City Council - Regular Meeting

Tonight's regular meeting, please call the roll.

Council members, Larry. Here. Borba. Here. Akeno. Here. Kozlovsky. Here. And Rethal.

Here. If you all please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance

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

And do we have any agenda updates this evening?

We do, mayor. We have two. For item number four, we have additional information. For item number 15, we have some revised information. And it's my understanding that that both of those have been provided to the council, and they are also on the back table for members of the public.

Thank you so much. And this brings us to, business from the floor this evening. I think we have a couple of requests to speak. If you go ahead and call them up.

Yes. We have two requests to speak tonight under business from the floor. When your name is called, please stand ready to the side. So first up is gonna be a group from the Metal Maniacs. Evelyn is named first.

And you guys can all come up, all four of you that are gonna speak this evening.

Oh.

Yeah. Just go ahead and pull that down. Perfect.

Okay. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Tonight, we're here with a win win solution. So I'm Evelyn. I'm a junior at Folsom High School. I'm a proud Girl Scout. I play soccer, and I'm one of the founding members for this robotics team, the Metal Maniacs. And we're know we know you're working hard on the Sears City budget, so we're not asking for any money, but we are here to introduce a movement our team coined as the Silicon Foothills. It is a vision to make Folsom the home base for youth in STEM robotics. So, think of it kind of like a D1 sports team, kind of like Folsom High's football team, but with wires, motors and AI sensors.

I'm Harsika, also a junior at Folsom High School and this season's team captain. Between being a swimmer and a dancer, I lead these 14 middle and high school students across five schools. If you've never seen a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics match, picture like an NBA playoff game except the players are robots that we've designed, built, and coded. It's a two v two. It's really loud, fast, and really intense. This year for the first time ever, our team metal maniacs are advancing to the NORCAL championships in Palo Alto. Thank you. We're proud to represent Folsom against the top 20% teams that are basically the Olympians of youth robotics.

Hi. I'm Nick, yet another junior at Folsom High. I run this hardware team and I run track. In track, if my form is off, I lose my time. In robotics, if my build is off, the whole robot stops. Great team teams always have great people behind them. Volunteers in sports, that's coaches. In robotics, that's mentors and volunteers. No tech experience needed. Every time every mentor and volunteer makes a positive impact, like our mentors from AeroMetals.

We heard the city's focus on living with within our means and building smart partnerships. So, to be clear, we are not asking for city funding. We're asking for brainpower to help us recruit mentors, volunteers and sponsors for youth STEM and robotics education programs. Supporting teams like Metal Maniacs because youth leaders like us have been making a positive impact in the city of Folsom since 2021.

I'm Ben. I'm the softer lead, a chess player, yet another junior but I go to Vista. So I'm usually rivals with these three. But in the Silicon Foothills movement, there are no Bulldogs versus Eagles. It's one team. Since 2021, our team has been hosting tournaments drawing in hundreds of students, families, volunteers into Folsom, eating, shopping and staying overnight. Last month, over 60 robotics teams competed, made possible with our partners Folsom Lake College and Playing Out Earning. This is a positive economic impact from direct and indirect spending in Folsom. All four Youth Robotics and our team, Metal Maniacs, worked hard to make that happen.

So tonight, we're leaving you guys with a one pager about First Robotics and the Metal Maniacs and our request is to please amplify our drive for mentors, volunteers, and sponsors where possible. And if ever want a quick robot demo, we'll bring our team's MVP, Labatt, to you. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, metal maniacs, and good luck in Palo Alto. Bring home the gold to Folsom. And come on back and let us know how you beat all those other teams. Okay?

No pressure.

No pressure. Right. Next up?

Your next speaker under business from the floor is Sherry Richter. And following Sherry is going to be Natheen Khatil Suresh, if you want to just be ready off to the side.

Good evening. Well, that's a hard act to follow. But here. We we are council members for the docents, at the Zoosanctuary. And we are here, first of all, to thank those of you that, supported us during, the wild nights at Christmas time because we saw many of you there. I think, Justin, you even helped with setup, and so we greatly appreciate all that support. But tonight, we're here to invite you to I will be your Valentine, which is this Saturday and Sunday from ten to one. Kids will be able to make Valentines and attach those to the enclosures of their favorite animals. And there'll be other crafts and fun stuff to do then. So we're here to invite you. And Peggy has some other news.

And I'm the friends at the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary are helping support the Folsom leadership team this year, and they are doing a fundraiser with Lazy Dog. And that will run from Monday, sixteenth to the twentieth, Friday, from eleven a. M. To midnight. And if you just mention our project, their project, that could help them be successful in building new signage for the front of the zoo.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate you guys coming out tonight.

I feel like there's a robot in the zoo kind of combo thing here.

Did you guys bring the robot tonight?

Robots and rain don't do well together.

Oh, Okay. Summertime. Summertime then.

Next up. Your next speaker is Natheen Khatil Suresh, and Charant Kalianpura is up next.

Good evening, esteemed mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Namaste. My name is Nitin Katil Suresh. I am a active volunteer with the Hindu Swam Sevaksan. So the annual Health for Humanity Yogatan or sun sanitation or we call it as Surya Namaskar Yajna, organized by the Hindu Swam Sevaksang, HSS USA, began on January 14.

The sixteen day event aimed to raise awareness about yoga and its benefits in achieving a healthy body, mind, and spirit. Surya Namaskara combines simple yoga postures into 10 steps with essential breathing techniques offering many health benefits the body and the mind. Each year, on January 14, Hindus worldwide celebrated Makara Sankranti, a festival marking the change of seasons. Makara Sankranti brings longer days symbolizing the annual arrival of sunshine in our lives. HSS organized the Health for Humanity Yogatan to honor the occasion from Jan fourteen to February 1 this year.

HSS launched launched its health awareness initiative in 2007, and this year, it celebrated its eighteenth anniversary. Since its in cap in caption, participants of all faiths and backgrounds from 43 states of United States have actively joined the Yogatan through yoga centers, community organizations, schools, and colleges. Together, we performed over more than 7,000,000 Surya Namaskars. Community leaders and elected officials across the nation have expressed their appreciation for this initiative and encourage their residents to participate and embrace the embrace the benefits of healthy lifestyle. This year, Hindustwaham Sevaksang invited community groups, yoga centers, students, and individuals to learn and take part in the Health for Humanity Yogatan.

Today, I am proud to share that the event successfully concluded and bringing people together in the spirit of health, well-being, and unity. The program was open to people of all ages, genders, and races. We took we look forward to participating with the city to connect with even more community members in the future. Our goal is to ensure that as many people as possible in our city can take advantage of and benefit from this initiative. Thank you for this opportunity to speak and. Thank

you so much for coming out tonight and sharing. Appreciate you. Next up.

Next is Sharanth Kalianpura, and that is the last speaker under business from the floor.

Hello, everyone. Good evening.

Good evening.

Honorable mayor, respected council members, and distinguished guests. Namaste. My name is Chirant, proud resident of Folsom City and volunteer for for food drive, which we'd started in October and ended in December. I'm here to give information on this year's food drive. October and November is a special meaningful for Hindus around the world as it is all also when we celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights.

Diwali is more than just a celebration. It is time to reflect on how light triumphs over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair. It encourages, upholds our values, act with honesty, and promote peace within our families and communities. Seva or selfless service is at heart of celebrations and daily life. During Diwali, we focused on mainly a national project called Seva Diwali.

It started in 2018. Seva Diwali is a collective initiative by the army organizations, include yoga, spiritual, Hindu, Buddhists, Jain, Sikh organizations, linguistic, and Indian social social cultural organizations. These organizations uphold. Service to humanity is service to divinity and responsibility which we all share. And fruits are all only as nourishing as care we put into.

Our goal is to give back to the society we live in during the festival of Diwali. So initiative aims to unite the rep and represent the collective strength and synergy of the Dharmic communities living in The USA. We aim to contribute to local communities and be part of the national movement to combat hunger. So so invites people to use their homes as collectives collection centers for collecting nonperishable items. These donations go to the local food banks and homeless shelters.

So the spirit of Diwali and giving reaches those who need the most. Starting from 2018 in New Jersey, twin 25 plus organizations collected around 18,000 pounds of food in 2018, continuing 2025 and 2026. So it reached around five fifty five organizations, and many individuals joined hands to get put together to fight against the hunger. And around 970,000 pounds were donated this year last year, twenty twenty five, December, from and it was donated to three sixty beneficiaries, food banks, which includes homeless shelters, families in need, food pantries, food banks. In Sacramento area itself, it was 12 organizations collected and donated 8,500 pounds of food and 12 various homeless shelters, community pantries, and food banks.

