City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn. And that takes us to our regular meeting. Will you please call the roll?

Okay, Council Members Leary. Here. Rohrabach. Here. Aquino. Here. Kozlowski.

Here.

And Rathel.

Here. If you'll please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

And do we have any agenda updates this evening?

No updates, thank you.

Thank you. That takes us to business from the floor. This is the time in the meeting where anyone from the public can address the city council on un-agendized items. We've got a couple of requests to speak tonight, but if you are here to speak and you didn't get a chance to fill out a blue card, you can grab one in the back and just bring it right here to the side of the dais. With that, we'll go ahead and call up our first speaker.

Okay, the first- Not me, am I too late?

There's a blue form right over there on that table there.

Okay, the first speaker will be Robert Dresser. You could go ahead and approach the podium.

It was a hard act to follow. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. My name is Robert Dresser. I've been a resident of Folsom around 12 years. I used to be, in a past life, an attorney with the state of California. I was the general counselor for the labor agency and chair of the unemployment insurance appeals board. And in those capacities, I had a little experience in settling lawsuits. filed against the various departments. And I was here before and respectfully requested the amount of money spent in litigating the district election by district case. And I said at the time, I didn't know, and I still don't know, that I wouldn't be surprised if a million dollars had been spent since the lawsuit was filed until now. And there's more litigation pending, of course, And it just seemed to me since the district some years ago went ahead and adopted by district elections, but have not paid the attorney who brought the lawsuit on behalf of a number of people in Folsom a penny in attorney fees, which I think is, from my experience, is really not quite appropriate, that I would encourage the city of Folsom to and respectfully encourage. I know it's difficult to engage in meaningful settlement discussions and to try to come to some reasonable accommodation. And I know when you're sued, it's hard. but I'm hoping that in order to stop the accrual of additional attorney fees, that some kind of settlement can be achieved. And I respectfully say thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, our next speaker, Josh White. You can go ahead and approach the podium.

And Josh, I know you had turned in two cards, but we just give each speaker three minutes. Oh, okay. So you'll have to cover both those topics.

Try to put some pressure on me, Mayor. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, I see the timer. Just wanted to say I was sorry, Mayor. Last time I was here, I was a little flustered. I had a bunch of notes. I think it's better if I just speak from the heart. I accidentally interrupted you when you asked how my day was doing. So two weeks later, I was a little flustered. That's how I was doing. Today, I'm doing a lot better. I won't say much on the pickleball basketball coexistence idea that I have, but I would love it if you guys would consider that. I had kind of a funny speech with all P words, but I'm just going to speak from the heart. I was able to get a blueprint from a public's request, Freedom of Information Act request, and I was able to modify a blueprint which shows a beautiful way that pickleball and basketball could coexist at Lemby Park. The blueprint I provided shows where two additional pickleball courts could go, and basketball could exist side by side. So I'm super appreciative of the five of you being able to take a look at that when parks planning has done their thing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Josh. And do I need to turn around or anything for my next one?

No.

Perfect. My name is still Terry Josh White. And I just wanted to send you guys an idea about the Chabad Jewish Community Center that recently broke ground here in Folsom. I don't know the appropriate time and place to maybe proclaim a Jewish celebration day for our city. But I think in the days that we're living in, there's a lot of crazy things. sentiment online with extremism on both sides. And I think it would be a beautiful thing if the city of Folsom could proclaim a sense of welcome, a sense of peace, and a sense of brotherly love for Rabbi Yossi Grossbaum, who personally helped me. I had a situation where I had an apartment manager that was demanding that I neuter my dogs. And in Jewish law, it is forbidden to unnecessarily mutilate any animal. So I personally agree with that. I don't agree with mutilating animals or people. What does that mean? But I would be grateful if the five of you would consider proclaiming a Jewish celebration day to make our Jewish brothers and sisters at the Chabad Community Center feel welcome and protected here in Folsom. God bless you and thank you. Thank you.

