City Council - Regular Meeting

As we heel tap to the front. Good. Great job. Last one. Let's go back to a toe tap. Alternating arm and leg. Good. Great job. Keep breathing. Are we having fun? Oh, yeah. Good. Alright. We're gonna take that toe tap into a leg lift. Lift a little higher now. Thinking about strong core muscles. Our core is the region of our trunk that helps support our posture, helps with our breathing, and all your movements should be coming from your core right now. Let's take those legs out to the side now. K. And press the arms out.

Vicky's showing an alternative for those of you who are seated. Good. Relax your shoulders. Last one. Let's take it to the rear now. If you're standing, tricep press to the back. Okay? Lift the leg to the rear. Press. Press. Press. Press. Press. Last one. Take it to the side again. Out. Out. Out. Good. Relax those shoulders.

We're trying to warm up the body, all the tissues, get the blood flowing, get the oxygen oxygen moving throughout the body. And to the front again. Lift. Lift. Lift. Nice and tall. Good. And now we're gonna cross midline. If you have a bad hip or knee, I would recommend that you just keep your legs going straight in front of you. Otherwise, join us as we cross midline. Cross. We're trying to get some rotation of the hip. Okay. We wanna move that hip into many reach in many planes of motion. Okay? Good. You know, with

the more we exercise, our hip, I think the less likely it'll fracture if we should fall, but

we're not gonna fall. That's right. We wanna get be prepared, and let's march it out.

From a fitness standpoint, every single activity is higher than national averages. From swimming all the way to jogging, which is 28% higher than national average. And then outdoor activities, a number of them are higher, some are lower. So in general, again, a very active community as well. Right now, you are higher than national average in terms of people that have access to a park within a ten minute walk, yet one in three people today do not have access.

So that is something as we look at a goal with the plan to increase access to someone, to everyone in the community, to a park space as well. And to better understand, this is where the extent of the public engagement and the outreach process has been thus far. Obviously, a number of different ways, starting with outstanding communication from the city staff to get the word out, to educate the community on what this plan really is. It's not a site specific plan, it's a system wide roadmap for the future. As we look at it, there is an active website, myfvparks.com.

I will ask you the name of the site at the end of the presentation. If you don't know, you'll have to spend the night here. But this is multilingual, ADA accessible, mobile friendly. So the idea is every meeting, every findings, whatever we do going forward, it'll all be here. So at the end of it, every place I've been to, there are two people that will come to the very last presentation in front of you and say, I didn't know this was happening.

The whole plan is flawed. Now there isn't an excuse to do that. Anybody that wants to engage has the opportunity to do so, and we will continue doing that in 82 different languages through the website. A number of stakeholder focus groups as well, individually, staff, internal, external focus groups, a number of different ways at special events as well, at open public meetings. We've invited the community to come to us.

We've also gone to them as well in a variety of different ways and at different events as well, and continue to promote this in multiple languages, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, etcetera, along the way. As you can see, the idea is to physically and philosophically go where the community is, not just expect them to come to us in order to get their information. We don't want to check a box. We actually want to hear from people in as many different ways as we possibly can. That leads to the key component here, the statistically reliable survey.

All the input we did up to that point, dozens of meetings, focus groups, etcetera, were all subjective, which means it depends on who showed up to that meeting. If you have a 150 people like me show up, you all better believe the most important thing in Fountain Valley is cricket fields, which may not be true, but that's all you're going to get, which is why you need a scientific defensible way to either validate or disprove what you heard as well. The input we got across all these meetings was then crafted into a six page survey questionnaire conducted by an independent company called ETC Institute. They've done thousands of these specific for park and rec agencies. We've done several 100 with them, including all around you as well.

So not only do they have the expertise, they also have a national database and a California database to understand how the results compare to the rest. This is sent by mail, followed up with a one time link per household, and a phone call as well if somebody wants to do it over the phone. For a population your size, 55,000 odd, three fifty to three seventy five is statistically reliable as a sample. One might think, how is that enough for that many thousands? If you look at national surveys for 340,000,000 people, they get a thousand surveys to express some of the information as well.

In this case, every response is actually one household, not just one individual. And as you'll see in the following slides, the results are sampled based on the demographics of the community. It is random. It is anonymous. I'm curious, did any of you get the survey? Yes. Yes? Did you take it?

Oh, yes.

