City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm going to call this meeting of the Fairfield City Council to order. Madam Clerk, roll call, please.

Council Member Carr?

Here.

Council Member Panduro? Here. Council Member Sandhu?

Here.

Council Member Tonneson?

Here.

Council Member Williams? Here. Vice Mayor Bertani? Here. And Mayor Moy.

here thank you all right and the invocation tonight imam um if you could come up please from the zonk center fairfield and welcome this evening sure that's great thank you i say 9 30.

We seek refuge with Almighty Lord from the accursed devil and his mischieveness. In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, all praise and thanks go to our Lord, who has created seven heavens and the earth and whatever it contains. Our Master, Creator, Protector, Provider, Giver and Taker, Everything belongs to you. Nothing is hidden from you. No one can benefit and harm without your will. You possess power over everything. You run the whole universe as you like without any assistance. You are independent and eternal. The only owner of the day of judgment. O our Lord, we only worship you and ask help from you. Please unite our hearts and minds, guide us towards the right path, the way of those to whom you have bestowed your grace, not of those who earned your anger, nor of those who went astray. O Lord, Put the right decision and thoughts in the mind and the hearts of the decision makers. Let them decide the affairs correctly which will be beneficial to our community. Please protect them to make any decision or pass any regulation which will be harmful for the citizens. Please pardon us, have mercy upon us, and grant us success in this world as well as in hereafter. Please bring the peace in the world, be our helper, and guide us in all the affairs. Amen.

Thank you. And then today I'm going to ask Madam Vice Mayor, would you, ladies in the pledge, please.

of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now we'll go to council reports. Councilwoman Williams, please.

Thank you. I have three different events to, well, three different things to report about. One was a tour of the Rockville Hills Regional Park with the RCAC, hopefully I'm saying that right, with Nick, Julie, and Julie's husband. And I just wanna say thank you to them for showing me the beauty and the challenges of the park. It was the first time I had been. My husband goes all the time and rides his bike, but it was the first time that I've ever gone. And I tell you, there's a connection with mental health and being in the outdoors because I left that place and I just felt 20 pounds emotionally lighter. So I wanted to say thank you about that. I had a meet and greet at Cordelia Library last week. It was fantastic. It was a great turnout with great questions. It was only two hours. We had to get kicked out of the space. People didn't want to leave. They didn't want to stop talking to each other. And that was really the true power of the event, that people got to meet each other. Community members got to meet each other. And that was pretty awesome. And then the last thing I would like to report about is... I always had this dream to do an Easter egg hunt and community event. And so I made that dream come true with the help of some really amazing sponsors. Mile High Ranch in Cordelia. I don't know about you all, but I didn't know there was a ranch in Cordelia. And there is one, and it's beautiful and stunning. Also, MSK Solutions, they're a full-service residential care center, and they were out there for us. Brudeau's Restaurant did hot dogs, but we had goats, cheap pony rides. Horse rides, musical chair, Easter hunt. I'm always worried that it's just gonna be me and two other people at an event. And so that week before it was maybe 30, 35. Three days before there was 188 that RSVP'd. I got up Saturday morning and 349 had RSVP'd. And we haven't gotten the final count, but it was hundreds that was out there. And to hear those kids laughing and just running across the field back and forth and having adults out there and older adults out there touching the animals and laughing, it, I don't know, it completely just fills my heart. And that was the first. The next day, the sponsor, Mile High Ranch, called and said, let's do it again next year. Let's do 1,000 people and let's make it double as big and double as amazing. And with that, my... I also want to thank you, Scott Tonneson, and Doris Panduro for coming out to the Easter egg event. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Tonneson, please.

Nothing for me tonight, Mayor, but yes, that was a fantastic event. There was hundreds of people.

Thank you. Councilman Carr.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I'll keep it brief. Did a few things since our last meeting. I went to the chocolate and vine event, and the Fairfield High School culinary students fixed all the hors d'oeuvres for that, and I just had to tell them, you know, they just knocked it out of the park. I talked to the chef and their teacher chef and he said that they set a goal that they wanted to do better than the year before and I didn't think it possible but they did it was it was just really wonderful I think that's such a good event And while I'm talking about food, I don't know if you've all tried Shayla's Southern Cuisine over at the mall, but if you haven't, you're missing out. I went over there. The food was terrific. It used to be where the Buffalo Wild Wing restaurant is on the other side of the mall. Friendly, nice. I got to meet the owner. She is part of what used to be the Chase Hole, and she opened up her own. And be sure you try the catfish. It was just awesome. Also, I attended the Solano Surf fundraiser. Again, great food. And they did raise money for the kids. I talked to Mike today. The financial aid type of money that they raised for some of the kids that their families struggle a little bit with the payment for that. So they were able to get quite a few of those raised for those kids. I then also went over to the Safeway Waterman grand reopening with my colleague and councilman Tonneson and the city manager The the store looks great if you haven't been in there, it's really nice the the work they done in that Safeway over there at Waterman Also the And don't forget at the park over there where the soccer fields are, Okta Park, we did get the walk park open to where you guys can take a walk around, walk your dogs. I do it every weekend. It's a little over a mile, and it's right there all the way around the levee at the Okta Park at the soccer fields. It's open regular park hours and on the weekends. So it's a really nice walk. Also, the city of Fairfield Homeless Service Division is hosting the next Homeless Roundtable on April 22nd in Willow Hall Community Center. It's just right over here, the Diamond Building. And if you want an invitation, please email Samantha Burrows at sburrows at fairfield.ca.gov. And Fairfield is also, the Homeless Services Division is hosting the next Homeless Outreach Partnership event. And I believe there's some flyers on the back table back there. If you're interested in tabling or providing resource services at this event, please reach out to hsd at fairfield.ca.gov. Applications are also on the website at the fairfield.ca.gov. Homeless flyer is attached, so you can get it there as well. Councilwoman Pandora, myself, did attend the Capsulano JPA board meeting on March 26th. The next board meeting is on the 30th. It is open to the public. It's at 601 Texas Street, the county event center at 630. And that is my report, Mayor.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Pandora, please. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. So I was honored... just this last month to be a part of the kickoff for the North Texas Street Revitalization Program. So it just opened. It is for businesses that are located on the North Texas corridor, and it's a grant reimbursement program designed to help, I'm reading off my script. because i had to do a couple of videos on this um in english and spanish so it's designed to help businesses and commercial property owners approve the appearance visibility and overall appeal of their properties so this this money is towards primarily lighting landscape permanent signage and parking lot repairs and it's really exciting um within the first 48 hours we had we had five apps turned in i'm sure we've had more um since then and so really positive things happening on the corridor. I'm really excited about the opportunity to invest in that corridor, and especially to support our local businesses. They are truly the backbone of our community, and so being able to do that for them is very exciting. We have a lot of great things happening in that corridor. And so if anyone wants more information or is interested, the information is located at www.fairfield.ca.gov slash ntx. And also along the same corridor on North Texas at the beginning earlier, there was a construction site tour for the new Robbie Burger Park. And so if you've driven by in North Texas, you've seen the building, something coming up, a big structure. And so that is gonna be not only a community center, but also a first five early learning center, so for zero to five education. And so it's very exciting. I think the MOU is on the calendar for today. But it's also gonna be open to the community. Aside from the center, there's gonna be sports courts in the back part, and so that will be open to the community. So it is also a new park that's coming to that area. And also April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. And I bring this up because I am the outreach coordinator for CASA of Solano County. So CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. And so we are located here at the courthouse. And so in honor of this month, we are having an event on Monday, April 13th, just right out here at nine o'clock. And it's called our Pinwheels for Prevention event. So we'll have speakers there from PD, from the DA's office, from CASA, and then also from the Solano Child Abuse Prevention Council. So the community is welcome to come out and attend. After the remarks, we'll be placing blue pinwheels throughout the lawn out here. So if you come any time after next week, you'll be able to see the blue pinwheels. The blue pinwheels represent every three calls made to report a substantiated allegation of abuse and neglect of a child in Solano County. and also my blue pin is another symbol of the month so if you see blue pins or blue pinwheels around town it is for child abuse prevention month and so we are one organization trying to provide resources um to families as a prevention to this um to that crisis and that is all mayor thank you thank you madam vice mayor

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, everyone, for coming out this evening and for watching from home. It really means everything to us that you take the time to be here at these meetings. And seeing you in the chamber is always a pleasure and makes for a much better meeting. I will be quick this evening. I just want to announce that our public table town hall meetings are progressing. We had our first one at Cordelia Public Library. Great conversation input. Thank you mayor for showing up. Thank you Councilman Tonneson for showing up as well. We had great conversation primarily around two issues. One, the Vista Ridge project and its ongoing discussions and progress and what is happening on the timeline and the appraisal and all that and then Issue number two, the LLMD refunds. And much discussion around those two very important issues which really impact financially this community and aesthetically. And so stay tuned on the April 21st meeting, I think. Both of those issues will be on the agenda at the general city council meeting right where we are right now. 6 p.m., and I am anticipating a very lively and robust conversation and input from our residents on both of those very important issues. And our next public table, neighborhood town hall meeting series, will be on Saturday, April 18th. downtown. We'll be meeting at the Famous Creations Meeting Room, which is at 811 Texas Street. That is a Saturday from 10 to 12. Anybody and everybody is welcome to join these public forum meetings because that's what they are, public forums. So, the public table um will be also hosting um additional public tables in different districts um in district uh we'll be having one on may 9th and mancus neighborhood center may 30th at donnell that's district 4. Saturday, June 27th at Bethel Community Church on East Tabor. And the final one will be Saturday, July 11th at the club at One Lake. All of these are listed on the flyer for the public forum meetings. And they're also posted at my website along with a lot of other stuff at pamburtani.com. If you want to join us on one of those Saturdays, please feel free. The second to last thing I'll say is that the Clergy Action Network, of course, meets on every fourth Tuesday of the month, every fourth Tuesday of the month, from 3 to 4.30 at the Community Center in the VISTA conference room. And among the things that we're discussing and planning are our upcoming fresh food festivals, where we go to elementary and middle schools and give away fresh food that is delicious and much needed in those communities. We have our National Day of Prayer coming up on May 7th. Juneteenth, we're starting our first planning meeting this Friday, April 10th, which will be a Zoom meeting by our subcommittee, but we're planning our Juneteenth celebration, which will happen on the county lawn on the day itself, June 19th, which is a Friday. So again, Clergy Action Network has a website and all these events will be there as well. And finally, I have received so many comments, questions, concerns about the mall. and redevelopment of the mall. Anybody that's been to the mall lately knows that it is still going pretty strong, but we all can agree probably that it's nowhere near reaching its full potential. And so I talked to the city manager and the mayor and I have asked for the city council to have a special study session regarding the mall and the redevelopment thereof. The new thing is that we're going to speak with Spinoza, who are the developers of that property. In other words, it is time to restart, to jumpstart, to pump more energy into the process of beginning a robust redevelopment of the mall, to make the mall what we know that it should be and what it's currently zoned for and everything. So that meeting will take place on Tuesday, May the 12th. at 5 p.m. here in council chambers. This will give the city council an opportunity to speak to the people who are in charge of or very involved with the redevelopment of the mall. We've never had a chance as a city council to actually speak to them, to share our vision. to see how we can be better partners at jumpstarting the redevelopment process out at the mall. So I invite everyone to attend that meeting. It'll be a public meeting, but a special study session. And it's with Spinoza and the full city council and staff Tuesday, May 12th, 5 p.m. right here in council chambers. And that's all I have. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Since I just scheduled that today, we don't know for sure if Spinoza can make it that day. But if we can't, then we'll adjust.

Okay, yeah, because that's the whole point is for them to be able to. Absolutely.

Agreed, yeah, and I've not even spoken to them yet, so I can't guarantee that date, but that's certainly the date that we'll cross our fingers for.

Set the date tentatively then. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for that, Madam Vice Mayor and Councilman Sandu.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to start off with, alongside many of my colleagues and a healthy delegation from the city, we attended the State of the Base at Travis Air Force Base. Needless to say, they have a lot going on. I want to correct the record on one quick thing in the picture. You saw a lot of the folks who attended that event. We missed the Deputy Fire Chief, and I want to clarify that he was there, in fact. We just couldn't get him in time for the picture. Following that, I attended the Power of 30 celebration for the Solano Community Foundation, which is one of the few donor-advised funds here in Solano County. It was the 30-year anniversary. They were founded back in 1995. Just last year, they've given over roughly $140,000 in scholarships in the community, so they're doing really good work. Following that, the city of Fairfield, in partnership with the county, did a very fun Adopt a Dog event. I, myself, don't have a dog, but I felt like I did for a few hours. And that was a really good event. And then alongside, as mentioned, the chocolate and vine event that the Community Services Foundation did, which went really well. Year after year, they do great work in collaboration with the Fairfield High. And then the Solano Surf fundraiser night here at Willow Hall. And I think I'll echo Councilman Carr that we do need to put some money into that building at some point. That was a really good fundraiser and just want to shout out the city manager because we did take home a cake that night. And we had a really good dessert at the table. And then following that, the Can Be Stand Up for Veterans event. It was the third annual event they did at Jelly Belly. And some really strong supporters of that organization. I think some of them here in the room, I saw Medic Ambulance walk in. They do some really good work for Can Be, in addition to Kaiser. And I also want to shout out Terry Lenore, because he also took home a cake. And I want to thank you for leaning in and contributing into the community. And lastly, the city of Fairfield had a really good egg hunt at the Allenwood Park, and I met some of our mascots there, which was pretty fun. And I think that concludes my report. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. And I am just going to report on a couple things. I first wanted to say that you know that there's a lot of construction going out on the interstate moving into Susan Valley along That's going to be the new truck stop. I'm sorry, not truck. Here I am thinking about the truck stop. Way station, basically. And I just wanted to give you an update on that. That is not going to be completed for another two years. It's a huge project, and I just wanted to let people know. I know I've been dropping in and letting you all know about that, so I wanted to let you know. I went to, it was last week, seems like it's been a long time ago. I was invited along with the mayor of Vacaville. There was a great delivery of food from the Church of the Latter-day Saints. And what it was was 33,000 meals were delivered to nonprofits in Vacaville and Fairfield. And so I was there and helped to move stuff around. And I spoke there. And it was – this is on top – it's really incredible what they do. They grow their own food, including cattle and – vegetables, fruits, and then they pack it up themselves and they send it all over the United States. And it was just incredible. I talked to the truck driver and, I mean, you want to hear some stories. It was really cool. He goes, oh, I'm just a truck driver. Oh, really? I mean, this guy's on the road every day. He tries to get home sometimes on the weekends. He is doing a lot of these drops. They're going to 250 cities in the United States for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence for our country. So it was a really great kickoff for that. And then on top of it, they're going to do the regular drop-off. So unbelievable, unbelievable. It was just so cool and happy to see. 33,000 meals. I'm still lost for words, and my husband will tell you that's not easy to do. I went to our police department, had their annual awards, and fantastic, unbelievable. what people do, what our police officers do out there, including saving lives when they're off duty. You know, it's It's amazing. I know you all feel the same way. We love our police. And then the next day or the two days later, I was at the County Board of Supervisors, and they were swearing in their new sheriff's deputies. So it was my round robin of law enforcement. I'm a big supporter of our law enforcement always. And that's all I have. And Mr. City Manager.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I've got really just a couple of events. So a reminder, everybody, coming up on April 18th, before we see you next, Blues Brews and Barbecue at the downtown lawn. And that is from 12 to 4 p.m. There is chicken and rib category. So depending on the type of meat you prefer, we've got you covered. Tickets are $10 for presale, $15 at the door. VIP is already sold out. So that's a good sign for the event. Always a wonderful one. So once again, April 18th, downtown, 12 to 4 p.m. And then a reminder for everybody, coming up on April 25th and 26th of this month, we have the Wings Over Solano Air Show out at Travis Air Force Base and their celebration of America 250, as the mayor just mentioned. We also have the Air Force Thunderbirds are the headline show. Always, always a great show out there at Travis Air Force Base. So that's coming up 25th and 26th. That is open to the public. But of course, it can be a little bit of delay getting in just because of security. So everybody plan accordingly. And if you go to their website, in fact, they have a countdown timer. We are now 16 days, 22 hours and 25 minutes away from the start of the air show. So. It's it's coming up and then lastly just a friendly reminder And a shout out to Jelly Belly candy company. We've been putting information out Jelly Belly has offered to match donations up to 25,000 to support the host Lions Club in the city of Fairfield in restoring the historic arch downtown modernizing it giving it a fresh paint job and replacing all of the interior electronic parts to it. And so Jelly Belly beginning any donations made between yesterday and I think it's two weeks. I forget the exact date. My apologies. But anyways, if you want to support the restoration of the arch, do so now because Jelly Belly will match your monies. The 20th. Thank you, Council Member Tonneson. So between now and the 20th, Jelly Belly's matching up to 25,000. And once again, thank you to the host Lions Club who originally put that sign up a little over 100 years ago and who now back at it trying to make sure that it lives on for the next 100 years. And that is my report tonight, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Excuse me, Mr. City Attorney.

Thank you. I want to announce out that in closed session a couple weeks ago, City Council in closed session approved a stipulation for attorney's fees in the matter of Thacker v. City of Fairfield. The court confirmed that amount and stipulation in docket CU23-03108 in the amount of $223,509. Thank you. Thank you. And Madam Clerk?

Thank you, Mayor. We are still accepting applications for District 2, the Landscape Oversight Committee, and also recruitment is still ongoing for the Youth Commission, ages 13 to 19. You can email cityclerk at fairfield.ca.gov for more information. Thank you.

Thank you. And now we'll turn to presentations, please.

Yes. Presentation one, Proclamation Declaring American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month, presented by Councilmember Sandhu to the Islamic Center of Fairfield and Imam Faridbeg Mizra. Thank you.

Thank you. Miss Reese, would you like to come on up? You got to tell your folks to come out next time. They sent you all alone. Thanks for coming. Good evening, everybody. As many of you know, we just concluded Ramadan just a few weeks ago. It's recognized by, I don't know the exact number, but probably over a billion people globally. And in recognition of that, we have a small proclamation to celebrate that. Whereas enriched by the unparalleled diversity of its residents, the city of Fairfield takes great pride in supporting individual religious freedoms and is strengthened by the many varied religious, political, cultural traditions and contributions of its diverse populations, including those that practice Islam. And whereas the presence of Islam in the United States predates the nation's founding, tracing back to enslaved Africans who brought their Muslim faith to the Americas, and later contributed in meaningful ways to the development of the nation. Today, millions of American Muslims, both immigrant and native born, represent a rich diversity of backgrounds and beliefs, with approximately one million residing in California, the largest population of any state. And whereas, over 3,500 Muslims live in Solano County and make innumerable contributions to the cultural, political, economic fabric and well-being of California and the United States. And whereas in 2024, the Council on American Islamic Relations received over 8,000 complaints nationwide, the highest number in its 30 years, reflecting a worsening climate of Islamophobia and concerns regarding unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. And whereas the Islamic Center of Fairfield, first established in 1982, serves as a vital religious and community hub for Muslims in the Fairfield area, providing daily congressional prayers, Islamic education, and Quran classes for youth, community outreach programs, interfaith engagement, food assistance, religious services during Ramadan and Eid, as well as a wide range of volunteer and charitable activities. And whereas the city council recognizes the vital role of local government in promoting peace and justice, and affirms that Muslims everywhere deserve to live in peace and safety. And whereas it is appropriate to recognize and raise awareness of the myriad of invaluable contributions of American Muslims in California and across the nation, and to extend to them the respect, dignity, and sense of belonging that every American deserves. Now, therefore, I, Catherine Katmoy, Mayor of Fairfield, do hereby recognize April 2026 as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month and acknowledge the rich history, contributions, and guiding values of Muslims and commend Muslim communities in California for the lasting and positive impact they have made on the advancement of our city, state, and nation. Thank you. Would you like to say a few words?

Thank you.

Good evening everyone. This is really historical moment for me as an Imam and religious leader of Islamic community of Fairfield. I served this community since last 24 years. And this is the first time I'm receiving proclamation from the faithful city. I really appreciate from the bottom of the heart and thank on behalf of Musi community. At least we are recognized now in public and we really appreciate this. And God bless America, God bless our city as well. And as a Imam, as a religious leader, I'm the part of CAN activity as well. Ms. Pam knows me very well and I do serve as a volunteer chaplain in Solano County at Stanton and downtown and I do serve as a volunteer Muslim chaplain at the North Bay Hospital and I do take part in interfaith programs as well and our police chief is very kind and very helpful to us in every occasion. We call him in Ramadan especially for iftar and always he present and appreciate our invitation. So I really grateful and I thanking from the bottom of the heart to Mayor and all the council members to granting me this honor and dignity and proclamation I accept on behalf of Islamic community of Fairfield. Thank you very much.

You take a picture? Oh, here she is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mom. It's pretty awesome. We just got to see history made here, huh, Mom? Right on. All right. So now we are going to go into public comments, please, Madam Clerk.

Yes. Persons wishing to address the City Council on subjects not on the agenda but within the jurisdiction of the Council may do so at this time. The Council cannot discuss or take action on matters not on the agenda for this meeting, but council members may briefly respond to statements made or questions raised by the public, ask for clarification from staff, refer the matter to staff, request staff to report back to the council at a subsequent meeting, or place the matter on a future agenda. If you're online to speak on an agenda item, please use the raise your hand feature or press star nine on your phone. Speakers are limited to three minutes per item as determined by the mayor. And our first speaker is Matthew Badu.

Good evening, everybody. You all know who I am, so I'll say the introductions. So we're having our Markley Lane meeting. We have five new students. from the school and at first I want to, at David Gassaway and the fire chief, he's here, thank you for what you've done. It was a blessing to see the chief at our meeting because he cleared a lot of issues up. But what came up is, is what's going on with the mayor. So you all know I called in and I kind of said, hey, let's just stop this, let's not waste public funds, blah, blah, blah, right? And the kids started asking me, and they referred back to Congressman Garamendi taking students. I'm sure you're all familiar what's happening, right? And it kind of made me mad because I started looking around, Mayor, and I find out that they're still living out there outside of the city. And we discussed, you know, and what kind of upset me is is I can't believe you haven't taken any corrective action. I'm going to tell you why. The kids think it's more as a do as I say, not as I do. Because we all have rules and we have to follow them. And I got to tell you, council, I just, I'm besides myself. Anyone, reasonable person with what's been going on, would do what they're supposed to do and live within the city. And somebody told me, well, the mayor's had her life threatened, this, that, all the things that you can find on Google. Well, I find that hard to believe. And I find it harder to believe that a mayor of a city doesn't feel safe with the police department which she governs over taking care of. So what are we going to do? Are we just going to wait this out and we're going to tell them, hey, Mayor Moy is above everything. She's okay. How many boards does the mayor sit on next to other mayors and things within this county, and it's a free-for-all? I only have 52 seconds. She doesn't live there. There's people there that won't come and talk here because they've been talked to. It's okay to donate through PayPal, $2,400. And we're trying to push a measure because we need money. This is Mayor Moy. And City of Fairfield, when did you guys get into the business of the city spending time and tax money for make other people's plans and airplanes and all this? And then they write the city a check. I just don't get what's going on. I love Fairfield because our school districts in it I know that you're coming to our meeting. We want to support this tax I think it's healthy for every book and But what you have to do is Is you got a rain in your mayor your time is up sir, right? We all have rules.

