City Council - Regular Meeting

Test, test.

Good evening. In a call to order our Tuesday, August 18th meeting. We'll start with an invocation by our Chaplain or Chaplain Michael Boyle. Is Michael here? Welcome.

Let us pray. Almighty God, who for our salvation has granted us life, we gather here this evening giving thanks for your life, giving mercy, which you have bestowed upon us. We thank you for the blessing us tonight in seeking your voice and your direction to complete the business set before us as good stewards for the health and welfare and the safety of our community. We pray that you will guide us as we ponder and discuss the business of this gathering, coming to a unity in making our decisions. We ask that you unite us in oneness of mind and heart. and that you may fulfill our promises and our duties for the betterment of each citizen of our city, so that our neighbors may rest with peace of heart, knowing and having faith in the members of this, our city council, and trusting in their care for us. We pray for wisdom, strength, and courage to do what is right and good for all citizens. May we put the interests of others above our own. May we act with love for the common good. May we be good neighbors, recognizing your image in every person. We thank you, our God. and pray again for each member of this council and for all of those gathered here tonight who through their labors will continue to fortify this city of chico which we call home such a wonderful city which shines brightly upon a hill for all to witness the goodness of your grace and the goodness of the people whom we call our neighbors In your name, dear Father, we beseech you that your grace would enlighten us to fulfill your divine will in all things. Amen.

Thank you. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Salute and pledge. I pledge allegiance. Madam Clerk, can you call our roll for us, please?

Okay.

All right. Council Member Goldstein? Present. Council Member Hawley? Here. Council Member O'Brien?

Here.

Council Member Van Overbeek?

Here.

Council Member Winslow?

Here.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Here.

Mayor Reynolds?

Here. Speaker card and remote participation announcement. If you are in person, you should first complete a speaker card found at the back of the chamber. Once completed, turn in your cards to the city clerk and the speakers are taken in the order received. In addition, due to a change in state law, citizens participating are now available via Zoom. Please note that we will ask those of you who wish to speak via Zoom to raise your hand when it's time for public comments on each specific item. Once the first speaker begins, no additional cards or Zoom speakers will be accepted. Persons demonstrating rude or boisterous behavior speaking on matters outside the jurisdiction of the City Council or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior will be called to order. If such contact continues, we may call a recess requesting the removal of such person or persons. Our first item is the closed session announcement, and we have City Attorney Ryan Jones.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and Council. Several items from closed session just prior to this meeting. Conference legal counsel existing litigation on the Geis Act. It was direction to legal counsel given for labor negotiators. Direction was also given to labor negotiator on item 2.2. For 2.3 and 2.4, which were conference legal counsel and existing litigation direction, was given to legal counsel from the city council. Also on 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7, which were all conference with the real property negotiator direction, was similarly given to staff on this. And that's the report from closed session.

All right. Thank you very much. Ms. Preston, will you swear in our new city manager? Ms. Haynes.

It will be an extreme honor. I don't even think I need the microphone since we're right here. I ask you to raise your right hand and repeat after me. I do solemnly swear. I do solemnly swear. That I will support and defend.

That I will support and defend.

The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. Against all enemies. Against all enemies. Foreign and domestic. Foreign and domestic. And that I will bear true faith and allegiance.

And that I will bear true faith and allegiance.

To the Constitution of the United States.

To the Constitution of the United States.

And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. And that I take this obligation freely.

And that I take this obligation freely.

without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I've entered.

Welcome, McGillian. She jumped into the deep end of the pool a whole whopping seven days ago, I think now, and we're off and rolling. Consent agenda. All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature and can therefore be enacted with one motion. Are there any no votes or council disqualifications?

Yeah, just put me down for a no on 2.6 again.

I will also register a no on 2.6.

Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I'll be registering a no vote on item 2.6. I'd also like to poll item 2.5.

Is that the local road safety plan? Yes. Thanks. All right.

Do we have any speakers? Yes, we do. We have one speaker. All right. Tracy Vincent.

This is pertaining to 2.5. I have a question also, and my question is, has everyone read the entire report? And if not, I respectfully ask that you vote no on adopting the resolution tonight until there's updates and you've fixed a few things that I think are important. I have three big concerns. One of them is the data set. The data set is coming from the 2019 to 2023 crash data. And I'm not exactly sure why they're sticking with that old data because I actually physically went out and reviewed all of the crash sites. Every 1 of those areas, except for 1 has actually either been completely renovated for all the safety things that we would need turn lanes, bike lanes, excuse me, et cetera. Except for 1, and it's currently under instruction. The. Switters and the Tims are up to date as of today, like literally 24, 25, 26 till today. Second is the survey. So roughly 950 self-selected responses were considered to be community endorsement. I disagree. I don't think 950 people is enough to say that's community endorsement. And then third is the prioritization of the projects. And I realize this isn't a legally binding. However, in the toolbox for recommendations going forward, excuse me, that could be In the future, pushing us towards certain jobs and the public should be able to understand why we are picking which jobs, which priorities. And I understand there's different avenues of funding, but for example. East 9th was identified on 2021 in this plan to be a dangerous corridor for pedestrians and bikes. We have yet to do that, but yet we are doing major renovations over on floral and manzanita out of major H funds to include a protected bike lane. But yet we've had a dangerous bike lane or need for a bike lane in a different area that's already been identified. So I'm just curious of how we're prioritizing the dangerous areas because we do have crash data from that corridor. We don't have crash data nor have there been.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And Mayor Reynolds, I apologize. I have one other card. Stephen Hazel. Okay. For the consent agenda items. Stephen Hazel.

It's your turn, sir. Okay. Can we put him in the spot in the back? For next time. For next time.

You've got to rise up where you guys are. I'm above you anyways. Okay, what is this, 2.1?

This is everything under, yeah, consent agenda 2.1.

So what's the thing about the entertainment zone? You already voted for it, the entertainment zone? You didn't discuss it about, right? You haven't discussed it yet, have you?

No.

You're going to discuss it after I talk? Is that how it works?

Did we pull it?

The entertainment zone item hasn't been voted on yet, so you may speak to that matter. It's on consent.

Okay, so you're going to discuss it, though, after I talk, though, right? You guys are, right? You're just going to vote on it, right? So they have their mind made up already on the entertainment zone. It's on consent.

So, sir, there was a public hearing held on the entertainment zone. And that was discussed. And when it comes back, it comes back on consent. So you have three minutes to discuss it.

Okay. This is just like a final reading or something of the ordinance? Yes. Because, well, all I'm just saying is it's kind of funny, full circle being the number one party school in America or the world. You guys were. Katie Holley doesn't know. You didn't tell her. You didn't tell her. Was it Councilman Overbeck said it so elegantly that, okay, we should, we're all 25. Well, she's probably 26 by now. But she doesn't know half the stuff in the 80s. My brother said, come to Chico, there's Pioneer Week and stuff's going on. I go, what? I don't even drink. Because we float down the river and like, I know I like inner tubes. I go, cool. I go, oh, so I got to take care of the beer? I go, wait a minute. I go, why is it out for a snag? What's a snag? Well, I found that out. But it doesn't matter. It's just too bad it went from there to, like... The ex-chief said there was a lot of alcohol, there was deaths, and it was, yeah, it was a death. I would say it was the out-of-state tuition from Idaho. Yeah, that's who it was. It messed up everything. Now, it got bad, but to come full circle, of course it's going to work, but look at the marijuana thing. Don't get so uptight when it comes to chaos. It's just ad-lib. Five or do 25 retail. It does apply because you're doing the entertainment. You're going to make money. Oh, alcohol is easy. And really, alcohol kills more people. In fact, you guys, you've been lying because you and I both know by the time you graduate high school, you drink at least a keg of beer. Everybody. And you know what? You're not even legal until you're like a junior in college. And you know it. So look at you. You hypocrites, holler you. No, but it's true. And then when you bring up marijuana, come on, just name 25. Don't look at Holly, look at her and go, well, we'll deal with cultivation, but forget about retail. Just name 25. It doesn't mean you have to prove it. So of course everybody puts you in an application, but okay. Of course it's going to work. You need money. But see, that's the whole thing. It's like synergy. So what? Alcohol could be a good thing. I don't even freaking drink. I do, but I don't. You know what I mean? But that's what it is. And you talk about marijuana. Now, when you overdose on alcohol, you die. So my sister, you know where she lived? You know where Lyndall Chan is? You know the house firm? On the corner by Gwynbridge? But she lived right next to that guy. That was her next door neighbor. She died of alcohol poisoning. She worked electronics, but she was a cocktail waitress and a bartender. But what is the odds of that? See, alcohol in moderation, of course.

Stay on task. We're talking about the downtown. What's that? We're talking about the downtown. No, I know.

Downtown, but hey. That's what it is. But it's all together. You want to have a Sears? You don't have Kmart? You're losing your, what, that little miniature golf course? It's like, you know, Marie Callender's. Come on. And you talk about, just sit down, down. That's great. See, alcohol, of course, man. You guys already have your mind made up. Of course you're going to approve it. See? It's crazy. The only reason why you listen to me is because you're required by law. And that's it. You know it.

That's time. Thank you. Yeah. All right.

Consider a motion to approve. I've got to go back to little people.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

Okay. There is a motion and a second to prove the consent agenda as read with it noted on item two point six three knows that was council member holly council member winslow and council member goldstein in addition item two point five was removed from the consent agenda for further discussion it also includes two ordinances ordinance of the city council of the city of chico amending the chico municipal code chapter by adding a new chapter five point four five entitled entertainment zones and amending Section 9.30040 to allow the consumption of alcoholic beverages in designated areas pursuant to Senate Bill 969. That's final reading and adoption. Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Chico approving Amendment No. 1 to Development Agreement 18-01 between the City of Chico and J.P. Real Estate Investments LLC, courtesy Motors, uncodified final reading and adoption. So, Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien?

Yes.

Council Member Van Overbeek?

Yes.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0.

All right. Item 2.5. Council Member Hawley? Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Just to be clear, I absolutely think we should... Adopts the resolution adopting the city of Chico updated local road safety plan tonight. I only pulled this item for slightly further discussion because I think it's important for us to remind ourselves that we do have patterns in this city of fatalities and serious injuries clustered around South Campus and downtown, which necessarily necessitates significant infrastructure. improvements and changes um so perhaps i should agendize that at the end of the meeting or we can just talk about it now um we have the item on the agenda now so it can be talked about yeah

Sorry. Council Member Winslow.

Thanks. I thought about pulling this too only because, yeah, it is, it's a big, it's a big plan. There's been a lot of work going into it. And only because I think having a, like a PowerPoint presentation on it is worthwhile. And so we could table it and request staff comes back with that. Would make sense. And otherwise, I mean, I look through it. It's, I'm familiar with the crash data at that time. I've been around. And yeah, South downtown has a high concentration of fatalities. Just eighth, ninth, main, three people died. Two of them were pedestrians that got hit there. including other serious injuries. And it's good for people to keep that in mind, especially as projects come up that relate to areas like that. And we make the decision whether to pursue them or not.

Yeah, I would like to adopt the resolution tonight. But if it would be more procedurally correct, I could... Request that being on the agenda at a later council meeting at the end of our meeting tonight. Is that best practice rather than now? I just don't want to table it and delay adopting the resolution.

Through the mayor, if council so chooses, we could come back as an info item and provide an update to the full council.

I would support that.

Did you have anything else?

Yeah. Similarly, like I saw this was on the consent agenda and I saw it was 180 pages and it's great. We need the local road safety plan. I don't want to do anything that would delay adopting it. But I think it's always valuable for us and the public to see an overview of what's going on in our planning efforts. and what kinds of crashes have happened that affect our community. So it would be perhaps a good idea to approve this and then have staff, as Council Member Hawley suggested, come back and just present to us on the collision data and the aspects of the local road safety plan that they would like to highlight to the Council and the community.

Council Member O'Brien?

Yeah, I would support that. I want to approve it tonight, though. And I would ask that that presentation not only be done with Brendan's input. He did the bulk of this and did a great job. So thank you. But also with some input from the police department as well.

OK, well, if that's end of the discussion, then I'll make a motion to. Pass the resolution adopting the updated local road safety plan, with the caveat that we'll also have staff return to us with a very brief presentation, including a bit from the police department, it sounds like, at a later council meeting.

I'll second that.

Okay. There was a motion and a second to adopt the resolution and to have staff come back with a quick presentation from engineering and PD. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien?

Yes.

Council Member Van Overbeck?

Yes.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0.

All right. Public comment. Members of the public may address the council at this time on any band are not already listed on the agenda and are within the jurisdiction's authority. For those of you that are participating via Zoom, now is the time to raise your hand. So please raise the speak now if you would like to speak on Zoom. Please note that council cannot take any action at this meeting on request made under this section of the agenda.