These results show what we can achieve when communities work together. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for supporting our local food bank, Twin Lakes. And that ends our public comment this evening and moves on to the consent calendar. I I know some of you that might be in the front row wearing bright red shirts might have more important things to do than sit through a council meeting, but we won't be offended if you leave. You're welcome to stay, but you won't be offended. And just so you know, just a little trick, you can watch these on double time at home. Makes them, you know, a little easier to digest too. Do any of my colleagues have items they want to pull from the consent calendar this evening?

I will move adoption of the consent calendar. Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary

Yes.

Rohrabaugh Yes. Aquino Yes. Kozlowski

Yes.

And Rethal.

Yes.

And that moves us to the old business portion of our agenda. Please call the next item.

Next is old business, item number 10, resolution number one one five four three. This is a resolution authorizing the city manager to approve an additional contingency in the amount of $2,803,450 from the water operating fund for the agreement with EuroStyle Management for the construction of the tower tank rehabilitation project and appropriation of funds.

All

right. Good evening, Mayor Rathal, members of the council, Marcus Yasutaki, Utilities Director. Tonight, the item before you covers or this presentation will cover items ten, eleven, and 12. And this is in regards to the tower tank project.

All

right. Slideshow is not progressing. Okay. Let me fix that.

I would make the joke, do we need an engineer to come help? But it doesn't it doesn't work this time. You you you need

a smarter engineer to come. Let me see if I can close it and then reopen it. Let's see if this works. All right. Here we go. There we go. Figure it out. So just to give you a quick background on the locations, you can see where the items are circled here. Those are the different tanks and sites that are all part of this project. Really, what we're going to focus on tonight are the Foothills tanks number one and two.

And that's kind of the primary focus of the three staff reports. This just gives you also a date of when the tanks were initially constructed, so from 1980 to 2002. So the scope of the work for the different tank locations was recoating, structural repairs, electrical service upgrades, mixers and blowers, piping modifications, SCADA, so supervisory control and data acquisition, so how we communicate with each of the tank sites to get information back to our treatment plant safety upgrades, so stairs and then a catwalk over from one tank to the top of the other and then just other miscellaneous site work. So during the project, there are many deficiencies encountered in each of the tanks, which is why we were in there doing the project. So there's advanced corrosion, significant metal loss, pitting and deterioration, inadequate structural bracing, and insufficient mechanical preparation for the coating application.

And I did bring a couple of goodies in case anybody wanted to see. But basically, this is the paint that should be adhered to the steel inside of the tank. So this is fully delaminated. So that's part of the improper coating application. And this is the deterioration. So this should be a metal I beam. But as you can see, there's significant metal loss from the inside of the tank. And that's the structural support holding up the roof of some of our tanks. So just to give you a quick idea of tank inspection. So these two pictures basically will show the water surface that we fill the tanks up to.

We send a scuba diver in. They're certified, obviously, in diving, but also in the inspection. So they will go into the tank, go from the water surface all the way to the tank bottom, and then go around the perimeter of the tank. But the part above the water surface line, you can't physically get up to unless you dewater the entire tank, installed scaffolding, and then climbed up the scaffolding to the top. So most of what we get when we do our reports is we get pictures of these different areas.

But you really don't know until you take all the water out and get in on top really to feel and look at all the different structural supports, just the exact condition in which they're in. So these are just some of the pictures of the deficiencies as the water was removed and somebody is physically up in the scaffolding. You can see a picture on the left. You can see the metal that's deteriorated. A picture on the right, the same stuff is starting to happen.

Just more pictures. Picture on the left is something similar to what I just showed you. Picture on the right, I'll have a video of what that kind of looks like when you're actually up there and physically touching that. These are a couple of closer pictures of what some of the delamination looks like of the paint itself, but also the metal that's actually corroding. Some more pictures here. The picture on the left, you could see the end of that I beam is deteriorating and corroding. So that's why it looks jagged on the edge. It should look smooth. And then the picture on the right, more corrosion and paint delamination from some of these beams and the girders. Just more pictures of the same.

And picture on the right, roof this is the roof vent, so on top of the tank near the center of the tank itself. So you can see just corrosion and deterioration there. This is a bigger piece of paint delaminating. So effectively, are able to go up there, pull the paint off, which is not good for the the metal structure itself and then I believe this is the video just to give you an idea this is our structural inspector on on top of the scaffolding. So it's that easy in some locations just to, you know, pull the metal apart.

So a lot of what we have this evening is what we are proposing to take care of this issue. And the echoing you hear is the bottom of the tank falling down to the to the bottom of the tank and the tank is empty. And so this is the part you can't do when you have water inside the tank because you just physically can't get up to these structures on the top of the tank.

Marcus, do we paint the inside of these tanks periodically? I'm sorry, what was Do paint the tanks periodically on the inside?

So part of what we do, you would hope to get fifteen plus years out of it. And so some of them we've been able to get that. There's others that we've had to do after seven years. And so when we do the evaluation, if part of the requirements from the inspection detail, hey, you should do a full recoat, we will do so. There are other times when it's just a spot repair and so we'll do spot repairs on the inside depending on the recommendation from our diving inspection team.

So the recommendations for Foothills Number two so there's two primary tanks, Foothills Number two and Foothills Number one, that are part of this request tonight. I won't read them all, but effectively, you could see how many different pieces of structure material up on the roof section that we are requesting to replace as part of the change order or the contingency, and then other structural repairs at the center of the column of the tank itself. And we know all of these because we actually took the tank out of service and we're up counting each one of them. It's a little bit of a different story for number two sorry, Foothills Number one. This tank is currently in service.

We can't take it out of service because it's still being used for our customers. Foothills Number two, we should be done with that. By May 1, we can put that in service. We got to keep all of our tanks in service throughout the summer to meet the peak demands in the summer. So our proposal in the staff reports is to come back in October to get into Foothills Number 1, do the same type of inspection, do the same type of scaffolding work.

We are assuming in the staff report that Foothills Number 1 is going to be in worse condition just because it is two years older. So we've accounted for that in the contingency amount. One of the benefits we would have is if it's not as bad, then obviously the ultimate change order that we have will be less than what we're planning for in this contingency. We're just asking that we look at the worst case condition if we need it. And if we don't, then we ultimately wouldn't have to spend up to that amount.

And so part of the request as well is for additional construction management and inspection. So, have a lot more welding inspection we're going to have to take on, a lot more coding inspection, and then the structural recommendations to be implemented. And then, the other item for item number 12 is additional design work for the center column and additional design work for the rafters and girders. So those are the three staff reports that all are part of this project. And with that, I will take any questions.

Questions for Marcus Sissimi?

This is just out of curiosity. Does the interior deterioration there impact the rest of the water delivery system? You know, the pipes that are dispensing water?

Not typically. We typically don't. When that if any of the material fell off, would float typically on top from the paint and the coating itself. We do similar types of inspections for our water lines, but most are either PVC or coated ductile iron pipe that has an interior kind of concrete or mortar lined coating. So we we don't typically see this impacting the rest of the distribution system. We just want to make sure obviously that it doesn't impact the structural integrity of the tank itself to prevent having to take that tank offline So in the

wrong there time of might be additional costs because of damage downstream?

No, none that we are aware of.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I'm assuming we compare this to the cost of building a new tank.

Building a new tank, it's about probably per million gallons would be about $1,000,000 So these are probably 3 and a half to 4,000,000. That's to build it. That's not to deconstruct the existing tank and demo it. And then so you'd have probably a significant demo cost that would occur if you took it if you had to take it down. Then you get into timing because you can't take them all down. So you'd have to do this. Typically, it's the October to about the April. So demoing then building a new one, you may be pushing your your your timing just a bit.

But we're spending basically the same amount of money as a brand new tank?

No. No. Because if if this was a 4,000,000 because this is covering two different tanks. So you're probably a third of the cost of maybe a brand new tank between the the two Foothills one and Foothills two.

I thought we were, like, a total of 9,000,000 in for both of them. Am I my my number's off?

Not for these two tanks, for the entire project, which was five total tanks.

Got it. Okay. That's where my numbers are off. Perfect. That makes more sense.

Yep. But a majority of the work is, as you can see, will be for Foothills one and Foothills number two. Got it. Yep.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Marcus.

All right.

Thank you. Public comment on this item this evening?

No request to speak for this item.

I move approval of resolution one one five four three.

Do we need three separate motions for this? Yeah.

I'll second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary? Yes. Rohrabaugh? Yes. Aquino. Yes. Kozlovsky. Yes. And Rethal.

Yes. I'll move go ahead.

I'll move approval of resolution number one one five four four.

Second. Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members, Leary. Yes. Rohrbach. Yes. Aquino. Yes. Kozlowski.

Yes.

And Rethal.

