City Council Meeting - Regular Meeting

I would like to call to order the Fontana City Council, which will consist of the following meetings. One, city council, Two, community foundation. Three, fire protection district. Four, housing authority. Please note that all meetings for the consent calendar and new business will be taken at the same time. Now I can call the meeting for Fontana City Council to order. I'll pass the gavel. Let's start with community foundation, which is chair Warren. Next is the fire district, chair Catherine.

The fire tenant fire district is now in session.

Housing authority, chair Garcia.

Housing authority is now in session.

At this time, we'll do our roll call. We'll start with mayor pro tem Garcia.

Present.

Council member Catherine. Present. Council member Roberts.

Present.

And council member Sandoval.

Present.

Can we all please stand for our invocation? Our invocation will be given by council member John Roberts, and our pledge will be done by council member Catherine.

Let's bow our heads. Heavenly father, we come before you with grateful hearts this afternoon for the many blessings that you bestowed on our city. Father, we ask for your guidance and wisdom as we deliberate the matters before us this afternoon. Father, be with those in public safety and military service. Keep them safe. We ask this in your name. Amen.

Please remain standing and place your right hand over your heart and join me in the pledge. 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.

Everyone may be seated. Can we have our closed session report? City attorney Ruben Durand.

Yes. Thank you, madam mayor. Good afternoon. This afternoon, the council met in closed session to consider the one item that is listed on that closed session agenda. They received briefing from staff and provided direction, but there is no reportable action this afternoon. Thank you, madam mayor.

Thank you. That brings us to ceremonial items and presentations. We're gonna start with, recognizing our public works and engineering twenty twenty five employee of the year. We'll have Jia Kim please come and join us. My colleagues will join me by standing.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody. This year's employee of the year from the Department of Public Works and Engineering is someone very special. So we prepared a little clip that we wanted to share. So if you can play.

One of the things I admire most about May is how incredibly organized she is. No matter how busy things get, she always seems to have everything under control.

May is representative of everything you want about someone working in public service. When you can combine ability and character and work ethic into one person, that's what every employer is looking for in their key staff.

Hi, Maylyn. Congratulations on being named Fontana's employee of the year. As the president of the Inland Empire branch of the American Public Works Association, I had the privilege of working with you to coordinate and set up our project of the year event as FODGES. Your dedication, follow through, and helpfulness were absolutely supreme. Thank you for all your help and your hard work. Fontana is lucky to have you. Congratulations on your well earned award.

It's amazing how fast she learned in the last couple of years from the department. I can't imagine our department without May. She has done so much for us.

You are always doing amazing work, taking care of balls we didn't even know we had.

We travel quite a bit now, and

May takes care of all of our arrangements. She even called me when I was there to make sure I got her seen.

She's basically the grease that keeps the machine running.

Thank you for keeping all of us in line.

This recognition is well deserved.

And congratulations again. Congratulations.

Thank you, May.

Thank you to May, and congratulations.

May is a team player, always has a positive attitude, and always a go to person when you need to get something done. Congratulations, May, on employee of the year.

So, I'd like to invite May to come up the stairs. So, while she's coming up, I met May three years ago, about three years ago. It was very challenging to find a perfect secretary for the department. With Matt, city manager and HR's assistant, I was able to meet May. She did a perfect job in the first interview. And for the second, I wanted to interview with her interview her with the engineering managers. We went to the wrong location. And but she waited for us patiently and then nailed the second interview. We loved her immediately and she became part of our family. So I assigned various projects to May so she can learn about engineering lingo and everything else.

She finished those very quickly and then she started asking extremely smart questions. And I also started hearing about compliments her work from others And I knew I had someone very special with me. I challenged her different project. So she managed traffic control cabinet wrapping project all by herself. She also managing selfie wall downtown parking structure you will see sometime this summer.

And then she also managing pavement art project. She wrote the RFP, evaluate the proposal, wrote staff report, the managing project with very minimal help from me. Around that time, we finished the East Annex Building, we need to move departments to new building, and I needed someone to help me out. And I asked Mary, and she said yes. And so far, we have, like, two successful moving major, and then more to come. But thank you so much for your hard work and your dedication and your can do spirit actually transformed the department tremendously. So you're just not the employee of the year, you're our everyday hero. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much. May, on behalf of the city council representing this great, great community, we'd like to present this award to you. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Let's give her another big hand, everyone. Monique said you need to talk.

Thanks, Monique. Good afternoon, madam mayor, council members, city staff, and members of the community. Thank you for this great honor. I share it with all of my coworkers who help

your coworkers to stand up.

Stand up, public works and engineering. Let's go. Thank you all. They think I'm the support, but they do help me to be better every day. Thank you, Gia and Phil, for giving me an opportunity to help the city through the moves. Gia, for your trust and confidence in me every day. My family, the reason why I do what I do. They say that sometimes it takes a village to make great things happen, and I'm extremely grateful to be part of this village. Thank you so much.

Next, we have officer Mario Martinez as Fontana Police Department twenty twenty five employee of the year presented by captain Brian Binks. Let's give him a big hand, everyone.

Alright. Good afternoon, mayor and, city council. Mayor, I think it's safe to say the city of Fontana is a Dodger town. Right? We could say that safely?

Anybody wanna fight

that? Well, with that, I just wanna, before I introduce our officer of year, Jackie Robinson had a quote, a life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives. Usually, we're recognizing, police officers, we focus on statistics, arrests made, drugs seized, or amazing cases that are solved. While those accomplishments truly do matter in our community, the true measure of excellence is the impact that a police officer has on others. So today, it is my honor to bring up our twenty twenty five police officer of the year, Mario Martinez.

While Mario struts down here, we'll get this going. Take your time, Mario. So earlier early in Mario's career, he was assigned to the narcotics unit where his work ethic and his investigations truly set him apart from his peers. He later served as a task force officer in our narcotics unit with the DEA, authoring wiretaps, coordinating complex investigations, and going after high level narcotics traffickers. This year, earlier in the year, the Los Angeles district attorney's office commended Mario for his work ethic and cases that he had worked on during his time on the task force.

They committed him for his investigative abilities. Just he he was, set apart from all the other officers, and with his amazing work, he, by himself with his investigation, seized over $21,000,000 in narcotics proceeds. Although those statistics are are extremely impressive, what sets him apart is what he does for other officers at the police department. Mario is a natural mentor at the Fontana Police Department. When we speak to newer police officers and they work amazing cases, they often tell us, you know, Mario showed me this or Mario taught me how to do that.

He doesn't just perform at a high level, he truly raises the level of the other employees at the Fontana Police Department. In 2025, Mario served our police department as a field training officer through the entire year. He never did not once have a trainee with him. He was often tasked with handling trainees who were who were underperforming or having a difficult time getting through training, and Mario, took them under his wing and and raised them up, not only helping them become well rounded, amazing solo police officers, but also helping us with our staffing levels, to be honest. While assigned to patrol, Mario was also assigned to a patrol team, that set a goal to make 600 arrests in a year.

They they did that goal, and truly Mario's leadership was one of the reasons they were able to do that. They were able to to arrest, narcotics, traffickers. They were, people that are out stealing cars, people committing burglaries. Mario and his team made a tremendous impact on our community. He was a leader on that team.

One of the cases that truly reflects Mario's commitment to our organization, we recently had a bank jugging case where suspects would watch people get money out of the bank, follow them, and and commit robberies and burglaries on them. Mario was assigned as a patrol FTO with this with a with a new police officer on one of these cases. There was minimal suspect information. Mario could have easily taken the case and handed it over to our detectives to work and do the follow-up. He didn't. He took the case. He he took ownership. He taught his trainee how to handle the case. Together, they located evidence. They authored search warrants.

They made arrests, and they were able to solve a bank juggling case that was a significant problem in our community. Not only doing that, but training a new young police officer how to do things the right way. At the Fontana Police Department, we have a sign downstairs in our patrol division that reads, we not me. And it serves our people as a reminder that it's not about the individual, it's about we. And not only we as the people in the building, but we as a community of the city of Fontana.

Mario truly, emulates that we not me attitude, and he sets the example for his peers. His humility, mentorship, and selfless service truly strengthen our police department. Mario, your leadership, your heart for serving others is why the staff chose you as the twenty twenty five officer of the year. Congratulations. Thank

you. On behalf of this great council and this great community, we thank you for all your service, and thank you for continuing to understand how important it is to keep us all safe. We're just so proud of you. Thank you.

Thank you. I

just wanna thank everyone here today. Sorry I'm a little under the weather. I wanna thank the council members, my, administrative staff at Montana PD. They're the ones that, put push and support us to continue to to lead by example. We wanna make better officers here at the at the police department. And I I truly believe that we work at the best department. So I I take it very serious to to teach and to give back. There's no point in harboring information when you can share it with others. So thank you again. Congratulations.

