City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello all and welcome to the Carpinteria City Council meeting. Today is September 14th and I will request a roll call please.

Councilmember Clark. Here. Councilmember Mayer.

Here.

Councilmember Nomura. Here. Vice Mayor Solorzano. Here. And Mayor Alicon.

Here. And I'd like to request a closed session report.

Thank you, Mayor Alarcon. We were in closed session for one item, real property negotiations, and all of the information is included on the agenda, and there's no reportable action this evening.

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, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And we will now move into introductions, proclamations, and presentations. And we will begin with a proclamation declaring September 15, 2026 to October 15, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month in the city of Carpinteria. I will now open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips for this item. Do we have any via Zoom?

Mayor, we have no raised hands.

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

I move to adopt the proclamation of the City Council declaring September 15th, 2026 to October 15th, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month in the City of Carpentria. Second.

We have a first and multiple seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. We will now be reading the proclamation and we will begin with Councilmember Mayer.

Whereas Hispanic culture constitutes the foundation of the history of the state of California and the southwest region of the United States, and Hispanics are justly proud of their rich and diverse cultural heritage, having made positive contributions to the social, artistic, linguistic, and intellectual aspects of our society and...

Whereas generations of proud, hardworking, enterprising Hispanics have contributed to and have strengthened our communities with countless achievements and their abiding values in the home and family and Whereas Hispanics increasingly impact the political, economic, and social growth of our community and state and constitute approximately 43% of the city's total population and approximately 40% statewide per the U.S. Census Bureau and

Whereas, as we observe Hispanic Heritage Month, the city encourages all members of the community to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of Hispanics in our community and the importance of social justice and fair representation for the Hispanic community in all aspects of city life and experience.

Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Carpinteria does hereby declare the period September 15, 2026 to October 15, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month in the City of Carpinteria in recognition of the many contributions Hispanics have made to Carpinteria, California and the country and to promote greater awareness of the rich history and culture of the Hispanic community. And with that, we'd love to invite Teresa Alvarez to the podium to share a few words.

Thank you. Would I be able to read it in Spanish after as well?

I guess I could.

Thank you Mayor and thank you to the City Council for this proclamation and for recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month here in Carpinteria. I'm honored to accept this and I want to say a few words, not just as the Executive Director of the Carpinteria Children's Project, but as someone who came to this country as an immigrant myself. Hispanic Heritage Month means something personal to me. It's a chance to celebrate the culture, the language, and resilience that so many of our families carry with them. The same family CCP has the privilege of serving every day. Our dual language classrooms aren't just an educational model. They're a statement that a child's home language is an asset, not something to leave at the door. That belief comes from lived experience, and I know I'm not alone in this room in holding it. This community, Carpinteria, has been shaped by the hands and hearts of Latino families in the fields, in the classrooms, in the small businesses on Linden Avenue, and in the homes where multiple generations show up for each other. Hispanic Heritage Month is a moment to say clearly that contribution is seen and it's valued. At CCP, we see it every day in the parents who trust us with their children before they even trust the language around them. We see it in the grandparents who pick up, in the families who show up for the workshops we offer, and in our lovely staff. On behalf of our staff, our families, and our own community's story, we're proud to call carpentry a home and proud to keep doing this work here. Thank you.

Gracias. Gracias alcalde y gracias al ayuntamiento por esta proclamación y por reconocer el mes de herencia hispana aquí en Carpintería. Me siento honrada de aceptar esto y quiero decir algunas palabras no solo como la directora ejecutiva del proyecto infantil de carpintería, sino como alguien que vino a este país como inmigrante. El mes de herencia hispana significa algo personal para mí. Es una oportunidad para celebrar la cultura, el idioma y la resiliencia que tantas de nuestras familias llevan con ellos. Las mismas familias que en CCP tienen el privilegio de servir a todos. Nuestras aulas bilingües no son solo un modelo educativo. Son una declaración que el idioma nativo de un niño es activo, no algo para dejar en la puerta. Esa creencia proviene en la experiencia vivida y sé que no estoy sola en esta habitación por sostenerla. Esta comunidad de carpintería ha sido moldeada por las manos y los corazones de las familias latinas en los campos, en las aulas, en los pequeños negocios de Linden Avenue y en los hogares donde múltiples generaciones se presentan entre sí. El mes de la herencia hispana es un momento para decir claramente. Esa contribución se ve y se valora. En CCP lo vemos todos los días en los padres que confían en nosotros con sus hijos antes de que confíen en el idioma que los rodea. Lo vemos con los abuelos que los recogen, las familias que se presentan a los talleres que ofrecemos y en todos nuestros empleados. Así que gracias por este reconocimiento en nombre de nuestro personal, nuestras familias y la historia de nuestra propia comunidad. Estamos orgullosos de llamar hogar a carpintería y orgullosos de seguir haciendo este trabajo aquí. Qué orgullo es ser latino. Muchas gracias.

And we'd love to invite you and anyone else for a photo, and we will hand over the proclamation.

This is it. Okay, everybody is smiling and happy.

And we're gonna do one with .

Okay. We are good.

Hey.

We will now move on to item number three, which is a proclamation designating the week of September 7th through the 13th, 2026, a celebrate community week in the city of Carpinteria. I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

I'm here. We have no raised hands.

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

I move to adopt the proclamation of the City Council designating the week of September 7th to 13th, 2026 as Celebrate Community Week in the City of Carpentria. Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. And we will begin to read the proclamation with Councilmember Mayer.

Whereas Kiwanis International, Lions Club International, Optimist International, and Rotary International have partnered in support of Celebrate Community Week to focus on local community service and...

Whereas Celebrate Community encourages service clubs to collaborate on projects that improve and benefit their local communities and...

Whereas in recognition of Celebrate Community Week, Carpinteria service organizations are partnering on local service projects, investing health and wellness, food insecurity and hunger, education and literacy, and the environment, and...

Whereas the City Council of the City of Carpinteria wishes to recognize the important role that local service organizations play in building and strengthening the community by declaring Celebrate Community Week, and...

Whereas Celebrate Community Week highlights the important work of our local service organizations and demonstrates the positive impact that can be achieved through collaborative community service.

Now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Carpinteria does hereby designate the week of September 7th through the 13th, 2026, as Celebrate Community Week in the City of Carpinteria in recognition of the dedication, service, and contributions of Carpinteria service organizations to the community. And I'd like to request, or it looks as though Rotary Club representatives and others are in attendance to share a few words to accept this proclamation. Welcome, Christina.

Good evening, mayor and city council and city staff. Thank you so much for recognizing our local nonprofits and service organizations with this proclamation. It truly is one of the things that makes Carpinteria so special is the volunteers in our community. And so many of our volunteers volunteer multiple places. that's just amazing and we actually even have a Carpinteria nonprofit collaboration council where nonprofit leaders meet every month to collaborate work together see how we can support each other and it is an open meeting and any Anyone is welcome and that is something that helped us create an actual internal calendar so that we work together to not have events on the same night. Our town is too small and we're trying to have as much impact as possible. And I'd like to invite everyone this Saturday to a community beautification day for our Tomal Park, and this is an example that we've invited different organizations, including the city of Carpinteria, to jump in and help together to make our community a better place. So thank you so much for the honor. Thank you.

And we'd love to, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, go ahead, Tanya.

I would like to say, believe it or not, 14 years ago, I started and chaired what we call the International President's Summit. That included the President International of Kiwanis, Lions, Optimus, and Rotary. It was sponsored by Rotary, and we've been talking about this for the last eight years, believe it or not. that we would create a collaboration of these four organizations to actually move forward with serving the communities, specifically at this time. So I would like to thank and recognize Carpinteria for being included in this international initiative. It's something very special to us. Thank you.

That's great. And we'd love to invite you back, Christina, for a photo and any other service club representatives to accept the proclamation.

Do you want to represent Noon Rotary? Hi. Thanks so much.

Alex, can you switch it to me?

All right, we are taking pictures right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council. I'm totally unprepared to say anything, but I'm super happy to say nothing. We as the Lions Club are extremely involved in helping the community. Our only purpose is to serve the community, and we're so proud to do it. We look for opportunities, and any time we see one, we're happy to step up to it. So I thank you for this opportunity, and just to say one more time how happy we are to receive this award and to help and serve the community. Thank you.

Thank you.

And congratulations, you're coming up on 100 years in the community, so congratulations there. Thank you.

If I could just say something, too. As someone who didn't necessarily have a background in some of these service organizations, I just want to thank the representatives from the Rotary and Lions Club who are here today. Every time I go to an event at the Lions Club or I'm a guest at one of the Rotary meetings, everyone there is so welcoming and just kind and inclusive. And I just think that that speaks to the integrity of these service organizations. So thank you so much.

We will now move on. Well, item number four will actually be postponed to September 28th, and we will now move on to public information reports and announcements, and we will receive a sheriff's recap.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. Unfortunately, the sheriff, or our chief, Rich Brenning, ma'am, he's unavailable tonight, so we're going to be also moving that one to the next meeting. Great. Thank you.

We will now move on to item number six, which is a temporary adjournment for the purpose of holding the monthly meeting of the Carpinteria Library Board of Trustees. And I'd like to call to order and request a roll call, please.

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

Great. And then confirmation of legal noticing and procedural requirements of meeting.

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

Thank you. And I will now open up public comment. And I just want to remind everyone that this is the time for public comments on matters not otherwise on the agenda, but within the subject matter of only the Carpinteria Library Board of Trustees. I do not have any speaker slips for this specific item. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

And we have no raised hands.

I will close public comment. And we will move on to item number four, which is the approval of minutes of the regular meeting held July 13, 2026.

So moved.

I will first open up public comment for the meeting minutes. And I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Once again, no raised hands.

OK, I will close public comment and now ask for a motion, of which Al Clark provided.

Second.

So we have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. Moving on to item number five, which is the Carpinteria Community Library Monthly Report for September 2026.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I will be providing the monthly report on behalf of our librarian, Eric Castro, who's on a very well-deserved vacation. So I will do my best. Eric's provided a number of updates from the July, or a number of events that we hosted in both July and August. Just going to highlight a few. There are so many, as you know. On July 31st was the summer reading finale. We had the bubble guy party who came to celebrate the conclusion of the license to read summer reading program. We had a bubble guy performance, snow cones, and music. The event brought together families and participants to celebrate their summer reading accomplishments. Overall, the library saw more than double the amount of participants in this summer's reading program, which is really impressive. Compared to last year, there were 635 attendees across this year's events. The strong participation reflects the community's enthusiasm for the program and the success of the library's expanded summer programming. Some ongoing library programs, the library continued to offer a variety of reoccurring educational, recreational, and community programs, including an English conversation group, preschool story time, carp writers group, songwriters group, babies are the best, and so much more. Additional information about upcoming programs and events are always available on the library's online events calendar, which is carpenterialibrary.org. Some information on partnerships, ongoing partnerships. The library continues its partnership with the Santa Barbara City College to offer free adult educational classes during this fall 2026 semester. Two bilingual computer classes, Microsoft Excel Fundamentals and Introduction to Computers, reached full enrollment before the first day of class. In addition, the library is offering an English as a second language or ESL class, pronunciation and conversation for the first time and there are 10 students enrolled at the time of the report. These classes expand access to educational and workforce related skills while providing convenient learning opportunities for Carpentaria residents and I just want to highlight that these are all free of charge for participants. The library was awarded access to Homework CA, a statewide program offered through a partnership between the California State Library and Tutor.com. The service provides free online tutoring and homework assistance to school-age Carpinteria residents. Homework CA will replace the library's previously paid subscription to Homework Help, resulting in cost savings that will help the library respond to some budget reductions while continuing to provide students and families with access to high quality academic support. The library's selection to participate in HomeWorks CA reflects its successful participation in California State Library initiatives and evaluation efforts during the previous fiscal year, which I know Eric talked to you all about, about our Every Story Counts and other public library surveys. The library received strong community feedback and positive participation results, demonstrating the value and impact for its services. And then finally for some staff updates, Sophia Rose, a Carpinteria resident, has joined the library as a part-time library technician. In addition to her regular library technician responsibilities, Sophia will also lead the Babies Are the Best program, where babies and their parents can participate in music, movement, and social activities. Her background in music and performance will support the continued development of this popular early literacy program. With that, I've completed the report. Happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you, any questions from council? Yeah, this might be more of an Eric question, so I can save it for him too, but it's great that the SBCC bilingual courses are filling up so fast. Is there any, I'm sure this depends on staffing at SBCC too, but are there plans to be able to expand those or to even expand the course, the bilingual course offerings?

yes vice mayor through the mayor i know um and eric could of course provide more detail when he's here next month i know sbcc reaches out frequently wanting to offer more classes and continue the ones we have through the multiple semesters to be honest the issue we're running to is just availability of the community room so in addition to the programs the library is offering we have these classes and other partner programs We have spilled over, for lack of a better term, into the meeting room in the Veterans Hall area when it's available so that we can add more programming. So there's definitely a lot of interest, and yes, it is up to SBCC and instructor availability, but there's, I can say there's eagerness on both sides to continue adding these programs and offering them.

And then similarly, another thing that was in the report was the Mexican consulate visits and presentations. Is that something that also, given that those were also very well attended and had a waiting list, are those going to continue to be planned?

Vice Mayor, through the Mayor, yes, they are continuing to be planned. If anyone is interested, they can call the library to be added to the waiting list. And I apologize I didn't hit on it, but there was like 52 people on a waiting list and I know the waiting list is continuing to grow. This one is very much dependent on their availability and when they can come here and use the room. But it's something that I think we'll be offering ongoing every few months whenever they're available.

That's wonderful, thank you very much.

Any other questions? Thank you for your report. I will now open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips for this item. 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, please.

I'll move to receive and file the Carpentry Community Library Monthly Report. Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. And item number six, which is new business and discussion. Anything from council members? Okay, seeing none, we will move on to item number seven, which is the adjournment. And we will now reconvene the regular meeting of the city council, and we will now hear from our city manager with the city manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor, council, community members. As always, I encourage people to read the entire city manager report. We just give a couple of highlights here, and there's some important links and things in here that people can click on. And then, of course, if the council has any interest in any of these items, happy to bring them back as an agenda matter. As is typical, I'll be joined by... A few different people helping me out. I'm going to start off with Assistant City Manager Ryan Kins to discuss updates on recruitment and also capital improvement projects.

Thank you, Michael. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Yeah, so we got several recruitments going on right now, and just as a reminder, these recruitments are for existing positions that became vacant following staff departures, and they don't represent any newly created positions. So these positions are the accounting specialist, accounting technician, that was pending final interview when I wrote this but we already did the final interview last Thursday and we did make a final selection so that's pending background check at this time. The building official, we had several great applications and we had one interview or doing another interview for a final interview so that one's pending final interview. Same with the engineering technician. That's pending final interview. And then finally, the management analyst position. We did make a final selection there. We sent out an offer letter and we're doing a background check at this time. So happy to answer any questions on any recruitments we have.