Yes.

Only is that it? No. No.

Have only

option resolution one one five four five.

Second. Please call the roll.

Council members Larry

Yes.

Rohrabaugh Yes. Aquino Yes. Kozlowski Yes. And Rathal.

Yes. And that brings us to item number 13.

Okay. Item 13 is resolution number one one five four eight, a resolution approving the preliminary engineer's report declaring the intention to order the formation of the Natoma Station Maintenance Assessment District number 2025Dash2 to levy and collect assessments to provide notice of public hearing and direct the mailing of assessment ballots within the proposed district in the city of Folsom.

Good evening, mayor and members of the council. I'm Derek Perez, municipal landscape services manager of the Parks and Recreation Department. I'll be presenting information on the Natoma Station Landscaping And Lighting District and the current Prop two eighteen process. The resolution before you is the second step in the Prop two eighteen process. Folsom has 30 L and L districts that maintain assets that provide a benefit to the residents in the district.

These assets include landscaping, street lights, monument signage, artwork, and mini parks, as well as other assets. All L And L districts are formed pursuant to the Landscaping Lighting Act of 1972 in the California constitution. Folsom has districts that range in size from 10 to 2,370 Most districts within the city, including Natoma Station, were formed prior to Prop two eighteen in 1996. The map here shows the boundaries of the Natoma Station L And L, as well as their landscaping in many parks. There are many other assets maintained by the district that are not pictured here.

This list includes the major assets in the Natoma Station L And L district. A few of these are the district has 16 irrigation controllers, 36 backflows, three fifty nine street lights. Now, also, this district's 36 years old. A lot of these assets have not been replaced in the last thirty six years too as well. Here's a brief explanation of the L and L Act of 1972.

Essentially, the act follows or actually, allows local governments to form L and L districts to fund specified services, such as landscape maintenance, street lighting, and maintenance of other items as identified in the resolution formation. Prop two eighteen, the Right to Vote on Taxes Act. This amended the California constitution to require constitutional voter approval requirements for all local government taxes, which previously did not exist. Requires voter approval when local governments impose extend or increase a tax, and districts can be formed under normal ballot procedures. Simple majority of weighted votes cast to form or simple majority of weighted votes opposed for majority protest.

The votes are weighed weighted by assessment amount. The assessment amount per parcel is established in accordance with Prop two eighteen, which is not prescriptive in the method of apportionment, but requires that each parcel be assessed in relation to the special benefit that parcel receives. We have received feedback from the community in all of our outreach meetings on the method of apportionment that they would like to keep the assessment flat like it is now in Natoma Station. Staff worked with our consultant, NBS, to determine the best form of methodology to sustain the assessment. The consultant is using the CHRIST method based on daily trips from the assessed parcels.

The Prop two eighteen process is a three step process. And the first step was initiated 06/24/2025, with resolution number 11403. We are currently in step two with the resolution before you, approving the preliminary engineers report declaring the intention to order the formation of a landscaping aligning assessment district, to levy and collect assessments, to provide notice of a public hearing, and direct the mailing of assessment ballots with the proposed district in the city of Folsom. Step three is a public hearing scheduled for 04/28/2026. And there's also a forty five day period required between steps two and three.

Part of what staff has been hearing from the public at the community outreach meetings is communication, communication, communication. Staff worked with the communications team to develop a landscaping and lighting 101 video for the public outreach. We wanted to convey a clear, concise, and factual video that can be shared on the city's website and where neighbors can share with each other. I'm sure you've seen this, but I'm just going to share it so you can take a quick look at it.

Did you know many Folsom neighborhoods are well lit and beautifully maintained thanks to special

Sorry. I'm actually not sure how to share the screen on this one, so I apologize. It worked for me earlier. If you want, you can go to our website, Landscaping and Lighting District, on the website and take a look at it. Happy to point you in direction.

Communication improvements. Since last May, staff has been working with the communication team to develop clear and concise communication messaging. Communications team developed templates that are easy to read for postcards and yard signs for continuity. The staff worked with the communications team to develop a branding logo that you'll see in the upper right hand corner up here that says funded by your L and L. These yard signs will be placed in L and L districts while large projects are taking place.

These will showcase where the neighborhood's funds are actually being spent. So we kind of want to showcase on future projects. If there's a landscape improvement right now, I think we just finished one along Roussey And Blue Ravine in the Prairie Oaks neighborhood. So if you're driving by there, residents don't know that that's actually your L and L funds that are actually being engaged and being activated there. So this is a way that we can actually formally show the neighborhoods of where your L and L funds are being used for maintenance and improvement projects in the future.

So this is just some of some branding that we came up with and worked with our communications team and just want to work on that moving forward. At the community hours meetings the last two weeks with the residents, staff presented the current district's budget and the proposed new assessment budget in their preliminary engineers report, which you see here. As you can see from the current fiscal year district budget, it's running in a projected deficit. The proposed budget increases landscape maintenance, pays back the debt service over a period of fifteen years, and provides installment costs for the short term and long term maintenance and improvement plan. Two items that have been added to the proposed new district is Sheldon And Mann Park.

Maintenance. The general benefit for this district will be recognized by the city's general fund contribution towards the maintenance of these two parks. By adding these two parks to this district, ensures a level of maintenance in case any future budget cuts are made towards parks maintenance in the future. Here's a sample of the proposed maintenance and improvement plan. This sheet shows the short term and long term installment summary that should be collected for the district.

You'll see that right here for the prior year's collections in this column for the short term. And then long term is right here, so the 77,354 thousand dollars which has never been collected because of the deficit for that district. This shows improvement projects for the district that is projected in the future as well as long term asset replacement plan. Currently, the district doesn't have any funding set aside for any replacements. Example that we have down there are some irrigation controllers.

They are 36 years old. They don't have the latest computerized centralized irrigation controllers or flow sensors. So if there's an irrigation leak or broken down there along the median strip along Natoma Station or Turnpike, the water just continues to flow. So the current technology would be able to shut that off right at the break of the line once it senses the flow is too much for the pipe. So that's just an example of the new technology that the district does not have down there.

These slides here show the most current schedule for the Natoma Station reassessment. We're right here, February 4, City Council. And this kind of shows all the noticing that we've been doing. We have postcards scheduled to go out later this week for the upcoming community outreach meeting on March 5. And the yard signs will be installed at end of this week to notice the neighborhood as well about the community outreach meeting on March 5.

This is our continued reassessment schedule for Natoma Station. We have our next community outreach meeting scheduled March 5. Our public hearing will be April 28 when the ballots will be collected. We will be tabulating the ballots the next day, April 29, 9AM in the Large Public Works Room. And then we will be coming back to city council on May 12 with the results of the ballots tabulated.

With that, staff recommends the city council approve Resolution 11,548, a resolution approving the preliminary engineers report declaring the intention to order formation of the Natoma Station Maintenance Assessment District, number 2020 Five-two, to levy and collect assessments to provide notice of public hearing and direct the mailing of assessment ballots within the proposed district in the city of Folsom. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. I also want to mention we have been working with our consultant, NBS, to prepare the method of apportionment, their preliminary engineers report, balloting, and future ballot tabulation. Sarah Mares with NBS is here to answer any questions you may have. Just a quick bio on Sarah.

Sarah Mares is chief operating officer and has more than twenty five years of experience with NBS. She formed special financing districts, specializing in assessment district and community facilities district formations and related bond issuance. Sarah has experience working with all aspects of the formation, annexation, and debt issuance process, including planning project management, budget analysis, rate modeling, financial analysis, formulation of rate, and methods of apportionment, and public presentations. She spent many years involved in ongoing special district administration, including working with distressed districts, and brings that experience and perspective to every formation project she works on. She's a registered municipal advisor representative, and sits on the legislative committee of the California Special Districts Association.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thanks, Derek. Questions? Questions?

I just have one, Derek. So I want to make sure I understood this correctly. Did you say that there are two parks in Natoma Station whose maintenance is currently funded by general fund, that if this passes, the maintenance will now be the responsibility of the L and L?

No. So it'll still be the responsibility of the city because that would be the general benefit. And so the city will still be contributing towards general fund to maintain those two parks for Sheldon and Mann. So it's just incorporated into this new district. But the city is still paying for the maintenance of those two parks at Sheldon and Mann. So that's correct.

Yeah. If I could just clarify, the reason why this is significant is it'll almost be like a double taxation in the sense that if it's included in the district or before, we'd have to pay out of pocket. But what we're saying is we're already providing in kind benefit because the taxpayers are already paying for that. So we're including it in part of the district, but it's not part of the assessment on the other properties.