Our next presentation, we're going to have chief of police, Michael Dorsey, come up to present.

Thank you, mayor and counsel. Let me flip these around for this presentation. You you just heard, one example of the, great employees that we here have here at the Fontana Police Department. And, we can't do this job without partners, community partners and other partners in the law enforcement justice system. And one of those incredibly important partners is our district attorney's office. And for this presentation, I'd like to, welcome our elected district attorney Jason Henderson up to the stage. Let's give it up for Jason.

Now look, this is our district attorney. We could do better than that. Come on.

Today, I have the distinct honor of recognizing two extraordinary public servants whose dedication, perseverance, and unwavering commitment to justice have forever changed the course of one family's history. Detective Catherine Katie Clark and San Bernardino County district attorney Lloyd Masson, who is now serves as an assistant United States attorney in the Los Angeles field office. Could you guys come up, please? This recognition centers on a case that began more than four decades ago, and the case is the people versus NASH. On 07/05/2028 I'm sorry, 1980, a young woman named Michelle Missy Jones was brutally and sexually assaulted and murdered.

Her body was left in a grapefruit grove in the South End of Fontana. The crime shocked our community. Investigators worked tirelessly, but every lead was exhausted. The evidence available at the time pointed in many different directions, and unfortunately, the case grew cold. And after forty years, Michelle's family waited for answers.

In March 2020, detective Katie Clark made a decision that would change everything. She reopened the case. She immersed herself in thousands of pages of reports, interviews, and physical evidence. She painstakingly reviewed every detail of the original investigation. During the review, she identified a critical piece of physical evidence that had never, been tested in 1980.

She sent it to the lab. That decision to send that piece of evidence to the lab was pivotal in this case. The testing revealed a DNA profile, one that did not match any of the original suspects and did not produce a CODIS hit. And a CODIS is a DNA offender offender registry that's maintained, by the government. Rather than accept a dead end, detective Clark went back to the beginning.

She reexamined every single individual that was connected to the original case. Through careful review, she identified a person who had never been interviewed in this case, and that person was Leonard Nash. And Leonard, at the time, was the boyfriend of Michelle's sister, at the time of this incident. With limited information and little more than instinct and intuition, detective Clark and her team traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they believe Nash may have been located. After an extensive search of the Las Vegas area, they were able to locate Nash.

He voluntarily agreed to meet with the investigators about a murder that occurred over forty years ago. And during that conversation, he made conflicting and inconsistent statements that heightened the investigators', suspicions. Detective Clark devised a strategic plan to secretly obtain his DNA during the interaction, and investigators then returned back to California. Then in September 2020 came the break that they were looking for. The San Bernardino County, crime lab contacted detective Clark with definitive news.

That DNA that was collect collected from Nash matched the DNA recovered from Michelle's body. The lab described the statistical significance as so overwhelming that there was no doubt that Leonard Nash was the source of that DNA left on the victim. With the evidence in hand, detective Clark worked with the courts to arrest and extradite Nash back to California to stand trial. But that pursuit of justice does not end with just a simple arrest. Deputy district attorney Lloyd Masson partnered with detective Clark to prepare this decades old case for criminal trial.

Together, they meticulously organized evidence, brief prepared witnesses, and built a compelling presentation for the jury. They faced the immense challenge of prosecuting a 40 old case, homicide, a task that requires not only legal expertise but extraordinary perseverance and commitment. Then on 11/13/2025, the jury rendered their verdict of guilty. On January 15, Nash was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison for the murder of Michelle Missy Jones. This case now stands as one of the oldest cases ever successfully prosecuted through conviction and sentencing in our county.

But beyond records and milestones, this case represents something far more important. It represents justice. Represents justice for Missy Michelle, accountability for her killer and closure for a family that waited more than four decades. Michelle's sister Kimberly is here today. She reached out to the Fontana Police Department.

She reached out to our mayor to express her sincere gratitude for the work that was done on this particular case. That is the true measure of public service right here, folks. Detective Clark and district attorney Madison poured themselves into this case as they have many others during their time in working the cold case unit. They purse pursued every avenue, followed every lead, and refused to allow time to erase accountability and responsibility. Because of them, cases once labeled our cold have been resolved.

Families have closure and they have answers. Today, we honor not only their skill and professionalism, but their integrity, their perseverance, and their commitment to serve our community. Detective Clark and deputy district attorney Masson, we, the council, the community, everybody thanks you for your service in closing this case and providing justice. With that, I would like to, give the microphone to our district attorney.

Thanks, chief. I can't say it any better than that. The the the heroes that are in the room are Missy's family who are here that you've referenced. Welcome. Just an honor to always be in front of all of you and for you to be here.

And to detective Clark, and my colleague, Lloyd, unbelievable, phenomenal job. It's an honor to be up here with the two of you, to have watched the work that you guys have done over the several years and the reconciliation and the restoration that has occurred in this process in a system that oftentimes is so maligned. But this is the greatest example of what justice can bring, and it, can never be stopped, it can never be put, in a in a treasure chest, or anywhere thing like that. With your resolve, and and and your spirit for your sister and your loved one, thanks to detective Clark and and Lloyd for always keeping that alive. Thanks, chief.

I'm not sure if you're comfortable, but you could certainly join us up on the stage if you would. You know, we, just had our state of the city last Thursday, and I want the family to know I was thinking about you and the email you sent me. That email went down in my heart. It just really touched me. People don't understand how important it is to have community.

And when you lose a loved one and not know what happened and not have that justice, it just yanks at you. And for this family to spread the love for Misty and not forget her and and not give up. But when you look at Fontana Police Department's relationship with this great district attorney, Jason Anderson. Jason, you have you have surpassed expectations in this county. I'm telling you.

You don't play. You get it done. And working with our great chief and our great police department and the two of you, let me tell you, what you did was god's work. What you did was god's work. And for this great family, we'll never forget about her. God has smiled on all of you. He kept your face. Your face paid off. So with that, I'm not sure what happened to the other award, but we'll get that too. We we have this one for corporal Catherine Clark.

That's

Right. Haiti. Right. But then, sir, we'll get yours to you. Okay?

Thank you.

Can we please give this family, all of our visitors from the DA's office and our police department a standing ovation? I understand the family has a presentation and a son, so I'm gonna walk over here where you all are. This is dedicated to the both of you and everyone that worked on this ape for this great family.

District attorney Lloyd for standing untrue, forgiving her name a voice and seeing justice

My name is Lisa. I'm Missy's sister. She was a year older than me. I just wanna really truly thank Lloyd and Katie for everything you did. Everything. It's it's with gratitude. It's with my heart. It's from God above. I thank you guys for working on this case so tirelessly and seeing it to the end. I appreciate you and love you. Thank you.

Same thing. I just wanna thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. You guys have no idea what this has done for our family. And, yeah, we love you guys so much. And, again, thank you. Thank you for all your hard work. We appreciate it. And then this Lord, yours is coming. Yeah. It's for you, Katie.

I want everybody to stay on the stage. We're gonna take a picture. But before we do that, I was gonna ask Lloyd to speak, and then we're let Katie.

Thank you, mayor, for this wonderful celebration. Thank you to the family for always believing in us. I wanna say thank you also to Fontana Police for assigning Kate to the unit. She solved many more cases than the one we're up here about, but thank you. You guys have always been excellent, and thank you also to the district attorney our management. You guys gave the case the resources it needed to succeed, and I'm really grateful for everything. Thank you.

Well, I'll second what Lloyd said. Thank you mayor. Thank you city council. This family and we've worked together now for, what is it, six years? So we've become pretty close.

And

when they say I love you, it goes both ways. We have a very strong connection since solving this case and working our way through prosecution. I just would like to point out that behind every good officer and every good detective is an organization who supports them. And I wouldn't have been able to go over to the cold case task force or to be able to work any of these cases if I didn't have the support of the chief of police and my command staff that's in the back. So if we could give them a round of applause, please.

Personnel runs pretty short, so to give up one detective is a kind of a big deal. And they were able to do that, and they provided me obviously with funding and support, and they never questioned me. And they let me do just about anything I needed to do to get these cases solved. So I truly do appreciate it and I wouldn't have been able to do it without them. And then obviously, district attorney Jason Anderson given us a DA as well. Cold cases are very unique. They're unlike any other case, so we need the support of the district attorney's office for that knowledge and then his chain of command there in the back as well. So I appreciate you guys very much, And I just I just wanna say thank you guys.