Looks like no questions.

OK. And then as for updates on capital improvement projects, the Franklin Creek Trail project construction is proceeding. Grading and utility work is now complete over there. The retaining walls are being poured, and anticipated completion is September 2026, end of the month. The path surface is anticipated to be poured in October of 2026, and then the project is on track for final completion end of this calendar year. On the Carpentaria High School crosswalk project, the realigned sidewalks on the high school side of 192 are complete, along with the realigned trail on the Franklin Creek side. The new crosswalk is in place and being used. The high-intensity activated crosswalk, that's the HAWC system. It's awaiting final installation and completion of power and communication lines. And then once that's done, the project will be complete. Happy to answer any other questions you may have.

Yes. Mark, some time of completion on that there, Ryan?

I'll have to double check with Josefina, our project manager on this, but I believe we have a couple more months of work to go. Yeah.

is any of the in terms of the additional couple months I don't know if that's a delay in terms of work but is any does any of that have to do with our end on making this work go a little bit longer is this like what phase are we in in this project like who's who's up next basically

Yeah, good question mayor. Um, so essentially we're in the final phases of this. Um, really the only work that's left is the installation of that hoc system. Um, and so that, but that there's a lot that goes into that in, in terms of installing the communication lines and the power lines and then the hoc system itself. So, but we're on the final stretch of getting that project knocked out.

Okay. By the end of this year, you said?

Definitely the Franklin Creek Trail project will be completed at the end of this year. I believe the Carpenter High School will likely be completed November range. But I'll have to triple check on that. And in our next report, I'll make sure to include a timeline for that project.

Great. Thank you.

Mayor, next, under our other city community updates, I want to turn it back to Parks Recreation Community Services Director Jeanette Gant to give a couple of updates.

Thank you. The City of Carpentry is proud to participate in the 2026 Santa Barbara Creek Week, which is taking place September 19th to 26th, and to help coordinate eight free local events as part of this countywide celebration of our creeks, watersheds, beaches, and natural resources. The week will kick off with the California Coastal Cleanup Day, which is on Saturday, September 19th, with city staff co-leading cleanup sites at Linden Avenue and Jelly Bowl in partnership with Heal the Ocean and Carpinteria Beautiful. Additional events throughout the week include the Creek to Coast Paddle, Carpentria Bluffs BioBlitz, Yoga at Linden Field, Watershed Rock Painting at the Carpentria Community Garden, Trail Restoration at Santa Monica Creek, and a guided tour of the Carpentria Salt Marsh Preserve. For a full schedule and updates, you can visit sbcreekweek.com. Moving on to Age Well, Age Well celebrated Dia de los Abuelos on Friday, August 28th at the Veterans Memorial Hall. The event brought over 75 community members together to honor and celebrate the cherished grandparents. Guests enjoyed food, entertainment, and meaningful connections, creating a joyful evening filled with appreciation. For the community garden, we'll be hosting a creative workshop this evening, actually right about an hour ago at 5 p.m. for garden members to build bee watering stations, which provide shallow and accessible water sources for bees, butterflies, and other beneficial pollinators. The workshop will encourage garden members to incorporate pollinator-friendly patches into their garden spaces. The community garden also hosted a volunteer day on the morning of Saturday, August 22nd, from 9.30 a.m. to 12 p.m. 16 garden members participated in weeding and remulching of the pathways. The event provided an opportunity for members to connect with one another while contributing to the ongoing care and improvement of the garden. And finally, throughout August, the community gardens composting system diverted 191.2 pounds of food and garden scraps from the landfill. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Any questions from council? No questions.

Great, thank you. Real quick, State of the City, the city hosted its 2026 State of the City and Town Hall on Monday, August 31st at the Veterans Memorial Building. City leaders and staff discussed the city's financial outlook, current and upcoming projects and priorities, as well as Measure I, which will appear on the November 3rd ballot. The main thing I want people to take from this is a recording of the event, if they missed it, is available in both English and Spanish on the city's YouTube channel. With that, I'm going to turn it over to our Public Information Officer and Emergency Preparedness Program Manager, Julissa Briones, to give us a couple of updates.

Hi, good evening, council. So I have a couple of updates from the emergency preparedness division. We'll start with the emergency operations plan and five-year emergency preparedness work plan. So last week, the city held two community sessions to provide residents with information about emergency preparedness and gather community input to identify priorities for the next five years. We had two workshops, one in English on Thursday, September 3rd over at the library, and then another in Spanish on Friday, September 4th. We had five participants for the Thursday session and 18 participants for the Spanish session on Friday, which was excellent. The Spanish session was done in collaboration with Age Well, the Abuelas group that meets monthly on a regular basis there. And we were really, really grateful for all of the feedback that we received. These events were held in coordination with Red Cross, County Office of Emergency Management, and also with Carpentria Summerlin Fire Protection District. And again, we're very grateful for our partners. And due to concerns regarding potential ice activity, I just wanted to make the council aware the Spanish language one was only distributed internally. And the intention is moving forward to do the same for their protection. Secondly, we will be having an El Nino countywide preparedness meeting. The County of Santa Barbara is leading this effort, but all cities are engaging and participating in it as well. Santa Barbara County will host the meeting on October 1st from 5.30 to 7 p.m. to help residents prepare for the upcoming storm season. The meeting will cover this year's weather outlook, the work completed on local creeks and roads to prepare, and important information related to storm and flood preparedness and emergencies. All community members are encouraged to attend. This virtual meeting will also provide closed captioning in multiple languages and simultaneous interpretation in Spanish. We ask that all attendees pre-register to make sure that we can accommodate everybody. And the city has and will continue to assist in sharing this information with all of our residents through our newsletter and on social media. I also have an update it did not make this report but it will for the next time around just wanted to make sure I gave it enough give it some more press time here so the Red Cross in coordination with the city Carpinteria Summerlin Fire Protection District State Farm and FEMA will be hosting their annual sound the alarm event on Saturday October 10th from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Sandpiper mobile home park and This annual event's intention is to install free smoke alarms across the entire community, and we're really grateful to partner with our neighboring agencies on this effort. And to sign up as a volunteer, the community can visit bit.ly slash volunteer STA Carpinteria, and we'll be sharing this information on our social media channels as well. And then an additional update as well, I'll make sure that it's included in the next report. So the city is working on the annual Santa Barbara County CERT drill. The city alongside the County of Santa Barbara, cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara as well are working to offer a countywide CERT drill on Saturday, October 17th, from 9 a.m. to noon at Santa Barbara High School. We're very excited as the last time that we had a countywide drill was pre-COVID. So, excuse me, we've been working very hard to get this up and running again, especially in advance of El Nino storms. Pre-registration is required for all CERT members, whether you are just participating or you're just observing. A press release and formal announcement on social media will take place by the end of the week with additional information. And with that, that concludes all updates related to emergency preparedness, and I'm available if you have any questions. Any questions?

have a question just because it is you know they're saying it's gonna be a super El Nino at the end of this year and I know I know a lot of our emergency management work is required you know we have to collaborate and I'm happy to see that the county will be hosting a meeting but how are we internally in terms of the city do we feel like we're prepared to handle should the disaster occur an emergency occur by the end of this year in the city of Carpinteria

Sure. So the city and all of our partners, as well as, you know, internally with Parks and Recreation, Emergency Preparedness, Public Works, we've been meeting on a weekly basis to try to prepare and just try to make sure that we're addressing all sorts of different things that could come up and everything from, you know, making sure we have enough sandbag materials ahead of the time to making sure all of our storm grades are cleared. And I won't try to answer anything public works related because I want to make sure I have Ryan Ayerly here. Maybe at the next meeting we can make sure that he's here and can answer some of those specific questions in regards to like storm drains and things like that. But we are being proactive and making sure that we're doing everything we can now to prepare for the storm season. And then we are meeting on a monthly basis with the county and all of our partners. to make sure that we're all on the same page ahead of time. We're really grateful to the county for really leading the effort on the community-wide meeting because what we have been experiencing is different cities are providing different updates and this really helps to make sure that everybody gets the same information all at once. And so there's not different stories being told across the different jurisdictions. So we really encourage everyone to participate on October 1st. I know that the session will be recorded and we'll make sure that it's available on the city's platforms as well.

Great. And then is there any kind of role for the council during an emergency situation? I don't know if there's – I know that there's the October 1st meeting, but is there a training that council can attend maybe along with staff just so that we understand what is happening? I think in the past – or at least I'll speak for myself – The emails that I get is going along with what everyone else is receiving, so I didn't necessarily know kind of what we were doing in the background. Obviously we were doing a lot, but I'm just curious to know how we can maybe increase that line of communication or if there's an opportunity so I can better educate myself on our processes.

I think we can definitely increase that communication with council especially as we kind of approach the season and get a little bit closer. I'll make sure to coordinate with our public works team too and see if we can maybe bring you into some of these planning meetings just so you're aware of some of the information that's being shared on the city level. We're also trying to be way more proactive on our social media accounts as well and so all council members are more than welcome to reshare some of that information on your own personal accounts. We always welcome that just to get the information shared across even more. But I can return at the next meeting with some of those. Great, thank you.

Yeah, quick question for you, point of concern. From the last El Nino that we had, one of the, I would say, weak points that we had was actually access to and from the beach area, specifically evacuation processes and procedures. Noted that the only way we can get out from that neighborhood was through Linden, up Linden. We talked about actually having a secondary emergency access because at that time, The railway actually had to shut down also for that one, giving us the potential ability for a temporary crossing over the railroad tracks. I don't know if that's still in the works, but at that time, that was considered one of the priorities that we had, and it's since then kind of subsided as far as urgency. So that may be something you want to take a look at, because that was one point that we did want to address immediately after the Las El Ninos.

Thank you, Council Member Nomura. There's one thing in addition to that that I can share as an ingress-egress is we have a, I'll say an informal arrangement that we'd like to formalize soon with the state parks to be able to use egress through the state park. And I confirm that with Dena Bellman there. I forget her exact title. uh here for the for the area and we do look forward to formalizing that soon but we do have another ingress egress in place

So are we also looking at a potential third one then? Is that what we're talking about? Or are you just going to use the state parks?

Oh, no. The other one, we'll definitely still keep seeing what we can do there. But for this coming weather events that we're expecting, we do have a secondary one in place. The other one will probably take a bit longer.

Sounds good. From what I recall last time, the only thing we did was we threw a big giant piece of plywood over the tire puncture apparatus. That seemed to work. Questions?

Also, I'd like to bring up back Jeanette Gant. So she's helping to oversee our maintenance division for Public Works right now where that director position is open and can add a little bit more information about what Public Works is doing. I do know that they essentially move like clockwork. Several of them have been with the city for a number of years and live here in town. And Public Works always does a fantastic job. And then internally, our focus has been communications and coordination with the other agencies. I don't want to say that it wasn't good before, but in the last few years, I've definitely seen a major improvement there in coordination with our fire partners and the county. And Jaleesa has been a big part of making that happen. But in terms of some of the more hard things that we're doing here, Jeanette can give more information on that.

Thank you. And just to add on to what Michael and Julissa said, the storm drains have all been cleared. There was one remaining one near the salt marsh area. Like Julissa mentioned, we're also meeting internally. We've confirmed all the permit, the regulatory permits for the berm are good and they're valid until 2035. We have solicited bids for building the berm. We're allowed to have it up as early as November 1st, so we're trying to get it scheduled as early as possible on or after that November 1st date as well. The public works team has also addressed all the high priority trees. ALONG THE ROADWAYS. THEY'LL BE FOCUSING ON THE TREES RIGHT NOW AROUND THE DOWNTOWN TEA IN PREPARATION FOR AVOCADO FESTIVAL. AND AFTER THAT IN EARLY OCTOBER, WE'LL BE ADDRESSING THE HIGH PRIORITY, PRIORITY ONE AND TWO TREES WITHIN THE PARKS. THEN WE'RE ALSO MEETING INTERNALLY TO JUST ADD TO AND REFINE OUR PARK CLOSURE AND field closures and dog park closure plan and communication plan so that we can let people know when those areas are closed so that they don't damage the turf. And I believe those are the key items that Public Works has been addressing. And like Mike said, the team is on it and they know they were clearing storm drains well before many of us are even talking about it. So really appreciate them and their hard work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeanette. And last but not least, I'd like to bring up our Community Development Director, Nick Bobroff, to give updates on development applications.

Thank you, Michael. Good evening, Mayor Ellicott and council members. I have just one item on here this evening, and that was to remind your council and any interested members of the community about the upcoming Planning Commission hearing to consider the Surfliner Inn project and the accompanying proposed final environmental impact report. So this will be a special planning commission hearing dedicated exclusively to this item. And it's scheduled for this coming Monday, September 21st at 7 p.m. And that'll be held here in the council chambers. It'll also be broadcast on SBTV and through Zoom. The environmental impact report for the project is up on the city website. Easiest way to find it is to go to the city's home page Scroll all the way down to the bottom where the hot topic buttons are and click on the button for the surf liner in And the EIR should be front and center on that surf liner in project page the staff report for the item Is being finalized as we speak and we're pushing to have it ready to be published tomorrow We should be a couple days ahead of schedule but we're really trying to make an effort to get that out there and give folks a few more days to to digest those materials ahead of the meeting. Monday night's meeting will be the opportunity for the Planning Commission to consider and take action on both the planning and land use entitlements for the project itself as well as certification of the Environmental Impact Report. So this is an important milestone for the project and we want to make sure that anyone who's interested has the opportunity to participate. And I'm available if you have any questions.

Will you be contacting the interested parties? I know there's an email list when the staff report goes out to let them know that it's up early.