Well, thank you. So now you know, right? It works. And we can't the fact that it's random and anonymous, we can't control who gets it, but they'll ensure that about 10 to 15% response rates to to get this number, four to 5,000 were mailed out. If we get more people, we'll take it.

As you can see, the goal was 400, which is higher than statistical reliability. The very last bullet point, all that indicates is for any methodology to be reliable, I have to be able to repeat the process and get consistent results. In no public meeting, focus group, special event, can you guarantee that. In this case, we can, and what this tells me is 95 out of a 100 times, the results you're about to see are in a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8%. 5% margin of error is really good.

The lesser the margin of error, the more accurate it is. Beyond this point, if I go from 400 to 900, the margin of error may drop to just 4.7. So the incremental cost of doing that many more surveys doesn't give you significantly more accurate data. Where you are is really, really accurate and representative. So this is where you can say, I don't expect a nine year old or a 15 year old to take a survey, but I do want to ensure that the household includes people of that age, which you can see from this that it does.

From a gender standpoint, almost even split. From a race and ethnicity standpoint, this matches the community's demographics. As you can see, nearly two in five are Asian. About 45% is white only. 18% Hispanic Latino, so on and so forth.

And then you have people that have lived here for less than five years to all the way for more than thirty one years as well that have all been sampled as part of the survey process. So very, very encouraging visitation numbers to begin with. 81% is the national average, four out of five. In your case, it's 90%, significantly higher have visited in the last twelve months. More importantly, they value and rate what you have as good or excellent also at higher averages.

Big props to the staff for taking care of what you have at levels significantly higher than national average. And no, they did not give me pizza and beer to say that. This is the truth. In addition to that, in terms of barriers to participation, this is huge. Number one, lack of restrooms. I know you've heard it. We've heard it as well. A number of people said that either they aren't there or we don't have access. Lack of shade. More and more, that's what we're hearing. It's not amenities. It's shade or restrooms to be able to use the amenities longer that we hear from people as well. Program participation, this is insanely good. I have no other words to say. National average is 32%.

We recommend agencies to try to get to 40%. National gold medal agencies get to 45%. You're already at 53. So I don't even know what to recommend for you anymore. Just be where you are. Good enough. More than good enough. Right? So extremely high participation across programs and events, testament to the quality of the programming and the events your team offers as well. Same thing here.

It's not just high participation. It's also high quality. Again, if I were to nitpick, I would say that the future goal should be, can you shrink the percentage that says good and grow the percent that says excellent? I used to work for Disney, so I'll say talking in Disney language, always plus up the show. And the idea is how do we go from good to great and stay there. Right? So that's the little extra, the little pixie dust that you can inject here as well to do that too. Mayor's laughing. I know you know it as well. You've been there.

You've done that. So, you know, here we go. Program participation barriers, number one thing nationally is I don't know what's offered. It's close for us too, but it's still much lower than national average, only 22%. So great job again in getting the word out and room to improve there in terms of continued marketing and outreach as well.

Almost every single one has a majority agreeing to the benefits that Parks Recreation Community Services in general provides. It makes the city a better place to live, more safe, higher quality of life, livability, all the rest. This is the money question. Right? This is really where you all are going to use this to make decisions is what do people really want you to do out of a $100?

The majority, almost $39, they want to spend on taking care and improving what already exists. This is a national trend as well. In addition to that, acquiring new parkland and open space, programs and improving indoor facilities rounded off most of the others. New community event center, again, a number of different things that people indicate the frequency of use, from aerobics and fitness to weight room, which is usually the number one along with walking, jogging, track. Lap lanes, indoor running, walking are all at 20% or higher in terms of several times a week of use.

Features most likely to use, top four, senior services and programs, indoor walking track and running track, aerobics and fitness, lap lanes for swim lessons, and the weight room were at least chosen by 30% or more as the top four. None of these are surprises. These are the most dues we see across the country. In terms of how it's funded as well, again, a gamut as well. You can see 21% from impact fees, 24% user fees, 19% city taxes. And the eighty twenty principle, nearly 20% say, I won't pay for anything. Right? I don't support building it. It's just no matter what you ask, the answer is no. Best represents the cost for operations.

This is where majority say user fees, fees from the users should pay most of it. 100% through city taxes and fees are 17%, and 31% say should pay a majority while users pay a portion of it. So it's a gamut from all taxes to all fees to something in between. In terms of the 16 acres as well at Miles Square Park, again, you can see walking, jogging trails and aquatic facility by far were the top two, followed by playgrounds and outdoor exercise and fitness areas as the third and the fourth highest preferred and most likely to be used. Regional trails, aquatic facility, community gardens, outdoor exercise fitness area and playgrounds and picnic shelters collectively were the top five.