This is a rule your time.

Is that my point? There's rules

Next is Joseph Joyce, to be followed by Nora Dizon.

Well, this is interesting because I was here to speak to a matter, speak to the record. On March 10th, I testified before the Coruanto proceeding regarding Mayor Moy's address. Based on my personal knowledge of her residency, I've been there multiple times. I provided evidence of her, there that week. I don't know this gentleman. That's going to be the next thing is that she's going to claim. Anyways, so the 11th, I contacted the city attorney because I was concerned of retaliation. I didn't receive a response until the 19th when I filed an administrative claim for retaliation, abuse of power, defamation. Also, Kat coordinated with Nora, who's actually coincidentally here today, to file a police report I pulled the police report. The police report was just a phone log that the records clerk was just besides herself. Nora says, I'm a friend of the mayor, and Joseph testified. That was it. Nora went on to her public page and then said, the police department was taking this very seriously because of Joseph Joyce's background. Moi, the day after I testified, she told them to look up my record, the people on these websites, and that I was a dangerous person. So over the last 18 years, I'm here today to give some perspective and clarify. Over the last 18 years, I actually worked against Don Dubain to seek Krishna Abrams, because I believed he had a revolving door of justice. I think the next year, I actually ironically, worked on Catherine Moy's campaign. I stood right here while she was administered the oath of office by my friend, Krishna Abrams. I was working on Catherine Moy's campaign as her political attack dog to attack her opponents. So I find it quite ironic now that she's saying that this is a political attack. I don't work for California forever. I have no reason to attack. I didn't... I did not... I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous. I didn't expect this is such a packed room. But I did not initiate the proceedings or the investigation. It was just the timing of the matter. I knew the information, I just didn't know when to bring it forward because I knew it, a lot of people know it, but there was no real official opportunity to bring that information forward. So I want to let you know I'm not going to be intimidated by the Mayor Fairfield. I'm going to pursue a civil rights action on day 46 if we don't resolve the matter. And yeah, I think Cat It's egregious. She's got a long history. It's indefensible that she attacks. She smears people. She's using the city's checkbook to pay off lawsuits and hire attorneys for you guys to constantly fight case after case after case over the last 10 to 12 years that she's been in office. So I got my 13 seconds left, but I think that I provided enough information. I was a little nervous coming in, but I guess I'm not the only one with the sentiment. Thank you.

Next is Nora Dizon to be followed by Mark Novak.

Hello, good evening. I want to thank you all for unanimously approving aid for City Church during the retreat. But something that has happened, I think you all need to be aware of. There is some sort of technical problem with, I guess, the classification of city church, and therefore the funds that you think you may have allocated to help them are not being made available to them. So I just want you to be aware that they are in limbo right now and it's something that needs to be kept in mind. That was all I intended to say but since I got accused here for a minute here, I blocked this gentleman from the website because I knew there would be clashing. And he decided to make up a new profile and come back online and then communicate with me with the image of him shooting a gun. I'm sorry, that is not okay. And then he proceeded to contact other people Different image. So it's very clear that this is a threat to me. And I did call the Fairfield Police Department. I did speak to an officer. I am not lying about filing a report. Anyway, thank you.

Next is Mark Novog to be followed by Tracy Nashand.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. If you've forgotten who I am, I'm a teacher in Travis Unified School District and the president of the association. High school students are at a formative point in their lives. Many are paying close attention to the world around them, trying to determine which institutions they can trust and whether their voices truly matter. The conduct of public officials plays a significant role in shaping those conclusions. Integrity is more than simply following the law. It is alignment between words and actions. It means making decisions that can be defended not only today but years from now when today's students are reflecting, when our adults reflecting on whether the system served them fairly. In school, students are taught about civic responsibility and ethical leadership. They look to institutions like this one and ask whether the lessons are reflected in reality. They notice whether leaders prioritize the long-term well-being of the community and model a responsive approach to citizenship. That example carries more weight than you might expect. These principles connect directly to a local issue. Markley Lane extension and a stop sign on Bandon Road. Each day residents sit in lines of 30 to 40 cars waiting to turn left or stop at that stop sign. I wonder how many of you have experienced this personally. This project remains critically important Thousands of people travel along Vanden Road through Whitney Drive and down Viking Lane daily, dealing with the consequences of the current traffic conditions. Apparently John Garamendi has earmarked $880,000 for Markley Lane. A similarly strong and visible commitment from this council to complete Markley Lane would demonstrate responsiveness to the students and families who rely on this corridor every day. As we enter a new political cycle, community voices carry particular weight. Families traveling this route each morning and afternoon will be paying close attention to how this issue is addressed. Taking meaningful action would earn appreciation of many of the community. This fall, I'll be distributing information about this issue to thousands of communities and voters at Markley Lane. In the few hours in each morning and afternoon a couple days a week, I can reach 2,000 to 3,000 people. The message will be on point. If meaningful progress is made, I will gladly distribute information to recognize and commend the Council and its members for their support. If not, I will encourage support for new candidates who are willing to prioritize it. Your decisions send a message not only to today's voters, but also to the students observing how civic leadership works in practice. I hope you will lead in a way they can look back on with respect. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next is Tracy Nashon to be followed by Kaylin Kelly.

Good evening, Mayor Moy, Vice Mayor Bertagni, council members, city staff, and community members. Tracy Nishan, Salon County Public Health, Tobacco Prevention and Education Program Project Director. Earlier today, the Board of Supervisors recognized April 6th through the 12th as National Public Health Week, and I don't think I could have planned a better way to recognize public health other than to be here tonight to support the youth, that are here and as well the youth that are going to be online and their leadership. The tobacco industry is marketing tactics that focus on youth, persons of color, and also other populations such as the LGBTQ community. My former manager, Robin Cox, who is a Fairfield resident, over 30 years ago started the tobacco prevention education program. And she would say, how can we support a product that when used as directed is known to kill? On April 14, 1994, almost 32 years ago, The executives of all of the major tobacco industries were in front of Congress and they testified under oath that they did not believe nicotine was an addictive product. It was shortly after that that the truth came about the addiction of nicotine and verified by documents, secret documents by the tobacco industry that were released by Dr. Stan Glantz from the University of San Francisco. And it was in the early 2000s when the efforts of public health and the community advocates that the tobacco industry was on the ropes. It was shortly then thereafter that they pivoted. They created the vape industry with over 15,000 flavored products. Again, public health focused the efforts revealing the smoke screen of vapor. The tobacco industry is once again pivoting, creating new addictive smokeless nicotine products such as ZEN. And many of you may have heard about how many ZEN can you have in your mouth. ZEN, are you an upper decker or a lower decker? And with many influencers really trying to encourage, again, people to use this product, saying that it is not as harmful, but yet we still don't know the results of this because of the new product and the synthetic nicotine salts that are being created. Here we are three decades later still battling this addictive product, known the risks of addiction and harmful health effects. We see tobacco and nicotine as a health equity issue. And even if we are needed to be here for another 30 years, we will be here for another 30 years as public health to try to prevent the use and exposure to youth and for persons who would like to try to quit the tobacco products. If I may also give this to the clerk, this is a publication. It is not on your best reading list. It is not a part of Oprah's Reading Book Club. But it is a pretty good read that actually talks about and discusses the harmful effects of tobacco and the marketing tactics of the tobacco industry.

Thank you. Next is Kaelin Kelly to be followed by Jesus Pantoja.

Good evening, council members. My name is Kaelin Kelly and I am the director of a youth organization based in Fairfield called Youth Tobacco Advocacy and Prevention Project. I graduated from USF with a master's in urban and public affairs. I own an intellectual property worth over $130 million annually and earned media. But let me tell you where I was when I was 16 years old. I grew up in Bayview-Hunters Point, which is one of the most disadvantageous areas that a youth can grow up in. When I tell you I was addicted to tobacco at the age of 16, I'm not lying. I went to recovery center after recovery center after recovery center, but my relatives did not stop smoking and the tobacco retailers in my neighborhood continued to sell me Newports. The youth that I work with have come before many of you asking for a meeting. What they want to do is speak to you about how you can protect them so that the trajectory of their future can be as bright as possible. I'm 50 years old, but they don't have to wait until they're 50 to be successful. If you work with a community and you work with law enforcement who will shortly be bringing a tobacco retail license before you, You can make sure that all of those opportunities that I didn't get, they will have to take advantage of. When you look in the city of Fairfield, and you all know what I'm talking about, there are certain areas that are disproportionately impacted by tobacco retailers. And I'm going to tell you, they don't give a damn who they're selling tobacco to. And we all know it. We've all seen it. We've all heard it. And we've all heard testimony from the youth telling you that this is happening. What are we going to do about it? Let's protect our youth. They surely deserve it. I work with youth that are going to Yale, Berkeley, Stanford. We need an ordinance that matches their vigor and enthusiasm for success and is that aggressive protecting their interest they will come back to Fairfield they will be your constituents they will be your commissioners they will be your law enforcement every single service occupation in your municipality they will occupy let's protect them not just for their future but for the future of the city of Fairfield thank you sir

Next is Jesus Pantoja, to be followed by Daniel Gonzalez.

Does the timer start on its own? It'll start, yeah.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and other members of the council. My name is Jesus, and I'm a 17-year-old junior currently attending early college high school. And for nearly one year now, I've been a part of YTAP, as Kaylin mentioned, which stands for Youth Tobacco Prevention Advocacy and Policy Project. It's a mouthful. It's like a group of advocates that work towards securing a more safer future from tobacco addiction for the youth. Our group has already had the opportunity to present to some of you, and we're very grateful for that. This evening I'd like to talk about the very serious issue that is the vaping epidemic. As Kaylin mentioned, I'm sure we've all seen it, whether it be on social media, on the streets, anywhere really. Did you know that nearly one in every five 11th graders in FSUSD have vaped tobacco? Not only that, but vapes oftentimes serve as a gateway drug and can lead to users developing risk of addiction to stronger substances like cocaine. I know this because I had a friend who started with vaping, then weed, and then stronger substances. I also know this because my older sister who went to high school in Fairfield, she struggled with addiction because she found a dealer and it hooked her just because that's what the tobacco industry does. It tore our family apart and we had to rebuild. We thankfully rebuilt. I'm here to encourage you to agenda the tobacco retail license in your council meetings so you can bring forward a policy that can address this crisis. You are going to shortly receive a collective letter that just a handful of youth leaders have signed to showcase their support for this. The youth are leaders of the future, after all, and we must invest in their well-being. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next is Daniel Gonzalez, to be followed by Terrence Strong.

Hello, my name is Daniel Gonzalez. I want to thank all of you for allowing me to stand here today and present to you. I am a junior here at Fairfield High School, and I am also a member of the YTAB Youth Tobacco Advocacy Policy Project for around a year now. I'm also a Fairford Youth Commission member, as some of you may know this. I have been on the Youth Commission for around a year and a half. And today I'm here to talk about the tobacco retail license. As you may know, many Retailers are often disproportionately targeting minority communities. This is especially seen in the east side of Fairfield. As you may know, this is where our low-income minority groups are situated. With tobacco retailers situating themselves in these areas where disadvantaged groups are settled as well as near schools and other community areas where youth or youth recreational areas. It is clear to see that Big Tobacco is targeting youth, especially those in disadvantaged communities. This is what the tobacco retail license prepares to combat. The tobacco retail license is prepared to further enforce California state laws, which haven't received much enforcement, especially in Fairfield. We've seen in Vallejo how the tobacco retail license has helped their community. And the tobacco retail license also hopes to set proximity limits on schools and other retailers, or on how far retailers can be from schools and how they can be from each other. This limiting clusters in areas that are disproportionately targeted. Last night, as a cohort of the youth commission, we were planning to vote on a resolution for the tobacco retail license and bring it up to city council. However, we weren't able to, We weren't able to vote on it since the meeting was adjourned early since we didn't have enough members. Next month we do plan to vote on this topic and hopefully bring a resolution to the city council. As my friend Jesus has previously mentioned, we will be sending a collective letter. We hope to agendize the tobacco retail license and encourage putting it on the agenda. Thank you so much for your time.

I just wanted to thank you and let you know that we did get a grant for this. We are working on it. And as soon as staff is ready, I will agendize it. So it'll be great for you to bring a resolution. I love the work. I liked meeting with you all. It was great. So we aren't letting any grass grow under our feet. We are moving forward with this, all right?

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for coming.

Have a great rest of your nights.

Thank you. Next is Terrence Strong.

If you would be so kind as to take one of the passes down, please.

Good evening, my family. Mayor Moore, you're not smiling right now. I want you to smile like you were smiling for that young man. There we go. There we go. There we go. Terrence Strong.

That's my name. You know Terrence Strong.

That's right. So Terrence Strong, the regional director of MV Transportation. We operate the Fairfield bus service, that wonderful service that you see the pretty blue buses running up and down the field. So I'm here to ask a simple question. No money donations, no political donations, just a message of love, just a message of encouragement. We are in a... a system right now with Meals on Wheels statewide, and we are in the competition to run to make sure that we get 17,000 messages to our most important, our seniors. And that, again, is for Meals on Wheels. So something really simple takes you a moment just to say thank you. We appreciate you. That's all it is, guys. I really appreciate your time, and thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mann.

See the smile? There it is.

I don't have any other speaker cards for public comment. Did anyone else wish to speak on public comment? And there are no hands raised on line, Mayor.

All right. Very good then. So now we're going to turn to the Housing Authority.

convened joint meeting of the City Council and Housing Authority. The holding of a joint meeting of the City Council and Housing Authority entitles the council members to receive additional compensation of $35 for attending this joint meeting. Resolution HA 202602, Fairfield Housing Authority Public Housing Agency Annual Plan. Approving the Fairfield Housing Authority's Public Housing Agency Annual Plan for fiscal year 2026 to 2027. And our presenter is Tanya Tran, Housing Division Manager.

Thank you, Karen. Good evening, Chair and Housing Authority Commissioners. My name is Tanya Tran.

Thank you, David.

and I'm Housing Division Manager for the Housing Authority. The Fairfield Housing Authority opens the public hearing for consideration of the Public Housing Agency Annual Plan for fiscal year 26-27. This is a document that HUD requires the Housing Authority to complete each year as a condition of continued funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8. The PHA plan includes two parts. The five year plan, which each housing authority submits to HUD once every fifth year. The second component is the annual plan, which is submitted to HUD every year. And it covers policies and procedures of the agency. This evening, we are considering the second component, which is the annual plan. The PHA annual plan outlines information such as the number of project based vouchers increased by an additional 50 units. The tenant based rental assistant program, also known as TBRA, has been approved by the state for the housing authority to restart in 2026. And reporting the housing authority section eight management program score, also known as CMAP. For the fiscal year 24-25, we are deemed a high performer agency, according to HUD, which is great, a personal goal of mine. So now we've achieved it, so now I can leave. No, I'm just kidding. The PHA plan also gives an update on PHA progress of its goals outlined in the five-year plan and its strategies to adhere to affirmatively furthering fair housing requirements. With over 900 vouchers authorized and HUD allocations of over $10 million in rental subsidy funding, the HCV program is the City of Fairfield's single most impactful program to address and prevent homelessness. These vouchers provide eligible households with monthly subsidy paid directly to the landlord, to help provide stable housing conducive to self-sufficiency. Units assisted by these vouchers are determined primarily by the participant family, consistent with fair housing laws. This evening, I'm seeking your approval of the PHA annual plan to meet HUD's requirements and continue providing critical rental assistance to extremely low and low-income households in Fairfields. And I'm available for questions if you have any.

Do we have any public speakers on this?

We do not. But you do need to open the public hearing.

I'll do that. Now it's open. No public speakers? None online? All right. I'm going to close it. And I'm going to bring it back to council for discussion questions.

Nothing? Yes. Just a comment. Thank you for the report. So I sit, as you might know, on the Cap Solano board, along with Council Member Carr. And so one of the biggest preventers of homelessness is rental assistance, so keeping people housed. And so it can be considered a low-hanging fruit. And so just thank you for the work, because it is impactful. And it keeps our families housed. And it's a small thing that has a very big impact on our community. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? Yes, Councilman Carr.

Just, like I said, a comment as well. Sitting on the board, and we hear it a lot, is I believe the percentage was like 64% are one paycheck away from being homeless. And the help that you provide in an emergency situation, somebody gets sick, it's just awesome that it's there. And again, I want to thank you, too. The best possible outcome for homelessness is what you're doing. Thank you.

Thank you.

ANYBODY ELSE? ALL RIGHT, THEN. ALL RIGHT, THEN. ALL RIGHT, THEN. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE OR NOT APPROVE.

APPROVE OR NOT APPROVE. APPROVE OR NOT APPROVE. I WILL SECOND THAT. I WILL SECOND THAT.

I WILL SECOND THAT. I'LL MAKE A MOTION, I'M SORRY. I'LL MAKE A MOTION, I'M SORRY. I'LL MAKE A MOTION, I'M SORRY. NO SECOND. NO SECOND. NO SECOND. OKAY. OKAY. OKAY. ALL IN FAVOR? ALL IN FAVOR? ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. AYE.

AYE. AYE. THAT WAS UNANIMOUS. THAT WAS UNANIM The consent calendar, please. All matters listed on the consent calendar are to be approved with one motion unless a member of the city council or the public requests that separate action be taken on a specific item. I don't have any speaker cards for consent. Did anyone wish to speak on any of the N items on consent?

NO. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. ANYBODY NEED TO PULL ANYTHING? CREW? NO. ALL RIGHT. THEN I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE. SO MOVED. I'LL SECOND THAT. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. AYE. THAT WAS UNANIMOUS. ALL RIGHT. SO NOW WE'RE GOING TO GO TO NEW BUSINESS.

I'm sorry, 01, Cordelia-Sassoon Valley Gateway Study Session. And our presenter is Jonathan Atkinson, Principal Planner.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Tonight I'm going to provide you with an overview of the general plan vision for the Cordelia-Sassoon Valley Gateway property. I will also introduce two current development proposals that do not align with this general plan vision. Furthermore, staff would like to know if the City Council is open to a new general plan vision for the property, particularly one with auto-oriented uses as well as health and medical uses. If the City Council is amenable, staff would like direction as to the expected level of public engagement for a general plan amendment and the quality of design for the development. Because this is not a public hearing, staff will not ask the City Council to take action on the development proposals. In December 2024, the City Council adopted a new general plan as part of the Fairfield Forward 2050 initiative. The general plan is a long-term comprehensive vision for Fairfield. It guides future development decisions on resource management, development, and public safety through goal and policy objectives. The general plan identifies multiple infill focus areas in which major development is anticipated through 2050. Approximately 44 acres of land at the southeastern corner of Sassoon Valley Road and Business Center Drive is an infill focus area and designated as Cordelia-Sassoon Valley Gateway mixed use in the general plan. Under the general plan vision, the property serves as a destination gateway to Suisun Valley. The general plan envisions the property as a mixed use lifestyle center with a combination of retail, dining, tasting rooms, entertainment, office, civic and recreational uses, as well as parks, housing, and lodging. Under the general plan, The design would emphasize walkability with interconnected streets, large sidewalks, outdoor dining areas, plazas, gathering areas, and buildings that are oriented towards the street. The image on the left is a rendering from the general plan simply for visualization purposes only. In May 2024, Discovery Builders filed multiple applications as part of the Suisun Valley Place project for city review. The project involves two commercial buildings, two freestanding drive-through restaurants, a service station with both a convenience market and a drive-through restaurant, a car wash, outdoor plazas, and an electronic freeway sign on approximately 9.7 acres of land. This slide depicts architectural elevations for the two proposed drive-through restaurants. There are no specific businesses identified at this time. This slide before you depicts the architectural elevations for the two commercial buildings. And once again, at this time there are no specific businesses identified. This slide depicts the main architectural elevations for the service station as well as the car wash. The convenience market would also include a space for an office, and as I mentioned, would include a drive-through establishment. In January 2025, North Bay Health purchased approximately 30 acres of the property to develop a new medical center, medical office building, rooftop helipad, a central utility plant, and various gardens, plazas, and green spaces. North Bay, which currently operates a medical center at 1200 Beagle Wilson, Boulevard would relocate this operation to the property, would relocate its current operation to this new property. Some of the surface parking spaces that you see on the site would be developed or provided on approximately 6.7 acres of land currently owned by the city. There would be multiple surface parking lots as well as underground parking beneath some of the buildings. And I just want to note that North Bay, as of today, has not filed any formal applications for development. This slide depicts the medical center entrance from the northeast. And again, this is another architectural rendering depicting the medical center entrance, or medical center, sorry, from the southeast and the southwest. And lastly, this slide depicts the medical office building from the northwest and the northeast. Once again, both of these development proposals do not align with the current general plan designation for the property. It does not envision auto-oriented uses such as drive-through restaurants, service stations, or car washes, nor does it envision a medical center for the property. Staff would like to determine whether there is general interest in an alternative vision for the property as laid out in the general plan. Staff does request city council feedback on the following areas or questions. Are you amenable to a no general plan vision for the property? What are your general thoughts on auto-oriented uses on the property? What are your thoughts on health and medical related uses for the property? What level of engagement would you expect for the general plan amendment for this particular case? And lastly, do you have Any thoughts or what are your expectations on the quality of design? And specifically, are there specific design aspects that you would like to see? For example, more public plazas, surface parking versus garage parking, different building materials. Some of the examples for design. Thank you for your time. I'd be happy to answer any questions that the city council has. I also want to note that we do have some representatives from Discovery Builders and North Bay, and they're available if any questions arise. Thank you.

First, I'd like to take any public comment.

Yes, I have Larry Trilups.

Hi Larry.

The officer at North Bay Health so happy to be here tonight and obviously answer any questions you may have.

Alrighty. Council, do you have questions of him now?

I have one.

Yes, go ahead.

You mentioned they'll relocate from the downtown Fairfield site near the mall to this new one, potentially. What would happen to that old property?