Through the mayor, council member mayor, we did send out notice of the hearing to interested parties, and we can follow up with an email to folks whose email addresses we have on the interested parties list to let them know the staff report's up.

think like if especially if it's two full days in advance that's a great i mean it's a really great effort from the city so thanks any other questions no questions thank you thank you mayor that concludes my report all right uh no other questions from council i will now open up public comment for the city manager's report i do not have any speaker slips do we have anyone via zoom

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

Thank you and good evening to everyone. I want to raise something in the spirit of the city manager's report. Years ago, I had a brilliant board member on one of my company's boards. He was former NASDAQ CEO of the year. He was this really brilliant guy. And he would come to the board meeting every time and ask the very same question. And that question was, what are the three things that have to be addressed immediately? Because if they aren't, nothing else really matters. And it's a very tough question, but it really kind of puts a titration process on When you're thinking, and I think this budget situation that we're facing is exactly that kind of issue, but I don't see anything on the agenda. I might be missing something. So please correct me if I'm wrong. And I didn't see anything on the most recent finance committee meeting agenda. about revenue generating ideas. So perhaps behind closed doors, you all are discussing ideas and doing research, talking with other cities about their experiences with such ideas, et cetera. I know I submitted a full suite of non-tax revenue proposals to the city a couple months back. And, you know, some of the ideas may be bad, some may be good, I don't know. But the idea is to engage with all of you and engage with the city on ideas and on ideating, because obviously we're in a crunch. But I have not heard anything. There's been no formal agendized, you know, evaluation from what I'm aware of. So, like, I just don't know. And because it's not on the agenda, You know, I don't even know who really is in charge of something like this, but anyway, again, I may be mistaken, but with the news outlets reporting that city leaders are once again, quote unquote, sounding the alarm about the city's financial future and warning that difficult cuts come to programs and services ahead in 2027, end quote, I would say that finding additional revenue streams is paramount. And yet I don't hear you guys talking about it. You all, I'm sorry. So with an election ahead, I'm kindly asking every member of this council and the city manager to go on record in the Coastal View News on radio with Brian Moots. I know that he's going to be doing radio interviews. And just tell people what you are actually talking about in terms of idea generation, where you stand on it. I mean, you're asking us to go and vote on a tax, and I get that, and you'll probably get it. But as you all have said publicly, that's not the answer. It may be a part of it, I understand, but it's not the answer. So what are you doing to get to that answer? That's what I'm asking. So nothing specific for tonight in terms of a plan or a proposal, but just kindly asking that you let us know what you're thinking about because I don't hear it, I don't read it, I don't see it. Thanks.

Thank you for your comments.

And that concludes Zoom comment.

Great. I will go ahead and close public comment. And I'll just ask the city manager, in terms of this last public comment, I know the finance committee has reviewed some areas to generate revenue, but in terms of the request of a concrete agenda item, if there's something you can share. I know the council also discussed this at the strategic planning retreat.

Yes, Mary, that's what we were just talking about. I think, you know, in terms of any specific plans for revenue generation, of course, that's for your body and the community to decide. We're happy to agendize anything between whatever time the council would like. However, currently we plan to go in that in depth after the election when we do our new strategic planning session in January.

Great. Thank you.

And if I could just have follow-up questions. So it was at a recent meeting when we discussed the potential revenue generators, like the sales tax increase. What were the other options that we, because the business tax increase, and then was it, there was one other one. I thought there were three options. So I think there has been on recent agendas where we have talked through extensively like what revenue generation options we have in front of us. So I appreciate the public commenter talking about the need to keep that conversation going. But I think it's also, I want the community to know that we have been talking about it during recent council meetings, exactly what some of the options are. And we chose to move forward with, having the sales tax increase on the ballot for the public to decide what they want to do with that. But there are others that we have discussed in depth as a council.

I think you touched on those in terms of what the community could vote on. The business tax rate restructuring idea is something that we'd be looking at. If we were to look at it, if the council were to decide to do that in 2028, there's other things that could be done more immediately that I know other committees are looking at. Maybe not finance, but the economic vitality committee in terms of agenda item that's coming up at the chamber and a proposal because things related to economic development within the city and in the downtown is also a way to impact our revenues through sales tax and so there's other some other committees that are addressing these issues in addition to finance committee and your council and again happy to bring back any of those items for further discussion at any time when does the chamber agenda item is that next

yeah that one will be at our next council meeting and give us an opportunity for your council to discuss some things specifically related to to economic development and happy to agendize anything else yeah no i appreciate that i appreciate the public commenter raising the issue because i know that is something that's on the community's mind so it's it's great to have the opportunity to keep recapping what we've been talking about in this area because it is an ongoing conversation and it has to be

What I would say, Andy, great job on that one. I would also say that we were more than happy to get suggestions, ideas, and thoughts from the community. I think that's one of the most important things. We probably may not have the answers, all the answers, but ideas that come forward from somebody else in the community that's either had experience or has an idea, please share those. I think that's an important part of it. Community involvement is what it's going to take to make this thing fixed. Thank you.

I mean, I do wonder if it would be helpful to, I'm not sure what you're envisioning in January, once we start working on the strategic plan, if this is just gonna be its own agendized topic, but I wonder if it would be helpful to agendize something because, you know, the finance committee is working on a few things, The Economic Committee is working on some revenue generating ideas and so I'm wondering if it would be helpful to kind of come together and put all these pieces together for the general public to not only for us to recap what we have done and what we've done the last several years up until this point but also moving forward. Is that something that council members would be interested in? Yes, definitely.

I'm feeling like the way I'm envisioning it could work is we do a CIP study plan where we discuss all of the capital improvements that we're looking at. And I think that when we have the opportunity to discuss revenue and what the city needs, can and cannot do in terms of creating revenue, but if it's with the idea of just generation and conversation and looking deeper, I think that's a good idea.

Mayor, absolutely would be a major focal point of the strategic planning process. Really encourage people to get involved in that. At the staff level, we collect all of those ideas and ultimately would like to present them all to you collectively as we consider what would be the best strategy moving forward and really encourage people to take part in that as soon as we set that date. We'll certainly be putting ads out there and things like that and we'll reach out to mr patrick specifically to make sure he's he's aware because we did receive those ideas and that would be a perfect time to review those

And then Mayor and Council Member, or Mayor Pro Tem Solisano, I wanted to remind the public the study you mentioned, the HDL revenue analysis, that did come to your council on April 13th, 2026. That was the potential revenue enhancement options. The council gave staff guidance to Endless HDL to look at potential tax revenue options, and that study did show results of our transaction and use tax options, which is the one we're pursuing for Measure I. The utility users tax, which several other cities use. There's parcel tax option, and then the last option they analyzed was the business license tax reform, just as a reference.

Great, thank you, Ryan, I appreciate that. I couldn't remember all the options off the top of my head, but I know you had talked through a couple, so thank you.

Yeah, and also one of the last points I'd like to make on this one is as you go through the strategic planning, we take a look at creating strategic priorities. In other words, right now we are moving all over the place, but if we had specific strategic priorities numbered in sequence, we could focus on those being the priority for the community. That would keep us from, quote, shotgunning all over the place where we have pieces flying in everywhere. But if they do fit within one of the strategic priorities, we could move forward with that as part of the end game.

Thank you, Council Member Nomura. I think some things we've been flexible with throughout the year and have tried to adjust as they've come up, but there are a few things that we did put in part of our strategic plan. We enlisted our grants consultant now that is constantly looking out for the city for grants. and has helped us apply for several grants. And then also the work that Jeanette's been doing recently with her policies related to donations and sponsorships. We've been working with a lot of foundations, are happy to report that's already off to a great start in terms of helping to support our capital improvement projects. So those things were on the strategic plan, but there's other things that have come up during the year that I think in January we'll have a chance to kind of take those again and re-look and re-prioritize them again in January. So I'm looking forward to doing that and also trying to stay as flexible as we can as things come up.

so to just confirm in terms of or I guess in terms of requests from the council do we want to receive agendize this item before January to receive a recap and then really dive into it in January when it comes to strategic planning and the goals moving forward

I like the idea of maybe having it as part of the strategic plan, that way people can also show up and everyone can hear everybody's suggestions at the same time. I think that'd be kind of nice instead of doing it in two parts and then needing to pull together the results. I just think it sounds like if the community's very interested in kind of sharing ideas, it would be great to get all that feedback around the same time. But I can see it, either way I can see it being a good option.

Any other thoughts or? I think for me, I just lean towards recap before January or actually maybe even before November I think it could really help the public really have a concrete idea of what we've done over the last several years and what we currently have in the works now and I guess that for me I don't envision necessarily something that is really in the in the weeds of things but just an overview and a recap and that actually might spark some more ideas that might come in January to really deep dive That's just an idea I'm throwing out there.

Mayor, and I don't know whether it needs to be an agenda item or not. I know we've had conversations about how we could get out some of that information having just had our State of the City and following up with some of the information that was provided at that meeting but maybe not in certain amount of depth and adding that to some of our communications through our social media and those sorts of things. was planning on doing that and then wondering if in addition to that if you would like to agendize an item or if through through our follow-up communications post State of the City if doing this our social media stuff would suffice I mean I really like the idea of the recap of the State of the City and I think I think I'm still really leaning towards a recap of just like what we've done in general for revenue generation

So next meeting the chambers presentation is agendized if we were to have a state of the city recap to talk about what we're doing in terms of you know where where we're at where we're headed what our options are and what we've done and then if we then have that opportunity to have a community discussion around that and then in addition

We're having this presentation from the chamber which would actually provide some concrete options for the community and for the City Council to make some decisions You know it kind of like pairs nicely Yes, that's something we can absolutely do is a read just do a recap of the state of the city you know as part as a prerequisite to the chamber presentation

That sounds good. OK. Yes. It looks like there's consensus. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

I will close public comment. And we will now move on to public comment on matters not on the agenda. And I have two speaker slips. Kim Seafelt, Spinetta.

Good good evening members of the City Council staff My name is Kim Seafeld Spinetta. I'm a resident and citizen of the city of Carpinteria, California. I received this flyer this week and It states that measure eyes on the ballot in November because the city's structural deficit, and I quote, is more than $24 million in deferred street and road maintenance. The city now wants the taxpayers to pay for that, foot the bill for fiscal mismanagement through this sales tax. Why is that? In your flyer, I don't see any mention of the thousands of dollars that are currently being incurred in attorney's fees because the city failed to have its state housing element in compliance with the state of California on February 15th, 2023. It wasn't compliant until January 30, 2025, two years. During that two-year period, two enormous builder's remedy project applications were filed with the city. An 18-story, just think about it, building on Oregon Road, and the other much-expanded farm project. Neither of these applications would have been possible had the city met its obligation to be compliant with the state in 2023. As a result of those projects, there are two ongoing lawsuits by the developers who are very savvy. They look around the state for these opportunities. By background, I'm a former prosecutor and civil trial lawyer doing complex business litigation for almost 40 years. I know, I can tell already what your attorney's fees are. And I can tell what they're going to be. That's gonna cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. Representatives of the city have recently, and in the newspaper, it's been stated, oh, well, we weren't compliant because of the Coastal Commission. As a matter of law, the Coastal Commission has no right to influence your housing element. It doesn't get involved until after it's approved and applications or projects come in. So that's not an excuse. Why are you expecting the taxpayers to foot this bill? And you've been, why did you give away money to NGOs helping people in this country illegally? Why is my money being spent for that? I have personally helped people become legal in this country. If you personally would like to do that, I invite you to and spend your money. Don't spend my tax dollars and don't tell everybody else in this city we have no money. when you are doling out our money for your personal pet projects.

Ms. Spinetta, your time is over. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. And we will now hear from Mark Rock.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, esteemed city management and staff, good evening. As a frequent patron of our amazing city beach over the past four decades, the past two years have borne witness to so many instances of the wholesale abdication of responsible lifeguarding that I can no longer regard these lapses as aberrancies, but rather as features of a lifeguard service that is no longer an asset to our city, but rather a liability that puts our entire community at risk. These have included allowing all three lifeguard towers to remain unstaffed during regular hours of service, not maintaining vigilance over the ocean and surf zone for extended periods, failing to respond to code violations even after being made aware of them, and interfering with law enforcement's efforts to enforce code violations after the lifeguards failed to respond. Each of these events have been brought to the attention of city management, often with accompanying written documentation and photographic and videographic evidence. The most recent case occurred over the Labor Day holiday when, in blatant violation of the city municipal code, a woman carried her dog through a crowd into the ocean, repeatedly dunked the dog, and finally proceeded to throw the dog into the ocean. The dog, now loose in the surf zone, was surrounded by numerous patrons and moderate to heavy surf, including several small children. The dog then ran out of the ocean and continued up coast along the shoreline for a total distance of approximately 50 feet. These activities went on for well over five minutes, during which not a single lifeguard responded to a clear hazard and code violation taking place in plain view of the Holly and Linden Avenue lifeguard towers. When I asked the Holly Avenue lifeguard, who was acting as the supervisor, whether she had seen this, her answer was no. No attention was being paid to major events taking place within the most hazardous area for small children and others at risk in heavy surf. Even after the violation was pointed out, the supervisor made no effort to address the hazard, which was still in progress. Rather, she stated, that's not my sector. None of that is the worst of this. Three weeks before this occurrence, an extensive and detailed report was submitted to the city staff outlining that on August 9th, the same lifeguard supervisor missed major events occurring on the beach and at the run of the water. On that occasion, she also neither accepted responsibility nor indicated concern when it was brought to her attention. Despite this documented history of negligence and lack of concern for the same, staff not only returned her to a lifeguard tower, but to the position of supervisor, where once again she failed to observe major events unfolding in the water, didn't address code violations, and demonstrated a lack of awareness as to the safety and status of other lifeguards. Our city is careening toward a tragic event on our beach. Knowing this and failing to act is about as clear a case of gross negligence as I can imagine. I bring this to the council because every other effort has failed. I deeply love our city and our community, and I in turn beg for the opportunity to come before you on September 28th, where I will present extensive evidence of everything iterated here, and will ask for the opportunity to cross-examine city staff in service of a remedy, one that is hopefully realized before our proud city motto, World's Safest Beach, becomes nothing more than a heart-rending irony.

Thank you, Mr. Rock. Your time is up.

Thank you.

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

Mayor, we have no raised hands.

I will close public comment and bring it back to the council if there's any follow up questions. Seeing none, we will now move on to the consent calendar. And I will open up public comment on the consent calendar. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We have no Zoom comment.

I will close public comment and request for a council member to strike a motion.

I move to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held August 24th, 2026 and the special meetings held August 31st, 2026 and September 2nd, 2026 to receive and file the warrant register for the period of August 17th, 2026 through September 4th, 2026 pursuant to the Carpinteria municipal code section 2.08.150F to receive and file the monthly city treasurer's report on compliance with statement of safekeeping and investments of public funds for July 2026, to adopt resolution number 6496 authorizing city manager to execute a grant agreement with the California Office of Traffic Safety for the Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program on behalf of MOVE Santa Barbara County and approve a $25,000 increase in grant revenue and a corresponding $25,000 expenditure appropriation in the fiscal year 2026-2027. Oh, on their budget. And approve the revised fiscal year 2026-2027 authorized full-time position list as shown in attachment A to authorize one human resources risk manager position within general government and reduce the management analyst one to senior management analyst series from two authorized positions to one.

Second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Clark. Aye. Council Member Mayer. Aye. Council Member Nomura. Aye. Vice Mayor Solorzano. Aye. And Mayor Alarcon. Aye.

We will now move on to administrative matters, item number 13, which is the Sixth Amendment to Lease Agreement with Chevron USA, Inc. for use of city submerged lands.