All right, next up, I can't read your handwriting. Looks like it starts with a C. Yep, you're up. Oh, I did not get that at all. So William, you are up.

I ran down from the other building. How can I help you with your drive?

It's really my drive is messed up, but let me turn you off. She had my, okay, good. Thank you. My name's William Thomas Bernal. You can look at my campaign. I am a vetted candidate for Area 6, Los Rios College Trustee Board. I'm running up against an incumbent. I have three minutes?

Yes, sir.

Everybody told me that I was running after a low fruit game. That means I was picking the easiest fruit in this election. The fruit didn't matter to me. What matters to me are all these kids right here. This is the future of Folsom. This is what we need to be planning for at the... trust board in which direction are Los Rios, Consumnes River, Folsom College, and Sacramento City going? Where are they going? And how are we gonna get to the 27th century with 19th century technology? Now, I know the trust board has done a good job of pulling Folsom out of the ground, and I'm gonna give you a little bit of my background. Don't trust AI. Copilot really put me in a jam. Good evening, I'm William Thomas Burnell. You can find me under votebillburnell.com. As a vetted and sworn-in candidate for the Los Rios Community College Area 6 Board of Trustees, I bring not only a strong professional background, but also a well-honed expertise in handling the nittiest, pickiest of nitty-pickiest people. That's a mouthful. I'm fully prepared to navigate the finest of all details with precision and ensure that our government and our governments, governance, holds up to the most rigorous standards. I have experience with allied administrators and accounting, in forensic accounting, business, Ben Assist, Deloitte, Tuch, Deloitte, no, now it's just Deloitte, the FBI, the RICO standards, investigation of pension funds, IRS funds, and any other funds that are held in account for any public entity. I'll bring a fresh and new approach as a trustee And I'm here just to introduce myself to you. I didn't plan on this big political speech. But I'm telling you, trenching up that handicapped ramp after doing physical therapy was tough. Please look at votebillburnell.com to see my endorsements from citizens of Folsom, Lakeside. I'm a chaplain at Lakeside. I'm the only candidate that's listed as chaplain. Thank you.

All right. We still got blue cards in the back. Going once, going twice. All right, we're gonna wrap up business from the floor and we'll move on to scheduled presentations.

Okay, scheduled presentations. Item number one, City of Folsom Resolution Accommodation honoring Folsom Lake Surf Soccer Club U15 Boys, ECNL Regional League National Champions.

Come on up here, guys. Come on.

all right we got there we go we got a microphone it's all good i'll get a picture just like i'm gonna read it first we'll get a picture here in just a second guys i'm behind you now you're all too tall all right So today we have a resolution of commendation honoring the Folsom Lake Surf Soccer Club U15 boys, ECNL Regional League National Champions. So whereas the Folsom Lake Surf Soccer Club U15 ECNRL boys team contributed to Folsom's vibrant youth sports community, representing the city with exceptional teamwork, sportsmanship, and dedication to the game of soccer. And whereas the team is comprised of 17 boys under the age of 15 that have trained all year with head coach and executive director Fritz Libby, who provided preparation, training, and leadership with encouragement all season with every training and every match played. And whereas the players came together all year to prepare for play at the highest level, demonstrating teamwork, positive attitudes, excellent work ethic, and enthusiasm for the game and opportunities to perform at the national level. And whereas the team traveled to Richmond, Virginia in July to attend the regional league finals, playing against three teams from across the country. And the team dominated the games by scoring a combined 12 goals to their opponent's zero goals and repeated as national champions by defeating the Houstonians football club 1-0. And the players, coaches and families of the Folsom Lake Surf Soccer Club team proudly represented the city of Folsom both on and off the field. So therefore, I, Justin Rathel, Mayor of the City of Folsom, on behalf of the Folsom City Council and the whole Folsom community, do hereby congratulate the players, coaches, and families of this team and extend our excitement of this national championship and wish them much continued success. Congratulations. And then we're all going to look. Well, there's a lot of cameras out there. So look at the camera in the middle there.