At this time, we're gonna take a picture, all of us together here. Monique, you got enough? Okay. Let's give everyone a big hand. That ends our special presentations.

And you know what? Let's give them another hand. This was wonderful. People ask me all the time, what does Fontana Way mean? Today, you saw that example.

That's the Fontana Way. When you can bring closure for a family that has suffered, that that means everything. That brings us to public comment next. Good afternoon, and thank you again for attending this meeting of the city council. The brown act provides that members of the public may offer comment on any item of interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council and on any action item including items on the consent calendar.

What this means is that the council welcomes and encourages your input on issues of city business and on action items of today's agenda. Issues of city business do not include personal attacks on city officials or city staff. While we acknowledge your right to comment on our actions or activities with respect to city issues and business, we will not tolerate purely personal attacks and comments not having to do with official performance of city duties. Please do not use profanity, name calling, or any other behavior that would disrupt the proceedings this afternoon, speech, other activity such as yelling from the audience. That disrupts the orderly business of a council will not be allowed.

After a warning, continued behavior that disrupts the meeting may result in you being asked to leave the meeting. Thank you. City Clerk Keyes, do you have any written comment cards?

Mayor, we have 10 requests to speak. I'll start with the first three. We have Mark Lowe as our first speaker, and he has some slides to show.

Well, was intense and amazing. Congratulations to the all the awards and the family for closure on that. That's just an amazing story and just great work by everybody involved. My name is Mark Lowy. I'm with Action Park Alliance. I'm your skate park management firm. We've been managing the skate parks for seventeen years, and we've had some phenomenal things happen over those years. Spoke to a handful of times at council, gave a presentation. We, had the world WCMX championships with the autograph poster by Aaron Wills Fotheringham. And it's amazing.

Skaters have come through the city. We've watched kids grow up over these seventeen years from children to adults, teenagers to, adults with families. There's a segue. We had our seventeenth anniversary October, eighteenth, and those Hot VWs magazines, if you flip over into page 74, we've got a four page spread. Hot VWs came out and did a story in collaboration with our seventeen year anniversary. Our parks director, Daniel Snyder, and staff with Stan and Genio. We did a Volkswagen car show that I've been doing at other locations we have managed for cities. So I saw some of you council members looking at it, laughing and bringing back memories. Everyone's got a story about a Volkswagen. It's not a bad one.

And even if you broke down on your Volkswagen, it's still a story. But what's awesome in that book right there, there's the two pictures of the skateboard. We had cars coming from all over Southern California, and we're looking forward to doing it again with our next anniversary. But segue into what's really cool, talk about the skaters that have grown up in Fontana Skate Parks. The two pictures of that little female skater, that is 11 year old, Maisel Parrish.

She's a born Fontana resident. She's an 11 year old Olympic hopeful from our skate parks, as I said, and she just won gold in Thailand at the Asian games, And she's competing in next week in Brazil at Worldskate Championships, which Worldskate is the governing body for the Olympics for all roller sports. So Maisel, our local Fontana girl, has a chance to compete in the Olympics based on her performance coming up here at the world championships in Brazil. And as a segue on that one, Victor Nelson, who's our operations director for Action Park Alliance, and then David Lee's right there as well. We just got confirmation that Action Park Alliance will be meeting with the leaders of Worldskate to potentially bring Action Park Alliance in to work with Worldskate with their facilities and help bring those type of Olympic programs, even our city here in Fontana, so that's pretty cool.

So like I said, some amazing things happened in Fontana. Thank you to mayor Warren for you were excited. You were at the car show. You loved it. Everyone loved it. Our local residents that came out loved it, and we're thankful for our relationship with Fontana, the seventeen years we've been here managing the facilities, the kids we've raised, literally, we call them system kids. We've raised children here. They are now becoming potential Olympians or just great people in the public, families, bringing their kids to skatepark now. So thank you for everything you've done for us and allowing us to be part of Fontana Skatepark for the last seventeen years.

Outstanding.

Mayor, I'll call our speakers in threes. Our next three speakers would be George Joshua Sabal, Asher Jones, and Andrew Hanna.

Good afternoon. Sorry. Excuse Good afternoon, mayor Warren and council members. Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to speak. My name is Andrew Hanif, and I'm an outreach specialist at the nonprofit Reach Out. Reach Out has been has worked to serve Montana and the Inland Empire for the last fifty three years. My work focuses on substance use prevention. I'm speaking today to draw the council and public's attention to attention to a dangerous substance that is currently being sold in Fontana liquor and smoke shops. I'm referring to seven hydroxymitrogen, more commonly known as seven o h. Seven o h or gas station heroin, as some call it, is a kratom extract.

It is also an opioid anyone can buy without a prescription, including the children in our community. I'm sure that we can agree that unrestricted access to seven o h poses a danger to our youth. Being a kratom extract, seven o h is not has not been approved by the FDA for any medicinal use. It is not prescribed by doctors for any ailment nor are there approved or acceptable dosages. Instead, these products are marketed as natural or holistic supplements.

They are advertised as energy or mood enhancers and concerningly, people use seven o h to kick an opioid or alcohol addiction. They are sold in pill, powder, drink, vape, and gummy variations. This might sound innocent or harmless, but I assure you it's not. The dangers are real. Seven o h binds to opioid receptors and provides users with a sense of euphoria and pain reduction. Research indicates that seven zero h is at least 13 times more potent than morphine. People are becoming addicted to seven zero h. People can overdose on seven zero h. These overdoses look exactly like other opioid overdoses. People can and have died as a direct result of consuming seven o h.

As it stands, there's no state legislation banning or regulating state seven o h products. California state legislation addressing seven o h has been stalled. This this legislation would impose age, concentration, and marketing restrictions on seven o h products. A bill classifying seven o h as a schedule one drug was outright rejected. Our neighbors in LA County, Riverside County, and Orange County have enacted seven o h regulations.

Murrieta, Temecula, and Moreno Valley are just some examples of cities that have banned seven seven o h in the last month. I'm sure we all remember the opioid crisis, while seven o h has already been referred to as the fourth wave of the opioid crisis. That is why I'm asking the Fontana Fontana Council to regulate seven o h, either through amending the existing synthetic drug ordinance or adopting a new one. My team would be more than happy to help you in your efforts in any way we can. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Asher Jones and I will be talking about item B on the consent calendar. In reference to item a of the February, agenda item a under public hearings. I am speaking about this item because I previously lived in temporary housing and got placed into more permanent housing through the host program here in Fontana. Today, I will be requesting for item b to be pulled from the consent calendar for the following reasons. One, who was awarded the contracts?

What was the process that they had to go through to ultimately be chosen to be awarded these contracts? How much was each contract for? Answering these questions are important because item b and o are the same property being discussed. The conversation being is who will run this shelter and will it be a faith based or a public organization? Two, why was this location chosen?

What was this process for choosing this location over others? Was there a community buy in before it was decided that a shelter would be built on this property? And three, under public hearing item a of the 02/10/2026 Fontana City Council agenda, the person persons in our organization building the shelter asked and was granted for a CEQA exemption. My question is, why was it a CEQA exemption being asked for when we know that shelterless folks are amongst the most vulnerable communities in our city? We need to take all reasonable and legal measures to ensure their quality of life which includes further investigation as to whether or not this property is toxic and therefore not a candidate to be used for a shelter.

Four, referrals. As I previously stated, I was a part of the, transitional housing. In a part of transitional housing, you have to meet certain criteria to be in transitional housing. Referrals take up to two to three years and can be detrimental if you can't get one, which means that people or persons wanting to get into a permanent housing may have be forced to exit temporary housing as they wait. I hope this council understands how important it is to be intentional not with the property that they have, but also the people that they are putting inside that property and how they're using the development.

Thank you. Next

speaker.

Is that on three?

Okay. Our next speaker is Jeff Larson.

Good

afternoon, mayor, city council, city leadership. I'm here to address an issue which I have brought to your attention before. We're talking about the young people on the e motorcycles. It's getting worse. I I don't know how to make it more serious than it is except to let you know that they're out there terrorizing citizens, antagonizing traffic, street takeovers, destroying both public and private property.

I don't know if you guys follow social media, but these last two weeks have been full of incidents where people's private property have been damaged. They they up they're out there blatantly riding in traffic. We need to get proactive instead of reactive on these guys because this problem isn't gonna get better. It's gonna get worse. Chief, I don't know if we can make that a priority.

I know a lot of our officers, their hands are tied because the laws don't allow them to do anything unless they're there to witness it. So you as leadership, you guys make the laws. Untie the police's hands so that they can actually do something. We need to make this a no tolerance policy. You know, I'm retired outside of golf and church. I got nothing better to do but come to every single one of these meetings and remind you guys that this is a problem. I'm gonna go to the other cities too. You guys run-in all these social circles. Mayor, I know you talked to the other mayors of the other cities. Maybe you guys can collectively come up with a solution. Thank you.