So just to add and that was my question on there. Saw so the original engineer's report had basically a $30,000 contribution from the general fund for community benefit. This most recent report was 15%, but then there was an additional 30 ks. So I'm assuming that's related to that. Maybe if you could walk us through those numbers

Yeah, that's correct. That is the current cost of what the cost to maintain those two parks for managed shelter

And right so that's why through the last process, one of the things that we identified is the amount of money already spent on those parks is greater than the $30,000 And so in some sense, you'd be paying even more than you needed to for that park. And so in essence, we're using the money that was already spent for that to account for the contribution. Before, it was going to be an additional above and beyond amount of $30,000 additional cost. So our thought is these type of changes should not have an additional burden on the general fund. The whole intent of lighting and landscape districts is so that they pay for the benefit around there.

And so this public benefit is created and already being spent. And what we're saying is we're spending and have been spending general fund money on these, and we will continue to do so. But because it's part of the district, we have to highlight highlight that.

Councilor O'Leary, any questions?

I don't have any questions, but I I didn't want to thank Derek, Brian, Jamison, and Kelly for all of the work that they've done on this. I think you're probably still receiving calls and questions by email, which has been great because a lot of people had a lot of questions that were unanswered with the first round at this. Yes. So I really appreciate that. And I didn't quite understand the piece about the votes being counted prior to the May meeting to certify votes because last time we the count was taking place during the council meeting and wasn't available by the end.

And is was that changed in order to be able to have an answer that night? Because you'll the city will have an answer about whether it passed or not before our meeting.

Yeah. So my understanding from last year was that the the county during the council meeting, it took a while and stuff. So this is a way for us to kind of be proactive and anticipate that by counting it the next morning so there's not a big rush in case we weren't able to come back to council with the results. So that's why we just kind of decided to have a count the ballots that next morning. It's open to the public. They can come. We've worked with our city clerk department too as well. And then we'll know the results that next day.

And I think the main point is so that we we go through the requirement of establishing an end date for when the votes are received. Mhmm. And then just trying to be expeditious with our time. We would count it the next day, and then it would be streamlined. We would know the outcome, but then it wouldn't be formalized until the next meeting. We don't necessarily have to do that. We just thought learning from our experience that it was a stressful situation trying to get it all in. This is being more measured and more precise.

Okay. So we'll be open to the public.

Mhmm. So the public will know the count on the day after the council meeting?

Well, I'm sure if someone called, I mean, they could. But we we're gonna make the public presentation at the following council meeting.

So you're but you're not announcing the results until that council meeting? Like, doesn't the council certify

the vote? We'll know the results. Yeah. I guess we hadn't really talked about, like, shout it from the rooftops. Either way, I mean, it would just be follow our normal counsel process, and we would bring it for that. I mean, I I don't see looking at our legal counsel, I I don't think there'd be anything from us if someone were to inquire, hey. What was the vote for us just to tell the vote.

It would be a public record once the votes were tabulated.

Right. Okay. So that just leads to one more question. And I'll just make sure that people know the answer to this because I don't think this wasn't talked about at the two meetings that I attended.

No, this is new.

Yeah, this is new. So the other piece of that is people will be a little confused because the last time we did this, people could bring a vote in until the end of the hearing.

And, basically, it's the same.

Yeah. They can still do that.

This is this is the same. We're just we're establishing the end is that second meeting in April. Right? Yeah. So that's the end. Okay. And then we collect all the votes. Everyone knows the voting period is over.

Right.

Mhmm. And then we count it afterwards.

But we have that additional day the following meeting.

Well, yeah. I mean, people can come. But it's almost the Super Bowl happened. Know the score. We're just

No. It was just I just want to be clear that due on the twenty eighth and that the meeting in May is just an announcement that

Basically that's what it is. That day. I mean, I guess I mean, I'm looking at our staff. I mean, we can try to do the count. I think we just learned from last time it was a pretty helter I mean, was not

No it was difficult. Just want to be

sure that I know process because

as we were talking here I realized wait a second quite different. Okay well I appreciate it and again thank you all for your work.

I appreciate not having to stall the council meeting in the hopes that we get it counted in time so I appreciate the new schedule. Do we have any public comment this evening?

No request to speak for this item.

Alright. Councilmember O'Leary would you like to make a motion?

Yes. I'll move for approval of resolution number one one five four eight. Resolution approving the preliminary engineers report and declaring the intention to order the formation of an atomic station assessment district number 2025 Dash 2.

I'll second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Larry Yes. Warbaugh Yes. Aquino

Yes.

Kozlowski Yes. And Rethal.

Yes. And that moves us to our new business. Please call the next item.

Next is item 14, an update and discussion regarding countywide homelessness shared governance.

Good evening, Stephanie.

Good evening, Mary. Let's get set up here.

While you're getting set up, I I do wanna say that I really wanna see some of these irrigation controllers from 1990. And just see how we manage to keep making them work. That's pretty impressive that we have irrigation controllers from thirty six years ago.

We can bring somebody.

It might be on the next minute with the mayor. You never know. Okay.

Let's see. Did I blow it, Christina?

Give it a second. I got it.

Thank you. So good evening, Mayor Rathal, council members. Stephanie Henry, housing manager, community development department. So this next item before you this evening is an update on the proposed homeless and housing system partnership update. With us this evening is Emily Halkon, the homeless services and housing director for Sacramento County.

As you recall, Emily and the Sacramento County staff were here last September, and they provided city council members with an overview of a proposed concept to have shared governance for homelessness to help us strengthen our county wide collaboration. Following that, there was a multi jurisdictional meeting in October where many of you were present and some participating that went over this proposed shared governance structure. And based on that feedback from that meeting and followed up with interviews from electeds, a proposed shared governance structure has been recommended to County Board of Supervisors. As you see in the staff report, staff is recommending to support the County Board's recommended structure. But before we get into that, Emily is here to present kind of an overview of what that structure would look like.

So I'm going to turn it over to Emily.

Thank you, Stephanie. And hello, Mayor Rathold, members of the council. It's really great to be back with you today. As Stephanie said, my name is Emily Halkin. I'm the director of the Department of Homeless Services and Housing with Sacramento County.

And with me today are County Executive David Villanueva and Deputy County Executive Siobhan Qatari. Stephanie did a lot of the legwork for what I was going to talk about, so I'll really briefly just remind us all of how we got here. Over the past about two years now, the County, as well as the city of Sacramento and the other cities and the continuum of care, have been working around how we can better organize to deliver services for folks experiencing homelessness and at risk of homelessness. We recognize this is a critical issue throughout the county, but also that each jurisdiction has their own approaches and unique natures that need to be thought of. There was a report commissioned in late twenty twenty three by the county in Sacramento Steps Forward.

It did follow some of the grand jury reports that were suggesting some changes. But really, this report was more in recognition of both the growing complexity of homelessness throughout the county, new opportunities for homeless and housing funding, and some frustrations that we had heard from elected officials about the Homeless Policy Council, which I think some of you have participated on in the past, and then the positive impacts that at least the city of Sacramento and the county were seeing in our partnership agreement. So in early twenty twenty five, the Board of Supervisors, following that consultant report at the 2023, gave county staff explicit direction to hold a workshop around homeless partnerships and governance, which we brought to public session with the Board in August. As Stephanie said, the board then gave us direction to visit our partners throughout the county. And we did that over the months of September and early October ahead of that joint meeting that occurred in October.

Following that joint meeting and then the recommendations that came out of that meeting, as well as individual interviews that Mosaic Strategies did with many of you, as well as your colleagues throughout the county, the county staff did modify our recommendation. And that new modified recommendation was approved by the Board Supervisors in December. And again, staff were directed to come back to our city partners, as well as the continuum of care, to elicit your input on the current modified model. I'm going to show it to you in a minute and walk you through what has changed and what we are recommending. But the main difference from what you saw back in September is that we are proposing, instead of creating a whole new body if you recall, the original recommendation contemplated establishing a whole new body.

We called it the Sacramento Homeless and Housing Board, then instead of doing that, that we lean on the existing administrative infrastructure that already exists with the Continuum of Care Board. This did come out, one of the recommendations, out of the MOSAIC report, and I think reflects a little bit more of the urgency in a way to not duplicate administrative infrastructures. It also proposes we heard a lot of feedback from the community about membership. And the original recommendation had an option A and an option B, but both were very heavy on elected representation. One was almost exclusively elected representation.

We heard a lot of feedback from community members that they felt that there needed to be more community voice. And so this new recommendation retains the majority elected, but does create some purposeful seats for community members as requested. And then while not shown on this slide, I do want to note that the Continuum of Care Board did take a different model to the COC board in December, immediately following the Board of Supervisors' action. Their recommendation at the time contemplated keeping the COC board separate from the body of local elected officials, But that was not approved by the COC. So at this point, they have not taken up the county's recommendation.