We're looking at a bunch of options for the old property in the future. We don't know now, but North Bay has invested a lot into that facility over the years, and we still think there could be uses for certain medical services to exist there, potentially other services and space needs for the organization. As you know, healthcare, it's always growing, has high demand, and I think we would see something there in the future. We just don't know why yet at this time.

would it continue operating in its current form or would that change?

That would probably change. This would be a replacement facility that we're looking at for acute services. So, you know, ER, ICU beds, things like that. Could be possible, you know, depending what's going on at that point in time, whether there's long-term care. Many of you may have heard we got a behavioral health grant as we look to expand what we're doing with behavioral health services. There could be needs around that. There's just a variety of options at this point in time. There's still a very viable tower with surgical suites if we wanted to look at continuing to run an ASC. But again, the process we're looking at is very far into the future, years into the future. And so we haven't put any specific plans, but still see value in that property and what we could possibly do there in the future.

The reason I ask, my one small concern would be you guys relocate and it becomes vacated and it's just sitting empty completely, and then it becomes a gaping hole, which I'd prefer not to see. So I guess I'm curious, would your transition, by the time this all takes place, would that be turned over to somebody else around the same time period? Or do you envision that there would be a period of time where it would just cease operations completely?

At this point in time, I wouldn't say it would ever cease operations completely, that we would be making plans to transition it to whether it's someone we're partnering with, joint venturing with, doing something else with. That's things we'd always be looking forward to. It's just sitting there idle by itself. I don't think does anybody any good, especially us, at that point in time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind. How soon will you have plans for the new hospital in our hands?

It's going to be a little while still. I mean, this is very conceptual where we're at in this process right now. So what you saw there was a product of us working with architects to get to what we called bridging documents. So we were able to put a stack of what we think we might need within the building. We're currently doing design with our teams right now to say what that could be. In a perfect world, if we were moving dirt, we'd like to hopefully move dirt in 2027. But there's a lot of steps in this process, a lot of things that we have to go ahead and look to put in place to make sure we're there and we're lined up for it.

Right, because I'm working on one of those things with the Solano Transportation Authority. It has to do with the ramps that come off the freeway. And so I'm very well aware of that. I wanted to ask you about the Behavioral Health Grant. From the story that you all put out, it said that it would be there. And so I'm wondering, I had questions about What kind of services would be offered there? Right now I know you have 5150s who are brought to your hospital or just walk into your hospital. Is that something that would continue at that site or would that be at the new hospital?

The behavioral health grant, what we're looking at is adjacent to our current facility that we would do something there on campus with us. Right now, the plan is to run a 24-hour, what we're calling behavioral health urgent care, where people can voluntarily go in, receive services, and we think that's really important. We're excited about the grant. I think as a health system, and I've worked in health systems in different parts of the country, you know we've really taken a look at behavioral health and put a plan together to what do we think we could address that's going to help the community help us as an organization and you know really address what is a large issue in health care for everybody it impacts us all across the the delivery system it impacts us in our communities and where we live And, you know, I think all of us could say, including myself, I mean, we probably had family members that could have or need services. And so I'm excited that we're bringing something like this to the area. One other thing to circle back a little bit to when we talk about if we were to move dirt by 2027 on things, we're looking at a phase concept right now that we would probably build a medical office building first. And, you know, just, you know, we throw terms around in healthcare, and we may realize we speak faster and don't let people understand what we're saying. A medical office building is where we would have physicians mainly located, potentially a cancer center, imaging centers, lab. A lot of the outpatient services that you would receive would be through an MOB, and that would potentially be the first step in this process before we look to the acute facility at some point in time.

I see. And what about the folks who currently live in the area, and some of them are not financially able, they don't have vehicles, and they are concerned about getting out to the news place once it's built. Is there any thought about that?

I can't say we would have a plan for that, per se, and I don't know what transportation's gonna look like seven to 10 years from now, too. Who knows, we all may be driving Uber somewhere or driving in different ways. I think we look, though, You know, we're an independent nonprofit health system. We're here to serve the community. If there were needs or things that we're seeing gaps with, I think that's part of what our teams are always working on. You know, we have a philanthropy arm that's always trying to do things for the community. We have a lot of people. Some of our team members are here tonight. Their job is just to engage communities and find out needs and say, where can we help if needed? So I think if it got to there was some glaring need that we could somehow help be part of that solution, we wouldn't be opposed to that. We would want to step in and try to help.

Right. Perfect. Do you have a developer yet, somebody who would be actually doing the work to build out there?

We do not.

You do not have anybody. Okay. And then I have a question. It might be a little uncomfortable, but, you know, sometimes I do that. Some years ago, it didn't seem like that long ago, North Bay was in trouble financially. Yeah?

Okay. I've been here 18 months.

Oh, well, this isn't a good question for you. I was just wondering how you rebounded and came on strong and kind of like it.

No, I think, you know, North Bay has been doing a lot of great things as a health system. I think there's team members there that years ago, you know, what North Bay went through is not uncommon with a lot of health systems we're going through right now. Sixty percent of the hospitals in California are not making money. 60. even some of the big names that we read about and we understand they have challenges too um that are coming through in different ways and so it is not a you know easy industry per se but it's one of those that you know we like to say we we need to make money to take care of people but we're not in the business of taking care of people to make money And so that's the fine balance. It's a nonprofit local health system we're always trying to strive for and want to make sure that we can do the best we can. But the funds we make, the great thing about North Bay Health, and I really hope the council appreciates this, it's an independent local nonprofit health system. I think in the state of California there might be 11 of those. So the idea that everything we're talking about here, whether it's our building in Green Valley or somewhere else, the decisions aren't going from here to another city or another state or across the country to be made for us. This is our people, our teams, our community making decisions. I'm really proud to say when you look at the renderings here, that's our doctors, our nurses, our admissions people, our reps, our business services people. We had a lot of sessions with hundreds of people across our system to say, what do we want to build for the future? What should it look like? What does patient care look like? What is flow? And some great themes came from this. One is we want it to be a destination. We wanted a place for people to come. And health care doesn't always do that. And so we're talking about a lot of different aspects of this project. There's different renderings where we talk about a garden on that shelf up there potentially, walking areas. We do want to have space between the buildings where visitors and employees can go and relax, so to speak. What we call a zen space, jokingly, that is nice and you can do that. We're talking a lot of our connector area there between the hospital and the medical office building. What kind of food, retail, cooking things things like that we could do that incorporate with what this community is about that we're really trying to think outside the box of creating something really special down the road so it's it's a lot of work it's going to be a heavy lift to get there it's not always going to be easy but i mean this could be such an asset for this community for decades to come uh i hope it really um you know is seen that way by people and uh obviously we're always open to talk about it and where we're at in the process

I personally think it's exciting. I have one ask of you, and that is for the mental health facility. we really need. I would like for North Bay to work with our police department to make sure that any impacts, because as you know, we have retired police officers who work for North Bay now for security. I know people who work in the hospital. I was born and raised here, so I know them very well. And so I want to make sure that it's not going to cause any kind of more calls to the area. So if you would work with our folks over in the PD to make sure that we are good.

And I think as we think about the facility and what's gonna be there, I do come back to, we always like to jump to what we think behavioral health is or isn't, and I think it touches everybody here. And so we are always working with security and police. We have great relationships with that. Security is always important when you're running a health system. You want it to be a place for people to come, but you want it to be safe for them also.

Absolutely. So I appreciate that because if we need to hire more officers, you guys are going to have to pay for them. Yeah. All right. Well, just being honest. Oh, yes. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you, Mayor. So I really appreciate North Bay Health. Over the last four years, getting to meet your CEO and people within your organization has been amazing. But learning about how special you are in the community, I really see you as a health care gem. in the community. And so it wasn't mentioned, but I wanted to say just out loud that the fact that you're a level two trauma center, that you're part of the Mayo Clinic Care Network, like right here in Fairfield, what you're known for, strokes, kidney failure, heart failure care. That all makes you just super special and I'm proud to have you all here and I'm very thrilled that you're, if approved, you'll come to our area here, well my area, Green Valley. But I do have two questions. One is surrounding traffic flow. The traffic flow, Nitzel Road and crossing over from that other side of 80 West, what is that going to look like with a trauma center there? What are your plans?

I think there's going to be work that's probably going to have to be done in the future. I don't know if we would have all the answers to that tonight. Obviously, you know, next step in this process would be us be getting to environmental, and environmental would take a look at traffic at that point in time and what that means. You know, we've looked at it from a campus standpoint, at least the ambulances flowing in and out and things like that. We do feel it is closer to IAD from an ambulance standpoint, which I think is something that's better for traffic flow in that regard and patients trying to get to the hospital. But we do have work to do there.

Yeah, for sure. You definitely do. Because just taking Uber, they get turned around in that loop. So I think you're going to have a problem unless it's really almost redone. Other thing I want to ask is about the number of employees. The one thing that stands out about you all, because I've walked the halls of North Bay, is I don't know if I, or maybe y'all had them hidden somewhere, tucked away, people that weren't happy, but it just seemed to be just staff that is very content with their workplace and how they service the clients. And I thought that was pretty impressive. What does a... North Bay relocation at this new location what does that look like is that an expansion or you just taking what you have and just layering it in this new location I appreciate the question that the drawing you're looking at there actually that facility could potentially go up to 280 beds which right now you know currently in Fairfield we're operating approximately about 150 beds

So quite a sizable footprint growth if we could have that. And I think one of the things you're doing is we're trying to look a decade ahead. We're trying to look two decades ahead. And there's a lot of exciting things going on here. And if they come to fruition and people keep moving to the area where you never want to be, and I was talking to a hospital about this today, they're a 150-bed hospital that has probably demand for 200-plus patients in any given time. That means people waiting in the hallways, people waiting in the ERs, It's not the ideal place to be as a patient. So we wanna think about having capacity in the future as we're designing this and being able to build that campus out. For the employees, I think it's gonna mean a growth of employees for us in the future. If you're running 280 beds instead of 150, I think we're bringing more people to work here, creating jobs here. I think that part's great. And I think from a facility standpoint, I mean, it's amazing what our teams do in the facility we're in today, right? and you can imagine a facility that has a brand new aesthetic feel, off stage areas, things like that, I think it's only gonna make our teams even better in the future. And to think about technology being integrated into a new building, I mean, when you're seeing what they're doing with hospital design around the country, I was talking to someone in Houston where they're building ambient listening rooms so the doctor can spend more time speaking with the patient and not looking at a computer or not looking at an iPad and things like that. Those are the type of things we want to think about as we think about the facility of the future here at North Bay. And this is just something, I mean personally it excites me, not everyone gets to touch a project like this in their career in healthcare. And it's really exciting I think for the community.

And then just final question. So of course, Solano Community College is right down the street, and Touro is down the road. So does your growth include embracing our students as interns, as fellows, a pathway to be employed? Is that part of your master plan?

absolutely we've always had a strong relationship in terms of the nursing program with the local colleges in particular down the street with us there i think in terms of toro one of the exciting things is we're bringing on medical residents in the future we will have a residency program so that means bringing more people you know i hear the speaker earlier talking about the kids going to yale harvard wherever well Hopefully they'll all come back someday, be our next CEO, be our next set of doctors, nurses, people taking care of this community. So, yeah, we need that. You know, people in health care is never going to go away. We want people who want to care for people. And, you know, it's a great industry, I think, for people to have a career in.

I'm going to have some questions. I just want to get through public speakers first. Okay. Just probably be able to call you back, because that would be cool. Okay. That would be fine.

Thanks a million.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. I have a card from Louis Parsons of Discovery Builders, and then I have one other card as well. Thank you.

Mayor, how are you? How are you guys? Thank you guys so much for taking the time to listen to me. We've been working on this a while as a team. A few years back when we had put our sort of mixed use plan together, a combination of residential and commercial as outlined in the staff report, We were approached by North Bay, and they explained their vision to us, and quite frankly, after getting to know them better and speaking with them and looking at what they're doing, we just thought this was really an opportunity to do something really transformative. And so we're just very excited to be working with them and very excited to see what they're bringing to this community. As you know, our company is very invested in this community, building homes for many years and commercial development. And so we've done many iterations of our site plan. And what we're asking now is to go away from that mixed-use concept and now allow for this hospital use and then allow for the remnant that we kept, commercial uses. And so we've provided this concept together, best in class. We've engaged John Kumpelik, very well-known broker to look at users to come to this spot as you can imagine knowing that there's this hospital coming there's a lot of interest that being said without you know the amendment to land use and and basically green lighting this it's hard for us to really nail down you know what who's going to go here things like that but we just think it's going to be unbelievable long term It's a great opportunity to take that southern portion of the site and put commercial there. And we're just really excited. We've made different iterations. We've done some public outreach already, even though we haven't even started the entitlement process. We think this corner and this vision, we've incorporated this communal space based on staff feedback where you can have sort of outdoor gatherings. We want there to be a lot of synergy with the hospital. But yeah, we're just hoping that there is at least the The thumbs up for staff to at least move forward with the land use amendments that allow us to pursue commercial and also for North Bay to pursue their hospital. And we're really excited. I'm here to answer any questions. And I really appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight.

Thank you. We'll continue to take public comment and then perhaps call you back up if that's OK.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Rodney Courtney.

Good evening. I'll be very short on this. I live adjacent to this potential project and I just really want the developers to include the neighbors. I drove by saying a sign only to find out that this was being a potential development. So that's all I'm concerned about is letting us know who live nearby.

Makes all the sense in the world. We'll make sure you do. Thank you. Thank you.

Uh-huh. Did anyone else wish to speak on this matter?

No.

No hands raised on mine, Mayor.

Thank you. All right. I'm going to bring it back for discussion here. Questions? Madam Vice Mayor.

You just framed my question for North Bay. So one of the questions, and let me preface this by saying I am a North Bay fan. Love North Bay. You've treated my children, me, my family, and it's always been absolute A plus excellence. every level so thank you for doing that thank you for doing that and my question is what the gentleman just mentioned one of the questions that staff wants us to address tonight is the level of community engagement that we expect around this proposed development so my question for My question is just that. What is the community engagement plan for rolling out, for introducing rolling out and continuing the development of this project over time? That would be my question for North Bay. And I'm sure someone here would, there he is. Come on back up. Community engagement. I know you're great at a lot of things, including that. So I'm wondering what your strategy, prospectively, would be in this regard to make sure that we include our residents and surrounding entities in the process of this coming to fruition.

I think we've thought about it a couple ways, and we do want to have the community engaged. But one thing is, even through the environmental, if we can get to that, that mandates we have to have community sessions. Community engagement is part of that also. So I think there's things we could do around there. The question comes up about traffic flow, things like that. I think there's things that will help us in our design and how we're planning things to say what can make it great for that area. And it's one of those that we have to have a community involved. we did have our community involved on the inside like i mentioned with our employees and people helping us with the design but we need the the outside also um you know we're not to the point where we have sessions set up yet or we're that far along yet but when we do get to that point there will be community engagement thank you you're welcome councilman thomason so for north bay just i'll ask a few questions ask questions roll around we might have some more um

I guess I'm speaking about visions of what I'd like to see. The hotel, you know, they're going to have a lot of people there, a lot of visitors. Is that on the radar?

We personally aren't hotel developers, so we'd like to see a hotel down there also, though. And, you know, I know there's people on our real estate teams that have thought about options of what we could potentially do there, and we would welcome that also. But we're not building a hotel within the hospital.

Parking garage?

Parking garage, right now what we're doing is we're evaluating, as you heard in the comments earlier, we're looking at potential underground parking. We do have adequate surface parking as it is. We do have plans where we could maybe do a parking garage if we wanted to down the road, but that's obviously not where the priority is right now to say, let's build a parking garage there. You know, the way the lot's designed, we do have options for other medical office buildings in the future, even further down the road. But, you know, we love the idea of having adequate surface parking. I mean, you know, today, I'm sure many of you have parked at our facility. Sometimes we like to think it's getting better. We're always working hard at that to make it better. And every health system I worked at my career has struggled with parking in some degree. So to have a Greenfield space and address parking, we want to get it right the first time when we do it.

And then I had include the neighborhood too. So that's all for me right now. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for coming to Fairfield. Thank you. Okay.

Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you. I have a question for Louis at Discovery Builder. Hi, how are you? So, Rodney, you cued this up perfectly. So, that space is so special. So, the Suisun Valley Gateway. In that space, we're thinking about the tourists. We're thinking about students at Solano Community College. We're thinking about medical staff. We're thinking about people that just pop off the I-80 and want a break because, of course, so many people pass through going to and from work. And, of course, we're talking about our local community. Our neighbors. And so that space being so special, you know, I know you don't know, you don't have a sense of, you know, this is all kind of new, exciting. This has to be a place. uh queued up really and you you don't quite know um what's going to go there but i want to make sure that the city council kind of keeps uh i don't know where we are in the controls of that like we don't want you to uh to put a mcdonald's there sure no offense McDonald's so you know we we don't you know so well I say we I I don't want a McDonald's there you know we just don't want any old thing there so but so I wanted to give you that you know at least my vision of you know what the aesthetics to me on the renderings it looks right but I just want you to be thoughtful just you know because y'all are really good about calling and saying hey look at this what do you think yeah and I just wanted to say it publicly so you know what I'm thinking and just to quickly respond to that you know I think what you're gonna see

you know, largely because of the investment of what North Bay is doing and the vision they have, but also just because of the location, you know, just the amount of traffic. This is going to be sort of best in class. You're going to get, if this comes forward and you're allowed to get these commercial users, you're going to be able to identify. These buildings, we have to come up with something for the purpose of an analysis so the city can conduct their environmental review. And so that's what we've done. We've taken that corner of the site and made it this communal space. We're thinking of those as a bunch of multi-tenant buildings that could be those things that could serve the community college, that could be a place for people to come from the hospital. but what what we see happening is you know if this actually becomes a reality we're going to really be able to be particular on on who goes there and we want it to be you know you know the owner of my company he's going to retain this we're going to own this and it's going to be part of the whole concept for this 40 acres that that it has that synergy with the hospital so Without us getting there, I don't know who's going to use this, but they're gonna be top end users just because it's a top notch site. It's gonna be unbelievable. And we're really looking forward to it. The architecture we've put together is preliminary. We'd come in, refine things as we defined users, but we really tried to do something really upscale and sort of honor that idea. And, you know, at least originally when we were working on this, we were proposing residential combined with this mixed use component. Obviously the residential now is going to be the hospital. And so we're, you know, that's our goal. And I did want to address one comment from Mr. Tonneson. As far as the hotel, we did show some hotels originally. your trouble find trouble getting traction with it but we do you think now that this is coming further along uh... there's other uh... piece of land actually really nearby that were in uh... pretty aggressive discussions with and and talking to north about this we do you think that once more they come to mind there will be a need for more hotel there are some great operators there in some hotels are now but uh... once um this is built there's probably going to be a need for that even you know hotels and then sort of uh like the the sort of midterm uh uh stays and so that's something that we're we're looking at um partnering with i can't go too much into details but want to want to implement in in this very nearby area because that's a very good point i think that'd be absolutely necessary and good for the area and uh and good for the hospital and also uh good for the city

Councilman Carr.

Yes, and you are working in conjunction with their developer to where everything's a smooth transition from property to property, I take it.

Yeah, I've been working very closely with Chris and Larry and their whole team, and they've been fantastic. But we have an agreement, a collaboration agreement. We're working with same civil consultants. And so the idea is we're doing everything hand in hand. All our plans are being shared, street circulation. So we're not, this is what I'm doing, this is what you're doing. We're doing this essentially together, but separate, if that makes sense.

Fair enough.

Other questions for him? Is there any chance that you would build the hospital?

Well, that's for the guy that I work for. And we've done some commercial development, probably not to that scale. But again, we're just really excited to be part of this. And we think what North Bay is doing is fantastic. And we're going to work hand in hand with them to make this a reality.

Perfect. I appreciate you. Thank you.

Thanks.

Lewis. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm along same lines as Kay with the upper end. We've had some renderings come before us that we've had some differences of opinion on. So I think in the future, when you come back with this, I love the project, love the project. But you know, I'm sure we'll have more to talk about when we when you get in front of us again understood. Thank you. Thank you.

Please just one more Council.

Yeah Councilwoman thank you along the same lines and just looking at the running. I know these are. It's a draft for the most part. When I like my vision is still it being a destination getaway. Larry talked about North Bay being a destination and obviously like these needs to match. And you know, you've had those comments before about making them these high quality spaces. And so when I see FC on these buildings, does that stand for, what does that stand for? Like on the buildings, on the little renderings, there's an FC? Is that fast casual?

No, I think it's probably a reference to the legend, and I'm sorry I don't know that, but it's a, I'm sorry, I'd have to look at why we have that acronym there, but no, it's not, it's a.

It's not, because it just looks like, it looks like it could be a drive-through of some sort for some of those, and so.

What we did there is we took a, I mean, it's a large building, you know, and working with John, you know, there is a desire to have that drive-through component, but because of the size of that, and typically, you know, when we're doing this from an environmental review standpoint, we want to analyze this. We want to really analyze this. show a detailed queuing analysis and what is the maximum impact. And so that is utilized for this environmental review. But then when we come, if we have a multi-tenant building and we come in, that here's the user, here's what we're doing, there could very well be a user there that doesn't want to drive through. But we're showing this and we're showing the impacts of that. thinking you know on that corner you know we on that upper corner here that we would think is like a like a high-end you know like a bakery or coffee shop or somebody you know we're just thinking think of how many people are going to be coming to this hospital you know think about the a nice coffee bistro a place for people to go all you know that's our vision let's get get get a template approved get the environmental done but then when we get the user let's finalize it and so that's really what our goal is the retail one in real retail two which is sort of the the sort of right angle at the corner. We pushed that to Business Center, and we pushed that to Suisun Valley so you're not looking at parking, and the parking's behind. Then we had like this sort of gathering area in between, and we just sort of look at that as, you know, three, four, seven tenants that could go in there. Really high-end retail restaurants, a place to wine taste. You'd also have that opening there that could walk to the hospital, so you could have You know, different events. We looked at a bunch of different examples. A veranda down in Concord has that sort of space. This is actually quite a bit bigger than that because we just think there's going to be a lot of outdoor activity. So we do have a good plan. We've really thought about this. But what I can tell you is we're going to massage this and we're going to adjust it as we get users and be working with the city because we want it to be fantastic.

Okay, yeah, because I'm looking for public spaces or public plazas and community spaces. So even if looking at where the current, where it says, I guess lawn is going to be like a community space, like park. Yeah. If we can even like, like what would that look like in a different space? So like. if we move it back towards the back to retool spaces in the middle there, because I think of the veranda as well. I've been there several times, and you've got to park a little far away to walk, but people show up anyway. And you do walk through. You walk through all these spaces. play spaces and community spaces where folks are just hanging out. And that's what I envision, something similar to that, where people are just coming together, whether it's just to grab ice cream or go to eat there, or they're at the hospital and they just need a break from the building, right? And so just being able to have spaces where not only folks visiting the hospital, but also community can come and enjoy the space.