Can ask you a question? Of course. This one is about a cricket pitch. Did you put that in there?

How did you know? At least we got 1%. But, yes, you know, it certainly is growing as well. And earlier, we would not even hear much about it. Now it's gonna be in the LA 28 Olympics. It certainly continues to grow. We're working in East Wales, and they have one. They're looking at adding another one as well. Best represent how this should be funded. Again, very similar. Bonds, 17%. Taxes and fees, 25%. User fees, development impact fees as well. In this case, much fewer, only 9% do not support developing the site. So the majority, 91%, certainly do support.

And in this case, again, 34% said current taxes should pay majority of the cost. 28% said fees from the user should pay the majority. 20% said 100% through Citi's taxes and fees. This all cumulatively gets to the final two questions, is the priority investment rating. And what this gets to is the idea that all the survey questions, every amenity, every program choice was a three part question.

Is this something you have a need for? Yes or no? If yes, is this a need that's fully met, partially met, completely unmet? And then separately, is this important to you? So things that people may say are important, things that then they say they have a need and indicate the need is unmet goes to the top.

Conversely, you may have a huge unmet need for underwater basket weaving, which is important to three people, so it's not that important. You have a very high importance for playgrounds, but you've provided a lot of them, so it's not a high unmet need. So that's where as you look at leadership, the greatest good for the greatest number of people, what is important and the need that's unmet rises to the top. And that's what you see here are the high priority ones are the ones that have the greatest combination of importance and unmet need. The ones that are low priority are where it's either very low importance or very low unmet need.

So trails, restrooms, again, this is an indication of, again, how things have changed. I never saw restrooms that high till three or four years ago. The longer people spend time, the more they have kids there. If you've had young kids at one point in time or the other or have them now, you know their bathroom dictates how long you stay in the park. So a lot of that now is what's driving it. Nature park, pools, off leash dog park, community garden, shade and trees, outdoor exercise, splash pads, spray parks, etcetera, are all there as well. We usually see pickleball courts higher, but you do have them. There are others coming as well. So it's not that they're not important. It's still the fastest growing sport in the country.

But it's a much lower unmet need here because people do have them as well. Programmatically, very similar. Fitness and wellness programs continue to be the number one. Special events here are very, very high. Two of the top four really tied to that, special events and cultural enrichment programs. Testament to the diversity of the community and the fact that you have a lot of special events, and they want even more. So these are some of the things you look at as well. This is nine months of work in about nine and a half minutes. We're we're going to go through parking facility assessments quickly, but I'll pause for a moment. If you have any questions on this, I'm happy to address them before I

bring Doug up. Any questions from council? Yes.

Actually I do, Mayors. Okay. Well, first of all, you for the presentations of the survey. It's very helpful for us to take a look at it moving forward. But when I was looking at the survey, like you mentioned earlier, scientific and defensible, right?

That was the key right there. And there's four fourteen response and that's a 95% confidence level as you stated in your survey. But it would be helpful to us to better understand how this ensure the survey is statistically valid, physically responsible, equitable and build public trust and here I'm going with this. Who respond to the survey? I didn't see that.

Was it a homeowner or renters, family with seniors, youth, income level, disability? We don't know that. Since the survey was mailed out citywide as you indicate earlier, it will be helpful to know who respond and whether the result reflect the found by the real demographic.

Great question. So the word I use is reliable not valid. Right? Validity of data is different than reliability. This is reliable because, one, it is random.

Second, it's anonymous. So there is no way of telling you who responded, but we know which households responded because a survey company sends it to households only within your boundaries. And if anybody sends it to somebody else and it comes from another address, they are discarded because they are meant to be responded only by your residents. Homeowners or renters, either one of them could have gotten them as well. As we showed here, you can actually see the ages of who lives in the household, the gender of who actually responded to the survey, the race and ethnicity of who responded to the survey, and how long they've lived here.

We do not ask about abilities, physical ability or not. That is not pertinent within the survey results here. But these are the qualifying demographics that we do ask as well. So this, when actually matched against your city's demographics, your city's demographics are 49.5% male and 50.5% female. This is within the margin of error and very close.