Yes, good evening Mayor, Council Members. So this item concerns the city's existing submerged lands pipeline lease with Chevron. The lease covers a 50 foot wide corridor through city controlled submerged lands containing pipelines that historically transported oil and gas from the offshore platforms to the carpentry processing facility. Chevron acquired the lease and associated facilities following the Venoco bankruptcy and has been working toward decommissioning and removal of the former oil and gas facilities. The current lease term expires on September 26, 2026. chevron originally requested a five-year extension through september 2031 but rather than approving a five-year extension at this time staff is recommending a six-month extension through march 26 2027 the shorter extension would give uh would it would maintain the existing lease while chevron continues its decommissioning activities and will also provide the city and chevron some additional time to reevaluate the appropriate lease arrangement going forward, look at some of the terms and identify any areas where we can make some improvements, including Chevron's anticipated schedule for completing decommissioning. Importantly, this proposed sixth amendment only changes the term, like I said. All other provisions remain in effect, so the current annual lease rate is approximately $48,700. and Chevron will also pay the city a $5,000 processing fee for this amendment. The city has also advised the State Lands Commission of Chevron's extension requests. The proposed action has been reviewed for compliance with CEQA and the applicable notices of exemptions are included in the staff report. Staff is recommending that the Council authorize the Mayor to execute this sixth amendment extending the pipeline lease through March 26, 2027. We also have some Chevron staff here as well should the Council have any questions for them. And then our City Attorney of course is here if you have any questions for our agenda this evening. So with that I'll turn it over to the Council if you have any questions.

Great. Thank you. Any questions?

In terms of the difference between the five-year requested extension and then the six-month extension that you're recommending, do I understand that the six-month, that's like a stopgap kind of time frame in order to figure out more what a longer extension would be?

Vice mayor, so as I know, that's absolutely correct. Um, before we initiated this process, um, I did reach out to Chevron to ensure they were amenable to, to just doing a six month and then having an opportunity to, to look at the terms with Chevron and come to a mutual agreement, mutual agreement so that we can do another five year term.

Okay, thank you. And then just one other question. So the report said that the existing lease reaches the state's 66-year maximum in September of 2031. If the decommissioning process were to go on further than that, would we have to then reevaluate what the timeline looks like for the decommissioning? How would that impact the decommissioning process?

Vice Mayor Solorzano, that's a really good question. My understanding, and I can also have Nick and Jenna add in, but my understanding is once the decommissioning work is done and they don't longer need those facilities, then they would request that the lease be terminated because they would no longer be using those facilities.

I'm asking if it goes over. Yes, sorry.

If it goes over, then we would redo another lease term with them.

Okay, okay.

Vice-Manager Solars, I know through the mayor, that's a great question, and that's something that we haven't needed to look into yet. So in order to just conserve resources, it's something that, yes, we're aware of and kind of is on our radar, and we'll be thinking of that as we move forward. Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Any other questions?

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

We have no Zoom comment.

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

I'll move to authorize the mayor to approve and execute the proposed Sixth Amendment to the lease agreement between the city of Carpentria and Chevron.

Second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Clark. Aye. Council Member Mayer.

Aye.

Council Member Nomura. Aye. Vice Mayor Solorzano. Aye. And Mayor Ellicott.

Aye. We will now move on to public hearing item, item 14, which is appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of a development plan, lot line adjustment, and coastal development permit to construct a new 3,520 square foot, two story, single family residence with a detached 840 square foot, three car garage at 333 Linden Avenue and to adjust the lot line with the adjacent property at 355 Linden Avenue.

Just one moment, please. I just want to check one thing real quick. Okay. All right, good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Cindy Souder, and then also for questions and input, we've got Jenna here with us tonight, and then Cody is also available via Zoom if other questions come up. But tonight we're here for the appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of the Cooler New Residence and Lot Line Adjustment at 333 Linden Avenue. So the appeal pursuant to our code, the appellant must state specifically in the appeal wherein the decision of the Planning Commission is not in accord with the purposes of the zoning code or where it is claimed that there was an error in discretion by the Planning Commission. In the appeal letter, which is Marilyn Jenkins is the appellant, she's a neighbor to the project, asserts that the planning commission failed to make legally supported findings when they approved the project, citing errors of discretion due to the project's inconsistency with the general plan zoning laws, residential guidelines, natural resource, and historic city gateway preservation. The staff's policy analysis and the ARB's recommendations for approval demonstrate the project's consistency with all the applicable zoning requirements and the general plan and coastal plan policies, and that's in our staff reports that are part of the package you reviewed for this meeting tonight. And then ultimately the planning commission, their second review of the project, they were able to make all the findings necessary for approval as documented in their adopted resolution number PC26001. And in the appeal so you know we're here tonight. I'll go over the project in the appeal there was no like factual evidence to State where the errors of discretion were made by the Planning Commission, so you'll see our presentation tonight It's essentially the same presentation that the Planning Commission reviewed I And just for bases and bearings, so the site is here. Here's Linden Avenue here, and the property is Dorrance Way is here. This is the project site. It's actually two legal parcels because a lot line adjustment is part of the project. So just for reference, we've got the spot restaurant here on the corner, and the old Stein house, that two-story house here on the corner across the street from the spot, Linden Field over here to the east, Tomal Park, and then of course down here to the south you would have the beach. And the Pellant's house is right here next door. And this is a vacant lot here with the big sycamore tree, and this is the site of the proposed residence. So just a brief history, I'm not gonna reiterate the whole thing, because I know you read it in the staff report already, but a concept on this property was presented to the ARB in December of 2015, or excuse me, of 2022, and that was for a duplex. The owner was initially thinking about doing duplexes. Then a formal application came in and he took some time on some other projects and then a formal application came in for this property and it went to preliminary ARB in May of 2025 and at that point it had been changed to a single family residence. And then they received comments from the ARB there, some size, bulk, and scale. They asked for some additional articulation, some changes to the roof line just to break up some of the solid masses on the sides. And so the architect did that. And then they came back for a second review at the ARB in November of 2025. And at that meeting, the ARB was very happy with the redesign of the project and made a recommendation for approval so it was able to go to the planning commission. So then in February of this year, the Planning Commission reviewed the project and one of the key items with the original proposal was that it had a driveway coming in off of Linden. And the Planning Commissioners were very concerned about the driveway off Linden for traffic safety, visual, tree removal, multiple reasons. And so they continued the project with direction to the applicant to eliminate the Linden access which caused by luckily this is on a property so they could do an easement off of Dorrance for access and to relocate the parking to the rear of the property. So they did significantly redesign the project. Now the Linden frontage has living space facing the street instead of garage doors. And then the access is now off Dorrance through an easement through the property on the corner. So, significantly revised, and then the Planning Commission reviewed that in June 1st of this year, and Nick presented, because I was on vacation, but they approved the project with a 3-2 vote at that meeting. And then the neighbor appealed the project, obviously, and that's why we're here tonight. So this is the fifth hearing on the project. So this is the project description that's before you tonight. It's also the project description that the Planning Commission reviewed. So the, excuse me. So the project includes construction of a new 3,520 square foot two story single family residence and a new detached 840 square foot three car garage on a 7,537 square foot lot. The maximum height of the residence is 24 feet one inch and the maximum height of the garage would be 14 feet and six inches. The new driveway from Dorrance Way would be a 15-foot wide easement, which meets the 12-foot fire department requirement, plus a little extra. And then there's a tree protection plan for the sycamore tree to retain the sycamore tree on site. The palm, there's a palm street tree that was gonna be removed, and that is also now going to be retained, so keep those row of palms on Linden there. The garage at 355 Linden, that's the Steinhaus, is going to be demolished due to an encroachment issue, which I'll show that to you guys in a little bit. And then lastly, a lot line adjustment between those two parcels. And the lot line adjustment, you know, it's always start with the property lines, right? So right now, on the left side of the screen, what we'll call like the Steinhaus parcel is this kind of backwards L shape right here. And then the yellow parcel is the 333 Linden. And the lot line adjustment is essentially just going to move this line 90 degrees to just go straight and to create these two parallel, over here on the right hand side of the screen, two parallel equally sized parcels. And in doing so, it would transfer 2,250 square feet from the parcel A to the parcel B. And then with the new access design, this parcel A would also be encumbered with the 15 foot easement to serve parcel B. And then both lots before and after the total number of units possible was six units. So it was four and two, and now it's three and three for maximum density in the PRD zone. So no additional density can occur as a result of the lot line adjustment. And then here's aerial photo showing also the new lot line. And if you look very, very closely, you can see the pink footprint of the garage is just barely right here. It's like literally six inches over the property line. And as such, instead of having a funny little jog in the property line, the owner has opted to just demolish the garage, and then when they do the redevelopment of this house on the corner, they will construct a new garage to serve that at that time. And here's the overall site plan. So Lyndon is over here on the right side of the screen. Here's the street palm tree that's being retained. Here's the sycamore tree that's being retained for the project. You can see the footprint of the house kind of goes around the tree. And they do have an arborist report that did the tree protection plan. So it's... adequate. And then in between the residence, this is the single family residence, and then there's a little courtyard here, and then here's the new detached garage. And then this is the driveway off of Dorrance. So you come in like this, and then you would park in the garage stalls like this. and then they could back out and drive head out. So they don't have to back out onto Dorrance. There's actually space to maneuver to be able to drive out head first, which is good because that's a busy street there with pedestrians. So here's the first floor plan. Again, here's the new living room area here instead of the garage in the front here. And then one bedroom downstairs, and then here's the garage back here in the courtyard. And then the second floor, the second floor is actually reduced as part of this change to put the garage in the rear of the property, so the second floor actually got a little smaller. And then three bedrooms upstairs, a little deck here to look out over Linden. And then this is the east elevation or the street elevation. These are olive trees proposed along the front there. And then the north elevation, so this would be like the spot side of the structure. Here's the south elevation, or the appellant's elevation. And this pink area is showing how the house was reduced in size when they changed the design from having the garage in the front to the garage in the rear. Do you want me to stop for a second? You guys got it? OK.

You know, Cindy, I got a message saying that on TV they can't see the slides. I'm not sure. Was that just fixed right now, maybe?

Vice Mayor, we're aware of it, and Brian is working with SBTV to work on it. We're happy to continue or to pause while we try to work that out.

They hear us, or?

I think that they just can't see the slides, so I think they can hear what Cindy's saying, but they can't see the different slides. They were just seeing like one screen.

Okay. I'm fine with us pausing. I mean, we typically take a break around 7 o'clock anyways, maybe for 10 minutes, and then we can resume. Okay. Great. Thank you. okay why don't let's just keep going yeah we're all here

Okay, never mind. All right. Let's see, where was I? Okay, so the north elevation, which is the spot side of the structure. This is the south elevation, which is the appellant side. And then this pink area here is indicating how the house was reduced in size when they changed the design for the Planning Commission's recommendation to move the parking to the back. And then here's the west elevations. So this one is just the house alone. And then this is how it would look with the garage in front of the house. So this is the back elevation essentially. And then here is the roof plan. The story poles, I'm sure, I hope you guys are able to go by and see the story poles. So the story poles that you see are those red dots here, and they are from the prior design. So they actually extend a little further back on the site than what the true proposal is. And then we have the landscaping hardscape. So it's gonna be a lot of permeable paving and flagstone pavers. Olive trees, there's a little short wall here along the front of the property. White stucco wall here that'll have little landscaping plants, small short plants here. And then kangaroo paw and a few other ones, some grasses and some shrubs as well. And then the sycamore tree that's going to stay. Here's the little courtyard. Here's an inspirational imagery for the courtyard. So they're thinking of some olive trees with like a little outdoor dining area. And then the driveway coming in from Dorrance would be a ribbon driveway with the time ground cover in the middle there. The colors and materials, the Spanish style. In the staff report, you'll see they went back and forth on the Navajo white, but one of the other houses, actually the one that's behind this one on Dorrance, ended up going the darker stucco color. Greekville, I think, was the name of that one. And so they decided that the Navajo white was the better color for this one to avoid having two houses that are exactly the same color next to each other or, you know, close to each other. And then the trim sandstone, Santa Barbara sandstone accents and the red tile roof and then the decorative lantern for the exterior lighting. So the project complies with the zoning code requirements. So this table is showing you that. So the front yard setback is 50 feet from the center line and 20 feet from the property line. This one is 60 feet from the center line and 20 feet from the property line. It's because Linden is a wide right-of-way. The side yard setbacks, five feet, five feet, meets both of those. The rear setback is 15 feet. The back of the garage is 24 and a half feet from the property line, so it exceeds that, but it does have that. 24 and a half feet is also our minimum backup distance, so it does meet the backup distance. For the height limit is 30 feet, the structure is 24.08 feet or 24 feet one inch. For building coverage and that is for the zoning code, building coverage is for structures containing dwellings. So the limit is 50% and this project is at 30.2% in the code. Open space and landscaping, the minimum's 20%. This project's providing 45%. The density, as I mentioned before, could be up to three units. This proposal's one unit. Parking is minimum of two garage spaces. The proposal's giving three covered garage spaces. And then the driveway width, the maximum allowed driveway is 16 feet, and for this proposal it's 12 feet. So it complies with all the PRD zoning requirements. And then this is a study for the neighborhood. So this is, there's the table H or attachment H that was in your staff report. This is an expanded version of that table because I felt like that table didn't quite get to the point I wanted it to get to clearly in the staff report. So the purpose of this table is I'm comparing the five newest residences in the Beach neighborhood that were also in the other table. The Ellis residence, which is, I was looking at like larger, what would be perceived as a larger home in the Beach neighborhood. So the Ellis residence, that's the one that sits kind of diagonal on the corner at 3rd and Holly. And then there's the Borrelage residence, which is on Dorrance, down towards Ash, on the mountain side of the road. It's on a small double wide lot there. And then the Markoff residence, which was probably one of the first redevelopments in the Beach neighborhood, with what would be considered a more modern size house. So those are the residences I compared but definitely kept the five most recent ones since 2020 but also others that are notable. So in this column, it's just the size of the single family residence, just the residence. If it's an attached garage, it's not included in this number. This is just the residential square footage. And then this column is the total size. So that includes garages, whether it's attached or detached, workshops, any other structures associated with on the property. And then this column is lot size. And then this is the floor area ratio. And that is the FAR. That is the total size, all the square footage. So if it's a two-story, both floors would be counted in this number. All the square footage divided by the lot size for just the true ratio of the visual of what you see or what is perceived. So this house, yes, it is the biggest house in the beach neighborhood at the moment, we'll say. However... With its larger lot size, when you look at the percent, it is not the largest percent of lot size. And so when you're in terms of size, bulk, and scale and neighborhood compatibility, this is in the middle or actually sort of towards the bottom of the middle of the quote unquote normal for the size for these newer homes in the neighborhood. Now I do have to note that the Cerny residence is a little bit different here because the Cerny residence is actually a double wide lot. It is almost 12,000 square feet. It is two full size lots that have been merged together. under construction right now is a new two-story home with a detached garage, but also on the property is an existing older 747-square-foot house with a one-car garage also. So this one is an anomaly in the sense that it is actually, its total includes two residences and it's a double-sized lot. But I kept it in the table because it is one of the newer, one of the houses is a new residence since 2020 in the Beach neighborhood. So, but you can see when you look at these numbers, that, you know, 57%, 32, that's the Cerny one. This one comes at 57.8%. We've got 67, 76, 60% for the one, the diagonal one on the corner. Boulage is 54, and then the Markov residence is 73. So when you look at that, when you look at the square footage, rid the lot size, it's actually not, And as we saw on the table a minute ago, it meets all the code requirements. So here's some of the key objectives and policies that were discussed in your report to preserve the small beach town character, encouraging compatible revitalization, which I think that table shows that the project is compatible with some of the newer revitalization efforts in the beach neighborhood. The size, scale, and form of buildings on a parcel are compatible with the adjacent nearby properties and with the dominant neighborhood or district pattern. Again, the table, I think, shows that. Architectural designs based on historic regional building types should be encouraged. We don't have a lot of Spanish style in Carpinteria, but we do have Spanish style structures, so it's in the mix of acceptable architectural designs. And then our oak tree and woodlands retaining the native tree because they did design the project to save that large sycamore tree. So that is consistent with that policy as well. So the action options tonight, staff's recommendation is to accept the appeal and review the action taken by the Planning Commission and adopt Resolution Number 6495, therefore affirming the Planning Commission's decision to approve the project as submitted, basically agreeing with the Planning Commission. Alternatively, you could choose not to accept the appeal and that would also end up holding up the Planning Commission's action to approve the project. Grant the appeal for consideration and approve it subject to modifications through conditions of approval or grant the appeal for consideration and reverse the Planning Commission's approval of the project. And staff's recommendation is the first one that I read. And that concludes my presentations. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Yes, indeed, you have actually one question specific. Looks like the overall is definitely conforming. My question is, and it didn't show this, nor did I have any photos or drawings showing it, but the current grade elevation versus the finished grade for the building, is that going to be changed? As an example, the one at Hawley, I believe, no, no, it's Elm and 8th, actually had to raise up almost two feet for the finished grade elevation. build then how about this one uh through the mayor uh the applicant is not proposing a raised foundation for this structure they're proposing a more slab on grade foundation okay so it would be you know six inches higher than what you see now okay and that fits within the neighborhood as in um I understand there's a few uh houses in that specific neighborhood that actually had to raise up almost a foot because of the uh potential sea level rise

