City Council - Regular Meeting

We have reconvened from closed session. There is nothing to report out. So with that, we will adjourn the special meeting at 6 p.m. And at this time, I would like to call to order the Elk Grove City Council regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, June the 10th, 2026. And the time is 6 p.m. Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. Pardon me. This meeting of the Elk Grove City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cablecast on Metro Cable Channel 14, the local government affairs channel, on the Comcast and DirecTV U-verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.saccounty.gov. Tonight's meeting replays will be on Monday, June 15th at 1 p.m. and Wednesday, June 17th for the late crowd at 9 p.m. on Metro Channel 14. Once posted, the recordings of this and previous meetings can be viewed on demand at www.elkgrove.gov or youtube.com slash MetroCable14. For members of the participating audience who may have personal electronic devices, please place them on silent mode during the meeting or on mute when you are not speaking. Peel Grove City Council welcomes, appreciates, and encourages participation in the City Council meeting. City Council requests that you limit your presentation to three minutes per person per item so that all present will have time to participate. City Council reserves the right to reasonably limit the total time for public comment on any particular notice agenda item as it may deem necessary. Pursuant to resolution number 2026-99, no individual speaker concerning public comment may address the City Council for more than three minutes per item. If you wish to address the council during the meeting, please complete a blue speaker card, which can be found at the back of the chamber and provide it to the assistant city clerk, Brenda Haggard, prior to consideration of the agenda item. With that, Mayor, I'll be moving into the roll call. And to start off the roll call, I will start with Council Member Robles. Council Member Spese. Present. Council Member Brewer. Present. Vice Mayor Suen. Here. And Mayor Singh-Allen.

Here. All right, thank you. Next up is our land acknowledgement. Assisting is our Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. We honor, respect, and acknowledge Elk Grove's first inhabitants, the Plains Miwok, who lived as sovereign caretakers of this land and these waterways since time immemorial. We commemorate and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Sacramento County who endure because of the bravery, resiliency, and determination of their ancestors, tribal members, and leaders.

All right, thank you. Next up is our Pledge of Allegiance. Would Council Member Robles like to lead this evening? Thank you. At this time, please join us for a brief moment of silence. All right, thank you. Next item is our approval of the agenda. May I get a motion?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Next item, please.

Under section three of our agenda for the closed session, there are no closed session items on the regular agenda, which will advance us to section four, our presentations and announcements. And the first is item 4.1, our proclamation recognizing June 2026 as LGBTQIA plus Pride Month. And I just wanted to note, Mayor and Council, our recipient Sacramento, Filipina X, they were not available, I believe, this evening due to a scheduling conflict. And they've rescheduled, I believe, to receive this item at an event they'll be hosting on June 20th.

All right, thank you, and we will be presenting it at that time, and just, you know, obviously the City of Elk Grove is a city welcome to all, and it was an honor to present this proclamation and also fly the progress pride flag outside. So with that, we will move on to our next item, 4.2, which is a proclamation recognizing June 19th, 2026 as Juneteenth. I would like to call forward Ms. Shari Wilson, and you're more than welcome to bring your friends. if you like, and I know there's a number of you. All right, so I'm gonna read a little bit on the proclamation. Whereas on September 22nd, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation and Executive Order were issued by President Abraham Lincoln, declaring the owning of slaves to be illegal, effective January 1st, 1863. And whereas almost two and a half years later, on June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, bringing news of the proclamation and executive order that slaves should be freed. And whereas the Juneteenth holiday commemorates the liberation of African-Americans attained by the African-American community's perseverance and innovation despite the perils faced, coupled with the proclamation and executive order outlawing slavery. Whereas almost 156 years later, on June 17th, 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, enshrining June 19th as a national day to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. stating that the signing the law was one of the greatest honors as president. And whereas numerous residents, organizations, and businesses within the city of Elk Grove have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to promoting the ideals of Juneteenth through education, advocacy, and cultural celebrations, thus promoting a more inclusive and equitable community. Tonight, we are recognizing Ms. Shari Wilson. Shari Wilson is a dedicated community leader, entrepreneur, and driving force behind impactful local initiatives across Elk Grove and Sacramento. As the founder of the nonprofit organization, Dreams Unlimited, she provides essential housing solutions, mental health support, and services to individuals navigating significant life changes, Her entrepreneurial footprint includes managing a global hair product line. Through her ventures, she consistently fosters community empowerment and mental well-being. A central pillar of Shari's community work is her nonprofit's hosting of the annual Juneteenth Festival in Elk Grove. It's far more than a traditional celebration. This cultural landmark event is intentionally designed to educate, activate, and empower. This year's festival focuses heavily on economic empowerment, local business ownership, and reclaiming the narrative around wealth, and is scheduled for Saturday, June 13th, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Old Town Plaza. We signed this proclamation this day today, signed by myself and the entire City Council. Congratulations to Shari Wilson.

So you said a lot of what I wanted to say about Juneteenth. So I'm going to skip that part, but I do want to say that Juneteenth reminds us about freedom is precious. History matters, and sacrifice made by those who came before us should never be forgotten. Today, we honor the resilience of our ancestors, celebrate how far we have come, and committed ourselves to ensuring that our generations to come will never forget history. and their power within. This recognition is not just about the past, but it's also a responsibility on continuing to building stronger and more united communities for the future. I want to thank the Elk Grove City Council. I want to thank you, Mayor Bobby. But I also want to thank these ladies. Ms. Inaj, Ms. Phyllis, Ms. Joyce, Ms. Carolyn, who was the ones that was coming to City Hall when we was talking about the... Civil War reenactment and why it was so important for them to show up because that's a painful story. You know, we was free two years before all black people was free. And so when people saying they don't understand why we don't want to reenact Civil War is because it's still in our bones. The pain is still running through us. It's still in our blood and it's still hurt today. So Juneteenth, thank you for celebrating. Thank you for recognizing it publicly. And I also want to say thank you to my aunties here. Miss Carolyn, thank you. Miss Inaj, thank you. And Miss Phyllis. Thank you so much. Thank you for standing up. Thank you for fighting. Thank you for leading the way for us. Me, Linda, Jillian, Sabrina, all of us, we're taking the baton from here. We're taking it. And we're going to keep on fighting. Thank you so much. And also, I cannot wait. I hope you all come out. We're honoring our chief. And also, Miss Inaja is going to be honored. So come out. Thank you, Rob, for always supporting. Thank you all.

Stay right there. We're coming right down.

Stay there, Shari. We'd like to picture with you.

Take a picture here, Shari, and friends. All right, next up is item 4.3, Republic Services Annual Report.

You got the memo. You got the memo with the black suit. I like that. Hey, man. Had to come fresh today. Good evening, Mayor Singh Allen, Vice Mayor Suen, council members, esteemed city staff, and residents of Elk Grove. My name is Ray Robinson. I'm the municipal supervisor for Republic Services, your trash and recycling hauler. And tonight I have the great pleasure of presenting our 2025 annual report.

And Mr. Robinson, if you pull out the tray and the podium. There is an arrow keypad on the far right, and we'll let you drive. There you go.

10-4. In 2025, Republic continued to provide the full suite of services, including traditional services like trash recycling and mixed organics collection, as well as additional, oops, went all the way back. Okay. Okay, and we're back. As well as additional services, such as the bulky waste pickup, the used oil collection, and the Christmas tree collection at the end of the year. What another great year for events in Elk Grove, and Republic Services was right there providing services and educational booths at events such as Running of the Elk, Family Fun Day, Uncorked and Uncapped, Giant Pumpkin Festival, and Dickens Street Fair. While we provided over 25, or provided services for over 25 events in Elk Grove, we also supported with monetary support. We also provided services and contributed to a lot of different community-led efforts, such as the Secret Garden Installation Gala, people working together and taking it to the streets, the Wilton Rattaria Golf Tournament, and the Chamber Luncheon. If there was an event in Elk Grove, we were there. In 2025, the city of Elk Grove launched the Compost Corner at the Elk Grove Regional Park for residents to pick up free compost. And that compost is made out of residential organic material provided by Republic Services. Residents capitalized on this program last year and collected over 1,000 cubic yards of material. That's about 23 semi-trucks load worth. And you can still go get free compost now from now until June 26th. Then the compost corner will close for the summer and reopen in the fall. Republic Services continued its partnership with Sacramento Splash to administer the four hours of sustainability presentations, also known as Trash Talk. We provided over 60 presentations in 2025. the annual sustainability scholarship. Republic Services is proud to invest in the future of Elk Grove. We partnered with the Elk Grove Regional Scholarship Foundation to administer three $1,000 scholarships to high school graduating seniors in the city of Elk Grove. These seniors plan to major in something that benefits their environment or their community. outreach campaigns. Our education and outreach campaign plan in 2025 focused on paper shredding events, bulky waste cleanup, cart contamination, and food waste recycling. We utilize many different channels of communication to reach Elk Grove residents. One of the key insights that we found from our food waste recycling survey is that about a third of the respondents found that the ick factor was a huge deal for them in participating in the food waste recycling program. The ick factor would be vermin in your organics carts or the smell coming from your kitchen pails. But we also found that about a third of those respondents didn't find any barriers to participating in the program. compost workshops. Backyard composting remains a key way to prevent miles traveled for that material. And in 2025, we hosted three backyard compost workshops where residents were able to learn some key compost strategies for their backyard, as well as receiving a free kitchen pail, getting some more information on what happens to the food waste once you put it in your green cart, and they were entered in to win a free month of service. For materials collected, I'll hit on a few of the key recycling numbers, as we have a lot of reported tonnages here. For organic waste, 28,100 tons. Organic waste is food waste and yard waste, and that's up year over year. Recycling totaled 8,190 tons. Bulky waste from your bulky waste program totaled 5,622 tons. Used oil, which is very popular this past year, up from a year ago, totaled 11,015 gallons. And then e-waste, 13 tons. Last year, I had the pleasure of announcing a few key acquisitions for Republic Services in the area, one of which was the Materials Recovery Facility, known as a MRF or a recycling center, that was in North Highlands. In this past couple years, we made some key updates and renovations, one of which is an AI-powered robot that captures plastic bottles before it hits the end of the sort line. Another one of those key acquisitions was the anaerobic digester, where your food waste goes to become fuel and energy. We also made some updates there, one of which was adding some more sorting to the process to reduce contaminants, as well as cleaning out the settling lagoon of 30,000 tons of digestate for the first time in the site's history, which will open up the doors for more renovation. And for our diversion rate in 2025, the city of Elk Grove and Republic Services reached a 46.5% diversion rate. So that's material being averted from the landfill. This is an 8.3% increase over the last 11 years. And finally, our customer satisfaction survey. We had about 700 respondents, and they responded with a 93% satisfaction rate in the services provided by Republic. And that's our 2025 annual report. Thank you to city council, staff, and residents of Elk Grove. We're ready for a brand new year, and I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

All right, thank you for that excellent update. Any questions? Looking to the right. Questions, comments? Nothing on the right. To the left, anyone? Yes. Council Member Brewer.

