City Council - Regular Meeting

and welcome to this evening's City Council meeting. Today is Monday, July 27th, 2026. Now I'll request a roll call, please.

Council Member Mayer?

Here.

Council Member Nomura? Here. Vice Mayor Solorzano?

Here.

Council Member Clark? Here. And Mayor Alarcon?

Here. And I will request a closed session report.

Thank you, Mayor Alarcon. We were in closed session to discuss one case under conference with legal counsel for anticipated litigation. There's no reportable action this evening. Great, thank you.

And if you are willing and able, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We will now move on to public information reports and announcements. And we will hear first from our first district supervisor's office. Welcome.

Good evening, Council. Hello, Mayor. Happy summer. It's nice to see you all. Okay, so I've got a couple updates. Not too many. There's not a ton happening right now. The quick update on Baylor is the application they've submitted an application to the County of Santa Barbara that is still, they're addressing some feedback as well as the application to the city that they're also waiting on some feedback for. Hopefully, the Red Tail team will be passing over their plans and their studies that we can put on the city website. I know people tend to look in those kind of hot topic sections, so that was something that Director Bobroff and I were talking about is getting some of those plans on the city website so it's accessible. And then the city and the county, are gonna work together on some impact, development impact fee sharing. So it's not something that happens regularly. So we're hammering out this process now. So that's something that the city and the county are working on together. And the developer really doesn't have anything to do with that. So that is the status of the Baylard project at the moment. And I should clarify, the item that the developer will be passing over for publication On the website will be the plan, the project plan, the evacuation study, the traffic study. I believe those are the main things, so people will be able to view those. I looked today and I didn't see them on the website, but hopefully by the time I'm here next, they'll be there. All righty, moving along. There is two operators that are still in the appeals process for their cannabis licenses. The BOSM operator is waiting on the judge's ruling, and the G&K and K&G operators have been continued to September. I believe that was because they just ran out of time during the appeals process and so that got pushed to September. So members of the public can still comment on ODOR reports on the county website. Moving forward with unincorporated road updates, the county is installing seven new electric vehicle charging stations in unincorporated CARP. So four chargers are gonna be at Santa Claus Lane, three are gonna be at Rincon Park. This project will be completed by January, 2029, so it's gonna take a while. The Santa Claus Lane will be, that construction will start in the next couple of weeks, whereas the Rincon Park, excuse me, chargers will take a little bit longer. Those are in the design phase still. But those are coming. Two things that actually were not on the agenda that I sent you guys, or excuse me, my notes. We've had a lot of concerns about RVs parked at Santa Claus. So we're working on increasing fines for that section. and what that could look like. Mostly the RVs are moving there because we have been installing more no parking signs on Via Real and at Night Ever, a bunch of different places that people have also mentioned. there being RV problems. So naturally these RVs are gonna find new locations. So right now they're parked at Santa Claus and we have installed no overnight parking, but the fees don't really seem to be deterring it. So we have heard the community and we are working on solutions. Another road thing that we hear a lot about is there's been an increase in dumping of trash and big items along the 192. That is Caltrans. So Caltrans is responsible for picking those large items up. There is a portal that Caltrans asks that people report to. So I will send that link out to Brian, the clerk, and get that back on this agenda so that folks can look at that. But we've been told that that is the best place for folks to report items large items so we've seen couches we've seen mattresses we've seen abandoned boats and abandoned trucks all that stuff so in the last couple months we've been pushing caltrans to pick those things up and just reminding folks to be vigilant and if you see something you don't have to live with it you can report it All righty, an update on the budget, the county budget. So the county passes their budget before the state budget gets passed and the state budget was passed and it restored some funding for public health. So the county has restored 15 positions to county health across the county, so seven nurses, two administrative staff, two financial office professionals, a health education assistant, two medical assistants, and a pharmacy technician. I reached out to Jeanette Gummer who covers the CARP clinic to try and get some clarity on how exactly those positions will affect the CARP clinic. It was TBD, but more positions being restored is a good thing. Those positions are being restored for one year because that was part of the state budget, but generally speaking, good news. The last thing I wanted to mention is that the Board of Supervisors is on break now until the 18th. That's when the next meeting is. So the supervisors don't have meetings, but staff is available and all the county departments are available. forging ahead and then finally um 8 25 august 25th is the first meeting with the new county supervisor um janna peterson she's the new ceo and our office is gonna work to introduce her to um all the to city manager ramirez and if any of you um want to be part of that meeting i'll leave that up to Michael, to determine how to work with that. So we will have a new CEO. Mona Miyasato is retiring, and Jana Peterson is coming on board. So that's my county update and questions. Questions from council?

This is a small question, but it does pertain to Jana Peterson. Is there a time, like when is Mona actually retiring? Like how much overlap will there be?

I believe Mona's last day is... I want to say the 21st, and I believe that there's a couple days overlap. I think Jana's starting on the 18th. She was here two weeks ago for a whole week meeting with department heads, so she's moving soon. She's slowly onboarding, but there will be some overlap between Mona and Jana. The CEO's staff is staying the same so far that we know. And another thing about Jana, she is from Boulder. She's the city administrator for Boulder, or the county administrator, they call it that, at Boulder County. So an interesting comparison for here. Thank you. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I got a quick question for you on this one. Actually, it's a suggestion or possibly something we could see about or do some research on. Currently, we have a committee. It's called SPCAG, and that SPCAG company or group is more involved with transportation. My question or suggestion would be, If we could, within the county somehow, go through the County Board of Supervisors, try and incorporate something based on housing. So we would have a committee or group that would get together actually and talk about this one. Currently every city in the county right now is surrounded by county property. So because of that, we don't have direct links. We can't work city to city. We have to work city to county, except for there's no communication. We just don't talk to each other. So with these new projects coming into place that are going to be directly adjacent to cities, it'd be nice to have some sort of way we could merge that together, come up with solutions, reasons and ways we could work together jointly, cooperatively, instead of right now just having things happen right on the line and nothing else occurs.

So you're suggesting like a subcommittee of SBCAG that's focused on city housing?

Specifically city housing and zoning.

Okay, yeah.

And that may go through also the California League of Cities, you know, the Channel Counties Division too. I mean, something like that. I think it's something we should probably work on. It seems logical. We will work in Santa Barbara County first.

Great. Yeah, Supervisor Lee is on SBCAG, and I believe Councilmember Clark is also on SBCAG.

And I'm the alternate, but we've never talked about that. It's always been based on transportation.

Okay, great. I believe the next SBCAG meetings resume in August, so I will mention that to Supervisor Lee to bring it up.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

As far as your question goes, SPCAG also does a few other things. They do do housing, they do the arena allotment, and they do airports, and they do broadband, and they do elections. I think that's the whole list.

It's the most influential group nobody knows about. Okay, anything else? Nope, doesn't look like we have any other questions.

Thank you. Thank you. I will now open up public comment on the first district supervisor's report. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom for this item?

Mayor, we do not.

I will officially close public comment. And if there are any other final comments from council, we will move on. We will now move on to item number three, which is the Carpinteria Public Improvement Corporation agenda packet. I'd like to call to order and request a roll call for this.

President Alarcon, all board members are present and accounted for.

Thank you. And confirmation of legal noticing and procedural requirements of the meeting.

And all legal noticing and procedural requirements of the meeting have been met.

Thank you. And public comment, and this is the time for public comments on matters not otherwise on the agenda, but within the subject matter of CPIC. I have no speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

And we have no Zoom comment.

I will close public comment. We will move on to item number four, which is the approval of minutes of regular annual meeting held July 28th, 2025. So moved.

Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Item number five, which is receive and file the CPIC annual report.

So President Alicron, I'll go ahead and take this item. The Carpinteria Public Improvement Corporation, also known as CPIC, was established in July 1988 as a public nonprofit corporation to provide a funding mechanism for the development of certain capital improvements through a lease purchase arrangement with the city of Carpinteria and the issuance of certificates of participation. Although there are currently no outstanding bonds or certificates of participation issued by the CPIC, annual board meetings must continue to be held to maintain the active status of CPIC. State law requires the board to consider the CPIC's annual report at a public meeting. This staff report serves as the annual report and the board meeting was properly noticed in accordance with legal requirements in the local newspaper. And that concludes the annual report.

Any questions?

I'm just inspired, we talk about this so infrequently. For anyone who might be listening, can you explain why we meet as this CPIC group, even though the certificates of participation were paid, I think, seven years ago?

Right, so it was formed initially to help pay for the construction of the community pool back in, I believe, 1989. And it did also help with a few other projects, I think Elk Harrow Park, maybe a playground or something, and some other project. back in those days. And so in order for us to keep it active, we just meet once a year just to keep the ball rolling. Great. Thank you.

Any other questions? I will open up public comment on item number five. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We have no raised hands.

I will close public comment. And do I need a motion for this? Let's see.

Yeah, I'll move to receive and file the CPIC annual report. Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. We will move on to item number six, which is any new business from council members. And item number seven, which is the adjournment of the Carpenter Republic Improvement Corporation. We will now reconvene the regular meeting of the city council, and we will hear from our city manager.

Thank you, Mayor, Council, community members. As always, encourage people. We usually don't cover every item in the city manager's report, so encourage people to read that. There's also some helpful links. We don't have as much as we usually do, but we have some recruitment information in there and some information on some other community things going on, and so I'm going to turn it over to our assistant city manager, Ryan Kintz, to give you some updates on employment.

Thank you, Mr. Ramirez. Good evening, members of the council. Yeah, just a quick update on our recruitments. So currently we're recruiting for four full-time positions, including the accounting specialist slash accounting technician. That position is open for applications until August 9th. We're also continuing to recruit for the building official. That position is also available for applications until August 2nd. We have an engineering technician position open. That is also open until August 2nd. And then a management analyst two or one to be considered for first review applied by August 2nd as well. And just to reiterate, these are not new positions. These are just positions where we've had some staff vacancies recently. And it's just a normal part of doing business, and we're recruiting for those new positions as people move on to other things. That's it, if you have any questions.

Great, thank you, Ryan. And now I'll turn it over to our Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Director, Jeanette Gant, to give us some updates on all things Parks and Rec.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I have just a couple quick updates for you all. The first two are for our Age Well upcoming lecture series. July's lecture series is a city manager update by our very own city manager, Michael Ramirez. That's this Thursday, July 30th from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Veterans Hall meeting room. Michael will provide an update on the city's current budget challenges, discuss how they may affect local services and programs, and outline potential revenue measures the city council may consider to help address the city's financial needs. And since we are not meeting early August, I will share with you our upcoming August Saturday excursion. And on Saturday, August 8th, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Agewell will host a free guided tour of the Krishman California Island Center, located at 4994 Carpentria Avenue. Guests will explore the natural and cultural history of the California Channel Islands through interactive exhibits and engaging displays. And I apologize, we have two lecture series for August I want to share. The second one on Thursday, August 20th from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Veterans Hall Meeting Room. AGL members will learn from our very own City Outreach Librarian, Tara, about the many free digital resources available with your library card, including e-books, audio books, streaming services, online learning, research databases, and much more. And for aquatics, on Friday, July 10th, we hosted our annual Carp Comp, which is our junior lifeguard competition here at the city beach. The event welcomed 10 different junior lifeguard agencies from up and down the California coast, bringing together more than 2,000 athletes, their families, and spectators for a full day of athletic competition. And just a big shout out to the aquatic staff, to our aquatics coordinator, Lexi Persoon, for coordinating such a large event, our junior lifeguard instructors, and our beach lifeguards for ensuring participant safety. And we'd also like to extend a thank you to our Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District for, again, partnering with us to provide personnel and personal rescue watercraft to enhance water safety operations during the event. Those are my updates. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

No questions. Thank you.

I thought she left out the best part about the event ending with the cha-cha slide on the beach. I don't know if you were. Did you take part in that?

I did not take part this year. I was attending a wedding out of the area, but I have seen it in the past, and it is a really fun way to end the event.

So with that, that concludes City Manager's report.

excellent do are there any council members with questions for the city manager okay no questions I will open up public comment do not have any speaker slips for this specific item do we have anyone via zoom we do mirror we have one zoom speaker Andy Patrick Andy go ahead thank you I just wondered if

Someone might be able to comment about the comment that I raised, I guess, a couple of weeks ago about the salt marsh and dogs and bikes and motorized bikes in particular. Is there any further thinking on that? Any planning? That's it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Great. Welcome, Alan Koch.

Good evening, everybody. Council, staff, city attorneys, and the big crowd we have behind. You have a big meeting ahead of you. I have a quick comment. This is a follow-up on an email that I sent to Michael regarding just the update on the surf liner. There's been a couple of letters in the Coastal View News, letters to the editor. talking about the benefit of a downtown hotel, and we understand that it would be a benefit, economic vitality. And there's a number out there of $14 million out there, which is very different from the numbers that have been in prior city documents of $600,000, $700,000. But they also said in their update, that they sent out to their database, you know, to their supporter database that the surf liner in has been cleared from an EIR point of view. Okay, so I'm not sure if they were talking about their hotel on parking lot three or the city proposed parking lot four so there's a lot of misinformation out there that uh you know i i would think at some point in time uh you know things are being worked on in you know in in the sense of the final eir but we need to put some status reports out there to the community what's going on that's it thank you for your comments

Do we have anyone else via Zoom?

We have no further raised hands.

So I will close public comment. I will look to staff to see if there's a potential response in terms of enforcement at the salt marsh in relation to e-bikes and animals and the surf liner.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll see if Nick wants to help add to that or our city attorney. But regarding the enforcement on Salt Marsh, we definitely heard that the city's a little short staff right now in code compliance and we're managing what we can. I'll see if Nick wants to add any to that, but we hope to be at least back to our level of full force soon. And then I'll let Nick respond to the items about the surf liners specifically.

Thank you, Michael. Sure, so I guess tackling the Saltmarsh question first. Our officers do periodically patrol out there. As you know, most days of the week we only have one officer on duty and they wear many hats and so we're not able to have a dedicated, consistent presence at Saltmarsh Park. or any of our other open space areas for that matter, but they do try to patrol those areas in their weekly routines and try to have some presence there in the hopes of discouraging, you know, unpermitted or illegal activity like riding bikes through the salt marsh or taking dogs through the salt marsh. And typically when they do, if the officers do make contact with folks that are engaging in any of those activities, the approach is typically education first and trying to educate them of the rules and discouraging the behavior and trying to make it a positive interaction. And the times when we do result to citations are the folks who just, you know, ignore the officers or continue with the behavior or get caught again on a repeat offense and and obviously we're just not out there consistently enough to be you know issuing citations to repeat offenders regularly but I think it is something that will continue to try to monitor and keep on top of as much as we can and I know earlier this year we did a Kind of a focused effort on the carpentry bluffs focused on enforcing the leash laws and having a more regular presence out there for a week at the time and signage. And that might be a good model to replicate at some point in salt marsh park in coordination with the parks department. Changing gears over to the Surfliner project, our intention with any of our city manager report items for community development is to provide updates when we have news to share. And so if there isn't an update on a particular project in the city manager's report, it's because there isn't anything concrete at that moment to share in terms of upcoming public hearings or upcoming deliverables or major milestones that have been met. So we are currently working with the environmental consultants to finalize the proposed final environmental impact report. And once that work is done, then we will change courses and take on more of an effort in preparing the analysis and staff report for an upcoming Planning Commission hearing. So we haven't selected a date yet for that hearing. We still have quite a bit of work ahead of us before we get there. And so as we get closer and feel that we have all the pieces coming together, we'll be better prepared to offer up a date on when we think those hearings will occur.

Thank you. Great.

Mayor, I can also add that while this will be covered in our chief's next report, we did start our e-bike enforcement. It won't really necessarily help maybe with the off-leash dogs, but as we continue that, that will be an area of focus that we have our deputies out focusing on. We gave out six citations in that day, and we'll also make sure that they focus on that area as well.