So visually, I'm going try to walk you through recognize the last model had a lot more boxes. I've tried to lift up to the 30,000 foot level to talk a little more conceptually. So what this attempts to show you is going across on the column sort of three modes of work that are really at question here. The first in the yellow column is the things the COC, the Continuum of Care, does, which is pretty regulated in federal statute. They administer funds from the federal government through the COC program.

They manage the homeless management information system, which is our community wide database that we're mandated to have. They operate the coordinated access system, which is the entryway to many homeless and housing programs. They facilitate the point in time count, which just happened a couple of weeks ago. And then they oversee the convening of the Continuum of Care Board. In the middle column, the green column, I think is the work that is most at question here and that people are most sort of looking to pull together more.

This is really who is responsible in our community for system wide strategic planning, setting goals across jurisdictions and across programs about what we want to achieve, measuring ourselves not just against the measures that the federal government sets for ourselves, but for what we are interested in measuring as a community. And on the far right column, the blue column, this is what is currently the responsibility of jurisdictions. And we are not recommending changes to any of these. These are things like land use decisions, which we all independent or you all independently hold, as do the other cities, managing your own budget, and many funding programs that come into your jurisdiction. So going down the rows then, the top row shows a very general depiction of what currently how this currently works.

Currently, we have a continuum of care board, of which, until recently, was entirely non elected. So we've just recently added four elected officials. It is mostly community members, a lot of providers, a lot of folks who are very passionate about homelessness but don't necessarily work within the system of care. That Continuum of Care Board doesn't have any formal relationship to any of the city councils or to the Board of Supervisors. So independent of that, the COC is making direction and making funding decisions for those very specific COC functions.

And then each city council and the Board of Supervisors is separately doing that as well. And while there are some ad hoc convenings to address those broader policy issues October 28 is a great example of that there's no continual place where elected officials throughout the community are convening to talk about that green column, the community wide strategy setting. So the recommendation that the board approved in December is to take what is currently the Continuum of Care Board and reconstitute it, and reconstitute it such that the majority of seats are occupied by elected officials from all the cities and the county of Sacramento. But that there's also seats for decision making community leaders. And when I say decision making, this might be the leader of the chamber or head of a hospital system.

Some of those interconnecting systems that we really want to have input on and who do affect the work we do and vice versa, but right now are maybe independently talking to you as leaders in the community, but aren't convening around this topic together with you. This board would be Brown Act. Currently, the COC board is not Brown Act. And there would be staff management underneath here, which isn't shown. So we have a system leadership group consisting of professional staff at each of the jurisdictions.

So myself, my colleagues in the city of Sacramento, certainly we would love to have participation from the other cities, recognizing you have some staffing, maybe a little bit less ability to commit staff. But by having elected officials on the COC board and formally appointed in a Brown Act body, just like many of you, I'm sure, have said on other boards throughout the community, that creates a very direct and advisory role back to your city council and back to the Board of Supervisors. And so while that new constituted COC board wouldn't bypass decision making that you might make as a city council, your members who sat on that board would serve as an advisory role and would bring things back to the COC board that are important to the city of Folsom. Some of the things that we imagine this new COC board, at least at initiation, taking on, certainly administering the COC functions, which I know I sort of put it in this yellow column and said it's pre administrative, but it is a big deal. They administer about $40,000,000 annually from the federal government.

But just as importantly, they manage the data that comes through our community. They help us tell the stories about how we're serving folks experiencing homelessness. They manage the front door for services. So for clients who are seeking access to shelter or housing, that's where the front door is managed. So this would bring those items into the purview of the new COC board with elected officials sitting on that.

Additionally, they are the recipients of a significant amount of state funds through the HAP program. Currently, the city of Sacramento, the county of Sacramento, and the Continuum of Care are the entities that receive those funds. So this would connect those COC HAP funds, which I think the amounts change every year. But currently, I think their HAP six round, which is the round we're in right now, is about $8,000,000 that goes to various prevention and rehousing programs. This is also the convening space where we would collectively do that strategy setting.

We have to develop a regionally coordinated homelessness action plan, R CHEP, every year. And this is the body that would do that. Additionally, this is a place where we might, in the future, have opportunities to look towards collaborative applications for grants if we wanted to do something across the county, if we wanted to set some strategic goals to take back to our communities. Finally, the last thing on the visual here is the Board of Supervisors was unanimously in support of what is the recommended option. However, we know and I think we talked about this last time I was here is that the only entity that can decide to reconstitute the continuum of care is the continuum of care.

So if the continuum of care board does not vote to reconstitute themselves, the county cannot force them to do that. None of the cities can force them to do that. We are still hopeful and confident that they want to participate in this, but at this point, they haven't. So knowing that, and that if the COC board did not choose to participate in this, the board approved what we call here alternative option, which would, unfortunately, leave the COC board as it is right now, operating the COC probably with less elected participation, more community participation, but still recommend formation of that elected body to do the broader strategy, priority setting, goal setting across each of the jurisdictions in the county. Creating that advisory role back to your city council and board of supervisors, but keeping sort of the COC functions apart.

And then finally on here, I just put the JPA option. The board of supervisors is not supportive of this, but because it's still in the conversation, I just, for visual purposes, put it on here. Just really quickly, next steps is, of course, we are seeking inputs from the cities. And you are the last stop on our tour today. So I can really quickly tell you, if you haven't heard, where all the cities landed.

So the city of Sacramento, on January 13, staff did recommend the county's option. The city of Sacramento chose, though, to direct staff to pursue a completely different option, which was forming a JPA. Rancho Cordova City Council took a neutral stance on the county's approach. The cities of Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, and Galt all recommended approval and participation in the county's model. And so pending your input today, we'll add your input to our collective report back.

And so our next step would be to request that the COC agendize this, because they are sort of the last entity to consider this formally. And then depending on their willingness, as well as the willingness of the other cities, either pursue the reconstitution

of the Continuum

of Care Board or the creation of the Homeless and Housing Board if the COC does not wish to participate. That concludes my comments. But I'm happy to take questions.

Councilmember Aquino.

Emily, could you please go back two So if the COC board is the only one that can determine whether or not to reconstitute the COC board, Can you explain the JPA thing at the bottom then that rolls that into that? How would that work? So you would electeds and the COC would have to agree to that. Is that

I believe that, yes. And this is probably your next item. But I believe that, yes, that the COC would also have to actively just like any city would have to agree to participate in a JPA. Were the COC to be a part of that, I think, yes, they would have to agree to that.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman O'Leary, any questions?

No. Okay.

Questions over here?

I have well, I'll just ask this one first. Although there's no immediate general fund obligation, what would be the long term staffing or burden on a city? Yeah. I mean, at this point on what we're Yeah.

Yeah. At this point, we would propose in the recommended model that we would keep Sacramento Steppes Forward as the lead agency. And they do have their own administrative funds they draw down from HUD. If there was a change to that and to designate somebody else as the lead agency to be honest, the only other lead agency that would make sense would be another nonprofit or the county. But because we're not proposing to pull in existing funds from any of the cities, we don't anticipate any kind of general fund ask of any of the cities. That being said, in the future, the COC board could expand. It could say, well, now each city wants to put in a portion of their funds to a collective program, but that's not envisioned at this point.

So this is an advisory what you're recommending as advisory. So what practical authority would it have that the current structure doesn't already?

So it's not advisory. It is directive in COC functions. So currently, the COC has the final authority on COC funding, HMIS status standards, things like that. That authority would shift to this board. And then things related to the COC HAP funding and the regionally coordinated action plan that the COC does. It would not shift, however, any authority, unless you chose to give it that, from a city to the COC board. Okay. Thank you.

How effective can any of these plans be if the city of Sacramento is going a different direction?

That is a great question. We are still hopeful the door is not closed. The door is open for them to participate. I think that once we know how all of the other cities what are the other cities' interests, they might change our mind.

Is that your only question?

That's my only question.

Alright.

I just have one on the alternative option here. Thank you for coming out today, thank you guys for coming out and doing the the whole tour. At the end of the day, this comes down to funding. Right? You talked a little bit about the two big sources of funds that come through the COC right now. There are options to peel off some of if if the SHHB stands up, there are options within state laws I understand it to peel off state funding from that. But are there options for federal funding to flow maybe through the COC but come over to the SHHB? Can you just talk a little bit about how that would work?

Yeah. So COC funding in federal statute is pretty explicitly the authority of the COC. And the COC is a sort of ill defined term in federal government. I do not believe that there's a way outside of the COC itself, the membership at large or the designated board, voting to give that administrative function to another entity. As you know, the county used to administer the COC programs up until 2011.