Thank you for the presentation, Ray. And I definitely like that we did get the memo with the tie. We got it. The tie clip and the suit. But I do have a question because we are doing a really good job on the compost education sessions at the community garden. I know that we had three last year. Is there a lineup for 2026 for people to get plugged into?

Yes, yeah, we actually advertise that on the Republic Services Elk Grove site. We also provide social media posts with the information on when those are coming up. I don't know the one on the top of my head, but I'll work with Kim and the rest of the team to make sure that information gets into your hands. And it should be on the city website as well, but if it's not, we'll get that there tonight. Great, thank you so much. Okay.

Vice Mayor, anything? All right. Thank you. Thank you for your update. And also just want to recognize you and your team for always being very responsive when it comes to community responses that we might get. You do a great job feeling those and just your overall engagement in our area. So thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So next up is our public comment. I will go ahead and open up public comment at this time. We have the Interfaith Council of Elk Grove. Oh, okay. Hello, everyone. Hello.

Hello.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening, Bobby Singh Allen, Vice Mayor, and distinguished members of the Elk Grove City Council. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Akram Cavill, and I'm honored to speak tonight on behalf of the Interfaith Council of Elk Grove, and joining me are some of the board members from the council. Not everybody could make it, but they represent different faith communities in Elk Grove area. We come before you with a message of unity, compassion, and solidarity. Recent attacks and acts of violence directed at House of Worships across our nation have deeply saddened and concerned us. Whether the target is a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a temple, a gurdwara, or any other sacred space, an attack on one faith community is an attack on all faith communities. Places of worships are meant to be sanctuaries of peace, reflection, hope and service. They are where families gather, where communities support one another and where people seek spiritual guidance and comfort. Violence, hatred and intimidation and bigotry have no place in these sacred spaces and no place in our society or in our nation. The Interfaith Council of Elk Grove strongly condemns all acts of hatred and violence against people of faith. We stand in solidarity with every community that has experienced fear, loss, or discrimination because of their beliefs. We mourn with those who mourn, and we remain committed to building bridges and understanding among all people. Our city, Elk Grove, has been a model of diversity and inclusion. Elk Grove is a home to people of many faith traditions, cultures, and background. This diversity is our greatest strength. It reminds us that while our beliefs may differ, our shared values and respect, kindness, service, and human dignity unites us. Tonight, we affirm our commitment of being advocates of peace. We pledge to continue fostering dialogue, encouraging mutual respect, and promoting understanding among all faith communities. We believe that education, relationship building, and open communication are powerful tools in overcoming peace and prejudice. We also encourage all residents to stand together whenever any member of our community is threatened or targeted. Hate seeks to divide us, but unity makes us stronger. By standing together, we send a clear message that Elk Grove will not tolerate hatred, discrimination, or violence against any group. Mayor Singh-Allen and members of the City Council, we thank you for your continued leadership in supporting a welcoming and inclusive community. The Interfaith Council of Elk Grove looks forward to working alongside with you as partners in promoting peace, understanding, and respect for all. Thank you all so much.

Thank you all for coming and sharing that beautiful message. Thank you. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you. Yes. That was our final for public comment, so I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment and move on to our next item, our city manager's report.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council, Jason Berman, your City Manager. First item, we've got a couple of bike rodeos coming up, sponsored by the City and the Sacramento Aero Bicycle Advocates, SABBA, and the California Office of Traffic Safety. First is on June 13th at Carroll Elementary. The second is on June 27th. at district 56 teaching new writers new skills age 5 to 12. there's going to be a variety of agility courses led by a certified instructor there's no cost but registration is required details are available on the city's website We had the city's first barbecue in the beat of the season coming up this Saturday at Backer Park, which is at 10400 Stathos Drive from 11 to 2 o'clock. It's a free community event offering our community an opportunity to meet our officers, canine demonstrations, SWAT demonstrations, free lunch, and opportunity to connect with our department as well as other city departments and neighbors. So please come on out and enjoy time together. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THAT LAGUNA BOULEVARD IS UNDER SIGNIFICANT RECONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW BETWEEN BRUCEVILLE AND LAGUNA SPRINGS. RIGHT NOW WE'VE GOT THE GRINDING DOWN OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT WEEK THROUGH JUNE 18TH. THERE'S GOING TO BE SIGNIFICANT ADDITIONAL WORK THAT'S GOING TO REQUIRE SOME LANE CLOSURE, SHORT DELAYS, MINOR DETOURS. IT'S GOING TO BE MOSTLY AT NIGHT FROM 8 O'CLOCK TO 5 A.M. WE TALKED ABOUT THIS A LITTLE BIT BEFORE. IT'S KIND OF AN INNOVATIVE TREATMENT PROCESS CALLED PARTIAL DEPTH RECYCLING WITH FOAMED ASPHALT, SO IT'S A SUSTAINABLE TECHNIQUE MEANT TO EXTEND THE LIFE OF THE ROAD WHILE REDUCING MATERIAL WASTE AND CONSTRUCTION IMPACT. SO WE'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING THE IMPACT OF THAT. THERE'S A LITTLE BIT OF PAIN UNTIL IT'S ALL DONE, BUT IT'S GOING TO BE BEAUTIFUL. WE ALSO TALKED PREVIOUSLY ABOUT THE PLANT MATERIAL, THE TREES and landscaping that has been removed. That'll be replanted later this fall when things get a little bit cooler. So we can do that appropriately, but they will be replanted with trees and appropriate shrubs, et cetera. So I'm looking forward to that project coming to conclusion. There's a community blood drive. Coming up at District 56 on June 18th from 11 to 5, this is a city employee-led effort. We encourage people to sign up during the summer months. There's an acute need for blood donations. So if you want to sign up, you can go to the city's website or call 877-258-4825 and use the reference code 10054564. WAGON WALK, WHICH IS A VERY POPULAR EVENT THAT THE CITY HAS HOSTED FOR THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, IS GOING TO COME BACK AGAIN AT THE PRESERVE AT DISTRICT 56, WHICH IS COMING UP ON FRIDAY, JUNE 19TH, FROM 5 TO 7 P.M. VISITORS CAN ENJOY A VARIETY OF DOG-CENTERED ACTIVITIES AND JOIN THEIR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS FOR A 1.6-MILE WALK AROUND THE PROPERTY. PET CLUB WILL OFFER GOODIE BAGS AND THE OUTGROVE ANIMAL SERVICES TEAM WILL BE THERE OFFERING FREE MICROCHIPPING, SCANNING PET TAGS AND OTHER RESOURCES. YOU COULD EVEN ADOPT A NEW FRIEND. This is a free event produced by the city and open to everyone. Registration is not required, but pet leashes are a must. Details can be found on the city's website. And finally, we're coming up with that time of the year again. City and CSD are working together to launch fireworks education and enforcement campaign in advance of the Independence Day event. celebration messaging has started rolling out local bars and restaurants on social media and in print about the potential dangers and penalties associated with the use and possession of illegal fireworks the don't blow your summer budget campaign will emphasize how property owners and tenants can be cited and fined up to a maximum ten thousand dollars a thousand dollars per firework for setting off illegal fireworks or for allowing illegal fireworks to be used at their property to reduce the danger and give residents a chance to safely dispose of illegal fireworks in advance of the enforcement period. A fireworks drop-off event is scheduled on Saturday, June 20th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at City Hall, which is 8400 Laguna Palms Way. No fines, no trouble, no questions asked. Residents can report illegal fireworks through the EGPD's non-emergency number, 916-714-5115. Life-threatening emergencies, call 911. Just as a reminder, we are out in force. We are in the air. We are on the street. And so we are definitely taking this serious, as we have the last few years, where we've had hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines levied against those that are shooting off illegal fireworks. So don't blow your summer budget. And that concludes my report. Happy to answer any questions the council might have.

Thank you. Any questions or comments?

Quick question. Yes. You said June 18th is when we expect the resurfacing to finish on Laguna Boulevard?

I believe that's correct. Let me just double check. Yeah, nightly through June 18th. Okay, great. Thank you.

All right, thank you for your report. We will move on to our next item, which is consent calendar items. I will open up public comment. No one has signed up to speak on the consent calendar items. I will go ahead and close public comment. Any questions or comments? If not, I'll look for a motion to approve.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. All right, next item, 8.1, public hearings. A public hearing to consider a resolution setting residential solid waste services rates for fiscal year 2026-27. Not quite as tall as Ray.

All right, here we go. Good evening, Mayor Singh Allen and members of the City Council. My name is Kim Taylor, and I manage the City's Recycling and Waste Division. I'm here once again with an item. The item I'm presenting before you tonight is a public hearing to consider a resolution setting residential solid waste service rates for fiscal year 2026-27. Ray spoke to you earlier about Republic Services' contract with the city. Part of the residential solid waste services in the city of Elk Grove are provided through an exclusive franchise agreement with Republic Services, as Ray stated. This franchise agreement details that Republic Services is entitled to an annual adjustment to their rates in accordance to changes in the consumer price index. An increase in the CPI reflects costs for solid waste services related to labor, fuel, landfill fees, and regulatory fees. Over the past 12 months, the consumer price index for garbage and trash collection increased 5.37%, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The city's contract with the public services states that the annual rate adjustment be capped at 3%, which is the rate increase staff are proposing in this year's public hearing, since the CPI for garbage and trash collection over the past year exceeded 3%. The proposed 3% rate increase would affect all trash cart sizes available to Elk Grove residents and will be detailed in a table on the next slide. The city's admin fee would also be adjusted in accordance with the rate increase from $3.75 to $3.86 per service account. The table on the slide, which was included in the staff report, includes what a 3% increase would mean for residents who utilize the standard 64-gallon cart size, as well as those who choose alternative service levels such as a smaller 32-gallon cart, a larger 96-gallon cart, or multiple garbage carts. Recycling and organics carts, up to three of each, are included at no extra cost to all residents with their garbage service, so would not be impacted by the proposed rate increase. Essentially what that means is that if you have a 64-gallon cart, you pay $31 and, oh, excuse me, you pay $37.64, and you can have up to three organics carts and three recycling carts at no extra charge. Most residential accounts in Elk Grove currently have a 64-gallon cart for their garbage service, and a 3% rate increase for them would equal a 95% per month increase in fiscal year 26-27. Eligible low-income residents enrolled in the city's Lifeline Assistance Program receive a 20% rate discount that applies to whichever cart size they utilize. The proposed 3% rate increase keeps the city of Elk Grove well below the average solid waste rates in the region. It's also worth noting that included in the rates for Elk Grove residents is the unique amenity of free and convenient access to the Special Waste Collection Center, where residents can drop off their household hazardous waste. Worth noting as well that the information shown on this chart is on rate years for the past year, as many jurisdictions have not passed their current rates for the coming year. And so if this was updated to show the rates in maybe a month or two after the fiscal year, you would see even a more dramatic difference with Elk Grove being some of the lowest rates in the region. The annual residential solid waste rate increase must follow the procedural requirements of Proposition 218, which dictates that fees for refuse collection services be noticed no less than 45 days of the posted hearing happening this evening. During the last week of April, 60,192 notices were mailed to all residential solid waste service property owners and bill receivers detailing the proposed rate increase and providing notice of tonight's hearing. Two notices for the public hearing were also published in the local newspaper. For a majority protest to exist under Prop 218, written protests must exceed 50% of the parcels impacted by the fee. The city has approximately 50,000 parcels or residential service addresses, which means that approximately 25,000 written protests would need to be required to halt the rape proceeding. My most recent update from the city clerk was that the city has received 25 protests, which does not meet the threshold for a majority protest. This is an image of the mailer that was sent out to over 60,000 residential solid waste service property owners and bill receivers at the end of April. And this is the back of the mailer that provides detailed information about how residents can submit protests. In conclusion, staff recommend the City Council adopt a resolution setting residential solid waste service rates for fiscal year 2026-27, effective July 1, 2026. Thank you.