Great. Thank you. We will now move on to public comment on matters not on the agenda. I do not have any general comment speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

I'm here. We have no raised hands.

So I will close public comment. And we will now move on to the consent calendar. And I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Once again, we have no raised hands.

I will close public comment and ask for a motion.

I move to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held July 13th, 2026 and the special meeting held July 15th, 2026 to receive and file the warrant register for the period of July 6th through July 17th, 2026 pursuant to the Carpentry Municipal Code Section 2.08.150F to receive and file the report on contracts executed by the City Manager for the period of June 2nd through July 6th, 2026, to receive and file the quarterly review of the Pension Stabilization Trust, to designate Councilmember Nomura as the City of Carpentry's voting delegate, and designate Vice Mayor Sol Arsenault as the City's alternate voting delegate for the League of California Cities' 2026 Annual Conference and Expo in Anaheim. to authorize the mayor to sign the closeout agreement and release of claims for the Linden Avenue improvements project with Toro Enterprise Inc. and authorize the city manager to release the construction contract bonds after one year of acceptance of the work by the city of Carpinteria in accordance with the warranty required by construction contract and to authorize the city manager to execute amendment number three to the agreement with Bengal Engineering Incorporated for consulting services for the Rincon multi-use trail project in an amount not to exceed $122,077 for a total amended agreement amount to $1,715,597. Second. We have a first and a second.

I will request a roll call vote please.

Councilmember Mayer? Aye. Councilmember Nomura? Aye. Vice Mayor Solarseno? Aye. Councilmember Clark? Aye. And Mayor Alarcon? Aye.

We will now be moving on to item number 12, which is the annual review of fire protection mitigation fee program.

Good evening, council. Item number 12 is the annual review of the fire protection mitigation fee program. The item covers two things for consideration, which are the acceptance of the Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District Annual Report and the adoption of resolution number 6488, updating the fee schedule for the development. Before I turn it over to Fire Marshal Lomonaco, I'll cover some background and general updates. So for background, the Mitigation Fee Act authorizes the local agencies to impose an impact fee on new development where a documented nexus exists between the development and the facility need. These fees are for the benefit of the fire district and can only be spent on fire protection capital improvements. Government code requires an annual review of the district master facility plan and its cost estimates by both the district board and the city council. The district board approved its annual report on July 9th, 2026. As for the adjustment itself, the municipal code provides that the fees are adjusted each July 1st by the published index for the preceding 12 months of the construction cost index. For this cycle, the adjustment is 3.4% and applied uniformly across all fee categories. So in practice, for the per unit fees, This graph displays a change from last fiscal year to this current fiscal year for per unit fees. So a single family resident increased approximately $97, and a mobile home by $162, and commercial lodging by $75. For per square foot fees, residential service and office space, these increase approximately 17 cents and industrial by about 1.6 cents. One notable change to the schedule is the ADU line in which ADUs under 750 square feet remain exempt and the ADUs at or above 750 square feet are now stated as a proportionate share of the primary dwelling fee rather than a flat per square foot rate. As for the fund status, fund 3633 for fund protection capital improvements reported $166,000 in fees collected, earned about $10,000 in interest, and reported $77,000 in expenditures. The ending balance is approximately $551,000, although these totals are unaudited and subject to review before final report is complete. The recommendation from staff is to adopt Resolution 6488 and accept the district's annual report. With that concludes the report. Unless Fire Marshal LaMonaco would like to share anything.

I'm really just here for the Q&A part. If you guys have any questions or clarifications, I'm not here to prolong it.

Well, welcome, Fire Marshal. Any questions from council?

Yeah, just two quick clarifying questions. Can you explain who pays these fees just so that the public better understands where the funds are coming from?

So whoever – if you're doing a development, so if you're going to do an addition to your home, you'll pay the – basically the fee per square foot. If you're going to build a new home, you're going to pay that. If you're building – an 18-story high-rise, you're going to pay a lot of fees. So it's if you're doing work on your home, expanding your home or your business.

So not for any existing, just homes that are already there are not part of that?

Existing stuff's not touched.

Okay, great. And then also, so the report showed an ending balance of about $552,000. What are possible future projects that might be utilized for?

So we've... outlined a number of projects that are lined up in the next, I think it's three fiscal years. One of those, retrofitting Station 61, earthquake retrofitting as well as remodeling it. New fire apparatus, so we have a couple engines that are getting outdated, some monies will be going into that fund. And then we try to keep the CARP funds kind of with Station 61 and not with our Summerlin Station. So those are kind of the next projects lined up.

Thank you, thank you. That's great to know. Sure.

I have a question and clarification. So the fire department runs, it runs separately. It's its own special district. And so it is within the city's ordinance that we approve this increase. Is that, I just want to, I'll look to staff to make sure I said that correctly. I'll look to Stephan.

I would defer to Jenna if she knows off the top of her head.

I think the point I just want to make is that these dollars will come as a pass-through through the city. The city doesn't hold on to any of these dollars. They'll go straight to the fire department.

You don't collect these fees at all. We collect them directly. So in the past, the city was collecting them, and we tried to basically make it simpler for everybody, and we go directly with these people.

Oh, great.

So you're not a pass-through at all.

And then my other question for you is because of potential large-scale development in the city, how does the fire department plan for that? Do you coordinate with the city in terms of increased fire services, or how does that work, or how do you intend to potentially address this?

We take a study. So it was in 2024 we reassessed what available property they were and what categories it fit in. And based on that, we look at what potential revenues we could collect from development. So as far as coordinating with the city, there really isn't. It's our own independent study. We look at what's available. And then we try to best, you know, it's a best guessment of, hey, the station's going to cost this much to build or an engine's going to cost this much. Right now, a fire engine's almost costing a million dollars. Right. So we kind of utilize what's left to develop on and go from there.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions from council? Okay. No questions. I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips on this item. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We have no raised hands, Mayor.

I will close public comment and bring it back.

I'm sorry. Spoke too fast.

Okay.

We do have Andy Patrick. Andy, go ahead.

Thank you. I just had one quick question because if I understand it correctly, the fee is adjusted automatically like every July or something like that by the construction cost index. So that has kind of an Underlying vintage. I'm just wondering when was the last like full Nexus study done and does it reflect the district's current capital plan?

Thank you Thank you for your comment. Do we have any other comments? That is it mayor I will officially close public comment and I will look to our fire marshal if you'd like to respond to that question in terms of the Nexus study Sure.

Our Nexus study was redone in 2024. I

And then when will the next one, another update?

It's normally a five to seven year process, and then we'll reevaluate.

Great, thank you.

Okay, so I will look to the council for a motion. I move to adopt resolution number 6488 as read by title only.

Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now move on to item number 13, resolution number 6487, vacating a portion of Olive Avenue.

Good evening, Mayor. I'll take this one. In July of 2025, the city received a letter of request from the Carpentry Sanitary District for vacating an approximately 1,800 square foot portion of Olive Avenue for a proposed protective flood wall and electrical equipment improvements to support the construction and operation of the future advanced water purification facility component of the Carpentry Advanced Purification Project. The Planning Commission last year found the vacation of that portion of Olive Avenue was in conformance with the general plan and local coastal plan. The Surplus Land Act process and afterwards, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued its Surplus Land Act findings letter to the city, which determined that the portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated qualifies as exempt surplus land. In June of this year, the council adopted resolution number 6481, declaring its intention to vacate a portion of Olive Avenue and setting tonight's public hearing on the matter. In conformance with the streets and highways code, a public hearing notice was published two successive weeks prior to tonight's hearing and the Public Works Department posted the public notice in conspicuous areas along the line of that portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated two weeks before tonight's public hearing. Additionally, the public hearing notice was mailed to all properties within a 500-foot radius of that portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated. Should the council adopt resolution number 6487, the resolution will be recorded with the county recorder's office, and upon recordation, the vacation will be complete. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions from council? Just one quick question. So this whole process, is this costing the city anything to process this vacation?

It would be staff time, I believe.

But nothing beyond that?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Seeing no other questions, I will open up public comment on this item. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We have no raised hands.

I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for a motion.

I'll move to adopt resolution number 6487 as read by title only.

Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. We will now move on to item number 14, which is resolution number 6489, adopting the City Council policy establishing guidelines and procedures for the selection, installation, maintenance, and removal of public artwork on city-owned or city-controlled property.

Thank you, Mayor Alarcon, council members. It will just take me a minute to get set up here. OK, let's see here. All right, I think we're good there. So this evening, as Mayor Alarcon stated, the city will, or the council will be considering resolution number 6489. I think I can start there. To adopt a public artwork policy for the city. The city does not currently have an established process for considering proposals initiated by the public for installing artwork on city owned or city controlled property. And this policy will provide clear guidelines and procedures for the selection, installation, maintenance, and potential removal of public artwork on public or on city-owned property. Just as a note, the policy does not deal with artwork installed on private property, even if such artwork is visible from a public right-of-way. This is something that we can revisit in the future if we want to, if the council desires to. OK. How do I go back now? Can you bring me back?

Oh, there.

Got it. Sorry about that. Sorry. Thank you. I can't move my neck. OK. So the city recognizes that public artwork enriches the community, enlivens public spaces, and contributes to residents' quality of life, which is one of the reasons the council requested that this policy be drafted. One of the concerns from the city attorney's office and from city staff was that moving forward and considering or approving art without a policy guiding that evaluation and approval of public artwork could create inconsistencies, lack of transparency, and also potential legal risks, specifically related to First Amendment concerns. So this policy addresses those concerns by establishing a transparent, fair, and legally defensive process for the city's exercise of its, what we're referring to as curatorial judgment over public artwork or artwork that's proposed to the city and becomes part of the city's public artwork portfolio. So artwork selected under this policy would be considered government speech, meaning that the city would be expressing its own civic message rather than creating a public forum for private expression, which would then, if that were to occur, would limit the city's ability to regulate the content of such artwork under the First Amendment. So that's one of the most, from a legal perspective, one of the most important reasons to have a policy in place before starting this process. So once again, I think I mentioned this kind of in the introduction, but the public artwork policy as proposed would apply to all artwork proposed for installation or display on city property, city owned or controlled property. Whether the artwork is commissioned or motivated by the city or whether a community member or local organization proposes the work to the city council. The policy covers both temporary and permanent artwork and would be administered or is proposed to be administered by the general government department. The policy is also structured to allow at a future time something like an arts committee or an arts commission to be established by the city council to help the city council evaluate and approve artwork projects. So as drafted, this is the process for the city's review of artwork that comes in. There would be a proposal submission, staff review, city council preliminary review, review by the architectural review board, and then a final city council decision. And this is similar kind of the ad hoc process that the city has gone through previously when you know considering different art or public artwork it just hasn't been formalized into a policy and thus provided the city with any sort of legal defensibility under First Amendment claims So I'll just kind of walk through kind of what the policy and I understand this is all in the staff report and I assume you've all taken a look at the policy, but just for everyone's and everyone following along on TV to kind of understand what the policy does entail. So the first step is proposal submission So a proposal would be submitted to the city clerk the proposal in the policy There are a list of requirements that are that the proposal should include information that the proposal should include Which are such things as a description of the artwork proposed location where the artwork would be located project costs and and a maintenance plan. Staff would then take this proposal, they would review it to determine whether or not there's sufficient information in the proposal to allow city council to adequately review the process, review the proposal in a sort of city council preliminary review. If staff determines that the proposal is sufficient in terms of the amount of information that's provided, a city council meeting would be agendized for the city council's preliminary review, during which time the city council can provide feedback, request additional information, or just direct staff to consult with experts or hold additional public workshops. as the city council deems necessary to gain additional information about the proposal itself or the content of the artwork and get some additional feedback from those experts in order for the city council to make their decision. After this occurs, the city council would then send the proposal to the architectural review board for the ARB's advisory recommendations in line with the ARB's authority under the municipal code. And then at this point, after the ARB weighed in, the proposal would go back to the city council for a final decision. If the artwork or the proposal was approved at that point, the artwork would become part of the city's public artwork portfolio thus becoming part of government speech and then i'd also like to just in terms of making sure the record's clear even though the city council does have the authority to retain to ask for expert input on some of the artwork that is before it. The policy is very clear that the final decision making authority at every stage in this policy does rest with the city council. And so even when the city council is seeking input from staff or community members or experts on any proposal, it's advisory only. And so all discretion is with the city council. Apologies, it looks like I've run through more of the slides than I meant to here. So in terms of when the council would go through its preliminary review, the policy also sets out different evaluation criteria. And this is a very important part of how to make sure or ensure that the policy itself does stand up to any First Amendment claims or is defensible under the First Amendment. So one of the council's tasks will be to apply these evaluation criteria to any proposal. that comes before it. And those criteria, some of them are laid out on the slide up here. The rest, they are all included and summarized in both the staff report and also included in the policy itself. But they include such things as artist qualifications, so the council can take into account artist experience, portfolio, professional credentials, artwork content. So the policy states that the city may consider the artworks content, but it has to do so in line with First Amendment principles. So that means that any content limitations are applied in a viewpoint neutral manner and reflects the city's exercise of its own curatorial judgment rather than a regulation on speech. So the criteria allow the city to retain, as I was saying, expert evaluation or opinion where proposals may contain historical, factual, or other elements where an expert opinion may be helpful to be brought in. For example, the city council can instruct staff to collect further information from an expert or instruct staff to hold public workshops or meetings to obtain community input or request the proposing party to submit this type of information with their proposal or as a supplement to their proposal. You have the discretion to even ask the applicant or the proposer to provide expert opinions or expert advice so that instead of the city going out and getting that advice from the expert, you can ask for that as a supplement from the proposer. So the criteria here are really designed to ensure that any proposal also clearly identifies all of the potential impacts on the city, such as costs throughout the lifetime of the public art, maintenance costs, et cetera, who would be responsible for those costs, whether the proposer is proposing to take over maintenance costs, or if those costs would be placed onto the city. There's also a, excuse me, several different criteria here for the council to use to evaluate the artwork content. And the artwork content should advance one or more of the city's intentions for public artwork. So those are to represent the diverse social, cultural, natural, and historical values of the city. contribute to the quality of life and economic vitality, be thought provoking, memorable and enduring, provide opportunities for education and learning, encourage civic pride and or add value to the community and represent the city as determined once again by the city council. So all of these decisions do rest in the city council's sole authority. So the policy also covers potential removal of public artwork because for various reasons, public artwork may need to be removed from the city's property at some point in the future. The city does retain that ability to remove artwork as circumstances change. And this policy creates a process by which the city, the artist, or the public may request removal of any piece of public artwork that is within the city's public artwork portfolio. So when possible, the policy does state that the artist would be contacted prior to removal and given the first opportunity to either obtain the artwork or have the artwork donated to an organization. Once again, this is depending on the artwork's condition and the severity or the, I guess, urgency of needing to remove the artwork from the location. So in terms of fiscal impact, there is no fiscal impact associated with adopting the policy. It can be administered within existing departmental resources, so it would just be the impact of additional staff time to help with those first steps specifically about reviewing proposals and then helping to schedule city council and ARB meetings. That is, unless the city commissions artwork or releases a request for proposal and wants to hire someone to create a specific piece of public artwork. At this point, I'm happy to answer any questions you all have.

Questions for council?

No questions. I have a couple questions. So one of the understandable comments that we've received in past meetings is why do we why does the city need a formal policy for this when there's actually so few spaces where where government owned property could display art? Can you just talk about what some of the risks would be associated with not continuing with continuing without a policy in place?

