City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Thank you everybody. I'm going to call the meeting to order. Thank you for showing up to the uh Cloverdale City Council meeting. If you'd please join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, roll call. Michael says, uh, looks like we've got everybody in attendance. Thank you, Mayor. Let the record reflect all council members are present. Yep.

Do we have any conflict of interest declarations? Seeing none. Thank you. Any agenda review? Any changes or deletions? No changes.

Okay. Okay. Public comments. Verbal comments. Any person wishing to speak in person on an item not listed on the agenda may do so at this time. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the city council is not allowed to consider issues or take action on any item not listed on the agenda. Three minutes are allotted to each speaker. Do we have any public comments? You have to push the green button or little button on that microphone. What? If you could push the button on that microphone, it goes green. Just one time. There you go. Perfect. It's green now.

Okay. Okay. Mayor, council members, public. Hi. Um, could you please state your name for the record, please? I'm just getting to that. My name is Maryanne Bighgam and I live here in Cloverdale.

I'm standing here tonight because I love this city, but I am ashamed of the behavior I have witnessed during our recent council meetings. I'm specifically referring to the personal mean-spirited and bullying behavior that is being directed at Council Member Marquez. Let me be clear. This is not passionate debate. This is bullying. We, the residents of Cloverdale, elect you to fix our roads, protect our water, and build a stronger community. We did not elect you to witness a schoolyard fight. It is embarrassing to watch and it makes you look unprofessional. I want to express my firm support for council member Marquez and any other member who is feeling treated with disrespect. I am calling for an end to these attacks. I encourage the mayor to enforce strict decorum rules. The Brown Act allows for respectful debate, but it does not require us to tolerate toxic personal attacks. Please start acting with the civility that this community deserves. I would like to speak about the foundation of our local government, trust, and the listening that builds it. In a small town like ours, city council isn't just a governing body. It is a table where our neighbors sit to make decisions that govern and affect our daily lives, our schools, our streets, and our livelihoods. We often talk about the public as a single entity. But we are a tapestry of viewpoints, young families, seniors, business owners, and longtime residents. When this council listens only to the

loudest voices or only to those who share a similar viewpoint, we miss the full picture. True, effective, and fair governance requires active listening to all voices, not just the comfortable ones. It means acknowledging that a young parent navigating school safety concerns has just as much stake in this town as a developer and that a senior on a fixed income has just as much to offer as a business leader. Listening to all voices brings us to the best conclusion because it brings the best most innovative ideas to the table. When we encourage a diversity of opinions, even the uncomfortable ones, we identify potential issues before they become crisis. A small town thrives when it works as a collective. We cannot afford to overlook the insights of any residents. When all ideas are welcomed, our decisions are more robust, our policies are more equitable, and our community becomes stronger. So I urge this council to continue and improve upon creating an environment where everyone feels valued and heard. Please make active efforts to reach out to the marginalized, the quiet, and the under represented. Our town's best days are ahead of us when we work together. Let's make sure the decisions made at this table truly reflect the heart and voice of our entire community. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service all of you.

Thank you, Marian. Any other public comment? Hi, my name is Annabelle and I live in Cloverdale. Um, I'm want to talk about water. Um, could you bring the micro Could you bring the microphone down a little, please, so we can hear you? There you go. Will that work? Yeah, better.

Okay. Um, a friend of mine in 1988 went to the Sacramento State Fair and went to a pow-wow there and he met a Native American, very elderly Native American there. And this man told him that the West is going to burn and there's going to be wars over water. And that was like 1988 before there were a lot of fires. And so we're at the point of we've already been through the West is going to burn part and we're getting to the wards over water part. Um I saw something on YouTube about from the UN. There's a man named Dr. Mandani who gave a talk about how the world is no longer in a water crisis. It's actually bankrupt. And uh what that me meant was that people have been drilling and getting all the water out of the ground that was actually put in there when they they had the last ice age. So we're not going to get that water back. And this they've done this in so many places. The east is the worst, but the United States is not great. Um, this week, um, President Trump asked Canada for water for from the Great Lakes from Canada, and they said, "No, our treaty is that no water can be imported or taken from the Great Lakes." So there are 10 states in the United States where they have pumped the water out of the ground to the point of subsidance and they're not getting they're getting brian or getting nothing and they're like um Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Utah,

Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and California. And um so that brings me to California. Um, California, the Imperial Valley gets 100% of the water from the Colorado River. And the Colorado River has two reservoirs, one by Utah and one lower down. Um, but more by Arizona actually. I don't know where it is below Nevada. So, um, the water, the one in Utah is going to go below, it's it's called, now I'm getting nervous. I can't remember. Um, it's going to go below where the water can go through the tunnel to get down to the next one. And that'll be um, uh, Deadpool will be at the end of this year. Uh the Deadpool for the one for Lake um me for Nevada, California, Arizona, uh where the Imperial Valley gets 100% of its water is going to be Deadpool in uh the summer of 2027. And nobody talks about this.

Excuse me, ma'am, real quick. We're you're past your three minutes and so everybody I just want to get give everybody a chance to talk. We try to keep it at 3 minutes. I'll let you go ahead and continue and finish off, but for everybody, we need to keep it to three minutes, please.

Well, uh, if Imperial Valley, they're going through the process of trying to decide what to do, and they're not coming to any agreement. So, might come to a big lawyer lawsuit about it, but there's not really any water to fight over. So, it's really going to affect us. Um, people will flee from having to pay high prices for water in LA and all the Imperial Valley. Uh it could be drought, it could be we don't know what it's going to be. So they they suggested a 10% cut for California and the government wants a 50% cut. That's huge. So I um here we really don't know because of the decommissioning of the dam um exactly how much water we're going to have and because of that also the stress of the California water system that's being really kind of shocked. Um I really concerned that we need to be really really careful about the use of our water and that's what the Mandani guys said about in the mud and he said really protect your water really be honest about the amount of water you have and don't use allocate any more water than you have and just really really really protect it and so that's what I'm asking um here of this happens in Cloverdale. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comments? There was one in the back.

Okay. All right. So, my name is Katia. I'm a Cloverdale resident. uh grew up here, of course. Um yeah, here we go. Hi everybody. So, I just wrote this and we'll see how this goes. Over a week ago, I sat down to map out what I wanted to say today and I ended up watching Yellowstone for the first time because I was too overwhelmed. I still don't know what I want to say, but that's okay cuz I spent the day mentally preparing for this moment. I started by watching Yellowstone this morning. Have we seen Yellowstone? Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, and then I also visited the Cloverdale Indian Museum just to kind of bring myself together or excuse me, the California Indian Museum. So, I guess I'll just stick to what I know. I know that I care. I care about this land and all all that reside on it, right? Not just people. Everything. I care about their preservation and honoring their history with their truth with the truth. I care about my neighbors. I care about my community. And I know that it took this community to raise me because it takes a village. I know my opinion is supposed to matter, right? So, hey, here I am with that. I kind of want to read something for you.

Mission: Deliver exceptional public services while preserving Cloverdale's character, natural beauty, and inclusive small town spirit. Vision to be a healthy, diverse, and family centered community that honors its heritage while embracing sustainable growth and opportunity. Values: Excellence, equity, efficiency, integrity, innovation, transparency, sustainability. We act with integrity, communicate openly, seek creative solutions, support a thriving community, use resources responsibly, work towards equality, and strive for quality and professionalism in all we do. I hope that rings bells. Now, really, I'm up here now. I have a buffering minute and 22 seconds. um to truly just wing it. So, here we go. Soil, we know that Esmeralda land site is contaminated. Tests have been done. Whatever might be said, maybe part of it, you can't build residential, but you can build commercial. Doesn't change the fact that it's contaminated. See, I meant to speak for longer than 3 minutes. doesn't change the fact that it's contaminated. Doesn't change the fact that the river is right there. I care about my neighbors. I care about Geyserville. I care about Helsburg. Canada. Someone brought up Canada. Cloverdale has grandfathered water rights. But what about that day that our neighbors aren't going to have water, right? We have to think about that. Yeah, there are things that we can do to start storing water.

Sure. For sure. we have taken from the generations behind us at this point. We owe them a debt. You're the ones sitting in the chairs. Um, soil. What else do I want to talk about? We know that this project is going to change Cloverdale. We want to keep Cloverdale Cloverdale. So, how do we preserve what makes Cloverdale Cloverdale when what I've been hearing is that these homes are going to be second, third homes? Yet, I have my peers around me that I look to, they're having a hard time buying their first home. I look at my sister, she searched for a home for 3 years. To be honest, even though we love Cloverdale, she didn't want to buy a home in Cloverdale. Why? because of commute. She and my brother-in-law have to commute very far from Cloverdale for their jobs. And trust me, they fit into that that gap that we're trying to fulfill. They fit into that gap and they can't find a home. So, what do we do about that? Whether or not we decide to go through with this Esmeralda project, what about, hey, no Airbnb. Hey, let's prioritize those who are looking to buy their first homes. Let's prioritize families. Let's, I don't know, maybe give dibs to those of my generation that have moved out of Cloverdale but want to live here as priority to preserve Cloverdale to continue that community that ra that community that raised me. I couldn't I couldn't walk down the street of Cloverdale without someone seeing me and telling my parents, "Oh, here we go. I'm in trouble. I got caught. Okay, cool. Guess I'll go home and read.

So, I just I just want you to I guess I'm really just up here to reinforce that with Esmeralda and with what you do in that while you hold that chair. Really preserve Cloverdale. My true opinion with Esmeralda, if you really point blank ask me if I'm for it, the side alone kind of brings up way too many questions for me. The fact that they're prioritizing putting a hotel first concerns me. I'm not opposed to growth, right? It's a thing. There are those large um topics that are hard for us to have. Population control, gentrification, politics in general, religion if we want to throw that in there. I did it. Okay. So, just kind of keep that in mind. Keep that in mind, right, when we decide about Esmeralda cuz Yeah. Thanks.

Thank you very much. So, our timer is down. Just as most people could tell, we're having Yeah. Once again, I just want to reiterate, we we have some public comments. I'd like people to have their time to come up here. Let's try to keep it to three minutes. We are going to be keeping a time up here. So, thank you.

Evening. My name is Dana Star. I'm a resident here. I want to thank all of you for your service for our community. It means a lot and it's not easy. I'd like to speak to my observations of the communications um that happen here on the dis. uh I'm witnessing similarities and differences in style which are in my view leading to a lot of struggle.