All right, thank you for your presentation. At this time, I will open up the public comment opportunity. No one has signed up to speak on this. I'll go ahead and close public comment. And I will declare the public hearing is closed. Looking to the left here, any questions? Looking to the right? Question. Yes, Council Member Steeves.

Quick question. So I would assume that, assuming we, APPROVE THE INCREASES TONIGHT. WE WILL THEN HAVE TO NOTIFY THE RESIDENTS AS WELL, RIGHT? DO THEY GET NOTIFIED IN THEIR NEXT BILL OR HOW ARE THEY NOTIFIED?

SO RESIDENTS WERE ALREADY NOTIFIED ABOUT THE PUBLIC HEARING. THE CITY IN PAST YEARS HAS NOT SENT A NOTIFICATION AFTERWARDS UPDATING THAT THE PUBLIC HEARING PASSED. JUST THE INITIAL MAILERS THAT GO OUT NOTIFYING OF THE RATE INCREASE. REPUBLIC SERVICES ALSO INCLUDES INFORMATION IN THEIR BILL INSORT THAT GETS MAILED TO ALL CUSTOMERS WHO RECEIVE MAILED BILLS.

OKAY. When we do the next mailing or whatever, can we please make sure that we inform them if they're a low-income senior that they have the ability to use the, I think it's SMUD, right? So if you could please ensure that they're notified in those emails. Happy to do that. In the mail, I should say.

Absolutely. And we actually have a plan for kind of rolling out outreach about that program this coming year.

Perfect. Thank you.

All right, seeing no other questions here, I will look for a motion.

Move to adopt the resolution.

Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Next item, 8.2, a public hearing to consider a resolution approving a conditional use permit and major design review amendment for the Calvin Point Major III mixed use retail and storage project located at 8854 Calvin Road. Aye.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Sarah Kirchgistner, Senior Planner with the City. The proposed project, the Calvin Point major three mixed use retail and storage project consists of a conditional use permit and major design review amendment for the development of the major three pad within the existing Calvin Point shopping center. The project consists of the construction and operation of a new personal storage facility with first floor retail use as well as other minor site improvements. The project also proposes to delete condition of approval number 35, from the adopted conditions of approval for the Shop 6 amendment project, which was previously approved, and place that associated obligation to provide emergency vehicle reciprocal access to the parcels to the south of this project site, and that condition would be placed on this project. The project site is located within the Calvine Point Shopping Center near the southwest corner of Calvine Road and Elk Grove Flooring Road. The shopping center is developed with Kohl's, Bank of America, El Pollo Loco, Island Pacific Supermarket, City Sports Club, Arco Gas Station, and one multi-tenant shops building. A second multi-tenant shops building, Shop 6, was approved by the City Council in 2025 but has not yet been constructed. And the construction for this project is proposed on the major three pad, which is a vacant 1.86 portion of the project site parcel. Surrounding uses include retail to the east, single-unit residential and a vacant city-owned parcel to the south, assembly use and single-unit residential to the west. The north side of Calvin Road is within the unincorporated portion of Sacramento County and features retail, single-unit residential and a vacant parcel. The City Council originally approved the Cowboy Point Shopping Center in 2005, and there have been several revisions to that site planned over the past 20 years. Here is the site plan from the original approval. The major three-pad building was originally identified as a linens and things, which is shown in red in the middle of two other major tenants. In 2007, as part of the Coles design review approval, the overall site layout was revised to shift the Coles building to the south, And what was the M1's electronic building and the S1 building were relocated to the north of the Coles building. The M3 building did not change as part of that 2007 amendment. In 2019, the City Council approved another amendment project, which again modified the overall site plan by shifting some of the building locations, added a few drive-thru locations. The M3 building, shown here again in red, was increased in size to approximately 44,000 square feet, and the Major 2 building was removed from the site plan. The project included design review for the city sports building on the Major 4 pad, which has since been constructed and is in operation. In 2024 and 2025, the ARCO gas station was approved immediately north of the Coles, and the Calvin Point Shop 6 amendment project was approved, which included design review amendment for the construction of the one story commercial building shown there in the north portion of the building. The general plan land use designation for the site is regional commercial and the zoning is shopping center. Personal storage facilities are conditionally permitted use in the SC zone. The project site is identified as an infill site within the city's general plan and general plan goal LU2 supports the development of infill sites with economically Viable projects and the project is consistent with general plan policies shown on your screen LU 2-1 LU 2-3 and LU 2-4 The project requests a conditionally used permit for a new three-story personal storage facility the Applicants business and operations plan was reviewed by the police department Customer access to the storage units would be limited to 6 a.m. To 10 p.m. And Pedestrian and vehicular access would be secured by electronic gates and locks, and the project includes a comprehensive interior and exterior surveillance camera system. The project is consistent with the general plan, the development standards of the municipal code, and the Elk Grove design guidelines. The project would have minimal impact on the surrounding neighborhood and is compatible with the adjacent land uses. There is an existing eight-foot high masonry wall and existing landscaping that exists along the residential parcels to the south, and it would remain and provide buffering between the two uses. Staff does want to note that there have been concerns expressed by the council staff and residents regarding the proliferation of personal storage facilities in the city Due to these concerns staff is working on an update to the municipal code for City Council review later this year and those recommendations may include possibly a prohibit prohibition a new facility citywide or Potentially adding development standards or operational standards into the code staff supports this project at this location due to the proposed location on an underutilized parcel which has been vacant in the rear of an existing shopping center the applicant has been unsuccessfully developing this major three pad over the past 20 years and has adjusted the site plan as you saw several times to try to attract a variety of tenants the proposed personal storage facility is compatible with the center's character and they are proposing to include retail use within the building on the north side of the building, which would help integrate this project into the overall center. Here is the overall proposed site plan. Access to the site would continue to be provided through the existing access driveways on Calvin Road and Elk Grove Flooring Road. Here is an enlargement of the major three pad. The project consists of an approximately 135,000 square foot personal storage facility 10,000 square feet of commercial office use and 2,000 square feet of flex space which could be either retail office or storage use a 3900 square foot drive up units in the rear as well as 21 additional parking spaces located along the north side of the building Here is the rendering of the project site as well as the elevations. The proposed design is consistent with the requirements of the Elk Grove design guidelines. The buildings include a variety of colors, materials, and textures. The color palette creates a contrast between the upper story and the lower story to highlight that there is ground floor commercial as part of this project using a lighter tone and a darker tone, more textured stone and awnings on that base of the building. The stone veneer matches the warmer earth tone stone that is found within the existing shopping center. The proposed elevations include high quality materials, detailing, and colors, and is consistent with the existing buildings in the shopping center and surrounding development. The project proposes to delete condition of approval number 35 from the shop six amendment project and place that obligation for the EV access to the parcels to the south on this project, which would be condition of approval 48 in the draft resolution. The location is identified in exhibit D to the resolution. I do want to note that the proposed condition as written currently includes a reference to exhibit C, not exhibit D, which would be corrected in any final resolution if the project is approved tonight. Improvement and maintenance of the access would be the responsibility of the parcels to the south. No further environmental review is required pursuant to state CEQA guidelines section 15162 and 15183. Staff recommends that the city council find no further environmental review is required and approve the conditional use permit and major design review amendment based on the findings and subject to the conditions of approval in the draft resolution. This concludes my presentation. I am available for questions. The applicant, Paul Petrovich, and his team are also available to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you for your presentation. At this time, I will declare that the public hearing is now open. I would like to invite the applicant to speak if you wish.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I am sorry that I hobbled up here, but I had complete knee replacement surgery 10 days ago. So I was determined though to be here tonight. I stand before you, my name's Paul Petrovich. I've been a retail developer for 45 years. I believe I am the longest tenured major shopping center owner in the city of Elk Grove. I bought this land prior to the city being annexed and attempted to obtain its entitlements when it was part of the county. After four laborious years of that, I was told to be put on hold until the city incorporated and EMC was your consultant planner back then. That added another five years and about $900,000 in fees to EMC to finally bring the project to the entitlements that were received in 2005. Just so you guys know, My business in Elk Grove is not limited to this shopping center. Before Elk Grove was incorporated, I owned, in partnership, the land where the Elk Grove Auto Mall is. And I was instrumental in putting that transaction together. And I've also had other developments in the city. And one of them, unfortunately, was the Rite Aid at Waterman and Elk Grove Flooring that we had a denial on a drive-through, which led to their early demise. But Rite Aid as a whole didn't work after 65 years in business. I wanted to develop this project as it was originally intended. But there was a series of things that occurred over time that kept that from happening. People that are in the retail business, the decision makers, they look at Elk Grove as one market. They don't look at it as two separate markets. The gravity started to occur along the freeway corridor. And you see that with the shopping centers and so forth that are developed at Bond, Laguna, and certainly Elk Grove Boulevard. As time went on, with the advent of the bigger boxes that ended up on Elk Grove Boulevard, they wouldn't pay attention to this intersection. I'm in the business, and I've built over two million square feet of retail, and I know every retailer, and I've done deals with every single retailer that is a national or regional tenant. I've developed a couple billion dollars worth of retail projects, and this has been a personal quasi-failure for me to not bring the center to its fullest potential. This originally was an assembly of five parcels when they were ranchettes back in the old days. In 2007, I was able to get the Coles open, and I thought that would spark development for more retailers to come as the anchor tenant, but I was unable to attract You know, Lowe's was at 99 in Calvin. Home Depot felt it closed off the market to them on this part of the community. There wasn't enough homes at that time. There was Orchard Supply Hardware when they were doing business. This is how far back it goes. I had a signed lease that took two years with Walmart Neighborhood Grocery. And the day we signed the lease, they elected nationally to end that program. Otherwise, there'd be a grocery store there. Then the advent of Amazon and online platforms, home delivery, and then we had Island Pacific get, they took over what was fresh and easy, if you guys go back that far. So we have three grocery stores at the same intersection, and the sneaky one that's out there is Dollar Tree. and a dollar store sells a lot of groceries for cheap, and they really undermine the profit margins on grocery stores, and so it is even harder to obtain a grocery store, and as a student of retail, I can tell you there are no intersections that have more than three grocery stores, and there's only two of them in the entire Sacramento region. The impact fees for this project have also created, in combination with large boxes going dark, it's like linens and things and Circuit City and Best Buy and so forth, and as a result, the cost to build new versus the opportunities to backfill second generation space has also made it economically infeasible to track somebody to pay the type of rents. The fees went from $14 a square foot to $45 a square foot. And the city sports transaction, there was a $600,000 impact fee. And that is below break even and I'm subsidizing it right now. That's how hard the market is right now to make new ground up retail occur. I won't bore you with all the retailers that I wrote down that I tried to lure to the site. This project will generate between $500,000 and $600,000 of impact fees to the city to go to other services. It also provides the much needed access to coral blossom. There's no nexus for the access in my opinion between Coral Blossom, which is two parcels away, And I was reluctant until I could bring a project forward for this parcel to give the emergency vehicle access for, there's a good chance that it would interfere with the development of this pad. So now that we have this project before you, we could establish and grant and engineered the exact location and it's not only condition, we have it fully detailed by a civil engineer so that it doesn't ruin the value of your property abutting this one by having to have an emergency access go out the parcel north of Coral Blossom. I think we've done a very good job of keeping it looking unlike other storage facilities in the sense that it has retail activation on the ground floor. And that doesn't exist in many locations. Or if they do attempt it, it never materializes. And so, The building, and you saw the elevations, I think resemble more of an office building with ground level retail. And we've taken great care, and through Sarah's input and other staff, we've put in faux windows to make sure that it looks right. And it also is about the quietest neighbor the community can have, the neighborhood can have next to it. Also very high security. I've reviewed all the conditions of approval. and I'm comfortable with them, and I can live up to each and every one. Being that I only met with council members piece, I don't know where the council is on this, and I know staff has recommended approval, I know this isn't the city's favorite use, but I think we've done a good job of figuring out something for this parcel instead of having it vacant and full of trash and be a nuisance, really. And the parking lot is, I mean, there's 1,100 parking spaces in that shopping center. So we're trying to activate it more. But you can't see this from the street. And that's also been a big problem with trying to fill this position. I would really enjoy answering any questions and engage the council if they have any concerns about this project. I hope we can pull this together and make it happen. And I ask for your support tonight, thank you.