On the state funding, I'm actually not confident. The state funding that the COC receives directly the HAP funds are in statute go to COCs. The COC is very difficult to pull apart. The COC lead agency, which is what Sacramento steps forward, should theoretically be easier to change locally. But at this point, there hasn't really been a strong interest and I still don't think there is. There have been a few questions around that to change that administrative function. What we're trying to do is pull that administrative function closer to the work that all of us are doing in government. Because right now, they're reporting to a board that isn't as publicly accountable, perhaps.

And is there any moves to make the COC board a Brown Act body?

The COC board has brought that up themselves. I haven't seen any proposals coming from them. And it's not agendized on tomorrow's agenda. They meet once a month. But I have heard them talk about that as a potential option.

Okay.

Sorry. Go ahead. Think of one question.

Councilor O'Leary?

Yeah. You know, when you're talking about the membership of the cities and the county and all, would the votes from each entity be weighted differently?

So this isn't asked of me from a couple of the other cities. So we have purposely not tried to dictate, like, numbers and seats. I do know that that's a very strong interest. Specifically, the city of Galt asked that that be reflected in their approval of this. So I did do that. I think that pending sort of everybody's interest, then the next step would be for staff to sit down and sort of talk about the governance and what it looks like in membership and voting. I think almost every of the cities that is in the city of Sacramento ask some flavor of that question. So certainly, it's top of mind for most of them.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

I have one more.

Councilwoman Rohrman.

I'm not sure you know this one. I don't know if you know this yet. But how will the representation and funding decisions reflect differences in populations and homelessness levels across the cities and the county?

Right. That's sort of aligned with Councilman O'Leary's question. So I think one of the benefits is that right now the voices of how cities that are not within the central core experience homelessness aren't really shared in some of our collaborative work or in our communities' plans. So those are the types of things that I think would have to be worked out. Like, is it a vote differential based on population? Is it a subpopulation sort of experience? I'm not sure quite how to do that, but yeah.

Okay. So it would be in discussion if it

continues Yes. Yeah.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And we have public comment this evening.

Yeah. There's one request to speak for this item from Julie Alexander.

Come on down, Judy.

Good evening, mayor and assistant mayor, council members, staff. I am just excited that somebody has finally realized that the current system doesn't work. Before he can fix a problem, you have to name it. And I think we're finally naming the problem. And that could partly be because we don't communicate on a broad enough basis and deal with homelessness as just part one of our other social problems that we have to resolve that are impacted one way or another by homelessness.

I find it very interesting tonight that we have managed to create an entity that spends millions, if not close to a billion, of taxpayers' money and can't be dissolved the continuum of care. I am befuddled by that. And they seem to be still holding the area hostage to what they want to do. So I applaud Elaine for trying to get this boondoggle straightened out that we have. At this point, I'm excited that there are new ideas and possibly new people.

And we can really look at this from a different viewpoint. However, there is so much lacking in this presentation so far, in my mind, that I can't imagine we would be responsible to actually say, yeah, let's go for it. We have no idea of costs. No money has been discussed yet. Are we taking money from some areas and putting them towards this new area?

Or are we leaving money where it is and hope we get some additional from the state or whatever? Because this will cost money to do, even if the original COC continues. We're going to add elected officials. They already are stressed out at their jobs. Now we're going to put more on your plate and their plate.

And we're going to need some additional support administratively or time or facilities. And nobody is asking that yet. I heard the state may be giving us some new funding to the counties that is not under the HUD umbrella. That to me is exciting because perhaps now nonprofits in our areas can be funded who do not check all the boxes for HUD. And we have a lot of those here in Folsom who do not qualify.

And you all lean on them, rightly so, because they're willing to do some of the hard work here in Folsom, along with police, fire, and staff support and services, which we all appreciate. But I haven't heard any mention of the flexibility that might be a real plus here coming out of state funding.

Judy, if you can make your closing comments.

Yep. Continuum of care is the only way for federal funding to get into the county. They've been designated by the federal government. So whatever we do with them affects federal funding, including for Sacramento City. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment this evening?

No other request to speak for this item.

All right. Stephanie, you wanna come back and address those comments? Or Yeah.

I just wanted to make sure before you guys close out the item that you do give the county staff the recommendation, just to make sure that that's there. And to remind you, staff was recommending City Council move to support the county's recommended option.

And I will go ahead and make a motion to support the county's recommended option which is to pursue a reconstitution of the COC board to include a majority of elected officials.

Second. All right. I'll open it up for discussion real quick. If anyone has any comments for a vote, please call the roll.

Council members Larry Yes. Horbaugh Yes. Aquino Yes. Kozlowski Yes. And Rethal Yes.

Thank you all for coming out. Any other further direction required this evening on this item? Alright. Please call the next item.

Next is update and direction on senate bill S B 802 Ashby.

Mayor Rethal, members of the commission, Desmond Perrington, planning manager in the community development department. Bear with me while I pull up the Okay. Okay. I'm here before you tonight to talk about the the situation and receive direction with regard to senate bill eight zero two. So as you recall, last year, senate bill eight zero two was introduced in in June 2025.

It was then kind of made into a two year bill due to the concern regarding the bill, our opposition, and as well as concerns raised by other jurisdictions. But the senator had indicated that if there wasn't if she didn't see the kind of collaboration, that she was expecting, that this would be reintroduced, which it has been. The, the original provisions basically transferred the continuum of care to the new organization, which is the Sacramento Area Housing and Homelessness Agency, or SAHA. It redirected all federal state homelessness funds to SAHA and would shift CDBG and HOME funds from jurisdictions to it as well and transfer all local affordable housing fees and and, housing trust fund fees to that. It would also originally propose to revise the RENA distribution process for Sacramento County.

The the concern expressed at the time was insufficient local input, and then the concern about the loss of control over, our funding, that we receive currently. And then related to that, the concern that we would not be able to meet and other jurisdictions would not be able to meet their local housing depending on how housing element objectives depending on how the money was actually spent. The membership of government that's proposed in this bill includes all cities and the county that have a population of $50,000 50,000 people or greater. Sorry about that. That would include City Of Sacramento, Sacramento County, Elk Grove.

They would have three, and Elk Grove would have two representatives on there, with one representative for Citrus Heights, one representative for Folsom, and one representative for Rancho Cordova. Galt and Ileton, which are the other two jurisdictions in the county, would not be included because they don't meet the population cutoff. There were a number of of key revisions to to the bill, which did allow what's called entitlement jurisdictions or those jurisdictions that receive their Community Development Block Grant and their Home Investment Partnership Act funds directly from the federal government and the Housing and Urban Development Department. It also clarified that affordable housing impact fees collected in, a jurisdiction would be spent in that jurisdiction, and it removed the change in the distribution to the regional housing needs allocation. It did create a homeless division that was would include Sacramento Steps Forward and the Continuum of Care.

However, it did not change the fact that it would take the the funds from the local governments and and place them, I I into the control of the new agency. So, in terms of, the local government actions that have, happened related to SB eight zero two, so, as Emily mentioned in her prior presentation, the city of, Sacramento voted seven to two in favor of a JPA model, although not necessarily in favor of SB eight zero two. And then the cities of Rancho Cordova, Elk Grove, and Citrus Heights were basically contacted by Senator Ashby's, office, and they, they were concerned about, having were they were they were concerned about the bill and wanted to make sure that they, that their concerns and potential changes in the bill would be considered, and as a result, took an a neutral, position. They are currently coordinating potential proposed amendments that ensures better local control of their funds. And then some clarification on some outstanding issues.

Based on city staff's review, there are still quite a few, issues of concern related to, related to this bill. First and foremost, it basically mandates, and has the state mandating that we join a a joint powers authority. This is not typically, powers authority are, under the law, entities that can be entered into voluntarily by different agencies to address a particular issue or concern. This is the state telling jurisdictions that they have to join a joint powers authority. It also still in the bill, despite the revisions, they still have control over our local housing funds.

And then, we need the the ability to to be able to use those funds to provide gap financing or to buy land in support of affordable housing. This would essentially remove our ability to, to control that. In addition, it mandates ethics rules that requires the members, including Folsom's representative from the city council, to prioritize the, the the agency over Folsom's own, priorities, which constitutes an inherent conflict for anyone from the council or from staff that's appointed to that board. So we need to ensure that the the CDB fund CDBG home and the permanent local housing allocation funds, which we currently receive through either the county or the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, would continue to flow to the city. That is not clear at all, in the bill.

For those entitlement jurisdictions, and we are not yet in a entitlement jurisdiction, they get their they have protections in the bill. They would continue to receive their money directly from HUD. But we don't have such assurances that are in the bill. It would, it's also not clear whether, we would be able to approve projects and and deal with the land use entitlements associated with those projects under that bill because it says in the bill that if they receive funding from the agency, they're essentially deemed consistent with our zoning and general plan land use designations. And we also need to see, really, the ability to, independently apply for state and federal housing funds.