Thank you. So what I'm witnessing these differences and similarities are creating challenge that no matter what the topic is they alone are going to create a challenge amongst the members because that's what happens with differences. Uh people tend to get comfortable with similarities and then when you get to differences it's like boom and cut and damaging. One minute left. There are ways of different ways of assimilating information, different ways of processing so that one can communicate using thoughts, feelings, and actions. And there's different choices on how approaches are done with decision making, which is what you all do for us is you come up with information. You communicate between yourselves with us and make a choice. Decide how we're going forward. And the thing about honoring the differences is that it builds trust. reduces problems and provides for the most in resources of our community members. And that's what I would like to see more of because what I've witnessed in the last 3 or 4 months alone I would say is very disconcerting. Um, one thing I can do is understanding how these dynamics play out, I'd be happy to offer for free my services to have a short meeting with each of you so that I can tailor this the discussion to what are your strengths and what are the

differences and how the two can work together because I don't want to hold the convers conversation in a big picture when I can't work with everybody where where they already understand and then bring in what the part that's being misunderstood. So that's basically it. Um, I would just like to see hugely that communications and decision-m comes forward in a way that serves our community, which is the job here that I see from all of you. Thank you. Three minutes. Thank you.

So, I had a finishing line and I just want to finish with it. Okay. Um, Ishmael Daniel Daniel Quinn. It's like 300 pages, super easy to read. Highly recommend it just to just it's a book that profoundly changed me and is very influential to me and I want to pass that on to you. So, Ishmael Daniel Quinn and if you have kids, my Ishmael. Thank you. All right. Any more public comments? Seeing none. Okay, we'll move on to

uh pardon me, mayor. Um if that's the end of the public comments, I would like to request uh one of the written comments to be read aloud uh by Karen Chin. Okay, you should read them all if you're going to read one. Read them all if you're going to read one. Um Alex, on that real quick, do we if we're going to read one, do we need to read You don't have to read any of them. Um, people can come give their comments in person if they want to. The

purpose there's no requirement. They're posted to be there and are available for the public to see, but someone wants their comment read out loud, but they need to attend in person, but it's it's certainly there uh for anyone to see. Okay. I'm requesting that that comment be read aloud. You don't have to. Okay. We're going to So, I want to make sure we're doing this. We're they if they have sent in a written comment, then it's on the agenda for everybody can get on and see the agenda on cloverdale.net and on the agenda center. Correct. Correct.

Okay. So, we do not have to read that aloud. And Karen Chin's comment is in the is in the agenda for anybody out there. I know there's a request to read it out loud, but if it's in there, then we would have to have go through and read all the comments. Correct. If we do one, we should treat all commenters the same. Same amount of time, same privileges. I'll request that all three are read again. I'd like to request that all three comments are read aloud. Okay, go for it. Yep. Let's go ahead. Let's read all comments aloud. Yep. I'm on it.

And do we have uh Caruso here? I'm going to move this to my screen just so I can read it. Tell me when you're ready.

Okay. So, we have them in alphabetical order. So, the first one would be Caruso. Timer set. Dear Cloverdale City Council, because Esmeralda Land Company's hired consultants water study was based on environmental studies completed in 2004 and revised in 2018, I urge the council to require Esmeralda to pay for a new study using an independent consultant of Cloverdale's Choice. Both studies were completed before the recent Russian River Project 2 basin solution. As you know, this decision will establish limits on diversions to the Russian River affecting Cloverdale's water supply, especially in drought years. Recent developments in Cloverdale, Bumgar Ranch, and others did not exist when those studies were done. Based such basing such a major decision to allow us to proceed on outdated information is, in my opinion, harmful to the welfare of our community. The results of your decision will play out long after you have left office. I realize there are no easy decisions in public office, but getting more information is never harmful. The Cloverdale needs to require a more recent environmental study using a consultant of their choosing paid for by as Moralda Lin Caruso of Cloverdale. The next one is from Karen Chin. Dear Mike Maloney, sorry, please below, please find a letter that I would like to be included in the public written comment for the upcoming city council meeting this week. Please confirm receipt confirm receipt of this email. Thank you, Karen Chin. Dear Mayor Wheeler, I am writing this email to be presented at this week's Cloverdale City Council meeting to state that I am very disappointed that city council member Andre Marquez is under review for censure due to his usage of the term liaison to describe his attendance at the Russian River property owners meeting. He has made it very clear that his attendance is as a member of the public and not in an official capacity. The first time he heard of this plan was during a formal city council meeting, which is unacceptable. First of all, his reports are important as they provide a broader perspective of the issues at hand so that Cloverdale citizens can

make informed choices. Censure is very serious and usually is raised when a serious infraction has been committed and is not to be used as a tri in trivial situations. As a democratic institution, the city council is tasked with serving the interests of its citizens. As such, these same citizens are owed all sides of the equation or issues that are discussed on the agenda, the good, the bad, and the ugly. From what has transpired, those that have brought the question to censure of centure up in the meetings are wasting the taxpayers money and hours of administrative time in the face of more critical issues that should be dealt with for something that could have been resolved in a simple email or phone call. This is in fact a huge failure on the part of the mayor and vice mayor. In effect, their actions have heavily eroded public trust by creating an unnecessary spectacle. In conclusion, I request that you and the censure process immediately so that your time is spent on more critical issues impacting the city. Censor should not be used lightly as it is a very serious tool to curb serious breaches of ethical behavior and not as a punitive measure because you do not agree with another city council member's opinions or reports. You say potato, I say potato. Potato. Sincerely, Karen Chin.

Thank you, Mike.

And then that last one, public comment from a Rob Kuslowski, city council members. Thank you for the comprehensive review of the city's new business during the January 28th, 2026 city council meeting. On item H2, street maintenance funding. A few items need to be addressed and responded to. Number one, thank you for establishing the oversight committee for both the sales tax measure DD approved in 2024 and the utilities user tax. Measure R permanent former measure O temporary. I look forward to reading about how our tax revenues are being effectively spent. On the sales tax, there was discussion sorry number two. On the sales tax, there was discussion by council about using 80 to 90% of collected DD revenues for road work, thereby forgoing projects involving parks and recreation as well as public safety. In the run-up to the 2024 election, the voters were told that these three key areas would be addressed more equitably. I also feel that Chief Parker could provide input on both public safety and road works projects, especially for those intersections where frequent accidents have occurred. Number three, I'm concerned that the city is considering more debt financing using tax revenue streams to address planned road works projects. This requires significant interest payments to service such a loan, thereby reducing the number of projects that can be stated in the first place. A similar situation occurred one when unknown to the public, a multi-million dollar debt financing scheme was used to fund non-priority water sewer projects using residents water sewer rate increases as loan collateral. The solar system HVAC installs and more are not important to upgrading Cloverdale's aging water and sewer systems. These funds for which taxpayers are on the hook for hefty interest payments have delayed or deferred many important water sewer projects. Number four, with regards to roads, whether basic maintenance or new builds, no list with projected costs was presented. After 15 months following the vote in support of measure DD, it was disheartening to have no priority list of road projects presented with scheduled start dates. Let's get moving on this infrastructure beyond high cost and questionable engineering studies for ADA compliant sidewalk corners. I trust that a sense of urgency will be adopted

to get these things done for the residents of Cloverdale in a way that doesn't burden residents with more debt and fewer completed infrastructure projects. Please push harder. Regards, Rob. And and that concludes the three public comments that were on the Thank you, Mike. Where we at here?

All right, that like uh city clerk said, that concludes the public comment right there. We also have moved a couple public comments to a section in the consent calendar. Those will be brought up. Let's move on to see student liaison report. Uh student liaison written report. Go ahead.

Hi, I'm Risa Cardinas. Um for the Cloverdale High School, we have an aviation career seminar that will take place at the Pacific Coast Air Museum for students interested in an aviation career. This will occur on February 28th. Um, scholarship opportunities are available for for seniors to apply for and there's free after school tutoring um on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:20 to 5:20. Our athletes are busy preparing for spring sports such as track and field, baseball, softball, and tennis. A winter sport awards ceremony is taking place as of right now in the East Gym. Mr. Eagle, which is a pageant show for the senior boys, will be taking place on Thursday, March 12th at 7:00. And there will be a bake sale on March 7th at the wine walk outside in front of North End for prom fundraising for the Jefferson Elementary. Jefferson had a steam night for the kids. Um, this week they had the Kowanas book giveaway. Each kid got a free book. February 27th is the end of their second trimester. And for Washington Middle School, the eighth graders visited the high school for tours. Um, they were able to sign up for classes and there was a schoolwide assembly with a motivational speaker. For sports, they have started track and field for sixth through 8th graders. And softball has begun for seventh and eighth graders.

Perfect. Any comments from any of the council members? Any none? I just want to say thank you and I I say it every time, but uh our two student liaison are outstanding. They're very clear and they have very well-written reports. So, thank you very much. It's much appreciated. All right. Mayor, we really quick just so you're aware, our live stream is set struggling. So, anybody who's watching on Zoom, um I would recommend if you can to come down to city hall. Um we cannot guarantee that the live stream will continue. But just so you're aware, council, that we do have a presenter at a later item that will hopefully be going through Zoom. I'll let you know if it's working at that time.

Righty. Thank you. And it's the same. Okay. Gotcha.

All right. Let's move into uh item D1, proclamation for Black History Month. And we have our recipient, Miss Lariva Miles, here to accept. Thank you, Lariva. So now I'll be reading the proclamation. This is a proclamation of the city council of the city of Cloverdale declaring February 2026 Black History Month in the city of Cloverdale. Whereas Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African-Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in US history. and whereas during Black History Month, we celebrate the many achievements and contributions made by African-Americans to our economic, cultural, spiritual, and political development. And whereas Black History Month grew out of the establishment in 1926 of Negro History Week by Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements by black Americans and other peoples of African descent. And whereas the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, ASAH, sponsored a National Negro History Week in 1926, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. The event inspired schools and communities nationwide to organize local celebrations, establish history clubs, and host performances and lectures. ultimately evolving into a month-long national observance in 1976. And whereas Black History Month honors the contributions of black Americans to US history, including Madame CJ Walker, who

was the first US woman to become a self-made millionaire. George Washington Carver, who derived nearly 300 products from the peanut, Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and galvanized the civil rights movement, and Shirley Chisum, the first black American woman elected to the US House of Representatives. And whereas the observance of Black History Month calls our attention to the continued need to battle racism and build a society that lives up to its democratic ideals. And whereas the city of Cloverdale continues to work toward becoming an inclusive community in which all citizens, past, present, and future are respected and recognized for their contributions to our community. And whereas the city of Cloverdale is proud to honor the history and contributions of black Americans in our community throughout our state and nation. Now therefore, it be proclaimed that February 2026 is designated as Black History Month in the Cloverdale and all residents are encouraged to recognize, celebrate, and honor the rich and diverse contributions of black Americans to our community. Dated February 25th, 2026. So ordered. Mayor Brian Wheeler.

Any comments from anybody up here on the dice? Okay. Okay. Liva, floor. Actually, you can wait for comments until after I've had my say. Okay.