Thank you, sir. Good to see you. It's been a while.

Thank you. Yes.

Okay. At this time, I will open up public comment. Nobody has signed up to speak on this. I'll close public comment. Would you like to provide any conclusionary remarks? You're good otherwise.

Sarah's been great.

Paul, while you're doing that, I just have a question before we do closing comments. Yeah, it's been a long time. Good to see you again. Hope the knee surgery worked out. Bump in the road. Yeah. You mentioned that you didn't want to bore us about the people you're trying to recruit here. I'm actually kind of curious that retailers, the retailers that you were talking to, and maybe if there's If you haven't landed anyone yet, who you might think would be good users in that space?

For the ground floor retail? Well, I am in conversations with Pet Supplies Plus. They are a tenant of mine at Crocker Village in Sacramento, and they're also a tenant of mine in my 550,000 square foot power center in Woodland. I have a very good relationship with them. They might take the entire ground floor of retail. I'm able to do that because the storage would provide the financial subsidy to allow for what is otherwise a second generation space. Because there's so much empty space that I can meet a rent that might be half of what would be required to build freestanding. So that is one in particular that I'm interested in pursuing. Quite honestly, it's been so long, 30 years, that until I have an approval, and can go to the market and say this is for real, it's hard to get people to engage, especially now in this world of online purchases and so forth. And I have to tell you that the California minimum wage, trade memos and all of our literature that list who's interested in going into what states is completely void of California. And even the retailers that are here in California, unless it's a smoking hot trade area, like your Elk Grove Boulevard Costco node, they are very reluctant to engage further in California. And this area to the north is more residential, and this is more of a bedroom community. To put it in perspective, I've owned for 20 years the southeast corner of Gerber and Elk Grove Florin. It is designated regional commercial, and I have no tenants for it either. And it's two miles away. and there's a lot of homes under construction, but that one I'm in for rezone to convert the perimeter edge of the property into retail pads, and the balance would be single family. to deal with the housing shortage. And I won 19 national awards for some single-family homes I built at Crocker Village, and we would be deploying those there to bring something very nice to that community. And they're FHA-level purchase, so for 3% down, people can get into them. We sold 77 of those in the last 18 months at Crocker Village because they were affordable, but not in the traditional sense of affordable.

So pet supply sounds like your best option at this point.

Yes, but you never know. I mean, when I finally have a project and I say, here you go, and here's the rent, because I know the storage is there to backstop it. That's the key. Thank you. Sure.

Any other questions from colleagues?

I don't have questions.

Comments?

I got comments.

Go for it.

Let's go. So, I mean, I appreciate the opportunity to catch up with you, Mr. Petrovich. I actually enjoyed our conversation. I'm glad that you have come to terms with the terms and conditions and the reciprocal access and all that. So I can support the project. I would also ask and kind of put a exclamation point on the need for the study to think about how many square feet of storage space in Elk Grove is the right number and to try to put something around that. So if I can support, I'll make the motion.

Thank you. Any other council comments? Looking to the left.

You got a second down here.

You have a second? Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. Petrovich. I haven't seen you in a long time. So good to see you again.

I didn't have any reason to come. Yeah, there you go. Feel better soon.