Yep, and we sort of, you know, thought about this space exactly like that, where you have the parking sort of around that area, but you could also even close off a portion, you know, for events, close off the road that goes through it. So we really think that opportunity is that sort of placemaking opportunity. We do have, I know we're high level, but When this gets further refined and presented we have a bunch of rendering examples of what this looks like We're kind of pilot, but I know exactly we're talking about.

Thank you.

Yeah Any any anything else nope, thank you free.

Thank you.

Uh-huh So now council let's could you put it back up here what you want us to answer and we'll go through it and So colleagues, the question is, you can see them right in front of you. Would you entertain a general plan amendment for what you heard tonight? Thumbs up. That was unanimous. What are your thoughts on auto-oriented uses? I think that's a weird name. I guess that's what you call it, but for the subject property.

Can Jonathan explain that one?

Yeah, I'm happy to weigh in. So these are uses that a major part of the function is the automobile. So think of a drive-thru fast food restaurant. Largely services cars, also a car wash. as well as service station, vehicle repair, so those types of uses. But also it includes development types as well, large parking lots, the site being designed around the automobile versus the pedestrian.

Sure. You have a question, Councilman?

Yeah, one bit of a comment, and I assume you all are taking this into consideration already, hence why it's auto-oriented, but I just want to re-emphasize the need to capture those folks who get stuck on I-80 on that traffic when they're going up to Tahoe and stuff. It's been a discussion point for a while to get them to stop in Fairfield somehow to help with... increasing our local revenue, our hotel revenue from that, and all of the things that come after that. So I would say just finding the best use cases to get folks off the freeway to stop in Fairfield. I don't know what those might be, but just finding very competitive things. example I don't know if we're looking at things like like an electrical vehicle charging station potentially stuff like that or other things too but I don't want to get caught up in the whatever is the easiest to get done as much as what has the best chance of getting folks to stop here so but yeah in general I like this just wanted to re-emphasize that point and I'm sure you're already thinking about that but just wanted to bring it up again Thank You mayor yes councilwoman Williams

Yeah, so as a person that gets off that exit all the time, already on the other side of 80 is where everyone stops for fast food and for car washes and gas. That happens already on the other side, just right across 80. So I just want you to be thoughtful in what we don't want to take away from that other side. We want them to still flourish and thrive and do even better, but not compete against this side of 80. So that's my ask.

Any other comments? Madam Vice Mayor.

My preference would be and I agree with what Councilmember Williams just said and what Councilmember Pender oh said so in that light. I would prefer more destination oriented uses of the property as opposed to auto oriented uses of the property. auto-oriented uses of the property don't seem as exciting and attractive in terms of helping to transform that space into a destination. So I don't know what those destination-oriented uses would be. Maybe the next time we talk about it, we can have more ideas in that regard. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

okay all right is that good for that is that answer your question okay and then thoughts on health and medical related uses it sounds like everybody was about that is that a thumbs up everybody we got that what level of community engagement do we want over the top and I'll just add robust exclamation point Being blessed is Zen. All right, parents? Absolutely. All right. And quality of design. I think we kind of talked about that, right? We want high-end, top quality entrance to our wine country that's number one in the country, the world now, I like to say. Does that give direction?

Yes, thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Yes. Oh, I think we just said that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, though. Thank you very much. Great presentation. And thank you all who came up and let us put you through the grinder. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to go on to, oh, yeah. Oops.

Item 02. Yes, item 02, please. Resolutions 2026-54 and 2026-55, advisory board report and levy and assessment against North Texas Street Business Improvement District. Resolution 2026-54, approving the report of the advisory board for the calendar year 2025 and proposed budget for calendar year 2026 in connection with the North Texas Street Business Improvement District. AND RESOLUTION 2026-55, DECLARING INTENTION TO LEVY AN ASSESSMENT AGAINST BUSINESSES WITHIN THE NORTH TEXAS STREET BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT FOR CALENDAR YEAR 2026 AND SETTING A TIME AND PLACE FOR HEARING OBJECTIONS THERETO. AND OUR PRESENTER IS DAVID ZELLERS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.

good evening mayor and council and thank you clerk for teeing up both the resolutions appreciate that makes my job a little easier this is one of those annual things that you get tonight so you'll get the first part here this evening and then two weeks from now i'll be back uh with the rest of it um jen rice is usually here to do it she gave me a little script so i'm going to stick to the script tonight The North Texas Street bid was created in 1999 under the Parking and Business Proven Law of 1989. The law requires a report and public hearing before assessments can be levied. The advisory board established by the City Council in 2000 prepares the annual report and proposed budget. The advisory board report estimates approximately $58,000 in assessment revenue is anticipated for 2026. The assessment rates themselves remain unchanged from those set in 2000. The board plans to continue their membership outreach activities, beautification, and planning for a signature event this year as well. And I see the crowd. We have here this evening some representatives from the Fairfield Sassoon Chamber, who may or may not have put a comment card in. I'm not sure.

Yes, no?

as they are the administrators for the North Texas bid. So tonight, staff is recommending council take the following two actions. Adopt the two resolutions, and then I will be out of your way. That's it.

Well, what if we don't want to?

I mean, you could do that.

Okay.

I don't know what happened. That's all. David Lim will have to tell you what happened.

Thank you. Any... We have one speaker, Lisa Bonington. Okay. Come on down, Lisa.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and City Council. I just wanted to, on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, thank you for your partnership and consideration of us continuing to administer the North Texas Business Association. It has been a wonderful partnership and an opportunity that really aligns with the Chamber as far as being of service to businesses. There is a tremendous amount of gratitude with the small community we have in the executive committee, which we think the additional interest will grow because we are implementing our feet on the street application where we are putting forth information about the one-time ARPA funds for the revitalization program. And as council member Doris Panduro indicated, as well as staff, that there is interest and there's applications and there's enthusiasm with few exceptions and we had feet on the street again today we intend on putting together some dates where council is welcome to join us as well to be able to communicate about the association to be able to communicate about the funds and the intentions that we have to be rolling out signature events and things of that nature I thank my board for their support as well But I just, again, wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for the allotment of the ARPA funds on behalf of North Texas and for your support. And it's a wonderful program that I'm excited to see what the results will be. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other public speakers? Any questions of her? Any questions at all? All right, then we'll entertain a motion on the two resolutions. Thank you. Both together, yes? He says two thumbs up.

So moved.

I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. All right, that was unanimous for both of the resolutions. Thank you, council. Thank you, 2026-54 and 2026-55. And now we move on to item 0.3, please.

Landscape Oversight Committee recommendation to modify member residency requirements. Discussion and direction regarding the Landscape Oversight Committee recommendation to modify membership residency requirements to allow at large appointments for all member seats. And our presenter is Chris Lewis, Senior Management Analyst from Public Works.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. The item before you tonight is from your Landscape Oversight Committee, and we have with us Member LaTroy Smith, representing District Number 6, and he will be presenting a recommendation to make modifications to the current committee's structure. Just as a little bit of background, this seven-member committee was established in February of 2023, and the qualifications for appointments has been that six of these seats will be filled by residents who live in and represent their respective council district areas, and then one of the seats will be filled by a member at large. And at the most recent Landscape Oversight Committee meeting here this past February, the members all moved to bring a recommendation to you all to modify that structure. So I will invite Member Smith to provide the details of that recommendation and close out the presentation. Thank you.

Hello, Mayor and City Council. I'll keep this brief. I know you've already received the recommendation to modify our commission's member residency requirements. So I want to just highlight the key issues and our request. Right now the Landscape Oversight Committee is the only one of the city's seven committees that requires each member to live in the specific district they represent. While that structure was well intended, in practice it's limiting our ability to function effectively. As outlined in our recommendation, we've had a vacancy in District 2 since October of 24, and despite outreach efforts from both the committee and the city, We have not been able to fill that seat due to district requirements, residency requirements. At the same time, we have qualified and willing volunteers who simply don't live in that district. This has real consequences. It affects our quorum, delays meetings, and slows progress on important work like our strategic plan. At-large structure would give us access to a broader pool of engaged, capable residents and allow us to fully staff the committee so we can do our work as you've requested. As at-large members, we would continue to bring the perspectives of the areas we live in. What changes is our ability to serve effectively. So today we respectfully ask that you align our committee with the other six committees in the city and allow all members to be appointed at large. Thank you for your time. Any questions?

Questions? Yes, we'll need to see if there's any public speakers, and if you don't mind standing by.

I just have one, Nora Desson.

Good evening. There's been so much about LLMDs, and I think we should try to be very careful to be neutral on how discussions and direction is done. No problem with going out to other parts of the city, but please do try to keep every district... Please let that be a priority. So you've got one district that cannot find, okay, fill that. But please don't start eliminating other people just because there might be a preference on what the outcome is. Please be neutral. We don't want any more lawsuits, I hope. So please be very careful to be neutral and allow people who have different ideas to join so that we don't have any more lawsuits and we go forward in a very good fashion with the LLMPs. Thank you.

Any other speakers? No, Mayor. All right. Any questions of our?

Yeah, sure. I have questions for you, LaTroy, and then questions for Christina. Why did I say Christina? Because I just emailed you today. Sorry. LaTroy, how do you think it affects or limits the quorum? How does it, having more members or having District 2 vacant, how does that affect a quorum?

It affects the quorum because there are times when maybe there's another member that doesn't show to the meeting. And so when we don't have the number, we need to have at least half of the members there. And so when we have, I just filled seat two, I'm sorry, seat six. So there were two that were vacant. And so the quorum is hard to fill or to meet when there aren't enough people in the meeting. Then we can't have the meeting.

OK, so I'm not going to pick on you. I'm just going to state the research that I did. I have all the attendance records. So of the three non-quorum or lack of quorum meetings that happened, two of them had seven member committees. So I just don't see having a vacant district, which we'll fill, as a quorum reason. I can go through all the vacancies, but there's people that have missed a lot of meetings. So I don't think expanding this LOC is... I don't think that's the answer. I think I've noticed through the... Because I read through all of the notes and all the meeting notes, and it seems like you guys are trying to address a problem by saying we need to reduce... the time that we spend on each item, on each agenda item, because you're not getting through the items, is what all the notes say. That's what I have for now. I don't know what a strategic plan is. I don't know what a landscape oversight committee. Maybe, Chris, you can answer that one. What is the strategic plan?

The strategic plan was something that as a group we decided was very necessary because this group has been in place since our first meeting was November of 2023. We've had a total of 16 meetings scheduled, 13 meetings attended or actually convened. And the group, this is something we've talked about openly at the committee meetings, all committee members and including staff can agree that there's not been much movement. At first there was a little bit of confusion as to maybe not the purpose of the committee, but how we achieve the goals as stated in the guidelines and duties. There was a revision to that guidelines and duties document in 2025. There was a subcommittee of Vice Mayor Bertani and Council Member Williams who came to the Landscape Oversight Committee and was acting as a subcommittee to provide some additional guidance as to what they'd envisioned the committee to be. But there is still some... confusion on how to make that happen. I think the different members of the committee have maybe different visions of how to of what the committee is meant for oversight versus maybe you know management or like implementation type of working working committee more instead of just oversight. So this strategic plan was meant to bring everybody together and set goals collectively as a group so that at these meetings we can Be more focused on the agenda Realizing that there are probably more problems or there definitely are more not I wouldn't say problems. Excuse me. There are more items that they'd like to address than there is time or resources and so a strategic plan is helps to bring everybody on the same page. We've been working on that the last two meetings, so the November and February meeting, and have a lot more work to do on that strategic plan before the group can actually get moving. But again, I think that there might be some different goals as to whether this committee is Working more as an oversight committee versus maybe a more like working committee or being more involved in the management or field operations, that type of thing.

But it's an oversight committee.

It's an oversight committee, correct.

There's some language in the, we changed the language to say that There's a two-year cap on the chair and vice chair on those positions. We changed it to say that they can be interchangeable. You can skip one term and do another term, but you're still maxed out at two terms, two years, two full calendar years. So if we move forward with this, we should probably clean up the language because the guidelines kind of offset each other, and I'll share with Mr. Gassaway, where I see that and see if you guys agree with me. But for right now, I think that it seems like they're trying to, they're shortening the minutes. I mean, the agenda items doesn't sound like, I don't know what a strategic plan looks like. I think they're an oversight committee. And I'm certainly happy. I want all the districts to be represented. And one at large is, I'd like to keep that where it's at, but it's up to the council. Thank you. And thank you, LaTroy. You have a perfect attendance record.

Madam Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you for the report and much appreciate it. And I appreciate the comments about neutrality that Nora Dizon just stated. But let me just, here's my bottom line with my involvement with this committee and speaking to various members there about the district designations have functioned in a way to preclude people who are actually enthusiastic about landscape oversight committee people who are experienced who have worked in the city and other cities around these issues and who want to volunteer freely their expertise. But if one such person doesn't live in a district that needs a vacancy, etc., that person is precluded from freely contributing their expertise. And may not be, some of the members may not be as zealous and enthusiastic and pumped up about landscape oversight. So I think that I agree 100% with the Landscape Oversight Committee's recommendation. And remember that if we go to an at-large structure, People it's wide open to anybody who actually wants to do it who actually wants to fill out an application and whatever go through an interview process and You know and become a part of the committee that doesn't preclude anyone from doing that but I think at the heart of the landscape oversight committee is a is a real need and for people who are enthusiastic, who have the expertise, and who actually want to be around the table to address Councilmember Tonneson's comments regarding the level of absences. That tells you something about the person's enthusiasm or willingness to be there and to be there consistently and to serve consistently. I think that we increase the prospect of peak performance out of this committee if we go to an at-large structure, which opens up the applicant pool to people who actually want to do it as opposed to people who are stuck in the six districts. Those are my comments. I totally support doing this, 100%.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilman Hedrick. Yeah, and then I got you.

Could you share why this committee has the district requirement and the other commissions we have in the city do not?

I would have to go back and look at the staff report at the time the district was formed. There was some guidance given by council back in 2022. And I see city manager, maybe you want to jump in on that.

Yeah, that was based on the discussion of council. That was council's direction on how we set the committee. My apologies. That's how the committee was set up by the council at the time.

And can you reiterate the current events at the time for the motivation for setting it up in the first place?

I BELIEVE IT WAS THE COMMITTEE CAME TO PASS AFTER THE 2023 LLMD EFFORTS FAILED. SO THE LANDSCAPE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE WAS SET UP TO OVERSEE LANDSCAPING AND LLMDs AND PUT CITIZENS INVOLVED IN THAT PROCESS. GOT IT. THANK YOU.

DOES APPEAR TO BE THAT WE HAVE TWO DIFFERENT, I WOULD SAY, PHILOSOPHIES ON HOW WE'RE DOING GOVERNANCE IN THE CITY NOW. WE HAVE THE DISTRICT METHOD OF HOW COUNCIL IS NOW AND THEN WE HAVE DISTRICT METHOD ON THIS COMMITTEE. THEN IN A LOT OF OUR OTHER INSTITUTIONS HERE AT THE CITY WE DO AT LARGE. I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE A specific position on this and that should be used across all of our governing bodies and we should not have this is at large this is district and tit-for-tat governance model I there was a there was a good reason why we had at-large council members at one point and that trend has begun to change and I I like the idea that if we as a council are going to be by district, which is what we're going to do going forward, that that should likely trickle down to the rest of our governing authorities just to have one single perspective on this issue. So that's kind of where I'm taking it at the moment. So that's my position, I think, for now. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor.

Councilwoman Williams. Thank you, Mayor. So Troy, you weren't here about a year and a half, maybe a year ago, where there was a question about if this committee, if it was efficient, if it had good direction. And then the Vice Mayor and I joined the task force to kind of work alongside you all. those same questions are flooding me today. Like, because I've been to some of the meetings. They don't feel efficient. They feel long. They feel drawn out. And it makes me wonder, you know, volunteers, because Councilmember Tonneson just showed me, you know, attendance records, volunteers don't want to work inefficiently. So my question is about efficiency. Why does it take 13 meetings? Well, let me just ask Chris. In 13 meetings, what has been accomplished?

uh... short answer and and i i believe that the landscape oversight committee every member would agree that there's not much that has been accomplished which is why we uh... you decided to do the strategic plan uh... there's been a lot of discussion uh... on on what they think the committee should accomplish, but I don't think there's actually been much movement towards that. I will say that a couple committee members, Member Smith included, has actually gone out to the community, and I know that they've come back and reported to the committee that they've gone out to the community, sat out on the Paradise Valley Loop, for example, on Saturday mornings to kind of get some feedback from the residents out in Paradise Valley. A couple members went to the farmer's market. But in both instances, while there was a few people who maybe stopped by, there wasn't much participation from the community. And so I guess to just loop back to my original short answer, there hasn't been much movement to date.

Thank you. And when, at least early on, it felt like there needed to be clarification about outreach, 218, a 218 education process. And for me, it felt like it got clarified, but that was all those months ago, and still there's no... There's no progress. So let me shift gears just a little bit. So in my community, we had a North Cordelia backslash Green Valley kind of a task force. And that task force, to me, like what we've accomplished in a little bit of time, is almost what I expected to happen at the landscape oversight committee. So I don't know if we're moving more nimble because in our district focused on our district and this needs to be like kind of separate separated out so those districts of concern are are addressed by district I don't know but it doesn't feel like it's working you like what's the question Yeah, could you kind of explain for my colleagues kind of what the North Cordelia slash Green Valley Task Force, like what, what that's like.

What it's like, yes. And so for the benefit of everybody here, there is a group of residents that formed what they are now calling themselves the Green Valley Community Landscape Group. I'm actually bringing an item on May 5th to you all to introduce you to it. It's a brand new group. This group was formed after Council Member Williams hosted a community meeting on May 1st of 2021. I believe it was, or 2025 maybe? 25. wanting to know who from North Cordelia was prepared to move into another Proposition 218 vote. Out of that committee meeting, all the residents were like, hey, we're not quite ready to move forward yet, but we'd like to create a task force with all of our North Cordelia residents, North Cordelia slash Green Valley residents, to start working on that Proposition 218 community engagement process, to start spreading the word, educating our neighbors, that type of thing. The first meeting for this Green Valley Community Landscape Group was held in May, the May 1st meeting. Since then I think the reason why they are so nimble is like you said everybody in that group is is from North Cordelia They're they're working together making decisions very quickly They kind of already know what they want. They know who to speak to Engagement is more like a cup of coffee with their neighbor on a Saturday morning versus an entire event that they have to you know to put on and and and plan and things like that. There's also a little bit more freedom, definitely, because there's no Brown Act restrictions where they can't work together with their group. They can meet when they want to. They can pick up the phone and call. They can call us. Anything we talk about at the meeting is not restricted to what's on the agenda, and I know that that is some of the concerns that some of the committee members on the Landscape Oversight Committee have expressed, that it is a limiting, definitely because it's a public process. And so I think that that's one of the major differences. Also, the North Cordelia Green Valley Community Landscape Group working committee they have a singular focus they have a singular goal they know what they want and they go after it at every single meeting and everything they do is towards that towards that singular goal so I think that that's probably some of the major differences between between the two committees

Thank you for that. So is there a way to take that same type of energy and layering and focus for the landscape oversight committee? Is that a replicable?

That is the purpose of the strategic plan is to create that goal so we can move forward.

Yeah, but it's been two years and 13 meetings.

I can only talk about my time here, which was as of last year. And in the last few meetings, the last two meetings, we've been working on that strategic plan. So we're working on it as we speak.

Yeah, and I was there for one of those meetings, and it didn't go very far. It was long, and it didn't go very far.

Agreed. We're working on that.

I know. Again, this is not an attack. Thank you for your service. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you to everyone that is on that LOC meeting. This is not meant to disparage. This is just an honest conversation about efficiency. And quite honestly, do we need this committee?

That's fair.

Yes, Madam Vice Mayor.

I'll just quickly add that I would, as someone who also attended some of the meetings, and then looking at the Green Valley Cordelia Task Force, being at that first meeting in Green Valley, here's what I know to be true. The people there want to be there. The people there care about being there. The people there are invested in this issue for whatever reason that it may be. They want to be at the table. And they don't want to be at the table working inefficiently. People have lives. But they want to be there because they care about how Green Valley and North Cordelia look. Yeah, the whole discussion was about how it looks. And so I'm saying that to say I think that that is a main issue about what is going on with the Landscape Oversight Committee. It is let's have some people who actually want to be there, not because they are in a certain district. Of course, it would be ideal to have engaged members from all six districts. Obviously, the evidence tells us that's not the case right now. As evidenced by their lack of making things happen, And I think the key difference, the common denominator, is the wanting to be at the table. We tried it with the districts. We have not been able to recruit those folks. as evidenced by the lack of the high percentage of missed meetings and all that. So why not try a model that makes more sense to get people around the table who actually want to be there like they are in Green Valley and North Cordelia? I say that the at-large structure facilitates that. A LOT FACILITATES THAT A LOT MORE, I THINK, EFFECTIVELY THAN STICKING ON THE DISTRICT MODEL THAT HAS PROVEN TO BE NOT AS EFFECTIVE AS WE WOULD WANT IT TO BE. COUNCILMAN.

QUESTION FOR THE CITY ATTORNEY. IN THE EVENT OF A VACANCY ON and for whatever reason we are unable to elect anybody in a special election, nor is there any applicant to fill that vacancy, what would the council at that point do? Would it turn into a six member council or would we appoint somebody at large to fill that vacancy for a temporary time?

So under, well, first of all, I need to point out that city councils are required by law as a general law city. this landscape oversight committee is not required it serves at the pleasure of the council they can form it they can change it you can have you know, whoever you want on it, you can disband it. And by operational law, you as a council are fully entitled to do whatever you want with this committee. So that's a huge difference between a city council. That being said, great question. Under law, if there is a vacancy during any council member's term, council has 60 days to appoint an interim council member who will serve the rest of the term or call for a special election. And that is at the discretion of the city council.

Would the interim member have to live in that district? Yes.

Got it. Now, you're putting me on the spot, because let's say you decide you don't want to appoint somebody or no one applies, or you call for a special election and no one runs, I need to go do more research. Okay, thank you.

The second point I'd like to ask would be, is it possible... There are some good people doing some good work, and there is a sense that their energy might be going to waste or not being utilized to the best effect. Is there... I'd like to potentially consider maybe down the road if there's a different way to get them to serve in Fairfield. But I want to ask specifically, is this a responsibility that could be delegated to the planning commission to take over, and then we can maybe repurpose the energy of these people somewhere else potentially? Could the Planning Commission take up this responsibility?

