm hearing is that this doesn't need to be on this list. It should be part of the budget conversation this year. Is that fine? Is that I see three yeses. Sure. Four.

Three and a half. Okay. All right. Nova, let's take that one off of there and then Ken will make sure that that as we're as we're developing the streets and stuff. Uh last one on this one and I think we're going to meet our 9:30 curfew. Uh 3.5.3 significantly increased parking enforcement capabilities. Um this is one that we added. Um it was added at the the chief's recommendation because it's something that he and Marissa have been working on actively and have a good plan for. Um I don't often do this, but I would make a pitch for this to be a number one because it's something we have actively working on and I think is pretty critical to the downtown area. So um any any comments on the language or the priority level from council? No, I think we should do this. I I think of all the things we can talk about with parking, we won't regret doing this one.

I just we'll learn a lot. I would like to know the financial impact because previously our enforcement activities were losing money, significant money. Okay. I mean, not millions, but hundreds of thousands, 150,000 maybe. I'd definitely put it a one.

Okay. All right. I think we got that. So, uh, council, it's 9:25. Uh, do you want to call that your curfew and we'll put a pin in it at S4 and return here next time we talk about it? Uh, she's already leaving and I'm right behind her. I'll take that as a yes. Thank you all very much. That was and thank you for letting me guide that conversation. The three of you if you want. Do whatever you want. Uh, so, mayor, I think you were gonna you're gonna adjourn the meeting this evening in in um on our friend Don Good Hugh's memory.

Yes. Thank you everyone for sticking it out tonight. And uh I'd like to adjourn this meeting in honor of of our good friend Donald Good Hugh. Thank you very much for all the good work you did in our town over the years. We stand adjourned.