The Asian population here is very close to what we see here as well, as is the white only population, as is the Hispano Latino population. So based on that, this is what gives us the confidence in the reliability of the data because who's responding closely matches who actually lives in the city at large. There is no other mechanism in any other process that can closely mirror your community's demographics. No online survey, no special event, no focus group can actually match that. That's why because it was random and anonymous to start, because the demographics actually match who lives here, that's why the reliability of this being within 5% of margin of error gives us the most confidence that what we see here actually represents the will of your constituents, not a loud vocal group, not a special interest group, not just users, but all residents and all your constituents.

Okay, great. In that case, were you able to identify any key populations that underrepresent, for example, seniors, working families? Were you able to identify?

So we didn't ask about working or not, right? That's not relevant to in terms of statistics validity. What we do know in terms of response rates, like I said earlier, you may have 13, 14, 16 year olds living in Fountain Valley, but not taking the survey, right? So that's in terms of the age group, it's usually the 18 that's underrepresented in taking the survey. That's why we have people answer, who will live in your household? And every question says, is this important to you or members of your household? So they expect that when I'm answering, I'm not just thinking of my needs as a 45 year old, I'm thinking of my son who's 12 and my daughter who's eight going on 28.

Okay. That's it. That's for now. That's for now.

Any other questions?

No. Just a comment. I appreciate all the effort that you put into that. That it makes a lot of sense. And statistically, it's interesting that I heard that from other survey companies too. The numbers kind of align. So that that makes I'm glad to hear that. And I'm super excited. I know Rob's gonna knows what I'm gonna say. I've been trying for seven years, eight years to get a community carded in a dog park, and I'm so excited to see those are ranked high. It's finally gonna happen.

And we're almost at time. Do we want to talk about the assessments or should we go quickly to the next steps?

I think for consideration of time, maybe we can accelerate just a bit. We have had the advantage of

reviewing this. Precisely, right?

And we've been brief, which we appreciate.

So suffice to say for the audience, the parking facility assessments were done for every individual site. Same for the programs, each of them were addressed. Generally, as a city, par for the course, you are above average, and there's always room to plus up the show. So we'll keep working towards that. Some of the next steps here, we will identify levels of service, show the mapping in terms of equity of access, tie it to a capital improvement plan to say what's it going to cost to upgrade, build new, maintain what you have, come back to the community and all of you just like we are, go through a visioning process, a draft and final plan and the final actual adopted plan, as Rob mentioned, in the next six months. With that, I want to thank you again for your time and the opportunity. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you also, Rob, for setting this up. Okay. We are going to take a quick recess. This will allow for family and and our guests to come in. So take maybe a

Okay. Five minute, two minute, three minutes.

Do five minutes. Okay. We'll come

back in five. Thank you.

Call this meeting to order at 06:10PM. Welcome. We will begin with an invocation from pastor Bill Staffieri. You would all please rise.

Let's pray.

Almighty God, we think of Psalm one twenty one. We look to the mountains. Where does our help come from? It comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. We thank you that, Lord, you can provide our blessing and protection. We pray that. This room is filled with people who serve this city, who want to, we we wanna pray your blessing on them, your protection on them. We're thankful for all those who want to see this city flourish. And God, we pray that you would show us well how to how to love our neighbors. And so we know tonight is a full night with a lot of important stuff to talk about and celebrate.

We ask your blessing. We pray for wisdom. We pray for discernment. We pray for a mutual care for each other, Lord, so that our city might thrive. We pray this in your son's name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, pastor. Next, we'll have

the salute to the flag.

Please remain standing. Council member Kim Konseti,

will you

please lead us in the salute?

Sure. Please join me in the salute to our back. Ready, begin.

Thank you. Sure.

Next is city council. City council successor agency housing authority roll call.

Council member Bowie. Here. Council member Constantine. Here. Council member Grandis. Here. Vice mayor vice chair Harper. Here. Mayor chair Kunin? Here. All members are present.

Thank you. Any items on closed session item? City attorney Burns?

No, mister mayor. There was no reportable action.

Great. Thank you. Are there any supplemental communications?

We have none.

Okay. Alright. We'll move into city manager update. City manager Lee.

Yes. Thank you, mayor and city council. Calling all young artists, the municipal water district of Orange County is now accepting entries for the twenty twenty six water awareness poster contest. For more than thirty five years, this annual contest has encouraged Orange County students to use their creativity to explore the importance of our first our most precious resource. This year theme will showcase how water connects us all.