Are you asking me?

Whoever is best suited to answer that question.

The City of Council could appoint the Planning Commission with those types of duties. It would be somewhat- RARE IN MY EXPERIENCE, NOT SOMETHING THAT IS TYPICAL FOR A PLANNING COMMISSION TO DEAL WITH, BUT AS THE CITY ATTORNEY JUST EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE CITY COUNCIL, THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE WITHIN YOUR RIGHT.

JUST TO CLARIFY, I MISSPOKE. THE OTHER BODY THAT IS required or allowed under law is the Planning Commission. So they are legislatively ordained with certain powers. So I would actually need to do research to see if you could just be like, and you're doing landscaping. And I'm not sure if you could do that.

I think you could.

I think you can, but I'm not sure how happy they'd be, but you could, I guess.

I don't think I see any of them here right now, so we'll just kind of do it and they'll deal with it after. I'm just kidding. The last point I'd like to ask, I don't think we would take any of their opinions or decisions any less seriously if the body was maybe turned into an advisory body. and then they wouldn't need quorum anymore. And I'd like to maybe we can consider changing their status from a formal committee to an advisory board.

Sorry. Sorry to douse your idea. So this committee is already advisory. They have no authority to budget, to pass regulations, to judge. They are merely advisory. But under the Brown Act, if this body creates a standing committee, it is subject to the Brown Act.

Can we make them a not standing committee and make it a more temporary one and reconvene and convene as needed?

The only committees that are allowed to be non-Brown Act are what are called ad hoc committees that are formed for a short period of time for a very specific purpose. if you formed so let's say for example you formed a landscape oversight committee for let's say a two eighteen process that was scheduled to take place in august and you said this committee's only formed to advise the council until that two eighteen vote i think that would count as an ad hoc committee where cities most of the time get in trouble is when they say oh this is just ad hoc and then like three years later they're still meeting you would probably get a challenge from someone in this room, and I'd have to advise you that, yeah, you probably violated the Brown Act.

Maybe we could turn it into an ad hoc committee and convene, reconvene as needed. That's another idea.

That wouldn't, well. No. That would not fit the definition of Brown Act. Having said all that, I'm the attorney, I give you legal advice. You can do whatever you want. Thank you.

Councilwoman Williams.

So you know I'm trying to tread lightly here. So after a year I had talked to a few committee members and felt like And they weren't showing up and then we had a whole bunch of people quit. And I will say these, at least two of them were passionate about this opportunity. Also went to a few meetings and felt the passion there too. And now I'm looking a year later at the absentee rate. I also notice that at times meetings float on my calendar. So it's here, I'm like, oh, and then all of a sudden it moves, then it moves, which makes me feel like having problems pulling together for quorum. There's something else there. I'm not sure if it's the right leadership. Leading that committee not for you to say yes or no, but that's what I suspect. That's why I suspected before That's what I suspect now. I think There's a leadership issue there. I think The the and I'm trying to be careful here and I don't think there's an inefficiency thing there. I think people don't like their time wasted. I think people have passion for landscape. I don't think you just put your hand up for landscaping and you don't care. just don't think so and then the people when I interviewed for district one like literally there was like five people and they had me putting together a freaking scoring matrix on their conversation like they were all incredibly passionate and And I had to, you know, they were like literally a point different. They were all incredible. These are people that care. There's something else. And we're not calling it out. I don't, you know, I know why. You know, we want to be careful. But the lack of inefficiency, that's what the problem is. So if it goes to a general, I would be concerned because I don't want all the passion just focused on one area. I see what you were saying, Councilmember Manveer, because there's something about being on this council, this general body, and I know District 1 like the back of my hand. I you know we're talking about an exit I know what exit we're talking about I know what's there I know every tree that goes like this I've been I know my district and there's something about being on a landscaping committee where you know your district so there's power in that but there's something I'm a little wrong about this committee. And I don't know if it's doing what it should be doing. And if we continue on this path, if we're going to be having the same conversation in a year. That's my concern, just upfront.

Yeah, go ahead, Scott.

I think we're getting points across everybody as, do you want people that want to be there? 100%. I've said in the past, it's not a secret, I think they should form a 218 committee. When you read all of the notes and the meeting notes, they brush right up against the line of being a 218 committee, campaign committee, which we know they can't do. I think that this committee is hamstrung by the Brown Act. Let me ask you a question, Chris. The Measure P Committee, how many times do they meet?

Quarterly. I'm going to look to city manager to confirm.

Yeah, they meet quarterly. How many times do they report to us? Once per year. Okay. And then, Sanji, I see you hiding back there. How many hours a month do you spend on committees in general? Is that even in your purview? And I think this committee just takes up a lot of time, a lot of staff time. Because when we started out these meetings, and I went to the first couple, there was five members that showed up and five staff that showed up. You know, has that been reduced or is the time drag still?

Yes. I mean, initially when I came on board, we were actually six staff. But over this period of time, we have reduced the staff to about only four or at the times only two right now. So slowly I have reduced that. But just Chris and Valerie, both of them actually present in this meeting for the last two meetings. But before that, myself and David Gassman, both of us with Chris and Valerie. Before that, it was about six to eight staff, but we have removed all.

And then you have two staff members working on this after the meetings? Yes.

Background work is a lot. I mean, we deal with LLMD overall issues, as you know. I mean, so very community interested, so we do a lot of background work.

Sanjay or Chris, how much time do you spend on the committee that Kay's formed? How many staff hours? Is it comparable or is it...

No, just because we don't have to put together an agenda, prep, do all the posting of the agenda, that type of thing. Minutes, we don't have to do any minutes for those meetings.

So it's night and day?

I would say yes. Okay.

Yeah, we want people that want to be there, but I'm struggling with the amount of staff time that's spent on this committee now and the lack of accomplishments.

I applied for this position with Patrice, I was one of the members. But I believe in three years you're going to have to reapply. I believe it's on a three year commitment, so I don't know. you know, if it took two or three years to get to this point, what really the goal is. So I just wanted to bring you to that point that we're almost to the point where you're having to reselect another person. And so I've been following what's been happening and I haven't seen anything, so. That's why I'm speaking.

Thank you. I'm going to ask the city manager to help us along here a little bit. And I appreciate you coming up, and I appreciate you signing up.

I'm one of those people that was really passionate about it. And I thought it was more like a committee to bring Fairfield into one like beautiful community. So I could see how you want one from every district because it would give a common purpose, but it is a hard thing to consider.

If I may invite you to the North Cordelia, the Green Valley Community Landscape Group, if you just Google that name, you'll find their website and you can participate with that group at least.

But, I mean, for the rest of Fairfield, too. I mean, I'm passionate about where I live, but Fairfield is a city.

Thank you.

All right. Listening to this robust conversation, I want to try to maybe help you all move this along. IF I'M I WANT TO BE FAIR I THINK THE LANDSCAPE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE HAS PUT IN A LOT OF WORK THE RESIDENTS HAVE HAVE CERTAINLY PUT IN THE HOURS THEY'VE PUT IN THE TIME THEY'VE PUT IN THE PASSION WHICH I KNOW IS WHAT EVERYBODY ON THE CITY COUNCIL APPRECIATES ABOUT THEM AND WANTS FROM MY OBSERVATION BECAUSE I'VE BEEN TO A LOT OF THE LANDSCAPE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETINGS THE THE CHARGE THAT YOU HAVE HAVE GIVEN THEM SEEMS TO BE SORT OF TWO COMPETING EFFORTS IN ONE. ON THE ONE HAND, TYPICALLY AN OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE WOULD BE ONE WHERE THERE IS SOME SORT OF FORMAL REPORTING, RIGHT? SO THE MEASURE P CITIZEN OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE, THE ROCKVILLE HILLS CITIZEN ADVISORY COMMITTEE, RIGHT? THEY MEET ON A QUARTERLY BASIS. WHEN THEY COME IN, CITY STAFF pre-approved sets of data and reports that we provide to them that they review. They ask questions. Hey, why is revenue down here? We want to see this. Can you give us some information here or there? They give feedback in landscaping terms. It would be like, hey, over on this one roadway, we've noticed that there's been landscaping dying. Can staff look into that? It's oversight. It's having some form of reporting and checks and balance to ensure that the landscape contract maintenance that we do, the oversight, the LLMD fund expenditures, right, on an annualized basis, what is the flow of the year and how then is the oversight committee ensuring that the city is doing the things it's supposed to be doing with those funds, right? That's an oversight function. What I also hear a lot of discussion around and sort of dancing around, and I think we all know, and I think it was to Ms. Dazon's point of like, let's be careful and neutral here, is LLMDs, right? In 2023, we all know that we went for nine LLMDs. We tried to get them all passed under 218. At your next meeting, you're talking about a totally separate but LLMD topic, right? It's totally different discussion, but still revolves around LLMDs. It's a big thing that we have in the community. And so getting new LLMDs passed, because only two out of the nine passed in 2023, I think that is what Council Member Williams and the Green Valley Group, they have coalesced around this vision of their residents in that neighborhood that want to get engaged with their neighbors to go make sure that they succeed in a 218 vote. Right that is not something that the city is saying hey go do this they stepped forward and said we would like to do this we helped facilitate the information that they needed the education that they needed in order for them to be a citizen group that is going and doing that work to make that positive impact in their neighborhood wonderful landscape oversight and neighborhood activity to get an LLMD 218 vote passed are sort of two completely different things. And I feel like having been at a lot of the Landscape Oversight Committee meetings, having heard lots of these discussions for the past couple of years, I feel like that's the dichotomy here where we're trying to fit both of those efforts into one square peg into a round hole, and that's the struggle. And so what I would offer for the city council is if you want landscape oversight, then quite frankly, I think if the committee, and I'm hearing some questions about if this should be a committee. I don't want to read too much into that, but I feel like that's what I've heard. If you want landscape oversight as a committee, then I would actually recommend to you that you very much narrow that down into here's the specific things we want you looking at. Oversight Committee and I think a lot of the framework is there in terms of the resolution and then the updated guidelines that the Landscape Oversight Committee has adopted and that the City Council has adopted. It's the LLMD aspect then that I think starts to muddy the water. If it's primarily a LLMD approach, then my recommendation would actually be scrap the oversight committee because you're never going to get them there in that way. It needs to be more grassroots efforts, which again, the city is happy from a staffing perspective. We're happy to convene, engage with, educate, and give the resources and knowledge that neighborhoods need in order to start their grassroots efforts at telling their neighbors, educating their neighbors, and convincing their neighbors that that's a good thing to vote for. But again, that's where I think these two things are two separate topics. And I feel like that's what the council's sort of talking around and wrestling with right now. And that's where I'll leave it.

I'll make a comment for the first time on this tonight. I think that what the city manager said just laid out. Is that also what Councilwoman Williams has said and the Vice Mayor said? I think that we as a body failed, not them. And here's why. We didn't do that, give them a specific thing. You're going to do oversight. And I know that folks who look at the landscaping and are passionate about it, like she said, is about making Fairfield beautiful. And so with oversight, landscape oversight, not LLMD, but landscape oversight, we could do that. Like he said, very specific things that we're going to talk about, and they could put the report together, just like the Measure P. And it's much more specific, and it's not going to be a waste of staff's time. They're going to be productive. They're going to understand what they're doing. Because what they want is they want the city to listen. And they want standards. And they want to have oversight of that. And I think those are things that they can do. We can direct it. So that's what I think. And I think that will cure a lot of the messiness at the meetings and hopefully inspire people to keep coming back.

Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, no, yeah. Both of them, yeah, they're both nodding their head. Okay, so that's what I'm gonna suggest. Mm-hm, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Thumbs up. Thumbs up, he said.

What was the suggestion specifically? I mean, are we making a vote, I mean?

Yes, that we do basically what the city manager talked about and not mix up the LLMD, just call it landscape oversight. LLMDs are a 218 thing. That's more legal. This is oversight. They want our city to look, and we all do.

If we're going to do that, and I like the direction you're going, can we mimic the Like the Measure P committee where they meet a couple of times, three or four times a year.

Quarterly. That's what I'm talking about. Exactly like that. I would like it to mirror that.

I can absolutely get behind that. But I want to keep it districts if it's a landscape oversight.

That's all good. I think we keep it at districts. And I don't want to expand the committee. So do you need a motion with this?

I think I... understand the direction and i'm happy to take that direction and uh we will come back with probably some amended documents i'll talk with with chris and sanjay and the team and we'll talk with the landscape oversight committee i've got some ideas on how we can make some recommendations but we'll come back to you all with what that looks like at a future meeting

Councilman Williams. So just to clarify, we're talking about a very specific narrow scope.

Correct.

Yes. And what happens when the bus comes off the track? Thank you. Thank you, Daddy. Are we able to be like, okay, we're out of scope?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's your prerogative as the city council. But I think that's where if we narrow it into – here is typical oversight functions similar to some of the other committees that you have that play those functions. I think that would be tremendously helpful and delivering for you all some assurance that citizens are having some oversight or some say into Yes, the city is managing landscaping in a way that is maximizing efficiency with the limited revenues that we have, that is ensuring that contractors are doing the types of things that contractors are supposed to be doing in their contracts, that we're addressing issues that neighbors are seeing out in their districts, in their community of challenges maybe that landscaping is having, right? I mean, with maintenance or shrubs dying or those types of things. And then that can be turned into a standardized reporting mechanism.

Yes. Last question.

Sure. We're really working our $7.50 an hour.

Girl, I get more than that. I'm at $8.50.

$8.50. Okay. Thank you. So I'm trying to make a joke and forgot what I was going to say. Hold on. So... Give me a second. I've got to remember what I was going to say. I think I was on to something good.

I know it's going to be good when it comes out.

Look at David like, what? I really forgot. All right.

I'll fill the gap.

Well, I just, before we end, Latoya, I want to say thank you. You know, you came to this game late. You... Obviously, I have the attendance records. You have not missed a meeting. I appreciate you coming up here. None of this heat was directed at you if you considered it heat, but I really appreciate you, and thank you for serving.

Amen. Amen to that. Thank you. You're going to continue, right? That's the man. That's the man. Okay.

Yes. You got it? Uh-huh. Okay. So the question is about, you know, on that committee, there's, I think, is there, what is the structure? A chair, a vice chair, and then members? Or is it secretary, that type of thing? So just a chair and a vice chair. Correct. Okay. And it is there, what is the turnover in chair and vice chair?

Annually, officers are elected annually at the first meeting in January.

Got it. And is there a limit, a term limit?

As Councilman Tonneson mentioned, I believe maybe in the first iteration of the guidelines there was, but as it's written right now, we don't have a cap written in. They do have to be elected. They can serve consecutive or non-consecutive terms, and it's one-year terms. And who changed it? Who?

We did. But it falls back to the two-year thing. That's the thing we have to clear up. We're going to have to clear that up, right, where that came from. Because that was brought to council.

Yeah, that was brought to council at some point. And so that's why I'm thinking maybe we've got to do some research on that.

So we're good? The direction's good? Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. The audience, thank you too. So colleagues, real quickly, do you need to take a break or we just roll? Just roll.

They're saying just roll.

Your bosses are saying roll.

Oh, you got something? Terrence Strong just would like all the cards that he passed out.

Please, totally loaded. Mr. City Attorney.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, I'd like to ask the mayor if we could call item P2 out of order. That's the massage appeal for Miracle Massage. We have the appellant here, and I want to see if she's okay calling it, but I want to be very transparent. The only reason I'm asking is, as you know, under law, the city attorney cannot staff both the council and the city staff. presenting the revocation. So we've had the attorney, Joanne Tran, who handled the first hearing and is here for the second one, but she is now 30 weeks pregnant. And it being 9 o'clock, I would really like to have let her staff hear that appeal and get her home. She's in the third trimester, and I think I'm just starting to feel bad about that.

I'm happy to move that around and get that done.

I'm sorry, I misspoke. She's staffing you. I'm punchy, too. She's staffing... Yes, that's right. She staffs that. We're all, sorry.

You guys haven't been drinking, right? Uh-huh, yeah.

Very good.

Let's roll.

Are we on item 04 or P1? P1. P2. Or P2, excuse me. P2. P2. Do you have to read anything? Thank you. Before we get started?

No? Okay. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Thank you all. It's been a late night, so we'll get started.

I do need to read the item. P2, Resolution 2026-57, Appeal of the Denial of Business Permit for Massage Establishment, located at 1328 West Texas Street. approving, sustaining, or denying overruling the appeal of the denial of business permit massage establishment located at 1328 West Texas Street, Fairfield, California, 94533, pursuant to Chapter 10A, Section 10A11, 10A.5, and 10A.6, and Section 25.22.2 of the Fairfield Municipal Code. And our presenter is Jeremy Proffitt, Community Engagement Manager of the Police Department.

And Madam Mayor, if I may, so this is, if you recall, this was initially heard by the city council last year. The council decided to place Miracle Massage on probation pursuant to certain requirements by code enforcement. Code enforcement sent them a letter of denial, as is in your staff report. Miracle Massage, with Ms. Dong, who is present, is now appealing this second revocation. So what's before you now is basically a second appeal. But as a reminder, you all heard this back last year. This is a hearing to determine whether or not to revoke and not renew the business license. I'm sorry, not the business license, the massage permit of Ms. Dong's business. And so it is a quasi-judicial hearing. With the mayor's permission, I'll swear in both staff and Ms. Dong and I believe her husband is here will swear all of them in and then we'll let them make the presentation. My recommendation is because it is their appeal that you give them first bite of the apple to make their presentation. Staff can then offer any rebuttal. And then let Ms. Dong have the final word as a rebuttal to city staff. A couple housekeeping matters before I swear them in is staff is represented by Ms. Joanne Tran. They need a separate attorney for this matter because in this in case you were acting as hearing officers. So I will be your attorney, but staff is not staff. Staff is basically a party to this action, and they're represented by Ms. Tran. Ms. Dong has also presented nine pages of information that I will present to the council. I have seven copies here for you, nine pages each that she may refer to. And at this time, with your permission, I'll swear on all the witnesses. OK, so can any staff member that's going to be presenting please stand, raise your hand? Miss Dong, can you stand and raise your hand along with your husband? Because I understand he's going to testify. So any staff member testifying? Just one? OK. Please raise your right hand. Do the three of you solemnly swear or affirm that the information and testimony you provide before this hearing tonight will be the truth and only the truth, so help you God? Yes. Okay, thank you. Have a seat. And Ms. Dong, because you have brought this appeal, you or your husband can go ahead and present first. And do you have a time limit, Madam Mayor? Yes, I would like to keep it.

As Mr. Lynn said, he has some items to give to you folks. I don't know if you already have them in front of you. These are the actual logs that we had agreed upon with code enforcement to fill out. And as you can see on these logs, all the information is filled out. Okay, let me back up for one second. So code enforcement agreed to, not agreed, code enforcement told us that they were going to remove the requirement for a customer's address and then add the need for a receipt. So this is a problem because code enforcement does not have the authority to amend the code. And that's essentially what they did. They amended it. If they want to change the code, then they need to submit a request to amend the code. And it has to go to you folks, and you vote on it. And then it goes into effect. Prior to that, it has no power. If I'm correct. I may be wrong, but that's the way I think the system works. That being said, we did follow. their advice and filled out a form that I actually created and has some Chinese on it so my wife could read it because there is a language barrier here. And they also insisted on this receipt for whatever reason. That is not currently in the code. Their Their stance is that this is not filled out correctly because on the receipt, this little piece of paper here does not indicate the amount of a tip. But it is on the form that my wife filled out. Clearly, right there, every one of them has a tip amount. But because it isn't on the receipt, then it's not valid. Their contention is that she's not following the rule. And that simply isn't true. And it also says, they are also contending that she didn't display the license of the massage therapist that was working there, which is not true either. If they intend to show a video tonight, which they did take, you will see, hanging on the wall, the license, the California massage license, of the masseuse that is, that was, I should say, working at the facility. Their other contention was that, well, she couldn't present an ID. Because therapy counsel gives a certificate and an ID. Well, the ID is not a requirement to be on hand. Normally, a massage therapist would have that ID on person. They're supposed to display that ID as part of their ID. as part of their massage when a customer comes in, they're supposed to have the ID on it. So we don't keep the ID card on hand. The massage therapist would have that. And then lastly, the last and the most damning evidence, if you will, that they contend is the video of when they came in, a customer was in there, there was no licensed massage therapist on the premise. Honey, let me finish, babe, okay? There was no licensed massage therapist on the premise at the time. My wife understood that. She told this customer, I will give you a body rub at no charge, completely free, no compensation required, no compensation asked or implied.

Within one minute, two minute, half hour, you know, I said within minutes.

Wait, please, wait. No compensation intended, okay. There is nothing in the code that prevents anybody from giving a massage, a body rub, for free.

No, because the business is no good. Because the customer come in here, I say you are leaving there.

She didn't want to lose the customer, okay. She didn't want the customer to leave. She wanted to make sure that, He stayed. So she offered the free massage. Honey, please let me talk. She offered the free massage, not expecting to be paid, not expecting compensation of any kind. And that in itself does not require a California Massage Therapy Council license. By your own code, it clearly states that a massage therapist that has to be licensed or has to have a certificate from the California Massage Therapy Council if they're doing massage for compensation. This was not a case of doing a massage for compensation. By the way, the customer never got a massage. He was only in the room for maybe five minutes before they came in. And the massage never even began. The customer stays in. You know, the customer states in the video that he, maybe two minutes, you know, he was getting a massage for two minutes. And, yeah, that's our stance. We've tried and tried and tried to comply, and every time... Yeah, I know, babe, they're probably going to show it, okay? We've tried and tried to comply, which... Which by our paperwork, we have complied. Unfortunately, you know, the code enforcement stepped out of bounds and did something they weren't authorized to do. And... Yeah, that's all I really have to say. My wife's livelihood is up to you folks right now. I mean, we are complying. By the way, she's never been accused of doing anything illegal. And that's always been a contention with these folks. They're associating her business with other businesses in the area that apparently got shut down. They're making reference to why has the business been sold so many times in a 12-month period, 60-month period. First of all, I don't believe that's illegal to sell a business however many times you want. That's up to you. Is that suspicious because you're selling your business? Well, maybe you're selling your business because business is no good. At this location, business is no good. I mean, unfortunately, it's not a very nice location in the city.

I want to sell it, nobody want to buy, you know. I before, first come in here, I don't know area, no good, no business. I buy too much money. I want to sell too much time for me, you know.

Nobody want to buy. Too many people come in here. No customer, no one body buy. Because I didn't know, I first come in pretty fair. Fairfield. I didn't know somebody to say business good, I to buy the $60. I want to sell the little money, okay, nobody want to buy, you know. So much trouble for me, you know.