Awesome.

Great work, guys.

All right, we're having a little mic issues.

Thank you Mayor Rathel and the council and City manager white Meyer and director Kelly Gonzales for your ongoing support of the club on behalf of our club in the 64 plus Clubs that make up surf nation across the country. We really appreciate your support and ongoing efforts to partnership with us and partner with us on things like field and you know, renovations needed to keep us on the field, keep us going. So thank you. Thank you.

We won't be offended if you guys don't stick around.

All right, boys, if any of you end up at Vista del Lago, I need you in the springtime after soccer for track and field. I need sprinters and jumpers for the track team when soccer's over, okay?

Thank you.

Good job. Congratulations.

All right, that takes us to our Consent Calendar. Would anybody like to pull one or two of these very important items tonight?

I'd like to propose approving the Consent Calendar as presented.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Okay, Council Members Leary? Yes. Borba? Yes. Aquino? Yes. Kozlowski? Yes. And Rathel?

Yes. That takes us to Old Business.

Okay, old business, item number four, resolution number 11693, a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number two to the agreement with West Yost and Associates for $402,886. from the Water Operating Fund for additional construction management and inspection services for the tower tank rehabilitation project, project number listed on the agenda, and appropriation of funds.

Please start the timer.

Mayor Rathel, members of the council, Marcus Yasutake, utilities director. We recommend approving the item, thank you. But somehow, someway, I knew I'd clear the room. So it typically happens when I have something on agenda.

Normally, it's later in your presentation, though. Yeah.

I will make it quick and ensure that it's only maybe 10 minutes. So just to give you a brief background, these are the locations of the project. It was all combined under the tower tank projects because we're doing minor work at some of the facilities until one of the areas turned into major work. And that's Foothills Tank number two and then Foothills Tank number one. The scope of the work for West Yosen Associates and their subcontractors is effectively taking work through April of 2027. There's additional weekly meetings, submittal reviews, project oversight for construction change orders that were previously approved for construction. And this all requires additional specialty inspections for welding, coating, and all the structural repairs that will occur and have occurred at all of the tank sites. And then the last item is preparation of a tank report that we are required to submit to the state of California. So when they came out and did some inspections a couple years ago, they identified a couple of areas for improvements at our tank site for drainage, which we've done, and I mean draining the tank, not drainage around the site. And so we've made those improvements and we have to submit a final report just to show that we completed what they required of us. Just in the way of background in terms of the deficiencies encountered, significant corrosion, significant metal loss, failed coatings, paint delamination, and this was... on the floor, on the side of the tank, on the top of the tank, on the outside of the tank. So pretty much anywhere you could find coating failure amongst all these tanks, we found it. Pitting and deterioration of the metal in and of itself. Inadequate structural bracing. So some places that should have had more structural metal there just was not included in sufficient mechanical preparation for the coating application. So areas where the entire coating would just come off by hand, which had the primer coat and the two paint coats, just you can have it in hand. So A lot of issues there. And then just kind of as a point of reference, we were here in front of council in February of 2026, and that's when you all approved a contract change order for the construction side of the project. And this is now for the construction management and inspection services. So just in terms of tank inspection, these are just some pictures of what was encountered during the inspections when the tanks were full. You can just see some corrosion that's been built up in some of the rafter areas. And I've got some more pictures that show something that's not even as good looking as this. And these are that. So a lot of significant failure in the rafters. You can see a lot of metal failure here. So you've got some coating in these areas up here. But that's actually an I-beam that's physically deteriorating. The inspector was able just to go pick it off by hand, which is not good for supporting the roof of a tank. Some more, some metal that was actually taken out during the process. And again, you can see in other areas just advanced corrosion in these locations. This is foothills number two, and just more of the same. You can see all of the delaminating, but you can see actually all the corrosion occurring along the I-beam. And this is just one isolated location. We had several locations throughout foothills number two. And when we... we're going through the work we realized that we weren't going to be able to do foothills number one so we had at the time in february assumed that foothills number one being five years older than foothills number two was likely going to be worse when we got in there so we accounted for that in the change order and that's been accounted for in the work by um that will be provided by west yost and associates uh just some more pictures again of the issues that we've encountered um You can see here, this is the edge of the metal just deteriorated. This is the whole section of the primer and the coating that is off in pieces that are 18 inches long, maybe six inches wide, and that's not a good thing. And then what we recently found is deterioration in everything along the floor of the tank. So the bottom of the tank at foothills number two looks like this, and we anticipate foothills number one will have very similar coating issues along the bottom. So that's going to require a full sandblasting of the entire bottom, surface preparation, and then another recoat. So these are the anticipated needs at Foothills number one. I won't read them all, but a lot of it's just what we anticipate as deteriorated metal or metal that will soon to fail. And so we wanna replace those while we're in there. The last item is something that we did add was we figure that the flooring of Foothills number one will be very similar to Foothills number two. So that was added in as well to the change order that was previously approved, plus what we're here for, tonight. And with that, I will take any questions on this project.