Through the mayor, yes, that is correct. Because of the sea level rise, two of the new ones I think are almost four feet raised to the finish floor. This site is not in the Zone 2 where the sea level modifications are required. And also with the new flood map, it is also not in the flood zone. Thank you.

And just one question. So one of the things that the appeal said specifically is it asked us to think about this project in the context of other larger houses in the Beach neighborhood, similar to the ones that you had shown us. But can you clarify, is that something that we should be taking into consideration when we're reviewing a specific project?

Well, each project is its own project based on the merits of how it meets the code. So I'm sorry, through the mayor. But... In the grand scheme of things, for neighborhood compatibility and everything, well, yes, the neighborhood's changing. So what's compatible is in flux right now, and it is changing throughout the Beach neighborhood, but there's a lot of new developments in the Beach neighborhood. I didn't look at every single house in the past 30 years, but a lot of the properties have been redeveloped and gone from those small cottages to the larger homes. Great, thank you for the context.

Any other questions? OK, seeing no other questions, I'm assuming I will then open up public comment and request the motion to accept appeal. And then we will move into opening the public hearing. Is that correct?

Mayor Alarcon, council members, I think what we're recommending, and Cindy can let me know if this has changed, but I believe we're taking public comment on both of the separate motions. And then we'll close public comment. And then the council will consider that two-step process so one whether or not to accept the appeal and then if the council makes a motion and it seconded and voted on to accept the appeal then to consider the appeal de novo I'm sorry so it sounds like just the one then because what I'm seeing here will we hear from the appellant as well or Yes, and Cindy, is it correct, we're hearing, we're gonna open public comment before there are any motions on the table.

Through the mayor, yes, we are gonna do that. The direction that I was given was that we were gonna do it just like a regular project with the public comment and the appellant and the applicant comments and public comment, and then come back so that the appellant can have her due process.

Okay. So I'm sorry. Let me know what you need me to do next time because I'm looking at something that's a little bit different. So I'm not sure what you – right. If there aren't any more questions here, it sounds like we will not take public comment yet, but we will – I apologize, Mayor Alicante.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question. So before there's any – before the council considers any motions either – and I believe that there are two recommended motions in the staff report. we're going to open up the public hearing and the first person that will be invited to speak is the applicant and then the appellant and then the public.

Okay, sorry.

Right, that's me.

Right, so we're opening the public hearing, yeah. Okay, we will officially. Sorry, that is my daughter FaceTiming me. Okay, I need to turn this off. I promise you she just for whatever reason. Okay. Okay, we will now officially open the hearing. Can you take over?

Sure, sure, okay, okay. All right, so it sounds like we're opening the hearing now, and so we're first gonna hear from the appellant.

Vice Mayor Sellars, I know through the council. Yes, we should open the public hearing, and I think the first person that we should invite up is the applicant. Great, so the applicant's agent.

Can we invite up the applicant to speak at this time?

Good evening, thank you for having me. I'm the applicant for the project, I'm the architect on the project. Thank you everyone here tonight. Cindy, thank you for your presentation. We've been working on this project from early in 2022, worked with the Architectural Review Board, refined it, reduced it, altered it a few times. Then we dealt with the Planning Commission and made some more major changes. modifications, reductions. Super happy to be able to save the sycamore tree, to save the palm trees on Linden, which I feel like are so iconic. To your earlier question, Um, we don't want to re change the grade of the property for the, for the Sycamore tree. And so that's one of the reasons we're, we're keeping it where it is and it's slab on grade. So the 24 feet foot height is going to be from virtually the, the existing lot right now won't be built up like some of those. houses were done. I think we try to avoid that now. And I'm really excited about the project. What a great location to be able to have a nice house. In addition to this being in the beach neighborhood, it's also, I think, defined as the edge of the beach neighborhood, which is typically... Cindy, can you pull up that slide? For me, as we go down Linden here, earlier on in the process, this small town beach charm comes into play. And how do we continue to keep the small town beach charm? But how does a slightly larger house than 1,000 square feet fit into that? And my answer is kind of like, how do tall people fit into Carpentria's small town beach charm? I think they fit in just fine. But as you go through Linden here, it's a little hard to see, but we're just highlighting the density and the direct neighbors of this property. And as you can kind of see from the image, Almost every property is larger than ours. This is an older slide, so I think it was from before when we moved the garage to the back. But the spot is definitely... I think the smallest structure in that area. But other than that, there's several very large condo developments, and then there's a couple single-family residences. Can you look just above the train tracks? And then this is in an area where there's some very large buildings, and there's a three-story building, Hotel possibly going in right right across the tracks from this location as well. So it's an interesting diverse area of the of the downtown and Other than that we're here to answer any questions or help in in any other way But I think that Cindy's presentation covered it we meet every single guideline. I wish I could be up here and try to defend the guideline that we don't meet, but I don't believe there are any. And it's been several years, so I feel like one would have come up if we missed it.

Got a question? Dylan, quick question. Actually, two questions. First of all, based on the photo that I see right here, you have what looks like the greatest setback in the street of all of the houses along that sector.

Yeah, and I think the first story is set back further than all the structures, and then our second story is set back 20 feet further than that. So it's going to be substantially set back.

Okay. Yeah. And then second question I have. Are there any consistence you made for the neighborhood or the neighbor specific appellant as far as adjustment of the height, size, scale specific that's adjacent to her place?

Yeah, I think over the years of all the meetings, you'll see that the project was reduced multiple times. And I know that it's a preference from the neighbor to not have a two-story, but her house is two stories and the other neighbor's house is two stories, so it's hard to remove the whole second story. So I know that we were obviously in an appeal, so we haven't worked everything out, but we've definitely... tried to address and acquiesce to reasonable comments all along the way.

Thank you.

Any additional questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. And we will now hear from the appellant. Welcome. Hi. Hi.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. I just, before I start my presentation, I want to address some facts that are incorrect that I've corrected at every meeting I've gone to. My house is not two stories, it's one story and a half. Mr. Nomura talked about this house is set back further than the other houses. There is only my house on that block. next to this house, except for the Stein House, which is the original hotel in town and it is set back approximately what my house is set back. I don't know the exact footage of the new proposal, but I believe that it's consistent with my house and the Steinhaus. So I'm here to ask you to grant my appeal. It was approved by the Planning Commission with a vote of three to two. Two other members completely turned it down, saying it was too big, it doesn't fit the two plans There's a plan residential guideline for the beach neighborhood and a community design element. The staff person said I had no evidence to support my appeal, and yet I followed what the planning commission members who opposed this decision. I listed some of the same things. There was never discussion at the meeting, the planning commission meeting, about those reasons that the two other planning commission members completely turned down the project. I didn't hear any discussion like that. While I respect a property owner's right to develop their land, the owner of this and four other properties in that area create a unique situation they've already been approved for two other houses of this size one right behind this and one right behind the spot which is a tiny little building all of the houses in that area will be dwarfed by these four buildings. Now I say four. There are two that are approved. This one's attempting to be approved. And the developers will not comment on what will happen with the historic Steinhaus. It was the first hotel in town. They've let it run to rack and ruin. It looks horrible. It's being used as a building supply yard for the builder. I've complained twice to no avail. So at the very least, the Planning Commission should have considered this as a development. It's four large houses. Two of them are five bedrooms, five bathrooms. This one is now paired down to four bedrooms. Four bathrooms, but it is not smaller that the pictures deceptive that showed the pink part that that they said made the house smaller The only reason that shows up is because the garage is now detached So the garage isn't included in the square footage of the house it's basically the same as it was before if you include the garage or even larger and I didn't hear consideration of the following questions raised at the meeting of the Planning Commission. What's planned for the fourth lot? As I already said, the answer isn't disclosed. What did the Commission and staff analyze the cumulative neighborhood impacts? Should one couple be in charge of what is going on in the entrance to the beach? Should they be allowed to build four large two-story homes? What is planned for the corner lot? Did staff analyze the short-term rental demand? This couple, they call it a single-family home, but this couple said they were going to live at La Playa on the top story. They've been there once that I'm aware of. That is a short-term rental, and each of these, I suspect, is meant to be a short-term rental. Though the ARB set a perimeter that the house should not encroach on the root line of the 30-year-old sycamore tree, the architect stated in the last meeting that was held that they moved the house a little bit forward to make room for the garage in the back. I didn't see analysis of whether or not that encroaches into the root line of the sycamore tree. It wasn't questioned. The garage, the way it's planned, is going to be very difficult for somebody, especially a short-term visitor, to use. La Playa has also a three-car garage. As far as I've heard, all three of those spaces are taken up with equipment. I've never seen anybody park in those spaces. They park next to my house, they park across the street, by the side of La Playa, and they park in front. That will be consistent here, too, perhaps with the other two houses. as well, I don't know. I support development that's consistent with Carpinteria's adopted vision and planning policy. Otherwise, why was all the time and effort spent to develop these? My house is pictured in the guidelines for the beach neighborhood. It isn't tiny, it's 1,900 square feet, however, not 3,000 plus, like these four proposed buildings. Three are proposed, one is a secret. As I've suggested to the architect, a one story single family home should be built on this lot with a different architectural style from the other three homes, the other two that have been passed. Perhaps one of the four Lots should contain a home affordable to a Carpinteria resident rather than being a planned boutique hotel operating with three others as a hospitality compound. And why am I the only dissenter here tonight? Because there's so much proposed development right now that people object to and that affects a whole lot more people. But the problem is they don't show in any of the pictures what the effect is of having four large houses at the gateway to Carpinteria. I ask you to join me in preserving this historic block. Once this slice of carpentry is past, is gone, it's gone forever. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We will now, I have here, B is public. I'm assuming that's public comment. Okay, I will open up public comment and it looks like we have a speaker slip. Patrick O'Connor, welcome.

Thank you, Mayor and Council and staff, as well as the applicant and everyone here. I'm going to make a subtle point that I've made along throughout this process. There's been a lot of gymnastics on this process. I am on the ARB, so I've been through all those meetings. It's hard to separate my mind from being on the ARB versus a resident, but I'll make observations nonetheless. You know this one's been a struggle like the other other four have been a struggle They are big and that's it's been viewed as a as a collective whether we should be or not. It's hard not to You know there's been objections to all of them, you know size mass and scale So we'll just kind of set that aside for a second The thing I really want to point out is more about process the subtlety that I want to point out is that the lot line adjustment was made at the very end of the process and Several ARB reviews and several design changes to accommodate all the issues were done before the lot line was introduced. In my opinion, the ARB was reviewing designs that were not buildable based on the lot as it was configured at the time that we reviewed them. So we're doing things in parallel between ARB and planning in that sense, when it should be in tandem. We should have these things worked out so that the ARB has a full view of what's capable on a lot. Until that lot line was adjusted, there was no alternative to access. There was no alternative to have a garage out in front. So when it finally got to planning and the lot line adjustment was made, planning saw the opportunity to then continue it with the, you know, compel the owners to do that. So a lot of gymnastics and I think a lot of wasted time and a lot of frustration and a lot of momentum. that supported the project when in fact it was not buildable throughout. So I think in any appeal process we should, you gotta make a decision, but you should also have some circumspect after the appeal. What needs to change? Why is this happening the way it's happening? So I think that would be my suggestion is to sort of rethink how we progress from ARB to planning when you have those sorts of anomalies, thanks.

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

Mayor, we have no raised hands.

I will close public comment. And I will give the applicant an opportunity to respond.

Thank you. I'll try to keep it brief. There's a lot of interesting things going on. So... We could get lost in the weeds and debate your definition of small. It clearly meets all the guidelines. This house is substantially further set back than both the adjacent houses. I don't know how to address the neighbor just saying it's not, but we can look at the plan. That's pretty substantial. One other issue is the city attorney here, that's you, I just, why is a ARB member that voted, I believe, against the project coming up as an ARB member in the city council meeting? This seems really inappropriate. And not to mention, let's fact check the stuff that he said, but it's just, it's ludicrous. I mean, we presented this project to the ARB. Why is an ARB member here saying it didn't get presented to him in a meeting that he was in? I'm really confused. But to stay on point and focused, we're here. We've been working on this for a really long time. We've tried to accommodate all the requests and commands or requests and adjustments to the project. And if you guys have any other questions, we're happy to answer them. Thank you.

Thank you. I will now give the appellant an opportunity to respond.