All Orange County students in grade k 12 are invited to illustrate how we can protect our water supply and highlight the many ways water brings our community together. A total of four winners will be selected across four grade levels. The deadline to submit all entries is 03/11/2026. To view the full contest rules and submission instruction, can visit Murdoch poster contest page at www.mw.doc.com and fountainvalley.gov. This year, we, the city, in partnership with Fountain Valley School District, will utilize the Murdoch contest and select one or two winners for our Art in the Box program, so the students will be able to see the art piece in our community.

Don't miss this exciting opportunity to showcase your students talent, creativity, and passion for water awareness. So, please share that with your friends, family, or any students that you know of. Thank you. That's it.

Thank you, senior manager Lee. Next is the mayor's update. The long awaited Popeyes has had their soft opening yesterday, January 19, and the city staff is working with them to coordinate a grand opening in the near future. Popeyes is located at Garfield and Brookhurst. Fulfill your southern fried chicken's cravings today. And I have to say,

when I got home last

night from a meeting, there was Popeyes on the counter, so it was great. Free health lecture, understanding heart attacks, stop by the centers at Founders Village Senior Community Center for an important and informative free lecture. Not after the Popeyes. So MemorialCare's doctor Tung, go, will help learn the signs, risks of what you can do to stay heart healthy. The lecture will be held on Thursday, January 22 from 03:30 to 04:30PM at the senior center.

Yeti or not blood drive, the recreation center is hosting its first blood drive on the month on of the month on Friday, January 23 at the Fount Valley Sports Park. Come by and help us make a difference together. Let's welcome the year of the horse. Celebrate Lunar New Year with the recreation center on 02/07/2026 from 10AM to 1PM. The morning will be filled with history, games, crafts, and activities.

For a project at 8550 it's called the park Parkside FV, notice is hereby given that the city of Fountain Valley as lead agency under California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA has prepared a mitigated mitigated negative declaration or MND supporting the initial study for the 8550 Warner Avenue project, Parkside FE. The project involves construction of three story, 72 unit apartment complex with 10 units set aside for very low income households and a one story amenity building. The MND is available for a thirty day public review period beginning 01/14/2026 and ending 02/13/2026. The Planning Commission I think I just read that. Okay.

And then lastly, it's time to crown a new mister Fountain Valley. This will be 02/21/2026 at 05:30 held at the center at Founders Village. Who will get the crown? There are five very worthy contestants, and so we encourage everyone to sign up and join us for the next crowning of mister Fountain Valley. Okay.

So that concludes the mayor's update. Next, we're gonna have a presentation recognizing Viet Nguyen on being named as a member of the 125 most influential people in Orange County for 2025. Vietnamian cofounder of Key Concepts moved from Vietnam to The US at age 16, originally intending to study IT and finance. It kinda changed a little. Luckily for Pilates, he made a detour in the culinary world opening soup noodle bar in 2014 in Buena Park.

This marked the creation of Key Concepts, which now has eight restaurants under its name, including the newly opened Kwa in Fountain Valley. So I'd like to make a presentation.

Oh, sorry.

So we had in in recognition of being named as one of Orange County's a 125 most influential people for for the year as the chef founder of key concept concepts, the city recognizes you and and wants to celebrate you this evening. So yeah.

Oh,

yeah. Zach.

We're not done yet. Sorry.

Morning, every or good evening, everyone. My name is Zachariah here on behalf of state senator Tony Strickland. He's the proud representative for the city of Fountain Valley in the California state senate. It's just such an honor to go out and recognize Viet Minh today for just how many things it's incredible. I was actually researching a little bit about his story, and it's just incredible, all the things that you've accomplished. And there's so many stories from across our district that are like yours. So we just wanna just recognize you today for the many contributions you've made to Fountain Valley, one of Park, and Orange County in general. Thanks so much. Of course. Well,

I like to say a few words, and I promise everybody this

is gonna take two minutes.

Alright. Well, thanks so much for being here tonight. I came here, I think I came to Orange County right around 2014. And I landed right here in Fountain Valley. And, it's timely because also I just being naturalized last year.

I just became a US citizen. I'd like to say, without this country, without this community, and without this city, I wouldn't be here. And this recognition is not just for me, me and 1,200 of our staff, about 800 of them in the city of Fountain Valley alone. So, you know, we're we're here to create jobs. We love creating jobs, and we we love to create magics.

Also, I wouldn't be here if my family wouldn't be here. Very happy that my dad is here tonight and my fiance. So Also, sorry we have to leave a little bit early tonight. It's her last night in America. She's flying back to Vietnam. She'll she'll be back here, but she, you know. You know what? We'll have to take her to the airport. But I love you guys all. You know, this city has given me so much.