Happy to, Vice Mayor Solers, I know. And I did touch on some of this in the presentation, but the idea is with policies that do set forth these kind of content neutral or viewpoint neutral criteria for evaluation, they help create a much more defensible First Amendment forum, right? And so what we're trying to do here is create a government speech forum so that wherever the city decides to allow artwork is actually at the city's discretion and the city can have discretion or authority over that. For example, if we weren't to adopt such a policy, potential artwork or speech, and that's defined very broadly to include artwork, someone talking, words, etc. If the city said, no, we don't like your message, they could come back and challenge the city under First Amendment grounds. And I'll just give an example from as I was, you know, helping staff with this policy, there was a really interesting case that I read where city staff, the city opened up an area right outside of their city council chambers and allowed students from a local school to put up their artwork. Just as a, oh, we're going to showcase our local elementary's artwork. And then later a political group wanted to come in and put up some very much more offensive to some people artwork and the city said no. And that later turned into a case where those artists that wanted their political message in City Hall came and challenged the city. And so it really is a very different bar.

And so one of the goals of this policy is to make the process more transparent. Can you talk about, you covered it a little bit, but just what are, how is this helping the community in order to have this process that is followed uniformly going forward with other arts, pieces of art in the public space?

Good question. Let me try to, and I think Michael can maybe jump in here, but I'd like to start with, you know, I've been noticing, and I think this has been a goal of city staff, that city staff is trying to create processes, right, for a lot of different things, whether it's for donations, or you'll notice tonight we also have a naming policy on our agenda to try to make it so that you know anyone it is more transparent and i guess approachable because anyone in the community can understand what the process is right what the rules are to get a public facility or attempt to get a public facility named in a certain way or propose public artwork in a certain way and all of the kind of different criteria are out there for those members of the public to understand before they propose anything it makes it while the city council does have full discretionary authority over any piece of art that comes before it, it provides criteria in a more, I guess, objective and transparent manner so that someone who's interested in getting artwork displayed somewhere understands what types of criteria, what types of things the council will be considering as they move through and consider their proposal.

I mean, I can add from the staff perspective in terms of deciding what to bring to council, it also does the same thing for staff. There's all the different types of things that could be proposed, could have their various nuances. And for staff to be able to determine, I know that we have a current process before us that probably took longer than anybody would like. And moving forward with this policy, we'll know immediately. you know, what to do with something and how to bring it to the council. And so we help to avoid those kind of things in the future.

And then just one really quick question for clarification. Can you talk more about the fact that art on city-owned property would be government speech? I hadn't heard that it framed like that before.

Yes, Vice Mayor Soler, so this goes back to what type of forum you're creating, and so let's go back to the case that I was talking about where the city decided to allow local students from the local elementary school to put their artwork up in City Hall, right? Because there was no policy stating specifically that the council has curatorial authority discretion over what comes in and using a content neutral evaluation criteria, it becomes a public forum. And so by stating the content neutral evaluation criteria and making clear THAT THE COUNCIL HAS FULL AND FINAL CURATORIAL DISCRETION OVER ANY ART THAT THE CITY DISPLAYS, AS WELL AS ONE OF THE FINAL PIECES IS THAT THIS PIECE OF ART BECOMES PART OF THE CITY'S PUBLIC ART PORTFOLIO. SO IT ACTUALLY BECOMES A CITY AND THE CITY DECIDES TO DISPLAY IT ON ITS PROPERTY. THAT IS HOW IT BECOMES GOVERNMENT SPEECH. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THOSE ARE MY QUESTIONS.

Any other questions?

I have a couple questions. So can you sort of go into a little more detail about what the ARB's role is in this, or specifically how they play into this?

That's Councilmember Mayer through the mayor. So ARBs would be not adding any advisory on the content of it, but rather the size, scale, materials, and those types of items related to the project.

And then how and where does public input play into this process?

Yeah. So the public input would be just, as Jenna had mentioned, is you could have a public workshop where that kind of information would come to you. It doesn't bind the council. It's still the council's decision. But it would just be information that might provide a perspective or something you hadn't thought of. It's not always about the artwork itself either. It could be about the location of the artwork. It could be about the material to be used and we haven't thought about, and this is something ideally the ARB would catch, but we didn't think about the reflectiveness of a material or its ability to get hot or anything like that. And so whether it's the ARB or whether it's the public, they're just able to provide information for council's ultimate consideration.

So there's not like a formalized process where it has 30 days to go in front of, you know, the public in some capacity?

And this policy, we didn't create that. We left a lot of flexibility, as Jenna mentioned, for the future, for potentially the council to even create its own art commission. So there is a lot of flexibility. Certain projects might have like the one we're speaking about later, historical components, where you might want to get some subject matter expert on history, and I know that group has done that as well, but that's something you would never ask of maybe another art project, and so we wanted to ensure there was enough flexibility for the council Like with all the things you all decide up there, we're able to get as much information as possible. And it's also important to understand the weight of these things is there is no assigned weight to them. You could do a public workshop, and you could get 100 people to comment, and you could have one comment that makes you think of something that the other 99 didn't. There's not like a scale or anything like that. It's really only for your information only.

So in the event that, because city council has ultimate curatorial decision making, and so let's say that a city council elects not to pick a public artwork for aesthetic purposes, what is the process of that? So does the artist have the opportunity to push back on us? I'm just curious of the rejection process, actually.

Yeah, Council Member Mayer, so there isn't an appeal process. Your decision would be the final decision. And the policy is laid out, and this is where you all could give good feedback if you saw something in a policy you didn't like. But ideally, you would support your decision using the criteria set along in the policy. If there was something in there that you didn't, that sort of ran contrary to how you think you would evaluate ART, In these cases, you would want to let us know that this evening, but basically you would make your decision using those objective criteria.

Okay, thank you. And Council Member Mayer, if I can just jump in and clarify a couple of points that Michael made. So one, I do want to, and Michael did touch on this in terms of the ARB's role. But we tied the, in the policy, we specifically tied the ARB's role to its statutory purpose under the CMC. So we referenced, I think it's section two of the CMC. and made clear that the ARB didn't have any authority to evaluate the artistic value or merit of a public art proposal. It was really just based on, as Michael was saying, what their purpose is. And so if we look at that, it's the exterior appearance. And here in the CMC, it talks about building structures, signs, et cetera. But that would be applied to the proposed public artwork.

Any other questions? I have a question. I like how this policy is written. It's written broadly to a certain extent, and I really like the idea of the Art Commission. And my hope is that this really opens up a pathway to have more art in our community. But in terms of the Art Commission, how will that be prompted to be created? It could be, what I can imagine is as maybe more

art maybe come through this policy then at that point the council could say okay let's create an art commission at this point in time or um how do we go about doing that uh mayor alec went through the council so it would be at the at the council's prompting so you all could say you know we're interested in putting an agenda item on a future agenda to create an art commission an art committee etc and then staff would go back and then we would want to identify what the scope of that art committee or art commission was. That could be a discussion with council during a meeting as well, and that would come back as an agenda item. So just taking a look at the policy before you write the art commission or the art committee, we have a lot of committees, right? And it would be a standing committee in this situation because it would have kind of a much longer scope. And so you could say that we want to create an art committee and we want the art committee to take the council's role in terms of this preliminary, let's see, how did I define this? the preliminary review, right? And so that could be the art committee's role, then they would do all of those preliminary kind of investigations, send it off to ARB, and then ultimately it would come back to the council for final decision.

and mayor i would just add program some of the larger cities that we reviewed had program managers for art and just a lot more infrastructure built around it and one of the things that those groups did were things like identify funding i know some of the concerns that i've heard is about this idea that that only if you have money is your only way to be able to get art and so i think having a commission for the future that's also able to identify funding so that the council could commission work We could get more artwork put in the city and ensure that we have some funding so that artists, regardless of their ability to support it, would be able to be. And it's always great when you do have people who can self-fund and also when you can make other opportunities available.

Thank you. Any other questions from council? Seeing none, I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker. Yes, I do. I have some speaker slips. Laura Sanchez, welcome.

Good evening mayor, vice mayor, council members and staff. My name is Laura Sanchez and I'm here today to express my support for the adoption of a public art artwork policy for the city of Carpinteria. Public art tells the story of our community. It creates gathering places, inspires curiosity, strengthens our local economy and gives both residents and visitors a deeper sense of connection to Carpinteria. One of the primary reasons Carpinteria needs a public artwork policy is to ensure that decisions about public art are made through a transparent, inclusive, and consistent process. Public art belongs to all of us. The community should have meaningful opportunities to help shape what is created and where it is placed. The public artwork policy supports this understanding by requiring thorough public engagement in an effort to display artwork that reflects Carpinteria's rich diversity, creativity, and shared values. Many nearby communities, including Santa Barbara, Solvang, and San Luis Obispo, have established public artwork policies that provide a transparent framework for commissioning, reviewing, and maintaining public art. Those policies have helped create distinctive civic identities while ensuring that art is supported by the community and integrated thoughtfully into public spaces. A public artwork policy is also an essential tool for good governance. This is especially true when artwork is intended for city-owned spaces, as we're talking today. Artwork installed on city-owned property can be viewed as carrying the city's endorsement. Without a clear, consistent process for evaluating and approving public art, the city could face unnecessary complaints, or worse yet, as we've discussed today, legal challenges. A well-crafted policy can help establish objective standards and protect the city from liability and, minimizing this risk, ultimately protect our taxpayer dollars. This issue is also very personal to me. My grandparents, Ralph and Betty Brown, donated the land that became the seal fountain. The space has become one of Carpentria's beloved gathering places and an important part of our community's identity. I see a public artwork policy as a way of safeguarding places like this for future generations, ensuring that these places continue to reflect the character, values, aesthetic, and spirit of Carpinteria, rather than changing in ways that might diminish or degrade their significance. I appreciate the council's willingness to explore this initiative in establishing a public artwork policy that ensures that decisions about public art are fair, transparent, and rooted in the public interest. We can create a shared legacy of community-driven creativity, collaboration, and civic pride. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you for your comments. Wendy Yanagihara? And I apologize if I mispronounced your last name. Oh, no, that was perfect.

My name is Wendy Anagihara, Carpinteria resident, writer, and non-prolific artist. Thank you, City Council, for the opportunity to share my comment on the proposed arts and public spaces policy. I'd like to disclose for the record that I served on the board of the Carpinteria Cultural Foundation for six months of 2024 before resigning. I note this only because I was called out in the Coastal View for not doing so in my letter supporting the establishment of an arts and public spaces policy. Secondly, I wish to express my disappointment that members of our community feel justified in vilifying and personally attacking city council members and staff with whom they disagree. It's particularly embarrassing to witness prominent community elders behaving in this manner when they should be leading by example. Showing basic respect for our fellow Carpentarians should be a given, even when we disagree. My comment is in support of the city establishing an arts and public places, public spaces policy. Carpenterians come from diverse backgrounds, and like most of humanity, have a range of opinions. No work of art will appeal to or delight everyone, and in fact, some of the best art invites discussion and debate. Because personal opinions will vary widely, designating art for display in city-owned spaces necessitates a formal policy, not only to ensure fairness, transparency, and inclusivity in the selection process, but also to limit the city's legal exposure and financial liability. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Tim Bliss, welcome.

TIM BLISS. Mayor, vice mayor, council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak. This is the first time I've ever spoken in front of the city council, even though I was born and raised here, and I think you should take that as a clear indication of how firmly I believe in and support the Carpinteria Cultural Foundation and all that it does for our community. Organizations like the CCF are a big part of what makes Carpinteria a unique and wonderful town. It is a truly grassroots organization made up of long-term community-minded Carpinterians who genuinely want to do what's best for Carpinteria. My wife Jenny and I are incredibly proud to encourage them and support them in every way we can. We have been supporters of the CCF since the Aliso School Tree of Life when it was first proposed and created in 2023. The mural is a home run. Yes, it's a gorgeous piece of art, but most importantly, it sheds light on a subject long overdue for its historical importance to understanding and appreciating the cultural foundations of the Carpinteria community. After the creation of the Liso School mural, the CCF embarked on a project of even greater scope, one that beautifully tells the story of our Valley's 300 years of multicultural heritage. Ginny and I have watched the project grow from the nucleus of an idea into a ten-mural reality of beauty and educational enlightenment. We know it will become one of a handful of must-see attractions on the California coast. People will come to Carpinteria just to see the amazing murals. Like the Aliso School mural, this 10 mural project is well researched. It will be a beautiful landmark worthy of the Carpinteria Valley, worthy of our rich and proud history, and worthy of the pride we all feel as Carpinterians. It more than deserves to stand alongside the other murals that honor our terrific community. Again, thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Thank you for your comments. Mike Dameron?

I'll have to mark this down as a banner day that Tim Bliss was my opening act. Doesn't happen very often. I hope my friends aren't watching, but I read the policy cover to cover this Saturday, and I think it's well written, and it covers all the city's bases. It does mention... has the word may in it about a dozen times and ultimately whatever suggestions the policy has as far as commissions or groups or advisory, there's really only one commission that matters and it's the five chairs in front of me. that ultimately are the deciders of whatever art comes through the policy. At some point, there's five people that are gonna make a decision before, in the middle, or after. But I read the thing cover to cover, and I thought it was well done. I commend city staff for what they put together. There was a lot of familiar themes in it because I read about six different cities' policies and there's a lot of familiarity with many of them. But I think it does cover the bases the city's looking to cover and I wholeheartedly support the policy as submitted. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Christina Calkins.

Thank you, good evening mayor, council members, and city staff. I'm Christina Calkins, I'm the executive director of the Linda Fairley Carpinteria Arts Center, and I would like to give a heartfelt thank you for considering having a public artwork policy. It gets me very excited about the potential for the future. And I wanted to make sure that the proposed policy also has a facet addressing temporary art installations that the city does not own, such as photographer Patricia Houghton Clark, that did an installation in 2019 in downtown Carpinteria titled Facing Ourselves. And we also had an installation in our gallery at the Carpinteria Arts Center. So I just want to make sure since everyone's spending so much time on this policy that it also has that facet So that we don't have to go through another long Approval process if someone has temporary art for us to install for a short amount of time Thank you.

Thank you for your comments Susan Gonzalez I'm sorry, Jesus Gonzalez, someone wrote on the side. I apologize.

I did not come with prepared remarks. I didn't expect to say anything, but I wanted to ask a question about the proposal. What you're asking for is a narrative. And so if someone prepares a narrative and presents it to the board and then it goes on to the city council. But what happens if after the narrative you don't like the outcome? What if after the narrative is accepted but you don't like a color? Or what if Francisco Botero presents a narrative and then after he executes it and it's a rotund figure but you think it's gross because it's obese. So I'm just asking that question. What happens when the narrative does not match what you believe to be the outcome?

Thank you for your comments. I do not have any other speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We do, Mayor. We have one raised hand. Andy Patrick. Andy, go ahead.

Thank you and good evening again. I was not prepared actually to speak on this, and I'm just so impressed, quite honestly, by it. Not only by what the staff presented, their professionalism, I'm very impressed with, but also the comments that were made before me, which I agree with all. This is a tricky one. I spent probably 40 years as a curator of exhibition and working with artists of a wide variety of mediums. So I want to speak to one word in this policy, and I think it's what you just mentioned in the speaker before me. I'm sorry, I don't remember your name. And that is curatorial. The structure here is sound. I mean, it's really sound. I lived in San Francisco 25 years before coming here, and I recognize a lot of of common themes. And I think that's good. And the discretion belongs with this council. I get that. But curatorial judgment in practice is a discipline. And it's knowing artists. It's understanding how work reads in a site over decades. And it's being willing to champion something before it's popular or unpopular. And no council, however thoughtful, I think can do that alone in a public session. And the predictable result of an art by council vote is that art often offends no one and moves no one, right? It just becomes a vanilla presentation. So this policy mentions an art committee only as something that might exist someday. And I urge you strongly to make that commitment rather than make it hypothetical. direct staff to return with options for an advisory arts body, drawing on the working artists, curators, art professionals, etc. that this community already has. I mean, it's vital, right? So keep the decisions here where it belongs, but give yourselves expert eyes to support you before you vote. Yes, it rests with the five of you, but boy, lean hard on a group of people that can really provide you insight. One technical note, this is small, but I just wanted the removal provision because i went through this with the mural in san francisco very famous artist incredible mural the presentation said something to the effect that the artist will be contacted when possible but there's there's existing law you'll you'll find it uh it's the visual artist rights act etc etc that sets specific notice requirements before artwork is removed or destroyed and it's tough because sometimes artists die and then they have a foundation or or a family or what have you. And it's become something super important to the community. I saw this in the Mission District in San Francisco. So something to keep an eye towards, but again, I support this and I applaud you. I think this is very, very cool that you all are doing this. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. That was an interesting alert. Okay, do we have anyone else via Zoom?