How many speakers do we have? We do have 19. All right. Two minutes each? Two minutes each. Okay. So I'm going to call the first three names, and if you could line up in the middle aisle. And then when you reach the podium, if you could lean in towards the mic, that will help. So the first three speakers, Nels, followed by Mary Kay Benson, and then Anna Krause. So Nels.

Seems like William's not here. Man of the hour. So, yeah, I'll just continue with what I was going to say. Michael, William, you two despicable sacks of skin are losers. Full stop. You two weirdos have a hard-on for each other so obviously visible one can view it from low Earth orbit, and your sadistic fetishes continue to run our small community further into ruin. There is zero excuse for the illegal sharing of personal information with federal officials and zero tolerance for an authority who says, I didn't know, when he's caught red-handed violating our rights and multiple state laws. William has failed and continues to fail as our police chief. As a citizen of this community and a registered voter, I demand Williams' employment be terminated effective immediately.

Thank you. Just a second. Let me get back up there. So Mary Kay Benson, followed by Anna Krause, and then Sam Barber.

The public trust has been broken again. We were told Motorola license plate readers were to find red light runners. But these AI cameras captures also used to share our data to ICE, DHS, and over 100 other federal and state agencies against California laws. Others may ask for a truly independent police oversight committee, but I filed a police complaint form along with 65 other Chicoans so far. I filed a complaint with the state attorney general and sent copies to the DA, although he has never prosecuted a police officer in the decades I have lived in Chico, because I read in ChicoSolOrg that the CPD is doing its own internal investigations. These result in unsatisfactory actions like the recent two police sexual assaulter officers cases prove. These AI data sharing results are 71% failures targeting innocent people erroneously. We need an outside independent investigation. Thank you.

Thank you. Anna Krause followed by Sam Barber and then Folk Ray.

City Council members, I am very upset that Chico PD has once again violated the rights of the Chico community by freely sharing surveillance data from red light cameras with numerous federal agencies. The police chief claims this was an accident. How many accidents had to happen in coordination for Chico PD to shelter and perpetuate an officer's campaign of sexual assault on vulnerable women in Chico? I cannot express to you how unsafe these actions are for our community. What are you going to do about this, members of this Chico City Council? I'm specifically invoking that idea of safety because several of you have decided to campaign for reelection on the basis that your work on Chico City Council is all about keeping the members of your community safe. You seem to think that treating poor people like literal garbage, or in your words, public nuisance enforcement, is the best way to bring safety to this community. I have a recommendation for you. Why don't you start with addressing the campaign of terror that Chico PD seems to be accidentally mounting on our city?

Thank you. Sam Barber, followed by Folk Gray, and then Lynn Overholzer.

Okay, so I'm also here to speak on that leak of information illegally, by the way, breaking the law, which I'm not allowed to do. But I guess if you got a badge, you're allowed to break the law. Sometimes it doesn't matter. You know, you can get blowjobs in a church parking lot. Regular person gets six months in jail, cop two weeks off and that's it and no accountability, no discussion about independent oversight from anyone. The Republicans refuse to have a discussion on independent oversight. Apparently that's ridiculous and you know better than we do. Anyways, you have put us all in danger. I'm not sure if you've heard of NSPM 7, but the federal government can call anyone a terrorist now if you say anything that's anti-Christian, if you say anything that's anti-capitalism, if you say Trump is a meanie poophead. They can go ahead and decide that you're a terrorist, and then these federal Gestapo criminal thugs known as ICE, who should be criminals, who should be being put in jail, will go ahead and kidnap people. And they'll send them to concentration camps. And they've already murdered over 11 people since Trump took office. Over 50 people have died when they've been in their custody. And over 4,000 people have been disappeared that we just don't know where they are. Again, they're sending them to concentration camps. this is a blatant disregard for our constitutional rights these cameras need to be removed billy aldridge needs to be held accountable any other police department official needs to be held accountable and by accountable i mean fired because they broke the law and breaking the law is supposed to matter but i guess if you have a blue badge on the republicans are like that's fine you're allowed to break the law which is really cool by the way super disgusted at mike o'brien and dale bennett weaponizing that mass shooting to try to push forward a raise for the police. Absolutely disgraceful of you guys to do that. I don't know how you can look at yourself in the mirror at night when you would weaponize something like that to be like, hey, this is why the police need a raise. Because guess what? If they don't get a raise, maybe they won't show up. Really great time.

Thank you. Vogue Gray, followed by Lynn Overholzer and then Dan Pantry.

I'm here to speak about the ALPR cameras data being shared as a violation of multiple California laws. This is exactly why Chico needs an independent oversight committee for the police force. Councilman Van Overbeck loves to say that the city council is a oversight committee for the police. as an attempt to silence the demand for an oversight committee. Statements like these highlight his incompetence and stubbornness to consider solutions to real problems in our community. If you are supposed to be an oversight committee, why were you unable to stop the PD from breaking state law? You have to be realistic about your resources and the effort you're willing to put forward. You never wanted to put effort in though, you just wanted to blow off any regard for accountability. You want the police to have free reign over what they do, but now because of your negligence, they broke the law. We need an independent oversight committee run by regular members of our community. And on the topic of clearing homeless camps, most people are one or two paychecks away from becoming homeless. That will become true for more people as the global economic crisis increases in severity. Clearing camps does nothing to change the conditions we all share. It doesn't help get anyone back on their feet. All it does is make a few rich people feel better for a few days. I'd like to see how anyone disparaging homeless people, whether they sit on the council or not, would last living in a tent in the city with the possibility of having their belongings taken from them by police thugs. If you have no compassion for people who live in tents, you have no humanity.

Thank you. Lynn... Just a reminder, we don't applause or boo. We want to have everybody feel comfortable sharing their feelings here today. Thank you.

So Lynn Overholzer, Dan Pantry, and Diane Suzuki. Go ahead, Lynn.

Sorry.

So I'm here in person because my attempts to remedy a dangerous bike crossing have not yielded any results. My daughter was involved. I sent an email with pictures to the engineering department nine months ago. And then I went in person. I thought I had a good solution. And nothing has changed. Then I went in person, and it's still the same. My daughter was involved in an accident last October on a dangerous bike crossing on Burnap Avenue in between Lassen and Cohasset. She hit a man crossing on his bike in her little Jetta. Thank God for her there was a witness or she would have been in a lot of trouble. They were coming from the opposite side walking their dog. The person did not stop, but the stop sign did not push the button for the light. His bike flew up on her hood. He was sprawled all over her windshield. She called the police. She called an ambulance. She got the witness to stay. If there wasn't a witness there, things would have been very different for her. The police report showed her 0% at fault. The man didn't obey any of the laws. He had a felony warrant out. The meth fell out of his pocket. Anyway, he was taken to the hospital. We received a letter from the Law Brothers, so that turned into an issue there. The transient man made a quick 40K. He made $60,000. The Law Brothers made $40,000. I'm sure you guys have seen their ads all over TV. Anyway, when I first approached the scene of the accident, there's a trailer that's been parked there over a year, cobwebs. It's illegally parked. It's blocking the view of somebody crossing there at the bike path. You have to be coming from the Lassen side, and you'll see what I mean. Even though he did violate laws, still neither one of them could see each other. My solution was get the illegally parked cars, including the trailer that's been there a very long time, get them gone and paint the curb red. An easy solution. As of today, still there. There's a fire hydrant there also. Anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you. Dan Pantry, followed by Diane Suzuki, and then Ann Polivka.

Good evening. My name is Dan Pantry. I'm an immigrant. I have had the good fortune to call United States home since 2022 and the privilege of living in Chico since 2024. But part of living in a place comes with an explicit responsibility to develop that place to be better for those who come after. I work as a security and a software engineer. My job is protecting the privacy of hundreds of millions of people who place their trust in my employer and me to keep their personal information safe and away from the prying eyes of third parties. Probably no secret, I'm here because of the ALPR readers. The city currently spends about $90,000 a year on about 30 of these cameras, while private flock cameras continue to multiply on our streets. Together, they record and store the movements of every vehicle that passes without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion. The police department already has a budget in the tens of millions of dollars. It has resources to enforce traffic laws with officers. It does not need permanent cameras to do that job. These systems add no real safety benefit. They do, however, create real costs. It is true that neither the Constitution or the current law gives us the right to privacy in public places, but these rules are a floor, not a ceiling. We are allowed, and I believe we should, demand better than the bare minimum the law currently permits, especially when technology now makes continuous tracking of an entire city both cheap and easy. The old idea that people have no expectation of privacy in public was formed before it was possible to permanently log every trip that every resident makes. And this is what these cameras do. The data has already been misused for stalking by officers and for unauthorized and unlawful sharing with federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That's why I mentioned I'm an immigrant, because it affects me. There is no requirement that it ever be deleted. There is no requirement that the person being recorded committed any crime. There is no reliable barrier against it being used for the purposes that the public never approved. There are better ways to make our streets safer, as noted in item 2.5, I believe. The majority of serious crashes occur at intersections. These locations should be redesigned with proven safety features, like lane lights, tidal curb radii, raised crossings, and roundabouts where appropriate. I encourage you to issue ordinance banning the use of automated surveillance cameras.

That's time. Thank you. Thank you, Diane Suzuki, followed by Ann Polivka, and then Bruce McLean.

Chico Police Department has been sharing data through their automatic license plate readers with federal agencies such as ICE and Border Patrol for close to three years, violating state laws according to Chico Sol News and Chief Aldridge. SB 54 prohibits sharing data outside the state of California and specifically with ICE. SB 34 requires that a public meeting must be held before implementing an ALPR program. Was this public meeting held? I appreciate that when Chief Aldridge was notified of this, he stopped the out-of-state sharing in July. On the other hand, it was my understanding that Chico PD would not cooperate with ICE in any unlawful way, but unfortunately it has happened. As a consequence, in response to these law-breaking violations, I'm calling for Motorola Solutions' contract with Chico PD be cancelled immediately and the 27 cameras be removed from our community. The ACLU's major complaints against Motorola's LPR technology include lack of transparency, surveillance without consent, and privacy rights. The city of Pleasanton has canceled their Motorola contract. Let's follow their example. The ALPR vendor Flock has found its way into many communities, but according to dflock.org, 99 U.S. communities have canceled their Flock contracts, rejected proposals, shut their cameras off, or banned ALPRs. In California, the list is growing and includes LAPD, Mountain View, South Pasadena, Oxnard, Santa Clara County, Santa Cruz, Coachella, Chula Vista, and Los Altos. Let's follow those cities' examples.

Thank you. Ann Polivka, followed by Bruce McLean, and then Emily Alma.

Good evening. I'm a member also of CC4J, concerned community for justice. And I'm here because I'm outraged. I'm outraged at the incompetence of a police department that neglected to notice until a new rookie reporter started doing some behind-the-scenes PR requirement work that illegally had been collaborating with federal law enforcement. This was also a violation of public trust, a violation of the chief's commitment last year that his police force would not be crossing jurisdictional boundaries. There would be no blue on blue. Chico PD carried out unrestrained, warrantless mass surveillance using automated license plate readers, the ALPRs, then fed that data to ICE and Border Patrol. Motorola ALPR records and records, sorry, records and tracks everyday Chico drivers, perhaps on our way to a doctor's appointment, to a place of worship, or maybe a protest. ALPR cameras record our vehicle's make, the model, the color, the license plate number, and the bumper stickers. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency that's anywhere in the United States, and potentially, if Motorola gets into it enough, the world knows. Any law enforcement agency with a Motorola ALPR contract can access. CC4J requests that Council direct CPD to immediately cancel its ALPR contract with Motorola since it lacks the guardrails to keep us safe, especially if we're immigrants or vulnerable in other ways, and threatens our First Amendment rights and rights to privacy. There is a groundswell of opposition to ALPARs across the country. Even Little Red, Siskiyou County, up in the north of our state, has canceled its contract. The issue goes beyond the typical red versus blue divide. Motorola now faces a California class action lawsuit. That's time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Bruce McLean, followed by Emily Alma, and then Dave Garcia. So, Bruce.