Okay. Thank you, Lariva. So, I'd like to thank Council Member Marquez and all of the uh rest of the city council for um asking me to speak and offering this proclamation to me. What I would like to say is that basically good evening to the mayor, council members, staff, and fellow Cloverdale citizens. My name is Lariva Miles and I was honored when Mayor Wheeler asked me to accept this Black History Month proclamation from the city of Cloverdale. When I first moved from the Bay Area to Cloverdale to be closer to my father, Glenn Miles, it took me 3 years to get used to the slower pace of Cloverdale. Mhm.

Every time I drove up here, when I got to Heelsburg, my blood pressure dropped and I felt a lot more relaxed. Once I was able to settle into a more relaxed way of living in the country, Cloverdale became my home and an oasis I love to return to every time I leave. During the past 16 years, I've attended many city council meetings. most of the time over a six-year period when Melanie Bagby, Carol Russell, and Maryanne Bighgam were participating council members. Um, I'm happy to see that Melanie Bagby is going to be running for Soma County Supervisor and I would support her in that effort based upon my having had the time to see how well she does the business of Cloverdale and Sonoma County. I've been a Cloverdale Performing Arts Center board member, its first front of house manager, and produced a successful fiddle festival when Bonnie Aian was director of the Cloverdale Historical Society. I'm a past arch druidist of Cloverdale Circle 81, have given speeches for the American Legion for Veterans Day, and at my father's Veterans Memorial ceremony after his passing last year. I'm proud to say I supported the development of the Smart Train many years ago by singing Choo Choo Chaboogie at a San Rafale council meeting during my three minutes of public commentary. And I'm hoping I'm not going to go over because I've timed this for two and a half minutes, but I might go over a little bit.

Um, I also recently sang the Star Spangle Banner at the Reese Across America ceremony at the Cloverdale Cemetery in December. Contributing to my community in these ways has made me feel that Cloverdale is my home. I'll close by saying I have a picture of my maternal stepg grandmother Kathleen Riley Dominick Kelly and my paternal grandmother Alsi Womac sitting at my kitchen table. They're both 95 years old sharing each other's company while sipping a glass of wine and smoking cigarettes. It's almost as if they were celebrating two branches of my family coming together so that I could inherit the country living lifestyle I've grown to love and enjoy here in Cloverdale. Thank you for this honor and proclamation. And I would like to say after hearing the public comments this evening, I think I'm going to have to come back and pay more attention to what's going on at city council. When people would ask me why I would come to city council because I I think a lot of them thought it was boring. I used to tell them I thought it was the best show in town

and I still think it is. So once again, thank you for this honor and I'll try to pay a little bit more attention about what's going on at city council cuz I can see that it's kind of heating up. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Do we have comments from the DIY? Thank you, Lariva Miles. I just want to appreciate you for being very welcoming to my wife and I when we moved to Cloverdale and sharing stories of of the history of your family. Appreciate it.

I wanted to thank you for everything that you've done to contribute to Cloverdale. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to thank you for uh contributing your voice to your your causes and I really appreciated the uh that was the first time I heard you sing with at Wreaths Across America. That was really really beautiful and uh I commend you for being an active community member. Thank you.

Your comments that you make here are some of the pluses of why I tell people Cloverville is so wonderful. It it's weird when you hit that Hillsburg line, your blood pressure does go down. And I used to work graveyards and a lot of the people that I worked with would either live in this area or up as far as Yukaya and they would have a hard time staying awake. They would be fine and strung out and stressed out until they hit about Hillsburg. And it would actually have them pulled over on the side of the road hitting guard rails all the time. It was a weekly basis you would find this because everything drops when you get into this area because it's just so calm and welcoming here. And so I I love your words and thank you for everything you've done.

Lariva once, thank you for accepting to come down or or agreeing to come down and accept the proclamation. You were the first one I thought of. And I want to say the same thing uh that Council Member Laskkey says. I was amazed at your voice when you did Reese Across America. Watch out. I bet you you're going to have a lot of people asking you to sing if it hasn't already happened. So stand by for that. But uh thank you very much. And and that's that's why we we live up here in Cloverdale. You know what I mean? It is that's I think that's the same thing with everybody. You clear that last corner in Hillsburg and the stress is gone. You can't wait to get home to Cloverdale. So once thank you for everything you do for for the uh community and uh thank you for your voice and uh thank you for coming down and accepting this. We do have a proclamation and can we get a picture with you please? Sure.

All right. Thank you. Thank you all for the offer. Yes. AMEN.

OKAY. Ease it on down. It's

a tough time sticking standing next to the tall guys. All right, game here. Okay. All right, we're going to move into item F, the consent calendar. Is there anybody from the public that would like to pull an item on the consent calendar? Seeing none, everybody, anybody, any of the council members? Uh, yes, mayor. I'd like to pull item F6. Okay. F6.

All right. Do I have a motion for uh approval of the consent calendar? F1, F2, F3, F4, F5. So moved. F1 through five. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Vote. I could just go into the item. I guess we're going to a vote. Well, it's either your preference if you wanted to request why you wanted to pull the item or if you want me to just go into the item. We pulled voting on item one through five. Perfect. I don't have a computer working right now, so I'm uh going off the cuff. So, all in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Sorry, without my computer, I don't have the resolutions in front of me. Right, let's move into F6. which is the uh consider amending the flag policy include the outdoor display of commemorative flags at the Cloverdale Library. Okay. Um I do have some comments to make regarding this item. Um I may revert to uh having the public comments read first. Uh I think that would be helpful in discussing this item. Is that the discretion of the mayor? Go ahead. Let's go ahead and read the public comments on that. Mike, I don't have them listed on mine.

I'll get them real quick. All right. So, we have two public comments for this item. One from Adelgato. This will not take three minutes. Dear council member, this one was to Morgan Stern. I believe every council member received it. I'm writing this letter in support of flying the pride flag at the Cloverdale Library June 1st through 30th in solidarity with other Sonoma County libraries. Thank you, Candace Delgardo. The next public comment was from Brooke Green. Mayor Wheeler, Vice Mayor Lans, and members of the city council. As you know, I represent Cloverdale and Sonoma County Library Commission, but I'm writing you today as a private citizen. Agenda item F6 under the consent calendar is a motion to add all commemorative flags to the flag pole at the Cloverdale branch of the Sonoma County Library. When I reviewed the video of the January 28th council meeting, I didn't see a vote for this or even a consensus in this direction. Starting at 1 minute and 39. This is the discussion I observed and maybe 1 hour 39. Council member Marquez asked that the pride flag fly at the library during the month of June. Council member Morgan Stern agrees that the item should be placed on the agenda. Vice Mayor Lan discussed the history of the flag policy and states all commemorative flags must be flown at the library to avoid being discriminatory. Mayor Wheeler asked council member Laskkey his opinion. After council member Laskkey clarif clarifies that two pride flags will fly during the month of June. One at the commemorative flag pole at city hall and one at the library. He says he's in favor of the item being placed on the agenda. Mayor Lans asks for clarification. Will all commemorative flags fly at the library? Mayor Wheeler says all commemorative flags. I want it in there. If anything, the consensus was to add the pride flag only to the library flag poll. I'd like to request you remove item F6 from the consent calendar and discuss rewarding the resolution prior to taking a vote. Brook, thank you, Brook Green.

Perfect. Those are both public comments for that item. Thank you. All right, let's move into comments from the Dice.

U so I would have to say that I do agree with the public comments. I do support the pride flag uh flying at the library in um solidarity with all the libraries in Sonoma County that have flag poles and it's also um representative of our city's proclamation. Uh that is the request by our community was to have a single flag flown at a single location. Um that's what the request is. I think I don't know if there's anybody here from the public today that is requesting that all three flags are flown at the library. Um if if that's not the case, I don't see any written comments uh requesting that. I would just like to move forward with the single flag.

I would like to move forward with the single flag as well. Okay. Council member Laskkey. I'm in agreement with other council members on a single flag. Mr. Mayor, I like it as it is written because I want it to not be discriminating against the other commemorative flags that we would hold in our town. If we are choosing which flags to fly where, it is discriminating against someone else.

Um, I had uh I'm in favor of the uh pride flag flying at the at the library. We are the only library in Sonoma County. I did make a call down to the uh and I'm going to I can't remember her name, the the director of Sonoma County Library and talk to her about this and mention that we do have this coming up and uh what her thoughts were on that. And uh she said that yes, she's in favor of flying the pride flag, but also uh she didn't have a problem with the other flags flying on the pole either. She said her comments were, "We follow the JPA through uh Sonoma County Library System with the cities and whatever the city decides on that." Um, I know there's nobody here making comments for the other flags, but they are on our approved commemorative flag list. So, my my struggle with this is I don't see I don't see why there's a a why people don't want these sons of Pearl Harbor and and our other flag on there. I mean, it's it's representing Cloverdale as a whole. The pride flag will fly. And the other ones are also they're on our commemorative flag pole here. If we're going to do the my opinion, if they're going to do the uh pride flag, let's have the other flags up there, too. representing the council whether it's this council or before approved them for a reason. They were brought to the council and we made that decision. I don't see the other flags flying as diluting anything. They all go up at different times. So, um I just uh I think I like the way it's written. I don't want to be technically Alex, correct me if I'm wrong here. It's not legally discriminating against the other flags, but it's just the public perception. Correct. That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. So, there's my comment. Do we have any comments from the public on this? I'd like to add a comment. Okay. Go ahead. Um question. Oh, Annabelle, what are the other flags? Currently, the three commemorative flags that are approved by the city council include the children's memorial flag, the pride flag, and the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors Flag. Those are the three commemorative flags that have previously been approved by council.

Okay. Um I'm I would say personally I'm in support of all three of our flags being flown at city hall. Um you know there is plenty of other flags that if uh a council member did want to make a request for many many many other flags that request could be made. Uh that request is not being made. Uh what request is being made I think has been made very clear. Uh when it comes to the talk of discrimination and this is for the sake of conversation um there is a flag raising for the pride flag. Uh would you consider having three flag raising ceremonies at city hall? Well yes and um the flag raising and why did you choose that single flag?