My main thought that I maybe didn't make clear, well, a couple things. The architect says that they've been working on this since 2022. The meetings began in 2025, so it hasn't been in the process of being approved for years. It's been last year starting in May and this year. Also, the couple that is developing this property, they own La Playa, they develop La Playa, it's beautiful. The architect did a wonderful job, and I have no doubt that these homes will be beautiful. But this is a couple that has not attended a single meeting. Why is the architect the applicant? There's a couple here. Why have they not attended a single meeting? I've been at all five meetings. I had to in order to appeal. I wasn't told that until the end, but luckily I'd been to every meeting. But I'd like to know, where are the Kohlers? Why don't they come? Thank you.

Thank you. I will officially close the public hearing, and we will now move on to city council deliberation. Do we have any additional questions?

Okay. Trying to think of how to phrase this. The community design element part, how, that's not part of zoning, but it's part of like a general plan, so it's like a guideline, right? So how is that sort of, how, can you sort of quickly just explain how that is, How do we use that when we look at projects?

In a nutshell.

Through the mayor, I will attempt this first and Nick will supplement. So the... The zoning code gives us the technical specific requirements, which is part of our general plan. But then the general plan does have the overarching objectives and policies that are more open to interpretation and can be more subjective. So that's why we rely on our ARB and then also our planning commissioners to look at those policies and the project case by case and then make those determinations for consistency.

Thank you.

I would just add as well, for some of the neighborhoods, including the Beach neighborhood here, we have developed a set of residential design guidelines, which are an additional tool that staff and decision makers and members of the public and applicants can use to try to help design a project in such a way that it can hopefully be found consistent with these general plan policies. All right, so these general plan policies, as Cindy mentioned, are mostly subjective in nature, right? They have wording like should be compatible with the neighborhood, should preserve the small beach town character. That means different things to different people, perhaps. And so we've taken, some of the kind of design characteristics that we've seen used in new development over the years and tried to distill those down into some various standards to say, all right, the second floor should be no more than a certain percentage of the total square footage. The zoning code allows heights to go to 30 feet, but most homes in that neighborhood aren't 30 feet. We wanna see heights stay a little bit lower, right? And so the design guidelines kind of try to distill things down to a finer level of detail with the thought being that if you design a project that is consistent with all those design guidelines, keeping in mind they're just guidelines, that then that project has a higher chance of also being found consistent with the general plan community design element policies. And so they're not something that you can approve or deny a project on by themselves, but they help give you context in a way to kind of measure how a project does or doesn't fit into the neighborhood and what's the desired character of the neighborhood. And so in the case of this project, I think as both Cindy and the applicant stated, the staff's analysis of the design guidelines concluded that the project was consistent with those guidelines and therefore also consistent with the community design element policies of the general plan.

Thank you.

Mayor Alarcon, council members, if I can just jump in, and this is going back to process here a little bit, but there is a two-step process. And so before we get too far into considering the appeal itself, there is a first step in the council deciding whether or not it wants to take up the appeal or accept the appeal. And then from there, considering the appeal itself de novo.

If someone can do the first motion, can we actually put it up on the slide, please?

There you go. Great, thank you. And you were just doing the first part right now, correct? So that would just be the first sentence.

Sorry, Cindy. Just to clarify, the first action would be a decision whether or not to accept the appeal. So a motion could be, I move to accept the appeal. A motion could also be, I move not to accept the appeal. If you move to accept the appeal and that motion is voted on and passes, then the council would go on and consider the appeal and all of the facts de novo. If you move to not accept the appeal, then the council would not have the opportunity to review all of the facts de novo.

OK. So I move to accept the appeal for the council's consideration. Great. We have a first. Do we have a second?

I will second that. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

No.

No. So motion did not pass.

Just confirming that those opposed, the noes were ayes for being opposed.

Correct. Yes.

But can I just ask a question? This is my first time in an appeal process. So by making the motion to accept the appeal, I was saying that I wanted us to be able to talk about the appeal and to talk about our reasoning and to be transparent about why we were either going to approve of, or we were going to adopt the resolution affirming the planning commission's decision to approve the project as submitted, correct?

Vice Mayor Solaris, I know through the mayor, that is correct. But by what I heard with not accepting the appeal was that by that action in and of itself, the action of the planning commission stands. So a majority of the council in the vote that I just heard taken, a majority of the council decided that they did not want to take the appeal up de novo, and that they were in agreement with, well, yeah, they didn't want to take the appeal up de novo, and so therefore the Planning Commission's actions stand. Great.

So motion denied.

Okay. The appeal was denied.

Perfect. So we can now move on. This item is over. Just confirming. Okay.

Number two.

Yeah. Okay. I will say that was a little confusing on my end. So I think moving forward, if we have another public hearing, maybe we can work out some of those.

Comments of staff on this one. In our packet, we received two, a sample motion number one and a sample motion number two. We did not see sample motions three and four in there or a continuation of that one. Suggestion in the future would actually be to be, I would say be more specific, give us clarification on what these specific motions would indicate and the actions being taken, what those actually show also. I think that would help us a lot in the process. I think there's some... I would say misunderstandings in the process itself. For example, we had no real chance to actually discuss what we were finding, what was stated during the testimonial time. So I think having a process that would include discussion on those specific points would benefit the decision in the overall process.

So council member Nomura through the mayor, understand your confusion and frustration. Our code is written in such a way that in certain situations there is this two step process that requires the council to first approve or accept an appeal. for discussion amongst the council and then make a de novo decision on the project itself. And so I understand if maybe there was some confusion in what motion was being provided. It is a very confusing process and it's just the way that it's written into our code. So by denying the acceptance of the appeal, then that forecloses the ability to discuss the facts that are brought up or the appeal itself.

So we could have talked about the facts of the appeal if that first motion to accept the appeal for consideration had been approved, then we could have talked about the facts and our opinions and our interpretations.

That's correct, and you could have still gotten to the same place if, yes. So those are, it's just, this is how the code is written, and it is this two-step process. Okay, thank you for the clarification.

Based on that, we still don't have that written into the briefings that we have, so that might be something you may want to consider or reconsider. The way I see it right here, Motion 1 and Motion 2 are 180. You don't have a choice in the middle.

Well, from what I understand, just for my own clarification, so they're kind of, they work together, they're two steps, is that correct, Jenna? So that in order to get to number two, you have to do step one.

Vice Mayor Soler, I know that is correct. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, and just maybe to clarify if it helps, step one, where it uses language, accept the appeal, does not mean that you're approving the appeal or agreeing with the appeal, it just means you're accepting the appeal to be able to consider the matter further. And so I think the intention, I'm speculating because obviously this code is quite old and hasn't been updated in quite some time, but I think the intention was to give the council an opportunity to dismiss an appeal in certain circumstances where they don't feel it merits further discussion. If you do feel an appeal merits further discussion, then you can accept the appeal, have that further discussion and deliberations, and render a decision.

Exactly. So here we go. What I would suggest or recommend in the future, because every one of the items that we've had in past agendas have a motion, sample motion one or two, it would be helpful if this sample motion, instead of being sample motion one, would be step one or motion step one and then motion step two.

Council Member Nomura, I think I'm understanding your confusion now, right? So sample motion one and sample motion two, you're interpreting those as either or versus step one and step two.

Correct.

I understand that now. That is understood.

Comments taken. So both one and two should have a yes or no, right?

Council Member Clark, that's correct. So it is a two-step. confusing two-step process and so each of those steps need to have a motion and a decision yes right and so in the upper you know there's the options below right where we go through and there are you know three options and so each of those options has two steps two sentences in each option right but I understand up above where you have the recommended motions it is sample motion one and sample motion two. I think we as staff read that differently because we are more familiar with the CMC section, the code section, but I understand where the confusion comes from.

And one other point that was brought up, Patrick brought this up. When the ARB looks at these, and I had done this in the past, if we found a project that was nonconforming due to some situation, of the project itself, as an example, something that was encroaching on a setback, something like that, or encroachment onto a property. It is my hopes that the ARB would get a chance to look at it once it does come into conformance, because that was not addressed evidently, it sounds like, by the ARB. They saw one project that was not gonna pass because of the nonconformity of an encroachment onto that specific property until the subdivision was created.

Can I ask a question? Because I might be thinking of this differently. Was part of the restriction on the fact that we could only have five meetings for this project? Because in other words, if it would have gone back to ARB and after planning commission had considered it twice, would it then, was that maybe a barrier it came against? Or is that a different issue? Because I want to understand this too, yeah, how the process works.

I don't believe that that came up in this situation, but this is state law does put a five hearing limit on these types of applications. I don't believe, I think that is likely something that is in different boards' minds, but I don't recall that coming up as an issue during this process.

I would say that had there been the opportunity for the ARB to review this one with, I would say, a recommendation that it move forward addressing the subdivision of that property might have helped a little bit. That way the decision could have been made based on a conforming project.

Just want to confirm, did staff hear?

Yeah, I did hear that through the mayor. Thank you.

We can move on, sorry.

Okay, no, great. Okay, we will now, so item 14 is done, and we will take a short break. We'll come back at 8 p.m. Thank you. Carpenter and City Council meeting today is September 14th, 2026. And we will begin with other business items, which is agenda number 15. And it is the approval of a special event permit application for the 2026 California Avocado Festival scheduled to run from Friday, October 2nd, 2026 through Sunday, October 4th, 2026, including designation of the event footprint as a public park.

Excuse me, Mayor. Out of an abundance of caution and a potential perception of a conflict of interest, I'll have to recuse myself from this one.

Great. Thank you. Thanks.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. I'll just do a brief staff presentation, and then I'll invite Olivia and Mike to come up to give the presentation and answer any questions you all have. So tonight's item is consideration of the special event permit for the 2026 California Avocado Festival, which will be held October 2nd through Sunday, October 4th. The applicant for this permit is the California Avocado Festival Incorporated. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the festival, so it's really exciting time. The event continues to be held primarily along Linden Avenue, and it's expected to attract thousands of residents and visitors to our downtown Carpinteria over the three-day event. The festival hours are proposed to be 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. as in previous years the city will support the event through coordination with the festival organizers also the sheriff's office the carpentry of summerlin fire protection district and city staff the city will also provide temporary traffic control and post event street and sidewalk cleaning the city's estimated cost for supporting this year's festival is approximately to 32 400 This includes $15,000 for the sheriff services and approximately $17,400 in public works costs. These costs are included within our fiscal year 27 budget and no additional appropriation is needed from the City Council tonight. The festival is also requesting authorization for the sale and service of alcoholic beverages within the designated festival area. Consistent with previous festivals, the recommended action before you tonight would temporarily designate the festival footprint as a public park during event operating hours and authorize its special use under the city's municipal code. So tonight, staff is recommending that the council approve the special event permit and the temporary public park designation. As I mentioned, California Avocado Festival Inc. representatives Olivia and Mike are here. And we're also available if the staff or council has any questions for staff.

Thank you. Any questions? Just a few quick questions. And this might be more for the Avofest folks. So I see the operating hours were shortened a little bit. I was wondering, was that something that is that for from the festival's perspective? Does that help a little bit on your end? Or was there concerns from residents? Or what was the background?

Yeah, come on up, Olivia.

Welcome. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. Yeah, one, the reason we were closing earlier on Sunday is because we have to open the street by 10, and we stayed until 7 last year, and so we did it, but that was aggressive, and we just want to chill a little bit. On our 40th year, we know that a lot's going to be going on, so we did that. And then opening up just a little bit later, it was just easier on the amount of sheriff hours and the amount of staff hours and the amount of volunteers. It just kind of like reduced everything a bit. I have heard that local businesses open at 10, so we hope it gives them an opportunity to have people go in there first, and then we open up at 11. So that was our reasoning.

That makes sense. No, thank you. And then is there anything, because it's the 40th, is there anything you're anticipating that's going to be an extra special focus or anything like that?

I mean, we're going to continue to focus on our youth area. That's been, like, our biggest priority in the youth stage and programming all of that. That's been really important to us. And just celebrating, you know, that we've done this for 40 years and how exciting that is. We'll have all of our regular fun that will be going on as well throughout the weekend.

That's great. And the youth stage has really progressed so much in the past couple years. So it's good that that's going to keep being a focus.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Well, so thank you. Those are my two questions I wanted to ask.

Okay. Can I say anything or, like –

Is that okay, Mayor? Yeah, go ahead.

I just wanted to like, I don't know, is this the one where I get to tell you guys all about it? Let's do it. But yes, it's 40 years of peace, love, and guacamole. We will have the 60 bands again across four stages, one of which is that youth stage. Opening ceremonies are at 5.30 on Friday, so... Everybody plan to be there? I think you normally are. But if anybody wants to say anything, please let me know. We love that. For everyone that's been working out a lot, our strong arm is going to be on Saturday at noon to see how long you can hold avocados. Roy Lee and Greg Carty will be there and John Palminteri facilitating that. our guacamole contest is changing a little bit we want people to register in advance as much as we love getting like 40 pints of guacamole on that day if you can let us know you're coming that would be cool just so we can be more prepared for that and our judges can be prepared to eat that much guacamole youth stage yes we're going to have all the youth bands again we're so excited about that how that continues to progress eventually maybe we'd want to add that on a Friday because we have so many locals coming on a Friday night and But stay tuned. We won't do it to you this year, don't worry. It's not in the permit, I know. We will be having a kids' dance party again with the Boys and Girls Club, so please, everybody plan to come out on Saturday night with your kids and come and dance with them. We're doing it a little bit later. It will be from 6 to 7 this year, so it'll be a little bit darker. And... Huge thank you to Edwell Hospitality that bought the Palms. They have contributed again so that all kids under five ride free on the Ferris wheel. So please have kids under five come ride for free. That's very generous of them. We will have the shuttle to keep traffic down in town. It runs all day on Saturday and Sunday. It's not as busy on Friday, so we don't run it that day. as much as we love to help all these local organizations, Aliso School reached out and they are gonna be offering their parking lot as a fundraiser, so please everybody go park at Aliso School to help them, otherwise you can take the shuttle from the high school on the weekend. We are so impressed, we've had more volunteers sign up this year than signed up by the whole end of last year. So we are super excited about that. We do have a volunteer social on Thursday for anybody that might want to come and see all the volunteers and hang out with us on Thursday. You get free pizza at Giovanni's. And if you haven't signed up yet, you can come and do so. But I think that just really speaks to Carpinteria and like how much, like we were talking about it earlier with Christina, like how beautiful it is that everybody volunteers here and gets involved. And we are just so lucky that we get to see that too from our side. There's also volunteer shirts this year. They're really cute, so. Volunteer. Posters, you will have seen them around town. Huge thank you to Public Works for putting them up everywhere. I don't know if you've been cruising around and seeing them, but we are so excited that those are there. And we've had everybody asking to buy posters, so we will have a vintage poster booth this year. We're quite excited about that. Somebody just bought one of every year this weekend from us. We talked about the hours, that's very good. One thing that Laz wanted me to bring up in the aware and prepare area, there was a lot of talk earlier about El Nino and if there's anything that we can have a booth there that helps like preparedness or anything like that, we are happy to offer that space. I think they're doing something at the Alcazar as well. And then just so everybody knows, we don't promote this event in L.A. anymore. We stopped doing that several years ago, so there aren't as many shuttle buses or anything like that happening. We want this to be a local event. We want to keep it just for the people that are here. I mean, we appreciate visitors, but we are not promoting it elsewhere and encouraging shuttles to come up like that anymore. And I guess I should have started with this, but thank you. Thank you to all of you for all of our meetings, for all of our times, for listening to my emails and calls and like, hey, can we get another banner up? Just really appreciate the support from the city. This event would not be possible without all of the support. I mean, you talked about numbers there. It's definitely a huge, huge contribution from the city, and we're just so thankful for that. And everybody is so wonderful to work with, which has been great, too.