We have no more raised hands.

I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for additional comments and or questions and of course a motion.

First I want to thank everybody who came out to speak today it's so important to get community feedback on changes like this or on formalizing processes like this and I hope that that it's clear that staff put a lot of time into this, that council's putting a lot of time into reviewing it and really trying to make the best policy that serves our community as much as we can. And I think this one does. I really appreciate the thoroughness, I appreciate the different steps that are outlined very clearly, so expectations are shared amongst artists now and in the future. I think this is gonna be a really positive step for the city to have a policy like this.

Yeah, I just, this is so straightforward and so transparent and in a lot of ways I see like the process is so straightforward that you sort of wonder like am I missing something because it's so clear and I think that the more we formalize these things, the easier these decisions make and it's just, it makes everything clear so thank you.

And I actually, before I make my comments, I just want to touch on what a speaker mentioned, which was the temporary art. Is that included in the policy? Or if you can speak to that.

Mayor Alarcon, yes, I think the policy could apply to temporary artwork as well. So it would, you know, I believe that there's enough in the policy to be able to interpret it to apply to temporary artwork so the artwork would become part of the city's public artwork portfolio for a certain amount of time and therefore it becomes government speech.

Excellent. And then just one other question just from one of the speakers in terms, I think he was referring to just the appeal process. There isn't an appeal, but I can imagine if the council said no, could the artist come back through the process?

So Mayor Alarcon, council members, yes, that's one option there that the artist could come back with a different proposal or a changed proposal. I know there was a lot of, there were comments about changes that the council may request, and so this is really an opportunity for the council to look at a proposal, compare that proposal against the evaluation criteria that are set out in the policy itself, and then it's a bit of a working with the artist to make sure that artwork that does become public artwork fits what the council is looking for in that situation.

Thank you. Council Member Nomura, I see you have your ready to speak.

Yeah, thank you. With that, I move to adopt resolution number 6489, approving the public artwork policy for the city of Carpinteria.

I'll second. We have a first and a second. Would you like to? Thank you.

No, I'll just be very brief. I'm really happy with the product that staff made. I think they did a terrific job. And I'm gratified that we got so much support from the public in this public art policy and the policy itself.

Thank you. So we have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. And I'd like to just thank staff for working so hard on this policy. I think it's going to be a really exciting step forward. We will now be moving on to the next item, which is item number 15, which is consideration of Carpenter Cultural Foundation's CCF proposal to install a 10-panel mural at the Seal Fountain Plaza Community Plaza in front of Smart and Final on Linden Avenue.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council, community members, I will try not to make this any longer than it needs to. At our meeting on June 22nd, your council directed staff to return with both the art policy, which the council just adopted, and then also research on past practices for other artwork in the city. And the goal of your council was to determine the best path forward for the Carpinteria Cultural Foundations, or CCF as I'll refer to them, their proposal to install a ten-panel mural at the Seal Fountain Plaza, Community Plaza in front of Smart and Final on Linden Avenue. In staff's research, we found that past projects fell into one of three categories, private project on private property, a city project on public property, or like the proposal before us today, a privately initiated project on public property. We also learned that the approval for these projects generally included this following steps, which are the same that were really outlined in the policy you all just adopted, which was some city council preliminary review while maybe not formal, which we just handled, some project initiation to start, some project refinement or vetting process, And then ARB, one of the examples even included a planning commission, which we did not propose in this instance, and then city council final approval. So the projects we researched included the mural projects at Linden Square and the Crispin California Art Center, sorry, Crispin California Island Center, and the Lindemar Building, which were all private projects, private property, Tomo Park, which is an example of a city-state parks rotary partnership on public property. And then lastly, the Ash Avenue Boathouse mural, which is an example of a privately initiated project on public property, and it was the closest example to the current proposal. Again, in all of these examples, some form of the previously mentioned steps of the review and the initiation was followed. Having just heard the item on the ART policy, I will not review that again here, but for anyone who missed that last item, I encourage you all to go back and read that report or see that presentation. Regarding CCF, a summary of their proposals included as part of this report. There's also links to their websites and videos for people to watch later. But in just a moment, I'm gonna invite up a representative from CCF to make a short presentation. I think they're gonna show their video and then answer any questions. As mentioned above with the sort of vetting process and as we already discussed, staff is able to assist with project preparations or vetting, such as posting the proposal. In this case, the artwork panels can be posted on the city's website for public engagement and use our social media channels. We can request for feedback from additional historical organizations and tribes. And the foundation itself is also kindly offered to do some sort of an in-person public display where we could also get feedback if we choose to do that as well. So with that, I'd like to invite up Dr. Jim Campos to make a short presentation. And I was also told it's Dr. Campos' birthday. So happy birthday to Dr. Campos.

I'm hoping they get a birthday present.

Congratulations on the art policy. It sounds great. You know, I'm a little torn to read this thing and get on to the other. There's so many things that were said here, and I want to comment on them, but I can't. So anyways, good evening, Mayor, council members, city manager Ramirez, members of our community. I've had the privilege of serving as the lead historian for the Carpinteria Cultural Foundation's proposed ten panel educational historical monument. For more than two years our board has worked to create an educational resource that tells the story of Carpinteria through the many cultures, peoples, and events that have shaped our valley. This has been a collaborative effort involving historians, educators, artists, tribal representatives, and community members. And I'm going to pause real quickly and say one of the important ones were Ralph and Betty Brown and your parents, Richard. And is it Mary Lou? Anyway, so they were uppermost in a lot of the things we did. We researched everyone, reviewed them, we designed them to ensure historical accuracy and respect. This evening, instead of a traditional presentation, we would like to share our nine-minute video, which tells the story of this project and the educational vision that has guided us every step of the way. Following the video, at the end of tonight's meeting we invite the city council, city staff, and everyone in attendance to take a few moments before leaving tonight to view the display of the 10 panels. Seeing them in person provides the best opportunity to appreciate the historical research, artwork, and educational value they represent. And please keep in mind if you do go check out the murals that these are smaller versions. They are our road show, our traveling show. They're what we have taken out into the community when we have made our presentations about this project. The project is more than a historical monument. It's a community investment. In addition to donating the monument itself, the CCF is committed to restoring the historic seal fountain to working order, enhancing the surrounding plaza, helping revitalize this important public gathering place while preserving its history for future generations. After viewing our presentation, we asked the city council to move this community supported, privately funded project forward so it may become a lasting educational and cultural gift to the people of Carpinteria. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Nope.

Yes. Good idea.

Chumash of the Carpinteria Valley were known for their advanced craftsmanship. They made intricately woven baskets, plank canoes called tomols, and elaborate art. They were skilled fishermen, hunters, and gatherers, relying on the rich natural resources of their environment. Spain commissioned major sea explorations off the coast of California. There was Cabrillo in 1542 and Vizcayeno in 1602. Gaspar de Portola led the first land exploration in 1769, accompanied by the clergymen Juan Crespi and Junipero Serra. Serra was a mission builder, and the exploration was called the Sacred Expedition. Portola's soldiers called the area of the Rincon La Carpinteria, the carpenter shop, because they saw Chumash making plank canoes, caulked with tar from the tar pits. Spanish colonization of California officially began in 1775 with the Juan Bautista de Anza land expedition. Nueva España became the Republic of Mexico in 1821. In California, the mission clergy favored the King of Spain as God's emissary rather than Mexico. The Spanish-speaking people of California came to be known as Californios. The Carpinteria Valley was a pastoral paradise providing livestock and agricultural support to the Pueblo of Santa Barbara. The valley was called the Pueblo Land of Santa Barbara. At California Statehood in 1850, American pioneer settlers explored the Carpinteria Valley from the Rincon to Ortega Hill, making preemption claims on plots of land. Forefathers like Russell Heath, Stephen Hart Olmsted, and Andrew Baylard led enterprising families that shipped cash crops like lima beans and walnuts from the wharf in La Serena. In 1887, the Southern Pacific Railroad Line established a depot at the foot of Linden Avenue, precipitating an agricultural boom. World War I and Carpinteria's agricultural boom created a labor shortage windfall for the Spanish-speaking community. A huge Mexican-American migration resulted. In its earliest stages, a Mexican town developed from Linden Avenue to Old Town Carpinteria. Today, half of Carpinteria's population has Mexican heritage.

Thank you.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1902 opened the door for Japanese migration into the Carpinteria Valley. The Izaki family came to Carpinteria circa 1910. At least 15 Japanese American families can be traced leading up to the Japanese Internment Act of 1942. Some thrived in agriculture, but only the Oda family, with the Fukasawas from Ojai, returned after World War II. By the 1960s, a new Japanese-American surge flourished with the flower industry of the Carpinteria Valley. The presence of Italian Americans in Carpinteria can be traced back to Giuseppe José Lobero, who established the iconic Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara in 1873. After his death in 1892, some of the Loberos relocated to Carpinteria, where they formed a bond with the Mexican Americans because of their shared faith in the Catholic Church. In the years that followed, more Italian Americans settled in the Carpinteria Valley, bringing with them a spirit of hard work and deeply rooted traditions that left a lasting mark on the community's identity. In the 1930s, Dust Bowl families escaping drought and windstorms from the middle of the United States arrived in Carpinteria, hoping to find steady farm work in the area's fertile lands and the offshore oil fields. They often lived in makeshift camps and worked long hours picking crops like lima beans and lemons to support their families. Though born of hardship, the Dust Bowl migration brought new life to Carpinteria, whose families found opportunity and stability. The American dream became a reality for Dutch families in 1967. Arriving from the Netherlands, they thrived in the beautiful Carpinteria climate, growing carnations, tulips, daisies, chrysanthemums, and other varieties. What began as a leap of faith grew into a lasting legacy, as Dutch families helped shape Carpinteria through hard work, perseverance, and a deep commitment to community. Carpinteria has long captured the hearts of locals and visitors alike, with its beautiful sandy beaches and gorgeous mountain range. At a time when many communities feel increasingly divided, Carpinteria offers a different example. It has a long history of neighbors stepping forward to help one another. In Carpinteria, community is not just a word we use. Being Carpinterians is a community tradition we inherit.

Do we take questions now, or do I?

Maybe.

So the options that we have before us, first staff's recommendation is to the council to direct staff to process CCS project proposal through the city's public artwork policy and consider the current agenda item to be the preliminary review for CCS project proposal under the public artwork policy. Council may also direct staff to process CCS project proposal. through a similar ad hoc process as utilized for other artwork projects that I mentioned or to provide any other direction as desired and happy to answer questions or representatives from CCF to also answer any questions the council has.

Any questions from council? No questions. Okay, so we will move on to public comment. Dr. Jim Combos, would you like to? Have another three minutes or?

Not really, but just a couple of things. You know, you talked about, well, what if the art, you don't like it afterwards or whatever. You know, one of the things that we did do with this project was we made it so that it could be easily put up. It did not harm anything in the plaza. We did not want to... take anything down uh... what is it more anything that was there that's why we concentrated the uh... ramada and put the panels right there and put them on some bars if uh... if there are what is it uh... if you don't like it you can take it down it's bolted in you take it out uh... also History is always not changing, but we keep learning new stuff all the time. And so we can always change things as we learn new things. And so it's with that in mind too. And so we'll have a Q&R or Q&A, what do you call it? QR. A QR code where we will talk in depth about every one of those panels. And I know I've discussed with a few people on the Italian panel in particular That was one that didn't quite make sense to us as we researched that one. We knew that Giuseppe Libero, when he died in 1892, that some of his family moved to Carpinteria. two years later. They put in a restaurant, a bar. They had a number of things on Linden Avenue. They melted in real well with the Mexican community. They were both Catholics. They both bought the Catholic Church off of Santa Monica Road. All of a sudden, they kind of slowly come into Carpinteria, but they're not a migrating force. They're not a big trend like most of the others that you see on the panels. It took us a while to realize that it was World War II. It was Mussolini and a lot of the Italians that came into Carpinteria that joined the ones that were already here that became kind of a large group. And so it was one of the ones that had to be included in the in the mural. The Chinese, the exclusion laws of 1882, 1892, and 1902 wiped out the Chinese from the United States. Carpinteria had its own group here. They left no imprint because they were kicked out. And so we don't have a panel for them because they didn't leave that cultural imprint. Everybody that's there has an imprint. Okay, so removal, easy, temporary if you don't like it. We can correct things as we go because of the methodology that our artist used, Rick Sharp. And one other thing, you talk about qualifications. Well, he's got a big portfolio. He has won the Fiesta poster contest six times. He is very well credentialed.

Anything that I'm missing that I should add?

Okay. All right.

Thank you. Mike Cameron, welcome. And clerk, I'll ask for the time for the public comment. Thank you.

Three minutes for Jimmy. Boy, you're playing with fire there. I'm here to read a letter from the superintendent of schools, Diana Rigby, who's not in town, to the honorable mayor and members of the Carpinteria City Council. On behalf of the Carpinteria Unified School District, I am pleased to express our strong support of the Carpinteria Cultural Foundation's proposed 10-panel educational history monument for the community plaza on Linden Avenue. This project represents far more than a public art installation. It is an educational resource that will preserve and share the rich and diverse history of the Carpinteria Valley for students, residents, and visitors alike. By telling the stories of the many people and cultures that have shaped our community, the monument will provide an accessible and engaging opportunity to learn about our local heritage. The Carpenter Unified School District recognized the tremendous educational value of this project. The foundation has developed classroom resources that complement the monument, creating opportunities for teachers to connect local history with meaningful Place-based learning. We envision future field trips that include visits to the monument alongside Carpinteria Valley Museum of History, the Carpinteria State Beach, and other significant community landmarks, allowing students to experience the history of their hometown firsthand. The Carpenter Unified School District has complete confidence in the leadership of the Carpenter Cultural Foundation and its board of directors. Through our partnership, we have witnessed a dedicated group of community leaders committed to educational excellence, historical integrity, collaboration, and responsible stewardship. Their thoughtful approach, attention to detail, and willingness to engage historians, cultural leaders, educators, artists, and community stakeholders throughout the development process exemplify the kind of leadership that earns public trust. We are confident the proposed 10-panel education history monument will be developed and maintained with the same level of professionalism and care, becoming a lasting educational resource and a source of pride for generations of students, residents, and visitors alike. The proposed monument is a privately funded gift to the city that will become a lasting educational asset for our schools and community. It reflects the values of learning, inclusion, civic pride, historical preservation that we still strive to instill in our students. We believe this project will enrich the educational experience of our students while celebrating the history that unites our community. For these reasons, the Carpenter Unified School District is proud to support the Carpenter Culture Foundation's proposal and respectfully encourages the city council to move forward with this proposal sincerely. Diana Rigby, Superintendent of Schools. Thank you.

Thank you. Christina Calkins.