Uh we were asked to come down since it was a new flag pole and we had the key to it. Um we came down and we were the city was asked to come down to open up the flag and participate in that was not a city sanctioned event. Do you find it discriminatory that the other two flags do not have flag raising ceremonies? You do you do not. Okay. So I think that might be but if if asked to come down for those I'm sure somebody would come down here. So by by request by request by requests

I would make a movement that we approve for the pride flag solely to be added to our flag policy for the Cloverdale Regional Library June 1st to June 30th annually. I second that. If if we can do a clarification, we do have a resolution as part of the staff report. So, you'd be amending that resolution and I'd be requesting language because it's red line. I'm happy to put it up on the screen so you can see it. This is the language from the staff report. I would like Whatever the motion, I just want the direction. Yeah, we need to take public comment first before we can vote on the motion. Yeah,

I have one more comment. Well, I have a question. How much do flags cost? Depending on the flag, it would roughly speaking under $50. Okay. Because one thing about flags is they do wear out over time and then they need to be replaced. So, we have to consider that. So with the flag policy, the person that has asked to have the flags flown on the commemorative flag poles is supposed to provide the flags as well. To me, I'd rather just have a single flag at the library as requested by the library. Okay. Any public comment on this?

Do I have to state my name again? Yes, please. Okay, just for the record, thank you. Yeah, gota. Um, so I'm seeing children's memorial flag to be flown April 1st and April 30th at the city hall. Pride flag to be flown June 1st to June 30th at the city hall. Sons and daughters of Pearl Harbor's survivors flag December 1st to December 30th. So that means that these flags are only flown during this time. Correct. Correct. Okay. Yes. Every time the pride flag goes up, is there a ceremony?

No. The city doesn't sanction ceremonies for any of these. There was a ceremony held by people that wanted to have one and asked us to join them. Okay. So, when the time comes for this flag to be put up, it just gets put up. Yes. Okay. I don't truly I don't see an issue why all three flags can't be included in this. They're flown at different times, just a single flag. And honestly, I go to the library with my nephew a lot. It would be pretty cool to walk up to the And he kids ask a lot of questions. Never never stop asking questions. I could see him walking up and going, "What's that flag for?" Yeah.

Raises the conversation. It's in honor of such and such. I think that'd be pretty cool to have all three flown at their designated times at city hall and at wherever they're Yeah. Include all three, please. Thank you. Yeah, get it written. Good evening. My name is Richard Green. Submitted a

um thank you uh council for having this issue being brought uh to to us to discuss. Again, I'm I'm the guy who brought the Sons and Daughters Pearl Harbor Survivors flag to the city council in hopes that it would be flown um by the city. Um my my particular hope was that it would be flown on the same flag pole as the American flag. I think it means more, but Kata was uh was right. When you see the flags up there, it does stimulate conversation. I have no objection to having this Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor flag flown at the library and I'm assuming that we're going to have an American flag, a California flag, and whatever commemorative flag there is. Now, that actually brings me some some calmness, some some some better feeling than I had been. And I have to admit I have a little whiplash wondering where the flag's going to be next week, but let's see how that goes. Um, most important, I have no objection to me having it flown at the library. And I happen to have two flags, so we're on.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's bring it up to the dice now. Well, um, yeah, my comment Oh, is there uh I'm sorry, sir. I did not see you. I apologize for that. Hello, I'm Craig Garnney. Um, I'm just kind of trying to understand this a little bit better. So, that means of the approved flags, there's only the pride flag approved with if No, there's three. They would all three. So they would all three still be treated equally flown in their own regular time, right? I mean, because already right now there's times like laid out for them.

Um, I guess I just like say that, you know, I'm I'm a big fan of having all all three of them run at, you know, on their scheduled time and uh see how that how that goes. Thank you. Thank you. So my comments uh just to be clear on the um explanation of what it is previous to uh this amendment was that we have three commemorative flag poles or three commemorative flags approved by the city to fly at one commemorative flag pole. The city does have jurisdiction over three flag poles

so three different locations um technically four. So, uh, the request comes in, uh, for the amendment presented by a council member, um, is the flag policy that if, if the public does make a request that it would have to go through council. So, um, when we have a request to fly a single flag, that's what I've put forward as far as uh, um, the pride flag at the library. If the community is speaking up and they want to see all three flags fly at uh the library, um then that's the request, you know. Um is it the request to have all flags flown at all locations? That might be a part of the discussion, too.

What's on the table? Hi, Brook Green. Um I thought I covered my point. My point was procedurally I saw the same agreement that we had at the beginning of this discussion uh on the video of last month's city council meeting. I felt that um the the minority opinion was pushed into this u amended policy and it didn't seem democratic and that didn't seem fair to me. So that was that is my point. Okay. So any other comments from the do

Yes. Uh through the mayor I just want to clarify his motion at this point because it sound like the next conversation or comment that you made was a little bit different like you wanted to go with as written. So I wanted

Well, I haven't made a second motion. Uh I think we're just still kind of melding over public comment and also wanted to make sure that the public is clear that um as the policy stood before this meeting was there was three flags that are approved to fly at city hall. Uh any amendment would have to be for that location specifying the flags and uh if that conversation is going to be all three flags at the library or one flag. So, I think uh just want to make sure that the public is clear on on what we're deciding today. Hi, this is Richard Green again. I I just want to make clear that um I have no objection to the sons and daughters of Pearl Harbor survivors flying at the library. No objection, but I don't prefer it. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Any other public comment for this before we end public comment? Okay, let's bring it up to the dice. And you know, I'll be curious to hear from some of the previous commenters maybe if they understand more clearly what the request is today. um if they would like to further speak on um what they would like to see. Um that would be good and helpful to so we have a complete conversation. We will have to allow it. No public comment.

Katia, we've we've have a motion. We've already closed public comment. We need to bring it up to the DAS and move this item forward. Well, I'd like to make a motion to amend the Cloverdale flag policy to include uh solely the pride flag being flown at the Cloverdale Regional Library from December 1st to December 30th annually. I would like to second that motion. So,

so you we see just to clarify what's up there. What you're proposing I I think is to eliminate the proposed changes in the first box. Mike, will you scroll up just so we're very clear cuz there it's been a lot of confusion. The and flag pole at Cloverdale Regional Library. Those words from the Children's Memorial flag and then from the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivor flag. And then in section 6.3,

if you scroll down, we would just eliminate all of those changes. That section already allows uh flags to be flown at an alternate location approved by the city council. So you'd be approving that by putting that language into the pride flag in the first box. So yeah, to make the amendment. So it is to adopt the resolution with those amendments. Okay. I would like to adopt the resolution with the amendments of removing um the sons of the survivors of Pearl Harbor flag and uh survivors of uh children's violence.

So uh let me restate it. A motion to adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Cloverdale approving an amended and restated flag policy to include the outdoor display of approved commemorative flags at the Cloverdale Regional Library with the changes previously discussed to eliminate the flag being flown the the Trill Memorial flag and Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor flag being flown at the regional library. So moved. I want to second that motion. Okay, let's bring it to a vote. Sorry. Good. Don't have a computer, so I'm doing it with a pen today. I'll start with the mover. Council member Marquez. I. Council member Morgan Stern. I. Council member Laskkey. I.

Vice Mayor Lance. No. Mayor Wheeler. No. Passes three to two. All right. As amended. Okay, let's move to give me a second here. Is the internet back up? Yes. Are we It is

It does appear to be up. We know the YouTube live stream has been active the entire time. Zoom is problematic. However, that is where our presenter is for item H1. Let me go ahead and um test it. This seems to be the same issue we had last year with this exact one. This one at least is we know what the localized problem is. It's the uh Wi-Fi is failing. Okay. We already got a thing into our IT.

Yeah. One second. All right, Terry, I'm going to go ahead and promote you if you can accept the prompt. While he um promotes Terry, I'm just going to Well, hold on. I want to let Excuse me for a second. I want to let the We're moving on right now to item H, new business, and consider the city of Columbia to audit financial statements for fiscal year 2425. Thank you.

Yeah. Um before our auditor walks us through the financial statements in detail, I just want to provide a brief overview uh um from management's perspective, the city received an unmodified or a clean audit opinion for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025. That means the financial statements are fairly presented in accordance with uh generally accepted accounting principles and there were no material weaknesses identified in the internal controls and there were no significant compliance findings. From a financial standpoint, the city's overall net position improved during the year and both the government and the enterprise activities ended the year in a positive positions. The general fund strengthened compared to the prior year and the utility operations remained stable. That said, it's important to keep this in context. Many of our capital projects are ongoing and some expenditures and obligations extend beyond a single fiscal year.

Hey Susie, could I get you to Yeah, just talk a little closer. Thank you.

Um, strong year-end results do not eliminate the need for careful long-term planning and we continue to face infrastructure needs, pension and OPED obligations and economic uncertainties that require thoughtful budgeting. Additionally, the general fund continues to subsidize the airport and the streets and storm drains funds. As we move into the upcoming budget cycle, maintaining discipline and vigilance will remain essential. Our focus will continue to be on stability, response, responsible reserves, and aligning expenditures with long-term priorities. I'd like to thank the council for your continued commitment to the fiscal stewardship and our finance staff for their work throughout the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Terry Craig to go over the audited financial report.

Terry, we're having some technical stuff over here. Can you test your audio for us? Just make sure we can hear you. You're currently muted. He's muted. You hear me now?

Is there any method to do that? So Terry, well, we can tell just I have some experience with Zoom. Notice next to the Cloverdale live stream how it has how that um microphone is oscillating. His is not, which means his is not operational right now. It's not something on our end. There we go. Had him for a second. Can you hear me now? Now his is moving. Correct. Now we can hear you. Okay. Good. Great. There you go.