My whole life, I'm turning 40 this year and, you know, I I can't do this without community support and, you know, this country. God bless America and may he protect our troops. Thank you for Maggie. Thank you for it's Ted. You know, they've been supporting me this whole entire time, and thank you to the whole entire city council. Thank you.

Alright.

Next will be the swearing in of new City Of Fountain Valley fire chief Chris Nick. Won't we clap? So we've got a statement that I'd like to read, and I think it it it recognizes lifetime of achievement. And so please please pay attention and listen closely. The city of Fountain Valley has appointed Chris Nigg as the as its new fire chief, bringing more than two decades of comprehensive fire service experience.

Executive leadership, and statewide influence to the Fount Valley Fire Department. Chris Nick joins Fount Valley from the city of Luverne, where he served as fire chief the past four years. He led the department through significant organizational modernization, strategic planning, fiscal stewardship, and numerous operational improvements. Over the course of his career, chief Nick has served in every rank in the fire service from firefighter through fire chief, providing him with a deep operational foundation and a leadership perspective informed by executive by experience at all levels of the organization. As fire chief in Luverne, he oversaw community risk assessment and standards of cover development, department wide strategic planning, response and deployment modeling, capital and apparatus planning, budget development, and organizational realignment.

His leadership emphasized operational readiness, firefighter safety, accountability Mama. And data driven decision making in service to community. Chief Nigga is widely recognized for his regional and statewide leadership within the California Fire Service. He has held numerous elected leadership positions throughout the state, which recently included president of the Los Angeles Area Fire Chiefs Association or LAFCA. He has been appointed to the California Fire Chiefs Association executive board as the deputy legislative director and is actively serving as the president past president of the California League of Cities Fire Chiefs Department.

In each of these roles, he contributed to local and statewide policy development and legislative advocacy. In addition, chief Nigg has held several other numerous elected positions, such as chair of the LAVCA Regional Training Group Joint Powers Authority, president of the LAFCA Regional Training Group Foundation, president of the LA area Foothill Fire Chiefs, and as a board member of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperability Communication Systems or or LARICS. Prior to his service in the Los Angeles region, he served as president of the Orange County Fire Marshals Association while serving as the fire marshal for the Fullerton and Brea fire departments. Chris holds a master's degree from California State University Long Beach. Go 49ers or sharks.

Bachelor's from Arizona State University, Sun Devils. And is an executive chief fire officer certified by California State Fire Marshal's Office. His professional fire service education includes multiple state certifications as a company officer and chief officer, as well as heavy technical rescue and fire and life safety plan reviews. As he assumes leadership of the Fountain Valley Fire Department, chief Nick is honored to join an organization with a proud history and a strong culture of service. We are now gonna swear you in.

Okay. You've raised your right hand. Please repeat after me. I, state your name.

I, Chris Nick.

Do solemnly swear

Do solemnly swear.

That I will well and faithfully

That I will well and faithfully

serve the city of Fountain Valley

serve the city of Fountain Valley

in the capacity of fire chief

in the capacity of fire chief

that I will respect, obey, and enforce

I will respect, obey, and enforce

the laws of the state of California

The laws of the state of California.

And the laws, ordinances, and regulations

And the laws, ordinances, and regulations

Of the city of Fountain Valley.

Of the city of Fountain Valley. Valley.

As well as the rules and regulations

As well as the rules and regulations

Of the fire department.

Of the fire department.

Further, I accept the badge

Further, I accept the badge of my office of my office

as a symbol of my responsibilities

as a symbol of my responsibilities and public trust

and public trust. And I promise to hold sacred and I promise to hold sacred the objectives and ideals

the objectives and ideals

of the fire service of the fire service as my chosen profession

as my chosen profession.

So help me, God.

So help me, God.

Let's give him a congratulations.

Before I turn it over to Chief Chris Nieg, I wanted to go ahead and acknowledge and thank our former fire chief Bill McQuaid for his support and also our acting fire chief in the last year, Tim Sakey for all of your support. And, I want to thank the department as well for everything you've done in the last year. And, I want to welcome Chris to our executive team. Thank you for being patient with us, with the process. And, we are excited to have you in in the city of Fountain Valley.

We're excited for your leadership. And, we are excited of your partnership with our fire department in serving this great community. And, we look forward to what you will bring in 2026 and beyond. Thank you.