Hi. I'm basically interested in the dollars spent to purchase, install, and maintain the clearly intrusive ALPR system. The cameras cost $2,500 each plus a $250 installation fee. Chico has 27 cameras, so there's a total cost of $74,500. Depending upon the software, service packages, and other costs per camera, the range is from $10,000 to $40,000 per year. Chico's General Fund is strictly reserved for core municipal operations, including public safety and basic city administration. However, Chico also funds social services from its general fund by making direct line appropriations, establishing public private partnerships, or awarding municipal community grants to support distinct community needs. In its partnership with community organizations, the initial 7,400 $74,250 spent on ALPR could have been spent on a more productive use by assisting our unhoused population by providing, for example, $25 a day for three meals for 240 people annually or $75 for shower and laundry for 84 people annually. On a side note, it is frustrating to know that if a social service program misuses funds, it faces immediate condemnation. Whereas the police department receives endless patience in its misuse of its responsibilities and public funds. The former city manager said at the Chico annual budget hearing that Chico residents must brace for higher costs to maintain the city's level of services. He expressed great concern in expanding general funds supported.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Emily Alma, followed by Dave Garcia and then Mike Schultz.

Hello. I feel personally vulnerable because of this oversight from Chief Aldridge. I happen to have a lot of bumper stickers on the back of my car. And this administration, the MAGA folks, are very ready to... victimized to to attack people who are their political opponents and now I have my the back of my car is on file with the FBI and the CIA as far as I know so I am fortunate I'm like have enough money to pay for my needs and I I'm not an immigrant but But I'm not I am not only concerned about myself, but this is it's outrageous. And I call for the city council needs to take this seriously to agendize it. There needs to be consequences. This is not just an oversight. This is a crime that was committed. And every single person who drives through the city intersections is. is now trapped we're known for who we are and that feels really uncomfortable and i think that we need also a citizen oversight so that this kind of thing is avoided along with all the other reasons for many years that's been called for so so please agendize this consequences serious consequences for a serious crime against the people of chico and citizen oversight of our community, of our police. Thank you.

Time, thank you. So Dave Garcia, followed by Mike Schultz, and then Chris Nelson.

Good evening. ALPR cameras, good God, what are they good for? Well, the Washington Post, Newsweek and the Institute for Justice reported that over 50 police officers have been formally charged or accused of misusing plate reader databases for unauthorized personal surveillance. And in 26 of those cases, officers were arrested or fired specifically for using ALPR databases to spy on their wives, ex-wives, ex-wives' partners, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, or women they wanted to meet. The Coalition Against Stalkerware claims the most vulnerable targets are women, LGBTQ individuals, and people of color. ALPR cameras violate the Fourth Amendment and our civil liberties by providing mass surveillance for pre-crime investigations. A 2010 Cato Institute report claims sexual misconduct is the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct after excessive force. Chico Police Department officers Michael Williams and Michael Vincent are proof of this sexual misconduct. Did they use the ALPR camera database to stalk their illicit romantic seductions? How many more officers have illegally used the ALPR database? Why does Chico Police Department refuse to release ALPR internal audits? What are they hiding? other police agencies release their audits to the Have I Been Flocked website. It is a discovery tool which provides transparency to its citizens and builds public trust.

That's time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike Schultz, followed by Chris Nelson and then Julian Zenner.

Hello, my name is Mike Schultz, and I have 28 years of experience, retired from Butte County Behavioral Health, some time as a clinician as well as a clinical supervisor. When I hear about the license plate reader justifications, it's usually in terms of a specific investigation, meaning a crime has occurred, and they use the information to then investigate that crime. For surveillance, however, what you do is you look at people in general, and then you decide patterns of behavior and try to define people, try to find people doing something wrong, that sort of stuff. That's surveillance. We object to surveillance. There are ways that we could put a stop to the surveillance piece and still preserve the investigations if that's what the community wants. Specifically, the police department could institute, well, okay, at Butte County Behavioral Health, our IT department were able to separate staff from one office to the other so that they didn't have access to another office of staff because they're not part of the treatment team. The same sort of thing could happen at the police department, whereby a sergeant on duty could decide which officers are currently investigating a specific crime and then give those officers authorization to use the system. And then once that investigation is complete, they lose that privilege again. And then they would assign it to specific officers, not to use it for surveillance purposes. I highly recommend that we implement some process like that with Chico PD. I'm concerned about the, you know, imagine a pyramid where the authoritarian structure is top down. Democracy is bottom up. We the people. around us are expressing ourselves. This is bottom up. Your job is to support democracy, not just one person, one vote, but democracy as in supporting the people's wishes. Your job is to do the people's wishes. We pay their salary. We should have some say as to what they use that time doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I'm Chris Nelson, followed by Julian Zenner and then Leanne Jenswold.

Hello. Back in March, you approved by a 4-3 margin a military equipment budget of $1.3 million, most of it for Measure H road funding, among which was three drones, Skidio 10 drones, for $20,000 each for... a first responder program of which there was one sentence uh in the in the information there's no oversight of this uh first responder program and um skidio 10s are autonomous drones they're ai driven but they're surveillance drones and they're used in these drone first responder programs They're called a force multiplier. They improve communication using augmented street and address overlays. In other words, they do what the license plate readers do. And there's been a push among police departments all over the place for more of these gadgets, more upgrades, more storage, more for video access. And there's a lot of peer pressure among law enforcement agencies about getting the latest thing. And these companies prey on police departments and people who don't know what they're doing. And so these drones also carry the same kind of cameras, the ALPR cameras. And they can read license plates from 2,000 feet above, according to Flock, which is one of the companies. SCIDIO integrates directly with software and data analysis tools that are sold by these ALPR networks. And so they're all part of a conglomerate. And what we really need to do is to think about our surveillance state that we're developing. We need to remove these ALPRs. We need to have oversight. We need civilian review. We need transparency. That's time. Thank you. And we need a safety plan. Thank you.

So Julian's inner followed by Lee engines world followed by Stephen Hazel.

Good evening city council members on our news. City manager. How to balance. The pros and cons of AI-generated surveillance street cameras now in Chico. Useful for solving crimes, they severely compromise our individual rights and privacy. No one in the Chico Unified School District Board seems to knowingly have approved or funded this technology. Throughout the school system, our police chief was apparently unaware of the police manual text enabling this surveillance sharing. The school board has apologized for blindly approving the surveillance on a multi item consent agenda. Chief Aldridge was less apologetic and forthright, writing, I quote, interpretation surrounding a license plate reader technology and interagency data sharing continue to evolve and questions regarding the application of California law remains unsettled. No, no. State law AB 34 prohibits surveillance sharing outside of our state. and law SB 54 prohibit sharing with federal agencies, specifically ICE. Please shut down our Motorola license plate reader contract and join the many cities around California which has shut down their more common flock. contracts. It's not too much to ask for our city representatives and their appointees to do their homework and not rely on staff or police and outside company Lexapol. This whole tragic misadventure confirms the need for transparency and civilian review oversight of our police department.

So Leanne Jenslil followed by Stephen Hazel and then William Bynum.

Hi, I have never spoken or been in the city council chambers ever. So for me to come out and do this is quite, well, it's a big deal for me. And so what I am here to do is give us action steps that we can do right now. And part of the steps we're taking is we have started a file and gather campaign. We are gathering complaints against particularly Chief Aldridge. And having members of the community fill out these complaint forms, and then we are filing them with the Chico PD. And this is an ongoing campaign we're doing and we also. To every person we hand a blank form to we're giving 10 more and asking them to. have their family and friends fill out complaints and then they bring them back to us. So we want, I want you to know there is something you can do. You are not, you are not powerless. And the other thing I noticed that the Oroville Chief of Police had a community meeting last Tuesday and took questions from the community. Why can't the chief of police of Chico do that? That is my question. We as the citizens have a right to ask questions and we're not being able to exercise our right. So the third aspect is you are the city council of Chico. You represent us. You represent our voices, our rights. If we feel that you are not doing that, we just want to let you know we will vote you out in November. And that's all I have to say. And thank you very much for listening. And by the way, I do have blank forms that people can fill out if they would like. Thank you.

Thank you. Stephen Hazel, followed by William Bynum, and then Jeff Glatz.

Yeah, I tell most people, you wouldn't know if God would stand right in front of you. And I'm standing right in front of you. Not who or what you expected. Yeah, that's me, man. Born 12-6. I was born that way. Did I come to you to tell you to do a resolution on displaying the Ten Commandments? Why do you think Bradley Sayre shot those two in the... library, because you took religion out of school. Remember when they took religion out of school, I was in fourth grade, it was 1969, when we got a right to wear pants, when they took a class photo. And what happened was, the story is, when this guy appears, Jesus comes back five years later. Well, this guy appeared in 1924, George Bush. H.W., he's the devil. He's the opposite of me. I'm God, and he's the devil. See, they don't tell you that. And his son still walked here and it'll tell the lovely Katie Holly that, hey, she was what? One 911. Well, remember Bush on fair night? Now, I found this for a buck. And guess what? He took a class photo. So we're going to find those folks committed this act. He's involved. Course he was. And you can't see it. And don't tell me that isn't in your jurisdiction. Of course it is. In fact, it's better than that because I told you close session. So maybe you'll Katie Holler will share it with other colleagues because that was dash security to the bone. I cannot disclose that. What I showed you is so it's unbelievable. That's what that's what the problem is. They're using it to alter the laws of God. The Ten Commandments, which are buried in cuckoo right now. You hear about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The whole thing with Iran. What about the Boland Amendment? You know, Nicaragua, the Iran-Contra thing in 80. Mr. Hazel, keep it on City of Chico. You don't say that, yeah. City of Chico. But you don't say that. You don't tell, okay, about that, how they were dealing with Iran, selling them Tomahawks for the Nicaraguan, for the Sandinistas. So what about that? And he's the only president, beat two women twice, wearing two different panties. That's time, thank you. And the only guy- That's time. He ran against, he lost to a braindead guy- Stephen, you're interrupting a public- Okay. Thank you. I'm done.

So William Bynum, followed by Jeff Glatz.

OK, thank you for giving us a chance to address the city council. Appreciate it. I'm well, I'm kind of just shocked with. the level of surveillance that's going on in our country, especially when it seems to me that our national government is lurching towards fascism. And when you see the atrocities that happen in places like Minneapolis, but not just Minneapolis, all over the country, when you see we have concentration camps in this country, when you see that our government is killing people on the high seas illegally, when we have a government like that, and then we're faced with surveillance cameras, surveillance cameras at a local level, it gives us pause, us citizens, when we can't trust our government. And that that to me is jarring that here in America, we can't trust our own government. And then when you see and I was at the data center meeting for the Water Commission last week, hundreds and hundreds of people showed up in opposition to those data centers. For good reason. These are billionaires gathering information. And what are they going to do with all that information and all these data centers all across our country? And you can easily tie in these surveillance systems and this fascist government and these authoritarians and. If it doesn't make you fearful, then you're just not paying attention. And I think what we can do here at a local level is at least get rid of these surveillance cameras and restore some trust in our community. Thanks.

Thank you. Our last speaker is Jeff Glatz.

Hello, Mayor Reynolds, Council. First of all, thank you guys for your service to the community. I always appreciate that. I haven't been here in a while, so some of these things I might mention you might have talked about. One of them will be kind of controversial in the room tonight, but one I think will just be not that important, but it's kind of a fun thing. My wife and I moved here over 20 years ago now. We drove into Chico, and the Welcome to Chico sign. It was a serious disrepair. So I said, what's going on with that? So she knew I was embarrassed. So she called the city manager, and they actually went out and painted the sign and fixed it up. So now when I'm driving in, I haven't been there in about a month, but at nighttime, driving into the city of Chico, it's just dark. There's nothing there. With the advent of solar lighting these days, why don't we just light up our Welcome to Chico sign? It just seems like an inviting way to have people come to our community. I just wanted to say that. It just seemed like an easy thing to possibly do. Now I'm a little bit more thought-oriented. The whole entertainment zone, and now I also understand there's a possible plan to change out the ranger program from one ranger to be totally under the PD, and possibly there might be three police officers assigned to that. So that all, I talked to the officer in charge of that. It seems like an actual very good plan. But with the entertainment zone coming from, I lived in Austin, Texas, went to school there, was back there recently, been to Bourbon Street. There's a big police presence. on these areas like 6th Street. So opening up downtown to an entertainment zone creates a need probably for a larger police force down there. So I just hope you guys have thought about that. In conjunction with increased police presence to the park, if we can get those three PD there, it just seems like some of the directions are going anti-PD, but I think the PD still needs resources to take care of these other issues that are going on in our city. Thanks, guys, for everything you guys do.

Thank you. Thank you. It was our last speaker.

All right. All right. We have no public hearings. Item 5.1, discussion on the public nuisance enforcement in the city and potential amendments to the Chico Municipal Code. I'm sorry. On public comment, I'm assuming we had nobody on Zoom. Okay. Just making sure.

I would tell you.