So thank you, and we're excited to see you all there.

Good day.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions from council? Okay, no questions. I will now open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Mayor, we have no Zoom comment.

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

I'll move to approve the special event permit for the 2026 California Avocado Festival pursuant to Carpentry Municipal Code chapter 10.68 special events and designate the area of the event footprint as a public park during the hours of operation and approve its use for the event pursuant to Carpentry Municipal Code section 12.24.022 permits special public park use. Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. Thank you. We will now move on to item number 16, which is a project status update for Carpinteria Avenue bridge replacement project.

Yes, good evening, Mayor. I'm gonna introduce our fantastic interim public works director, Gerald Kamadi. We are so lucky to have him on board as our interim public works director. In addition, he's also been the project manager for the Carpinteria Avenue bridge replacement project since its beginning. So he is the expert on this matter. As he'll detail tonight in his presentation, the city is slated to take on one of its biggest CIP projects in the history of the city. and we are in good hands with Gerald. He's gonna give you an update on the project, a full history, and then talk about some of the upcoming steps that come with this project beginning to start construction this summer. So with that, I'll turn it over to Gerald.

Thank you, Ryan. Madam Mayor and members of the council, good evening.

Let's see.

So tonight I'm going to do a comprehensive overview of the project. I know you are familiar with it, so hopefully it won't be too boring. But there are some exciting elements. This is an overview of the major topics I'll be discussing. So I won't go through that. I'll just start right in. First one is some background. So the bridge was built in 1937. So it's one of the oldest bridges around in the Central Coast. It wasn't luckily built in the 60s. Most of the bridges built in the 60s, as you may or may not know, have now been replaced because they had reactive aggregate. They all used the same aggregate source. This bridge didn't. It was older, and so that's why it's still standing today. Caltrans is required to do every two years an inspection of all local bridges like Cop Bridge. And back in 2011, after inspection, it raised some issues related to structural deficiencies and hydraulic deficiencies that made it eligible for funding for either rehabilitation or replacement. through the Highway Bridge Program, which is a federal program. The structural problems were related to, differences were related to deep cracks in the deck, as also a diminished girder strength. of the bridge. Now, that's kind of a continuing issue back from 2011. It's getting worse and worse. However, the bridge is safe for the loads that it currently receives with the traffic. So it's not going to fall down soon or at all in the near future, but it is a big red flag for the future. We have to do something about the bridge. That's the structural side. On the hydraulic side, a little more intuitive, the existing bridge does not allow the conveyance of 100-year storm floodwaters beneath it. So this would be some overtopping, as you've probably seen in some of the big storm of years. but does not convey 100-year storm orders, and so that needs to be modified. That is a design standard for new bridges. So those two things qualify it or qualified it for funding through the Highway Bridge Program. So that's the history. A little bit about the Highway Bridge Program. It's a national program, obviously. Each state gets a chunk of money from Washington. And the funding categories, there's three categories. They kind of simplify it quite nicely. There's the PE category, which is kind of the broadest. It's kind of all the services related to delivering a project. So it's preliminary design, environmental, permitting, final design, right-of-way engineering, all that stuff. Right-of-way is the second category, and that's specifically for the property acquisition, related legal services to that acquisition, appraisals for property, and right-of-way agent services to make offers, negotiations, et cetera, et cetera. And then the third and largest part or category is construction, and that's where most of the money goes. And that includes all elements of a construction project. So the big chunk, of course, is the contractor, the construction contractor builds the project. And then we have construction management services, which runs about 15%, so it's not insignificant. And then there's design support during construction. As questions come back, well, what's the design mean? And it goes back and forth with the original designers. That's a relatively small amount of money. And then there's mitigation monitoring for some projects, and it is applicable to this one. All right, so I'm just going to quickly hit on all the major phases of the project, some of which are now in the past, or most are in the past. But I think it's a good kind of summary of what happened. So the first one is a preliminary engineering environmental. So as I said, we got identified for potential funding back in 2011. And we kind of kicked off that effort with interface field meetings with Caltrans and development of a hydraulics and hydrology study to assess what exactly is the need for conveyance of that 100 year event. and then a bunch of technical studies to support our environmental document eventually, which is going to bio, cultural, floodplain, visual, kind of a lot of studies you've probably heard on many other projects as well, as well as the polymer engineering. So that's bridge-type selection. What kind of bridge are we going to, to replace this. Are we going to have a big single span bridge? Are we going to do lots of little spans? And we did a large assessment and we go back and forth and directly interface with Caltrans and get some community input as well. And we ended up with a three-span bridge. So that all kind of comes together. And then we begin the environmental document. We did an environmental impact report, EIR and the CEQA. And that was ultimately approved by council in 2016. And concurrent with that, because this is a federally funded project, we also need to have NEPA approval. So we got a categorical exclusion, which we prepared. And that's approved by Caltrans as the federally sponsoring agency for the project. Next, I'm going to talk about permits. So, again, the usual suspects on the permitting side, Corps of Engineers, Regional Water Quality Control Board, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, CDFW, and then we, of course, have the city's coastal development permit. So we have all those permits, or we had all those permits, and we had to do, as the project kind of got extended and delayed, and I'll get to that discussion a little later, we got extensions to these permits. However, and everything's in place now, all good, except that CDFW, we couldn't get another extension, so they have asked us to reapply, which we have done. submitted the application a few months ago and we're just kind of going through that discussion with CDFW. We expect that to go through smoothly since they approved it once and nothing has changed on the project. And hopefully nothing's changed too much on the CDFW side of things. So that's permits. Next, I'm going to spend a little more time on the design. So after the environmental was approved, then we kind of began the final design, as it's called. And it's an elaborate, lengthy process. And we are effectively complete. And we've kind of been in this kind of complete stage now for a few years, in a way, waiting for other things to occur. And I'll get to that. But right now, the team is putting together the construction bid package, kind of the boiler plane language up front. This is a Caltrans project. It's not many Caltrans projects that the city does in terms of compliance with our code and design guidelines. And then we have technical specifications and all that stuff. So we're putting it all together to accompany the final design plans. Now a little bit of details about the project. So just as a reminder, you probably know some of this, but the bridge is going to be replaced in its entirety. Of course, it's going to actually be about 11 feet wider on the north side. It's going to hold the south side. It's going to be 11 feet wider on the north. There will be two vehicle lanes, just like today, one in each direction. And there will be a center median turning lane in each direction, just like today. There's a 12-foot travel lane, 14-foot central median. Two class two bike lanes, just like today, and eight-foot sidewalks, which I think actually is wider than we have today. I think they're six feet right now. The bridge, as I said, will be a three span bridge. Right now it's a six span. So there's lots of columns in the creek. So we want to reduce the amount of columns in the creek. So the best we could do was two sets of columns. And that increases the elevation by two feet of the bridge. So it's going to be slightly higher than it is today. That's in the middle. Of course, we conform back to the existing driveways on the other side, so there's no kind of big elevation changes there. Also, the increased height helps us with the accommodation of the 100-year storm floodwaters underneath. There's an existing bike path, as you know, on the west side. That's going to be accommodated. It's going to be increased in elevation slightly to match the slightly higher T intersection at Carpenter Avenue. Bridge rail will be very similar to what it is now, kind of the arched concrete. It's going to be a little more robust, a little heavier, similar to some of the bridges that you've probably seen in the city of Carpinteria and in Goleta. That's the design. And this project was approved by ABR back in 2019. The construction will be two stages, fairly straightforward. It's kind of half a bridge. The north half will be demolished and then reconstructed first. And then the next season, the southern half will be demolished and reconstructed. As far as construction or traffic during construction. So there won't be any closures of the road. All the traffic will be shifted onto the open part of the bridge that's not being worked on. There won't be a middle turning lane anymore. There will just be one lane in each direction. And bike lanes, there won't be a bike lane during construction. It will be a shared facility. And then for pedestrians, there will be one sidewalk open at each stage of the bridge, and it'll be a shared sidewalk for both directions. And both of those protocols are pretty conventional in this type of bridge construction. So the overall process will take two dry seasons, if you like. So summer plus autumn, and then you have to wait till the next dry season comes along and do the second stage. In between those dry seasons, there'll be, during the wet season, if you like, there'll be a lot of stuff happening on the top of the deck, or the bridge rail, and that kind of stuff. Except it's not in the creek, because you can't work in the creek in the wet season, as you know. All right, I think that's the design one. Let's get to utilities. So a bunch of utilities are impacted by the project. Again, not uncommon. It's a major thoroughfare of Carpath, as you know. So the utility relocations fall into two major categories. There's those relocations that have to occur before we start construction, because they're that much in the way. of cranes and actual construction operations. And then there's relocations that occur during construction. So in the middle of construction we have these kind of windows of time where they come in and fed stuff through the new bridge and things like that. Most of the pre-con relocation work is now complete or will be complete certainly before the end of the year. And then I should also mention that as part of the project of our contractor's work, the contractor will be doing two relocations for two of the utility companies. One is the sanitary district and the other is the water district. So for the water district, the contractor will be relocating the main line to the upstream side of the bridge. It will be hanging on the outside of the upstream side of the bridge. And for the sanitary district, we'll be boring a new line under the creek just downstream of the downstream side of the bridge. So that work will be part of the bid package. All right, so that's utilities. Now I'm going to get into right-of-way.

I'm sorry, quick question if I may interrupt. So are those utilities the only ones that are left to be moved as the project continues? Everything else, all the other utilities in terms of the delay that I read in the staff report, that's all done?

That is correct. All will be done in the next month or so.

Great, okay, thank you.

And actually you can see what was, some of you can't see because it's underground, but what was done is they put temporary overhead poles on the north side of the bridge. You can see them kind of wowing out around the bridge, and that's Edison and Frontier are gonna be on that. I don't think Frontier has strung the lines yet, Edison has, but that was the big delay, one of the delay elements of the project. That's quite a significant piece of work. Especially, I should note, all this utility relocation work, because it's in public right-of-way, it's at their cost. It's not the city's cost or anyone else. So they have to relocate at their own cost. So sometimes they drag their feet because they have lots of other priorities that you can imagine, especially the electrical Edison. All right, so on the right-of-way side of things, back in 2018, we did acquire the right-of-way needed for the project, and that consisted of one permanent right-of-way take in easement and also a lot of temporary construction easements and temporary mitigation easements. Now, temporary construction easement is an easement that you get for a set period of time during construction and it's for construction operations and access, equipment access. So basically without TCEs you can't get to the project to replace the bridge. So it's all for operations and access. A TME, a temporary mitigation easement, is basically access to an area where we're going to be putting in mitigation planting for impacts to riparian areas that the new bridge is causing. We'll be removing non-natives and putting in native plants. Once after installation of the plants, and this is after completion of the project, we have a five-year monitoring period where we go back every quarter to make sure that the plants are taking, and if not, we do some more planting, so it's a required permitting element of the project. So the project, so we acquired right away back in 2018. So why isn't the project built? There were delays to the project, as you can see. And the main focus of the delay or cause was while we were programmed, federal money was programmed for all phases of the project, including construction, they don't actually allocate the construction funds until they have the money. and you're ready to go to construction. So the HPP program is, back in 2020, kind of hit a bit of a problem because they weren't getting any more money from the feds. It wasn't kind of increasing appropriately with the cost of construction, which was going up, especially during COVID and post-COVID, it went crazy. So there wasn't enough HPP funding for all the competing projects that were approved for HPP funding. they implemented a modified prioritization process whereby which projects need the money most and therefore which projects get the construction money first and this project was not particularly high on that list so for many years we were kind of just fighting can we get the money now you know what about now and and it was this back and forth and finally we did secure construction allocation of construction money in the summer of 2024. So that meant we certainly couldn't go to construction in 2024 because we needed a good amount of work beforehand before we get to construction. And the other thing that this delay caused was that the utility companies aren't willing to commit to any relocation work until they know you're going to build the project. Especially since it's their dime that they're doing this relocation work. And especially Edison. They have a long lead time for the development of their relocation designs and then the scheduling of the construction work. You can imagine. They have so many other competing priorities with wildfires, et cetera. So they weren't able to complete their pre-construction relocations until now. So we couldn't go to construction until next summer, 2027. So that was the delay. And what happened? What did that delay cause? It caused us to basically, our easements that we acquired back in 2018, they expired for the most part. So Caltrans basically said, okay, you've got to go back and reacquire those easements and also put in modified easement language in the easement documents. So as a result, we are now in the process of doing that appraisal for these properties. The good news is that we did apply for additional federal funding to pay for the additional cost of these acquisitions, and we succeeded in securing that additional money. All right, so now I'm going to just hit on some milestones moving forward as we get to approach the start of construction. So let's see if I can read this from here. We've got a couple of council meetings coming up that we are scheduling in November, December, one of which is to secure your approval of the design package for us to be able to advertise. We need council approval. We also will be taking to Council probably the same meeting approval of our construction management agreement with the consultant that was selected through RFP process, federally endorsed. We will secure our permit for CDFW. We need that. Actually, we can advertise without that permit, but we need that before we can start construction. Obviously, we need to have all the settlement with our right-of-way acquisitions done before we can advertise, and we project that to be by January 27th. And then Caltrans will issue a right-of-way certification to us. And then we advertise. It's, say, February of 2027. And then following that, council award of a contract in April of 2027. And we'll start construction May, June of next year. Construction completion for the bridge work is 2029, say, January, February. And then we begin that five-year mitigation monitoring period, which will go into 2034. And my last slide is to discuss a little bit, and we'll be coming back to Council for a more in-depth discussion of this. So this is the construction funding issues that we need to address. Right now, we have... programmed, allocated, construction funding of $12 million. Actually, it's $14 million. And, yeah, it says 14 over there. Now, that includes, as I mentioned before, not just construction itself, it also includes the services supported, so construction management, design support, et cetera. Given the escalating construction costs over the last few years, you're probably all aware of it, we know categorically that that's not enough money to build this project. But that's okay. Caltrans understands that, and that's pretty much the norm in today's environment, especially with the high-wage-based program. So the protocol that Caltrans has clearly laid out to us is that bid the project, advertise, open the bids, and assuming the low bid is compliant, then you award the contract to the contractor. And then, only after then, will staff submit an application for supplemental funding to close the gap between what we have, the $14 million, and what we need. And what I said in my staff report, I think right now it's about $20 million But it could be more. It could be 22. We're now refining our construction engineer's estimate for what that construction cost is going to be. So this happens all the time with HBP projects. I have never seen in my experience with this and the designer who does hundreds of these bridges has never seen it either. Caltrans always fills the gap, provides the supplemental funding. And they give prioritization to projects that are in construction. So once you award, you're in construction. So automatically, the project goes to the top of the list to get the supplemental funding. So the timeline for that is usually, I've seen it as short as a month. But I put in the staff report six months, just to be conservative. But usually it's around three months that we get the approval that Caltrans, all good, the money's there. we recognize, the city recognizes that there has to be some way to kind of bridge that funding gap. One, to be able to allow the city to actually award a contract for, let's say, $22 million, but you only have $12 million or $14 million that's in the bank, so to speak. So there's that strategy that needs to be figured out. And then also there's issue of cash flow over the life of the project, two years. life of the project. So we've been discussing with finance, and we'll be coming back with specific recommendations of how to accomplish that. And Michael and Ryan may have something else to add to that.