Alright. Wow. Thank you everybody for being here. Good evening, mayor, members of the city council, city manager, other elected officials and their representatives, chiefs in the room, labor partners, members of the Fountain Valley Fire Department, family, friends, and honored guests. Standing here tonight is both humbling and deeply meaningful.

I'm grateful for the trust placed in me, honored by the responsibility that comes with this badge, and genuinely excited for the opportunity to serve the city of Fountain Valley and the men and women of this fire department. Before speaking about the future, it's important to acknowledge the circumstances that have brought us to this moment. This department experienced a profound loss with the tragic passing of fire chief Bill McQuaid. His loss was felt not only professionally, but personally by colleagues, families, and a community that depended on his leadership. I wanna pause and recognize chief McQuaid's service, his legacy, and the impact he had on this department.

I'm mindful that I step into this role carrying both response both responsibility and remembrance, and I do so with great respect. Tracy McQuade, where are you? Thank you for being here tonight. It means a lot. Congratulations.

Thank you. In

the months that followed, this organization benefited from steady professional leadership under acting fire chief Tim Saiki. Stepping into that role during a period of loss and transition is no small task. It requires judgment, humility, and a commitment to the organization above self. Chief Saike, I wanna sincerely thank you for providing continuity, stability, and care for this department when it mattered most. Fountain Valley Fire is better positioned today because of your leadership. Where are you,

brother? Thank you.

I also wanna recognize president of the firefighters association, Russ Martin. Where are you at? From our earliest conversations, your approach has been one of openness, professionalism, and partnership. You took the time to welcome me to candidly share the interests and priorities of the labor group and to ensure that I understood the perspectives of the firefighters you represent. I value that honesty.

I respect the role that you play, and I look forward to continuing a collaborative, trust based relationship built on mutual respect and shared purpose. Before going any further, I wanna say this clearly. This is an outstanding fire department. I've had the privilege of leading a strong and respected organization as a fire chief prior to coming here, and I am no stranger to what excellence looks like in practice. I've seen busy busy departments, high expectations, resilient people, and cultures built on pride and professionalism.

Those same traits are clearly present here. Fountain Valley Fire is a busy, highly capable, and deeply respected fire department throughout the region. The call volume, the complexity of incidents, and the expectations placed on this organization are significant, and yet this department continues to perform at a high level day in and day out. What stands out most, however, is not just how busy the department is, but how it carries itself. There's a strong sense of pride here, pride in the job, pride in the uniform, pride in the community that you serve.

I've already seen a department that is resilient, professional, and unified, and one that shows up for each other and for this city no matter the challenge. The culture within Fountain Valley Fire is real. It's built on trust, accountability, and a shared commitment to excellence. That culture is not created by policies or titles. It's created by people, and the people of this department are its greatest strength.

It's an honor to join an organization with this reputation, this work ethic, and this level of pride. None of this would be possible for me if it wasn't without the support of my family. My wife's been my constant anchor through the demands, long hours, and emotional weight that comes with this profession. Fire service leadership does not end at the station doors or my office for that matter. And it just asks and it asks just as much of our families as it does of us.

Her strength, patience, and belief in me are critical to my success. To my family, thank you for walking this path with me and standing beside me tonight and my extended family here. As I look ahead, I wanna be clear about how I view the immediate future. The first chapter of my time here is not about sweeping change or quick declarations. It's about listening. It's about learning. It's about understanding the culture that already exists and honoring the people who have built it. My early focus will be on will be on getting to know our firefighters, our chief officers, and the professional staff as individuals, spending time in the stations, on the floor, and in the field. I get to ride out again on the fire engine. That's cool.

And listening to what is working well and where we can improve and be better. And conducting a thoughtful analytical review of our operations, risks, and organizational systems. Only after that foundation is built can be a meaningful vision truly take shape. That vision will be grounded in data and best practices, but guided by people and values. It will emphasize professionalism, readiness, wellness, and pride.

It will respect the legacy of those who came before us while positioning this department for the future. And above all, it will focus on taking care of our people because when we do that well, everything else follows. I believe deeply in servant leadership, accountability, and creating an environment where people are trusted, supported, and challenged to be their best. I'm incredibly proud to wear this badge, honored to serve alongside you, and committed to earning your trust every single day. Thank you, everybody, council, fire department personnel, for the warm welcome. Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for allowing me to serve as your fire chief.