It's not clear that we would be able to retain that authority because it appears as though the Sacramento Area Housing and Homelessness Authority would be the entity that would go after those funds. So we could potentially be shut out of those, those dollars. So those are kind of the big issues. I really wanted to come staff wanted to come before you, kind of lay those all out for you, and then really get further direction from you on how you'd, like us to, to proceed, in terms of the the stance that the city takes on this bill and our interaction not only with the other jurisdictions that have that are working with the the the center and with the legislature on this, but with the legislature itself. Thank you.

Thank you, Desmond. Questions for Desmond this evening?

No questions, but I'd love to make a motion.

No questions. First off

Oh, do you have a question?

Councilor O'Leary, you have a question?

Yeah. I I I'm dismayed that these recommendations for changes in there haven't been adopted as yet, but it seems in you know, from the the processes that have already been undergone that this is still being finalized in the assembly at the state level. And it's not clear whether, you know, the contingencies that we would like to see and that some of the other cities asked for could be implemented? At this it seems like a late date to try and make significant changes unless it happens at that level.

So the the opportunity in the senate that it that closed on January 31, but it is in the assembly, and it will be going through several committee hearings. There may be the opportunity there to amend it as through those committee hearings. And I think that's what, you know, what staff and the other jurisdictions out there, you know, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, and Citrus Heights would like to see because the things that they had recommended be included in the bill, not all of them were. So, there is that that potential, but we we just do not know at this point what will be in the final version of the bill.

And do you know if there's any anticipated time frame when this will get a vote in the full assembly?

I mean, how

I I I don't. I'd I'd have to check the schedule and Okay. And and see. Obviously, this would need to get taken care of, I think, by I think, in late summer, early fall. It has to be signed by the governor in in early fall. So this would need to be wrapped up, in in the summer. That

makes it difficult to assess a a stance without these things having been addressed at this point.

Yeah. I I think, you know, we would certainly want to to see these items addressed. Certainly, to to take any kind of positive position on on this or or and frankly, even to remain neutral, I think, staff's perspective is that if we're gonna take a neutral stance, we would want to see these, these things included. It it is highly unusual for the for the state, like I said earlier, to mandate, to require us to enter into a to a joint powers agency, especially when as you you heard from Emily Halcomb and, and the county that there is a current process that that's going on. It's just that the city of Sacramento has opted to to go a different direction.

Thank you.

Vice mayor, you have a clarifying question?

Yeah. I just I I mean, I heard this. I just wanna make sure that the public hears it, too. But you mentioned that there are some kind of lukewarm assurances that the money that Folsom raised would be spent in Folsom. But you also mentioned that but not how it is spent. Is that correct?

That that's correct. So they there's no there's no information on on in the bill at this point about how that money would be spent, what it would be spent on. We we just don't know. All all that there isn't the only language that's in the bill, is saying that money collected from Folsom would be spent in Folsom.

So basically, the JPA could decide how the money was gonna be sent spent in Folsom regardless of what Folsom wanted. So therefore, giving up local control control. So the only the only way I could get on board for something of in in this conversation and of that is if in that situation that would have to come back whatever the JPA would decide would have to come back for counsel approval.

And that's not currently in the bill. Again, we have one vote on an 11 member commission. And so our member could be opposed to that, to whatever is being proposed, and they could be overruled.

Thank you.

We're going to do comments.

I do have one question.

Sure. So

this is for the city attorney. It seems like the state mandating the formation of a JPA is completely contradictory to the JPA formation law in California. Am I understanding that right?

So this is a new proposal. It is unprecedented. And there is nothing that specifically says they can require it. The overarching premise behind the JPA law is an agreement entered into by the governing bodies of more than one local agency. So by its terms, the concept is an agreement. So this bill does supersede that and go a completely different way.

Thank you.

Mayor, if I can make a comment. Just to remind the council, the Board of Supervisors you know, has, you know, publicly voted five o against, in basically an opposition to this bill. So just a point of clarification.

Thank you. Do we have any public comment this evening?

There are no requests to speak for this item.

Thank you.

I have comments but I can make wait till after the motion.

Yeah I will move to oppose SB802.

Second.

All right I will open it up for further discussion or comments before you Sure.

I can start. There is no change that could be made to this language that would cause me to support this bill or even to go neutral, because this is not a bill about homelessness and housing. First and foremost, this is a bill about state control versus local control. And one of the first things Councilmember Kozlowski and I did when we joined the council in 2018 was to adopt a legislative platform. And the first tenet of that platform is preserve local control and oppose legislation that preempts local authority.

And although this particular bill talks about mandating the JPA for homelessness and housing, this just sets a terrible precedent. The next bill could be mandating a JPA for transportation or public safety or what have you. And I don't think this is a route that we want to go down. I cannot support it. But I do want to say unequivocally, I believe in collaboration. I believe in cooperation. I believe in being good neighbors and working with our partner agencies. And I am even willing to consider a JPA. But it has to be a JPA of our choosing and not one that is forced on us by the state. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman O'Leary, any comments this evening?

I'm just going to reiterate my earlier comment after I asked my questions that it's really difficult to support this or even, I think, take a neutral position without with not having seen the significant changes that were recommended by the cities adopted in this version that's now gone to the assembly. I'm fully supportive of collaborative efforts. I've been talking about that in various settings for quite a while about dealing with this homelessness issue because it's something that affects all of us. So I support the motion.

Thank you. Councilmember Kozlowski.

Yeah. I I echo my colleague's comments. The, you know, the entire time I've been on the council, we've seen constant, chipping away at local control on every front. And, this one is an example of a complete lack of restraint, in terms of, trying to co op local control in this particular area. So I can't possibly support it the way it's formulated. And I agree, a JPA of our choosing probably would be a good useful change in our region, but we need to be able to formulate it locally.

Thank you. Vice mayor?

Yeah. I'll be sure. I echo everything everyone else has said. Our resident I'm gonna guess I'm gonna echo what you're gonna say too. Our residents elect this council to make these decisions. If we are accountable for housing outcomes, we must retain meaningful authority over policy and funds. SB eight zero two mandates participation in a regional authority where effectively giving silencing Folsom's voice. So for those reasons and many others, I definitely oppose this or am in favor of the motion.

Thank you. And I'll definitely echo comments. Right? I'm I'm all in for collaboration in the region. We do it in in many other areas, and we do it very well, with our neighbors. We've solved a lot of of large regional problems together, and I would encourage us to solve this one together. Also, I I can't support being mandated by the state, to do so. It just sets us up for failure really at our very first meeting. When we're forced to be there, it doesn't set us up for cooperation because we haven't set the terms of our cooperation together. I'm really disappointed that the latest amendments did not preserve local control.

We've we've all spent a lot of time and energy, and I think the staff and all the different entities that have been involved. I think all the council members across the region that have spent a lot of time on the phones and meetings working this issue. And unfortunately, the amendments, even the latest set of amendments, didn't meet those requirements that they had been laid out. So that was that was disappointing. That doesn't even address the core issue of it, which I agree with my my colleagues on.

But that would have at least moved us in the right direction, and it didn't. Folsom has collected significant fees, and we've used those fees effectively to provide affordable housing despite some significant opposition sometimes from our own residents on projects. But we've done it in a way that we've tried to honor those wishes of our residents in the way the best way we can in a local control way. This bill, unfortunately, if it goes forward, has the potential to shut that down. And so I would just encourage the senator to consider those repercussions if this bill does move forward.

It likely does, I think, end up in litigation. Oh, and and and, unfortunately, that will have negative impacts on constructing affordable housing in this region over the next few years. So I would just ask that that be taken into consideration. I know some of our other agencies have asked for the bill to be shelved also. And with that, I will conclude and call for a vote.

Council members Leary? Yes. Rohrbach? Yes. Aquino? Yes. Kozlowski?

Yes.

And Rethal?

Yes. Alright. That moves us to city manager report.

Great. Thank you, mayor, members of the council. Just wanted to, highlight, you know, our, city attorney Steve Wong, has decided to retire. I don't know why he would want to do that, but he decided to retire. I just wanted to say, at the last the last meeting, I asked him if if he'd let me recognize him, and he said no.

But he's not here. So I so I just wanted to congratulate, you know, Steve on his retirement and thank him for the over seventeen years of service that he provided to the city. And I just wanted to publicly state that, that we appreciate him. We're fortunate that we had a deep bench and that we have Sari Myers Durking to step in as our interim city attorney. So, Sarie, thank you for doing that, and glad to have you here with us.