Good evening again, Mayor, council members, and staff. I am here representing the Linda Fairley Carpinteria Arts Center. We had the murals on display in our community gallery for about a month, and we also hosted the Cultural Foundation in our courtyard for a time for the public to come view it and ask questions. And over that month period, I did not hear any negative comments and neither did my staff. And before we got to the point of hosting the Carpinteria Culture Foundation's murals, our board heard a presentation from them asked a lot of questions and then discussed it at length whether the Arts Center wanted to support the tin mural project and the board did vote to support the project and so that's why I'm here and I look forward to having it possibly across the street from the Arts Center, which would be a great place not only for the schools, as Dinah Rigby just shared, but also for all the youth that comes to the Arts Center. Like we currently have Summer Arts Camp, and how great to be able to cross the street and talk about the history of Carpinteria from, as displayed by Rick Sharpe's creative artwork. He has been displayed in our gallery many times and I know also in Hawaii, different galleries there. So he's an established artist and also an established member of our community. So I thank you very much for your consideration of this project. Thank you for your comments.

Tim Bliss.

I went out of turn.

Okay, no worries. Jessica Snyder.

Hi. This is kind of impromptu. I'm Jessica. I'm speaking tonight in support of CCF's panels, and I'm looking at you, Monica, because I remember how much we celebrated the Aliso mural and how it brought our community together, and it was an opportunity to teach our kids, to really embrace diversity in our community, right? So that's kind of what's bringing me. I said it's just, I just was trying to write this. It's such a heartwarming project as a mom, a teacher, a native Californian. This is just what our community needs right now, especially considering the political climate. More than ever, the artwork, like these panels, celebrates our rich, diverse history, stories, cultures. One of our dear friends, one of my dear friends, Rodney Chow, who passed away last year, we would talk all the time at their farmer's markets and talk about his family's history and, again, the diversity and how it should be celebrated. I don't see a single negative component of these panels. I loved hearing that Diana Rigby endorsed it and supported it because I was typing notes. I was like, I can't wait. What if we could teach, like bring our students here as like field trips, you know, and it's such a central location as well. Also, I know on a personal note, Adriana quite well, I know how disciplined she is. I know her heart goes in 100% as well as the other members of CCF and how much time and effort they've spent on this. I also know my own conversations with other moms and parents and just saying that overall, I don't see even a millimeter of a negativity about this project. So I don't I guess to me it's like I don't understand why there's any red tape and I don't understand all the rules but like to me it seems like it's a fantastic project and it's an investment as well. It's a value added for our city. I would be interested in just asking you guys, do you have any caution? Do you have any negative comments? Do you have any, like what are your concerns about it? Have you heard from community members that want to see these panels? Are you allowed to answer any questions?

You're not? Oh, I'm just posing it.

And I'd like to ask, is it all done? Okay, I've got one more, all right. It's just that the seal fountain is so central to our city, it's a gathering place that brings people together, educationally, historically significant, only positive reflections in my heart as I've talked to other community members who share my support and enthusiasm for welcoming this art.

That's it. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Alan Koch.

Hi, again, to everybody. I just want to bring the perspective of the downtown T and economic viability, you know, to the front of this, the core front, that this is definitely going to help out. I mean, when you look at what we have at the northern boundary on the Crispin Channel Island Center, John Wilburn's, That's the gateway into the downtown. Coming from the beach, we have, I believe, the Whitney Abbott on the warehouses there. Both private, I assume. Those are private public work. And then we have... the Art Center, right across from the Seal Fountain, the location of where this is supposed to be. We have our own little mini art district on the 700 block there. So again, I agree 100% with everybody's other sentiments. This is a great, great project. It fits in there. And I hope we get a favorable response ruling from the Council. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. I do not have any other speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Mayor, I see no raised hands.

I will close. Oh, for this item 15? Okay, come on up. You're more than welcome to.

Good evening, City Council. As I stated previously, I served on the board of the Carpentry Cultural Foundation in 2024 and resigned after six months. In my time on the board, I discovered that the board's pattern of operating did not align with my values and ethics, leading to my resignation. In my resignation letter I stated, while I appreciate the stated intentions of the CCF and take no issue personally with board members, I do not believe that the organization's culture fosters transparency, inclusivity, or collaboration. I urge the board to take these values into consideration and to clarify a coherent mission statement as it moves forward. The reason that I said that is because All of this publicity that's surrounding the mural is coming at the end of the process. I don't have a problem with the board. I don't have a problem with the project itself. I also think that Rick Sharp's artwork is wonderful. But the narrow demographic that they have approached represented by groups like Rotary and Lions is a very narrow demographic of Carpinteria. And I've spoken to many civically active community members who heard about the mural project for the first time either in the series published in the Coastal View or through the Arts Center display. So I also believe that the statements that they've thoroughly vetted the content of each mural by historical and cultural experts has not been very transparent. These experts remain unnamed publicly. I would like to ask whether the Chumash Tribal Council, Japanese American Citizens League, or the larger Mexican American population in Carpinteria was consulted around the mural. I applaud the CCF's vision of celebrating Carpinteria's cultural heritage, but for the reasons I've stated, I find their process to be problematic. and I respectfully urge city council to retain the council of a subject matter expert in guiding the mural project moving forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. And I will just double check we don't have any other Zoom commenters?

That is correct, Mayor.

Okay, I will officially close public comment and bring it back to the council for additional questions or comments and of course the motion. Yes.

A few comments on this one. First of all, my opinion, it's going to definitely revitalize the CO Fountain Plaza. That's one thing that I think we as Carp Maria feel quite proud of that has been a gathering spot since it's been developed and built. I was part of the group that actually did the review of it at that time and it did actually live up to its expectation. One of the questions I do have in considerations, and I'm only putting this out there, is if this does move forward, I would like to see the trellis work that was supposed to be trellis for the grapevine to remain open and maybe put the murals actually on the wall instead, which would give it more durability, better visibility, and keep the integrity of the trellis that was supposed to always be a grapevine itself trellis. Other point that I would like to say, and I would guess referring back to some of the public comment, I am actually the president of the Santa Barbara Japanese American Citizens League, and I was asked to review the Japanese portion of that one. So I know for a fact that I may not be an expert at it, but I am a representative of a national league for Japanese Americans. That being said, Working with the group, seeing it when it first came almost 18 months ago, at that time I was in favor of it. I thought it was a great idea. It does show the history of Carpinteria, one of the only places I know, in fact, where we see a lot of these details being moved forward. So like I said back then, for me, I think this is a win-win.

Thank you. Oh, you want to go first?

I don't care.

Okay. I want to thank CCF for the presentation. It was great seeing, I hadn't seen the video before, so I appreciate that. And I think the timing of this, especially with the previous item that we had, works out really well because I think some of the public comment concerns about different types of engagement can be addressed through the policy and so I think the fact that we're considering these two items one after the other is really I think to the benefit of both the proposal and this particular project so I'm in favor of Processing it through the city's public artwork policy and then giving the community a chance to really weigh in how it would however that community engagement angle will be I think that's going to be it's going to be great that this will be the first project that can can Bring the policy to life. So again, just thanks that thank all the public commenters for all the feedback they gave I think it's really helpful and I think that that will hopefully that type of feedback will also be part of the the community engagement from the policy and

Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to thank the board for bringing this forward. It's a terrific project, and especially the multicultural aspect. And I think the art's fantastic, and it's going to be great. I do have a question about the location. It's not a serious question, but it's just something that I guess the ARB can work out, is that there's already a mural there, and the grapevine situation, which when I visited, is hanging over where the mural's gonna go. So there's this not necessarily conflict, but there's this coexistence of these things have to be there together. And so I'm sure that the ARB can come up with something Another aspect of the location that I had a question about was the presence of the bench there is different. I see that they have these beautiful paintings, and they're very detailed, but they're up in the air, especially for shorter people. I guess it's the safety engineer in me, but I think of little kids or people getting up on the bench to just to try to see it better. And so I'm not sure if there's any way around that. It just may be, you know, a thing that's there. Anyway, I don't mean to, you know, negate anything I said that I really do like and support the mural. I think it's going to be a great asset to Carpentaria.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I really appreciate you being here and I appreciate being able to weigh in on it and I agree, this is the perfect project to go right after our policy and I look forward to the process. I think I have, my questions I guess are, what are we, are we moving it forward? Is this considered that the project, like are we, what phase are we in? I would like the logistical question.

Thank you, Council Member, Mayor, through the Mayor. I was going to interject at some point because I think this is an important piece of it. So as one of the, so there are several options before you this evening. One of the options is to consider this as the preliminary review. of the project and so if the council were to take that option um you would be you know taking a look at the proposal and evaluating it based on the evaluation criteria that's in the policy and so i can just read some of those different evaluation criteria off to you so it's artist qualifications artwork content, site selection, maintenance, feasibility, project readiness, community context, quality, style, permanence, duplication, public liability, legal considerations. And that's the last one that's applicable to the current proposal. And so in this, you could ask for additional information to come back this is because this is the first time we're doing this it may be you know we may have a few more steps uh... then as we get this more you know more well oiled but if we are going to treat this as a preliminary review i would recommend that uh... you discuss the project in terms of that evaluation criteria we could also request additional information to come back and we could request that from the proposers from CCF or to have staff bring additional information back to kind of a second phase of this preliminary review if you'd like.

I think for me, just because it is a brand new policy that we just adopted, I wouldn't feel prepared right now to use that criteria for the project. So if this is a time to give some feedback about what we would want to see, would that be now or would that be I don't know, how would that part of the process go?

Thank you, Vice Mayor Solorzano. So as I said, this policy, there is a lot of flexibility in it. But I think asking for that additional information right now would make sense. And so there are different, if I'm going through the evaluation criteria, it's Section 1 of the policy that was just adopted. And so some of those specific areas are in the second paragraph of section B, so artwork content. And so this proposal does contain historical and factual elements, so there may be additional information that is requested to come back on that. I heard a council member discuss I don't think it was the, it was the style of the artwork in terms of the size and scale, so there could be questions about that that you could ask. Is there the ability to make it larger or to not have to stand up on a bench, et cetera?

Yes.

What I'd like to point out is that we actually have a sample motion here that includes this as being a preliminary hearing review. That being said, it's part of the sample motion. However, if we do consider this going forward as a preliminary review, I would recommend that we take some time and actually make comments individually, specifically about the project. This would then get it at least moving forward. A lot of it is not gonna be, I would say, addressed during this meeting, but we could actually put in point of direction for what's missing, what we feel is missing, where we would be most comfortable. For example, Wendy, you know, you heard about the point of making sure that these have been culturally sensitized. And reviewed, I know for a fact that most of the panels have been, but I think it's something that the public should be aware of. So those are some of the items. I did make recommendations about placement, items like that. That would then go into record, and that would then be able to move forward with the review process, starting with staff, going to ARB, and then coming back to us to see if, in fact, those concerns have been addressed through the previous review up to our point of the final portion of hearing it.

Quick question then, in terms of the process, because I think it would be helpful, I hear what you're saying, Council Member Nomura, in terms of sharing questions to staff, but I think it would be a great idea, as long as the council's on board with this, to almost have a second preliminary review with additional information, as our attorney suggested, especially with that historical context, just to gain additional information, and then any additional questions we have, it can be made public. But in terms of the project itself, I wanna thank CCF for being here. I know it can be a frustrating process. On my end, I've been impressed with the project 18 months ago. I was impressed with the project when I met with you all in May and I really think this policy really solidifies the importance of art in public places. And so I would definitely be on board with approving this and then just requesting a second preliminary review with additional information.

Yes, Mayor, we were just discussing. And the way that it's written is there's multiple checkpoints where it comes back to your council. And so we don't have to not do all the things that we said staff can start working on reaching out to the subject matter experts and doing any public engagement or gathering that information. And then we would come back to your council and continue this before going to ARB. So I think it was designed well so that things can be moving right as we're doing those things and so happy to, you know, continue that. that part of the process and then come back to your council once we've done all of that work.

Great. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely on board with it continuing to move.

I think that's an important piece of the process. And I just want to say I completely agree with the mayor just because there are some parts of that section that a city attorney mentioned like public liability and legal considerations that I feel like I couldn't speak to right now I mean I feel like that I wouldn't have comments for a preliminary review taking that into consideration or even some in terms of the community context like I did hear the concerns and we even received some by email from people who felt like they were hoping for broader outreach to people maybe who wouldn't normally come to a city council meeting or even go to the art center but who might where they had the display but who might have important information to share or feedback to share about it. So I think so for me it's that community context and then some of the other items there that I would like to be able to talk about again.

I mean, also I think the advisory bodies that we have in place, there may be some things that in terms of installation that the council may not think of on their own that ARB would bring to light. And so even after that step, it comes back to council again as designed to give you guys all a check-in at each point. So happy to go forward, you know, as part of that motion, if that would include the organization of that on-site display, which it sounds like they've also done at the art center, but we could organize, you know, at the site, getting things posted on our website, and social, it could include an ad in the CVN, however you guys want to to add in that engagement, and then, of course, the subject matter expert piece, and we can begin all of that at your direction.

So just so I understand, then this would come back at a future council meeting with that information, then we would discuss it, and then it would move on to ARB?

Yes, that is correct.

Got it.

Okay, with that then, I'd like to make a motion. The motion would be to... I direct the staff to process the CCS project proposal through city's public artwork policy and consider the current agenda item to be a pre-preliminary review for CCS project proposal under the public artwork policy and bring it back for a second and final preliminary review with questions that have been proposed by staff, prepared by staff, and by city council.

A second bet. Great. We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. Do we need a, why don't we take a five minute break and we will return. Thank you. back to the city council meeting. Today is July 27, 2026. And we will resume our meeting with item number 16, which is the development of a city naming policy.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of City Council. Tonight's item is more of a policy workshop regarding development of the city's first naming policy. Rather than asking you to adopt a policy this evening, staff is requesting direction on several foundational policy questions that will guide the preparation of a draft policy, which would then come back to Council at a future meeting for consideration. The target date to present to you a naming policy for consideration will be at your next council meeting on August 24th. Currently, the city does not have a formal policy governing the naming or renaming of city-owned assets. Historically, requests have simply come before city council on a case-by-case basis. Most recently, with the naming request coming forward, staff recognized that it would be beneficial to have a consistent framework in place before future requests are considered. To help develop that framework, staff reviewed policies from several California cities, including San Diego, Alameda, Gardena, and Morro Bay, among others. Although each policy is a little different, they generally address the same core issues that we'll be discussing tonight. I do want to point out that this policy is intended to work alongside the city's existing donation policy. Our donation policy already allows the city to recognize donors through things like plaques or recognition markers, but it doesn't address the naming of city-owned assets or property. This policy would establish that process and provide clear guidance for future naming and or renaming requests. So this evening really comes down to four policy questions. We are looking for council's direction regarding what type of city assets should be eligible and if existing assets should be eligible for renaming, what criteria should qualify someone for honorary naming, whether donation recognition through naming should be allowed, and finally, what process should be followed when naming requests are submitted. I'll walk through each of these with you all individually and ask for feedback as we go. So the first policy decision is determining what city-owned assets should actually be eligible for naming. Staff found that cities take a variety of approaches. Some policies apply broadly to all city-owned assets, which would include buildings and streets, open space, right-of-way. Others are more limited, applying only to parks, recreation facilities, or major public amenities, such as City Hall. So tonight, we're looking for your direction on which general approach you would like staff to draft into the policy. And here I have four considerations for you. So one could be all city-owned assets, as mentioned, which would be parks, buildings, streets, et cetera. Another option would be parks, buildings, facilities, and major public amenities, such as city hall, library, plazas, et cetera. The difference between the two would be the removal of streets. The third could be parks and recreation facilities only. So those would be facilities really managed by my department. So parks, the pool, the garden, dog park, et cetera, or other direction. So I'll stop here to open it up for any discussion on eligible assets before moving on to the next question.

for the second square the parks buildings facilities and major public amenities that could also could that also be things that were not as big as like a building but also bigger than you know just the the you know benches and stuff like that I'm trying to think because I like the idea of it being significant facilities and stuff but I don't know does that mean that it's limited to like buildings and parks, like those kind of huge things.