Our next three speakers are Russell Johnson, John Piniello, and Gabriel Cancenos. Speakers, you have three minutes each.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Russell Johnson. I'm with the Associated Builders and Contractors Southern California Chapter. Just want to let you know that today we're not here to complain. We're here to share some good news. So we have some amazing news to share about a Fontana resident. But first, let me share a little bit about who the Associated Builders and Contractors are. Our organization is an association of contractors. We've got over 400 members in Southern California. We've got three workforce development training centers, one in Anaheim, one in San Fernando, and then our Inland Empire one is in Riverside.

We train in the construction craft trades. We have four state and federally approved apprenticeship programs in electrical, low voltage plumbing, and sheet metal HVAC. Something exciting happened for us in January. It was our annual craft championships. And through the annual craft championships, the local winners get to go on and compete at our national competition. I'm happy to share with you today that one of those folks who will be competing at our national competition is Gabriel Cancinos, and he's a local Fontana resident. But before we get to him real quick, I'd like to ask our other apprentices from Fontana to rise that are in the audience today.

So

I'm gonna turn over briefly to John Panello. He's with our training department. He's gonna share with you the significance of the craft championships and, the steps that, Gabriel had to go through. John?

Hi. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm personally a resident of Fontana for twenty nine years, and I wanna thank you guys for your service. So again, my name is John Pinello. I reside here in Fontana for twenty nine years. I'm a tradesman myself for thirty five years. I specialize in low voltage. Every year, ABC SoCal has a craft champs event in their Anaheim, facility. And this craft champs event is, is not easy to compete. You have to pass a test with highest scores, and the winners get to compete in this competition, which I'm going to explain.

This is this isn't a competition. It's a live, high energy, hands on event where apprentices put their skills onto the test and the real world construction challenges. They're judging on safety, precision, craftsmanship, and professionalism. The same standards that they're held to on the real job sites. It's the skilled trades version of the Olympics.

And this year, we have something special to celebrate. A Fontana resident earned first place locally and now has the incredible honor of representing Southern California and at the National Craft Championships, competing against the very best apprentices in the entire country. That level of excellence, that kind of work ethic and talent is being developed right here in the city of Fontana. And, the program is great, and I've been involved with ABC for ten years as an instructor, three years as a continuing education manager, building road maps, for the newer generation of tradesmen. And I'm I'm I'm proud to be a part of that association and also, just seeing these individuals, growing their knowledge in the trades and doing it correctly.

And now, it's absolutely a privilege to acknowledge Gabriel Cansino's, a proud Fontana resident, and our national craft championship competitor representing Southern California and our city of Fontana.

Alright. Hello, mayor Warren and, council members. I just wanna say thank you for giving me the opportunity to just introduce myself and, share a little bit about me. My name is, Gabriel Cancinos. I'm a 25 year old electrical apprentice.

I grew up out here on, Southridge, Fontana. I I attended school at Shadow Hills Elementary and graduated from Kaiser High School. I've been a Fontana resident for over two decades now, just surrounded by people who've shown me unwavering support, teachers, special educators, and even the Fontana Police Department who all played a crucial role in my journey and my character development. I knew after high school I wanted to pursue, pursue a career that made a meaningful impact on a lot of people's, daily lives. And so in 2023, I was given the opportunity to join ABC SoCal as an electrical apprentice.

So I've been with them for about three three to four years now, and the opportunities have honestly been endless. Recently, just like how John Panello had said, I was given the opportunity to showcase my skills at their local craft championship. And I overall won first place, and I was really thrilled about that. And as a result of that victory, I now have the honor of representing a b so ABC SoCal and the city of Fontana at the national championship in Salt Lake City, Utah. So I'm I'm incredibly grateful for, you know, their time and support and also for the city of Fontana. Thank you.

Mayor, our final speaker is Deborah Hall Lindsay.

Good afternoon, mayor and city council. Greetings from the concerned citizens for the development of North Fontana. I'm Deborah Hall Lindsay. I'm the event coordinator and the executive pageant director for the Miss Black Awareness Scholarship pageant. I just wanna say we're going to have an exciting weekend coming up.

Fontana along with another city is the last that are gonna be celebrating activities pertaining to Black History Month. And our parade expo, we have a car show, we have marching bands, all kind of things that's gonna be happening for that day's event. And our theme this year is youth entrepreneurs. We're highlighting it's all about the kids this year. And so, grand marshal is Cyrus Moss, who which was instrumental of getting the school changed name to O'Day Short, the elementary to O'Day Short.

And we just thought that this young man should be so young to have that much passion, to push forward, to that he saw something and wanted to see his community get behind him and the school and the community did get behind this young man. Our day for that day, we have such wonderful things happening. The parade steps off at 10:00 from Citrus And Summit, heading south on Citrus and turning to right onto Home Depot I mean, Sierra Lake Parkway and disbanding in Home Depot. And so, with that and that event is going on from ten to three. And then, we get to finalize everything for the jazz festival that follows that evening right here at the Millers Amphitheater.

So, my thing is I'm letting everybody know it's a community thing and it's a fun thing and it's something that we can do just right here at home base And we want you all to come out, celebrate these kids that's gonna be on the on the parade line as well because, again, like I said, it's about us coming together as a village and I love the village thing and just having a great time. Thank you.

That concludes our speakers, mayor.

Thank you, city clerk Key. Gabriel, I just, you know, wanna tell you how proud of you we are. We'll be praying for you in that competition, and you gotta come back, and we gotta make sure we give you a certificate of appreciation for representing this great city. I had the honor when they had the grand opening to go over to their facility, and it is amazing. So we're looking forward to having more of our students participate with you, and thank you so much for your great work.

At this time, yes, absolutely, we can applaud him. That brings us to the consent item, consent calendar. So we have a request for item b and o. And then, Matt, I had given you one. Let me look for that one. Does anyone else have any other items as I look for the one that I asked for?

I believe it was item d

It was item

related to, the, design amendment

Okay. Yes.

To Seville Park.

Seville Park. Absolutely. So, Matt, let us know how

you gonna

The handle

subject matter that came up was for items b and o that was referenced under public comment. Item b is basically the second reading. So this is the second hearing that we're having on the subject matter, which just allows for that use to occur at that location. And we've had, you know, a couple public hearings associated with that. Item o is the actual purchase and sell agreement.

We're partnering with the county on that property. And the county's gonna provide the operations that hasn't been finalized as who the final operator is. But what this agreement does is it allows for the transaction and improvements for the property. Lot of reasons why it's exempt from CEQA is because it's an existing building, and we're just changing the interior improvements. And it's all you know, when the building was originally constructed, it went through CEQA.

And when we went through the purchase, there was some what was expressed by the public was the potential for any hazards, but it's a relatively new building. And we did do a phase one on that project, and we didn't find any. So that concludes that report. As far as item d

Before you go to those other items, we have been discussing this for quite a few months. The overview of this particular building is we are partnering with eight other cities from Rialto all the way to Chino Hills, and this will be a facility that provides treatment and placement for people. We're meeting people where they are, and our officers, all of the different teams through all the different region will be bringing individuals in and taking individuals out. And this is something that is going to be county wide at some point. There's other navigation centers in the High Desert, as well as San Bernardino's working on one, and this is the one for the West End. Thank you, Matt.

Yes, mayor. And I'll have, Phil Burm, our deputy city manager. He'll provide a general overview for item d as it relates to Seville Park.

So I think the item on the agenda today is the change order for the architectural design contract. Seville Park Council previously approved an architectural design contract to design new pickleball courts at Seville Park. Seville is one of our probably least active for the public parks since Central City Park opened. Seville Park has kind of been left to the side. So staff presented and council supported the idea of adding pickleball courts there to make it a little bit more active.

But over the course of several discussions over the and more things that could happen with that park, council asked what else could we we could do. So with the change order, before you today is we'll allow the architect that's designing the pickleball court to also site layout a new pump track and skate park. So that park will be completely activated, and well attended, we believe, by the public. Those are all three items are things that our public throughout the city has been asking for more of. So we believe we're trying to do it all in one nice location central to the city.

Thank you. I wanted everybody to hear that. We are getting more pickleball courts.

Yes, ma'am.

It's public. More pickleball.

More pickleball. So we're on it.

Yes, ma'am.

Thanks so much. With that, we need a motion to approve the consent calendar for the following meetings, city council, community foundation, fire protection district, and the housing authority.