So along the same lines, I do like the design that I've seen here. It definitely doesn't look like a traditional storage space, so I do like it. And I'm glad that we are studying this beyond this project. Because I do actually get complaints from time to time on the amount of storage units that are in our city. But thank you. I definitely am supportive of this project. So we do have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Congratulations, Petrovich. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go on to our next item. 8.3. Okay.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. I'm Nathan Bagwell. I serve as your budget manager, and I have the privilege this evening of presenting to you for your consideration the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget for your consideration for adoption. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment and thank our city manager, Jason Behrman, and our assistant city manager, Jackie Guzman. uh our finance director rajnil prasad thank you for your leadership and collaboration throughout this process and additionally all of our department heads our administrative staff for your partnership throughout this process budget season is a team sport and their hard work and professionalism commitment were instrumental in getting us here tonight and i'd also like to recognize matt ruiz who's here with us this evening as well as the slate long part of the budget team they make the budget office better every day and the quality of the budget before you tonight is a direct reflection of their hard work and commitment. With that, let's get started. So we're gonna be covering a lot of ground tonight. We'll start with public engagement. We'll talk about the city-wide overall budget overview at a really high level. Then we'll drill down on the general fund, capital improvement program, some of the great work being done through Measure E, how the city is addressing homelessness, some proposed personnel changes for the coming year. We'll talk about five-year forecasts and major funds. We'll discuss pension obligations. And then we will conclude with staff recommendation and looking for council direction. Public engagement, something we're really proud of. Elk Grove 101 Citizens Academy is one of the most effective outreach tools. It gives residents an opportunity to learn firsthand about city services, projects, and the financial planning process, while providing staff valuable feedback from the community. This two-way conversation helps increase transparency, builds trust, and showcase the important work being done throughout the city. And our little plug here, the city's now accepting applications for the sixth cohort starting in August. Budget information is also shared through a variety of channels throughout the year. Community engagement includes Measuring Citizens Oversight Committee meetings each January and May, stakeholder meetings for major initiatives such as the Future Permanent Homeless Shelter, ongoing outreach for transportation, trail and infrastructure projects including White Lock Parkway State Route 99 interchange and Laguna Creek Trail improvements. Staff also engages residents through advisory committees, public meetings, direct emails, website content, social media updates, budget and brief materials as well. To help keep the community informed, for instance, just for this item, over 2,000 emails went out reaching another 830 residents through our email subscription lists and generated more than 8,500 views across the city's social media platforms. Following adoption, the city also publishes an updated budget and brief. In the winter, a PRRS fact sheet. We'll also be issuing a press release highlighting key priorities, investments, and outcomes to further support transparency and public understanding of city finances. At a high level, the budget continues to invest in the services residents rely on every day. including public safety, homelessness response, traffic improvements, and economic development. Just as importantly, it's a financially sustainable plan, balanced not only in the coming fiscal year, but throughout all five years of the forecast. That strong financial position allows us to maintain healthy reserves while continuing to advance council priorities through investments in infrastructure, technology, community services, and measure E initiatives. Per the city's reserve policy, the general fund maintains reserves equal to 30% of adjusted appropriations. What this means is we have 25% are set aside for reserve economic uncertainty or rainy day fund, and a 5% opportunity reserve. In the coming years, the city plans to continue strategically directing reserve levels above policy targets towards capital needs, economic development opportunities, and pension obligations. This is to strengthen long-term financial sustainability, reduce future costs, and preserve financial flexibility. Maintaining the target funding level for reserves in the coming fiscal year will be considered before a transfer of reserves is initiated. The coming year proposed budget includes several targeted investments to strengthen public safety and emergency response, including approximately $200,000 to expand red light camera enforcement to five additional intersections, another $400,000 for six new dispatch consoles, continued investment in additional real-time information center Arctic, and travel enforcement staffing. Funding for a new forensic investigator and approximately 150,000 to continue the city's electric vehicle patrol pilot program and other operational support equipment to enhance field response and community safety. Addressing homelessness remains a key priority with the permanent shelter set aside increasing from four to seven million. Continued funding for outreach and navigation services, housing assistance programs, interim shelter operations, and encampment response efforts designed to connect individuals with services and housing resources. Traffic safety and mobility remain a major focus, with investments in pavement maintenance and rehabilitation, traffic signal operations and maintenance, and additional signal upgrades, flashing yellow arrows, controller replacements, speed control measures, and trail improvements throughout the community. The 26-27 proposed budget includes several investments meant to strengthen organizational capacity and improve long-term operational efficiency. This includes implementation of a new budget software program, expanded leadership development and workforce training programs, AI training for staff, ongoing process modernization efforts, and targeted staffing investments to support growing operational and service demands across the organization. So zooming all the way out, the city budget overview. is 491 total million dollars. This is an 80 million dollar increase from the current year 25-26 adopted budget, rather 19% increase. Key drivers include carryover of multi-year capital and grant funded projects, new first year CIP appropriations, anticipated land acquisition for future homelessness and affordable housing efforts, increased developer funded project activity and reimbursements, Overall, the budget reflects continued investment in city infrastructure and community improvements. Next, we're gonna drill down to the general fund. This is really the 30,000 foot view of the general fund. We'll break down both the revenue forecast and major expenditure drivers in more detail in just a moment. Bigger picture, big picture, revenues, 117.4 million. Expenditures, 107.5, that's a $10.1 million increase. Primary cost drivers, which again, we will provide more context momentarily, are the usual suspects. Compensation, internal service fees, capital and operating investments. Before you is the general fund five-year forecast. This summarizes the city's long-term financial outlook. It's based on the forecast included in the budget transmittal letter. The overall story remains one of long-term fiscal stability. This forecast is structurally balanced throughout the five-year planning period, revenues exceeding expenditures in every year and fund balances continuing to grow. The forecast maintains the city's reserve targets in every year, which includes the 5% opportunity reserve and 25% reserve for economic uncertainty, preserving financial flexibility to respond to economic changes and unforeseen events. In addition to maintaining policy reserves, General Fund continues to make annual contributions to both the capital reserve and economic development reserve, supporting future infrastructure investments and strategic economic initiatives. Importantly, this forecast incorporates a number of significant long-term assumptions, including continued investment in personnel, negotiated compensation increases, rising retirement and healthcare costs, ongoing transfers of recycling waste franchise fees to the capital reserve fund, and additional discretionary contributions towards pension obligations through the city's reserve and pension funding strategies. While these assumptions result in expenditure growth over time, projected revenues continue to outpace expenditures. This allows the city to maintain structural balance, meet reserve targets, and invest in long-term priorities. Overall, the forecast demonstrates that the city remains well-positioned to maintain service levels, invest in community priorities, and preserve long-term fiscal sustainability. So in greater specificity, we'll look at the revenues first. It's important to note, Measure E revenues are budgeted and reported separately. These figures shown here reflect only the city's traditional general fund revenue sources. Overall general fund revenue continued to trend upward. For the coming year, we're projecting general fund revenues of approximately 117 change million, an increase of about 2.3 million, or just over 2%, compared to the current year-end estimates. Property tax has now surpassed sales tax as the city's largest general fund revenue source, continues to be one of our most stable and reliable revenues. For the coming year, property tax revenues are projected to increase approximately 4%, which is driven by continued assessed evaluation growth and ongoing development activity throughout the city. Sales taxes continue to grow. It's projected to grow about 2% over the current year. This forecast is informed by ongoing analysis conducted in partnership with the city's sales tax consultant. It's monitored closely throughout the year to reflect changing economic and consumer spending trends. The remainder of our major revenue sources, including property tax in lieu of vehicle license fees, utility user tax, transit occupancy tax, other local revenues, generally expected to remain stable or experience modest growth in the coming year. Overall, the revenue picture remains healthy, supports a balanced budget, but we're continuing to forecast conservatively as growth begins to moderate compared to the stronger post-pandemic years. Now we'll turn to expenditures. Chart shows that the general fund spending continues to grow over time, reflecting the city's ongoing investment in services, infrastructure, and organizational needs. For the coming year, general fund expenditures are proposed at approximately $107.6 million, an increase of about 10.1% over the current year's adopted budget. Compensation continues to be the largest expenditure category. It's projected to increase by approximately $4 million. This increase reflects negotiated salary adjustments, step increases, rising retirement and healthcare costs, the addition of four new general fund positions, which we will discuss more in a bit, and the transition of certain positions into the general fund following the expiration of grant funding. Internal service costs increased by approximately $3.6 million, and this is driven largely by City Hall renovation and facility improvements, along with investments in facilities, fleet replacement, maintenance, and technology infrastructure. A significant portion of this increase is that one-time-in-nature City Hall facilities improvements and associated with that project. Beyond compensation and internal services, The budget includes strategic investments that advance city council priorities and strengthen community safety. Key investments include red light camera expansion, public safety technology and equipment upgrades, dispatch and emergency response enhancements, and the electric patrol police patrol vehicle pilot program. Budget also continues the city's commitment to innovation and transparency through organizational modernization efforts, including implementation of new budget software. So this concludes the general fund portion of the presentation, and we will now transition to the city's capital improvement. This slide provides a high-level overview of the city's five-year capital plan. This includes more than $450 million in planned investments to maintain and improve the infrastructure, facilities, roads, parks, and community amenities that residents rely on every day. 68% or $350 million of all projects in the CIP are funded. while 32 percent, or $146 million, are unfunded, with the unfunded portion primarily shown in the potential grants category. You can find a version of this chart on page 265 of the budget document. The proposed budget incorporates the first year of the city's five-year CIP, continuing progress on key city council priority projects. Some highlights include the Elk Grove Library, permanent homeless shelter, camera road extension, fish hatchery restoration, Old Town Streets Gate Phase 2, among many other major infrastructure investments across the city. Next, we'll transition to a discussion about Measure E. The Measure E Oversight Committee met in January and again on May 4th. At the most recent meeting, the committee found that the city's and CSD's expenditure plans for the coming fiscal year reflect the needs and priorities identified by the community. Measure E is projected to generate 36 million in the coming year. The city and the CSD share Measure E tax revenue per a tax sharing agreement. 20% of the annual revenue first goes into a priority projects reserve intended for future projects or services. The city receives 50% of the total revenues, while the CSD receives 30. So of the 36 million, the 50% that the city will be allocated is 18% for FY27. Some highlights of Measure E. When residents talk about public safety, they're talking about everything from traffic concerns to emergency response times. Measure E allows us to make targeted investments in those areas by expanding traffic enforcement, strengthening dispatch operations, growing our Arctic capabilities, and continuing programs like business reimbursement for integrated camera systems incentive programs bricks wasn't going to read that but i decided to go for it tonight that help businesses partner with law enforcement to improve community safety Measure E funding supports a comprehensive homeless response strategy through investments in permanent and transitional housing, interim shelter, and homelessness prevention programs. These efforts provide housing stability, emergency shelter operations, case management, and supportive services designed to help individuals and families avoid or exit homelessness while improving overall community health, safety, and quality of life. Over $2 million is programmed in the coming year for these efforts. Measuring also includes over $2 million for pavement maintenance, pothole repairs, roadway rehabilitation, along with $90,000 for a new sidewalk cost-sharing program to assist homeowners with sidewalk repairs. Additional investments of nearly $1 million support traffic signal enhancements, flashing yellow arrows, traffic controller replacements, and speed control improvements to enhance roadway safety and reduce congestion. The historic main street lighting and safety enhancements, another 200,000, carry over funding to enhance nighttime safety and visibility in historic Main Street. This is through installation of solar powered street lights, security cameras, and license plate readers along Elk Grove Boulevard and Railroad Street. Measure E funding advances the city's middle-income housing initiative in the coming year, building on program planning efforts completed in the current year. $2 million in funding supports homebuyer assistance, housing incentives, subsidies, and strategic development partnerships aimed at expanding attainable homeownership opportunities in Oak Grove. Paint the Grove Mural Festival expands support for the city's growing mural festival and public art programming, enhancing community identity, placemaking, and cultural engagement. Lastly, Public Art and City Facilities funds public art installations and city facilities to enhance civic spaces and strengthen Elk Grove's art and cultural presence. Missouri also funds a flurry of important one-time projects. These include $4 million to expand Southeast Policy Area Neighbor Park K. I believe it's Mendez Park is the proposed name. And it expands it by approximately three acres. creating additional space for amenities, parking, and improved access while helping address neighborhood traffic concerns. Grantline Business Park sewer project receives $4.9 million, and this is an additional $2 million in the coming year. This is complete critical infrastructure needed to support future business development and job creation in the Grantline Business Park. Another $600,000 is dedicated to the Stone Lake Sunwall Beautification Project. This will refresh the appearance of the I-5 Sunwall adjacent to Stone Lake and Laguna West. Measuree also continues investing in mobility and connectivity, including 2.5 million for Laguna Creek and a regional trail crossing at State Route 99. This will create a new bicycle and pedestrian over-crossing connection connecting both sides of the freeway. An additional 1.3 million is included for traffic improvements on Elk Grove Boulevard near State Route 99. This will improve traffic flow and operations in the area. The budget also includes $300,000 to advance restoration of the old fish hatchery site through environmental review and design work, helping move the project closer to construction. Finally, a quarter of a million dollars is dedicated to trail pavement rehabilitation, supporting ongoing maintenance of the city's extensive trail network and helping keep these facilities safe and accessible for residents. For a more detailed discussion of measuring programs, services, and planned investments, please refer to page 69 of the proposed budget. Addressing homelessness remains a key city priority. The coming year budget includes nearly $8 million to support prevention, outreach, shelter operations, housing assistance, and encampment response efforts. The largest investment is the future permanent homeless shelter with nearly $4 million budgeted. Measure E also includes a $7 million set aside to support future shelter development. The budget continues funding for interim shelter operations, as well as permanent transitional housing programs that help individuals move into stable housing. Funding is also provided for outreach, navigation services, homelessness prevention, and the homeless outreach team, helping connect residents with services before homelessness becomes chronic. Finally, the budget includes funding for encampment cleanup activities, supporting the city's balanced approach to providing compassionate services while protecting public health, safety, and quality of life. We'll now move on to proposed personnel. In the police department, the coming year budget proposes to add seven positions in the police department. four in Measure E, and three in the General Fund. These new positions are focused on proactive policing, traffic safety investigations, and emergency response operations. New staffing includes a forensic investigator, traffic detective, motor officer, Arctic supervisor, two Arctic operators, and a parking enforcement technician. These positions will expand traffic enforcement, strengthen investigations, support 24-7 Arctic operations, enhance drone as a first responder capabilities, and improve neighborhood responsiveness while allowing sworn officers to remain focused on core public safety duties. Finance is proposing to add a senior management analyst to support growing finance department operations, strategic initiatives, process modernization, compliance, and organizational efficiency efforts. Lastly, Public Works is proposing to add three new Public Works positions, a project manager, street sweeper operator, and traffic signal technician to support growing operational demands, expand maintenance capacity, and enhance citywide infrastructure and service delivery. Next, we'll take a look at a high level of our major funds forecasts. Before we get into the details, the full five-year forecast can be found on pages 33 through 40 of the current budget document, the proposed budget. Tonight, I'll just be highlighting some of the key takeaways. Our first look is at the gas tax fund. Revenues remain a reliable funding source for transportation improvements, supporting ongoing roadway maintenance and projects such as Old Town Streetscape Phase 2, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, sidewalk infill, curb ramp upgrades, traffic signal enhancements. This forecast also reflects the strategic use of reserves to advance these infrastructure investments over the next five years. SB1 revenues remain stable throughout the forecast. providing a dedicated funding source for roadway rehabilitation and preservation projects. Forecast includes significant investments in pavement rehabilitation, slurry seal, and resurfacing projects, roadway preservation efforts, and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements that extend the useful life of the city's transportation network. CFD 2005-1, this is for a community facilities district in Laguna Ridge. This is a levy that funds the maintenance and operation of parks, trails, landscaping, recreation facilities, open space, and other community amenities within the district. Revenues are growing over the forecast period as development continues within Laguna Ridge. The fund remains financially healthy with sufficient reserves to support both existing facilities and future growth throughout the district. Measure A provides a stable funding source that allows the city to invest in pavement rehab, resurfacing, slurry seal programs, traffic safety enhancements, as well as bicycle and pedestrian improvements. By strategically utilizing both ongoing revenues and available reserves, the city is improving roadway conditions today while preserving infrastructure and maintaining long-term fund stability. Under the city's memorandum of understanding with Bolton rancheria related to the sky river casino development city receives ongoing revenues to help offset public safety roadway and infrastructure impacts associated with the project forecast funds major investments, including camera road extension, what like Parkway state route 99 interchange promenade Parkway resurfacing annual payment maintenance projects while maintaining strong reserves for future needs. The drainage fund is supported by drainage fees and property tax revenues that fund the operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement of the city's storm drainage system. The forecast includes major investments in Laguna Creek and White House Creek multifunctional corridor project, pump station improvements phase two, southeast industrial area storm drain improvements, and utilizing accumulated reserves to advance critical infrastructure needs. Finally the last forecast will highlight tonight is recycling and waste fund this one supports the city's recycling organics and solid waste programs, including. Ongoing sb 1383 compliance requirements. The forecast reflects continued investment in collection education monitoring and enforcement activities utilizing available reserves support growing program costs. So that concludes the funds forecast. Next, we'll just spend a bit of time discussing one of the city's most significant long-term cost drivers, retirement and pension costs. Long-term fiscal sustainability remains a priority. The city continues to proactively manage its pension obligations through prepayments and contributions to its pension trust. To date, the city has made $13.5 million in prepayments and contributed $15.9 million to the pension trust, helping reduce long-term costs and manage future rate volatility. At present, the city's pension plans are approximately 88% funded, placing Elk Grove among the top 10% of CalPERS agencies statewide, helping ensure the city remains well-positioned to adapt to changing economic conditions and future financial challenges. So that brings us to the recommendation for council to deliberate and receive public comment. We recommend that council conduct a public hearing and consider a resolution adopting the budget for fiscal year 2026-27, the CIP for 26-27 through 30-31, annual appropriations limit, fiscal year 26-27 investment policy as well as a resolution ratifying amendments to the Elko POA and PMA MOUs and authorizing the city manager to amend the unrepresented compensation policy and updated citywide salary schedule. Council can choose to update tonight or may wish to continue the item until the next council meeting on June 24th, 2026. There is a new SB 707, I believe, is the law that requires me to state the following. It's very technical, so I apologize in advance. Prior to council action, in accordance with government code section 54953C3 and California Code of Regulations 570.5, The proposed FY26-27 salary schedule includes a 3.5% general salary increase for non-representative executive management and department director positions. The 26-27 proposed salary adjustments are reflected in exhibit C through attachment two of the staff report for this item. The city manager, city attorney, and city clerk are excluded from this action and are compensated pursuant to separate employment agreements. And with that, we conclude the budget presentation. Thank you for your time and consideration. Happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you for that very detailed presentation. At this time, I will declare that the public hearing is now open and open up public comment. We have two speakers signed up. We'll start with Lynn Wheat, followed by Mark Graham.