It doesn't have to be, Vice Mayor through the Mayor, it doesn't have to be limited to just those on the screen. It could be, for example, the current request that's awaiting our review would be for a small parcel of land. So that would, I would consider that to fall under that second category. And again, as you all provide direction, I'll make sure to take detailed notes and factor all of this into the drafting of the policy.

Well, having said that, I like the second box personally.

What are some examples of buildings?

It could be Mayor Alicon. It could be City Hall. We don't own the Veterans Memorial Building, but if we were to own something similar or in the future own a building, it could be one of those. The Boathouse on Ash Avenue is a great example, the community library.

I would exclude, I mean, just I'm thinking like the City Hall Library and if we own Veterans Hall, I think I would exclude those. But it would be interesting, like the boathouse, naming of the boathouse, like buildings of that nature.

Can I ask a question? So we obviously don't own Veterans. We don't own the land that the pool is built on. However, it's the municipal pool. So could we, would that be considered naming eligible?

Council Member Mayer, through the Mayor, I believe so.

Yeah, all of it would definitely go into some sort of a contract at some point that would say if we no longer had possession of it, then that would end the contract and protect us that way. So I think anything that we control programmatically, I think even though we don't own Veterans Memorial Building, we did name the library what we wanted to name it, and I think we could do that just with the caveat through a contract. It may not be forever. Thank you.

I can imagine naming like the library community room. Yes. Great. That's great feedback. Thank you.

A question I do have for you, Janet. That would be assets. We talk about assets. What would be considered an asset? For example, let's see, Carpenter and Beautiful used to put labels on their trees, street trees, things like that. Don't know how small you want to go, how large you want to go.

Council Member Nomura through the mayor. For this specific policy, I was thinking a bit larger than the plaques at the base of trees. So an asset could be anything from the locker room at the community pool to the mayor's point, the library community room, a building in its entirety, a park. So although I don't have an exact idea in mind, and again, open to feedback, I would imagine the city-owned asset would be something larger than a tree. It would be a street. would be an example of an option.

The reason I asked that question specifically about street trees, knowing that we're in a situation in our area right now where we have to replace a lot of them, if it includes a financial commitment for that, that could be a potential replacement of a street tree. And that can go through a whole neighborhood if you did it that way. That would definitely help us out as far as city. Something to think about.

I like that idea.

I like that and I also like the idea of not including City Hall or the library you know or those particular ones and then but I like it with that could that include like trails and things like that.

Vice Mayor Solorzano through the mayor. Yes, it could with the exception of anything that would be under our agreement with the Santa Barbara Land Trust and adhering to the, but trails outside of the Bluffs property, essentially, yes, could be eligible for naming or renaming.

And I think that for me, I would be interested to know what other people think too, but like naming streets, I'm not, that feels a little bit different. Like I wouldn't, I'd feel less comfortable with that than with the other ones that we've discussed right now.

If I could.

Although a lot of our streets are named.

I mean any new ones, like you know. Understood.

Just for the conversation, I think ways that I think about it is naming as honorary. I think we're going to get to this later on in the policy that some cities do not accept money for these types of things. It's meant to be truly in recognition. And then I would take things like naming. Well, I don't know that we would name the tree that this is this tree, but the plaque thing is kind of like a sponsorship. So I think we could maybe do that under more of our sponsorship policy where you sponsor a tree. And then the name, and again, this is just for conversation. I think you can do whatever you all decide to do. But thinking about it as honorary recognition versus a sponsorship thing, I would think of it more that way, personally.

Yeah, I appreciate that distinction because I think naming streets, it feels more suiting for it to be honorary as opposed to sponsorship.

Well, that goes back to the slide prior to where it says donor recognition. That's why I was curious about that.

Yes, and in the future slide, we will discuss just honorary naming versus naming for a monetary donation.

So if I give you enough money, will you name the city after me?

Sure.

And then we can actually go through, I think, through some of these next steps and then return back to this at the end and see if it's changed your mind on what types of things we might name or not name.

And if I can jump in, just a reminder, we'll wanna take public comment before we have any specific motions or directions to staff, thank you.

Thank you. I apologize, I know this is out of the norm of our process, so I appreciate you all bearing with me.

And then, sorry, just for clarity, so if you go back to the last slide, it sounds like it was all it would be that first bucket just with just some exclusions of buildings and then we're going to revisit pieces of it is that correct

Mayor, what I have written down here for my notes is generally the second idea with exclusion of larger buildings or more established, depending on how you look at it, including city hall, the library, however, options for naming buildings such as the boathouse or rooms such as the community room. And I heard from the vice mayor, no streets. Okay, and again, happy to once we go through them all come back and go through just to make sure I have a good understanding of everyone's opinions. So next is if city-owned assets should be eligible for renaming. Some agencies do allow renaming using the same standard as new facilities would be. Others allow it only under limited circumstances because changing established names can have historical significance and practical impacts such as replacing the signage, updating maps, publications, and public records. And other agencies discourage renaming altogether. And again, here just looking for some direction regarding renaming. Examples here, I am thinking, you know, Monta Vista Park as an example.

I like the idea of under limited circumstances, and maybe with a heightened justification for it, just so that it will be more of a robust process to look into than just naming. That's what I would think.

Yeah, I agree. I was thinking specifically of the skate park, which is called the Carpinteria Skate Park, but if in 25 years you wanted to name it after someone, if it had the right justification, that would be clear, but... Understood. Which is a rename. Yep, absolutely.

And it looks like there's consensus for that across the council. Yeah.

Wonderful. Next is the question of what should qualify someone or something for honorary naming. Across the policies we reviewed, the most common criteria include significant and lasting service, historic or cultural significance, demonstrated local impact, land donations, significant financial contributions, and in many cases requiring an individual to be deceased, sometimes with a waiting period. I'm interested in hearing whether there are additional criteria you would like included or whether there are any listed here that you would prefer not to include.

I would prefer not to include financial contribution.

But the only thing I would worry, like what if somebody were to give a big donation for the pool that allows us to do all the work we need to do?

I don't know.

Well that's a tough one.

Yeah.

As in 100 percent or 120 percent. Right.

Exactly. That's a tough one. Maybe case by case.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Because I know what you mean and I agree with you.

Maybe like if there's a significant financial contribution there also needs to be something else like a demonstrated local impact or like I don't know.

I like that. Council that's great feedback. The city manager Ramirez brought something up about going under the donation policy as well. This one would straddle both policies. One thing I do want to note is any donations over $50,000 would be brought to your council for approval per our donation policy. And those thresholds are set on our purchasing guidelines. So there would be kind of two-fold opportunity for you guys to assess if there was a significant financial contribution. And it could be part of a donation agreement, which you could... discuss during that aspect when you're accepting the donation. And also, interestingly enough, just last week, Goleta took to their city council naming of a portion of their library, which is currently under renovation, and it was a two-fold naming request. So someone who was very involved in the library and the community and had a significant financial impact. contribution or donation to the project. Goleta does not have a specific naming policy that I could find, but the council considered it and so both, it was exactly what you had mentioned. It was kind of a both and thing.

I do have a comment on these also with the seven that you have. The bottom two, individual is deceased or awaiting a waiting period after death. I don't know if that's as important. We could use it as a guideline, but it may be that naming somebody that when they're still alive would be of greater impact to the community than if they were waiting to be acknowledged after they were dead, knowing that they're going to get it anyways.

I would ask, because I know you did a lot of research about this, so is there a reason that oftentimes people wanted to have a waiting period?

Vice Mayor Solar Snow, through the mayor, in the policies I read, there was no real reasoning behind just the policies themselves. I have assumptions that perhaps they were just hoping that

I could tell you what the reason for those are, actually. It has to do with political ambitions. A person would get the naming rights knowing that they had ulterior motives to get that position or naming specific. So they're trying to extend themselves with another ladder. In the case that we're looking at, my opinion, we would be able to go through and decide whether or not that was a fact if we were aware of that. And that's usually the case.

That makes sense.

I'm thinking specifically about what you said like there's a quite a great impact to the community if you are going to name something after someone anyway and they happen to still be with you to give them that honor that that is quite meaningful actually thank you

The next policy in question we've touched on a bit is the donor recognition. It's really a philosophical decision for you all. Some cities reserve naming solely for honorary recognition and do not allow financial contributions to result in naming rights. Other cities allow naming opportunities for significant public investments, for example, substantial capital donations, land donations, or long-term maintenance endowments. If council wishes to allow donor recognition, the future policy would establish thresholds and parameters. Tonight I'm just asking whether this concept is something that you would like staff to include. Just based on our conversations two slides ago, it's sounding like you're willing to entertain it potentially in partnership with someone who has made a meaningful impact to the community. So hand in hand.

I would say case by case.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

The next one's a little bit more straightforward, and it's who should be allowed to initiate a naming request. Should they be able to come from members of the public, community organizations, advisory bodies, city departments, city council, all of the above, a combination of these? And this will help me develop a consistent application process.

guess I can see it being fine if maybe if any member of the public had an idea but then it would have to go through like city staff and then be presented to council if it's like a significant building or something like that and then we would discuss it that way so I don't know I guess that would mean maybe any member of the public could initiate it but it wouldn't mean that it would it might not even pass like the staff level to move forward potentially I

I don't know though, what do you think? Yeah, I think I'm on to what you're saying. I think that if any member of the public initiates it, then the staff should probably have someone in an advisory capacity or a community organization give a reference of some sort before it is advanced. There should be some buy-in from the people that are helping us make our decisions.

Correct, and I think there should also be a vetting process included in that one just to make sure you don't have to retract that honorarium at a later date or time. Wonderful.

All right. Next, again, another more straightforward. What information should be required at the time of a request? Some suggestions would be, of course, the asset that's being proposed, the proposed name, the justification for as to why, supporting documentation, evidence of community support, and applicable justification for renaming, but what I've heard is we will entertain renaming on a case-by-case basis, so they would need to provide significant justification.

Yeah, and I guess under justification would be something like their relationship to whatever the entity was. But I guess I would also possibly go under justification, but I feel like that would be a nice thing to require, too.

All right, wonderful. The final policy question is the review process. All of the cities we reviewed ultimately reserve final approval authority to city council. The question is really what happens before it would get to you. Should the request first be reviewed by staff? I've heard yes, that sounds like a great first step. Should the appropriate advisory body provide a recommendation? Here I'm thinking the Library Advisory Commission, if it were the Library Community Room, COSMAP, Carpentria Open Space Management Advisory Body, if it were anything in our open spaces as examples. Or would council prefer requests come directly to council?

Definitely staff review. And then I like the idea of the advisory body, if that happens to be applicable for whatever it is.

I think anything that makes our decision streamlined, but also with as much relevant information. Wonderful.

I'm sorry, if I just could add really quickly. In terms of for staff, I mean, I agreed with Council Member Nomura when he talked about the vetting aspect of it, and I think when I speculated about why there was a requirement for this to be you know, after death or a certain number of years is there's some sort of just an automatic sort of vetting process that comes with that. And there is some concern, I think, for our ability as staff. Well, I think vetting is a good idea, the ability of us to receive a request for someone and for us to be able to do the appropriate level of vetting to do that. And so any ideas or thoughts the council has on how to,

take that process on i mean of course if it happens once every however long it's not an issue but i do have some concerns for staff and our ability to vet appropriately i i also have a concern on that part of it if it comes to city council um open comments is going to be extremely difficult we do not want to put that forward um that opens us up for liability my suggestion would be that we would probably wanna have some sort of advisory board committee put in place for this specific. Whether they be named in person or by position, I think that would be important. And the reason I say that, it should be, well, it should be protected under the Brown Act. In other words, only two members if council's gonna be involved with this one. And it should be something that could go in a meeting position like that that doesn't have to be public noticed and public informationed. I'm very concerned that if in fact we find something, it's going to be presented to public with a negative, and this person is going to be held in high esteem. So that's why I'm concerned about that, and I think that's why this should be ultimately our first review behind closed doors by a committee.

No, I was just, I'll let Jenna jump in after, but I think that's the advantage in this case of, you know, whereas with the arts policy where we built in a lot of flexibility, one of the ways you can take this is to set these elevated standards so that it doesn't become those types of questions when it's a lesser standard and the room's filled with people for and against and we're vetting and doing all sorts of things. I think that is the one advantage to not having as much flexibility in this instance and setting a high bar up front that staff can check against or a process we can develop. The lower that standard is, the more vetting that's required, the more room for debate and conversation I think that there is that could put the council in a difficult position. I think that's all part of the reason why we went from developing a policy to present to you tonight and asking questions because we started to struggle with many of these same discussions as we talked amongst ourselves, but very interested on your guys' thoughts on that because that was a dilemma that we came across.

I would say one example, without putting any names out there, is potential for somebody that has been honored as a civil rights leader that they find some secondary instances have to retract those, and that's something I don't want to see.

I really like Council Member Nemer's suggestion of putting together a specific advisory body to review the naming, or to do the vetting.

If I can jump in there, Mayor Alarcon, council members, that may be possible in some situations, but as you remember, you would have to be creating an ad hoc committee, and so an ad hoc committee is created with a very specific, limited scope and timeline. So we wouldn't be creating a, you know, for example, when we were talking about the arts committee for the public artwork policy, there would be the creation of a committee standing committee that would review all proposals that would come in and do the preliminary review here if this is something that we were interested in and you know it would have to be we'd have to see how it all worked out but assuming these are proposals that come in very very infrequently and we may not always you know need to have a committee to do this initial review process, we could consider creating an ad hoc committee for the naming of a specific asset. We would just want to be very careful that it wasn't like we weren't creating a new ad hoc committee every six months to do something.

One of the things Ryan just brought up to me was that Galita had formed a standing committee for naming in 2010. They named one thing and eventually disbanded the standing committee for just lack of activity. I'm not sure why they decided to disband that. Something else we could look into, but it sounds like various different processes have been taken on by other cities.

Okay. As we wrap up tonight's workshop, I want to open it up to see if there are any other considerations you would like staff to explore or incorporate into the draft policy, or if there's any additional direction you'd like to provide that we haven't already discussed. Then I'm happy to review everything to make sure we're all on the same page.

I do have one question. Jeanette, is there a specific item or a reason that this is being brought to us now? In other words, is there somebody that is seeking naming rights?

Yes, Council Member Nomura, through the Mayor, I believe back in April, Carpentria Open Space Management Advisory Body, COSMAB, and I believe it was Ted Rhodes, came to your council requesting you all entertain the idea of renaming what is known as the Farmer Parcel in honor of Vera Benson. And it was brought to Cozumab via the citizens of the Carpinteria Bluffs, Ted brought it to your council, and two council members did request that it be put on a future agenda.

Yes. Okay, thank you. Yep, that helps.

I have a question in terms of the naming of a building. How would we, each building is so different, right? So if we take the pool, for example, or the locker room, would it be the total renovation cost of the locker if someone comes in and says, I can renovate the whole locker, then that qualifies them in addition to how they've interacted with the city, but would it be the total cost and then that qualifies them to potentially have their name on it?

Mayor Alcon, that's a great question, and I think that's something that would have to be discussed by your council when it was presented. But yes, I would assume it would need to be, based on what I'm hearing, a fairly significant donation in addition to the community, their support of the community historically. So off the cuff, I would imagine if you were to pay for the entire renovation of a locker room or close to it, That plus your commitment to the community could be something you all would consider an equal to result in the naming. But to your point, everything is so different as we were drafting this. We couldn't possibly think of dollar amounts and thresholds for every single item. So it will definitely have to be a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, but and that's something that staff could discuss with the donor to get to You know what their donation what they were thinking what was needed what makes sense and then present it to your counsel for consideration Thank you So do you think we actually need a naming policy to be put in place or could we handle this as a case-by-case?