Move approval, mayor.

Cauthorn, I'll second the motion for approval.

Have a motion to second. Please cast your votes. Wanna take it oral? Yeah. Okay. No problem. Council member Catherine. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Garcia.

Aye.

Council member Sandoval. Aye. Council member Roberts.

Aye.

Mayor, aye. Motion passed. That brings us to new business. New business item a is fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty six, mid year budget status report. We have our chief Financial Officer, Jessica Brown. Will you provide a staff report for new business item a?

I can use my mom voice.

There you go.

There we go. Good afternoon, mayor, members of the council. The item before you today is the mid year budget status report. Now I realize that there's a the report itself is actually a lengthy one. It's a lot of material to cover, but I believe that the information is, presented in a concise manner truly to highlight the city's overall current financial status.

In addition to the report data, I'll also cover the city's year end estimates, five year forecast, and highlight a key a couple key areas of the, report itself. As you're aware, the status report is a substantive report, providing a comprehensive update of the city's financial status with the first part of the report providing a narrative to key metrics, and the second half is providing the numbers with the main focus being the general fund. So, with that, I'm going to jump right into the general fund, but I'm going to start with the year end estimates for the general fund. I believe it's important for the not only to understand what's happened in the last six months, but then if we have budget adjustments, how they impact the forecast for the general fund as well. So, the year end estimates in total, this is for our revenue and sources.

We have a total increase of revenue or over budget of about 6.9, nearly $7,000,000, and this is primarily due to the use tax, as you will see here. Our use tax is coming in about $4,000,000 higher than originally, forecasted, but contributing to that as well are increases in property tax and interest in rentals. Those two categories are based upon the current trend as well as actual maturities for investments that we have this year. Our increases are offset, as well, by a decrease in sales tax revenue. So, before I jump into sales tax, I do want to point out one.

I'd like to pause and discuss the development related revenue. As compared to last fiscal year, our single family building permits, those are up by 22%. Our multi family permits are down by 46%, and our commercial and industrial permits are pretty much flat. We had about five at this point in time last fiscal year or six last fiscal year and five this fiscal year. Additionally, as conversations that we've had over the quarters, last couple of years, development related revenue has been pretty volatile as well, where we've had increases in one year of about 30.6%, and then we've had losses of about 23.5%.

So, it's a little difficult to truly forecast what exactly is going on with our development related revenue. In addition to that, revenue that we have received through December is about $3,500,000 And then, in December alone or in January alone, we received about $1,300,000 So, there's a lot of activity that has happened in January that could queue up for a couple of things, either an uptick in activity and or the and a combination of the fact that our fees went up in January as well. With that being said, I have held the estimates for development related revenue at budget, mainly because we need a couple of months just to truly assess what's going on. That way, can see the increases in revenues as well as any additional activity. Now when we then look jump into sales tax, sales tax, property tax are two major contributors to our revenue sources, as well as our new revenue source, which is the use tax.

Sales tax receipts, as you're aware, they do run two months in arrears. So, the table in front of you is basically for the third quarter, July through September of fiscal year 2025 or for calendar year 'twenty five, and it looks back to the same quarter for 2024. Basically, what this table is telling us is that for the current quarter that we had finished in September, sales tax is down by 3.8% as compared to last calendar year. The major dip that you can see here happens to be in autos and transportation. Now, when we talk about the top 25 sales tax producers in the city, nine of those are car dealerships.

So, the fact that those are down, it is one of our they make up a good portion producers. And then, we look at the individual metrics of that. The new motor vehicle dealers, which is one of the top lines here, shows a 7% a 0.7% increase, while our used car dealerships have actually declined by about 34 and a half percent. Now, we have lost a couple of dealerships over the last couple of years that's contributing to that, but there's also a new reporting methodology that has been put into place where used car sales tax is actually going to be distributed and paid through the DMV. Our current consultant that works with us on sales tax believes we might be underreported, So, we might not have all of the revenue for that particular, line item, and they are currently working with their contacts at the state to verify that and improve that going forward.

This is what our sales taxes looked like over since fiscal year 'twenty one, 'twenty two. We had anomalies coming out of COVID. We truly believe that since 'twenty three, 'twenty four, we have been more stabilizing as to what that new, economy looks like when you saw that transition from e commerce back to brick and mortar and even some staying on e commerce. Now, in 2425, our consultants told us, hey, hold our breath. 2526, we're going to start seeing our more historical growth.

Unfortunately, that is not occurring presently. We are looking to as I had indicated, it's about $1,000,000 under as compared to the original forecast. And if you look back all the way to fiscal year 'twenty two-'twenty three, these are the major changes that have taken place with respect to losses. Now, business and industry is our largest. It's about $2,200,000 of the change in revenue from 'twenty two-'twenty three to the current fiscal year, and that's going to be business that happens between businesses, construction company buying lumber and such to provide a service.

In addition, you'll see there in the middle is our autos and transportation is had a decline of 848,000. But if we keep in mind too, these movements that we have seen economically over the last few years, it makes sense. Fuel and service stations as well, we had higher gas prices when you look back to twenty two-twenty three. So, all that being said, restaurants and hotels are doing well over that course, and that they've trended up, which we expected to see that post COVID as well. Now, when we look at Measure T, the interesting thing about Measure T is you would think that it would react the same way as in sales tax, but with it being a new revenue source, we didn't exactly know what to expect in comparison to sales tax.

Our original forecast that was provided by our consultants was just about $46,000,000 When we started the fiscal year, they said, no, it's actually looking it's going to trend a little bit lower, so we dropped it down to 43,700,000.0 And then, the midyear estimate's back up to 46.8. So, it's exceeding expectations currently, but again, since it's a new revenue source, we need additional time as well to truly understand how this revenue source is going to perform for the rest of the fiscal year. So, with that, when we look at our uses, and these are basically all of our expenditures, we have a for our departmental expenditures, we're coming in under budget by about $3,200,000 So, a current budget of $159,000,000 I'm forecasting, year end estimates about $155,900,000 So, we do have savings there, mainly attributable to vacancy savings. Additionally, we do have an increase here in that next to the bottom line to the operating transfers out, there's an increase of $2,000,000 that currently isn't budgeted. That is to account for the increase in the use tax, which 50% will then get, transferred out to a separate fund for project related expenditures.

So our total uses are coming in about $1,200,000 under budget. Now, what that means then is, with respect to the year end, we have revenues coming in over under our total expenditures about 7,500,000.0, We have other adjustments that we do make to the fund balance annually. So, we're going to have an increase in fund balance of $8,000,000 Now, make your budget adjustments. And again, we're mainly focusing on the general fund, we'll provide a high level summary of other funds. But in totality, we're looking at a $3,800,000 increase of revenue that we're requesting in the mid year report.

That represents about a 1.9% overall increase. And this basically is based upon the estimates to date and to fund those requests that have been made from departments. The next slide here, we're going to talk a little bit more in detail with respect to our uses. We have an increase of expenditures of $2,600,000 being requested. We have an increase in transfers out of about $1,000,000 and then we have one time versus recurring of all of the requests being made.

We have 860,000 of that being recurring and the $1,800,000 being one time. So, when we look at the expenditures, this is how they broke out at the department level. This is the $2,600,000 or 1.7% increase in the expenditure budget. A little bit about the detail of the requests being made. We do have a personnel request of $1,200,000 This primarily has to do with the PMA contract, which was negotiated and finalized at the end of calendar year 2025.

We also have new requests in the amount of $1,500,000 Of that $1,500,000 $1,300,000 is primarily being requested by police, public works and engineering and planning for various initiatives. And then we do have a recurring request as well of $176,000 and that's to fund the graffiti abatement contract for the remainder of the fiscal year as well as an increased our animal shelter contract. We also have some offsetting requests. Basically, what those are is if it's an increase in expenditures, it's also offset by a decrease in expenditures and or a revenue source. So, essentially, for the general fund results, the current budget is total uses of $210,000 We had a use of fund balance of $610,000 We have proposed adjustments that have a net fund balance impact or a contribution of $159,000 Our proposed budget before council is total sources of $214,000 and $181,335 And we're just about balanced there with the total uses, but we have a use of fund balance being programmed of $451,000 There are some organizational changes being requested in the mid year report.

A couple of things I wanted to point out about these. These are all requests that are being considered for counsel. They were previously denied either in the prior budget cycles or quarterly reports. But the key pieces about these are that they have no net impact to the general fund. This means that they're funded by the reprioritization or reallocation of existing funding, And the net result of the requests are an increase of two additional positions and the reclassification of two vacant positions.