I know you would. Just want to get it on the record to make sure we did look for him. So if you are on Zoom and you want to talk on item 5.1, this is the time to raise your hand. And I will turn it over to our city attorney, Mr. Ryan Jones.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. My name is Ryan Jones. I am the City Attorney here in Chico. This is a really important topic and one that I appreciate the opportunity to speak with the Council about and get your feedback. We want to talk about the status of things, where we're going, and what we can be doing. So we're talking about public nuisance. And we're going to talk about the background of how we got to this point. We're going to talk about what is a public nuisance. That's kind of a broad term that sometimes gets confused. We're going to talk about what the municipal code right now that can be enforced and are being enforced. And then I want to touch on the Warren Settlement Agreement. That's really kind of the elephant in the room of how this impacts the city's ability to do code enforcement. And then we'll talk about what code enforcement or what code changes we can make to help equip our law enforcement and those who are trying to help keep things safe and keep the downtown revitalized. And we'll conclude with some next steps and looking for direction from the council to help staff know what your priorities are and where you want to go from there. So by way of a background, in May, the council did give direction to staff to come back and talk about public nuisance, do an audit of the municipal code and determine what changes can be made. And so we did that. Apologize for the delay of here we are in August, but really it was a comprehensive audit to go through the municipal code and work with our police department particularly Sergeant Bailey, who's the target officer, that helped us go through those code sections and help determine which are the areas where we can change. So that's the background. What is a public nuisance? You know, it is in our municipal code under Section 1-1 for a public nuisance is basically a violation of the municipal code. But it's also any endangerment to public health, welfare, the safety of the community. Those can be considered a public nuisance. So I want to talk here about these are some of the code sections that today are and can be enforced. Right. We'll talk in a second about what the Warren settlement agreement precludes the city from doing legally. But these are sections that currently are on the books that can be can be enforced. So you see health and sanitation is in Section 8. smoking regulations, also in Section 8, wood burning regulations, noxious odors, urination and defecation, a shopping cart ordinance. These last two are not in our municipal code, but these are still tools that the city has to keep things safe. And those are related to fire hazards, right? Or obstructions of rights of way. Especially we want proper ingress and egress for ADA compliance and safety issues getting in and out of our buildings. So the Warren settlement, right? This is a big thing that the council is aware of and the community is aware of. We as the city are going to follow the terms of the Warren settlement agreement. In addition to state law, federal law, these are all things that we will follow and are following in the city of Chico. Though the Warren settlement does expire, and it expires in a fairly short order. It expires on January 14th of 2027, so about less than five months from now. In the meantime, we can still do things, though. Because of the other laws and tools that we have to enforce, the city is not precluded by taking those enforcement measures. What it is precluded from doing is enforcing anti-camping ordinances. And the rub is, what is an anti-camping ordinance? Obviously, camping, we can't cite for that, but there is rules about what an analogous provision to anti-camping is. That is something that has been litigated, could be litigated further, but... But that is something I can certainly opine on as your city attorney, but really would be up to a court to determine what is an analogous provision to anti-camping. But this is, I think, maybe the most important part for the council to think about. These are code sections that in my work with Sergeant Bailey and with others at the police department and code enforcement are areas that we think we can come back and improve. These are areas, some of which will have to wait until the settlement agreement ends for Warren to actually enforce. But because there is a lag time, it takes a first and a second reading and 30 days for codes to actually come into effect. If council gives direction to staff, we can start bringing these back over the coming months. So I highlighted nine here. This is not an exhaustive list. Frankly, there were about 12 to 15 sections of the Chico Municipal Code that we felt could be updated, some in minor ways and some needed a sort of a complete overhaul. So clearly the definitions of camping and unlawful camping on the top two is things we can change to be in line with what the federal law now allows. So we previously wrote the ordinance. We were thinking about the Martin v. Boise case. Since then, that has been overturned by the Grants Pass case. And so what we're talking about doing is bringing our code up to date with federal law, what it's allowed to do. There's also some other sections that we think our public parking lots can be better enforced. There's some language there that we can improve. Center median safety provisions, we would not call in. It is not an anti-panhandling ordinance because that is unconstitutional legal under the First Amendment. But there is a safety issue of people being in certain areas of the street. And so that has been determined to be a legal enforcement mechanism. Again, it is so it wouldn't be targeted particular people for their speech. It's targeted anybody who is in there, whether you're a Girl Scout selling cookies or somebody who might be panhandling. It'd be the same protocols because it's unsafe to be in a center medium. Also, Pedia talked about recreational vehicles. Right now, there's some loopholes that allows people to kind of move their vehicles back and forth. We'd like to strengthen that to give us more opportunities to keep neighborhoods safe and free of blight. Property removal, there's some noticing provisions that we think we can update that are also current with best practices in the state. A vacant property ordinance is one that I talked with city manager Hain recently about. I believe she had done this in her previous city. It's something I've worked on before that we think we can update and bring here. And that is sort of a registration of any. Property sites, mostly it's retail sites that are vacant. We don't want that kind of blight. We want to encourage property owners to reinvest in their properties, to keep them clear of things that maybe make it so you can't see in or out. We want them to register to motivate them to try to help get those properties filled. The penalty structure in the code right now is very loose, and it could be tightened up. We'd like to make things more, some of the infractions, the ability to treat them as misdemeanors. That's something we'd want to bring back, as well as animal control and animal impounding. So I highlighted just nine of them. What would happen is if the direction is, hey, move forward with some of these, We would bring them back maybe two, three at a time, whatever the council's appetite is for them. And we would very methodically go through those changes. Right now I'm highlighting it at sort of a high-level overview, but you would have the ability to look for the public to certainly comment on any of these provisions. And we would like to bring them up to what we think are best practices and consistent with state and federal law. So next steps, we're looking for direction from the council. Are you interested in us bringing back some of these amendments for further discussion? Do you have thoughts about enforcement? Would you like to see certain areas enforced more or certain provisions to be enforced? Clearly, enforcement would be consistent with the Warren settlement. We're not going to do anything or other federal and state laws that are inconsistent there. And lastly, City Manager Hayne and I also discussed, even this morning, in executive staff meeting, the idea of a comprehensive unhoused strategy, right? So dealing with public nuisance is one component of the whole system, and I think that with City Manager Hayne's leadership and the council's direction, that is something we'd like to work on as staff to help over the next, really the coming months, have a comprehensive plan to address that. So those are the areas I wanted to touch on tonight. I'm happy to take any questions from the council. Certainly we have some public comment and some deliberation. The action item tonight is to give direction. It is not to approve anything. That would be to come back at future meetings to help the council in that regard. Are there any questions that I could answer at this point?

Council Member O'Brien.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney, for the comprehensive report. I think it's excellent. I do appreciate that. I just have one question right now, and I'll probably have more after public comment, but I just want to confirm for us and the rest of the audience that possession of a nuclear bomb is still a misdemeanor in the city of Chico. Is that accurate? That is correct. So it's not an infraction, right? All right. Thank you.

Council Member Van Overbeek.

Are you saying if I go to Amazon and assemble the parts for a nuclear bomb in Chico that that's a misdemeanor?

That's what our code says at this point. It is actually in our code, Tom.

No, I know that. No, I'm very aware of that. But thank you for pointing it out. So I had a question. First of all, great presentation. I love the idea of bringing this stuff back a couple, two or maybe three at a time so we can talk about it. But about a year ago, we went over changing the code. We changed the code to deal with vacant properties. It's... 1.14, you went through that, but you think it still needs some work?

Yes. Okay. Among other code sections, yes. Okay.

Council Member Goldstein?

Yeah, I had a couple of questions. There was one item in the staff report on storage of building materials, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on if that's been an issue and what the logic is with that item.

Is that building materials? Yes.

Yeah, one of them had to do with storage of building materials, prohibit storage of building materials.

Yeah, that was one that was brought to my attention through Sergeant Bailey of the Police Department. I think they could elaborate further on what that is. I just included in the staff report in my collaboration with them, but I believe that's something they could maybe help share with the council if we do bring it back. I don't know if Captain Paney knows offhand, but perhaps if we're going to discuss that, we'd have Sergeant Bailey come and talk to you about that.

OK. Do any other staff have an answer to that yet, or should we?

I think what it is is it's building materials are left on a property. We like the ability to be able to clean them up, put them somewhere until the rightful owner comes to get them.

I suppose if we looked into this further, of course, we'd set some standards like a time limit. Absolutely.

There'd be noticing requirements. There'd be timeliness.

Okay. Of course. Yeah, I think the only other... Oh, did Captain Pena have a comment?

My goal is that I was... I'm going to also highlight that I think what Sergeant Bailey was trying to address is there are some existing noticing requirements with certain property. When we're talking specifically to building material, talking about pallets, tarps, or other materials that aren't necessarily covered, and we could probably strengthen either the noticing requirements or how we collect when they're left abandoned.

Okay. Well, thank you for that. I think that's all my questions for now. Thank you so much for the presentation.

All right. I think that's all the questions we have up here. How many speakers do we have?

We have 11. Two minutes each? Two minutes. Okay. All right. I will call the first three speakers, and if you can line up in the middle aisle, it will help. Sam Barber, followed by Charles Withoon, and then Rob Berry.

Am I good? All right, cool. So I have really big concerns with this whole graph and attorney coming up here with all these strategies to, I mean, let's just call this what it is. We're punishing people criminally for being poor. for being mentally unwell, and we apparently can't do anything better. It's been a long time now where the Republicans have been kind of cowering behind this Warren v. Chico settlement as a reason to not do anything. We could be doing things. We could be trying to give these people homes. We could be trying to give these people mental health care. We could be trying to secure food for our community. We could try these things. We could explore these options. But we're going down the Nazi path of criminalizing homelessness. I went to school. I wondered, how could people let the Holocaust happen? And now I'm living through that. And it's traumatizing to come to these meetings and watch you time and again do nothing for these people. The Nazis called them asocial. They called them work-shy. They labeled them as biological hazards. Now, many of the Republicans, I think all of you take money from the Better Chico Pack, we've seen the mailers. We see the imagery attached to the unhoused population and the correlation or how closely it resembles Nazi rhetoric and how they treated the unhoused and how they would do mass arrests and how they would put them in prison camps. i mean that's what's happening right now and it just disgusts me that we're in a community where we can't come up with a better option apparently the only option is let's find out strategies to arrest people for being poor and i'm genuinely disgusted by that and i think our community can do better than that and i think these unhoused people deserve better because they are humans all right uh charles with hoon followed by rob berry and kelly lesser

Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff. How about a safe, welcoming downtown? Less homelessness, fewer tents. How did other towns do it? Berkeley, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, Emeryville used California Code 8698. Chico's big shelters don't work for a significant number of our unsheltered population in the way that tiny home villages do. The North State Shelter Team has shown you a tiny home proposal that we offered to pay for. Based on successful plans that have improved security in other towns, it's now a 50-page proposal with six potential locations. Berkeley saw their homelessness drop by 45%. San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento saw a 19% reduction. Emeryville saw their numbers drop. Culver City and Sonoma included managed tent camps in their shelter crisis response and saw double digit drops in their homelessness. Chico has seen an increase. Why not let's direct staff to pick a location. We have shown them six. Pick a location, use State Statute 8698, and let's start a properly managed campground or a tiny home village. Why not three places instead of one, instead of making the entire town an impact zone? We've spent millions of dollars on sweeps, and many other cities have worked with nonprofits doing programs that nearly pay for themselves. I hold in my hand letters of support from eight other local nonprofits in Chico that have supported North State Shelter Team's proposals. Let's get together and get the job done. Thank you.

Thank you. So Rob Berry, followed by Kelly Lesser and then Mason Khan.

OK, good start. We're finally taking some action post Warren, and I would just make a couple of quick points. Number one is out of all the list of things that can be done, let's begin with those things that we can do now. It's August. This came in May. And, you know, the warrant expires in January. We should not be inactive between now and then. The second thing is I really like the plan that you adopted earlier unrelated to this particular item about designating the city center as the ground zero sort of in recapturing the quality of life in our city and moving outwards. I would just remind you that. There's another aspect of our city, the riparian corridors along our creeks that are particularly vulnerable and have been particularly devastated by these illegal encampments. And I would hope that an early intervention and protection of our riparian corridors would also be included in your plan, because those are going to take the longest to heal. And, you know, they really interfere with people's ability to use the creek. So thank you very much for taking this on.