You know, in today's world with technology, it seems to always be something that, you know, that jumps right at us, but I'm I'm glad it was resolved. Um, like to say good evening, mayor and members of city council. Uh, thank you for inviting me to present the results of um the city's uh June 30, 2025 financial statement audit. I have uh completed the audit and uh what I'd like to just um do is um give you a little condensed version of what's included in the financial statements and then walk through some of the more significant uh financial matters uh matters that surfaced in fiscal uh 2025. As you may know the the basic financial statements has a number of components. It consists of my independent auditors report uh management's discussion and analysis. That's a section where your finance director has provided a narrative explanation of her assessment of the city's uh financial changes during fiscal 2025 along with some uh graphs and charts that have some comparative financial information. U then we have the governmentwide financial statements. Those appear on pages 13 and 14. Those statements treat the city as if it were a private corporation with the exception of two columns, one for your governmental activities and one for your business type activities. But both those columns include depreciation on your capital assets, receivables, payables, long-term obligations, and uh the more significant issues that surface there

that are not in the fund statements are your pension liabilities and your uh postemployment benefit liabilities. Uh then you have also on pages 15 through 17 your traditional um governmental fund uh balance sheets and statement and uh revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balances and a also a statement of um the net position and changes in net position and the cash flows of your business type enterprises being the water, wastewater and airport uh enterprise that the city uh operates. It also included a statement on the changes in your successor uh agency to the former redevelopment agency which is primarily u just concerned with the repayment of outstanding uh tax allocation bonds and um the rest of the um statements I would say pages 24 through 46 are notes to the financial statements with additional explanatory information and uh uh financial information as well on the different types of um accounts in those financial statements. So given that you and then at the end there's some some required information budget to actual statements and some combining statements of your non- major governmental funds. Uh with that said about the structure, what I'd like to do is just uh run through some of the more significant matters that are included in your financial statements. Obviously the most important thing from an auditor standpoint is um my uh auditor's report

wherein I have expressed it a unmodified opinion that the city's financial statements for June 30 uh 2025 do represent fairly the financial position of the city u and the changes in its financial position its cash flows all in compliance with um kind of principles generally accepted in the United States of America. Uh generally referred to as a a clean audit opinion, so to speak, which is always good to receive. um on a city-wise basis. uh starting on pages 13 and 14, the city did experience on a governmentwide basis, that is the u the governmental activities and the business type activities combined together an increase in the city's overall net position of about uh $3.3 million for fiscal um 2025, which is always an important consideration to see that your city's financial position continues to improve versus deteriorate. Um also um most of the let me see here of that um that was the increase in the overall net position where the city ended fiscal 2025 is with a combined net position of about $17 million. Uh that 1707 17 million consists of about um 89 million or 76% that's really not available for use because it's represents the city's investments and

capital assets and land uh buildings equipment vehicles and infrastructure being your streets, parks and uh related airport facilities. That leaves about um 20.5 million available. But such funds are restricted uh uh how they can be used. Bottom line is at the end of June 30 of 2025, the city has about $7.6 $6 million available uh for future use with almost 90% of that amount being in your business activity funds that is your water your wastewater and your airport fund. Um moving on to the um governmental funds that's a traditional way of looking at the uh financial affairs of a city in that it's a fund account does not include depreciation uh does not include u your pension liabilities or your uh postemployment liabilities uh or capital assets. Um so in that regard those funds on a traditional governmental fund basis um ended 2025 with about a um combined $22.2 million fund balance. A good portion of that was in your general fund which ended 2025 with a fund balance of 10.6 million. your special uh employee retirement tax fund ended 2025 with about $2.1 million. You

have a city of low moderate income housing fund that ended um 2025 with about $1.6 million. And then you have all other governmental funds which have which are basically funds that are not quite as large as your general fund. uh and have not been identified and requested to be reported as a major fund. Um they ended up the 2025 with about $8.2 2 million in fund balance. And about half of that 8 million is tied up in your um impact fee funds that really are restricted to use for just those purposes for which those impact fees were assessed and collected. And uh you also have about $2 million in that group uh not impact but separate from that of uh unexpended bond proceeds from prior years. Moving on to your business type activities. Those are on pages 18 through 21. They all reported a positive ending net position and positive cash flow increases for 2025 which is uh always a good thing. Both the wastewater and the air port did report um operating losses from uh their activities. that those operating losses were primarily the result of the fact that those funds include capital assets. And there was about uh uh the depreciation charges um almost equal those operating deficits. which means if you didn't

depreciate the assets, you probably would have had a a break even position on your uh business type funds. Then your uh successor successor agency fund in pages 22 through 23 reported a $900,000 decrease in the deficit possession of that fund through the process of retiring the previously issued tax allocation bonds that were carried over from the dissolution of the city's redevelopment agency. um notes in the financial statements. I'll just hit on some of the more significant notes that you have uh on page 30 and there's some discussion of your investment portfolios. The city has about 31.3 million invested in the state local agency investment fund, another 3.3 million in your mutual funds, and about 1.9 million in other bonds, notes, and treasuries. Uh also on page 31, you move into the city's uh receivables and transfers that uh are on the books at the end of the fiscal year. U the more significant items being the uh interfont transfers from uh from fund to fund and most of those transfers are transfers out of the retirement tax fund to the general fund and to the business type funds uh that actually have employees and are paying a share of the retirement cost. So that's that's special taxes special tax fund to be honest with you in clo is very unique. There's not a lot of cities

in my 40ome years of auditing cities that have a voter approved special tax fund. So from that perspective I think the city's very fortunate to be able to fund those retirement issues. Pages 32 through 33 have a schedule of your capital assets. um again buildings, land and so forth. Uh the most significant um transaction in that area this year was the um close out of about $3.9 million from construction in progress to actually inservice assets. And that really was um related to the PG& metering uh project that the city has been going through the last couple of years. Um, in terms of long-term debt and borrowings, all long-term debt, uh, shown on pages 34 through 36 was, uh, paid and, uh, put it this way, the principal and interest payments were paid when due, and there was no default on any of the city's long-term obligations. And pages 38- 44 have information on your retirey medical program and your pension uh funding information. the city's retirement uh medical plan is untrusted and is unfunded which you may want to think about from the standpoint that uh other governments that um I have been fortunate enough to serve as auditor for over the years are actively funding uh those um

um retiring medical benefits by opening a trust fund uh at the uh in the PERS system and transferring money to that trust fund to be able to make the payments on future retire medical obligations which payments would made be made directly out of the trust. The um disadvantage of that of course is that once you put that money in the trust, it's irrevocable and it's not available for any use other than for retiree benefits. Uh at June 30, 2025, that liability is about $1.9 million. The uh issue that a lot of people have with funding um postemployment retirement benefits is the fact that that liability can go up and go down from year to year depending upon the performance of the u the pers trust funds and actuarial information. Uh but what actually happened last year was the liability went down by about $500,000 because of changes in actuarial factors and uh unexpected differences and assumptions. Basically saying that at the end of the year the actual results changed significantly from what everybody expected. A lot of that has to do with um how well the invested uh um well in your case you don't have investment. How well the actuarial factors

end up being reflective of actually what happens in the retirement world. You also have your um pension plan which is the city's cost sharing pension plan where you do have trusted funds uh or you put it this way you have a share of the trusted funds at pers and the city's uni unfunded liability there was about $12.8 million as well. uh that did uh decline by about $180,000 uh in fiscal uh 2025. And that particular liability uh which is only on your governmentwide financial statements, not on your your fund statements, but is in your business type funds. um that liability as well can fluctuate significantly from year to year depending upon the actual performance of the PERS uh investment fund and actual general economic conditions. So that's pretty much an overview of what's in your audited financial statements uh in fiscal uh 2025. I would have to say that on overall basis the city looks to be in a sound financial condition. Um you have a reasonable amount of money in your general fund and in your other funds as well. In addition to the audit of your financial statements, I do pro and have provided to you some additional um audit related reports and that would be the u report to those charged with governance

where I've um communicated to you directly uh information about the conduct of the audit as well as some observations some of which I've already talked talked about. I also provide the study with report on internal control over financial reporting and compliance and other matters. That purpose of that report would be to report to you if there were uh and not were if if it came to my attention that there were uh some material deficiencies or weaknesses in the financial accounting system. uh that was not the case this year. Um, in addition, it provided you with a management letter um talking about uh improvements that could be made in the city's financial system being and I think the primary one that I've referred to is you could uh purchase some computerized software to account uh for your capital assets and the depreciation that goes along with that. currently it's maintained on Excel spreadsheets which um is you know acceptable but it's really kind of not where it's at in the governmental um accounting world in today's world. Um and then my last item that I last report that I've also provided to you is a report on uh agreed upon procedures that I applied to the calculations of the city's appropriations. Um the results of that those procedures was that I had no exceptions to the calculation. So that's pretty much an overview of the

city's financial statements and the uh uh reports that are provided and my overall assessment of your financial affairs. And I must say that I think that it's my judgment at least that Susie and her staff do an excellent job of maintaining your financial management system and the respective uh financial uh reporting system. I'll be happy to answer any questions if I can that you may have. uh question, Terry, thank you and thank you Susie for doing a great job with our uh finances. Um just looking at uh page 32 and page 33 uh under capital assets for buildings. Uh my question was about the value that we have listed for our city's buildings if um those buildings are insured to protect uh us in case there was a fire or earthquake that uh that value would be equal to a reconstruction cost with

Yeah, you should have Susie take a look at that. I I know that you do have liability and property insurance and it's I would I believe it's appropriate. But one of the things to remember is that these numbers on page 32 and is it 32 and 33? Yeah, they they are historical cost figures. So that's a good point because that you bring up because um while these numbers uh are somewhat large, they're also um reflect years of accumulation of costs when these things were initially built. So would it be important to you maybe u ask your insurance carrier to what extent um does the policy simply because I can't remember off the top of my head um cover replacement costs and in today's dollars um and of course the um that that is important for our buildings and for other equipment. Susie may know the answer to that.

All of our vehicles and property are insured to be replaced as they are. Okay. Thank you very much. Questions? Questions? No questions. Thank you, Terry. Thank you, Susie. Um, also I I just want to bring up that Susie does I know there's been some council members that will sit down here with her individually. So, if you guys do have any questions, um, by all means sit down with her and she's more accommodating to explain. This is a lot of information and she will do that with you.

Real real quick, Mr. Mayor, I just uh some takeaways are the financially the city remains financially stable with a growth in our overall position and our our general fund has increased and it's going up and we've met our uh reserve uh policy. So those are all very positive things. So you guys should be very proud of that.

Yes. So one of the things I was going to talk about is this time last year we were looking at a 1.2 2 to 1.5 million deficit. And the changes that our city manager has implemented uh through our city staff and the different things that we've done over the past year have us now at a 1.3 above last year general fund. So if you look at what this city is doing right now compared to where we were two years ago, 3 years ago, this time last year, we are looking at a structural deficit and we've we've actually gone up 1.3 million to 1.8 million depending on how you look at it. So, thank you Kevin for doing such a phenomenal job on making this happen. And Susie, sorry. I'm

can't forget you. I'm so sorry. Thank you. You guys working together has been amazing. I I thank you guys. I want to thank you, Susie, for all the hard work that you've put into making sure that Cloverdale is financially healthy. Thank you. Any other comments? Comments from the public? I'm seeing none. All right, let's move forward. Okay, H2. Mayor, we do need a motion to accept the offer. Oh, yeah. Okay. Do I have motion to accept? So moved. It's not a resolution. Second. It's a motion. All in favor say I. I. I. All oppose say nay. There you go.

Motion passes. 5-0. All right. Let's move into item H2. consider adoption resolution updating the personnel rules and regulations for the city of Cloverdale.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh we have a resolution. We're requesting adoption to adopt the uh rules and regulations. The ones that are currently in place were adopted in 1993. So, this is long overdue. Um there's been many changes in federal law, state law that are needed to be included in this. And we have change made little changes along the way, but we haven't done a complete overhaul. And I'm just this process started in 2018 with meet and confer with all three unions and it took that long. I mean co delayed it a little bit. So this really modernizes our our rules are it talks about compensation discipline appeals. So this is the rules that the employees need to work under. Uh I just want to give a huge shout out to Shannon Peterson, our finance and HR manager who really took this over the finish line. So, if you're out there listening, thank you, Shannon. Uh, there's no direct finish uh fiscal impact due to this. And um that's kind of it. I just wanted to acknowledge how what the process was in this and how long it took and we're just really happy that it's finally being it's finally done. So, thank you.