So now the code enforcement, I believe, is recommending, obviously, to deny the permit and um to close the business down completely and not allow another massage business there for a year on what grounds on what grounds there are no uh you know there's no uh illegal activity happening there um so that's pretty much all i have i mean i i they can provide what they have and then we can to dispute anything that they might have to say. Thank you for your time.

OK, thank you. All right, staff, you're up.

Good evening, Council, Mayor. Thank you for your time. Again, my name is Jeremy Proffitt. Just to give you a little bit of history of my qualifications, so I've been overseeing the Code Enforcement Department for about five years now. Before that, I worked in various departments and units in the crime prevention and the Fairfield Police Department. Before my, well, during that time, I also was a hearing officer, so I understand the challenges and expectations as hearing officials. We make difficult decisions, but we stick to the facts. SO I WANT TO PRESENT THOSE FACTS TONIGHT. A LITTLE BIT OF MY HISTORY BEFORE I JOINED THE CITY OF FAIRFIELD. I WORKED IN THE MILITARY. I WAS AN INVESTIGATOR. MILITARY POLICE. I DID TWO YEARS OF SUPERVISING IN OUR UNIT. SO I'VE DONE A LITTLE INVESTIGATIVE WORK OVER MY TIME AND THAT'S KIND OF WHERE MY EXPERTISE BACKGROUND IS IN SUPERVISING THIS UNIT. And there's a lot of things that don't add up to this story and are concerning in facts. Stories continue to change. And I want to really start, I think we got caught up in the first hearing. We were stuck on the records, the audit trails. Think of this business, just take this business out of, it's not a massage business. If we were to get a haircut, I don't get my nails done, but I have three daughters, so I take them to a nail salon. They all have state licensing that has to be posted, right? When we get haircuts, we transfer and we share information. We don't just do cash. We usually don't leave anything behind. This is very common practices. So we're not treating this because they're just a massage establishment. We're looking at it as a standard practice of businesses. There are ordinances in place in our code that governs those ordinances, and that's what we're applying today. So this is not picking on a massage parlor. This is not abstractly applying rules. Council did give us direction to work with the business. We conduct extensive outreach. I personally went out with my team and showed and worked with them on different ways to come in compliant with audits, right? How do you run a business with no audit trail? Like you don't have receipts. You don't have all these different things in place. How do you do your taxes? How do you employ people? Where's the work comp? Where's all those different documents in place? There's none of these records in place. So that is not normal for this line of business. What we're looking for is suspicious activity. Is there a lot of cash flow? Do log books add up? That doesn't add up. People are coming and going out of this business, but there's no record trail. We have a lot of massage businesses. We have a lot of sex trafficking. We have a lot of trafficking. It's very known that there's trafficking going on in the city of Fairfield. They're happening in these businesses. So that's what we're trying to prevent. We're trying to regulate with these authorities. So what is the chapter that we're looking at? 10B as employee 33, which is the business license practice. We're looking under subsection C. THE BUSINESS OR THE ACTIVITIES OR THE CONDUCT OF THE BUSINESS AT THE PROPOSED LOCATION IS PROHIBITED BY THIS PROVISION AND THIS CODE FOR ANY LOCAL, STATE, FEDERAL LAW, STATUTES, RULES OR REGULATIONS. SO WE'RE LOOKING AT ARE THEY VIOLATING ANYTHING IN THE ORDINANCE, ANYTHING STATE LAW, and we could apply that to a revocation taking a business license. Now, we don't do this lightly. We understand that Ms. Dong has a livelihood here. This is not a simple task. This is why we continue to work with them after the hearing back in July. So these are the regulations that continue to be an issue for us. Was the certificate posted? Sometimes there would be a certificate posted, but there would be a massage therapist that didn't match their certificate. Again, when you walk into a barbershop and you get your hair cut, usually there's a certificate posted. Those things should match up. And that's really what we look at these businesses. Go to a nail salon. They usually have their state certificate. Anything that you provide these services. So this is not just about massage. This is about equally applying these laws across the board for all businesses, all standard practices. We look at food vendors. We have a permit process. We have things in line. We're applying these equally across all businesses. So records of treatment, that is a huge red flag to us. If you cannot show any records of treatment, any records of anything, that is a flag. How are you paying? How are you receiving these things? So we worked with Ms. Dong and her husband, Dave, to establish those regulations. To keep in mind, this is not their first rodeo in this business. They've been operating, I would say, five plus years, maybe not in Fairfield, but from Milpitas. Why all of a sudden these are challenges to meet regulations in this city? Needless to say, we tried to work with them. We did our outreach. We met over several months to try to get these things fixed, and we gave them several opportunities without revoking their license again. We took some time. This started in July of last year. So here are some facts that we'll go through. So February 2026, Ms. Dong submitted her application. This is when Officer Elterham, back in March of 2025, Officer Elterham allowed Ms. Dong and her husband to operate Miracle Massage on a probationary period. THE ITEMS THAT HE ADDRESSED WAS LOOK AT MUNICIPAL CODE CHAPTER 10A AND FOLLOW THOSE RULES AND REGULATIONS SET FORTH, AND THIS IS SOMETHING THAT HE DOES WITH EVERY BUSINESS THAT COMES INTO FAIRFIELD. SO MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND OUR LOCAL ORDINANCES. REALLY, WHEN YOU GET A BUSINESS LICENSE, WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TEACH THAT, BUT WE DO OUR OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT TO HELP THESE BUSINESSES SUCCEED. WE DON'T WANT BUSINESSES COMING TO FAIRFIELD AND FAIL. We want them to succeed, so we do provide those additional things. The logbook really was a problem in the beginning, but you'll find out at the end, the final kind of straw that we revoked the license wasn't the logbook. It was actually an illegal massage being given, and there was a lot of mistruths being shared with that, and I'll go into that here shortly. But May 2nd, Officer Erlterham and Officer Figueroa, who are here today, conducted an inspection and found various violations from our Chapter 10 massage regulation code, including failure to maintain proper logbooks, that's the audit trail, failure to have clean linen, failure to provide adequate lighting and sleeping on premise. So there look to be signs of people living there. That was argued back and forth during that hearing, but that is something that is a red flag to us. Are they operating late night, after hours? July was the hearing that we had time to spend with you because that's when we were denied the business license back in May 6, 2025. For the due process, we held a hearing with you all on July 1, 2025, which you asked for code enforcement to work with these business owners to give them a second chance to really become a successful business. ON SEPTEMBER 5TH OF 2025, CITY STAFF CONDUCTED AN INSPECTION AT MIRACLE MASSAGE AND FOUND VIOLATIONS INCLUDING FAILURE TO MAINTAIN A PROPER LOG BOOK AGAIN, FAILURE TO DISPLAY A VALID CAMTC CERTIFICATION. AGAIN, THINK OF IT, THE STATE LICENSING THAT YOU POST ON THE WALL. the city then extended an additional opportunity. So here we are a few months afterwards, we could have came right back to you and say, we're gonna pull the plug again. Like darn it, we keep providing resources and we can't get this straight. But we worked with city staff, I WORKED WITH OUR TEAM TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL RESOURCES AND THAT'S WHEN I CAME INVOLVED AND I WENT OUT AND CONDUCTED OUTREACH. WE MET WITH DAVID AND MS. DONG TO CONDUCT WHAT DOES THIS LOG BOOK NEED TO LOOK LIKE AND YES, WE DID MAKE SOME CHANGES TO TRY TO GET THEM IN SOME COMPLIANCE. DID WE HAVE TO? NO. DID WE DO IT TO HELP THE BUSINESSES? CORRECT. Really what we're looking for is that audit trail. So, okay, if you can't have an address, can you show us a customer walks in, what service did they get? Where's the price dollars? Does all this match up, right? So I'm looking at customer A came in, he or she received a 45 minute massage. On the wall it says a 45 minute massage is $60. Does that receipt match up to $60? It was kind of a mess. We could not figure that out. There was no real good record keeping. Again, how can we fix that?

Jeremy, you have about two minutes left.

Okay, we'll keep it quick. So I wrote a letter to them on May 10th outlining how we can improve those issues. I went into September 10th. The final inspection was done. The log point entries did not correspond. There was a male customer inside capturing on our team's body-worn camera that admitted to getting a massage. He admitted to getting a massage. There was no massage therapist on site. There is various reasons why, oh, we're just waiting. They all denied that this person received a massage except for the client. The client admitted he received a massage and frantically walked out of the building. They denied it. I spoke to David. He denied there was a massage. I says, well, we have it on body worn camera. He received the body-worn camera. All of a sudden, the tone changed to, he didn't receive a massage until he received the massage for free. Now, keep in mind, this business keeps saying they're struggling, and I understand that. Why would you give out free services if you're struggling? That doesn't make sense. And why did you change your story? Again, that does not make sense. You go from you never provided the service to you provided the service, oh, by the way, it's free, so you can't tell us what to do. Doesn't make sense. So an appeal letter was submitted. They now have submitted an appeal, ironically, and I gotta jump forward, because I'm running out of time. Ironically, when they appealed, they also said, we wanna change owners. Well, they've already put a new owner on the lease. They're doing some research, thanks to our attorney. We do believe there's also relations connected to this person. Either they lived with Ms. Dong or there is a ownership connection. So again, this is really common when people get caught into something. They sell the property really quick or they sell the license because they don't want to be involved with these violations. It's a loophole. It's how they get out of it. But what's ironic with this, she's going to go from being the owner to now the manager. So she's not leaving the business. She's going from, I'm not going to own it. I'm just going to be the manager. Well, if you can't comply as the owner, how are you going to comply as the manager? So a lot of these things don't add up. And that's where the frustration comes from the code enforcement unit, trying to work with them, trying to resolve these issues. And we get a lot of mixed stories that don't make sense.

Your time is up. Stand by. Jeremy, we may have questions, okay?

Yeah, so he is correct. He did attempt to sell the business, which we submitted all the paperwork, paid the money, submitted the application, code enforcement, did the whole nine yards, which they haven't done anything with. I don't believe it's illegal to sell a business to a relative. I don't know why that's a red flag. He keeps making reference to a receipt and all of this nonsense about, if I go into a restaurant and eat and I pay cash, I get a ticket that says how much I owe, 35 bucks for my meal. If I leave a $10 tip, that's not reflected anywhere. I leave $10 cash on the table. Why does, that's not on a receipt. When I go get a haircut, I give a beautician or the person cutting my hair, I'll give them cash. Where is that documented? Nowhere. So this nonsense about needing a receipt is flawed, okay. I don't understand the paper trail of how do we do our taxes. I didn't know that was a concern of code enforcement or the city for that matter. You folks are not involved in me doing my taxes, OK, or my wife doing her taxes. Yeah, so I don't know. We've complied, and you can clearly see, again, by the documents that you have in front of you, that that form is filled out as per city code minus the address, because code enforcement said I didn't have to put that on there. That's my only rebuttal to this argument.

All right. Thank you Yeah, so what I'm gonna do now is Take questions from the City Council if you have any of Questions Yeah, we could do that. Are there any public speakers?

I don't have any speaker cards. Did anyone wish to speak about this? No. OK.

So everybody looks perplexed. I know we're probably tired, right? Councilwoman Williams.

um so yeah i do have a few questions sir so this log yes ma'am does this represent your october log yes ma'am so these are all of your massages happening happening in october no it's not all of them but i didn't but you just said it was oh no i did not say it was i said that that is representing those are all from october yes that's not all of the ones in october why did you not submit all of the ones in october

Well, that's pretty close to all of them. I mean, I went through the logbook, and there may be one or two more. I mean, there's not a lot of them. Let's put it that way. Got it.

So how many masseuses do you have? Just one. And how many massages happen a day?

That's really hard to determine.

Average.

Average?

Two. average okay well you gave us seven for your October log if I round them up to $70 times seven you've made four hundred and ninety dollars in October well yeah those are not all on the same day of course those are different days yeah okay

Well, I guess that would be accurate. I don't think they're all for $70, though. Some of them.

Yeah, some of them for $50. I went up. OK. I see a lot of reflex too. I'm a small business owner as well and you were given very clear steps on what to do to be in compliance. It was super clear. I was super clear and I don't run a massage And the fact that they did take off, you know, that the client's address needed to be there, I'm glad they did that. I feel like they gave a lot of grace. They were working with you, being very small business friendly. And you were very clear, leaving out of here, that you were on probation and you had to follow these rules to the T. And I find this staff recommendation and this layout of facts extremely compelling, too, that you didn't do what you were supposed to do.

Okay. To what degree? Is that form not filled out correctly?

So that's the end of my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Yeah, I just, again, I was here on the last, time we met, and I voted in favor along with some of my colleagues, all of my colleagues but one, and the direction was perfectly clear, crystal clear.

Yes, it was.

We were given the story, and I think that they've been overwhelmingly... Forgiving and in what I've read so I am going to go with the staff recommendation on this Any other questions, yes

Mr. Proffitt, in regards to the logbook that they submitted, could you maybe clarify what your department's concern or maybe the disagreements is in regards to the logbook?

The biggest violation on that day was the subject receiving a massage in the various stories. So the logbook was really after the fact. We all of a sudden, hey, what is somebody doing in a room? So our investigation shifted into what's going on when they told us no one was there. UM SO THE LOG BOOK WAS KIND OF ERRATIC MEANING OH HERE'S SOME OF OUR STUFF BUT WE DON'T HAVE ALL OF OUR STUFF TOGETHER BUT WE REALLY FOCUSED ON WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH THE PERSON IN THE BUILDING BUT WHAT WE RECEIVED IS NOT THE FULL RECORDS ON HAND SO THAT CONTINUES TO BE AN ISSUE IT'S AN IMPROVEMENT BUT IT'S NOT RESOLVING THE MATTER AFTER COUNTLESS OUTREACH ATTEMPTS

I guess that was my next question. Since this issue began until now, have you guys seen improvement in their attempt to comply with what we require?

With the receipt side, yes, we have seen improvement. But there's the continued violations and now providing a massage without a licensed person. And the non-truth to that story is very concerning because it started with they were adamant no massage happened. Well, why do we have a person in there? to once they received our body-worn camera to now there's a new story of, oh, he did receive a massage, but it was free. That is a serious problem. That is a serious problem. And for a business that's saying that they're struggling, why are you giving out free service?

Thank you.

I have a question of Jeremy, please. Yes, Mayor. The question is, the owner here said that you changed or weren't abiding by our code. Could you address that?

SO UNDER DIRECTION, I WON'T SAY WE CHANGED. WE LOOSENED, YES, WE DID LOOSEN THE CODE TO SUPPORT THE DIRECTION THAT COUNCIL GAVE US TO WORK WITH THE BUSINESS. OKAY. BUT WHAT WE DID IS WE DIDN'T SAY YOU COULDN'T HAVE A LOG BOOK. WE JUST MADE IT MORE USER FRIENDLY. AND BY DOING THAT, WE SAID THIS IS HOW WE NEED TO CONNECT THE DOTS TO SHOW THAT YOU'RE PROVIDING SERVICE A MATCHES WITH YOUR RECEIPTS. But we took off the address that is correct. We did say we understand that might be a little bit of a vulnerable situation based off of direction from you guys. That's just something we could we could adjust if that makes sense.

So when you when your folks go into other massage businesses, are they looking for the address?

We're looking, yeah. We're looking for the full logbook.

You're giving just special because of what we had directed, right? Yeah. Kind of a little favor to them.

I won't say favor. We don't give people favors. But based off of support and direction to our leadership, we worked with you guys on that. Everything we do in code enforcement is great. There's nothing black and white. Just like applying the law, sometimes you could speed. You may get a ticket. Sometimes you won't. THAT MAKES SENSE?

I GOT IT.

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU. THANK YOU, JEREMY. DID YOU SELL YOUR BUSINESS AND IF YOU DID, HOW MUCH?

IT'S NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY SOLD YET BECAUSE WE WERE WAITING FOR THE OUTCOME OF THIS.

HOW MUCH ARE YOU SELLING IT FOR?

$40,000. 40? 40. THIS IS A FAMILY MEMBER? YES.

And would you still be involved?

My wife would be the manager of the business, yes. I mean, is there a problem with her still being at that location? I mean, I don't understand.

Look, my problem here is that staff, we gave you a big chance. And we were specific. And our code enforcement officers work very hard. I don't like how you've demeaned them at all. And I am going to vote to revoke the license. Anything else? You all good? We're good.

Madam Mayor, I do have one procedural thing I need to clarify. I do apologize. So the city has provided eight attachments, which is included in the agenda packet of the city council packet. Ms. Dong and Mr. Davis have submitted nine pages, which you have all had a chance to review. Attachment number five for the city is the email confirmation from Miracle Massage from the city to Miracle Massage regarding the appeal date, and the appeal date was originally scheduled for March 17th. That date was rescheduled till tonight because Ms. Dong sent an email to the city indicating that she needed to be out of town. Is that correct, Ms. Dong? That is correct. Okay. So I wanted to clarify that, and we did send her notice via email and in writing, and Mr. Davis just confirmed that. So that's the only procedural clarification I needed to make. um thank you so much mr city attorney so i'm going to bring it back to the council for a motion on this and sorry madam mayor so on the motion before you is resolution number 2026-57 this one is a little different as hearing officers than your normal resolution it provides you with two options so i'll just remind you that the two options are either number one to approve and sustain the appeal of Miracle Massage brought by Ms. Dong. So an approval would basically mean you're approving the license. So approval sustaining means you're going to grant the license. The second option is to deny or overrule the appeal, which means you would be denying Basically upholding the decision of code enforcement and denying the issuance of a massage permit So whoever makes a motion I would recommend that you say I either approve sustained resolution number 2026-57 or say I make a motion to deny or overrule resolution 2026-57 And just to say it one more time, if you are approving it, you are granting the massage license to Miracle Massage and Ms. Dong. If you are denying or overruling the appeal, you are denying the massage license.

And just for clarification, on the resolution, there's two different addresses. There's 1312 West Texas and 1328 West Texas. So I don't know if that's a typo.

You're at 1312, correct?

What's the address there, honey?

1328. 1328. 1328.

Yeah, so it should be 1328.

I apologize, it's 1328. It's 1328. It's 1328. I do have one question before you vote, if I may.

Who are you asking the question?

To you, Madam Mayor. Actually, let me address Mr. Lim. Is this going to prevent her from selling her business because they revoked the license?

I would say that that's a question to the chair, and I would advise you to decline it. We're not their lawyer or real estate broker, so I don't know the answer to that question. And even if we did, I don't think it's appropriate for us to answer that question to them.

right i'm i'm not going to answer that i don't know the answer okay can i can i i think we're done asking questions sir okay yes i have a question uh just to clarify the uh what was the forest did i read somewhere in here that there would also be a one-year uh moratorium on what type of business can operate there yes one year so that would preclude her from selling the business what what i what i'm curious of is While I understand the new structure in the event of a sale, the ownership is closely tied to the current ownership. Technically, it is still different. And I think in its current form, we have seen lack of adherence to I think what we were trying to go for in its current structure from a corporate standpoint. I would like to not see the one-year moratorium. If they're trying to change structure and go at it a different way and try again through a different means, I think they should have that opportunity. I guess all I'm asking in specific would be to not put the one-year moratorium.

My advice to this body is you are acting today as hearing officers. Before you is a resolution to either approve or deny the appeal of Miracle Massage located at 1328 West Texas Street. The prohibition on denial of a license of one year is codified under the Fairfield Municipal Code. It's not within the purview of this body acting as a hearing officer at this time to just change the code. If you want to bring another Ordinance to amend that ordinance you can do it, but I don't think I would not recommend that this body is hearing officers Say that we're going to just disregard our own municipal code. That's not the job of hearing officers.

Thank you I'll entertain a motion For the deny the denying overruling of the appeal

I will second the denial.

All in favor? Aye.

Can we take a roll call, please?

Yes, we can. Roll call, please.

Council Member Carr.

Deny.

Council Member Pandoro.

Yes.

Council Member Sandhu.

Yes.

Council Member Tonneson.

Aye.

Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Bertani.

Yes.

And Mayor Moy. Yes, that was unanimous. 7-0.

Oh, it wasn't? He may have denied the appeal. No, that's okay. It was unanimous.

So Madam Mayor, if I may address the appellant. Yes, please. So Ms. Dong, the city will send a letter confirming the city council's vote in a copy of the minutes so that you'll have that. And code enforcement, I assume, Madam Mayor, you're just instructing code enforcement to do anything necessary to give them notification of the denial of the permit.

Absolutely.

So you'll get something in writing from the city. Thank you. Thank you for letting us take this out of order.

Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. OK, now we're going to go to item 0.4. Is that right?

Yes, item 04. Discussion and direction regarding rental housing safety program. And our our presenter is Our presenter is again Jeremy profit community engagement manager of the police department and

I just want to say that quickly here. We have 10 minutes to wind up this meeting. You know my rules, not past 10 o'clock. Right? Fast.

I'm just kidding. Can I start?

We have seven speakers on this side. OK.