Thank you. Kelly Lesser followed by Mason Kahn and then Mike Schultz.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I did have something written, but I thought just after hearing some of the comments, I might just try to wing it. And I'm not the best public speaker, so apologies ahead of time. I do want to thank you for starting to do something regarding this situation instead of waiting until January 14th. There's so many of us that are working so hard to keep our doors open, and this is part of the problem. with what's going on downtown for us, but I also, in the same breath, I hear other speakers talking about the homeless population in the plaza downtown, and that's heartbreaking to drive in every day and see people living in this manner, all these poor animals. I had There's one individual. You probably know who she is. She camps out right up outside here on the sidewalk, Jan. She's not a bad guy. She just is very mentally disabled. And the other day it was about 107 degrees and I saw her walking and I pulled over and I said, hey, Jan, are you okay? Because she just looked like she was ready to keel over. And I said, why don't you get in the car? And she sat in the car with me and for about 10 minutes cooling off. And I said, is there any way that I could get you to reconsider going into like one of the pallets or anything like that? She doesn't know how. There's so many of these individuals that need our help. And I think not everybody can be lumped into one. category there are bad guys downtown trust me i deal with them we all deal with you know the situations that we have with that but there's also a lot of people that just don't have the tools so that's time thank you thank you mason khan followed by mike schultz and then jeff glatz how's it going thank you guys for all this service that you guys provide uh i know it's probably a lot dealing with everything

Just graduated from the college. I got a job right downtown. I look out to the plaza every single day. It's gotten to such a bad point where it's I'm here today to at least bring it to your attention. I didn't know about this public nuisance that's going on right now. I kind of think that's a short term problem to a long term short term solution to a long term problem. I believe for the future generations, the next 50 years when this settlement ends on January 14th, whatever decisions or goes forward there is such a big deal for the city of Chico. Think about the future of people coming to this city to live here and work here when they can't feel safe at work, when they're at home. I mean, since August 1st, we've had 10 cases of Defecation, health problems, it's been so bad. It's disgusting. It's horrible. It's because of danger, safety to all the community around. I mean, Mayor, you have a business downtown as well. I can't urge enough on January 14th to please take into consideration the future of the city of Chico. That's all I'm bringing to the attention. It's become more than just a homeless problem. It's now a drug problem. I don't see cops doing anything. If you take a dog through the downtown, the dog will go crazy of all the drugs that are out there. I know all these people, I mean, every human being has a right to everything, but it's become such a problem that people do not want to be in this area, which is the center of our city. Another thing real quick to the two that are on social media, keep that going. The younger generation, that's how we hear stuff. Everyone here is older, so keep the social media going. Thanks.

Thank you. Mike Schultz, followed by Jeff Glatz, and then Lynn Overholzer. Okay. All right. Jeff Glatz, followed by Lynn, and then Chris Nelson.

Hello again, guys. Park Commission, drug-free zones, that's kind of why I'm here and how it plays into the public nuisance. I've been fighting this battle for quite a few years now, and I confirmed this with the city attorney a couple years ago. Our public park, including downtown City Plaza, are drug-free zones. So when I look at these public nuisance, it does include public safety and things like that. And smoking, odor, all that can be part of this public nuisance. If you can't drink alcohol, you can't smoke dope. It's a pretty simple theory. It's never been kind of acted upon. But now that we're getting to the point where you're looking for... And by the way, we're not targeting anybody. It's the gentleman who's been there for five years, sitting in his car at the one mile, getting stoned every day and then driving away. It doesn't have to be... It's not one community that we're targeting. It's the entire Chico community. If you're going to be in the public parks where our children play, where our homeless... We're our elderly walk. You don't need drugs. It's pretty simple. It's a pretty simple fix. And it's a major non-confrontational argument I think you can make to deal with the entire population of Chico, not targeting anyone specifically. And I think we just heard from somebody who was talking about downtown City Plaza where you don't want to walk through because of drugs. And I hate this, and now this is going to sound hearty, but I'm on my way over here. I've got 30 seconds. I did a quick chat, GTP. Homeless population in Chico, what percentage is kind of drugs? Only 30 to 35% in the state of California. Okay, what about people who do not want to take advantage of services, who do not want to go to a shelter, who want to live on the street and live in that? 70 to 80%. All of a sudden it pops up to 70 to 80% of the people living in our parks maybe doing drugs. So it does seem pretty easy add-on to your kind of solution you're trying to come up with. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Lynn Oberholtzer, Chris Nelson, and then Bruce McLean.

Well, I've never been up here twice in the same night before, but actually my three minutes was cut to two, and I had one additional item I did want to address having to do that I learned from my daughter's accident, and I realized it fits right into this agenda item, so I stuck my card in again. The center median safety provision is one of the items here. I wanted to address that anyway, even besides being on this agenda item. My daughter and I learned that if you hit someone who's on a bike or walking, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are. We met with enough lawyers and insurance companies to find out the driver is found at fault. State Farm would not take it to trial, even though we wanted to go to trial. The police report said this man on a bike was 100% at fault. We had a witness, the whole thing. No, they said juries do not side with people with drivers when they hit somebody. Doesn't matter. You think you have a slam-dunk case, we won't go. So I said, well, we want to fire you and we'll go ourselves because this is just not right. And they said, you can't do that either. Read the fine print of your state farm insurance policy. Anyway, so after months of all this, yes, the settlement was made. My daughter has a letter saying she was 0% at fault. It will not affect her insurance. If there was not a witness, she would have lost her license for a year. She would have been charged with committing bodily injury, and her insurance rates would have gone up for seven years, and she did nothing wrong. After that, we're in a car together going to Sacramento to replace her used car that was totaled, and there was a man standing in the median, and he stepped down. We both just about had a heart attack because we now know. I mean, I am sorry. People might think we're discriminating against people trying to get money, but when people are in a median and they step off, if you tap them with your car, you as the driver will be found at fault. That's the way it is.

Thank you. Chris Nelson followed by Bruce McLean and then Maria Rodriguez.

Hi. I just want to say I've been a nurse for 52 years, and I've worked with people, and I didn't hear people come into the conversation about nuisances earlier, so I want to remind you about Maslow. In 1943, the hierarchy of needs was developed, and I think this is more than a theory now, that humans are compelled to satisfy physiological needs first to pursue higher levels of intrinsic satisfaction. To get to these higher level of needs, they need to have these needs met first, the physiological ones. That means that if a person is struggling to meet their physiological needs, they're unwilling to seek safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization on their own. Physiological needs, to remind you, are air, water, food, heat, clothes, reproduction, shelter, and sleep. Without these things, people cannot move on. We need to address homelessness. We need to provide for people. They cannot do it for themselves. They've shown that. This is not about nuisances. This is about human beings. And so I think we really, really need to have a new city council if we cannot understand that, because we're coming into a crisis. You're going to do draconian things in midwinter, and I'm I'm appalled thinking about what you've got planned.

Thank you. Thank you. Bruce McLean, followed by Marie Rodriguez.

Hi again. I want to welcome our new city manager. I was glad I was here when you got installed. Attorney Jones mentioned on the list of nuisances, public defecation and urination. Often when I'm cycling around town, I wish that there was a public bathroom, toilet. The solution for public defecation and urination are public toilets. If we're concerned as I am, I live near the Little Chico Creek riparian area. In camping everywhere, the solution are sanctioned campgrounds, but not like has been done in the past here. sanctioned campgrounds that meet basic needs that Chris was just talking about, water, electricity, public toilets and shower, and security. I think the timing is inappropriate. I would recommend that you don't make changes now so that we don't have to go and revisit this after November. Thank you.

Thank you. Marie Rodriguez is our last speaker.

Hello. So I've lived in Chico since the early 1990s. I'm a far northern regional center client, and I've been working in the nonprofit sector with people with disabilities and the homeless. And it's really surreal that the vacant... PROPERTY ORDINANCE IS UP ON THE AGENDA TODAY BECAUSE I WAS JUST TALKING TO COUNCILMEMBER WINSLOW ABOUT THAT JUST A COUPLE DAYS AGO ABOUT THE K-MART BEING VACANT. SO I'M WONDERING WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THAT IF WE CAN USE THAT AS A RESOURCE CENTER BECAUSE WE HAVE SEVERAL NONPROFITS IN TOWN THAT WOULD BE MORE THAN WILLING TO OCCUPY THAT SPACE AND WE CAN MAKE IT SOMETHING TO BE OF USE. Because I've seen what has been done with the Jesus Center when they had the three meals a day. They had the showers. They had washer and dryers. They had the clothes closet. So why can't we have something like that with the Kmart? I mean, the resources are there. We have people in town that have money that would be willing to throw money at something like that. We have the resources. We have the people to do it. Why can't we do it? So I ask the council members to please, if you can just think about sitting down and looking at the vacant properties in town and see what we can do with that to actually come up with a solution that would help instead of doing these sweeps. that can help the homeless population because we do even though we have the tourists and we have the jesus center we need another resource center that can have services for people that are that have disabilities that have problems with homelessness thank you so much thank you and she's our last speaker

Do you want to double-check your stock? Do you have one for Stephen Hazel? See that?

There it is. Thank you for speaking.

Watch.

I'm having her check.

It's in there.

I did miss it. Okay. You're up, Stephen.

Oh, wow. See, America, you saw it. It's your turn.

Come on. Everybody's waiting.

No, under closed session, they said it was closed to me, and I had to make an argument. They weren't going to let me in. I said, hey, it's under the agenda. Why don't you speak?

All right, you're addressing, Stephen, you need to address the council. Come on.

You're all liars. Watch this. She's going to cut me off. She wouldn't let me speak three minutes without interrupting me no matter what. She can't help it. I got to write people die for my right to speak. What would Jesus do? Yeah, let me give you a point. Let me give you a hint here. It's all about money. And you know what? Here's the date, 5-14-2023, 60 minutes, about Chris Waddell. He's one of the bishops of the Mormon church. He's got 300, well, to my estimate, $300 billion right now for the second coming of Jesus Christ. But there's a problem there. Jesus died second time. In fact, that's why the Pope died. You know that? He died on Easter. You know why? Because he's still on the first time. It was still California time when he died. Stephen, you're on topic. I'm on subject. I am. It's about Jesus Christ. What time is it? It's Jesus Christ. It is. It's not just a year, the month, or the day. It's not just an hour, the minute, or the second. Jesus Christ is everything. It is. And for certain reasons, some religions don't believe in Jesus. Okay? And it's serious. It's very serious. And that's how I'm going to pay for this. I'm going to pay for this. That's how I'm going to pay for this. Because the more mature it's got, $300 billion is going to pay for all the money for the The homeless people, all the homeless people. See, look at her. She's cutting me off because she's always like, God, I'm standard. I trump her because it's all about rank and file. I just happen to come in here to one of seven of you guys. And then she thinks she's God of all you, Mayor. And she's not even being humble because I'm a citizen. This is our community. This is our forum. But she thinks she's separate apart from all you guys. Everything's R&D. There's two competing whatever, going back and forth. I'm I. Guys of no party. Say I'm a true I. I'm not an American independent. I'm a true I. I'm not of either party. And the way I'm going to pay for this is a more mature. You've got $300 billion put aside for the second coming. I'm God. Don't say I'm going to do a man's job. I'm 35 years difference from Bush. I'm born in 1959. He's born in 24. He's like, God, I was born that way. And your guy's 34 felonies. He should go to prison right now. He's got 34 felonies. That's a code in life. And guess what? Yeah, right. My son, Jesus Christ, actually, Adam Winslow, resembles him the most. He's a dirty blonde. So Adam Winslow resembles Jesus Christ anyways.

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

What's that?

All right. Council Member Winslow. Thanks, Mayor Reynolds.