Comments comments? None. Comments? Seeing none. Any comments from the public? Seeing none, I have a motion. Move to approve by title only a resolution of the city council of city of Cloverdale adopting updated personnel rules and regulations pursuant to chapter 2.48 of the Cloverdale Municipal Code and repealing the prior personnel rules adopted in 1993. Second. I would like to second that. Okay. All in favor say I. I. I. All oppose say nay.

Motion passes 5-0. Okay, moving to H3. Consider creating a community garden at the southeast corner of Ferber Park.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hector, I'm going to put you on the spot, maybe. So, maybe come up to the the front row. This is an idea that Hector and I have been talking about for a while. Uh, I think there's a need in the community. Um, so we're just looking for a discussion tonight. There's the southeast corner of Herbert Park is kind of a unused zone. It does have irrigation. Uh it's against the creek and back of sidewalk. It's a pretty big area. We think it'd be a really good spot for a lot of reasons. One, it has the irrigation there. There's electric there. There's the the restrooms in the parking lot are all part of Ferber Park. So, we just think it'd be a really good spot. We've been kind of informally asking people around if there would be an an interest in this. And I think there is. One of our goal I mean our goal tonight is just to see if the council likes this idea. If you do, we'll come back with some more specific ideas and maybe, you know, a budget amendment. We don't want We're not going to spend a lot of money, but we do think it's something that the community would really like. There's condominiums right down the street. Those folks don't have yards. Uh we really want to do a big effort to get get it up and running, looking for as many volunteers for both labor and materials as possible. And then hopefully we can get a nonprofit group or other people in town who will be interested in maintaining it. There's a lot of things that we have to work out, but we didn't want to go too far until we know that you guys like the idea. Windsor's got a great one. We've already obtained their kind of rules and regulations on how they work it. So that's a good starting point. So again, if if if you guys like this idea, we'll come back at the next meeting with a with a budget amendment. And again, we're going to keep it very conservative. keep the price down. I just think it's a great amenity for the town and a good location in terms of its proximity to higher density housing, people with no yards. Hector, I don't know if you want to say anything, but I know Hector's on board. We're giving

Hector more work if this goes through, but he seems okay with that. So, you don't have to say anything if you don't want. Okay. No, you will. not afraid of a microphone. Mayor,

Mr. Mayor, city council members and staff. Yeah. I mean, I throughout the throughout the years, the last five or six years, every every once in a while, I do get a a few voicemails that are on my phone uh from community members asking about a community garden. But I was, you know, we've been uh researching and looking for places that would work uh that would have like Kevin mentioned earlier today, all the the parking, uh utilities, restrooms uh in the room. Uh one of the positives about this location is that we will be getting uh we will be removing a big section of lawn that right now has over about 150 sprinklers. So, we will be actually saving water. Um, so I know the community gardens community garden will be on on a drip system if it goes, you know, once you guys if you guys approve of it. So, I think it's very doable there. And if anybody has other locations, too, I think we we were open for that. Cool.

Thanks, Hector. Um, I'm all for a community garden. I don't think that's necessarily an ideal location. Maybe if we had something closer to the town center that was um more walkable for a lot of people. I mean, there's a lot of really nice houses around Forever Park that actually do have gardens. So, I just think a different location maybe where there was some shade um and maybe start smaller like maybe um I had an idea before that never went anywhere to maybe do a pollinator garden first and then you know organize and then do uh community garden.

Okay. Uh I love the idea of a community garden. Uh this is something I've heard from, you know, a resident here and there. uh I haven't seen a whole group of folks like really rather rally behind the idea and that's always kind of been what has kept that idea from sort of manifesting into something that I feel would work. Uh my concern about this location um is that yeah there's there's not much shade there. Um you know you'd put a fence that would surround the area and you're just kind of out in the open. I don't, you know, know if it's if if there's enough people involved right now uh to to succeed in that location. I would hate to see something um part of our park sort of amended and then possibly go unused. Uh, I'm certainly open to seeing who steps up from the community, whether that is a nonprofit or a volunteer group, and maybe starting there, and sort of forming possibly an ad hoc that can uh discuss the idea and and maybe look at a few different locations and and make sure that they know what it's going to take to make a community garden work. because you hear success stories, you also hear um you know some some bad stories of things that have happened in community gardens across different cities. So I think it's good to to look at it. I would certainly be open to um assembling a citizen group. Uh but I think I'm leaning against uh spending staff time for this location at this time.

Council member. Yeah, I'm all for community garden. Uh the locations I mean there's probably multiple other locations throughout the city uh that could house a community garden, but uh you have to start somewhere. So, and if this if this is a starting point to uh get that movement going, uh I'm I'm all for it, especially if it's uh it's basically unused spaced right now and we can curb back some of the maintenance on where it's at and trans uh transfer that into, you know, producing viable food for the for the local community. I'm all for it.

Uh thank you for bringing this. Um I after we're done bring it to the public.

Yes, absolutely. Uh thank you for bringing this forward. Um my first comment would be this is a very heavily used area by the public which is great. That park is busy 24/7. Um little league um the high school, everybody practices there. You have every sport that goes on on that field. Uh I think it was last year or a year before we actually paid and helped put in a scoreboard there because it was something they hadn't done in over two decades. Uh we also just updated all of the play structures and everything that goes on there, all the games for everybody. It is a very centralized area for our our community and it's in a very mixeduse area of housing. So, it's phenomenal. You have everything from town homes and apartments to million-dollar homes within a couple blocks. And I think that's that's great. and you see everyone down there. Uh to be able to conserve water and add a benefit to our community, I think it's huge and I think it's a great first step.

Um I agree with I mean all these comments up here. There is uh there is probably alternative options out there around town. I think uh I know personally that that section of the park right there is very hard to maintain in the summer to keep that lawn green which trying to match that very corner with with the amount of maintenance that goes into keeping the park the way it is is almost impossible. It's hard to mow. It's hard everything. So when it comes down to conserving water, that's big. you said close to 150 sprinklers in there and I've seen that thing just get dumped on and it just never turns green there. So, um I think uh like the vice mayor was saying like all these comments there there probably is other options around town that is just a city-owned property and the I think the thing that makes it so attractive is there is the bathrooms right there. There is, you know, the the creek right there. There's shade along the creek right there. And I think it brings community together. Uh it could be an educational thing for people that have never gardened. It could be uh I mean it brings community together, helps people, you know, the the the mixed uh the mixed housing down there, the apartments, everybody could come in if they wanted to grow a garden. Yes, some of them do have do have yards and they grow their own garden, but we're giving an option for people down there. And with the growth of Cloverdale, here's what I'm seeing for the future is it's you look at Bombgartner, you look at all this, we are becoming the central part of the city at Fervor Park right now. So, uh, I agree with everybody. There's probably other locations. That's just a city-owned one. That would be a very easy place to pick right now to get this going. So, appreciate bringing it forward. It's, uh, it's a great location to me, but I think it would work great.

One more quick comment, uh, to add to the second port part of this. Uh, Cloverdale already has like garden clubs. The high school has a a class and we have a incredible nursery downtown. It would be probably good to get some of their input and they might already have these groups formed. So, if someone was looking like you said you wanted a citizens committee, it might be something that they already have that we could just ask them to uh work with us and they'd jump on board as a volunteer. It' be great.

I think it's a good idea. Um, there's certainly some groups that we can start with and maybe start there. Um, you know, I'm almost kind of thinking uh cuz I I I don't want to just jump into this location. Maybe I don't want to say no either. So, you know, my my thought is to maybe table it. Uh take those steps, you know, reach out to the groups that are already doing gardening and see if there's uh you know, we can put a some word out uh to the public and see if there's other folks that want to step up and volunteer. Um, my wife is in the garden club and I know that they are kind of maxed out with what they're taking on. So, um, I think it would be good to gather a group of people that want to do this and, um, and then kind of they can sort of, you know, maybe look at some different locations and take it from there. Um, I would hate to just jump in and build something and and not have it be used. That's that's my worry. But I think that uh starting to gather a group of people together would be a good first step without spending too much staff time. Um I would like to look at all the different possible locations that we have available and then have a discussion on that and then go from there because to me um it'd be nice to know, you know, a variety of locations to pick from.

Okay. Any other comments? Okay. Public comments on this. Hi, my name is Annabelle Burke. Um, being really sunny is a actually a huge attribute for having a garden. Even though it might be uncomfortable when it gets really hot, it actually is great. Um I think um just because of what I discovered this week regarding the state of the Imperial Valley that it's really going to be absolutely has to change. Uh it will affect us. People will move north if they can't have any water and it's serious and I don't know why it's so not talked about. um to have gardens here. I was thinking I was trying to figure out how much water we would need to feed 9,000 people and I that's like 3 million gallons a year or something. I don't know if that's accurate, but I was trying to think of where we could have a garden in case because the Imperial Valley grows 90% between Arizona and the Imperial Valley. They grow 90% of the of the vegetables the people eat in the United States uh in the wintertime and that's huge. And so uh we might need to do that for ourselves a little bit more than we're doing. So I even thought of how they do it used to do it in Mexico. They there's a little bit left where they would build canals and then along the canals they would have a farm in the water and they would like hang their their plants in the water and that's how they would propagate their all their food. I thought maybe we could do that

here. I don't know. But anyway, I appreciate that. I think that having one one garden is a start and there could be like other gardens. It doesn't have to be just one garden. So, thank you. Thank you. Did you

Good evening everyone. My name is Kelly Spagnola. Um I'm for having a community garden somewhere in town. I personally don't care where it would be, but I like the idea of bringing people together and having the community there. I'd be willing to donate my time and and help in any way that I can to make it happen. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment?

Hi, Dana Star again. Um, mine is I have a question. I read something recently I think in starting in 27 that water usage is going to be limited uh for on commercial uh city property and things like that. Uh even our my apartment complex is putting in uh different take pulling out grass and putting in uh something that works for water conservation because of the limitation. I was just wondering is there anybody here who knows or has What that means is like when you have your sidewalks and you see the grass in the sidewalks between the curbs and the sidewalk

that won't be allowed. It'll be the the unused portions commercial. It can also mean just se little sections of grass that are in apartment complexes and things that are facing the streets and things like that. Those won't be allowed because they're unusable uh grass spaces that you can do a different type of landscaping to conserve more. That's what that's about. Okay. So that doesn't go into the the parks or No, it would not go into the parks. And actually, this would benefit more actually if if they did push that law because this area is on the outskirts of the park and it is kind of an unusable space that we have grass on if they if they push the law further. That's this that would be included.