All right, good evening, Madam Mayor, Council. And I want to thank the community members that are out here tonight. Good to see some familiar faces. We did host a community meeting. As you all know, we've been talking about this topic for a little over a year now. And I would say a little bit longer than that, addressing quality of life issues throughout our community. So let me get into this presentation so we can give our audience for sticking through all this tonight. They're they're engagement just to kind of give a flavor. We had 27 people online and about 20 ish in person, I think is a good estimate. So wonderful out Thanks to our amazing small team, we sent out over 600 letters to business owners that are renting, not only to business owners, to property managers, anybody that had a vested interest in this ordinance that we're looking to improve our city with. And we're really been kind of tasked to come up with unique ways to improve our quality of life, improve our services in a challenging time in the city right now. So this program was kind of to help address multiple issues in our community through this. So as you see, what are our program goals? The rental housing safety program ensures that all resident rental properties in the city of Fairfield are routinely and thoroughly inspected, verify that they meet health and safety standards, The program also provides outreach, education to property owners, managers, tenants, and really a way to work together to address multiple issues in our community right now that we face. All rental properties must register. So we looked at this and you'll see quickly when I go through this, there's a lot of legislation out there that is asking cities to get involved with rental housing, such as apartment complexes. There's a ton of legislation that says we need to be in compliance to have rental programs. What we looked at holistically and talking with different cities and talking to the apartment rental associations, they're asking cities to fairly enforce or fairly come up with programs that support all rental housing, not just targeting large apartment complexes, not just targeting single family rentals, but how do we enforce quality of life standards of living across all rental properties? And that's what we're trying to do with this program. What is this program? It's here to help property owners, property managers, tenants, and the entire community improve the quality of life. Look at substandard housing. This is a photo from the city of Fairfield. All my photos in this presentation are real photos. We didn't use anything from Google. A good question that was asked the night of the community, the property owners and managers was, who gives us this authority? Because people are concerned, like, are we overstepping our boundaries? Why does code enforcement get to do this and so forth? So there is a code. I just could not recite it Tuesday night. You guys got me good on that question. I could not remember. It was eight something. The authority is 829 A and B, establishing legal definition and authority of code enforcement officers. There's multiple subsections. Really what we're enforcing is the health and safety code section 17920. All of our inspections are going to be based off of this health and safety code, which I did not have a chance to give you all. But there's seven different packets of what our inspections, a sample packet of what our inspections will look like. That will be standard across all rentals to address those health and safety things. If you guys weren't aware, but I think I've explained this, the county is no longer truly investigating these. What they do is they'll take a complaint and they refer to code enforcement. So previously, code enforcement really wasn't involved inside a housing per se. And we worked with the building department to address some of these issues. But the county really addressed all the health and safety codes that is no longer happening. And we're seeing a large uptick. would say three or four um complaints from the county has sent my way to code enforcement weekly right now i think i have about 15 on my desk in the last month of complaints about housing with the section 17920 and the health and safety code substandard substandard housing again these are photos these are photos taken within recent of an apartment complex. I have had the privilege, I volunteer outside of my work here, but I've worked in this city since 2014. I think there's only one person in this room that I could say that has done outreach and engagement, and that is the chief of police that has been to this many properties in this city. I've delivered food, I've delivered furniture, I've done code enforcement work, I've done outreach, I've delivered toys, I've been to a lot of Rental properties in the city from the beautiful multi-million dollar homes that we have in this city that has hoarding issues Okay, I'll back off the mic We've dealt with multi-million dollar homes that have substandard issues, that have had hoarding issues, and this impacts all walks of life. But I'll tell you what impacts the east side of our town, which is our lower income, that don't have a voice, that are scared to report things. I was at a property about a month ago in an apartment complex. Basically, they were trying to report flooding that had mold in substandard housing. And they were asked, hey, we're not going to move you until you drop your lawsuit. So these stories are real. These people, these are issues. Do I say this happens to 99% of the apartments, to 99% of the rentals? No, but it happens a lot. um so just like i would say in in from the law enforcement perspective not everybody is bad but there's a huge majority that keeps us busy and a lot of this is all quality of life issues that we're trying to address and that's outside inside that is junk debris faulty plumbing this apartment complex here is missing windows I mean, I've been to a third world country. We have places that look like a third world country in Fairfield and it's sad. It really is sad. Do I say that to everybody? No, but there's enough issues out there. We went to issues last week on an apartment complex on Alaska that turned into one complaint, turned into six complaints with running water through six different apartments. They're using broom handles and makeshift buckets to reroute water out the door and no one's doing anything about it until code enforcement showed up. um so these are rural issues in fairfield none of this is being made up none of this is saying um you know there's not a problem there is a serious problem there are slumlords in fairfield i'll be blunt honest with you there are slumlords in fairfield it is sad to see some of the conditions that we see throughout the east side of town serious and i'm sure council members that that uh serve these districts could probably say the same um and it's concerning and that's what we're trying to address So this is, I would say, the biggest concern that our folks that showed up, and I understand when we talk dollars and cents, we live in challenging times. No one wants to have to pay a dollar to anybody. But I had to, as a leader, look at cost recovery, look at what does it cost to stand up a program? What are the services that we cannot provide today because we're such a small team? How can we tackle this? And this is where this assessment came into. So we see a fee of 195 per unit. That would be anybody that is in a fully registered program that is not self-registered. And I'll try to go over that quickly here shortly. You would pay 195 a unit. Where did that number come from? In our fee schedule, we charge 255 for an inspection for code enforcement. There's a ton of staffing. There's reporting. There's administrative staff. We have to send out letters. Think of a code enforcement unit as we provide service, but we're also like a court system. We have to provide due process. We have to submit records. We have to make sure people receive their due process in a timely manner. We do this from beginning to end. So this is all staff time that goes into this stuff. So that's where the 255 Our goal is to look at a self-certification program that's incentivizing hardworking, good property owners at $85 a unit. So a Netflix prescription subscription is what? $29 right now for $85 a unit. Divide that by 12. You're looking at about $6 per month. And I'll explain what all those different services that these these properties will receive with that. And again, I understand Even $1 is challenging for today's time, but I have to look fiscally responsible. How do we deploy something? How do we look at cost recovery? How do we run a program? Because we can't do it on current staff, and we can't currently manage code enforcement on the current level. So we pride ourselves in what other cities are doing. There's no hidden fees. So there is no, hey, we're going to charge this when we show up. We're going to charge that later. Some cities offer a lower registration fee, but provide additional fees when they do inspections. They provide an 8% technology tax. There's all these different fees. It's one stop. This is what it is. This is what the expectation is. Our goal is to get everybody self-registered. What does that mean? You don't have any violations, and these are verified violations. These aren't just because a tenant or a person calls and says, because we understand the civil that goes on with renting. These are verified and non-corrected violations. So if you become a slumlord and you don't fix these issues, you're not going to get into self-certification. If you're a hardworking rental property, you're going to get into that self-certification right away, if that makes sense. There is a re-inspection fee, but like the standard is, you get to the third inspection, re-inspection, before we charge that fee. So what it is, 195 or 85 per unit, covers everything, except if we have to come back to your apartment or your unit, your rental property, a third time for the same issue, then we could charge a 255 re-inspection fee, which is what we do in code, but it takes that third visit. So it's not something that happens CONSISTENTLY. THERE IS A LATE FEE IF YOU DO NOT PAY ON TIME. WE'RE LOOKING AT ESTABLISHING RULES WHERE YOU WOULD PAY SIMILAR TO A BUSINESS LICENSE, IT MUST BE DUE BY JANUARY 31ST. IF YOU DAY 31 TO DAY 60, THERE COULD BE A 50% LATE FEE NOT TO EXCEED 7,000 ON THAT. WE HOPE WE DON'T HAVE TO GO DOWN THAT PROCESS. Here are some of the facts that I presented before. This is the true cost of trying to get four additional code enforcement officers, a management analyst, and an admin person. Currently, right now, code enforcement does not have this staffing. We have four code enforcement officers and a supervisor to manage the entire city. There is cost that will come. There will be abatement fees. What does that mean? So if we have to abate a property attorney fees, cost of boarding places up, there's a lot that goes into a code enforcement unit because it's all legal. It's all stuff that we have to provide. One-time fee of purchasing four vehicles for the four additional staffing is in here. equipment and training, which will be ongoing. So the first year cost would be 1.4 or 1,407,476. Future cost would drop about 300,000 because you're not buying the vehicles. It's now routine maintenance. The cost to operate this will drop about 300,000. With the CPI, what we're forecasting is The price is going up by 3%. We're looking at $1,191,685.28. FIRST YEAR CREDITS, WHAT IS THAT? AND I'LL GO INTO THIS NEXT SLIDE. THIS IS THE COST RECOVERY PER UNIT. WE'RE LOOKING AT FIRST YEAR CREDITS BECAUSE THOSE THAT DON'T SELF-CERTIFY IS FALLING INTO THE GUIDELINES WILL BE AT THE FULL 195. IF YOU SELF-CERTIFY, YOU'LL BE AT THE 85 BASED OFF OF THE ORDINANCE THAT WE DRAFTED. SO THAT REALLY IS A FLEX OF 1,579,871 TO 1,200,676. Our goal is to really drop full service, meaning full registration, by 25% within the next two to three years, which is incentivizing hardworking, good rental properties. And that's to drop it down to the 85 per unit fee, if that makes sense. So we really want to push the more folks to get into to self-certification. And that's where these property management groups could do their own inspections and submit the paperwork. And we just do random checks of those units and we do auditing and so forth. So it would be less staff time to do that. But it does not mean we still don't provide services. We still don't go out to the the units and do inspections.

Am I still too close to the mic? All right.

I'll bring my next I'll bring a lapel mic next time. So these I want to be very honest with you. These are extremely rough numbers. The reason why I tell you none of this data 100% exists. We're looking at census tracts. We're looking at Water bills, we're reaching out to the county. We have one individual trying to pull together a strong data point of how many rentals are in this city. That is not being captured anywhere. To this day, we're probably have been the first data to collect a strong data point. I know there's more rentals out there, but I have not had time with our small staffing to collect the eight to 9,000, potentially 10,000 rentals. We don't have enough data to, we are painstakingly going through water bills, reaching out to county assessors, matching up different things. So I will tell you, these are estimated numbers and they're trying to be conservative for a reason. We do know apartments are a lot easier to track, so we have a strong number on that. The hardest part is the properties, the single family, rental properties because those are just so many different ways. You could either not accurately track a rental property. So the number is conservatively sitting about 476. What does that mean? If you're renting two or more properties in Fairfield, we're asking you to be a part of that program. So if you rent, you're running a business and you're renting two or more properties, we're asking you to be part of the rental. If you're reading one, You're excluded. If you're renting to people that are not paying rent, it's a relative. If you're not receiving any tax-related purposes off of that as far as collecting income, we're not asking you to be a part of the program. There'll be a way to exempt yourself on that. So currently right now, as the code states, if you're renting four properties anywhere in the country, basically, that doesn't have to be foreign Fairfield, you're supposed to have a business license. Shocker, most people don't know that. And it is a code. We're supposed to be receiving business license fees. I WOULD SAY IT'S LESS THAN 50 PERCENT OF FOLKS OPERATING THAT WAY OR EVEN PAYING A BUSINESS LICENSE I COULD TELL YOU THERE'S APARTMENT COMPLEXES TODAY LARGE ONES NOT PAYING A BUSINESS LICENSE SO THAT'S A CURRENT THING THAT WE'RE TRYING TO CORRECT WITH THIS PROGRAM THEY'RE NOT PAYING BUSINESS LICENSE YOU ARE OPERATING A BUSINESS WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO LOOK AT IS IF YOU'RE IF YOU'RE RENTING TWO OR MORE PROPERTIES IN THIS COMMUNITY THAT YOU SHOULD REGISTER YOUR PROPERTIES AS CONDUCTING A BUSINESS IN FAIRFIELD what does that look like? If you're renting a single-family housing unit and you have two or more, you're supposed to be paying at least $60 on that. So if we're talking you're a good renter and you're paying $85, it's only a $25 increase, but the services that I'll show you later that you'll get out of this, because we're asking to waive the business license in exchange for paying for the rental. What we don't want to do is stack fees, right? We're not trying to say you've got to pay this fee, then you're going to pay that fee. We don't want to do that. So we're looking at in exchange is you'll pay the rental housing annual unit fee. It's annually, not monthly. There is some confusion on that. And we would waive the business license fee that really is not being fully collected. Here is where I did a cost showing everybody again, code enforcement cost per hour is 255. That is a fee study. That is actual fact. An average inspection is an hour. The annual rental housing, if you pay the full price, is 195. We're looking at cost savings and adjustments to waive the business licensing fee, less paperwork, more services provided. Self-certification would be even less, 85 per unit. Here is the legislation, and yes, a lot of folks pointed out this is all for multifamily housing. why would we not want to support our renters whether you're living in a single family house or a apartment complex because we've ran across all these issues in both so we think it should be fair across the board and not just say only apartments have to participate in fair housing or safe and healthy housing These are actual pictures of the apartment complex. We were just at they use the Dustpan to reroute water off the wall. This was two weeks three weeks ago, maybe Again supporting owners tenants property management groups consistently reached out to us. Hey, I can't get a tenant to comply They won't let me inspect can code enforcement help we could write inspection warrants. We could help work with these apartment complexes They're already asking for these services. We just can't keep up. We really can't and Um, last year we, um, over the summer we had six cannabis grows, 12 total over the entire year, all rental properties. Um, so what we're also looking to, to address these issues, how many times has council kind of connected with us about, um, Supportive housing was a hot topic, right? We cannot regulate the people that live in the homes You can't that is illegal, but you can't address are they living in safe housing? What is that? Are they? Sex registrants. Why do we have 15 of a living in a house? These programs allow us to do safety inspections. They allow us for them to reap right now There's no reporting mechanism mental health facilities are operating in Beautiful neighborhoods and they're housing five to six to ten people they're flying under the radar Are they really living in rooms? Are they renting out beds? We don't have a mechanism to inspect those farming housing The state of California supports farming housing. How many complaints have I received from council members like, I need you to go in there and see if they're living in standard housing, are they okay? This would help address those. Again, we can't address people, but we can make sure they're in a safe and healthy environment. I hope that makes sense. We can't say, no, they can't live here, no, they can't live in this place, but we can say, why do you have 30 people in one house? Do you have adequate living conditions? BENEFITS, OWNERS CAN BECOME SELF-CERTIFICATION, SO LOWER THE RATES. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT TRYING TO REVITALIZE OUR CRIME PREVENTION SUPPORT, SO BRING BACK THE CRIME-FREE MULTIHOUSING IN SUPPORT OF THIS RENTAL HOUSING PROGRAM. MOST OF YOU THAT HAVE BEEN AROUND HERE FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARS, WE KNOW HOW SUCCESSFUL CRIME-FREE MULTIHOUSING WAS. And is, and we would try to revitalize through these programs to bring more of that back to the community with some of these cost recovery mechanisms. Providing, we'll provide free crime permission septeds, assessing, do they need improved lighting? How can we make the house or the apartments a safer, healthier place to live? Preventing crime, a lot of these places, a lot of the areas that we discussed are high calls for service. These are some of the total numbers that we just discussed, but I'll continue to hurry up because I got 29 slides. We're about seven multi-units, six to seven multi-units in development as we speak. Some of the highlights to these. There's mandated expectations or exceptions. That is newly constructed units. If you're five years or younger, you would go right to self-certification. Public housing. So rental residential units owned and operated by the housing authority. So they're already in a program working with Section 8 and so forth. If they provide documents that they're following those, then we'd exempt them. SINGLE FAMILY COMMUNITY UNITS AGAIN IF IF THESE FOLKS THAT ARE RENTING PROPERTIES THAT ARE SAYING I'M DOING FOR MY COUSIN MY AUNT THERE'S NO TRANSACTION OF FUNDS THEY COULD BE EXEMPT AND IF THEY'RE NOT OWNING TWO OR MORE THEN THEY DON'T HAVE TO REGISTER WITH THE PROGRAM IF THEY'RE NOT COLLECTING ANY FUNDS Form a notice so there will be notices the property owner and the tenant So that's part of what code enforcement would have to reach out send a letter and say in 30 days We would like to inspect unit a or C. Whatever that is The owner or the tenant does have the right to refuse. What does that mean? We'd have to write an inspection warrant to inspect and So everybody still has due process. Everybody has rights. It doesn't give us an open key to just walk into anybody's house. They could say, I don't want you here. And if we have probable cause and we have different things that we could write warrants, inspection warrants, we can further assess that. A lot of the questions we get from property owners and managers is, hey, my tenant won't allow me access. Can you get in? There's legal stuff that we have to follow. It's not a magic key, so there is due process. There is people's rights. We are keeping that in place. That is written in the ordinance that we drafted, 25 pages, that will be given to the owners, the tenants. This will all be spelled out to make sure no one has their rights violated as far as the right to refuse. Again, this is kind of covering a lot of this what sections the rights this is all in the ordinance I was just trying to highlight some of this Again these are all rights right in the ordinance self-certification Speed it up self-certification again is what our goal is Any questions SOME DAY BEFORE I RETIRE, CAN I BE, LIKE, NUMBER ONE AND TWO ON THE AGENDA?

I THINK WE'LL HAVE SOME QUESTIONS AFTER THE PUBLIC COMMENTS. OKAY.

PUBLIC COMMENTS, PERFECT.

SORRY, I'M NOT SPEAKING FOR EVERYONE. I WILL.

SO I WILL GO AHEAD AND OPEN PUBLIC COMMENTS SO THAT WE CAN TAKE THE PUBLIC COMMENTS BEFORE WE BRING IT BACK FOR COUNCIL DISCUSSION.

Okay, our first speaker is Carl Dumas, followed by Don McDonald.

Good evening, council. My name is Carl Dumas. I've lived in Fairfield for 35 years, and I am a rental property owner as well. I really love Fairfield. I love this town. There's nothing like it. No better place to live. And I do want to acknowledge that we do have a great police chief, hardworking, as well as the code enforcement staff is hardworking as well. But as a former community development director, it is difficult for me to come in front of you and oppose a city item. However, this rental housing program proposal is fundamentally flawed. It lacks imperial discipline. data necessary to prove that Fairfield single-family and multi-family rental stock suffers from a systemic health and safety crisis. If you look at the census data that's out there, Fairfield contains 41,000 dwellings. About 40% of those are rentals, which equals about 16,000 units. It's not the 50% stated in the proposed ordinance and staff report. Between 6,000 and 7,000 of the rentals are single family or condos. It leaves about 9,000 to 10,000 apartments. And about 3,200 of the rental property owners live out of town, and about 1,900 of them live in Fairfield. The staff report has no foundational data for program for this program mandate. To discuss a program like this, at a minimum, city council, as well as the public, should have the complaint volumes out of code enforcement, the types of complaints, the location of them, the frequencies of the violations, and a comparison in terms of multifamily and single family. Also, are they rental, are they homeowners? And as well as, what's the effect on the affordable housing if a program like this goes in place? The program also inaccurately uses Assembly Bill 548 as justification, and that's only for multifamily. If code enforcement is understaffed, and there's a citywide systemic enforcement issue, then why hasn't code enforcement been a Measure P sales tax funding priority? This proposed program is frivolous, and it contributes to eroding the confidence in the city staff, and it gives no motivation for voters to extend Measure P sales tax. Those 1,900 rental homeowners represent about three eligible voters per household. If you do the math, that's over 5,000 potential eligible voters that can vote for Measure P. I take pride in maintaining my properties to a high standard and investing in the community I live in. Responsible housing providers and their tenants should not be burdened by broad mandates and a clear lack of evidence based on this necessity. We ask that you please table this item until there's information provided for data that actually justifies it. Thank you.

Thank you, Carl. Next speaker is Don McDonald, to be followed by Steve Talbert.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council Members. Thank you so much for hearing us and staying as late as you are. I sat on the Planning Commission for 13 years and served as the chair twice, so I know what it's like to sit here at 10, 11 o'clock at night, so I appreciate that. I want to... concur with everything that Carl just said, because those are facts. But I also want to point out a couple of other things that I think you should be aware of. First of all, I am a broker owner of a real estate company here called Navigate Real Estate. We have 108 agents and four offices. We also have 250 plus properties under rental as a property management company. And I can tell you, resoundingly, our clients are yelling at us like this could be the last straw for them, like they're going to sell. Why would they continue to rental if you're going to keep getting money from them, right? And you look at the fee, $195, doesn't seem like a lot, right? Oh, we'll just pass it on to the tenant, right? Pass it on to the tenant. Well, it's not the fee that's going to affect everybody. It's going to be the cost of compliance. Do you know that the average cost of a property off the market for one week is $700 to $800? That's what it costs the homeowner for that property to be off the market, not rented for one week. And you're talking about an inspection, re-inspection, how often that's going to happen, how long it's going to take for them to come in, get it compliant. Just painting a house can take a market off for six weeks. that profit margins aren't there for the homeowners. You gotta really consider that. If you look at the surrounding cities, Modesto, Stockton, Richmond, Rancho Cordova, they all have similar programs. They're all substantially less by a half of what we're costing. And all of them have zero credibility facts on reducing the renting costs. They've all increased. They've all followed in line with market, which, as we know, the market is set by demand and fluctuation. And if we give up our most precious commodity in housing right now for affordability is the mom and pop rental market. That's where people have an entry level to get in and establish a home. That's where the second homeowner who bought a home turns a home into a rental, builds wealth and generational wealth for themselves. And if we start removing that, where does it stop? Do we start taxing every human in Fairfield now to pay for the homeless? Do we start taxing an additional charge on every car so we can remove the unwatered cars off the street? It has to stop at some point. I understand we're $11 million deficit here from Budweiser bailing on us. We've got to find ways to get money.

$9, $9, $9, $9.

Give or take a few. I understand we've got to get money for the city. I understand that. Measure P is an excellent opportunity that... you're going to be fortunate if it continues to get passed because we need it. So we're not here advocating for anything other than homeowners, people who put their heart and soul and money in here. And he said himself, his words, it doesn't affect 99% of the housing out here. So if it's affecting 1%, maybe we could do a better job of policing the 1%, finding the 1%, getting them to clean up their acts and change that. That would be better money spent. Thank you.

Thank you, Don. Next is Steve Talbert to be followed by Nora Dizon.

Thank you for listening to me this evening. Sorry I didn't dress up a little better. Yeah, this is quite a problem for me. I've worked over on Phoenix Drive in an apartment over there for 40 years. And I could tell you the history of lumber yards coming and going in Fairfield. And I've got so many credit card points from going to the Home Depot and the Lowe's. It's an ongoing thing. The business, the apartment building is 60 years old. And there's always something. And I have never one time had a problem downtown with the judges throwing my evictions out for housing issues. Never once in 40 years. And for some reason, I gotta pay the city of Fairfield now an inspection fee, drop everything I'm doing, and go through all of these units over there. This does not work for me. I've got to take the money out of my budget and spend it for a fee? What am I supposed to be spending it on? I'm supposed to be doing the repair work. You know? I don't know. This one, if you've just got to do this, at least put a sunset clause on it. Because you're not going to... I've been doing this for so long, I can tell you for sure that improvements in housing and remodeling, that comes about because of economics, because of demand. People want to live there. You've got a whole bunch of people that are willing to pay the rent And all of a sudden, well, that's when it improves. That's what makes it improve. You've got deterioration around here because the job market. There's not enough people to pay for it. And so the landlords aren't going to put money into a dilapidated thing to get a rent. You just can't get it. I've got a vacancy right now. I've got to put a lot of money in these places with kitchen. And they're just sitting there. I can't get the money back from these things. I don't know where the tenants are yet. So I just don't need any more expenses. So that's, you know... That's really about all I've got to say. I hope you think about this very carefully because it's not good economics. It's good for you guys to get some more fees. And that's what I'm thinking, like the last speaker. It looks to me like a fee collection thing. And let's hire some more people to run around and do inspections. I don't think so. So that's my opinion. Thanks for listening. Appreciate it.

Next is Nora Dizon to be followed by Simona Padilla-Schulters.