So, with respect to the five year forecast, these are the general assumptions that are being made. And as you can see, I look at every revenue category and we take different things into consideration. It's not just a blanket 3% or 5% spread across every category. The five year forecast, I think the most important thing that I'd like to point out here is that percent change at the very bottom. What you'll see in the last three years of the forecast, we have a leveling out of approximately 3.7% in revenue growth year over year.

With respect to our uses in the five year forecast, all labor contracts have been included in the forecast. Benefits have been increased by 5% for future increases, and then we also have operational expenses increases that have been considered. Again, and when we look at this at the departmental level for our uses, which should be our expenditures and transfers out, that last line is the most critical line as well, in my opinion. And if you'll note there, too, in the last two to three years of the forecast, we're averaging about a 3.7% growth in our expenditures or uses. So, as a result here, what you'll see in the forecast is in year fiscal year 'twenty seven-'twenty eight as well as 'twenty eight-'twenty nine, before we consider the midyear adjustments, we have a forecasted deficit of $330,000 and then $200,000 in the third year.

These are manageable deficits, and the one thing I can tell you about my forecast is it's going to be wrong. The numbers are about as accurate as they can be. When it comes to assumptions, you've got it I'll put it in writing for you as well. There's no way that I'm going to accurately forecast to the dollar what's going to happen two years from now, let alone five. So what this gives us, though, is a tool to keep ahead of the game and make sure that we could address any deficits that we have in future years of the forecast.

So, this is the five year forecast being truly used as a tool. Now, when we consider the midyear adjustments, you'll see in the second year of the forecast and third year of the forecast that deficit actually increases as well. I will say that the majority we had some requests that came in from departments that were recurring in nature. I had made the recommendation that we make them one time so that we can consider all recurring requests with the supplemental budget for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven that, therefore, will have an additional two to three months to fully address what our revenues look like as well before we commit the city to any recurring requests.

Okay.

So then, when we look at, other funds, we the city overall has just over 200 funds in total. So, these include all of the funds outside of the general fund. And the requests received for midyear include $15,700,000 in General revenue or transfers in and $18,300,000 of expenditures or fund balance or use of fund balance of approximately $2,600,000 Now, these come in different categories of our funds. I just want to point out here the multiple projects and initiatives that the city is moving forward. One of the biggest is our capital improvement funds, and we have a use of fund balance of $5,800,000 being projected as a result of the midyear report.

We had to adjust our debt service for the bonds that were issued last October, And then, we had some adjustments to clean up some project budgets for our enterprise funds, specifically sewer. And then, we also had some other general funds. These are funds that support general operations. Key things here that I'd like to point out is the 5 and $22,000 being budgeted to fund the Jesse Turner gym floor replacement, and then we had some reconciliations to do with our fire leases. Lastly, we had special revenue funds.

We had a decrease in fund balance of $2,300,000 We had a couple of grant projects that were being funded, as well as a decrease in fund balance of $1,600,000 for license plate reader upgrades, and then the purchase and outfitting of three narcotics vehicles for the police department. A couple things I'd like to highlight from the report real quickly. We've added a couple pages to summarize some high priority items, and they're just they're actually just really good things to point out to the public too. So, the public entrusted us with the transaction use tax, and as a result, this is what the first year programming looks like. We had a budget of $21,600,000 It's broken down by the category, but then also as various projects in the report as well.

Of that, we've obligated $2,500,000 and have spent $10,400,000 and available this fiscal year to spend as well is $8,700,000 Additionally, we've added a grants update, and this basically tells us of of the grants awarded, what's been expended, and what's remaining. This is provided to you at the department level, and the I've summarized it here as well by the funding source. So, to date, the city has received $136,000,000 in grants. We've expended about $60,000,000 and we have a remaining $75,000,000 of grant funding available. And then, lastly, with respect to the report itself, we do I wanted to provide a brief update regarding ARPA because I think this is another win for the city.

The city received just over $50,000,000 in ARPA funding. And to date, we have spent 46 nearly $47,000,000 and we only have $3,300,000 to spend. And all of expenditures are estimated and forecasted to be spent by 12/31/2026, which is the end of the grant or performance period. With that, just a brief summary on our Treasury report. I just wanted to take the opportunity yes, I'd like to get this information in front of counsel on a quarterly basis, but this particular quarter, at the December, we had some things occur that are and transfers in transit, just wanted to point out real quickly here.

The first portion of this table here is our advisor manage. That's our financial advisor that we work with. These are the funds that they manage. As you can see here, we had a significant increase year over year, January and 2 nearly $103,000,000 of additional funding. That's the result of working with two financial advisors and really working with our needed cash flow and being able to push more into investments that we can have a higher return on with no risk of needing that cash flow.

Additionally, pooled investments, as you can see, year over year have declined significantly. But if you'll notice, my deposit accounts increased significantly. And the reason being is, local agency investment fund is a state ran through that they provide investment services. And then CLAS California CLAS is another JPA type investment that we use. But the two perform differently depending on the economy.

So what are we what we are doing now is we're looking at our cash balances as well as how they're performing on a weekly basis, and we are moving our funds back and forth to make sure that we realize the most investment income as possible. So, our deposit account of the 168,000,000, it is up because we removed funding from our California class account. And then in January, what you'll see is an additional $100,000,000 invested into LAFE to realize that additional interest income. To date, the total cash and investments held by the city, there's a year over year increase of 28.6%. I do want to just point out as well that the we have a higher amount of cash in the month of December because that's when we receive our first allocation of property tax.

These are just the breakdowns of our advisor managed portfolio. We have $400,000,000 in the advisor managed portfolio, the majority of those being in U. S. Treasuries. We have $150,000,000 in the pooled actually, it's not $150,000,000 There you go, Councilman Cawthren. There's the error. It's not 150,000,000 in the pooled account. It's only 1.2, but it'll be 150,000,000 when we move the rest of it in there. And then lastly, have our deposit accounts. We have 168,000,000 presently, but that will be moved into those pooled accounts in January.

So, with that, that is my presentation, and I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. And we're basically looking for approval of the item, the budget adjustments, as well as the fund balance adjustments as identified.

First of all, outstanding. Outstanding. Thank you so much for that thorough, very thorough report. Are there any questions?

Good Councilmember job. I appreciate it on that side of things. I appreciate you being clarifying to the residents of the community that obviously you don't have a crystal ball. Can we get you one so you can just predict if you

can No, that was actually in my notes to say absent my crystal ball, but it's broken.

Okay. Matt, you can get that for her, right? You see, he's not even listening to me. It's okay.

He's online shopping.

No, he's online. He's on Amazon? Looking for a crystal ball.

He's looking

out for it. So one thing that I did take particular interest on this side of things is going to be on our sales tax by industry group. This is kind of giving me a little bit more comfort in the fact that people are spending less on consumer goods and they're spending more time on things that are going to be either with their families as far as restaurant, hotels and entertainment, which is a good thing for our downtown because we are heavily investing into downtown as an entertainment capital. So we are I think we're going on the right track as far as diversification as far as the City Of Fontana goes. And so I'm a little pleased on that one.

But overall, I mean, it's not always great when you see that your sales tax isn't hitting the goal that you originally wanted to. But at the end of the day, I think the city is pretty financially conservative on that side of things and we're doing pretty well. Obviously, just a couple of years of bad decisions on our part of here and we can be in a bad spot, but thankfully we have good people that are looking out for us and we're keeping the city going in the right direction. So thank you very much. I appreciate the port.

Are there any more questions? Sounds like Matt wants to chime in. Did you find that on Amazon?

Yeah. No. So I just want to note that in addition to midyear, Jessica went over some of the staffing adjustments. And so you're also when you adopt the midyear budget, you're also adopting a resolution that makes those staffing changes. Just wanna provide that clarity.

Okay. Well, thank you. If there are no other questions, I can have a motion to approve new business item a for the following meeting, city council, community foundation, fire district fire protection district, and the housing authority.

I'll make a motion, mayor.

Okay. Second.

Catherine, I'll second the motion.

I have a motion to second. Please cast your vote. Orly? Okay. We're gonna start with council member Sandoval. Aye. Council member Roberts. Aye. Mayor, aye. Mayor Pro Tem.

Aye.

And council member Cothran. Aye. Motion passed. That brings us to new business item b is the introduction and first reading of ordinance of city council of City Of Fontana, California rescinding and replacing articles one through seven of chapter 23 of the Fontana Municipal Code regarding sewers and sewage disposal. Public works director, city engineer, Jia Kim, will provide the staff report.

Good afternoon, mayor and the member of the city council. The proposed new business item this afternoon is resent and replace Article one through eight of the Chapter 23 of the Fontana Municipal Court regarding sewer and sewage disposal. The current sewer ordinance been amended incrementally and then as a result that we need to have a comprehensive update is required to align our current ordinance to meet the state regulations in our current operation. So, are five topics that we focused on. The first one is on-site treatment system.