I

Council Member Nomura through the Mayor, that's completely up to City Council direction here this evening. Historically, the Council has reviewed the one naming item that I'm aware of, just on a case-by-case basis, but similar to the policy created earlier, it could be considered best practice to have some framework in place so that if there were naming you all perhaps were not in support of, you could have some guidelines to point to as to the reason behind it. But ultimately, unless our city attorney has another legal advice, I believe it would ultimately be up to your council. There were many cities that I researched that did not currently have a naming policy in place or one that I could find. And so, it would be up to your council.

Have you seen any templates, anything like that that we could borrow from, quote, and use that maybe as a guideline instead of trying to create a whole policy here this evening?

Oh, yes. Council Member Nomura, through the mayor, very much so. The city of San Diego had a very robust naming policy that I have printed and would be a great template. sounding from what I'm hearing from you all tonight would line up very closely. So I would definitely take from other cities things that we thought were really fit and aligned with what we have rather than reinventing the wheel, if you would.

Personally, I'd like to see that first before we make a decision on this.

Maybe hearing this or putting this back on a future agenda with that information would sure help.

Let's see. So you're asking for this feedback now, right? And you're saying you could plug it into kind of an existing or some sort of a template in a sense, right? So, I mean, it seems like I'm not sure if we would need the extra step or, you know, because I like the idea of having the policy to work with, and it sounds like, you know, that the information you provided, it's pretty extensive, so I'm not sure what would be the next step from your staff perspective on how to move forward.

Vice Mayor Sorcino, through the Mayor, my original intention for this evening was to solicit feedback and craft a policy. We have our policy template, which is just a very bare bones of the looks of our policy, and then I would pull from other policies for language and I'm happy to bring these policies back to you. I'm also happy to add them as attachments to a future staff report with a draft policy, if you would like, so that you can look at them side by side to see what I was pulling from and working with, if that would be something.

Personally, I'd like to see that. If we had a policy that we could adopt, put in place, we could still run this through as a case by case, knowing that we have guidelines specific to make that decision on.

Mm-hmm.

Vice Mayor, so, you know, I think these questions were actually derived from, and Jeanette can correct me if I'm wrong, from review of multiple policies and seeing where the policies differentiated. So we felt like if we brought you one policy that we might not have gotten as far as we got, if we could say, hey, some of the policies required it to be posthumously, some not, some here. And so each of these are similar points in policies that have been uh... adopted by someone and so if we could figure out uh... wasted on those we could find which one most closely aligned and then you know tweak it a little bit if there was a specific point i think there's different things from larger cities and the thought of even naming something versus a smaller city and so i think sometimes looking you know at San Diego or LA could just be completely different than you know looking at at Carpinteria with a longer history and closer-knit community whereas LA it might be more about multi-million dollar donations and so we we just found that there wasn't something that matched exactly and so came with these with these questions but based on the feedback we can look now back at the ones that we do have the feedback that's the most we were pretty direct on those

Thank you for that clarification. I totally get it now. Thank you.

Can I ask a question that goes back to the original reason we're having this conversation, which is about Vera Benson? Would it be possible for us to Would you would we prefer to do this get this policy and then talk about this because she's got to be 95 and she's probably like our greatest land conservationists in Carpinteria and a huge reason why we have what we've got. And I think that that was why it got brought forward is to honor her before she passes away. I mean, honor her while she's still with us is a better way to put that. So I guess I do sense that it is sort of timely.

Council Member, Mayor, through the Mayor, my intention would be to, similar to earlier today, perhaps bring them both at your next council meeting, understanding that there's just one council meeting in August, and they're from some members of the COSMAP, although they're very understanding, a bit of a sense of urgency with their request.

I'm good with that.

And if I could just jump in, in terms of some of the legal concerns here, they're very similar to the legal concerns surrounding free speech with the public artwork policy. So in this situation, because the request is coming from outside the city, that's what implicates the free speech concerns. If it were the city deciding to name something, the city council deciding to name something without whether you're entertaining or encouraging requests coming in from the public, that's where the free speech concerns arise and so that's why we'd want to have a policy with specific criteria to use so that our evaluation wasn't considered to be viewpoint discriminatory, it would be viewpoint neutral. So I think the proposal that Jeanette came up with makes sense and would be the most protective.

Yeah, thank you for that explanation If it's all right with you I'll just run through them all really quickly so that you can offer any last comments make sure I get a full understanding Regarding to which assets should be eligible generally the second box here Parks buildings with the exception of the City Hall library larger facilities and such but things such as the boathouse library community room would be entertained and no streets and Generally no to renaming assets with the understanding that it would be done under limited circumstances with a heightened justification and would require a more robust process. In regards to naming criteria, we talked about significant financial contribution and demonstrated historic or cultural significant local impacts, land donations and the like. donor recognition and naming rights. Again, we kind of touched on it. If it was significant financial contributions tied with an honorary recognition, Here generally anyone in the community is welcome to submit a naming request, understanding it would go through a process which would begin with an application at the staff level and then jumping ahead a bit, reviewed by any applicable advisory board or body if they're in existence. If not, I'll work with the city attorney to explore some options for either standing up an ad hoc or something to review these on a case by case basis before they get to your council. Required information generally everything listed here significant justification And again, if renaming would require a more robust process and more justification Review process again staff advisory body City Council And I think that's all thank you all so much I if you have any questions I Any other questions?

Real quick on that one. I didn't know if you said that or not, but it was the one under naming criteria. An individual had to be deceased or death period. That was not included, correct? Well, we can remove that. Thank you.

Great.

Okay. Just a reminder to take public comment. Perfect. That's what I'm going to do. I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We do have one raised hand, Ted Rhodes. Ted, go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I wasn't planning to speak, but I just wanted to reiterate that this is a rather unusual situation in that I just want to remind folks, I'm sure you read materials earlier, but The farmer parcel, which we found very confusing, both as a member of the city advisory board and as citizens for the Carpenter Bluffs, that was a quiet purchase that was made when Matt Roberts was parks director of the city. It was a $500,000 acquisition because there could have been a two-story R&D building put there to protect the view quarters of the Carpenter Bluffs. We had some money left over from our first acquisition, so We went in with the city and a Department of Interior grant. It's kind of the perfect scenario for public participation. And between the three groups, we purchased that property. In hindsight, we would have renamed it at the time because constantly people said, oh, did that used to be a farm, farmers out there? And no, it was two brothers named Farmer. So in hindsight, we would have named it back in, 2009, but anyway, I appreciate and respect the fact that you want to have a policy on it, but this is a rather unusual situation, which in the past had been done a little more informally. But anyway, hopefully we can address this at the next council meeting, and thanks for your support on this.

Thank you for your comments, Ted.

And Mayor, that concludes Zoom comment.

I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for any additional comments, questions, and of course a motion.

I don't think we need a motion for this one, right? Is that right? Vice Mayor, to the Mayor, I do not need a motion, but thank you. I've received all the feedback.

Okay. We will now move on to the next item, which is item 17, which is period two, department reports for the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget.

As Mayor, Council, community members, we're here with our period two departmental reports. We changed from the quarter to the period as we moved this to a semi-annual process as we went to the two-year budget. So it's quarterly for the two-year budget. And we're going to have each one of our department heads speak to you about each of the... departments going on over the last six months. I'll turn it over to Ryan to start off with general government.

Thank you, Michael. Good evening, Mayor, council members. So on the general government side, as you guys know, we have city administration, communications, emergency preparedness, elections, human resources, risk management, records management, and community services support. A lot of things went on this past quarter, so I'll go over them now. So during period two, we made significant progress across several of those program areas I just mentioned, including an emergency preparedness. We initiated the development of both the city's emergency operation plan and a new five-year emergency preparedness plan, while also graduating 17 local teens through our basic CERT program. For elections, staff completed the work to prepare for the Fall 2026 election that's coming up, including the City Council elections and the Transaction and Use Tax Measure Potential ballot measure, while also successfully administering the process for the Prop 218 Assessment District balloting process. Within records management, we completed the migration to the city's new agenda management software, Civic Plus, and through that we've improved efficiency and transparency for our agenda preparation. In city administration, the council adopted the city's e-conveyance ordinance and staff executed an agreement with Move Santa Barbara to establish the youth diversion program. that will support the implementation of this ordinance, which will be probably launching sometime in the fall after we conduct several months of enforcement with the sheriff's office. We also worked on developing the draft of the city's new artwork in public places policy, which you saw tonight, and we coordinated the annual State of the City event. That does take a lot of work. Hats off to Juliza and Michael for a lot of work there in partnership with Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce. And then finally, through our community services support grant program, the city completed grant awards and recipient reporting while risk management staff completed comprehensive insurance records audit to ensure appropriate coverage and identify potential cost savings. On the engagement side, it really did remain a major focal point throughout the reporting period, not just for our department, but for all departments. We continued outreach through the Teen Cert Program, the State of the City Program, not just the South Coast Chamber, but ours, extensive community outreach related to assessment district ballot proceedings and education efforts surrounding the proposed transaction and tax use measure. Staff also continued supporting the host program and other community events that strengthen communication between the city and our residents. So our upcoming priorities, looking ahead, several major initiatives will continue to work through this next reporting period. Staff will complete the city's emergency operations plan and prepare for both the fall 2026 municipal election, including the new measure IVE, the transaction use tax. So that'll be upcoming this period. Within human resources, priorities include completing the class and comp study, which we're kicking off our meeting with the consultant on August 3rd. Updating the personnel rules and regulations, we're continuing to make progress there. Conducting union negotiations, that is gonna be a big one for us. And then also continuing the recruitment for several of our vacant positions. Staff will also launch, as I mentioned, the youth diversion program in the fall. And we'll continue development in the arts and public places program as those proposals work through the system that we just adopted tonight. We're also going to begin share of contract negotiations, a big one for our department. And then we'll be developing with your council the next strategic plan. And then just quickly on a financial overview for us, during the reporting period, major expenditures did include the class and comp, the community grant program funding that went out, and continued development of the city's emergency operations plan. Looking ahead, one of the most significant long-term priorities continues to be fiscal sustainability, as you all know. As operating costs continue to increase, as you all know, particularly in public safety, infrastructure, insurance, and construction, staff will continue evaluating the cost recovery opportunities in addition to our ongoing revenue, increasing our revenues, as we mentioned through Measure I on the November ballot. So that concludes general government and I'm here for any questions you may have. And if no questions, I'll turn it over to Lisette.

I do have a quick question for you there, Ryan. Yeah. You have one of the slides shows community engagement. On that one there, could you tell me what the difference is between community engagement committee and also the public engagement committee?

Yes, so we only have one committee, and it is the community, it's a public engagement committee. Correct. Yeah, so we don't really have a community engagement committee, just a public engagement committee.

Okay, and the reason I'm asking that, there seems to be an overlap on that as far as goals and responsibilities. I was just curious if that's something that we should be looking at working together with, or...

Yeah, Council Member Namor, the community engagement is just a section that we have of all the department slides where we just cover any community engagement events that we had that could be tabling at another city event or a festival, not meant to be confused with the program or the committee that is the public engagement committee. This is just a way to classify some activities.

Any other questions?

Okay, thank you.

Oh, I have a question. Sorry. I see here under community engagement, hosted and coordinated regional professional networking events, including the MMASC Region 1 event. Yes. What was that? Yes, good question.

So Ryan Benson, our management analyst, he does serve on the board for MMASC, and as part of our support of professional development, we encouraged him to participate, and he worked to host that one event, and he represented the City of Carpentry in that event. his presence at that event.

Great, and then one other question for you, because a lot of the outreach that was conducted in this department was clearly geared towards informing the community of the assessment districts, tax measures, town hall, which I'm really excited to see. We're doing a lot more community engagement than we have done in the past, just this last year and a half or two years. What are some kind of takeaways that the team has learned when we're hosting these?

That's a really good question. I think Michael is ready to provide a response.

Yeah, Mayor, I've had the opportunity to make some of these presentations. I've found that we have a very engaged community, and they've been giving us a lot of feedback on how our presentations are being interpreted. And so I think you always find that you have blind spots and things that you think are being digested a certain way when they're not. So it's been very helpful to get that feedback, whether it be through emails or other committees we've also found that there's sometimes constraints on on what we can do maybe through our monthly committees or various engagements that we do and there's things like our mid cycle we just talked about this at finance committee things that we can do during our mid cycle and end of year activities that we may not be able to do on a monthly um And so I think what I've learned is about realizing there's going to be a mix of information that we give out that's going to be dependent upon frequency and the audience. You also always tend to learn that no matter how much you do to try to get the information out, it seems you can never get it out far enough. And so, you know, that's where Julissa and the work that she's doing in social media because, you know, oftentimes people are just not going to get the information from us. But if they can get it from people that they know or through their, you know, various networks, that has helped. And so those are just some of the things that I've certainly learned. Happy to try to think of some more, but those are the ones that jump out at me.

That's helpful.

Thank you. Can I ask a quick question just because it came up? You mentioned the share of contract negotiations. Can you just remind us when that's going to happen?

Yes, Michael will answer. So a lot of these negotiations, this process, is going to be a lot of research out of our office. Our contract technically still allows for, I forget whether it's two or three one-year extensions, but even with that, this is such a lengthy process, and it's also one that we collaborate with some of our other neighboring agencies that in terms of our research and all of those things leading up to starting now. But we technically still have extensions that we can go on. And then there's also, I think there's a year notice that we give before we terminate our contract. So just with the basic term of the agreement ending, our staff has already begun doing research on our next negotiation. So that's the phase we're in right now.

So the basic term ends 2027?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'll turn it over to Lisette.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council and the public. I will be providing an update for the Administrative Services Department. Some of our department highlights. During this period, the Administrative Services Department made significant progress on several initiatives that improve efficiency, strengthen internal controls, and support long-term operations. Staff participated in professional development to expand expertise in municipal finance, procurement, treasury management, technology, and cybersecurity. We completed interim grant procedures and began developing a comprehensive grant management policy to strengthen grant oversight and accountability. In May, we implemented an electronic bid management platform, improving procurement efficiency, vendor communications, and transparency. The department also implemented a capital asset policy and the GovWealth cash receding upload template, reducing manual processes while improving internal controls and financial accountability. Finally, we procured a contract management system and began configuration. Once implemented, it will centralize contract records automate notifications and enhance contract oversight. Overall, these accomplishments demonstrate our continued commitment to improving operations, increasing efficiency and responsibility managing the city's resources. Under the community engagement during this period, we supported several community outreach efforts including presentations on the fiscal year 25-26 mid-year budget review and the fiscal year 26-27 mid-cycle budget update, providing the city council and community with updates on the city's financial position. Staff also supported outreach for the assessment districts and transaction and use tax initiatives by providing financial analysis and public education to help residents understand these measures. Upcoming department priorities. Looking ahead, the department will focus on three initiatives. First, we will begin developing the fiscal year 2027 to 2032 five-year financial plan, including procuring a financial planning consultant and re-evaluating the city's long-term fiscal sustainability. We will also finalize the grant management policy and bring it forward to city council consideration and strengthen grant administration and internal controls. Finally, we will begin implementing Office 365 migration, including consultant procurement, project planning, staff training, and the transition to a modern cloud-based environment. These priorities will continue to strengthen our financial planning, improve operational efficiencies, and it has a technology that supports city services. Our financial overview, the administrative service department remains within the adopted budget with no major expenditures or budget overruns to report. As of June 30th, 2026, revenues totaled approximately 95,600 or 96% of the budget, while expenditures totaled approximately 1.43 million or 92% of the budget. These figures are preliminary and may change slightly as year-end invoices, accruals, and financial accounting adjustments are completed. This concludes my presentation and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Questions? I just have a quick question about the five-year financial plan development. Have we used a financial planning consultant to do the five-year plan before? Is this just common practice?