That's pretty much it. Thank you so much, Gerald, Mayor, council members. Yeah, just to add on that a little bit more, we've already kind of prepped the finance committee on this and gave them some preliminary kind of direction that staff is going to take. We want to really identify all of the potential funding sources that are out there and the credit options that are out there. and then come back to Council with what those options are. And then it's at that time where we're going to ask Council to give us approval to start pursuing those in detail and then get all the terms for whatever loan that might look like. And then we would come back to Council again with those loan terms. And it's at that time that the Council would make the approval to enter into a loan. FROM WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT, THERE ARE SOME REALLY GREAT OPTIONS OUT THERE THAT ARE CAPITAL FINANCING INSTEAD OF A BOND. THEY PROVIDE A LITTLE BIT MORE FLEXIBILITY, A LITTLE BETTER RATES, AND ALSO A LOT FASTER TO ACQUIRE THE FUNDING. IT ALSO GIVES US SOME FLEXIBILITY ON WHAT WE CAN USE THE MONEY FOR. SAY WE DON'T NEED IT FOR THE BRIDGE, POTENTIALLY WE COULD USE IT DOWN THE LINE FOR SOME OTHER PROJECT THAT THE COUNCIL LIKE PAVEMENT OR SOMETHING. and really it's it's as gerald mentioned it's twofold we can't award a project if we don't have sufficient funding and so while we're waiting for the hpp funds the hope is we won't need it at all and then secondly as gerald mentioned we'll need the cash on hand to pay our bills because the hpp grant is reimbursable so we spend the funds first then we submit the the funding invoices that that we spent and then we get reimbursed so there's that lag time so that's the other reason And what, you know, just preliminary analysis that Lisette and I have done, we're earning pretty good interest on our money market funds and our savings that are in those accounts. And the interest earned on those is actually higher than the interest that we would be paying for these potential loans. So there's also some potential cost savings there. Because instead of taking the cash out of our money market funds, we would use these loan balances. Similar to like how you would use a credit card instead of cashing out, you know, stocks or bonds or whatever you have. So it's an option. It's really preliminary right now. We're going to bring all these options to the full council. I don't have a lot of the information to answer your questions today, but we're going to do this in multiple steps. We're going to work closely with the finance committee, and then we're going to work closely with this council to ensure that we all understand what we're getting ourselves into, what the options are to make the best decision for the city.

Great, thank you. Questions? Yeah, I have a question about just as to what you were talking about right now. So is there some contingency built in for if costs continue throughout this process like you're saying where we don't have, we're waiting for the HBP construction funding to come and there's like unforeseen increases in costs. What does that do in terms of this supplemental funding that we'll be looking for?

Yeah, I'll answer that and then I'll turn it over to Gerald to add anything. Once the bid is locked in and we agree to that bid amount and we award the contract, that amount is really what the contractors are agreeing to, so there shouldn't be any major changes. I'll let Gerald add in, there might be some small change orders, but as I understand it, what we get in that bid and what we award in that contract is what we should expect to spend.

Well, I would just add that every construction contract has 10% contingency automatically. Some even want more. So that would be in that total amount of money that we need for all construction, we would include the 10% on top of the low bid.

And is it pretty much determined for certain that our share of the project cost won't be more than that 11.47 local match, no matter what? Correct.

That's locked in, yes. Okay. And actually, as a point of interest, we're historically locked in nowadays. I think it's 80-20, so we're kind of fortunate that way.

Good. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Clark.

Thank you. So the... If you've got a $20 million project with a 10% contingency, so how are we gonna come up with that 11 1⁄2% on the city side? Is that what the loan is doing? I think I'll let Ryan handle that.

I can take it. So very good question, Councilmember Clark. I'm looking at our capital improvements program project, CIP project page, and we've already programmed some funds out of different funds that we have. So for example, there's 471 in highway diff just for fiscal 27. Fiscal 26, it's 569. Anyways, a total of 1.4 is being programmed out of the highway diff. The RMRA fund, we have 350,000 programmed. The gas tax, we have 119 programmed. Measure A, 135. Measure X, 16, and general fund, 485. So that's based off of our existing design engineer's estimate of the project of 15.3 million. And so that's currently where we're projecting those funds will come from. We'll likely have to identify some additional funds, as you mentioned, Al, in the future once we get that actual bid amount. To answer your question, yes, potentially it could come from that loan, but we'll also have to look at some other sources of funding, likely our capital reserves, maybe some additional general fund or Measure X funds. But those will be decisions that this council will make as we get those bids and we come back to the council. Once we get that bid amount, we'll really know what we're dealing with, and then it's at that time we can make those decisions and the tough calls of where those funds are coming from.

Yeah, a question for you on this one also. Since we are basically administrators for the grant, for the project itself, are we going to be able to recover or recuperate any of the expenses that staff time is going to be included for doing this project?

Yes, all staff time is reimbursable. Thank you.

So, understand that costs go up, but if I'm not mistaken in the staff report, it was just May 2026 that we were looking at 14 million. And maybe I've got the dates wrong, but that $6 million gap, I guess you've explained it, but maybe you can just... How did we end up with such a high jump so quickly? Were we just not really looking at the real costs?

The construction cost of a project is developed through a term called the engineer's estimate. You've probably heard that kicked around. That is literally what it is. It's the estimate by the designer. And Dewberry, the last time Dewberry did their update, a proper thorough update, was a few years back, maybe more than a few years back, actually. And it was coming in at maybe 10 or 11, and then they just did some escalation rates applied to it instead of a proper full Monty update. And this estimate is basically broken down by bid items. So it's probably 30 different items, quantities. It's what the contractor uses to come up with their price. So we were aware for many years that that $14 million we have isn't going to be enough. And we kept telling Caltrans this. And they said, don't worry. Wait till you advertise. And so they basically said, don't ask for more money now. Ask for it once you've opened the bids and awarded. And we'll go through that construction protocol that we just described. So it was more like... Caltrans are saying, you know, stay cool. We've got it covered. It is a big jump. But it's not really, from our perspective, we kind of knew always it was coming.

I see. What happens, this is just a theoretical, but I think it's helpful for us to know, I mean, because my question was in line with the, you know, how are we going to pay this $2.2 million, which, I mean, only paying 11% is still $2.2 million. Is there, what happens if the lowest bid is like markedly higher? Because yes, we only have to pay 11%, but is there a threshold where we say 11% of 30 million is just out of the realm of comfort for the city? Like do we have sort of a contingency, or is there some thought that's been put into that at all?

I can try to answer that.

So it's a really good question, Mayor, and Council Member Mayer. To answer your question, we're really banking on this project coming in relatively close to the engineer's estimate of $20 million, as Gerald put in the staff report. If it does come in around $30 million, I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there sort of thing. because we're already all in on this project. We were able to confirm that what we've already spent on this project, if we don't pursue and complete this project, we would have to pay that back. And that's upwards of what, two million or something at this time? More than that. So it's either we pay back the two million or we pay whatever more it is to just get this project done. I think if it does come in at 30 million, we could look at that loan option and maybe use majority of it to cover that gap. But I would be remiss to say, if I didn't say, that there's going to be some tough decisions to be made for this council and for the staff if it comes in that high. Because it will be in, so to speak, a pickle.

Sure. Yeah. So I have one last question. Okay, so when you get an SBA loan, they say they'll give you $500,000, but you have to pay it and then you submit the invoice and they give it back to you. So I'm assuming that that's sort of how this will work. What's the maximum amount of money that we're thinking we may have to be putting out at a certain time? And this may be something that's gonna come back through the finance committee, but I'm just curious.

Generally, as a rule of thumb, this is a two-year project, so you can probably divide the total construction by 20. I wouldn't do 24. And that's going to be your average outlay to the contractor every month. On top of that, you'll have the CM, so probably a little bit more, so add 10% to that. I just wanted to add to your previous question, and I know that Ryan and Michael have been thinking about this as well, as to what avenues does the city have to perhaps secure some supplemental other funding. And because this is a federal grant, anything we get state or other, so long as it's not federal. Federal we can't use as a match. We can only use state or local. And there are opportunities on the state level, certainly, for potentially getting some help, you know, for the match. But we can't use federal.

Thank you.

When do we expect the final engineer's estimate report to come out or to come back to council?

Certainly, when we come back in November or December, whenever that was, we'll have that number for you. Okay, great.

And then, I know you mentioned it, Ryan, in terms of we would have to pay back the dollars for this grant if we don't move forward. And so, in line with that, is there a certain milestone or a date that we just need to keep going before it's too late?

In terms of schedule, obviously we're targeting next summer to start construction. And that's important because of the right-of-way issue and the start and end dates. But if for some reason the city felt we can't go next summer, you don't lose the grant. It kicks down to the next year. So we do have flexibility to push the can down the road, so to speak. With the exception of the right-of-way problem. Right. But yeah, it's not like, oh, you missed your window, now pay back everything. It doesn't, no, we have that flexibility.

Right. And at the same time, we don't want to push it back too far either, given that the bridge was built in the 30s.

Yeah, and construction costs just keep going up.

Right. Okay, thank you. Any other questions from the council? Okay, no other questions. I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Mayor, we have no raised hands.

Okay, I will close the public comment and we'll get back to the council for a determination.

I'll move to receive and file the comprehensive project status update for the Carpentria Avenue bridge replacement project.

Second.

We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. And I just want to say I really appreciate this project status update. I think it provided a lot of clarity in terms of where we are with the project and where we need to go from here. Thank you.

yeah i would like to add i've been on city council for almost two years and i've been a resident so i've been watching this project but this is by far the clearest picture of what is going on that i've been presented with so i really appreciate it

i just want to say i know because there's been um since we were talking about it more there's been more more public input on it and i think it's it's important to councilman ramirez point like that we have been discussing this project for years now and so there has been plenty of opportunity thankfully for the public to be able to weigh in at different stages so um yet to have like a really good comprehensive recap like this is so important for that process too so the public knows exactly where we are what our options are and they can look back at the other times we've discussed this project, but now they know where we are moving forward. So I just share my colleague's appreciation for the presentation.

Last point I'd like to make there, Gerald, is see if we could save the pillar that has the 1937 on it. I thought that was pretty cool.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Great.

Okay, we will now move on to item number 17, which is amendment number 10 to agreement with Dewberry for the Carpintero Avenue bridge replacement project.

Well, I'll take this one as well. Some of this information is really just a carryover from the previous item. So this before you today is an amendment number 10 to the Dewberry Agreement, basically for supplemental right-of-way services. So as you know, Dewberry was originally awarded the agreement to basically provide all services to deliver this project. So not just design, but there was right-of-way support services, including appraisals, as well as environmental permitting, everything. They were all sub-consultants under Dewberry. Dewberry did the design, but they do stuff. So one of their subs is Hamner, Jewell & Associates. You've probably heard of them. the prominent right-of-way service company in the Central Coast. So when we first began the process earlier this year, the beginning of the year, to reacquire these easements, Our presumption was that the valuation of the properties would be below, say four of the six properties would be below the threshold requiring independent separate appraisal. So that was the presumption kind of going in, and Dewberry was able to juggle some budget to allow Hamner-Jule to begin the work, and Hamner-Jule was taking the lead as the right-of-way service company. So we've kind of gone through that. Two of the appraisals that they did do through an independent appraiser have been completed now in a preliminary form, and so that information has led Hamner-Jule to kind of reassess whether or not the other four properties in fact can be assessed through a simple in-house valuation or do they also need an independent appraisal per Caltrans requirements. And it's the latter scenario that they are now recommending we proceed with. So that said, we now need additional funding to complete not just two, but six comprehensive independent appraisals, as well as six review appraisals, which Caltrans requires, again, in their right-of-way manual. So that's what this amendment is covering, as well as the additional effort by Hamnajul to basically manage the whole thing, make all the offers, negotiate with the property owners, reach out to the property owners beforehand, all that stuff. That's all what this amendment is about. And it's for $47,250. It is entirely covered by the Highway Bridge Program funding for the PE phase of the project category. So that's the recommendation, and the staff recommends that you consider that today.

And so, yeah, that's our recommendation. And then I did want to, as Gerald mentioned, the $47,250 for the amendment, that will anticipated result is $41,847 in federal reimbursement and $5,403 in city funding. That's at 88% to 11%.

And if I may jump in also, one more thing I meant to say was that this amendment, of course, does not address the capital side of property acquisition. This is purely services. The capital side is a separate part of money altogether. And we've, as I mentioned earlier, have secured additional funding for that.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from council? OK, no questions. I will go ahead and open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Mayor, we have no Zoom comment.

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

I move to authorize the city manager to execute amendment number 10 to the agreement with Dewberry to provide additional services for the Carpentry Avenue bridge replacement project in an amount not to exceed $47,250 for a total amended amount of $2,423,417.37. Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Clark. Aye. Aye.

councilmember Mayer aye councilmember Nomura aye vice mayor Solorzano aye and mayor Alarcon aye we will now move on to committee reports inquiries and other matters presented by councilmembers

Real quick, I do have one. We have coming up the Central Coast Community Energy Annual Meeting coming up this week. So we'll be in Monterey for a two-day session with that one, myself and City Manager Michael Ramirez.

Great, thank you. And then we also have the Cal Cities Conference or meeting the 23rd through the 25th with Council Member Nomura, Council Member Mayer and myself. And if there aren't any other updates, I will confirm attendance of Council Members for future meetings. Yes. Yes, everyone. Okay, and it is 9.02 and we will officially adjourn the meeting. Thank you.

So, you you you you you