The proposed ordinance reflects the current state water resource control board policies and the regional water control board policies. So, for example, our current ordinance says, if any structures are more than 200 feet from the existing sewer line, then we are allowing the septic system. However, when they go to regional board try to get the permit to install the septic, they're looking at it as a property line, not the building. So when we are approving project as a building and then when they go to regional board, they're getting denied. So, we were talking to the regional board, and then they reviewed our ordinance.

They concur with our changes, so we're changing to align with the regional board standard to the property line, not to the building. So, those kind of things have been updated as a part of this ordinance. The second thing is a pretreatment program requirements and an enforcement tool. As we know that we do not treat the sewer here, we're sending to IUA and the City of Rialto to comply with their tolerance level. Our tables are updated to meet their guidelines because they are the one permitted, they're holding a requirement with their state.

And also, while we are updating that, we're also improving our pretreatment standards so we can prepare our pretreatment system more effectively. The third one is a grease interceptor and grease trap replacement. Our current ordinance not clear in when to use a grease trap and how to use it. And so, this ordinance, a proposed ordinance, we clearly indicated when are using the grease trap, it needs to be a separate location, not nearby the full preparation and stuff. So that way, the people who are designing things, they know the clear direction how to design properly.

The fourth item is the fees and charges. As environmental rules are getting tightened, then the city is required to do monitor and then provide inspections to various business, commercial, industrial. Our city council approved a new user fee in the last year July, which is effective this year. So this ordinance reflecting the what city council approved it to comply with the rules. So as a result, we will charge plan review fee that before we couldn't charge, we're also charging the inspections and then violation fees.

The last one is general clarification and administration updates, which basically revision to improve clarity and to modernize the terminology and align with the procedures with the current operating process. So, STAT recommends that City Council waive the full reading and introduce by title only, Ordinance Number nineteen eighty four, rescinding and replacing Article one through eight of the Chapter 23 of the Fontana Municipal Court regarding sewer and sewage disposal. This concludes my presentation. If any questions arise, have staff here to answer any questions.

Thank you for that great presentation. I do have one. When you talked about the design, how does that impact different applications you have in the hopper right now? Are they impacted? Or you've already given it to them?

Well, so the design itself for the grease trap and those kind of thing, yeah, I mean, the guideline is pretty clear, the building code. We were just making that our ordinance matched with the latest building code guideline. And then also complying with the San Bernardino County Health Code thing. So, what we're trying to do is that there's all existing in there. We're just putting in our ordinance to make sure it's transparent.

Okay. Thanks so much. I could just see when I'm talking to people how does this impact my project now.

That was going to be my question as well as did we reach out to county health because I don't want county health and us to have two different standards as far as what's acceptable. Because we've all been there. Owner getting not caught between the county or the city or some other entity trying to figure out it gets done. I appreciate the clarity on that side of things and hopefully this will make things a little easier for everyone.

Thank you.

Okay. Are there any more questions of staff? Okay. With that said, we need a motion to approve staff's recommendation as provided in the staff report. One, read by title only and wait for the reading of and endorse ordinance number one nine eight four, an ordinance of the city council of the city of Fontana amending chapters 23, sewer and sewage disposal, and 30, zoning and development code of the Fontana Municipal Code regarding on-site wastewater treatment systems. A motion, please.

I'll make the motion, ma'am.

Cauthorn, I'll make the second.

Motion and a second, please. Oral. No problem. Council member Cauthorn?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Garcia?

Aye.

Mayor, aye. Council member Roberts? Aye. Council member Sandoval? Aye. Motion passed. That brings us to our city manager's communication.

Yes. Thank you, mayor and council. Certainly, we had a lot to celebrate today for the city of Fontana. I wanna first recognize again May, Mario, and Katie for a wonderful job that not only they provide to the community, but the support they provide our staff. Also, if you look at our consent calendar, there's a lot of investment in infrastructure. I mean, we just had a wonderful presentation on mid year, but we put over $4,000,000 in streets. It was included in here replacing basketball courts. So that utility users' tax was was very valuable to us, and certainly, we're putting it to good work. So thank you.

Before I go to other communication, I'd like to announce that tonight or, actually, this afternoon, we will be adjourning tonight's today's meeting in memory of Matthew Schaefer, who is the nephew of council member Jesse Sandoval. Our condolences, Jesse. And then Francis Koihoi. She is a Fontana resident. And then also reverend Jesse Jackson. So with that said, I'm going to start with our treasurer, Janet Brooks.

Thank you, mayor. I'd like to congratulate the employees of the year. They, do an outstanding job. And I wanna also thank Jessica Brown for her mid year budget status report. That that was just phenomenal. Phenomenal. So So thank thank you you so so much. Much.

Next we have our city clerk, Jermaine Key.

You know, kudos to our employees who are recognized as employees of the year. Always want you know, give thanks and and attention to the employees who excel. Mayor, that was an amazing state of the city, last Thursday night. I thought the aim at recognizing our staff, our personal staff, was, a good people move. It just really felt different.

Also, I was really impressed by the Summit High School Choir. Typically, I cheer their marching band, and my three grandsons are members of the marching band, but the choir was amazing. So great job, and thanks again.

Thank you. That brings us to council communications. I'd like to start with council member, Catherine.

Thank you, madam mayor. Hats off to another wonderful state of the city on that side of things. The little taste of Fontana afterwards is always a great touch to see our local businesses and vendors as far as what they have to offer. I did not go home hungry that night. Between the Indian food, the pizza with pastrami on it, the mini donuts, the kettle corn, the coffee, I can go on and on, on that side of things.

If you don't get a chance to visit one of our state of the cities and actually see what's going on on a regular basis, I encourage you to go out, come spend some time with your local elected officials, come see city staff, as well as other businesses that are putting their hard earned money into the city of Fontana to make Fontana a greater place for you guys to call home. I have to give hats off to Daniel Snyder and his team over at community services. You guys will get a chance to soon watch, Daniel. He's now a movie star coming up on his screenplay for the city of Fontana. So make sure you guys ask him for his autograph later on today.

And then we I'm really excited about the new basketball courts and and finally changing things. I I got a chance to actually go across and and walk across one of the, fields that we're doing the improvements at the Lewis Park right now, and the amount of investment the city continually puts back into our youth and our opportunities that we give for future Olympians, hopefully, to to have their start here in the city of Fontana always amazes me. And I just I'm very appreciative to be a small part of all that and and have such great staff behind us that are willing to put in the effort in and to make sure everything's great. So thank you as well, to all of our community, and staff that put it so much effort in everything. That's all I have. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you, councilman Cawthren. Mayor Pro Tem Garcia.

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. And I'd I'd also like to congratulate you on the great delivery at, of that message at, our state of the city. And I'd like to thank Monique and all the staff at the city that put that on. It took a lot of planning and the chamber as well.

You know, each year, I don't know what we're gonna do next. It keeps getting more challenging to top the last event. But it's a it's a great production, good messaging, good vibe out there with, you know, our residents, the business community, chamber members, elected officials. We had elected officials from other cities attend. So it's a very successful event, and it sends sends a good message and delivers a good message about the great things our city is doing.

So the other thing, I wanted to thank Jessica and her staff for keeping our finances in order. You know, positive messaging here in terms of our our city budget, and she's tracking that to make sure it stays on track. And also, the gentleman brought us this magazine of it's a hot VW dune buggies and hot VWs. And this is what had our, our skater champion in there, but, reminded me of the 1972 yellow VW Beetle that I had

It's in

the back. When I was about 19. And I looked in there, and I said, oh, that looks just like it. So I love that car. Easy to maintain. Heater worked really good on the floorboard. So but, yeah. Anyways, everyone have a good evening.

Okay. That brings us to council member Sandoval.

Just have, one comment. Daniel, the Dodgers wants to know how come you didn't show for spring training yet. They're still waiting for you other than having no other comments. Thank you.

Council member Roberts.

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. Hats off to the employees that were recognized tonight. It's always amazing the quality of people that we have here and know, being here for a while, Fontana, I've we recognized Katie Clark tonight. And I've known Katie Clark since she was six years old when she was on the Fontana Seahorse's swim club with my two boys.

And ironically, they've all wound up in law enforcement. So I guess the swim club was a good place for everyone to start. But, yeah, that's that's terrific. And, so wanna, again, commend the mayor on a terrific, state of the city. It was fantastic. People came up to me, and, they they just couldn't believe, how great Fontana is and and how we're moving forward. So hats off to you, mayor. It was a great job.