Good evening. I want to thank the staff for a great budget and easy to read, sort of. I want to go through, you established the policies. And what I want to go through is how some of the monies are spent, in particular in our economic development department. In reading the businesses that we have within the city here, Not many have been brought by our economic development department, and we have given incentives to a few that have come. We're looking at giving more and more monies away, and we're looking again at investing in our old town. Over the years, we've put $12 million plus into developing our old town. This is all taxpayer money and grants. Now we're going to put some more in. Well, when I get an investment, I'd like to see what the return is. And nowhere in this document, when our economic development department is saying what they've done, have they quantitatively told us how we as taxpayers have benefited from any of this money that we've given away. And so I'm just gonna kinda go through some, like we're purchasing five million for land purchase, Elk Grove taxpayers. The measure operating budget includes funds for several projects, this is on page 163, that will be completed in the near term. I'm curious as to what projects there were. It might have been helpful to have that within there. We gave Buzz Oates Industrial, a speculative building, 1.3 million in deferred fees, but it doesn't say when will they be paying those fees back. What's the term and condition of that? I think that would be helpful to see that in the budget. And then on page 169, it says the mural festival was a great success. Well, I thought the budget was done a little bit before this mural festival, and I'm just curious as to how we determined whether it was a success or failure. And then on page 171, it talks about the added jobs over the years. And I just want to know, did this include our city hires too, or was this outside private businesses? Again, when I look at what's going on in the Economic Development Department, I'm very curious as to how my investment's paying off long term, because I'm not really not seeing it. And for example, when we're looking at murals and doing things for the residents, over the 99 overpass, the pedestrian overpass, the Walmart there has a wall that's graffitied all the time. How nice it would have been for the residents to have a mural there that walk there. I walk there and I see a lot of people walking there that come over from the businesses to walk. And so it's heavily used. thankfully, and that would have been nice, too, besides just doing them in Old Town when I've talked to people that live in Laguna that didn't even know we had an Old Town.

Thank you.

OK, I had a few more questions. I will send them to the budget manager, and I will save them for our next public comment.

Thank you. Mark Graham.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Mark Graham, Elk Grove resident. You have a 343-page budget for the next fiscal year, and I think I read that it's $471 million. Is that right? Anyway, with all this, you should be able to pay for everything you want. everything that the residents need. I want to talk about the police department. There is one new full-time equivalent forensic investigator paid for by the general fund. Overall, if I read it right, the police compensation is $68 million. And I realize that there's a reason for that, and it's been probably the biggest area of expense in the city budget for a long time. The city council, by comparison, only gets $875,000. Anyway, speaking of investigations, I have a couple questions. Is this new forensic investigator going to be for investigating cryptocurrency crimes? My understanding is the city currently has one investigator for cryptocurrency crimes. I had a conversation more than a year ago with Sergeant Emerson in the investigations unit, and he told me that your one detective for cryptocurrency crimes He either said he had 75 cases he was working on at the time, plus another 50 cases like backlog that he had not gotten to yet, or switched those numbers around, 50 active cases and another 75 pending. That is too much work. I don't think you have to be in the police department or an investigator to wrap your mind around the fact that that is simply too much work. I was a victim of cryptocurrency crimes and I reported them to the police department and was very disappointed to find that despite many, many months, they did very little investigation that they were willing to share with me. There's so many things that we do on our mobile phones these days and not everybody, but a lot of people are using cryptocurrency to pay for things. Cryptocurrency crimes are popular with criminals because the transfer of cryptocurrency is basically anonymous, not entirely. It can be difficult but not impossible to trace as far as the identity of the person who received the money. If a criminal breaks into a cryptocurrency account and sends money to himself or his partner in crime, it's difficult but not impossible to identify who stole the money. That's why criminals like it. In my conversation with Sergeant Emerson, I said, well, how many detectives do you think that the police department should have to investigate police department, to investigate cryptocurrency crimes? And he laughed and he said, well, ideally we would have four. And as far as I know right now, we still have one. At the time he was investigating, some unfortunate Elk Grove resident, $600,000 of cryptocurrency was stolen from him or her. And of course, I don't know who that is. And I think there was another person who lost $400,000 to a cryptocurrency crime. Those high dollar value cases naturally get the most attention, but there are a lot of cryptocurrency crimes involving $1,000 to $10,000, and the problem is the city does not have enough investigators to investigate these crimes. So I would like to know, what is the current caseload and backlog for that investigator, and is this new hire going to be working on cryptocurrency crimes?

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

You're welcome.

All right, that concludes our public comment. I will go ahead and declare that the public hearing is now closed. And I'll start to the left. Questions, comments?

No comment. I want to thank Nathan and Rajanil and the entire finance team for putting this together. I appreciate the committee meetings that took place over the year as we looked at the audit to make sure that we were clean and compliant and sticking to the rules. One of the benefits of having the surplus and being well-budgeted is being vigilant for our own selves, protecting ourselves from ourselves. Just being mindful of any possible fiscal cliff that is on the horizon and making sure that we're staying well balanced and very prudent with our resources to make sure that the city stays well protected for our residents and for our own posterity. But thank you very much.

Vice mayor.

Thank you, Mary. Yes, Nathan, thank you and your budget team for all the work to prepare and your presentation today. It's great news. We've got, from the outlook to the services that we're continuing to be able to provide to our residents, It's, you know, really pleased in maintaining not just the reserves and economic opportunity, but I really like when you let us know that we're 88% funded in our pension obligations, and so very good steward of the public funds. Thank you.

Council Member Spies.

Yes, so Mr. Bagwell, thank you very much, you and your staff, and of course the rest of the, all of the finance team. I think it's important to note that that Finance and budget is the lifeblood of the city. If you don't, just like a business, if you don't have that, if it's not operating properly, then you have to cut services. There's a lot of agencies around the Sacramento Valley that are looking at just that problem today and last night and around. With that, thank you very, very much to the Elk Grove taxpayers You know, we appreciate your trust. We appreciate that we're working in your benefit. And so I did have the opportunity to finish reading up, although I wish I could say I read the whole document. But I think I read enough to say that I really appreciate the good work and that I think we're moving in a great direction, making sure that we're addressing the needs of our residents and their priorities in a very responsible way. So thank you very much. Happy to support the budget tonight.

Thank you.

Council Member Robles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Nathan, I just want to say thank you for the presentation. Very, very, very detailed. As well, I did go through the budget and I'm just excited to hear and see, and you mentioned this a little bit, how we're working on homebuyer assistance program. That's something that we as a city get to do that not many other cities around this region have the ability to do that. So I'm looking forward to seeing that. As well as, I remember when I was on the Planning Commission, a lot of the CONCERNS WERE THE PAVEMENT, THE broken, had to be repaired because of the roots of the trees. So it's good to see that we're able to help out some of our residents who are struggling, who can't afford to fix the sidewalks on that. I'm also looking forward, hopefully, as we continue for the next year, is potentially even looking at child care, see how we can kind of do something like that with the city. But Excited to see where we're going or where we're heading as a city. Thank you to your leadership, thank you to your team's leadership, and thank you to our city manager for balancing this budget and making sure that we have a good budget. And happy to support this as well.

Thank you. Thank you for your excellent presentation. We are, you know, this is a great moment of pride. Earlier this afternoon, Chief Davis and I attended the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors meeting to advocate supporting our district attorney and our sheriff because they're facing severe budget cuts. Those budget cuts will have an impact in Elk Grove by way of our community prosecutor program because even though our taxpayers pay for it through Measure E, he would likely have to get called back into the main office to address the workload because they can't add more bodies. We are so lucky, we are so fortunate because we're sitting here talking about quality of life and adding positions and enhancing our public safety and improving traffic safety, addressing homelessness. This is not something all cities and counties can do right now. So I feel very blessed that we are in the position that we are, that we are here. And I'm really proud that we have strong financial reserves. And I think the most optimistic statement you said at the very beginning, that is that we have a balanced budget with fully funded reserves. That is probably one of the most important statements that you made during your presentation. Lots to be proud of, lots to celebrate. Thank you, thank you everyone for being out to, and the work that you've done bringing this budget here, and then also of course our capital improvement program, and the progress that we've made there. So thank you for that. Budgets typically reflect our community values, and I believe that we see those reflected in here. So thank you, and specifically thank you for your tremendous public engagement outreach program. Thank you for that. So with that, I will look for motion one.

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Now motion two.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. All right. With that, we will move on to our next item, item 8.4.