Okay. Thank you. Any other public comment like saying that name

Katya again. Um, so a little story. I think I'm kind of a one-off on this. When I was in fourth grade, uh we actually had a garden at the Washington School and it was um mainly the project of one of the parents of a peer of mine. We were in the same grade and having that well specifically right like literally right there um was life-changing to me. Um it taught me a lot. Fast forward to me being in college. Col uh college of agriculture. Freshman year. I have how many? Five other roommates. They're all from cities. I a plant soil science class. We got this tiny little plot where we grew fruit food. I would come home with a bunch of food. The first time I came home with a bunch of vegetables, sat them on the table and I said, "I need help eating this." They looked at me confused. Where did you get this? And I said, I I grew it. And they said, what do you mean you grew it? Their mind didn't go past the store. And I had to sit all of them down. Little girl from Cloverdale. I had to sit them down and quite literally teach them how I got all this all of these vegetables. Um, so I think there's a lot of positive from having a community garden. Um, I hope that it also kind of influences people to start their own gardens at home because water is scarce. Change your lawn, turn it into your own home garden. It also kind of makes Cloverdale a little bit more self- sustaining as well. Um, the world is crazy. I mentioned that there when I was in college, we studied a policy. I think it was in Santa Barbara where the way

that their food system worked, some natural disaster happened. They couldn't export their food, nor could they accept food in, but the way that the policy was written, they couldn't use their own food to feed themselves. What?

Yeah. Anyway, um in terms of shade, I do think that having a space where we can kind of sit and sit around a table and um relax in shade would be cool. It's also an opportunity to plant some fruit trees, sit under a fruit tree, pick an apple, I don't know, eat it. Now you got shade and you got food. So, I think there's a lot of awesome things that can happen. Um, in terms of fencing, I know that having something that you is nice to look at is also an importance. Maybe something that's kind of clear that we can block off. It also provides a section for starting seeds. Um, I do think that getting a group, a volunteer group together, um, is a priority. So, I definitely think we should do that. So, my thing that I'm going to throw at you is how do we get the word out that this is something that is at the table? um maybe starting by the neighborhoods around and letting them know, hey, this is something that we want to do here. Who that is here is willing to stand up and say, let's take this on. So, thank you for bringing this forward. I think it'd be great.

Do you have comment? Part of what we were going to do, and I didn't bring this into my report, was use Mike and his all his great social media skills to start gathering names of people who are willing to participate in this. So, that was something I failed to say, but I think we've had enough people approach us. I mean, I know they say it now and maybe they won't when it actually comes to it, but I think we can get enough people um wherever it the the garden ends up being. if it's somewhere else.

So, as a a item for direction here, I think that we kind of that's what we're looking for in my opinion. And I I think that we have it because I think a it sounds like we have consensus that a community garden is a good thing. This is a good starting point. We've looked for spots for a long time, for years. And so I think that whether or not we do more or multiple or other places, I still think this is a great spot to start and that we should give direction to move forward on trying to plan for something. I think it would be great if we could use Mike's survey skills and maybe list a variety of spots and other questions and and find out exactly what the community does want in a community garden and where they would like to have one.

I agree. I think that's a great next step. um our outreach technician, uh aka city clerk Maloney. Um I think putting the word out to the community uh would be a great start. You know, there might be a few volunteers here today that want to get that thing started and also reaching out to um you know, our nonprofit groups and uh gardening classes. There might be some other nonprofits that can also help uh through education opportunities. Uh so I think we can get those things together. uh would be a good first step in my opinion. Council member Laskkey.

All right, we've left somebody out here. We've had public comment coming up here, but our student liaison, what is your take on a community garden? Um I think it's a really good idea to have a community garden. Um I think it's a great opportunity to allow people to learn how to grow a garden or how to plant something just in general. And then if any if you guys ever like needed more volunteers, I think it'd be a great idea to involve the students at the high school too. Like you could say if you wanted community service hours, you could come this day this time and they could help out and you wouldn't have to give them money or anything. It would just be signing off.

Great idea. Thank you very much. Um, yeah. I I think that's that's one of the things I was hoping you'd bring that up is community the community hours for the kids. Um, I will there's a lot of people to talk to. I also think that uh it's a great idea, but we do need to do the outreach uh and see see where we're going to get how many people are actually going to get to do this cuz I I agree on one thing with council member Marquezer. I don't want to see this section of the park get set up into a garden, dug up, flattened out, and all a sudden now we went from really hard to mow grass and it's grass, although it may be brown in the summer, to a big pile of dirt that's doing nothing. That wouldn't be very productive. So, uh, I think the direction on that, according to the council, is Mike, let's go ahead and and do a survey on that and look and see what we've got, how many people we have interested in this, and we can also continue to look around for other spots. This is a good spot, but there's also options for other things. This community garden may take off and not be the only one. You never know.

I have one question for Hector. Um, have you been like using chemicals or pesticides or what have you been using on that lawn? Uh, thank you. Uh, you referred to v uh the elbow where they want to put we don't use chemicals. So the city has we have a new integrated well not new it's been it's almost 10 years integrated pest management. So uh due to that we're not allowed to use any pesticides or any type of organic or gly or glyophate type products. Uh we be we our abatement strategy is technically just pretty much weed eating and removing weeds by hand.

Thank you. It's just sometimes it's brown. The reason why it gets brown is because some of the irrigation system uh that that whoever did the soil amendment and the soil preparation for that specific section uh didn't do a lot of didn't do a good job preparing the soil and so the water t it takes so much water uh to to get that section green. Perfect. Thank you. Right.

So just I want to be very clear about what the direction is from the council. Um, so what I heard was everyone's in favor of a community garden, but what I I think I heard from three council members is to not move forward with Ferber Park at this time. Instead, to do more outreach on various locations, see where the community might want to explore other locations, but start moving forward. Start moving forward, but do some outreach to make sure that we're not going to have a a pile of dirt there. And there is going to be some a lot of people involved in this. and then bring it forward after that at a next meeting when we compile that information.

Can we can we put a short timeline on that survey to get this moving because I I mean that was going to be my next question. Some of the parameters around next month. So I'd really like to if we're going to do something now, we need to be going on it.

Yep. And a question for um city manager, city clerk, uh with the nonprofits, and this would maybe be the mayor with the nonprofits um can we delegate who would be contacting them? Now, you know, one one of the thoughts as Briea mentioned was um the high school and I it brings me back to the garden club is that the garden club does off offer a scholarship. Um I don't think they're directly working with high school students. So, it's like that could be a good partnership because they are uh master gardeners and I think that would be a good connection um to you know get th those two groups working together. So, uh I think there's a lot of opportunity through some of the nonprofit groups as well.

I I mean I would think that uh we direct them to Mike's information gathering. Yes. I think anyone would should do that. Anyone who can find people are interested. It's just my thought. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't want to leave anyone out. So, I think I would recommend having them, you know, we put we publish information, we put out surveys, we get as much marketing out there,

having interested parties come to us rather than me going to there's probably hundreds of groups and I wouldn't know which ones to pick and I don't want to exclude anyone. So, I think that' probably be my recommendation. Um, and then just for the council to be aware on our parks page, we do have um a couple of programs that we can kind of initiate into this, but you know, we have an adopt a park program. We have um our VIP program that Hector and I are working on right now. It's called our volunteer in volunteer in parks program. So, a few of these programs can align pretty well with this as well. um as well as a park a month program which is something that you know that you just reminded me of that we need to update our site on but it's a it's a project and this could be one of those things that gets the community involved but we can definitely do a survey. I would like a few parameters from the direction side of things. When would you like it to come back to council because that'll kind of dictate when I'm

Well, uh like the vice mayor said I believe that uh if they're we're going to be doing a community garden, it's going to take one time to get it set up and uh things go on the ground next month. So I if you if we can swing it, I would say the direction is to bring it back to the next council meeting with results from any type of survey that you put out. Is that doable?

I can create a survey relatively quickly um as long as we don't need council to approve the questions. Um if you trust my judgment on it and then it's just really getting it out there and getting folks to fill it out. Like as you know like the boulevard survey was open for maybe 3 months, the parks survey was open for two or three. That's kind of the what we've been doing, but that's that's a long time and honestly we get the bulk of our um respondents in the first post and we can do another one. So within a couple weeks I can have the results at least to be able to present to council or in the next couple meetings like if if you can't So I was going to say if the next meeting is probably unlikely realistically. So push it to the first meeting of next month. Yes.

Okay, perfect. There's your direction. And then one of the questions I would have, are we looking for alternative locations or multiple locations because I know the public may want more than one or is that not an option that the council's interested? Alternative. You could do alternative on there because that's going to bring up the different ones that people may think of in the in the town. I agree. Yeah, I understand. I was just thinking like if it's people may want Ferbert and an additional one or is it just we're interested in what we have all the time? Okay. Yeah, let's let's make sure to curb the Yeah. Yeah.

Perfect. I was hoping that maybe you could also contact the principal of the high school and find out maybe we can add questions to the survey like so that maybe high school students want to take the survey. Do they want their own beds? Do they want to share beds with us? You know how they would like to do it. Okay. Unless it's for a class.

If you have a class that's set up for that, then it's like responsibility for your plot. I don't know. Anyway, that was just um it would be really cool if right like you do the survey and then you say like those interested in um participating in this let's meet at this time because I also kind of hear that we want to we don't want to give Hector and his team more more work. I kind of see this being as a self- sustaining self-managed type of thing. Um, and it is like we should it's the end of February like stuff needs to go in the ground. Um, getting the volunteers together to kind of come up and plan for it and then um really making sure that this is fulfilling community engagement and I think that starts from the very beginning. So from putting those beds in, having volunteers to put those beds in so that there's more of accountability behind it and more pride behind it, um I think would be really cool. But I think as soon as we get those who say I'm willing to get involved, as soon as we get them together and start getting that going would be great. So maybe like a week after presentation. I don't know. That's logistics for you guys.

Thank you. And I I agree with you, Katya. Um just to clarify, city clerk, if we have interested parties, we would have them contact you. Yes. Yes. Um yeah, we we'll figure it out. Okay. For now. Yes. For now. For now. Yes. Similar to when we did we had our parks and recreation survey went out. I had um one of the questions on there was are you interested in being an instructor? If yes, put your information. It's because it's a private survey. You know, the results that goes to me and then I compile a list of all of our potential instructors. It'd be a similar survey question where

I can't I can't let Hector off the hook this easy either. I see him back there smiling. So, I think I think maybe some of the contact would also be with uh lay with Hector, too. Just tell me what the deal. I'll definitely be working in tandem with our park superintendent to draft for the survey.