Good evening. Nothing personal here, but I am against this idea. And I think that there was not enough engagement with the community. Because if there had been, there were lots of points that I could have provided that is done differently in other cities. I do have property in Sacramento. After the first inspection, the fee is $27 a year. And they run it to really help for the safety. You know, good for a tenant, good for a landlord. Anyway, I think there is a lap. of interaction with people that could have given information that would have been helpful. There are other aspects to the program that's there. And I just wish this city council would really think about what's important right now. We need Measure P to be approved, to be voted on. If we don't get that, this city is in trouble. And you think, please, really think back about these topics that have been coming through. I'm sorry, people are not happy. You've got Vista Ridge, you've got lots of people who are angry, angry about that. LLMDs, I'm sorry, people are angry about that. Other things in the past that came up that were really infuriating. Why do you wanna do this now? And if you think you're just getting the landlord, you're mistaken. The tenants don't like to get the inspections too. So I'm telling you, you would be impacting a whole bunch of people who are gonna be upset with this city. If you're gonna do it, have more interaction with the community, learn a little bit more or a lot more. And do it after you get Measure P passed. Right now, people are upset. The timing on this is as bad as it gets. Thank you.

Next is Simona Padilla-Schulters, to be followed by Pam Segal.

Good evening. I am Simona Padilla-Schultens and also owner of several rental properties here in Fairfield. I was not aware that this discussion was going on until a couple of days ago, so I don't know how the outreach was done. If it was strictly through the property management companies, you're missing a lot of us that have not been kept informed as to this proposal. I am strongly opposed to this proposal, primarily because I think that the majority of the property owners take pride in how we maintain our properties. My husband and I work very hard to make sure our properties are kept up and it's a full-time job for us. We don't just sit back and collect the rent and let the properties go downhill and create problems because then you're not gonna have tenants for very long. Rental properties are not like they used to be. You have vacancies now. You could have one or two months and if your property is not competitive, you're gonna have a problem. I agree that you have what you're calling slumlords. And that is true with many of the cities, not just the city of Fairfield. But I believe that the slumlords are the minority, not the majority. The majority take pride and the minority is what's causing the problems and it's the focus of your attention. And you're putting all of us in one bucket. And those of us that take pride in taking care of our properties, resent it and do not appreciate the city trying to put their hands in our business. I think that you need to focus on where the problems are. You need to focus on the minority. We all know, I've lived in Fairfield for 57 years, and I know where the rental blight is. And I think you guys do too. You can walk the streets and you can tell which apartments, which homes, which areas in Fairfield you're gonna have the problems. So why don't you focus there? And leave the rest of us alone.

Simona, your time is up.

Thank you. Good to see you.

Next is Pam Siegel to be followed by Greg Owen.

Good evening. I know it's late. It's way past my bedtime. I just want to thank you for taking the time to be here. I don't have much more to add because everybody has already said what I was going to say. I have a couple of rental properties. I do use a property management company on some. And I already pay them a monthly fee. They do a yearly inspection. So why should I pay double, double dipping? And most of us do take care of it. I have another property that I maintain it. And I've never had any complaints. I've had the same tenants for eight years. They're great. So like she said, it's more of a minority that's not taken care of. Some of those pictures on homes, I sell real estate. Some homeowners live like that, you know, and they should be under the code of enforcement just as much. It kind of sounds like it's a money-making business. I'd just like to see $1.4 million going into this. I'd like to see that spent more on the police or fire departments or something that's going to serve and make Fairfield a better community and not gouge the homeowners that are taking care of their properties. Thank you. Thank you.

And our last speaker is Greg Owen.

Good evening. Thanks for staying so late. My name's Greg Owen. I'm a resident at Fairfield. I have a business here with over a hundred employees. I have rental properties. Most of them I built myself. I'm third generation. I have fourth generation here growing up and the fifth generation. They'll all be passed on the rental properties we have. Interesting that We have pride and ownership on every one of our properties. The first one I bought was 50 years ago. We still own it. And it's the best looking house on the block. We know that it's important, like other people mentioned, that it's a business and you have to attract tenants. And we don't have a problem at all getting tenants. What this does, it takes like peanut butter on toast, spreads out your staff to all, I think I heard 7,000 rentals 100% of all of them will have to be looked at when there's only, from what I could find, there's a problem with 4%. So 96% of the rental owners who are here have pride in ownership. So now they're going to have to cover all of them instead of only the 4% that needs the love. If they focused on the 4%, which with the staff they could probably do, they could Evict the tenants they could foreclose on the properties and raise that number up It doesn't make sense for them to have to cover all ninety six percent that don't need anything at all Thank you.

Thank you. I Don't have any other speaker cards did anyone else wish to speak? Okay, come on up Oh, are you Jim Stever? Yeah.

Oh, okay. I screwed up.

Okay, that's all right.

Real quick, ladies and gentlemen, this guy did a great job the other night explaining everything. He really did. He had a full hour. He did a great job. The one thing that he pointed out that he didn't point out tonight, though, and I think those of us that were here are still remembering, and I forget the cities, honest to God. I don't know, Santa Rosa or... two or three that he named off. And their monthly fees were like $60, $48. Everybody, their minds are blown on what they're asking us to pay. The one other thing that was also mentioned that came up was just have a flat tax on everybody in the whole town. And God forbid, if you decide to do that, please don't ask me to be on your re-election committees, because you guys are dead in arrival. But think very carefully about this, really, really and truly. And like that one man said, more and more owners are getting fed up and they're selling their rentals. I've sold a lot more rentals for old clients than I've sold the new ones, honest to God, in the last couple of years. So be careful.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? No, there are no hands raised on line.

Thank you. So I'm going to go ahead and bring this back for discussion questions. Councilman Doug.

Yeah, some of you may or may not know I was in the trades for many years here in Fairfield. I've been here 63 years. I know the town as good as anybody. And I've got to agree with you guys a lot on the percentage of the slumlords. I did a lot of the remodeling and painting, and I did that for 25 years here in Fairfield. So... I know that most owners take care of their place, hire people like me to go over, people like all my friends and my family who, he still does it, works for realtors. My brother is 70 years old, he's still out there painting and taking care of things. So I know there is a percentage that don't and I also know, I did a little checking in some of the other towns even nearby and they're way less on this too. So I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not on board on this at all. Thank you.

Anybody else have anything to say?

Yeah, thank you, and thank you. I've been in the real estate business since I was a kid, so I know most of the people in the room. Yeah, I think we need to re-look at this and maybe pause for now. Get more people involved. People have talked about having a group come together and really hashing this out. The numbers I'm seeing, when the realtors bring up cost of repairs, what are the timelines on that? I know inspections are tough. I know that, and again, Jeremy, I think you did a lot of good work on this and you dug in, but the $85 a year, I think that's a fair fee for self-inspection, but What's it covering? I mean, I know that we're doing the code enforcement, but it's just a lot of this is unclear, and I've received a lot of information from several different people and You know, we're pushing late into the night, and I don't really want to go in depth, but I'm happy to speak with anybody that wants to reach out. But I'm on a hold pattern right now, and I don't disagree with we've got a Measure P tax to pass, hopefully. So I think I'm in favor of the concept, but not necessarily the direction this is going now and certainly like to get a lot more information on it. Thank you.

Madam Vice Mayor.

Thank you Jeremy for doing a great job at reporting and getting together the information that you've gotten together for us. Thank you speakers for your input. And thank you Carl for a particularly comprehensive and enlightening packet of information that really brought some important issues to the surface for me. I have very little experience in the real estate industry, et cetera, so I really appreciate the insight of someone with experience in this regard. I'll just say that I agree that what concerns me the most about this project, which like Councilmember Tonneson said, I agree with the concept, but what concerns me the most is the lack of data. the lack of data so that we're making data-driven decisions, like the city manager likes to make. He's a data guy. And I mean, would a more targeted approach to this concept be more viable? I mean, the first year estimated revenue is based on 7,169 units, right? But we know that there are approximately 16,192 rental units that would be subject to this Frankly mandate if if the city adopted it, right? So I mean that's it that that's a chasm of Difference between the projections for the first year revenue and how many Units this will actually be applying to Almost well more than 50% more. So it would be covering a lot of rental units Where do I get that number? Where am I getting that number? The 16,100 whatever 90?

Yeah, I believe that was the number that was submitted by Mr. Dumas.

Yeah.

Correct. Yeah, I was just confirming with Jeremy that the 7,000 number is only the multi-family units.

okay but but my point is just that that is not representative of how many rental units this could actually apply to which is more in the neighborhood of 16 000 units am i right about that jeremy we don't have we don't have a true accurate number there's no hundred percent saying that's how many we have this is all

but that doesn't mean we're gonna get to that number and be able to accurately say that's how many, that's an assessment, right?

Okay.

So I'm just saying, I'm just saying, so not to belabor the point, I mean, I am inclined to really get into this because so many units can be impacted. I don't know what this would have, how this would impact affordable housing. Okay. in the city of Fairfield. And I think, and are there target zones where we could do this kind of a program as a phased approach or just a more, we know where the target zones are. I mean, and I'm sure we can have data to find data to support that. Maybe that's the approach to take initially. But I think at this point, we just don't have the data in front of us. And so, yeah, I too agree with the concept. I don't think that we are at the point, not even close, to making a final determination on a blanket mandate to charge these fees, which, by the way, are annual fees, but inspections are, what, every three years? So, you know, I've just got a lot of questions about the program I you know this is a baseline where we can start we really need to get into it and and get much more community engagement and insight from the people who actually be impacted by these fees so I'll leave it there for now.

Councilman Sandy. Mr. Profit, thanks for your presentation and to everybody that came out. I recall when we were at one of our retreats when this initially came up and I think we really liked the idea of it being more or less budget neutral on the impact for what we currently spend on code enforcement. This was going to be a revenue balancing thing to increase code enforcement. go as far as to say I think a lot of us agree that we need to do more code enforcement overall. And I hear the idea that maybe this is too high from a price perspective, but if we want to do more code enforcement then maybe we'll have to look at the budget process again and fund code enforcement more because one of the initial drivers of doing this whole thing was we wanted to do more code enforcement without paying for it from the city perspective so while I hear the concern from the home from the owner standpoint which I do agree with as well from a city perspective part of what drove this I think process a year or two ago was trying to find a creative way to do more code enforcement One question for my colleague, Councilman Tonneson. Would you be more in favor if the pricing overall was lower?

IF THERE WERE MORE INFORMATION OUT THERE THAT WE'VE GONE TO THESE EXPERTS AND WE'VE DISCUSSED IT WITH, LIKE PAM SAID, WE'VE HAD MORE DISCUSSION WITH THE PEOPLE THAT ARE THE PLAYERS.

I RECALL WHEN WE DID A TOUR MAYBE A YEAR OR TWO AGO AND WE LOOKED AT SOME OF THESE PROPERTIES AND IT IS DIFFICULT TO GET COMPLIANCE WITH SOME OF THESE COMMERCIAL PLACES THAT ARE HIGHLY OUT OF CODE AND THE JUDICIAL PROCESS CAN BE TAXING. I think we need, I agree that more information on this. And then do you have information currently on before us in regards to the pricing and how it ranks with other cities? We've heard a few comments on that, but do we have that right now in front of us?

I don't have that right now in front of us, but we did do that previous meetings back. We did discuss that previously. That was.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you. So I have a few thoughts. I have a property management background, too, in affordable housing. And when I You know, I had a flashback of three years ago when there was a half a room of folks that came in that were saying that they were living in substandard deplorable conditions. And so I remember that the other side of the coin, you know, residents that were impacted and they were crying and they were talking about You know bites and and it kind of reminds me of some of these pictures so it's obvious that there's a problem is obvious that The folks that are taking good care of their properties are here But there's definitely People that aren't they don't give a shit and they're letting people live any type of way So what is that balance? So when I think about that balance is, you know, maybe it's a lower fee, but what does that fee look like? So, you know, I would almost want to see... have you all involved because I could hear from some of your voices that you you know that this is needed but it's just that rate that $85 or 155 that's like an angst, you know, but a very much lower fee is something that You all would consider because you know, you know code enforcement is needed and I'm also thinking, what does a pilot look like, a lower fee pilot? You know, just kind of data and numbers, what does that look like? So that's crossed my mind. Also, in that same vein, I also feel like, is the timing right? Like, we're trying to push Measure P. Do we want to include this in the conversation? And I don't think we do. I think we want to pause and wait. The other very interesting part of the presentation was the business licenses and that there's all of these folks that we're not collecting business license fees for. I think that's a completely separate issue that shouldn't be intermixed, in my opinion. I think if you have a business, you need a business license in the city of Fairfield. And that feels like revenue we're not tapping into, and we already know we need every piece of revenue. And to me, that seems like a reasonable lift, even though, in my mind, business license fees GO INTO THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BUDGET AND NOT A PUBLIC WORKS CODE ENFORCEMENT BUDGET? IS THAT RIGHT? IF WE INCREASE CODE, I'M SORRY, BUSINESS LICENSE FEES, GOT THAT REVENUE, I'M SAYING INCREASE, I DON'T MEAN INCREASE, ACTUALLY GET OUR MONEY THAT WE ARE OWED, DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR BUDGET?

NO.

IT DOESN'T? YES.

BUSINESS LICENSE REVENUES GENERAL FUND.

Yep, yep. So I think we have two completely, I don't know, I just, I don't want to waive business license fees. I want those business license fees. Everyone in business, they need to expect to pay a business license fee. So I kind of think that's separate. But just to kind of repeat it in my head, I would like to see a lower, lower more digestible fee and we should be having meetings doing surveys that type of thing in this first phase and not intermixing it with measure P that push is my thought so thank you and thank you for this very thorough presentation I appreciate it council in Pandora

Thank you, yeah, so I'll echo what my colleagues are saying with regards to, it's too soon, need more information. Jeremy, thank you for all the work you've put into this, because I know this also came before us, because we all have shared concerns with these specific types of properties. I'm a renter, my district is not, there's no secret, it probably has one of the highest concentrations of these kind of sub-centered conditions, and so I also think about, Where does the cost go? I pay rent. It's not too bad. But I have others in my community, in my district, who are, they're barely surviving. It's just, it's day by day, it's day to day. And so I think about those folks and how this might impact them. And so I just wanna make sure that we have the right information and the right data and that we have folks on board so that this program or a variation of it is beneficial to the city and not, it's not a negative impact to those that are barely able to, or that, So much of their income goes towards rent and then they can lose her, you know They can lose a job and they're out on the street. So I think about those folks As a renter myself and the folks that live in my community in my in mice in my complex I have elderly I have young families I have you know, blue collar workers. And so these folks are the backbone to our community. And so just want to make sure that we are also thinking of them in this space and making sure that again, this program is one that the city can be proud of and can look back to and that code can go out and do their job at the same time, making sure that the substandard living, you know, is decreased more and more every year. So thank you.

And Veer, really? Go ahead.

MR. PROPHET, COULD YOU CONFIRM, WAS YOUR MAIN DRIVER FOR COMING UP WITH THE COST ESTIMATE TO ENSURE THAT IT WAS BUDGET NEUTRAL?

THAT IS 100% CORRECT. BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE THE STAFF TO OPERATE THIS. below minimums.

Yeah, OK. Just one idea from my colleagues from my position. I'd be curious to see what maybe three different pricing tiers would look like that were not budget neutral. And we can maybe determine from there how we feel about it. At least from my perspective, it seems there is a sense that something like this is needed. Yeah, thank you.

All right. I'll make a couple comments. First, Jeremy, thank you for all your work tonight. It's been a long night, and I know working on that took a lot. I started getting letters and calls from folks because I thought the concept was OK back when we talked about it. The more I learned and dug into it, the less I liked it. Here's why. I had seven rentals at one time in the city of Fairfield. And we called them mentoles. You know why? Because we worked our tail ends off to make sure they were in good shape. Because once you let, just like let's say here in the city, once you let maintenance go, you're asking for it. It's going to catch up with you. That roof is going to collapse, the roofer's wife. It's going to happen. So you don't want that to happen. Everybody who owns rentals, whether it's apartment complexes or mom and pops, I guess that's what Ken and I were, it's a business. Do we really want to be anti-business? I don't. I'm like really thumbs down on this all the way around. And I've heard enough. I had people call me, and they weren't threatening. They just said, I'm selling my apartment complexes in Fairfield. And you know what? When they started doing this in Oakland, it made it so who wanted to invest there? We want people to invest in Fairfield. That's what we want. This kind of stuff is a kind of tax. And it's a horrible tax, because what it does is it makes housing unaffordable. It's talking out of both sides of your mouth. You want affordable housing, but you want to do this? It doesn't work. Is there substandard housing? Oh, hell yeah. These people can tell you where it is. We can tell you where it is. And I get it. We're underfunded everywhere. Everybody's working their tails off. But the answer is not this. And we've just raised water rates. The sewer district just is raising sewer rates. And we want to tax. And we've spent money stupidly in this city. And then we're going to come at you guys? I don't think so. No. So I guess we're giving direction tonight. It sounded like a majority of us at least want to wait. Probably it's a good idea to wait way past the elections. What I mean is for the tax. If we support the tax, like they said, let's count them up. It's simple math. How many people live in these places? And you got voters in there. And I'll also laugh about what Mr. Stever said. I was just going to ask him to work for me on my campaign. But anyway, I think we all gave direction, and it sounds like,

Can I ask one last question? Sure. So at one of the last times that we'd heard about this, I think that there was a few of us that had asked to speak to other cities.

Yes.

Is that correct? Yes. And who was that, yourself and the vice mayor? I think so. Can you guys share who you guys spoke to and what they said?

Oh, that we were going to talk to other cities about it? We didn't. I didn't. No. I didn't talk to other cities about it. I just did research on it.

Yeah, no. You guys didn't meet with anybody? Excuse me? You guys didn't meet with any other city that had...

No.

Mayor, if I could jog your memory a little. You and the vice mayor and I had a Zoom call. Yes, we did. I think he was vice mayor at the time of Rancho Cordova who talked to you about the program.

Yes, we did. Well, we did that, but beyond Rancho Cordova, we did not. So we did talk to one city.

Right, so that was my question. I'm sorry, I apologize. Yeah, so I wanted to know what they had said about the program and how it was going for them.

Yeah. Just curious. They seemed happy with it, I think. I think that's fair. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think their fees were a lot less than what we were looking at, from what I recall. But anyway, that's correct. And there's one other thing that I want to talk about. And that is some of the folks who live in lower income areas. We have... people throughout our city who are undocumented. They're fearful of people coming in and going through the stuff. We have to think about that. You don't want people living in fear. I think this is the way to do it. So again, I could go on all night. I don't want to. We're done. I mean, it's tired. But I think, again, the direction is not now. Hang it up for now. And then maybe we can bring it back to the board and get some suggestions and talk to actually the experts, those guys out there. They know where to look to see how many apartment complexes we have, all those kind of things. That seems like it. It shows that we didn't talk enough to people. That's what it shows. We didn't, you know, to find out exactly. So, anyway, I just want to thank, oh, yes, Madam Vice President.

Just one really quick comment. Another great idea. offered up by Carl Dumas was the prospect of establishing a collaborative working group to create a stakeholder task force comprising local landlords, property managers, code enforcement, housing services, and the building department. This group will use the data collected to develop targeted community-driven solutions that ensure Fairfield's rental housing remains both safe and affordable. So I would love and be interested to follow up with you. And talk to Carl. Yes. And maybe do a task force like that so we can make some progress. Sure. As we move forward.

I think that's a good idea. And we do appreciate all the comments from the experts again. And Carl, I'm glad that you sent out the letter and stood up even though This is a city you work for. You're an expert. You should, you know, what you sent out was a staff report, bro. And you schooled us. So anyway, thank you. I think that's it. You got direction? You got it? The city manager said yes.

Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you very much. You guys are excused. All right, team, we just got this last.

and ordering the fees to be adjusted annually to stay current with expenses. And our presenter is Jeff Thomas, Chief Building Official.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of council. Pardon me. Start over. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of council. Right now, why is it not up? It's on my screen.

THERE WE GO.

I GOT ALL NIGHT. IN THE INTEREST OF TIME, MOSTLY THIS PRESENTATION IS WHAT YOU GUYS SAW A FEW WEEKS AGO. I CAN GO THROUGH REALLY QUICKLY JUST A FEW THINGS THAT HAVE COME. I BELIEVE YOU GUYS HAVE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM THE BIA THAT THEY HAVE SENT US. SO I CAN BRIEFLY TOUCH ON THAT. WE HAVE BEEN IN COMMUNICATIONS WITH THEM. THEIR SECOND LETTER INDICATES THAT THEY DON'T BELIEVE WE'VE ANSWERED THEIR QUESTIONS. WE BELIEVE WE HAVE ADEQUATELY ANSWERED THEIR QUESTIONS. PLEASE AS COUNCIL OR IF WE WANT TO SEE IF THERE'S ANY SPEAKERS FIRST, THEN WE CAN COME BACK AND POTENTIALLY GO THROUGH IT. BUT SOME OTHER ITEMS THAT WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO JUST BRIEFLY ADDRESS IS, I MEAN, WE CAN SKIP ALL THIS STUFF IN THE INTEREST OF TIME. I DID SOME MORE INFORMATIONAL SLIDES ON COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL PROJECTS AND WHERE THOSE FEES HAVE BEEN REDUCED. Just briefly, I did get in touch with Vacaville. They are going to be doing a fee study this year. It sounds like their fees are way underwater.

I'm sorry, Jeff. Madam Mayor, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The Zoom function went down, and under the new law, if the Zoom goes down... We've got to shut down. Yeah, you can continue this... Sorry, Jeff.

Does this need to get passed tonight?

Technically, yes, but... So... Okay, so legally you cannot continue this meeting until the Zoom is back up.

Well, we're leaving. Yep.

Well, I was going to say if someone challenges it, we'd have to cure and correct it.

Right.

You hear what I'm saying?

So I'm... You want to just, okay.

We'll wait a few minutes to see if it comes back up perhaps, and then I know it's late. IT's in the room right now.

Yeah, I guess not.

So the team is scrambling to put it back up. But I will look to the council given the late hour. And I'll explain very clearly or as clearly as I possibly can. For building fees, there's a 60-day waiting period. The item is before you tonight in an effort to try to get the building fee adopted and in place prior to July 1 and for budgeting purposes so that the finance and budget team can account for or put into the budget if you were to move forward with new fees, with those new fees. It's back up. Back up. Back up. Staff did build in float, but I think you all know that the 21st is going to be a long meeting as well. Jeff, take it away.

Okay. So yeah, we did reach out to Vacaville. They're proposing to begin a fee study this June. They indicated that their fees are way underwater. They're building divisions pretty much on life support and surviving off of the general fund. You know, I have a couple slides in here. We can go through them if there's questions. I really don't think that, you know, certainly in the interest of time, it just does anything but just kind of highlights some of the reasons why we are where we are. So, I mean, if it pleases counsel, I can quickly go through some of the questions that BIA had, if you'd like.

Do you guys want the questions? No. No? I know I know. No, thank you.

Do we have any speakers then? I guess we have speakers.

We do not.