I want to start off with saying thanks to our city attorney, Ryan Jones, for understanding the assignment and coming back with this. Thanks to all the speakers, all the speakers for contributions to the discussion. And I think that our conversations on the dais have gotten really level-headed around this, and I'm going to knock on the laminate there. There's a couple just kind of big picture things that I want to mention. I think that if we're going to ask for direction to come back with ordinance updates that we probably should be specific about which ones. There's something like nine different proposals here. One is just for about six years, maybe more, there's been a sort of legal paradigm from the council, doing things that I don't share the motivation for. I don't think that it's as effective. So how we got into the Warren settlement agreement was there's the park codes, which covers all sorts of things. Riding your bike along one mile is covered in that. Being there after dark is covered by that. Carrying glass in is covered in that. Drinking alcohol. And we went from these things being infractions to being misdemeanors, so you can be arrested for them. So we upgraded sort of the penalty, the possible penalty, and then we started to enforce them harder. So it was not legal to camp before that, but we made it extra illegal, and then we've been stuck in the Warren Settlement Agreement. We've done this in other regards, too, just looking at things that are already illegal, but then making them, like, more illegal in ways. And I don't think it's made anything better, and it's sort of a— It's the nuclear bomb of legislative interventions, I think. We just take everything. And there's actually the proposal in here to do that, which is why I mentioned that, of taking every single infraction in the Chico Municipal Code and making it enforceable as a misdemeanor, as in people could go to jail for it now. And I think that if people are deterred by... jail and a fine, people are deterred by a fine. And that's not really an approach for us, I think, as policymakers to just make everything an arrestable offense. I don't think that it makes the city any better. That being said, there's a lot of things that we need to worry about, and there's reasons that we're talking about this, and good reasons. So the other big picture thing that I want to mention is the suggestion that we change the municipal code relating to camping. Once again, it is illegal to camp in the city of Chico. It has been illegal. It is currently a misdemeanor. And there's a suggestion of changing some updates to that that came yesterday. in these lawsuits and conversations that currently it says that before enforcing against camping, people need to be offered shelter. And changing that would mean that we could remove the requirement that there be shelter available for us to enforce against camping. Now, while I think that the city bears responsibility, if we're going to ban people's ability to sleep places, it is our responsibility to designate the place where they can go. The thing... The thing is, and I think most people share this opinion, is that there should be a place for people to go. It shouldn't just be people scattered to the wind. People are not going to Gridley. People are not just going to leave town. We can't make it so miserable that people are going to leave town. I think, to me, that's a moral thing. I think when we say that we're a compassionate community, and I think everybody up here has said something like that, if not those words verbatim, that's what we mean, is that we're not going to scatter people to the wind. letting them figure it out when we made it illegal for them to figure it out anywhere in the city of chico so right now we have shelter beds available thanks to the warren settlement agreement we have a pallet shelter and we've increased shelter capacity and this has benefited a lot of people who've gotten off the streets there i do not think we should go in the direction of making it so we can if there is no shelter available if those shelters fail to shut down if we have a covid pandemic once again and they're not accepting new people that we make it illegal to sleep anywhere and don't people don't tell people where they can go I think it's our responsibility as a city to be directive about that, and I don't think that we should be changing that ordinance. Those are the big picture things. There are other things in here that I think are great ideas. The vacant property ordinance, make a Kmart owner sign up to a registry and we're going to go in and check them. That's a great idea. There's one about recreational vehicles. Currently, if you have a guest and they're in an RV and a grandma's visiting in a Winnebago, she can she can camp outside your house, outside your house adjacent property, as your guest for up to seven days. I think changing that to one day would be bad. I think people's grandmothers should visit in their Winnebago's. I don't think they're causing a problem in the city. I think that it's already illegal for people to be camping not as guests in their cars, places, and when that needs to be enforced, I think it can already be done. I would like to see more in regards specifically to litter, but again, this is the sort of thing, it is already illegal. If We don't need to change the code to make it more illegal to litter. We just need to change the enforcement practice, and that's something I think can happen at an administrative level. So I won't refer to any others, but those are my big picture thoughts just to open up the conversation.

Council Member Hawley.

Hello. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. And I also wanted to thank our attorney, Mr. Jones, for curating this report and presenting to us. I was especially pleased to see restoration area code amendments included here. I've been in contact with Director Lipski about how that temporary fencing is really difficult for our staff to maintain because it gets damaged so easily. It gives off... you know, a perception of blight. And it's just all around something that I think our citizens aren't very excited to have in Annie's Glen there. So I'm glad that we're looking for solutions. Also equally excited about the vacant property ordinances and creative solutions that we can create there. But I also wanted to echo Council Member Winslow's concerns about specifically the misdemeanor code updates and recreation plans. Recreational vehicles. This is a pretty overarching and broad. Agenda item, but I do want to be clear that I will not entertain for a 2nd, the possibility of converting all of our current infractions and the Chico municipal code to misdemeanors. This is the difference of being ticketed and potentially being arrested or put in county jail. And for a lot of our infractions, I don't think that reaction is warranted whatsoever. It could be things as simple as like having glass in the park. And I will not be voting yes on any iteration of a motion that includes changing all of our infractions to misdemeanors, because I think that's very dangerous. And I think that would be the city going way too hard on our power that we've been trusted by the community with. And same with recreational vehicles. I think just one day of camping, it's... or excuse me, yeah, just one day of using any like camping or recreational vehicles is just way too strict. So I hope we can move forward and make progress and get more staff information on all of the other items besides those two.

Council Member Van Obrecht.

Yeah, I don't think this is a place where we want to go through all of these 10 items. I think that City Attorney Ryan did a great job of framing this. And so what I would like to see us do, this is... what we need to do pre-warrant. There's a whole set of things that we need to do post-warrant, but I would like to see us deal with these maybe three at a time. There's 10, so maybe two threes and a four, so that at that point we can really talk about them in depth. And the second point I want to make is, as we found out with our traffic laws and our red light camera system, Any law that's not enforced will be disregarded and we might as well not have it. So either we have laws and we have real penalties or those laws are really just wishes and they're ineffective.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you, Mayor. So we do need to exercise common sense, certainly, and discretion. I don't think every one of the codes needs to be a misdemeanor necessarily. However, I think these nine, that's a good start. And I appreciate the city attorney bringing this back because I think these are common sense.

Adjustments to our existing municipal code.

And I just want to state that compassion is not just for a few. Compassion is for the entire community. That includes those that are unhoused. That also includes the rest of the community that are impacted by some of these issues. And I think we need to address these as well. So, yes, I agree with my colleague, Council Member Van Overbeek. We've got a pre-warn path that we need to take, and then there's going to be a post-warn path we need to take. But we should not just sit here tonight and do nothing. We need to do something. And I think this is a very good start to that something.

Council Member Goldstein, sorry for missing you there.

That's all good. Right, yeah. Thank you for the presentation, Ryan. So laws already exist. We need to enforce them, not create more. That's my main opinion here. But if there are other tools that our staff can use to proactively address homelessness, then I'm willing to entertain those. But I really want to see us take a much bigger picture look at this and continue our conversations on planning for when the Warren settlement expires. So some of these ideas being proposed are good. Some I believe we've already done, like the median ordinance, and some are going way too far, as my council member colleagues have already expressed. So we're proposing this vacant property registration item, and I like the idea of that. I like being able to have our city staff track long-term vacant properties so that we can prevent blight, vandalism, and fires and more violence. easily work with those owners to get those buildings occupied again by our residents and businesses. The median ordinance, we've already discussed that at council a few months ago, so I'm a little confused. I meant to ask earlier. I think this might already be on the books. Could our city attorney or staff just comment on that real quick? Sorry to put you on the spot.

I think it could be updated and more consistent with sort of best practices, but... So yeah, we would have a much more comprehensive discussion with each one as they come back. We'd have to do a first and second reading. So I think it could just be updated.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jones. So as far as the camping related ordinances, again, willing to discuss these, especially for longer term planning of what these ordinances will look like after the Warren settlement. But I always want to reiterate people need shelter. People need tiny houses, a safe place to park their cars. For example, we're looking at this RV ordinance, which I don't think would have much of an impact. We already don't allow RVs other than invited guests. We need to consider if there's an opportunity for us to let people safely park their RVs or cars in a space if they're down on their luck and living in their cars. We just need to be more strategic. I don't want us to go back to an era where we had... One encampment in one part of the city that gets evicted and then moves to another park somewhere else in someone else's backyard. We have to be strategic, and this is a really good pivotal point for us to do that. But I'm worried that these ordinances would either be piecemeal or have negative effects on people. And of course, as my colleagues already mentioned, turning infractions into misdemeanors could have serious unintended consequences for people's rights and for our quality of life in this community. Yeah, and so let's just enforce laws that we have. And if there are tools staff need to be able to reduce the amount of litter and human waste in our community, then I am for looking into that. But I think we need to look just beyond enforcement and into ideas for things like shelter and even public bathrooms. So thank you. Vice Mayor Bennett.

Thank you. So I will be brief. I WOULD LIKE TO SEE US MAKE A DECISION TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THOSE UPDATES AND ENHANCEMENTS OF THE CURRENT CITY CODE AND MUNICIPAL CODE SUCH THAT WE CAN MAKE SOME MOVEMENT NOW, NOT IN SIX MONTHS, NOT IN THREE MONTHS, BUT START MAKING SOME MOVEMENTS NOW TO TRY TO ENFORCE WHAT WE HAVE ON THE BOOKS BUT MAYBE IT'S NOT AS STRONG AS IT SHOULD BE RATHER THAN WAITING. And I'm looking at a particular person. She's been waiting for a long time for something to happen. I think it's time for us to take action and do what we can do, be reasonable, be fair, be sensitive to those people that may be affected by some of our decisions. But it's time for us to try and do something to move forward with those issues that we all recognize we are all well aware of here in our community. So I'm going to be supporting. I don't know how this is going to be framed, but I'm going to be supporting moving forward with your recommendations. And thank you for bringing this to us. We've been working on this for years, literally. So thank you.

All right. I haven't gone yet, so I'm going to go. And then so I have a couple of comments and then I have kind of a three part motion slash comment. So my first comment is when you read. VIEWED THESE, MR. JONES, MAINLY YOU WERE LOOKING AT LIABILITY FOR THE CITY, IF OUR CARD CODE IS NOT DONE CORRECTLY, AND ALSO BEST PRACTICES IN, YOU WORK IN, I DON'T KNOW, 20 OR 30 OTHER CITIES, BEST PRACTICES OF WHAT YOU SEE IN THE OTHER CITIES THAT YOU WORK, RIGHT? Okay. Yes. And that's for everybody in the city, not just our unhoused population. These are things that affect everybody. Okay. Now, if grandma is in the Winnebago in front of my business and she's selling meth, she probably doesn't need to be there for, you know, more than a day. Like, I think we can work on that. She doesn't either. So and a really good news is Kmart and the grocery outlet are both for sale. So if anybody wants to go out and buy them, they can buy them and turn them into a shelter and do whatever we want to do in there. Not us, the city. I don't think that's what we should do. I think we should help write a code for it that allows it and give them a use permit and do all the great stuff. But anybody is welcome to go buy them. They're listed for sale right now. And you can go on the MLS and look at those. So in order to potentially maybe move this forward, the three things that I would like to see is, one, begin enforcement of any public nuisance and health and safety laws that are happening right now that do not violate the Warren Settlement Agreement or state or federal laws, period. Start that right now. That's number one. Um, continue to have, I know Ryan, you did a quote unquote thorough invest, but I know this wasn't everything. Continue to look at our codes and let us know of anything else you see that needs to be updated. Um, and then bring these items back for us to investigate and talk about thoroughly with more public input and all those things decide whether they should be a misdemeanor or whatever they, what your recommendation is. I don't think these are all things that need to, um, Be enhanced. So maybe three at a time, two at a time, whatever is necessary to get them done. I heard in the presentation that it's been talked about the post Warren conversation. I think that that is super important. And I would like to add that there must be a minimum of two public outreach meetings in those where the public can come and talk about what they were hoping to see post Warren. And what they're excited about for the community and what they look forward to in the future. And then lastly, and this isn't really part of the motion, but I want to get it on the record, because when we met on May 19th and we got the report from some. Assistant City Manager, Mr. Gustafson, you mentioned in your words that that would be coming back, but it wasn't actually part of the motion that was made. And in that motion, we put prioritizing the downtown plaza and working outward, and that was approved 7-0. And we talked about grants and proposing for grants. And there was a lot of things that were talked about, and we all agreed that those were all great things, but it was also agreed that that was going to come back. So I just want to put it on the radar that that does still need to be talked about, because I think we do need to talk about restoring our you know creeks and waterways and all the things that it's going to take because that's a long-term project it's been five years that things have been happening and i think that's something that's going to take a really in-depth conversation so that's not necessarily part of the motion but it didn't get captured in the motion when we had it on may 19th so i just wanted to put that on the record so that's how i would um move that we move forward from here and i'll leave it at that and take questions councilmember winslow

Yeah, I think if you could just restate some of those components of the motion, just so we all follow, because there's kind of a lot there.

So, Ms. Presson, do you want to, or do you want me to? Okay.

So, if that's a motion, I'll second it. I'd like to see it'll be more concise, but I like the ideas.

Well, part of it was making sure it was on the record to bring something back, and I made that, I think, pretty clear, but let's see what Ms. Presson got, and if I need to clear it up.

So can I make a friendly amendment? And it wasn't clear on how many. Hold on. I can't hear. Please stop talking. As far as the number of ordinances to bring back, do you have that number specifically? I'd like to do as many as possible.

I recommended three at a time, but if whatever the city manager or city manager and city attorney are comfortable with.

Three is about as much as you can probably digest in the public at any given meeting. So I think three is... Actually, some of them are just slight changes. We could potentially do more, but we would talk about that internally.