That's it.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Kerry Whitlock, Long Range Planning. So this evening, I am presenting the climate compass for consideration. There have been a series of general information presentations on this topic over the past few years as we have developed the plan. And we are ready with a finalized document for your consideration. The climate compass is a comprehensive update to the city's current climate action plan, which was adopted in February 2019. This new climate compass provides a roadmap for the city to achieve state recommended targets for greenhouse gas reductions, similar to the current 2019 cap. The climate compass goes further. as it addresses not just greenhouse gas reductions, but also climate adaptation. So identifying actions to address the climate change we are already seeing and expect in the future. And it supports the city's broader sustainability and resilience goals. In addition, the climate compass is intended to be a CEQA qualified climate action plan, as is the 2019 cap. This sequence streamlining provides efficiencies for new development application and reduces the time and expense of preparing project specific GHG analysis. California has steadily strengthened its greenhouse gas reduction goals over the past two decades and the climate compass update ensures Elk Grove remains aligned with the latest statewide targets. The 2019 cap included an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, a target which was established by the state in 2005, and a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, a target established by Senate Bill 32 in 2016. The 2019 cap did include strategies and actions sufficient to achieve the 2030 target, but not to achieve the longer term 2050 target. More recent legislation, including Assembly Bill 1279, which is the Climate Crisis Act of 2022, accelerates these efforts by setting a statewide goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. The California Air Resources Board's 2022 scoping plan reinforces this direction and introduced an accelerated 2030 target of a 48% reduction to stay on track for the 2045 carbon neutrality goal. Updating the climate action plan to the climate compass allows Elk Grove to integrate these newer, more ambitious state targets. The climate compass evaluates greenhouse gas emissions at two levels, community-wide emissions generated within Elk Grove's boundaries and emissions from the city's own operations. The document includes a full emissions inventory, projections of future emissions and a set of strategies and actions designed to reduce emissions over time. Each strategy is quantified to show its anticipated greenhouse gas reduction potential. All components, the inventory, the forecasting, the strategy actions, and the quantification are included for both community-wide activities and local government operations. The Climate Compass was developed over a three-year period and shaped extensively by public engagement. Community members, local organizations, and various stakeholder groups contributed through more than 60 in-person and virtual meetings, workshops, and events. Throughout this time, staff also presented progress updates to the city council on five separate occasions to gather feedback and direction. Both the draft climate compass and the supplemental environmental impact report were released for public review last summer, providing additional opportunity for public input. Moving into implementation, ongoing engagement will remain essential as continued participation and behavior change in the community are key to successfully reaching the Climate Compass GHG reduction goals. Public feedback, community input, and further staff discussion led to several refinements between the public draft from last summer and the final climate compass. These updates included adjustments to actions related to building decarbonization to ensure compliance with Assembly Bill 130, clarifications to electric vehicle charging requirements to better reflect infrastructure needs, and additional implementation details were added to improve transparency and accountability. Community and council input emphasized several key themes, maintaining affordability, balancing ambition with practicality, providing flexibility, relying on state building codes, prioritizing partnerships, right-sizing EV charging requirements, and preferring incentives over mandates. So these themes are incorporated throughout the plan. Examples include coordination with SMUD to explore on-bill financing for electrification projects, exploring partnership opportunities to help low-income households access energy efficiency upgrades, and establishing an incentive program to assist building owners to add cool or green roofs. The plan also leverages the latest state building codes, which now requires heat pumps for HVAC and hot water heating in new homes. And since that new building code went into effect on January 1st, 2026, we've seen 92% of new production homes being all electric without a city requirement. For EV charging, the building code increased EV charging requirements for new multifamily development. So the city is instead focusing on increasing conduit and electrical capacity installation for future EV charging in new commercial construction. The final community-wide strategies are grouped into six focus areas shown here. Building and energy and transportation represent the most significant opportunities for greenhouse gas emission reductions, accounting for 99% of the reductions by 2030 and 91% by 2045. That's consistent with their current share of our emissions, which is at 95% for those two areas. The remaining focus areas, while smaller in impact, provide a strong foundation for climate action and adaptation efforts, support increased resilience, and emphasize meaningful community engagement and awareness. So as mentioned, as part of the Climate Compass development, a greenhouse gas emission forecasting was completed through 2045. This graph shows historic trends in per capita community-wide GHG emissions in Elk Grove, which are in orange. The dark green lines are the per capita emissions if everything were to remain as they currently are. So if there were no additional federal, state, or local actions, you can see that our emissions would remain fairly consistent. The light green line shows the projected greenhouse gas emissions with state and federal legislation. And the blue line shows projected GHG emissions with the strategies and actions included in the climate compass. And those red dots show the reduction targets for 2030 and 2045. And as you can see, we would be able to meet both 2030 and 2045 targets with the strategies and actions included in the climate compass. As was mentioned, local government operations are also covered in the Climate Compass. Here, the strategy and actions are grouped into four focus areas. As with the community-wide sector, the focus areas of buildings and facilities and fleet and employee commute will have the largest impact in reducing city GHG emissions, accounting for 99% in 2030 and 95% in 2045. The other two focus areas will support a more resilient and sustainable organization. And as with the community-wide activities, forecasting was also done for local operations. The forecast data shows steady projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions if no actions were taken. The state and federal actions would have a long-term decrease in emissions, but not sufficient to meet targets, which again are shown in red. The proposed strategies and actions in the climate compass document related to government operations would be enough to reduce GHG emissions sufficient to meet the targets for both 2030 and 2045. I also wanted to briefly highlight our climate compass dashboard tracking progress is essential to successful implementation of the plan. The dashboard tool is available on our city website and includes all of the strategies and actions included in the document along with targets and indicators. And the dashboard is an interactive tool that allows transparent information sharing with our community who can use it to follow progress related to implementing the climate compass following adoption. As mentioned at the beginning, the Climate Compass is intended to be a CEQA-qualified climate action plan. This requires an environmental review, and in this case, a supplemental environmental impact report was prepared. The 2019 Climate Action Plan was programmatically evaluated as part of the general plan updated environmental impact report. So the supplemental EIR prepared for the Climate Compass is an amendment to that general plan updated EIR. Per state CEQA guidelines, the supplemental EIR need only contain information necessarily to make the previous EIR adequate for the project, analyzing the potential significant environmental impacts resulting from the implementation of the climate compass. Therefore, the supplemental EIR included an evaluation of just two environmental issue areas, energy and greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The supplemental EIR identified that the climate compass would not result in any new significant impacts or substantially increase the severity of significant environmental impacts disclosed within the general plan EIR. There are some text modifications needed to the general plan document to ensure consistency with the climate compass. These include edits in Chapter 7, Community and Resources Protection, and in Chapter 10, the Implementation Strategy, and these modifications are included in your packet. In addition to the Climate Compass action this evening, we're also requesting some corrections to the Implementation Strategy to restore two actions that were unintentionally removed during the December update to the General Plan. And these both relate to housing elements and are both included in chapter 10 implementation strategy and those are also included in your packet. One final item we are recommending this evening is on the infrastructure plan for fleet electrification. This document was presented at council in July 2024, but was not approved or adopted at that time. The purpose of this plan is to provide clear, actionable guidance for electrification of the city's municipal fleet, and for infrastructure to support fleet, staff, and public EV charging at city facilities. It provides a roadmap for supporting the conversion of the city's light duty vehicles to zero emission with a focus on the needed electrical upgrades, infrastructure installation, and policy recommendations needed in the near term to set the foundation for the longer term transition. Approval of the plan this evening will support the strategy identified in the climate compass to shift the city's fleet to zero emission vehicles. Finally, staff's recommendation this evening is that you certify the supplemental environmental impact report for the climate compass and adopt findings of fact. Approve the modifications to the general plan related to the climate compass and approve the revisions to the general plan related to the implementation strategy. Adopt the climate compass and approve and ratify the infrastructure plan for fleet electrification. And with that, I am available for any questions.

Thank you. Thank you for that comprehensive report. At this time, I will declare the public hearing is now open and open up public comment opportunity. We'll start. So we have four people signed up to speak. We'll start with Vincent Trotta, followed by Tim Padden.

Hello. I'm not in the whole loop of the city council stuff. I'm fairly young, but I felt like it would be a really good opportunity to get my voice out there. Elk Grove is growing and the traffic is getting heavy and it feels like nothing's getting better. I personally just bike everywhere. I have the skills to hold myself safe, but not everybody does. And not everyone has the ability to bike. There are people who don't have many options to get around. And I feel like the best thing that we can do for the whole city is to improve the bus system. It would reduce traffic. It would reduce emissions. It would encourage the youth, such as myself, to explore and live outside, as many people my age are opting to just stay inside. And they don't tend to have much of a life outside anymore. And it would benefit a lot of people without transport options as well. And it would make the road safer because there's less drivers, I guess, just crowding the streets. There's less tension on the road overall. And another thing that I would... would be light rail increasing it, but I don't know if it could be extended as much anymore since CRC area is kind of tight now. And I've heard a lot of people talk about how the public transit system is dirty or it's poorly made, but at the same time, it's not really fair to make those judgments when they're unable to be used much. Whenever I'm trying to go to college at CRC, if I miss the bus, I have to wait a whole hour before I'm able to use it again. So I might as well just not use the bus. I might as well just bike or take a car. If I'm taking a car, well, now I feel guilty because I'm adding to the traffic and I'm adding to the emissions. But if the buses were to come, I don't know, every 30 minutes instead, I wouldn't have to worry about missing that bus. And if the bus routes were explored upon, maybe increased to reach the new areas of Elk Grove, or not even just go to CRC, but to go to different spots, it would grab more people. Not everyone is in these spots where the bus zones are very acquirable, I guess, to say. They'd have to walk about a quarter or half a mile, and not everyone's willing to do that. So we just end up with this huge situation where a lot of people my age, especially, are just kind of reliant on their parents or reliant on a car. But gas is getting more expensive. Cars are getting more expensive. And that money is just becoming more tight for most people. But buses, I've seen work throughout places in the U.S. Even like in San Francisco, they've been implementing more buses. And it seems to be working. People are happier. People are getting around more. So, yeah, that's just getting my opinion out there. I think buses would help the city a lot. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Please reach out to me, Vincent. I'd be more than happy to walk you through some updates. I'm also chair of Sacramento Regional Transit and loved what I heard, so thank you. Sweet. Welcome. All right. Tim Patton followed by Greg Fishman.