Just by way of other general updates, we'd like to invite the public to our water and sewer rate study public meeting that will be held at the first public that will be held on Tuesday, February 24 as part of our regular city council meeting. So you will be able to hear about future capital needs and costs and everything associated with our water and sewer systems and possibility of rate increases there. Also a reminder, we have applications to sell fireworks. The application period is currently open, but it closes at noon on Friday, March 13. And this application window is for local nonprofit groups.

So if you're just a random person who just wants to sell fireworks, sorry. Can't can't

do that.

Already decided. Please don't.

Yeah. Also, we need volunteers. We're looking for volunteers to help us with the Castle Park community build. That will take place the week of April 7 through the twelfth. That's kind of the spring break week. Volunteers must be 10 years of age or older. And those ages 10 to 13 must participate alongside parent or guardian. Visit the Parks and Recreation website for more details. We also want to announce and invite residents to take part in Shaping the Future of Neighborhood Park 1, a brand new park plan for 3294 Empire Ranch Road in the Folsom Plan area. Community members are encouraged to attend their next upcoming in person workshop on Monday, February 23 at 05:30PM.

We hope you can make it. Actually, a cool highlight. We'd like to recognize Chad Guenter, a longtime professional with the city of Folsom Parks and Recreation Department and Aquatic Center. He has been selected to serve on the board of directors for the California Water Safety Coalition, a statewide organization dedicated to reducing water related injuries and fatalities. We're grateful to have staff like Chad that is so willing to get involved in regional issues that allow us to have additional access to information for our community.

Our police department continues to do phenomenal work. They on February 6, Folsom Police responded to a report of mail theft in the 1900 block of Horseshoe Glen Circle. Officers found a community mailbox unlocked and emptied, contacted a suspect matching the description and recovered stolen mail, personal identification or personal identifying information and suspected forged mailbox keys. The suspect, Christopher Palma, Sacramento, who was on felony probation, was arrested and booked on multiple charges, including mail theft, identity theft, and possession of burglary tools. And another on February 3, Folsom Police responded to a local dealership auto dealership after staff flagged a fraudulent ID during a vehicle purchase.

Off officers arrested two suspects. I think these two incidents highlight the great work that our police department does on a regular basis, and we're grateful for those proactive efforts. They had another arrest as it relates to narcotics. They've performed retail theft operations. And they continue to just do a phenomenal job of helping protect our businesses and our residents. So thank you very much. That concludes my report.

And that brings us to council comments. Council Member Aquino.

I also would like to thank Steve Wong for his service to the city and the country and I wish him a healthy, happy retirement. In case you haven't heard, we are having a party here in Folsom on Wednesday, March 4. From 10AM to 2PM, we are celebrating the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of the completion of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, the 22 miles from Sacramento to Folsom. And then we are also celebrating the two hundredth birthday that day, March 4, of Theodore Judah, who was the chief engineer of the Sacramento Valley Railroad and, of course, the person who laid out the original town side of Granite City, which became Folsom. So we are going to have a demonstration of the turntable and how that turns.

It does turn. We test drove it today. So thank you to Parks and Rec staff for their help with that. We're going to have the Folsom Public Library out to do a story time. We're going to have hands on activities, educational displays. I'm even finding a way to incorporate some animals from the zoo. If there's a way to tie them to the railroad and Theodore Giro, we will do it. So hope you all can come to that. And then just as a reminder for my colleagues, there's kind of an earlier portion of the day. We have invited talk about regional collaboration.

We have invited our friends from the city of Sacramento, the County Of Sacramento, the RT board, the STA board, the SPTC, JPA board, legislators, congresspeople to kind of recreate that historic ride from 1856. So we're going to meet at the Sac Valley Station. 09:04AM, we'll hop on that light rail train. We'll get to historic Folsom Station at 10:04. There will be a historian, games, prizes, special guests along the route. You don't want to miss it. So I hope you can all come. Thank you.

Thank you for doing that. Councilmember O'Leary.

I have a couple of things to cover. I'd like to thank Chief Solak for coming out and walking around the wetlands in Natoma Station where we had a significant amount of ladder fuel growing for several years along the Natoma Station Drive. And I'm not sure if he's aware, but the brush was cleared all along that strip. And I understand that that was through the ladder fuel abatement program. I called staff because I wasn't expecting that to be done so quickly, but it looks amazing.

And I know the neighborhood's very happy about it. Thank you. And this contributes to the entire area over there where FOFP has been removing ladder fuel along the bike trail between Natoma Station Drive all the way over to Folsom Boulevard. One of the fun things that we get to do as council members is attend some of the ribbon cuttings. And in the last two weeks, I've been to ribbon cutting in my district at the newly opened yard house at the Palladio.

Haraz Coffee, which is a Yemeni coffee shop down by Winco. And everybody may have already found this out because I know there's a lot of crowds going in there, and Chick fil A has been reopened. So that's what I have to report tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Geselowski.

Okay. I found the most pedantic thing to tell you all about. Earlier this week, we are at the end of last week, we had the land use and natural resource meeting down at SACOG. And SB79 is being implemented to try and encourage transit oriented development. Its underlying objective is to reduce vehicle miles traveled.

Vehicle miles traveled are the stand in or proxy for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. There's a partner bill that passed called AB 130, or that is winding its way through, that is going to try and establish a VMT bank for VMT mitigation for projects. That has become the hot interesting topic around land planning and SACOG is considering setting up a regional VMT bank here. There are some smaller ones that already exist and the state is trying to set up a supersize one. The idea being that as a developer right now who is going to cause an increase in VMT by their project, or at least their SQL report indicates that they will, they're responsible for mitigating that effect.

And usually the way that you mitigate that is by helping other VMT reducing projects get funded. It's difficult in the moment to get those two things to sync up at the right time. The idea of the VMT bank is that you can pay for that pay that bank, and then the bank is available to use for projects that will reduce VMT. Remains to be seen if it will work beautifully, but there's going to be different banks at different levels for developers to take advantage of and projects that create mitigation to take advantage of. I think one of the things that we discussed at some length was are there underlying improvements to the way that CEQA challenges may happen?

Because oftentimes the mitigation strategy is the subject of a lawsuit by parties who would rather not see the project go forward. At least with regard to the VMT mitigations, the premise here is that if a statewide bank is the one taking in and endorsing the mitigation strategy, it may reduce the sort of ability for that to be challenged in court, or at least give it a better standing. Remains to be seen. So anyway, that is the most nerdy thing I could tell you all about today. That happened.

It was an interesting discussion. You can look at it online. And then the less nerdy thing is that the, last games of the winter sports seasons are happening right now at both high schools. So the basketball teams from Folsom High and Vista Del Lago, have their last games. Girls tonight, boys on Friday for Vista, and other days this week for Folsom High, and then playoffs start. And I think at least three of the four teams, boys and girls soccer and basketball, will end up in the playoffs. So inexpensive, fantastic entertainment if you got nothing better to do. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice mayor?

I have two s's. One, want to thank Sari for I'm excited to have you as interim city attorney. I do appreciate that we had a deep bench. We had one, but that's okay. I'm really excited to have you help move our city forward. So, it's been it's

Here here.

Been fun, having you a part of our conversations already in the last couple weeks. The other s is the Seahawks. I heard your comment, Brian. Not everybody was bored during the Super Bowl. It wasn't that great at a game the first half, but it got better. Lifelong Seahawks fans, so I'm super happy that they won the Super Bowl. And I wouldn't have said that if we had played the 49ers. So I do know my place.

Thank you. I do want to talk about and congratulate Chick fil A. They actually set the single day sales record for Northern California. So there was a lot of pent up demand for Chick fil A after that closure. And I also wanna thank the person wearing a community service day shirt in the audience today because it reminded me, to to thank the steering committee.

They just started meeting again, this year, to pull off another fantastic service day, always the third Saturday in September. So remember that. Mark your calendars now. Third Saturday in September. But also start walking your neighborhoods, and keeping an eye out for projects, because that will be the first step that that steering committee asks for public input on is identifying projects out in the community that could use some love in September.

And tonight, we are going to adjourn in memory of Cassidy Sidhu. She was a lifelong Folsom resident who passed away on January 29 after a sixteen year battle with brain cancer. She grew up in Lexington Hills. She attended Oak Chan Elementary and Folsom Middle, and she graduated from Vista Del Lago in 2016. Despite not having to use the right side of her body due to side effects from radiation treatment, Cassidy founded a small floral business in 2020 called Purple Petals.

She absolutely loved making flower arrangements and helping people with their floral needs, even with the use of just one hand. Cassidy packed a lot of love and laughter into her 27 and lived by her favorite quote. Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain. We extend our deepest sympathies to Cassidy's parents, Lisa and Sham Sidhu, and her brother, Cade. And with that, we are adjourned.