So at least three, and then if you can, if some are so simple that it's just a little tweak here or there, then if we can bring those back. I just want to do as many as we can as quickly as we can. That would be my friendly amendment.

Sure. Okay. All right. So I got first one, begin enforcement of rules that do not violate the warring agreement. Second one was continue to look at our codes and bring these items back and vet them thoroughly and with public input and obviously with staff recommendations attached. Three is post-warrant conversation must be at minimum two public meetings held so the public can come and talk about what they would like to see post-warrant. There was a friendly amendment from Council Member O'Brien regarding the number of ordinances and to bring them back as quickly as possible. with some of them being consolidated, depending upon if they were minor, from what the city attorney said.

All right.

And then I know you stated something for the record, which was about when the original discussion happened on May 19th, that staff had indicated that they were looking at moving from the plaza and outwards to begin that process.

process and you wanted it on the record for that that that would come back and I know that and the main reason I'm putting it there is just it I we have a new city manager and she needs to be brought up to date on a lot of stuff and this is all going to be part of the post Warren conversation and I just want to be sure that that great report and all that hard work that you did isn't included in that so we can talk about our waterways as well okay okay councilmember Wenzel I see you in the queue thank you thank you thank you um

So, okay, I understand that better. I appreciate it. There's a couple things that I think would lead me to not vote for it, and one is that some of these things I don't think should be included, and that's okay. We can talk about them individually, and then we'll probably have agreement on a lot of things. The first part of the motion, the directing enforcement of existing public nuisances, I'm just not sure that that... is helpful to staff when they would be doing these things already or at least understand kind of our you know the sentiment that we have um so that that i wouldn't vote against that just if it was just that but also i'm not sure that it like directs them to do anything in particular um I do want to offer a suggestion in terms of this, the ordering of this, because time is of the essence or it ceases to be really relevant. I mean, a lot of this is preparing for a post-war world, which we need to do. I like the idea of some meetings, making sure we're hearing things and having a thorough analysis of what actions we're taking. I would suggest that the... The restoration areas piece come back soon because to me that looks like a tweak right now. We require just everybody knows in order to have a restoration area and close off a portion of a waterway. For example, Lost Park and Annie's Glen have been this way for a while. We have to have it fenced off. That fencing is tedious and expensive, falls over anyway, looks bad. I just hate fencing in general. It would be nice if we could have that. security of our waterways without requiring the fencing to me that seems like an easy tweak it also would be effective and especially in this time period I also like to note as much as it gets to be summer and we think about the heat the floods come real fast a lot of these greenways are greenways because they flood and when people are camping in there it has very detrimental impacts to their possessions themselves and of course environmental quality so I would recommend that that be the the first I mean maybe others are ready at the same time the next meeting when we have it but would that be a priority

And I have you in there.

Did you want to say that didn't reset? So thank you. I'm good.

All right. So we have a motion. Councilmember Holly.

Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Just real quick. I'm going to make a substitute motion just to move forward with all the staff recommendations, with the exception of the misdemeanor code. updates. Again, kind of similar to what Councilmember Winslow said, I think enforcing our current laws and the amendment to bring back as quickly as possible. I don't know are necessary. However, I am very supportive of a lot of these amendments as a whole. But if that item, changing all of our misdemeanors to infractions, came to us by itself, I would never support it coming back to this body in any shape or form. So that would be my substitute motion.

I don't think that was in my motion. Are you saying the staff report says to make everything a misdemeanor? That's currently a misdemeanor to an...

I'm saying the staff report, word for word, says... Did I miss that? The staff report says, as best practice, staff recommends convert all current infractions in the CMC to misdemeanor code sections.

Yeah, maybe I can clarify that one. I think what... as a best practice, is to allow the flexibility to be an infraction or a misdemeanor. So not necessarily a conversion, but to say it could be an infraction or it could be a misdemeanor based on sort of the severity of the situation and what the officer on the scene is assessing. So I probably wrote that incorrectly to say we're just going to convert them all. It just would be an option.

That's okay. Thank you so much for the clarification, Mr. Jones, but I do have to say I'm still very uncomfortable with that.

I just recommend people look at the 2016 Chico Enterprise record story called I Can't Do What Wacky Chico Laws and understand that all these wacky laws against like herding goats through the public right-of-way would then be arrestable offenses.

Council Member Goldstein.

Yeah, I'm especially uncomfortable with that section of this staff report, and I'm still uncomfortable with that language because I wouldn't be comfortable with the idea that officers have discretion on that or that our legal system can turn something from an infraction into a misdemeanor, essentially, depending on the situation. I just don't feel comfortable with that because it could be targeted at certain individuals. But I side note, I second Katie's for discussion her from substitute motion. Although I'm I am I'll state while I'm speaking that I'm torn on approving either of these the substitute motion or the as proposed because they both include some items that I'm a little less than comfortable with at this point.

There also will be, you're not voting on the ordinance now. We're voting on a direction to go forward. When and if it comes forward, you could certainly vote no and ask for amendments at that point as well.

Council Member Winslow.

um yeah i mean sort of in response to that it's just if we're given the direction now i would expect you're going to come back with completed ordinances and so there's some some work that goes into that um and yeah it's that recreational vehicles one is the one that really um i think rubs me the worst way i feel like it's already adequate the way that you have to be a guest you can't be hooked up and you can stay for only seven days and i think the cases of like um if my grandma were say smoking meth in front of casey's ice cream shop unless she's her guest She could stay for no longer than seven days, as it is, and still is not allowed to smoke meth.

Luckily, I no longer have a grandma, so we don't have to worry about that.

I got a couple.

We're getting bogged down here. We've got a substitute motion.

All I'm saying is that I'm not going to vote yes on the substitute motion unless you want to exclude the recreational vehicle update as well.

Was that a suggestion for a friendly amendment?

That's a suggested friendly amendment.

I'll accept that.

All right, so we have a substitute motion and a second.

Okay, and that was to accept all of staff's recommendations except for converting infractions to misdemeanors with a friendly amendment to leave the recreational RVs at seven days. Is that correct?

Yeah, to exclude that from direction to bring back.

All right, so we'll take the substitute motion first. Council Member Goldstein.

There's just still too much that I am questioning here. So, no. Okay.

Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien?

No.

Council Member Van Overbeck?

No.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

No.

Mayor Reynolds? No. Fails two to five. And then the original motion, which was to begin enforcement of rules that do not violate Warren, continue to look at our codes and bring those items back thoroughly and with public input and with staff's recommendations. Also, to continue to have a post-warrened conversation at minimum, two public meetings should be held so the public can come talk about what they would like to see happen with their city. In addition, there was a friendly amendment by Councilmember O'Brien on the number of ordinances to be brought back at a time at least as quickly as possible. And then for the record, the staff report that was presented at the May meeting said just for the record that they would begin the post warren restoration from the plaza and then outwards and to bring that item back for discussion by the full council That is correct.

Can I just clarify one thing? Yes. I want to make sure that, I believe that I said it, but I just want to make sure it's on the record, that when these recommendations come back, that Ryan, Mr. Jones, would then advise us on the misdemeanor versus infraction part, and we would go through that further.

Okay.

I did say that we would take them each one at a time, but.

Okay. Would provide recommendations on infractions versus the misdemeanors. Correct. Okay. All right. Council Member Goldstein? No.

Council Member Hawley? Again, thank you, staff. Really looking forward to 90% of these conversations, but because of that one item, I cannot entertain. No.

Council Member O'Brien?

Yes.

Council Member Van Overbeek?

Yes.

Council Member Winslow?

No.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 4-3.

We're at two hours. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back.

All right, let's get going. Addison. We only got two items left.

Tom.

Tom.

You.

All right. Item 5.2, consideration of designation for delegate for League of California Cities. Ms. Presson, our clerk and elections official.

So I'm going to take like one really quick minute. This is something we do every year. It's the league puts on the voting, the conference and ask for voting delegates to vote on any type of legislative actions that they might be working on. This upcoming one is September 23rd through the 25th. It's in Anaheim. Last year, the mayor went in the past. The mayor's gone a lot. It's up to the council. And I did budget for it, so all is well there. So I'll turn it over to the council if you have any questions. Any questions?

So, Mayor, do you want to go again? I'll ask that question of you.

I was planning on it and would love to, but... Wonderful.

I second that.

Council Member Goldstein? I was just curious if you know if there's any items they're voting on this year.

We checked a little earlier and there aren't any yet, but we're hoping that there will be.

Okay, great.

We'll keep checking. Would you like to be my alternate? I think you were last year, Council Member Goldstein.

Or somebody else.

I think we have to have an alternate, right, in case something happens to me.

I was checking my calendar to see. I have no idea. I could be your alternate for now. I don't have a lot of interest in spending and committing to it yet due to the time commitment. Well, somebody, well.

And we didn't have a, well, I can't recall. I don't budget for two to attend. No, I think it's just an alternate case. Yeah. Okay. So we can do, is there some.

Can I question, I mean, if nobody could go, that's also, is that an issue? I mean, do we have to send somebody?

You don't have to. And again, what we can do is we can keep checking to see if there are any legislative matters going to be heard as well as we get closer.

I have it scheduled on my schedule and planning on going. So great.

Yeah. And I support you.

I'm confident the mayor will make it so. Okay.

All right. So that was a motion and a second for the mayor to attend and be the voting delegate. Council Member Goldstein. Do we have any?

Just make sure just to get on the record. We don't have any public comment.

Oh, I can't believe I was trying to rush it. Well, I know we're trying to get them to bring it down there. We did not have any speakers on this one and I didn't block anyone. Zoom. OK. Yes. OK. Sure. Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member Hawley. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member Van Overbeek.

Yes.

Council Member Winslow.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett.

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Carries 7-0.

Yeah, I will not be attending Disney. All right. June 16th, finance committee minutes. If you are on Zoom and if there are any speakers to address this item, this is the time to raise your hand. So please do. Speakers. Let's see who's going to take this. Council Member Van Overbeek.

Yes.

Yes, take it away.

Okay. Well, we had our meeting on June 16th. We came up with three recommendations. Vice Mayor Bennett made the excellent recommendation that we look at what we're charging for lease rates at the Chico Regional Airport compared to other industrial properties to make sure that we're charging or we're asking for... competitive market rate, lease rates. So we agreed on that. And then I had an item I would like the, we get excellent reports from Director Martin on the city's financial situation, but what we don't need to know What we need to know is when something's going sideways. So I suggested a red, yellow, green reporting system so that we could see the things that we need to watch and things that are really headed for the weeds just to make it more efficient. And we agreed to do that. I had a conversation with the city manager this afternoon about it, and there were some issues, but you came up with a way to work through that. And then I wanted the staff to come back and give us a report on the city's philosophy for insuring properties, buildings, vehicles, and liability. Specifically, what I want to know is how much are we self-insuring and how much insurance are we buying? Because My philosophy is you should have very high deductibles and self-insure for what you can self-insure for. And I have no idea what we're doing and we should know. So I think the next meeting, Director Martin, are you planning to come back with that at the next meeting?

If that's the direction of council, we can do that either at finance committee or at this venue.

Fair enough. Well, I would like that, but if council needs to approve, that's fine. So anyway, that's the report. Anybody, any questions?

Vice Mayor Bennett, I see you have your, let's get him as the, and then...

So administrative director. Martin there you go. Is that I heard it took it would take a long time to put a report together on the insurance in overall. look at insurance rates and how they are determined where to insure, how much to insure, and all of those factors. Is that true? I want to be careful about your time.

Yeah, we can give a fairly easy report on what we currently have insurance-wise and what different plans we have and what the deductibles or self-insured retentions are, that sort of thing. We can provide a report of that and then see where it goes from there.

So to your point, yeah, what I'm not looking for, I don't think either any of us are looking for, is a detailed report on every single insurance policy, but sort of a high-level philosophically, how do you think about it? How do you think about risk management? And specifically, how do you determine what an appropriate deductible is? That's really the nub of it in my mind.

Well, I support getting a report on insurance philosophy. I think it's a proper thing for us to review or for Finance Committee to review. The green, yellow, red thing, the fact that this came back to us makes me, it flags it to me. It's like, is this an issue for staff to provide? Also, what's the philosophy of the green, yellow, red? Is it subjective? And I just wonder, Barbara, if you could weigh in on that and whether I should say yes.

Well, I suppose it could be subjective. We attempt to highlight funds that we're concerned about revenues not coming up to projections or fund balances in ways that we don't want it to. We feel like we do that pretty well. If a summary wants to be provided about the things that we are going to talk about or that we've already highlighted, we can always do a summary page within the report. The report is an extensive report, so if there's a, these are the places that we're keeping our eye on, we can definitely do that. I tend to do that in the presentations that I give you all periodically anyway, so.