Questions for staff?

I have a question. I just wonder how this deterioration in the tanks, which I assume delivers water to various areas of the city, how does that impact the water quality?

So typically, at least in what we've seen or have not seen, is not any of this leading to anything in the distribution system as it leaves the tanks and out into the system. And so typically, we just find the remnants along the floor when we do As part of the annual inspections, we'll do annual cleanings as well. And so when we do that within each of the tanks, that's typically we find it on the bottom of the tank and not in the outlet of the tank to the distribution system.

So is there any filtering that takes place between the tanks and the water delivery system?

There is not any filters out in the system.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions for staff tonight? All right. Thanks, Marcus. Thank you. If you want to comment on this item, we will have public comment.

Yeah.

We already have your name, so you don't need to fill out another card. So no other questions from staff? Perfect. We can move to public comment. If you want to come on up.

I'm a builder. I'm a C-29 contractor.

I work with large projects from

Microsoft's largest Northern American cast in place concrete structure which went seven stories down to protect their servers to working on the Golden Gate Bridge. Okay, so are these structures that are holding drinking water for the public to drink?

We can ask your questions. You've got three minutes to give public comment, and then we're not going to go back and forth with questions, but you can give us your questions.

Are these drinking water tanks? And they expect them to be not leaving any lifelong chemical reactions or chemicals in the water that people will be consuming? And... Why so much going back using iron and why not use a more advanced technology that will prevent any rusting from anything? So I propose a construction material change instead of using the same old, same old 19th century, might as well put a locomotive tank up there with a tank of water. My comment.

Thank you.

so to answer the first question yes this is all drinking water in the the city system and all of the materials used all are approved by the state of california for drinking water purposes so we're meeting all the requirements as such in terms of the material type used i can't speak for what was done and built before i got here but So you are aware we are considering in the plan area south of Highway 50, being that's the newest area where we are physically building more storage above ground, that we will have three concrete tanks in the Folsom plan area. So there's one that's currently a steel water tank now, and then we're looking at three others that will be built out of concrete.

Thank you. Questions, comments? I'll entertain a motion.

I'll move approval of resolution 11693.

I'll second it.

Please call the roll.

Hey, council members, Larry. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That takes us to city managers report.