Did you like the dance moves?

And the rest of them. Your dance moves are always good.

I'm kidding. Okay.

And and you made a star of Daniel Snyder. So, I mean, it's all good. So that's all I have, mayor.

Thank you. I just, first of all, want to really, really, thank all of our staff, particularly our police department. Thank you, chief, for bringing closure and Katie and Lion I mean, the DA showing up in our meeting. This I don't think people recognize what a big deal this was today. I really don't think you you you can put your arms around what can you imagine over forty years, a family member not knowing what really happened and why?

And when I received the email from this family and chief received one too, there was no doubt in our mind that something really, really special had occurred as a result of this city's great efforts in the county of San Bernardino DA's office. And we wanted to acknowledge that family to let them know that we we have them, that we got them. And it just brings such pleasure. After the stay of the city, it was so nice. A young person was at the state of the city, and he came up to me.

He said, mayor, you know, I've watched what you all are doing. I love it. He said, I'm just 13 years old. He said, but you know what? I'm a be a police officer. I wanna I wanna keep people safe. And I just hugged him. I said, well, you know what? We have an explorer program. Let's get you started.

Which brings up something else. Today, we attended the services for Grant Ward, who was the president of the CEBA, which is the sheriff's employee employee benefit association. But it it never it really came clear today that he was not only representing his union members, he was representing law enforcement through the country. Whenever issues came up at a legislative level, Grant was there to fight for his membership and all those that say law enforcement's important to this community and other communities across the state. So today was his funeral, and it was well deserved tributes.

And we just continue to have prayers for his great family and our sheriff family also. Today, though, it has been just so many accolades. We have such great staff members that just come every day to to not only represent and do their job, but fight for our public and fight for the things that make Fontana the great community it is. But I messed up so bad Thursday, and I'm here to publicly apologize. Monique, will you please stand up?

Monique Carter, will you all give it up? When I came off that stage, my sister was here and she I went up to her to get my sisterly hug and she snatched me by the collar and said, you forgot Monique. And I said, I oh, shoot. Let me tell you something. Monique Carter and her great staff, they started working on our state of the city, I believe, in August.

They started talking about visioning and messaging because people don't realize how important the state of the city is to this city. It tells people where we are and where we're going, and we want to make sure we're always transparent in our offerings. They put a lot of time in those videos, and weren't those videos amazing? And the one the last video, you know, they didn't tell me they they kept it a secret because we always have you know, I've been shown in my bedroom waking up having nightmares about the state taking all of our money. I've gotten stuck indoors and can't get out in some of those videos, but this year, they really told me, you gotta be serious, mayor.

And I said, well, this is a serious subject talking about the attention and detail to our parks. And when I saw that video, I thought I was gonna fall over. That was incredible, but it wasn't offbeat, and it was true. And I wouldn't doubt somebody's not smelling those roses to make sure they smell good, and I know they're making sure they have detail on the concrete, and just showing how people care about where they work and where they serve. It was just incredible.

So will you all give it up for all of our staff members, everybody? And, you know, the other mayors and and city officials get so sick of me. I'm at meetings, and they're talking this mess, and I'm always, Fontana has 52 parks, you know. And one guy turned around one day and told me, Safna, you say that one more time. I said, what's going to happen?

You're going try to get at more than three parks in your town? Boy, he was mad at me. But we did that. The council before us and this council, we did that because we wanted our kids and our families to not just have a quality of life, but to understand they deserve that quality of life. And that's what we're gonna continue our theme.

Our public deserves all the quality that our great council and the staff is putting out there, and it's theirs to enjoy. Had a busy two weeks before the state of the city. I attended the IEP state of the region, and they documented the amount of health services that they're bringing to the town. Very impressive. And so on top of that, I went to the United States Conference of Mayors where I'm a trustee.

We had our leadership meeting. Our hostess was mayor Karen Bass from Los Angeles. She took us to LA Twenty Eight, which was amazing. Of course, I was running up to the CEO. I'm sure security almost snatched me because I want him to know. We want activity in Fontana too. And you know what? I think we're gonna get it. I'm not gonna give up. I'm already emailing that guy every chance I get.

He's gonna get tired. They talked about possibilities of things like bringing the torch to a town or creating your own activity and filming and sending it in, don't worry Fontana, we will not be ignored. Another item that really got my attention this week was we have a unique opportunity here at the city to be that flashing light out there, to show people what we're doing works. It's a formula. So I had a chance, and I'm so honored.

I went to Time for Change Foundation in San Bernardino. People always say, why are you all over the region? Because we are the region. I want to give special kudos to Kim Tillman, formerly Kim Carter. She let me know I'm married now. Get over that last name. I said I already have. Calm down. But she put together with her Bebop Center, which is black and brown Opportunity Progress Center, where people can go and put their ideas and get help with their businesses. Now she's come up with the Connect Hub AI, and she took me through some of the laboratories they put their business leaders through.

It is amazing. They have screens everywhere. You can put an idea in, and the AI actually shows you what it looks like in human form. This all types of resources. So we're going to be talking with her since some of our great businesses over there.

And don't let me forget our great Fontana Chamber of Commerce. They showed up and showed out at the state of city, and it was a packed crowd in there, and so we really want to give them a big hand also, the Fontana Chamber. I saw the executive director earlier, Danielle Holley, so let's give it up for them. And then Edison had their black history program, and I got a chance to be on the stage with the Sparks, and it was really interesting talking about black history and how it impacts everyone, not just African Americans. But black history is actually American history.

And we're right in the end of that month, but we celebrate every day. They're going to we're gonna have the parade on Saturday morning. It's gonna be up on Citrus, then they're gonna have the expo, and then the city is going to have the jazz fest. So those of you that need help with your dance moves, I'm just making myself available because it's great exercise, Philip.

You're gonna target him.

I'm a target you. I have to. And did you see Peter? Did he had it

going on, didn't he? He did. He had a nice little little limp to it.

He had that little limp to it. Right. So, we're gonna have a good time at the Jazz Fest. You don't wanna miss that. Everyone is invited. Come out and party with us. And then in March, before we have our next meeting, your mayor was in a documentary in 2024 called Respect Your Crown, and it is going to be playing at San Bernardino Valley College on March 7. And I'll get more detail, and you can follow me on my, my different medias that I have. But I'm looking forward to seeing it. I haven't seen it yet, but I heard it's really good.

So I'm looking forward to it. Now when we did the state of the city, we made very clear where the city was headed. And as Monique and her staff put that together, you'll see the detail that was put into the state of the city and why it's so important. Parks, people, and programs progress. People don't realize how important these spaces, they're not just green, they're places where people connect, and we made a commitment that we were going to connect more with our great public, and you're going to be seeing that throughout the year so that we clearly and explain clearly why we do what we do for you.

But this is the time of our council meeting at the end where we honor those who have passed recently and ask for prayers for their family. And people always say, everybody's around you when a death first happens, but where are they when the family has already buried their loved one or had a service? That's when they need us most after the service. So tonight, we will be adjourning our meeting in memory of Matthew Schaefer, who is the nephew of our council member Jesse Sandoval. We will also dedicate memory for Francis, hope I say this right, coho, And this next individual, I gotta tell you, I've watched his battle with, disease for the last four years, but he still maintained his dignity and his smile.

Jesse Jackson, we often referred who's often referred to as the lieutenant for doctor King was right in the middle of the civil rights movement. This young man that decided and got doctor King's approval that we needed to bring young people into that space, and he did. But his ultimate, coalition actually worked saying that everyone should have a say. So he was a pioneer in saying we all have to have a say no matter what your race, no matter what your religion, your party affiliation. He had a rainbow coalition which brought people from all over the world together.

And little do people know or have forgotten, it was Reverend Jackson, a Baptist minister, that was able to go over to other parts of the world and and get Americans that had been captured in war or either disputes out of those countries and bring them home. When negotiators could not do it, other countries like Cuba and Syria would allow him entrance and discussion. And when his plane would leave, those individuals would be on the plane with him, and people forgot about that. But for me, having my father take us to the big Watts Stacks, which was amazing music, seven years anniversary of the Watts riot, that's when that speech he made went through my body. When he did the speech, I am somebody.

I will never ever forget those words, and that word echoed through my life and others' lives. So please join us in standing for all of these great people we are concluding our meeting in their memory. I adjourn this regular city council meeting in all three individuals' memory to our next regular city council meeting on Tuesday, March 10, here in these chambers, Steel Workers Auditorium at 2PM. City council meeting is adjourned. Community foundation meeting is adjourned.

Fontana Fire Protection District adjourned.

Housing authority is adjourned.

Thank you.