Yeah. Yeah. I just recall in any time where we'll do like a six month financial review, mid budget review, and you'll flag the funds that are not doing so well or if we have some recovery and ones we flagged before. And I just want to make sure the direction for how you highlight those things is the best. from your end and from our end, and if color coordination is or isn't that, I don't know.

So the idea is, and this comes from private industry, we have a budget, we go through a budget process, and then every finance committee meeting, the finance department comes in and reports and says, here's how we're doing relative to the budget. So if we're on track, or relatively on track, we don't need to talk about it. If the trend line is going like this, then that's something we should be flagging. And if we're really in trouble, like in the parking fund, that should be flagged. So the idea is to get us to focus on the problems rather than to suck up a lot of time saying, yeah, this one's going great, that's going great, and that's going great. So that's the basic idea.

But you think the summary pages that she was alluding to would do what you need it to do as opposed to color-cording the entire thing?

Well, whether it's color-coordinated or it's bronze, silver, whatever, there needs to be, what I want is to flag the things that are exceptions. Okay, so I see our new city. And so that we can focus on them.

Okay. So the only concern that I had, and was glad that this was coming forward, because we need new legislation on ADA compliance on our website and anything that's being uploaded, and so certain colors and everything. So if we could... avoid that or do it in a different manner, that's even better.

I just was going to say, I saw city manager Hayne had her mic on as well.

I apologize. I met with director Martin and then council member Van Overbeek and then went into closed session. So we haven't closed the full loop, but we did discuss, um, Councilmember Van Overbeek and myself about potentially using the summaries that Director Martin already prepares and identifying high, medium, low priority instead of color. We could still color code it, but it could say high, medium and low to avoid the ADA issues, but then also to still kind of flag and say, hey, this is a high priority to look at in the summary. If that would work, Director Martin.

Yeah, we can work on something.

Okay, Councilmember O'Brien.

No, I think it's a good idea. We have to remember history and history of the city is, unfortunately, that this budget and previous councils and staff almost ran the city into bankruptcy.

It was this close.

We have excellent staff now. I think we need to hear from them. And then when they have a concern, I want to hear about it. I want to give them the forum to do just that. That's our responsibility. That's their responsibility. I trust them implicitly. I think that's a good way to do that. And whatever coding we use, it could be high risk, medium risk, low risk, whatever. I don't care to comply with the ADA and such. But we need something in place. I think it's a great idea. Thank you.

Council Member Hawley, did you have something?

I was just going to express that I've been more than satisfied with the description of all our different funds and how at risk they are thus far. And I think this is micromanaging, and we're getting beyond the scope of this council and finance committee's role.

Vice Mayor Bennett.

So I've been on the finance committee since I joined this club.

Oh, you hit your mic. There you go.

So I've been on finance committee since I joined up. And I'm happy with the way it is. If we have some way to make it easier for some of us to review, that's fine. I just, when it comes out, I just sit down and go through the whole thing and take a look at it and then call you or Amanda with questions. So I'll go with whatever the decision is.

All right, how many speakers do we have? We do not have any. Okay, perfect. So how would you like to move forward?

I like the city manager's recommendation for this far as the flagging of the report goes. And the presentation on insurance I think seems fine, so that's a motion. That works. Would you repeat it with the city manager recommended in terms of flagging and of the reports? High, medium priority, high, medium, low priority. And then just approving your ask for a report on insurance.

Well, we have a third one from Vice Governor Bennett about insurance rates, about our lease rates.

So do you want, I guess my question is, do you, if we give permission, do we want to just send all this back to finance to committee and then have a, no, you want to come back here?

No.

Do you want to come to council and not finance committee?

I heard a rumor that you have resolved the item that I was going to talk about. So I'm not going to say a darn thing.

Thank you.

All right.

So if you want to just accept the finance committee minutes and their recommendations and allow staff to, figure out exactly how it's going to be implemented. Okay, perfect. And that's all that needs, it doesn't need to be individual motions. Perfect. It's acceptance of the finance, excuse me, the finance committee.

All right. Does somebody want to make that a motion to accept the finance committee report?

I'll make... Did someone make a motion? Seconded before the motion was made? I'm not sure. Okay, perfect.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't, but... No, I was waiting for somebody else.

Well, now you did.

Okay, I did. Made my first motion.

Okay, so it was a motion and a second to accept the Finance Committee minutes and reports and recommendations. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien?

I think yes.

Council Member Van Overbeek?

Yes.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carry 7-0. All right. We have nothing posted after the agenda reports and communications. The following reports and communication items are provided for council information. No action can be taken on items under the section unless council agrees to include it on a subsequent agenda. City managers report. Ms. Hayne, would you like to give us your first city manager report?

Yes, please. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. It's been a great, busy seven days on the job. Attended last week the Enloe Cancer Wing Ribbon Cutting, which was a wonderful event and a beautiful facility. Got to meet a lot of community members there, so I'm super thankful I was at that event. And then Wednesday, the Chick-fil-A ribbon cutting that I brought my youngest to, and she got to sign the sign, and now she'll point at it every time we go to Chick-fil-A. My name's in Chick-fil-A. But it was a great event, too. A lot of community members there. Where I come from, that one is very popular. About as popular as In-N-Out, so we'll see how that fares here in the city of Chico. Just doing a lot of outreach and listening and meeting with people, staff, many of you council members, community members, got out to the wastewater facility and had a tour out there, met with Public Works at their safety meeting, going to meet with O&M in the morning, met with the PDA team, came to the office and did a little meet and greet, so that was great. planning on hitting every single roll call once the chief is back in town at all hours of the evening and morning there with the police department and then as well as the fire department so i'm looking forward to those we talked a little bit earlier we've talked with staff about you know post warren and what are we going to do and really brainstormed on a staff and executive level got some good ideas rolling out on that that will be to be continued Again, lots of community stakeholders kind of establishing those communication cadences and just fitting in with the different groups and organizations and nonprofits and what all whatsoever. lots to still meet with so if anybody's out there please reach out i'm happy to connect and then yeah overall i just want to say i'm very impressed with our staff we've got a really expert staff they all did their kind of swat analysis of gaps and opportunities it was really great reading that hearing from them very impressed with the organization of our community members lots of very organized groups and they know what they want. So that's great. It gives us some good direction. So looking forward to many future opportunities together. Thank you.

Thank you and welcome again. Council Member requests, pursuant to APMP 1010, Council Members may verbally request an item to be agendized at a future meeting. After stating what the item would be, a majority of the vote of Council is needed in order for staff to agendize. Do we have any Council Member requests? I have one, but I'm not allowed to put my own speaker name in there, so I would like to do one, if that's okay. So I would like to request a conversation about our ALRP. have a presentation slash conversation. We got an update in closed session a few weeks ago. I actually agree with Mr. Schultz, and he's not here right now, but he actually had some really good suggestions, and I actually think we're doing a lot of those things. So I would like to have a conversation and presentation as to what is happening with our ALRP so we can figure out where we need to go and what we need to do. I'd second that.

Just a point of clarification because I had a conversation about it. I thought that police staff or via city manager's office was going to come back with a report on it. And so that would be maybe sooner than a gender request would happen?

If we want to add it to the... If we want to waive our rules and have it not be the 30 days and come at the next meeting.

Sorry, I thought staff was already bringing it forward is my understanding. I just want to check.

Through the mayor, if I could clarify, yes. So we've met with staff internally. We are working on that analysis and report now. And the plan was to bring it, hopefully, to the second meeting in September, if that's acceptable, which would be when the council member request comes anyways.

So either way.

I don't believe that's in the agenda forecast.

Correct. We just discussed it this morning about the dates.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I just think it's important for the community to know. And I'd like it to be a council member request that knows that we're bringing it forward. And if there's information that we want to bring forward before that, I'm fine with that, too. But I really think this needs to be an extensive conversation opened up. And it might need to be an agenda where we don't have a lot on the agenda because I think there's a lot to talk about.

I think it's a great idea. I was concerned because there was so much misinformation that the public had about the systems and how they work. I think having it happen at the same time that Captain Struthers comes back with a report would be useful, and I agree that the agenda should be pretty short because this is going to be a long one, and we'll have a lot of people who want to speak to it.

It will be a long one, but it's going to be an important one. And I completely agree. This technology thing is important for all of us to get a handle on because it's outpacing case law, legal interpretation. It is something that we should pay attention to. And I think distinction also is important to understand our system versus other systems, what we're doing, what we're not doing. And I think the timing of the audit, timing of the audit, along with a presentation is going to be really important, so.

So that was a motion and a second to bring that forward. Is that, I made a motion.

Still a little confused because there could end up being two things, but regardless, if it ends up being two, I guess that's fine.

Yeah, it's just whether it's you write the report or we get the report from staff. I think getting it from staff makes more sense because they're already preparing it and Captain Pena is not in his head.

Perfect. So you want that in conjunction with the staff report that's coming back?

Okay.

All right. Council Member Goldstein? Aye. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien?

Yes.

Council Member Van Overbeck?

Yes.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0. Council Member Hawley? Aye.

Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. With the upcoming Vina Groundwater Sustainability Plan submittal to DWR by the Vina GSA, I'd like to agendize a discussion exploring official letter options to the Board of Directors outlining how the final plan could affect the City of Chico.

Second that.

Okay.

Did the clerk repeat the motion?

She would like to agendize a discussion about exploring an official letter to send in with the VINA GSA letters. regarding how it might impact the city of Chico?

A letter to the board of directors of the VINA GSA outlining how the final plan could affect the city of Chico, and this is not necessarily taking a planned stance, just outlining how it would affect the city of Chico. Okay.

So may I make a friendly amendment? Can we have maybe a presentation on this issue so we understand before we're starting to talk about letters and such? I think having some detailed information would be helpful, in my opinion.

So the amendment would entail... Can you be more specific? Would you like a City of Chico staff member to give a brief overview?

If they feel qualified as far as the impacts on the city, I'm fine with that. I will defer to them. If they think they need to bring in an outside source, that's fine too. But we need to have some more information before we even consider writing a letter, something we don't even understand about. So I'm going to defer to our staff on that.

Maybe Kimmy Loesser? Yeah, I don't know. I think Kimmy would... Sorry.

No, you're totally right. I mean, the county is very involved. It would just be the county dedicating staff time, and I don't know that we have the jurisdiction to say the county uses staff time for that.

I think we could perhaps ask that our staff help figure that out, like invite county staff. I see a nod from Public Works.

My understanding is that agendizing items is just a preliminary conversation on whether or not we want to follow that. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Yep.

Well, you can deny my friendly amendment. That's fine. But getting ahead of ourselves is talking about a letter we know nothing about right now. I think we need to understand the issue first. That's the presentation piece. Then we can consider what actions we want to take. That's why I made that friendly amendment.

I appreciate that, but I don't know if staff could help me clarify. I don't believe we're able to vote on taking up over an hour of staff time when we're just agendizing a conversation about something.

I think we've requested from a request motion like this to ask staff to bring us presentations before, but I'm not sure. Maybe that could help with that.

Typically, the process is you have the discussion, and then the body votes when the council member brings back the item. with a write-up explaining more as to what they're looking for in that letter or whatever the item is and then the council staff begins its work after that um on this one i don't know if it's a timing issue because of the i don't have a concern with the time with the timing i think a really basic preliminary conversation

is all we need and if that preliminary conversation results in you being interested in having a staff presentation then we can go from there but we might not not even get that far and i don't want to waste staff time

Okay, so we have a motion and a second, and she did not accept the friendly amendment.

Can I perhaps just say what I think I'm hearing, which is that this would be kind of you're agendizing a conversation that could direct staff to bring us more information, not just specifically a conversation about a letter or all of the above. I don't know if that was a good question. Sorry.

Sorry, I'm struggling to make the agenda item clearer. Do you want to talk about it and go from there or not?

I mean, we can just go to a vote if that's fine. We can just vote.

So at this time, the motion is just to have a council discussion, a preliminary discussion about exploring a possible official letter. And Council Member Hawley would frame that in her write-up as to what she's wanting it to be. That would be part of the agenda packet. And then you would have that discussion. And if you wanted staff to address any questions who may be here in the audience you know here already may be able to do that um or you decide not to go with an official letter that would be the discussion or take further action at that time great is that thanks debbie okay so council member goldstein yes council member holly yes council member o'brien nope Council Member Van Overbeck?

No.

Council Member Winslow?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bennett?

Yes.

Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 5-2. All right.

Anybody else? I don't see anybody in the queue. I'm making sure nobody's not working.

Okay.

We are adjourned to our regular meeting on September 1st at either 5 or 5.30. Thank you.