Yes, so the city hired the first consultant in 2017, this is before I started, and we completed it and reported it to council. and then the same consultant did the current plan that we're in right now that expires at the end of 2027. Okay, great, thanks.

No other questions?

I'll just add, interestingly, that Measure X was a recommendation that came out of one of those five-year financial plans. Oh, and also confirmed that we have three one-year potential extensions for the share of contract, and it is one year's notice from my previous.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Lisette? Okay, we'll have Nick come on up for community development.

Good evening again, council. This last reporting period I think reflects or continues kind of a trend that I've reported on previously, including most recently at the mid-cycle budget hearing where our department as a whole was exceptionally busy in the development and review side of things, working on a handful of large projects that took up a lot of our staff time and staff resources. And because of that, we weren't as successful as I would have liked to have been at completing some of our other strategic plan priorities for this last reporting period. That being said we were able to check a couple things off the list and make some progress on a few of our key efforts Among these were we were able to complete the original or the initial development of our new online building permit platform and do a what I'm calling a soft launch and beta testing of that platform that's still continuing right now as we work through some of the final details on that process, and we're hoping to have that ready for a full public launch later this summer or early fall. In the advanced planning program, we've continued to make some progress at moving the general plan update along. That included both publishing the updated marked up version of the public draft with comments incorporated from our public comment exercise that was conducted over the winter, and then completing the initial scoping and notice of preparation work for the EIR, which is now underway. Uh, then also in the events planning realm, we were able to make some progress on updates to our ordinance, getting the draft updated ordinance submitted to both state HCD and the California Coastal Commission for comments and feedback. And just recently got those back end of last month. And so now we're. back in the dungeons tinkering with those and hoping to refine those, that ordinance based on those comments. And we've also got now a relatively complete draft of our supportive and special needs housing ordinance coming together and hope to have that ready for public hearings later this year. um not as interesting maybe on on face value but nevertheless very important we were able to update our planning project application submittal checklist to comply with current state housing law requirements and so this better protects the city going forward in terms of the information that we request of developers or that we're allowed to request from developers you need to list out everything up front and if it's not in the checklist you really can't ask for it later and so um you know sounds like not a very interesting or or uh challenging exercise but it took us quite a while to work through that and make sure that we had a robust list and so that's up on our city website now and then finally um as you know we we did some work behind the scenes with dignity moves to help facilitate their submittal of a grant application for the encampment resolution funding. And we're waiting to hear where that goes. But hopefully, if that goes through, that could help facilitate a supportive housing development here in the city sometime down the road. On the community engagement side of things, I really just wanted to highlight a couple of efforts that we did here that I thought were kind of interesting. So our associate planner, Megan Mussoff, had an opportunity to do a guest lecture for a UCSB environmental studies course on the California Coastal Act and local land use planning. And so that was a great opportunity for Megan, you know, kind of neat for her, too, since she was just only a couple years out of the UCSB Environmental Studies program to come back and wow the cohort coming in behind her with all she's learned since she left the ivory tower of UCSB. And then the other one on here that I really thought was really cool and I'd like to see us do again is the Leash Law Enforcement Campaign that I talked about a little bit earlier today on the Carpinteria Bluffs. That's our first time that we've done that. We took a week to work with the Parks Department to put up additional signage and have a more dedicated presence out there on the bluffs. And our code enforcement officers really thought that it was a successful a way to connect with a lot of people, educate or remind folks of leash laws. And I think we only ended up, over the course of the week, maybe issuing two citations. And those are for folks who saw the officer, hooked the dog up, and then as soon as they were 25 steps past, unhooked the dog again and continued on their way. But I'd like to see us continue this. It seemed like a successful strategy and replicate it again, not only on the bluffs, but maybe in other open space areas like the Salt Marsh Park. In terms of upcoming priorities for this new reporting period, again, we're really trying to get that full public launch of our new permitting platform up and running. We're also looking to release an RFP for the building permit fee study, continuing work on the general plan update. and some of our other housing implementation strategies. We need to recruit and fill a vacant building official position. That wasn't on my strategic plan, but it is now. Continuing to work towards some opportunities for affordable housing. then also under animal control as kind of goes along with the permitting platform is we're looking to transition dog licensing onto an online permitting platform that makes it both easier for the public to license their dog and administratively easier on our staff to stay up to date on that and keep current And finally, in terms of the financial overview, nothing too exciting to report out here other than we closed out the year outperforming revenue projections for the year by quite a bit. We came in as a department approximately 60% over what was initially estimated for the department for the fiscal year. A lot of that was in planning charges, but it also was reflected in revenues collected for building permits and even fines and citations. And I'll wrap it up there unless you have any questions for me.

Questions? No questions, thank you.

Okay, so for this next one, Jeanette and I are going to tag team to present on Public Works. So during this period, the department really did work very hard on advancing major capital improvement projects, which you'll see a lot of our sustainability initiatives and community outreach, as well as long-term infrastructure planning. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeanette. This one.

So during period two, staff continued expanding community outreach efforts and worked with hundreds of residents and community partners to promote sustainability throughout Carpinteria. Collectively, they hosted or supported five community outreach events that reached approximately 500 residents. Those efforts resulted in the proper disposal of more than 22 tons of household and hazardous waste, diverted over 700 pounds of material from the landfill through repair and reuse, Removed approximately 300 pounds of litter from local waterways and involved more than 25 volunteers and community partners.

Great and then on the administration capital improvement program highlights so staff did submit a 1.42M safe streets and roads for all grant application. We're really opening, hoping that this will get funded because it's going to go towards pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements at 4 major intersections throughout the city. The Public Works Department also advanced the Franklin Creek Trail Improvements Project. A big phase was we went into construction phase of that project, so that's a big one. Another major accomplishment was the completion of the Linden Avenue Improvement Project, as the council is aware. And then finally, we did execute an agreement with the SPCAG Santa Barbara County Association of Governments that provides $198,900 and alternative funding for the Franklin Creek Trail project. So that leveraged some outside funding and it does help reduce reliance on discretionary city resources.

Our annual for community engagement, our annual household goods and hazardous waste collection day served 335 households and safely collected over 22 tons of material for proper disposal. Staff hosted the second annual Fix-It Fair, where volunteers helped repair or diagnose more than 100 household items, keeping approximately 700 pounds of material out of the landfill. Staff also held the Cyclemania Family Ride, which brought together approximately 50 community members for a fun event promoting bicycle safety and active transportation. Staff continued expanding bilingual outreach by providing educational materials in both English and Spanish and partnering with the Promotores Network to better reach our Spanish-speaking community. And finally, staff partnered with AgeWell during National Public Works Week to highlight the important work public work staff do every day to keep our community running smoothly. Thank you.

Thanks, Jeanette. And then looking ahead for some of our department priorities in public works, one of the biggest ones is the completion of the Franklin Creek Trail Improvement Project and delivering this important act of transportation improvement to this community. We're also gonna be developing the next five-year capital improvement program. So beginning this fall, we will engage city leadership, stakeholder groups, and the public through multiple workshops and special meetings to identify and prioritize the community's next five-year future infrastructure needs. So that's a big one for the department. In addition, staff will continue advancing capital improvement projects while also pursuing grants and other external funding to maximize investment in the city's critical infrastructure.

For the Sustainability and Environment Division, the next period, staff will continue building on those outreach efforts through events like Creek Week and Pumpkin Smash while strengthening partnerships across city departments and with community organizations. We'll also continue improving how we measure outreach success through standardized feedback and evaluation tools, and we'll develop a volunteer database to better coordinate future volunteer opportunities. One item I'd like to briefly highlight is a strategic plan goal related to developing 100% energy sustainable and resilient city facilities. As staff began planning, it became clear that this goal warrants further evaluation. Since the strategic plan was adopted, federal funding opportunities have been significantly reduced and the overall scope of achieving 100% energy sustainability across all city facilities is extremely ambitious, particularly for our small organization. So during this next reporting period, staff will evaluate the feasibility of this goal and return to council with recommendations that better reflect current funding realities, organizational capacity, and measurable outcomes that are within our control.

Okay, and then I'll wrap up the Public Works Department with our financial overview. So one of our big investment this year was, or in this last reporting period, was 28 new combination refuse and recycling receptacles for a total of 85,000. The slide also highlights some reductions in the budget. We did this just looking at some cost-cutting measures. I know the community's really looking at the city to really cut some costs, so Public Works did take some time to look at some costs we could cut. including some railroad support services. We did cut some expenditures on the pedestrian bridge inspections, the storm drain master plan, and some irrigation repairs. Michael will make a comment here, but I'll just stress this was also at the end of the fiscal year too. So there was only a few weeks left of the fiscal year and we knew some of this work wasn't gonna happen anyways. So another reason for the cut. So happy to answer any questions.

No questions, thank you. Wonderful, then I'll move into Parks, Recreation, and Community Services. And period two was another very active six months across all divisions. And like every other department, I just want to highlight that these goals were in addition to my staff's everyday work of running the facilities, offering programs, and these are just the additional projects that they worked on. So a lot of department highlights there for you. I will touch on just a few. So AgeWell received more than 120 participant survey responses, which will help staff continue to improve our programming. The community garden also completed its annual participant survey and continued expanding community engagement. AgeWell, the community garden and park and facility rentals completed the translation of all major program applications and forms into Spanish. both online and in print. And although not in our strategic plan, I do want to highlight some of our ongoing daily work that staff are doing, which included relaunching the Doggie Pot Sponsorship Program after a one-year hiatus and successfully securing sponsors for all 31 stations. Our summer co-ed softball league continued to grow. We welcomed 12 teams this summer, which included one new team this season. Staff also submitted the development plans for the permanent Monta Vista off-leash dog park in partnership with Public Works. At the library, staff continue implementing the three-year strategic plan while expanding outreach, partnerships, and inclusive programming. The community pool renovation project continued making steady progress and has now secured $373,000 in philanthropic funding, while Sunday swim lessons exceeded enrollment expectations with approximately 86% average enrollment, which does meet those cost recovery goals. Finally, through the California State Library's Every Story Counts initiative, the library received an impressive $92.6 5% community approval rating and secured three competitive grants to further expand programming and services. Moving on to community engagement, which again is a major focus of our department every day. Staff participated in a wide variety of community events, which included Dia del Nino, Bluffs Day, Earth Day, Psychomania. We hosted beach lifeguard trainings in collaboration with the fire department, and we continued developing a swim lesson scholarship program in partnership with local organizations. The library also continued expanding youth, teen, adult, and bilingual programming to strengthen lifelong learning opportunities throughout the community. Some upcoming priorities, we are going to be reviewing all that participant feedback that was gathered from both the Age Well and Community Garden surveys to refine and strengthen our programs and offerings. We're launching bilingual customer satisfaction surveys for park and facility rentals, so this will go to all renters after they've rented either the Veterans Memorial Hall or one of our barbecue and picnic areas. We'll continue the implementation of the library's three-year strategic plan while expanding programming for teens, families, and lifelong learners. We will officially launch the community pool fundraising campaign and continue the design work on the renovation project. We hope to implement our aquatic scholarship program and begin the Division of Boating and Waterways grant funded kayaking program in which we'll offer kayak lessons to students at the Carpentria Unified School District. And from an administrative perspective, staff will return to your council with the sponsorship policy and again the naming policy for council consideration. And we will continue advancing the planning for Rincon Bluffs open space and begin construction on Bluffs 2, or the Coastal Vista Trail project. And a very brief financial update. During period two, staff identified operational savings in several program areas, which were due to lower than budgeted spending on meetings and travel, supplies, materials, and equipment, and printing, and those savings allowed us to reduce operating budgets while continuing to provide services. We were able to increase revenue due to a number of factors, which included the increase of the facility rental fees, which occurred July 1st, 2025. And looking ahead, the fiscal year 26-27 budget includes additional reductions across several programs, which include Agewell Library, Junior Guards, Ocean Beach Services, and the department sign replacement. This concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions?

Quick question just about the pool. When should we expect to know what the costs are going to be for the pool?

Council Member Mayer, through the Mayor, you heard it here first. I received some rough cost estimates last week. I will be presenting to you in a more formal capacity a launch of our fundraising campaign at your next meeting. council meeting rough numbers at this point which include construction the remaining costs for design and permitting fees and etc is coming in around 3.3 million dollars The construction was estimated to be around 2.5, 2.6, and then again there's additional fees of the design, which we have under contract currently, and then fees through the DSA permitting process. Thank you.

Okay, if there are any other questions, I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We do, Mayor. We have Andy Patrick. Andy, go ahead.

Thank you. I want to be very respectful here and constructive. I appreciate the amount of work that went into this presentation. But honestly, after listening to it, department after department describe its highlights and priorities, I'm left with a very fundamental question, which is, are we measuring what the city did? or whether what the city did to make Carpinteria better. And I think, you know, the city manager, I respect you tremendously. And this is around OKRs, right? It's like, you know, we can have slides that combine activities and process steps and expenditures and Projects that are completed, community outcomes, all this stuff, but it's, I don't know. Hosting an event is an activity. Submitting an application is a process. Securing some sponsorship for the pool is measurable accomplishment, but even the accomplishment is not necessarily an outcome. The larger question is what changed for the residents of Carpinteria? And this is what I don't get. I mean, again, this is out of tremendous respect. I really do respect you all, and I know how much work, and we've been at this, what, for four hours now. But community engagement is simply the city appearing at community. It's not simply the city appearing at community events. It's a two-way process through which the residents influence priorities and decisions. So anyway, I'll end it there, but I just want to say that, like, Instead of kind of having a rah-rah, like here's all the things that happened, I would love to hear the impact, you know? Like how did this change the city? Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

And Mayor, that concludes Zoom comment.

I will close public comment and bring it back to the council.

I move to receive and file the period two department reports for the fiscal year 2025-26 budget.

Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. And we will now move on to committee reports, inquiries, and other matters presented by council members.

I'll just report that MTD had their board meeting last week. Some of the topics discussed was an increase in the UCSB student transit bus program fee, and then also the fiscal year 25-26 annual ridership report. And then, let's see, the adoption of MTD procurement manual amendment to their vendor pre-qualifications, which was actually really interesting, because they're trying to have kind of a list of people who they predetermine are secure bidders for things. So yeah, it was really interesting. So that's my report.

Do you have an update on the wave?

Yes, so it should be September that it's going to be coming. And they're going to be doing a lot of outreach about it first. And so, in fact, they had done, I think it was Hillary Blackerby with MTD had done a presentation to Age Well about that, and also about the contactless rider payment system, I think just a couple weeks ago. So yeah, so definitely we'll be hearing more about that.

Great, okay. Any other updates from council members?

Yeah, actually, I do. July 16th, I had another Community Matters event. We went over CAP, Carpentry Advanced Purification Project, giving some information history on that one. The next one I do have coming up is on August the 20th at six o'clock, location to be determined. I'll put that in Coastal View. But it's gonna cover regional housing needs allocation and builder's remedy information. So we're gonna be having staff present on that so there's a better understanding within the community of what those are and how they're affecting us in the community.

Any other updates? MS. We had an economic vitality meeting two weeks ago, and we received the detailed information from the Carpentry Immigrants' Rights Coalition, who were grant recipients, and their findings of their survey that they did of local businesses and how the ICE raids had impacted us in the economic THROUGH AN ECONOMIC LENS AND IT WAS ABSOLUTELY REALLY INTERESTING, REALLY A LOT OF INFORMATION, SO IT WAS GREAT. I LOOK FORWARD TO EVERYONE HEARING IT SOON, MAYBE.

GREAT, OKAY. SEEING NO OTHER UPDATES. Attendance for council members for our future meetings?

At the next city council meeting, I will be traveling for work, and I'm unsure if I will be able to call in and be available by Zoom or not.

Well, safe travels. Thank you. Okay, and we will officially adjourn the meeting. It is 9.34 p.m.