Thank you, everybody. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Good to see some familiar faces. I'm Tim Padden, I'm the Government Affairs Manager for SMUD. I wanted to make a first, a couple of acknowledgements. SMUD Board Member Rosanna Herber wanted to be here this evening. She had a scheduling conflict and she's actually chairing our policy committee back at SMUD headquarters this evening, so that's why she is not here. But she wanted to let the Council know that she's very supportive of the plan. She knows how important it is for not only Elk Grove, and SMUD, but the entire Sacramento region. So I wanted to state that. Secondly, I wanted to acknowledge SMUD Board Member Greg Fishman, who's in the audience. Board Member Fishman's wearing multiple hats, and he's wearing a different hat this evening. So in my role at SMUD, I wanted to acknowledge his role at SMUD. So I wanted to acknowledge Board Member Fishman. SMUD appreciates the opportunity to express our support for the Elk Grove Climate Compass Plan. We commend the city. for the development or developing a thoughtful roadmap that advances greenhouse gas reductions, improves energy efficiency, supports clean transportation, and strengthens community resilience. The goals outlined in the Climate Compass Plan align closely with SMUD's commitment to achieving carbon neutral electricity by the year 2030 through our 2030 Zero Carbon Plan. Both efforts recognize that electrification of buildings and transportation Expansion of renewable energy resources and investment in grid modernization are essential to meeting our shared climate objectives. SMUD also appreciates the opportunity to be part of the technical advisory panel for the plan, which led better connection efforts between SMUD and the City of Elk Grove. By working together, the City of Elk Grove and SMUD can help residents and businesses reduce emissions while maintaining reliable, affordable energy and supporting sustainable economic growth. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the city as we advance these shared goals and build a cleaner, more resilient future for the Elk Grove community. So we appreciate the council for their thoughtful leadership and consideration. We want to thank staff for all the hard work they've done for, I think, several years, probably about six years, right, Carrie? So, and I've been bugging Carrie like every other day, I swear, like the last, you know, three months, like, when is it going to go to council? When is it going to council? Well, here we are tonight. So someone is very appreciative of our ability to speak here tonight, and we fully support this plan. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for being here. Thanks. Next up is Greg Fishman, followed by Lynn Wheat.

Madam Mayor and Council, thank you for this opportunity. I'm here, as Tim said, wearing my other hat. I'm the Senior Community Relations Officer for Sacramento Regional Transit. And let me start by acknowledging, Mayor, your service as our board chair and Rod Brewer serving as a member of our board. There's no lack of coordination between the City of Elk Grove and SACRT. I also want to acknowledge the young gentleman who spoke first, Vincent, I believe was his name, but I did give him one of my business cards. He's exactly right. One of the best ways that we can reduce carbon output is by increasing bus service, increasing light rail service. We would love to be able to do all of those things. You just had your budget presentation tonight. SACRT had ours on Monday. And money is tight. So any expansion is gonna require more funds. We're looking at that all the time. We are in the middle of doing a comprehensive operational analysis now. We'll have some answers. towards the end of this year, looking at all of our routes, all of our connections, and say where can we potentially save money, where can we apply those funds to add service where it makes more sense to do that. The other thing I want to tell you, and I know that the two who serve on our board know this, we are also in the process of decarbonizing our bus fleet. It's gonna take some time. The new buses, either battery electric or hydrogen fuel cells, are more expensive. They're not always as available. And we also need to coordinate with SMUD to make sure that we can charge those buses at an appropriate location. We have to develop that charging system. and we have to develop a new hydrogen system. We have grant funds to begin this process. The hydrogen especially, we're looking at McClellan as a location to install a hydrogen fueling system for hydrogen fuel cell buses. This again, we're in the initial phases of that. It's gonna take some time. but that's part of what we're looking at doing to help decarbonize our fleet. I will also say that our current fleet of natural gas buses, compressed natural gas, are actually very, very clean. They do produce carbon. We'd like to get away from that, obviously. We're required to get away from that, but compared to the same number of people driving individually in their cars, they're vastly more efficient and cleaner than doing so individually. And finally, light rail. You also know, I'm sure, that there is a study, we're just beginning that, to look at a light rail extension from Cosumnes River College into Elk Grove. What would that route be? How would it serve this community? What would it cost, and where will those funds come from? Again, these are very expensive propositions, but we're taking the initial steps to look at that, and do what we can to serve this community a little bit better. With that, we're also very grateful for this opportunity to address you tonight and to support the Climate Action Plan and the Climate Compass. So congratulations to staff. Believe me, from both of the hats I wear, I know how much work goes into these kinds of things. And you should be congratulated for this update and for moving it forward. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for being here, sir. Next up is Lane Wheat.

Good to see you.

So I wore my Climate Ambassador shirt and I totally support this plan and totally support all the efforts that the staff have done. So in my early days, I liked the name Climate Ambassador much better than, I guess, Tree Hugger. So that's what I had when we became a city because I was really concerned about the environment, observing kids with a lot of asthma and a lot of other health issues and not having the opportunity to be outside in safe places. I read this book, Last Child in the Woods, and I'd suggest that you all read it. So this carries even beyond what this climate action plan will do. We need to continue with what you have tried to do, which is connect our bike trails and have safe places for our young people to ride, and encouraging them to ride by looking at putting safe places to park bikes in our retail centers. These are great steps. I'm excited about it. I had somebody recently ask me that knew that I was always fighting for the environment, fighting to get light rail down here, and it fell on empty years. They said to me, so are you still trying to save the environment? And so I sarcastically replied, yeah, people don't really care about that. But there are individuals within our city and within our community that are not here tonight that really do care and I know support what you are going to do as a city. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I will go ahead and close public comment and declare that the public hearing is now closed. And council comments, questions? I'll start to the right this time. Council Member Robles?

No comments, but ready to support whatever.

Council Member Spies?

Actually, so I do have a quick question. Can you summarize some of the outreach that we did to community stakeholders and kind of summarize what their feelings were relative to the plan?

So we had a number of different things. As Lynn mentioned, we had a climate ambassador program. We opened that up to anybody in the community who wanted to participate. We did a series of different meetings with them and engagements with them. They also helped us through broadening that outreach. So they actually talked to their friends, their neighbors, their communities, and fed that information up to us. So it helped us have a broader understanding broader reach with the messages and what we heard. So that was really helpful. We had a technical advisory group. As was also mentioned, we had a lot of different regional organizations, SMUD, SACOG, SACRT, Republic, but also a number of local organizations, Sacramento Splash, lagoon creek watershed council that were on that as well we did also do and the building industry association was also a member of that technical advisory group we did a lot of individual outreach with the different environmental groups sac 350 ecos we did a lot of outreach as well with The trades groups, the Sacramento Realtors Association, the Restaurant Association. No, I'm forgetting somebody.

That's okay. No, I appreciate it. What I wanted folks to understand is that this isn't a... an idea that it was just hatched in a vacuum. There was a whole lot of conversation, a whole lot of stakeholders, not just residents, but industry as well. And so I want to thank you for that, Ms. Whitlock, and I'll be able to support tonight for sure.

Thank you, Council Member Brewer.

I want to thank you, Ms. Whitlock, for your work on this. I mean, on paper, it says the initial plan was adopted in 2019. But the actual plan has taken many, many years. And it's evolved over time. And it shows by the group of stakeholders that have been coming into the process to actually be an honest and earnest stakeholder in this. because everything in this plan is intentional. It's a breathing document. It's intended to get better over time to help us meet these climate goals. And so this is really good information. And I really liked our first commenter because what he stated is absolutely true. But in order to do that, we need to rethink how we do transit here in Elk Grove to increase riders and help show the different programs and things that are out there that regional transit provides so folks just don't feel like that they're just hamstrung waiting for the bus. There's other services out there, but we really need to figure out a way to make sure that we have more than just a few hubs to get people onto public transit and really figure out a lot of creative ways on whether we do bus rapid transit or light rail down here in Elk Grove, figuring out a way for the bus system to utilize the main avenue for the light rail to be that island to get people from point A to point B because as Elk Grove gets bigger, people are going to need to find ways to be able to get around and that transit part is just one small aspect of it. but it's part of a bigger picture on how we create a connected community and a cleaner, greener community by thinking outside the box and really thinking big, but also being responsible. So thank you very much. This is great stuff.

Vice Mayor?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I agree, Carrie. I'd like to plan when you first brought it forward in 2019 and those baby steps, if you will, and how it's evolved. But we always stay true as a city, you and the team. I just think this is another example of how we do governance here, right? You engage with the stakeholders. We are... bound by obligation for the state, but we're also trying to do something good for our community and our residents, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that this effort to make our community more livable is noble, but we don't do it in a vacuum, and we obviously are abiding by the law, and we engage everybody who's affected by it. So thank you for your good work on this. I look forward to adopting it tonight.

Thank you, Carrie, for your excellent presentation. I really appreciated your outreach efforts, particularly with your technical advisory group. I have a question. Does the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce participate in this?

We have not had a lot of participation from them specifically, no.

Okay, can we just add them? They should be chiming in on something as important as this.

Absolutely, and some of the actions we will need to do further engagement and outreach on, and we will absolutely reach out to them to try and get them more engaged.

Okay, excellent. Then I want to again thank you to SMUD and SACRT for being here. This evening, we can't do this work alone, so it's great having wonderful partners in the community as we all share in our responsibility as being good stewards of the environment. So thank you again. With that, I will look for motions one through four.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. We do not have regular agenda action items, so we will go to 10, which is council comments, reports, future agenda items. We'll start with council member Brewer. Anything?

Just we, as Mr. Fishman mentioned earlier, Zach Artsy, he met on Monday to adopt their budget, and that's all I have to report.

Vice Mayor?

Yeah, SACOG committee meeting last week, nothing to report, thank you.

Council Member Spese, anything?

I do actually have a little bit more than usual. As everybody knows, I've said it before, cable commission or cable revenue is declining. There has been a lot of consternation recently about how much it's declining and what the distributions are. And there's a whole lot of conversation about that. And so last Thursday at our conference, Yeah, it was Thursday. At our commission meeting, we discussed having a working group made up of member jurisdictions to challenge the underlying assumptions, to come back with potentially a budget amendment from an ad hoc group, and then in subsequent quarters to address the strategic direction of the commission as well as the future for Metro Cable 14. I bring that all up mostly because I want to make sure that I thank Mr. Prasad, our finance director, for supporting. He's committed to challenging those underlying assumptions and coming up with a better budget that most everyone can be happy with. Nobody's ever going to be happy with a declining budget. It's not going to happen. But I want to thank you very much for committing to that, and I want to thank the city for giving us a little bit of Mr. Prasad's time. So thank you.

Councilmember Robles, anything?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I had a JPA Connector meeting last week or two weeks ago. That's a pretty good one.

Thank you. Yes, as Councilmember Brewer mentioned, SACRT, but I'll also use this time to just thank our Arts and Creative Economy for the Paint the Grove Mural Festival. It was fantastic. I was out there. I think I'll a number of us were out there at different times looking at the beautiful artwork in our historic district, right, Daryl?

Or I probably said, historic Main Street.

You're gonna have to come up with an acronym like everything else. But it was a lot of fun. Visited several of the businesses, they all saw an increase in traffic coming to their places, the restaurants and even Bob's Club had a huge uptake in business. But it was great to see a lot of activity and action out there around our community. And a lot of very happy people admiring our murals. And I also want to formally recognize Rosemary Revis, welcome. Mr. City Manager, if you want to do the formal, but I look over and I'm like, hello, who is this? So Jason, would you please formally introduce?

Absolutely. I should have done this during my comments earlier, but it's my pleasure to introduce Rosemary Rivas. She's the city's new Human Resources Director. She comes to us from the city of Stockton, where she also served as Human Resources Director as many, many years in the human resources profession. And so we are fortunate to have her join our team. So please join me in welcoming Rosemary to the Elk Grove team.

Welcome aboard. The promise will be a lot easier than Stockton. With that, we will go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 8.15 p.m.