Hi, I'm Monique Evans. Um I also want to just honor Hector. He's um I've been working with Hector many years. Um yes um we used to do a program with the center for social and environmental stewardship and it was a summerlong program. I always thought it would be awesome to have something like that in Cloverdale for high school students for the summer to help maintain the gardens. Um we didn't have Hector in the same capacity that we do now. So, it'd be great to see that be a part of maybe, you know, not just parks and wrecks, but bringing the garden forward. Um, and it could we definitely have more than one season. Yes, we want to get stuff in the ground now, but there's lots of work to be done, and if we do it in the right way, we can really bring lots of community together. Um there is also 4 in our community that's very strong and we can if we do this right we can also partner with a nonprofit or several nonprofits for grants that we can work towards something that's more longterm and sustaining. So just wanted to bring that up.

Thank you. I have one more thing to say. Maybe um we should get have a ad hoc committee for the community garden so that way we can collect all the information and go from there. Ad hoc committee on the table right now. Would you guys be let's start let's start with the survey. Yeah. I think um that allows everyone to kind of work on it together, right? If you create an ad hoc, it's kind of just you're picking two members at that point. So, um I think it's a possibility for the future if we get some direction and and we want to make this uh go forward. I would be absolutely in favor of an ad hoc.

I'm making an assumption, but we're talking public or city-owned property that we'd be looking at potential garden sites. Correct. We don't want to go to the private. Okay.

So, right now the direction is going to be and do I agree with ad hoc? Yes. The direction right now, Kevin and Alex and Mike, is let's get our survey out and let's see how much how much traction we get on this. Obviously, we've got some in this room, but let's see how much traction we get. Bring that back at the second meeting of next month. Then from that point forward, look at forming an ad hoc and and really revising this thing from that point forward. Is that clear? Okay, well good on that. All right, let's move forward. Thank you all for your comments. Okay, let's move into um where are we at? Council council member reports. Go ahead. Okay, that would be

council member Marquez.

Thank you, mayor. Uh so, council member report. Let's see. Uh January 29th, we had a zero waste Soma special meeting. Uh this was in response to the Cold Creek compost facility. It's just south of Potter Valley in Menesino County. Uh they're contracted to do organic waste, which is uh your grain bins from most of North County. Uh they experienced mechanical failure in their primary and backup grinders. So uh they had to uh send some of their uh organic matter to three other locations and that required a bunch of uh trucks and and and things. So the the board got together to ratify that emergency action. Just kind of speaks that uh you know things do happen. We have generators and backup generators and sometimes both can go down. So it's always good to be prepared. Wednesday, February 11th, uh I attended the Russian River Property Owners Association board meeting as a member of the public. Uh they will present be presenting to LAFCO, which is the local agency formation commission. Uh this will be on for their proposed Alexander Valley Water District and the uh Lavco meeting will be on Wednesday, April 1st at 2 p.m. It's at the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chambers located in room 102A at 575 Administration Drive at Santa Rosa. They're looking to seek conditional approval to go to the public election for the formation of the Alexander Valley Water District. Uh Cloverdale residents can attend, listen, learn, and advocate for their interests during public comment. Thursday, February 12th, uh I attended virtual by Zoom the Inland Water and Power Commission meeting. Uh again, this

is as a member of the public. Uh you can if you cannot make it to the meetings or you want to see a back meeting, you can follow up with staff member Candace Horsley for the full video. she'll provide you with a uh a passcode to view any of their Zooms that are not available as archived. Uh Thursday that same evening uh was a Mayors and Council Members Association of Sonoma County dinner. Uh there was a presentation from Caitlyn Cornwall of Sonoma Ecology Center. Uh it was really uh educational kind of learning about what they're doing out in Soma Valley. So, they don't do much work out here uh in the rest of the county, but uh some of the programs that they provide is like bilingual uh tours of the parks and they do help with vegetation management for fire control. So, um any way that we could relieve our parks department from vegetation management puts money back into uh into our parks. Uh February 19th was our regularly scheduled uh zero waste of snow board meeting. It was a pretty quick meeting. Board and staff discussed and the action discussed uh the draft budget, so there was no action taken there. Uh Tuesday, February 17th, we had a library advisory board meeting. Uh we did receive a presentation from Julie Carter on the imagination library and uh that was really uh exciting as I am a fellow Quanian uh with Julie Carter and some of the stats that they have with their book giveaways is uh they've given away 14,000 books since 2012 to Jefferson School uh 2,000 books to Washington school since 2024. 4. And at miscellane

miscellaneous events, they do 400 books annually. That's uh since 2012, it's 5600 books. Uh and also the uh at the library, the patio upgrade will be complete in time for the repair fair, which I have here. So that's on March 7th from 1 to 4. If you're attending the steel head festival, come by uh after. It's it'll be from 1 to 4. you could bring your items that you might have to be repaired. Uh Saturday, February 21st, uh Laaf Familia Sana had their community resource fair grand opening and ribbon cutting for their family resource and resiliency center. Congratulations to the staff there and the board members for all their hard work. And Tuesday, February 24th, uh I met with tribal representative David Smith Ferry with the Dry Creek Rancheria. And this was the first of uh my meetings as a tribal liaison. Uh we're going to work to meet some of the board members in the future. Uh but they would want to announce that uh the Dry Creek Rancher is happy with the first stage of the B2A housing development and they look forward to future work with the city of Cloverdale.

Thank you.

February 2nd, I attended a wonderful roundt discussion at the Shonne farm. It was put on by the um president of the Santa Rosa JC and um our big discussion topic was how to interest students that might not um be headed to college out of high school to interest them into one year or twoear certification programs at the shown farm in um doing agricultural certificates. I attended the Esmeralda town hall. I also attended the mayor's dinner meeting in Katadi. I attended the ribbon cutting at Laaf Familia Sauna. And tomorrow I am attending a board meeting for the Russian River Watershed Association.

Yeah, February was a uh was kind of a blur for me. So on the 5th, I did attend my Sonoma Clean Power uh meeting. Uh we're building our agenda for the for the year. So stay tuned for more on that. Um I I was able to attend the uh the citrus fair, the parade. Had a little energy for that. also attended the uh the review with Alex and Jose at the uh open meeting on the 20th for the uh continuence of the governance manual on conduct. That was very informative. And um in a roundabout way, we're working on getting uh Eric Poland, who is the uh COO of the Cloverdale Healthc Care District Board, to give a u a presentation on uh ambulance service here in Cloverdale. Okay, it's been kind of a busy month. Um I attended a lot of what everyone's talking about, Esmeralda Town Hall. uh Cloverville Chamber held a mixer at the Redwood Credit Union regarding uh fraud, which was a great uh lesson to learn about what's going on with the new different types of fraud that people are using. I attended the Sonoma County Farm Bureau crab feed. Uh Senator Magcguire held a town hall in Cloverdale and I attended that. Um Geyserville held a chamber dinner. They do these um every year and so it was great to be invited by one of our Cloverdale members invited me to go with her. Um, I assisted the sheriff's office and um, Rush Riverkeeper uh, with some of the homeless and mental health living along our river levy. Uh, we've gone through and offered programs to everyone. We spent several hours over several days uh, helping and then uh, cleaning up and doing everything we could to get them either some type of placement or the

assistance that they need for sta stabilization. Um I attended the Alexander Valley Association's annual meeting that they have. Uh the reason I did that is it it has to do with a lot of um the statistics and crime and water and things that go on in our area and they have it all blanketed together. So I got to meet and uh work with the sheriff's office. Uh the supervisor was there, a lot of our our politicians were there and our fire districts were there giving different stats and their plans for the fifth uh year coming up. I I went attended the Sonoma County Transit and Climate Authority meeting. It was more of a uh structural meeting. There wasn't much that went on to um to speak of. Uh the city workshop like they discussed the Lafa grand opening citrus fair parade and fair. Uh Potter Valley Alliance. I went to their meeting had to get updates on what they are working on regarding the dam removals and everything else that they're working on. Uh I attended a resilient Cloverdale Emergency Operations Center meeting to start designing and uh finishing the uh structure for emergencies in Cloverdale. It puts people in place and creates the flowcharts to make things happen when we have a major emergency, whether it's fire, flood, earthquake, anything that goes on here. Uh we have a plan in place. And I've been working on this for about 8 years now and it's really starting to come together and have names in positions butts in seats and so it's really working. And according to the people that put it on who actually come here from San Francisco, they said we're one of the most organized and prepared cities in the state. So I take that as a as a big badge for us to wear and I'm really uh excited and proud of the the work that this city has done. And then the last thing, tomorrow I have an airport land use commission meeting and I'm not sure but I would imagine uh Esmeralda is part of that discussion.

Thank you. Uh we did February 5th was the Esmeralda town hall. Thank you for everybody being there. Uh February 12th did the male mayor council member uh dinner down there. Had a board meeting uh adopted or appointed Tanya Potter and Mark Stap. Tanya Potter's the vice mayor of Windsor. Mark Staps, mayor of uh Santa Rosa to the aviation commission. Samantha Rodriguez uh was chosen for the childhood planning council. February 20th, we did the special work shop with uh uh Redwood Law. Um also, I got a call from uh Tanya Potter. She is really looking for Windsor. she started doing their looking at their animal services contract that they have in Windsor and uh made some site visits to all the animal shelters and and is uh really working. I don't think she was too impressed with it and the services that she's getting. So, she's working that angle to either upgrade services or or uh a little bit more accountability on what their contracts say and make sure they're doing that. She was a great conversation with her. Uh we did the resilience uh uh ribbon cutting up there for La Family Asana and then also on the 24th we did the EOCC playbook like the vice mayor said that is uh really developing into something that Cloverdale should be very proud of. There's a lot of people there that uh know what's going on and and like he said, I just want a mirror. It's a badge we can wear. A lot of us there's a lot of experience in there on people went through the King Cade, went through the Tubs fire and they're capitalizing on that experience and I think uh Cloverdale will be extremely ready hopefully with the way this is organized if something does happen in Cloverdale. So, thank you very much. All right. Legislative report reports. city manager

and well, we got three uh in there. They're on there and then city manager report. Just one real quick uh report. The chamber director has invited the mayor and me to start participating in what we're calling a business visitation program. So, what what this is is um Nina at the chamber is going to set up a a brief meeting with certain businesses in town when she's going to decide which ones so we can just go out and get to know them. You know, put a face to the city, ask them if they have any questions and just make contacts with with folks. Um so, we're going to be start starting that when Nina gives us the green light. I just wanted to report that.

City attorney reports. All right. Thank you. Let's move into item M. And at where are we at here? 8:20 we're going to adjourn the meeting. Thank you for showing up tonight.

Do we have future? Do we have any? Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that, guys. Yep. Seeing none. Sorry.