Great. Thank you. Mayor members of the council. Just a couple of updates to share with you in the community. As anyone, everyone should know Prairie city road is closed. It's under construction. We appreciate the partnership that we have with Sacramento county. They're doing the work in partnership with our Public Works Department. We appreciate our Public Works Director Rebecca Neves and her team doing all that they're doing. We recognize that this is a challenge for the community and we're working to get it done as soon as we can. Just so you know that the road is closed between US Highway 50 and White Rock Road. from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. We expect the work to be completed the week of September 1st, so we don't have an exact date during that week. And we may have some closures on August 29th and 30th, so stay tuned for that. Once again, we're working as fast as we can to get that done. We also want to remind folks that improvements are underway for Livermore Community Park. The project will add a new 62 space parking lot adjacent to McAdoo Drive. It'll improve accessibility and pedestrian connections and complete a section of class one trail. I know the neighborhood has experienced a lot of traffic impacts and parking for the sports fields that are there. So this is a great addition to that facility. We also want to recognize and announce that Detective Austin Alvarez with the Folsom Police Department was inducted into the Congressional Police Honor Roll. This was related to his work on the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. His efforts have directly contributed to the identification, arrest, and prosecution of offenders while helping protect vulnerable victims from further harm. Congressman Kevin Kiley recently recognized Detective Alvarez on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and we're grateful for his service. I also want to thank all those who helped in the first step for the food drive that's coming up related to Community Service Day. Over a two day period, over 36,000 bags were assembled for the food drive that will benefit the Twin Lakes Food Bank. Many thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Muslim Community of Folsom, Trinity Episcopal Church, and Oak Hills Church. Bags will be delivered in early September, so be on the lookout for your bag to fill with non-perishable food and put out by 8 a.m. on Saturday, September 19th. That concludes my report.

Excellent. We don't take questions during this time. All right, we'll move on to council comments. Council Member Kozlowski.

Just two quick things. The mayor and I were at the ribbon cutting for the ACE Pickleball Club. So if you're worried about there not being enough pickleball courts, you've got yet another opportunity. And I wanted to highlight this because it's in a little forgotten corner of Folsom a little bit. The Y that is created by Madison and Greenback All the way up to what used to be Big Lots but is now the ace pickleball club is a part of Folsom and you should Go to those businesses just like you do throughout the rest of the city That's in my district district one and then last thing the the final summer concert That's held in the amphitheater down on Sutter Street is this Thursday at 737 People will set chairs up at like 6 a.m., so if you want a good spot, you gotta be an early bird for a concert that evening. That is all, thank you very much. Thank you.

Vice Mayor? Council Member Leary?

I just wanted to acknowledge that we had some nice events to attend this past weekend with the opening of the Jewish Community Center and a Muslim Community Center. It was really enjoyable to go in and talk to the members of those congregations and learn more about their work. And attempts to increase education, the availability of library books at both of the sites. And I thought the Muslim community center did this all a great service by occupying 1 of those large empty buildings down at the end of blue ravine in the office park. That's been. losing business for a long time, but I think that'll help revitalize that area. Up there will be the building of the new SMUD operations tower. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is that we were lucky a couple months ago, I think, to have Dr. Slater present some information about Lunar Landing Day. And he sent me a note this morning that the California Assembly passed with unanimous consent Resolution 139, introduced by Assemblyman Josh Hoover, co-sponsored by Blanca Pacheco, Um, establishing every July, 20th is lunar landing day here in the state of California, and that was ratified by the Senate. So we had a nice opportunity to see what that was all about. And he's been successful in his endeavors and appreciates any and all support he can get throughout the state. uh and then i also want to thank staff again for the work on prairie city road it's been i know a really challenging project but much needed and i'm happy to see one of the items on my top 10 things to move forward on uh this earlier this year that we shared with the public uh is is making progress so thank you again for that thank you councilmember aquino mr mayor i hope you have a very happy birthday tomorrow that's all

Oh, thank you. It's my birthday Eve. Thanks for making the meeting short on my birthday eve. Couple of things, one, AB 2415 is moving to the governor's desk. The Hoover bill on our historic district, great news for Folsom today. And we hope the governor does sign that. The letters already are going out to encourage him to sign that bill. and really help protect our historic district. And then just another plug for community service day. Last I looked, we had about 800 volunteer slots still needing to be filled. And after my minute with the mayor yesterday, I got two of my project lead spots filled, one of them being Council Member Aquino, thank you. But I still have one more need for a project lead that has some painting skills. So if you're out there wondering what you want to do on Community Service Day and you have some painting skills, please reach out to me personally and we'll get you connected with that project. And with that, we are adjourned at 7.10 p.m.