I'd like to call up Zechariah to present on behalf of state senator Tony Strickland. Welcome.

Hello, all. It's me again. I have the honor again to be here just to go out and congratulate and thank and just for all that he's already been doing. Even before he got sworn in today, I was at a Fountain Valley Rotary meeting who a lot of people are here from there today. But it was at 07:30 in the morning.

He's already putting in early hours even though he hadn't even sworn in yet as chief. So you guys have a worker here, and and I think as city manager Maggie Lee was saying, it'd be a mistake to not mention former chief Bill McQuaid in this as well. He was one of the first faces that I met in this community, and he always was so very kind to us in our office and just me as a person. Just it it would be a mistake to not recognize him for his service as well. But to also just go and congratulate you, welcome you to our community and just offer my hand up to our office and say we're here to help. Congratulations.

We're gonna take about fifteen, maybe twenty minute recess. We're gonna be walking towards the back, city manager Lee, and there'll be photos. And so we'll start back here probably around seven. Thank you. So council colleagues will.

We're gonna resume our meeting. First City Council successor agency housing authority public comments for unscheduled manner matters only. Are there any requests to speak?

I have three requests to speak. Okay. First, Katie Wright.

Someone gave me these and I kind of agree with them. So I'm here on a non agenda item. I just wanna point out a lot of people don't understand when you talk about the meetings coming up for committees, commissions and boards. Someone I spoke with didn't understand what any of that talk was about. Now I know the deadline has already passed, but it's a situation where people that are interested in serving on planning commission or any of the committees or any of the boards fill out an application and then they get interviews. I would love to cordially invite everyone to those interviews. As a member of the public, I have the right to do that. It's a public meeting. A couple years ago, I attended and it was very unusual. They weren't accustomed to people showing up.

And the then mayor asked me twice to basically, he tried to guilt me into leaving saying, you know, you're gonna make people uncomfortable by your presence. Don't you think you'll make them uncomfortable? I said, I don't think so. If they're running for planning commission, if my being present in the room is gonna make them uncomfortable, that's kind of a them problem not a me problem. And in that meeting, I sat through a couple of interviews and again, it's a public meeting everyone's invited to be there.

And then I got to thinking, maybe I am being unfair. So I asked the city council members between interviews, I said, I would like to ask all of you, do you think that I'm being inappropriate by sitting here? Well, knew council member Constantine's attitude would be very much pro me being there because she had actually told the public, hey, come on out and watch these interviews. And I asked all the other members. I knew what the then mayor was gonna say because he was trying to guilt me into leaving.

But as it happened, one person did speak up on my behalf. That was Patrick Harper. He said, no Katie, you stay right where you are, you have a right to be here. But I want to point out for everyone to be aware, we do have an election coming up. Two of the other people sat there stone silent, didn't say a word, didn't offer me as a member of the public any encouragement at all.

That was Ted Bui and that was Jim Kinneen sat there silently allowing me to be bullied. Two people stood up for me and I want you to all start showing up at these public meetings and paying attention. These interviews are a master class in learning how to pass a panel interview. If you are just coming out of high school and you don't know what you wanna be yet, but you know you're gonna have to interview for jobs, come to these meetings. You're a member of the public, you're entitled to be there, and you will learn so much about watching how a good interview is conducted. Thank you very much.

Next speaker is Vicki Johnson. Vicki? Yeah.

Welcome.

Good evening, city council, mayor, vice mayor. My name is Vicky Johnson, and I am a monitor of the Orange County Power Authority because I lived in Irvine when it started and OCPA targeted my retirement community Laguna Woods. And I have a handout to be passed out to you. Hopefully, you'll review that. The Orange County Power Authority has ended the 3% discount off of SCE.

In 2026, OCPA will not offer a discount on on SCE for any of its rates. OCPA stated their rates will be about 12 to 16% higher than SCE, and it works out to about $20 more for an average resident. OCPA has steadily lost millions since Fountain Valley joined in November 2024. Their reserves are down by half since then from 90,000,000 to 40,000,000. So OCPA raised its prices over 13% in October.

An Irvine City Council member and former OCA board member said, this hike is predatory. On January 1, in contrast, SCE lowered its rates 3%. Not only Fountain Valley has joined OCPA since OCPA started in 2022. Three initial members exited and other cities OCPA has targeted did not join. A few months ago, October 2025, Costa Mesa's Finance Committee recommended not joining OCPA to wait for OCPA to mature and get stronger financially and they expressed concerns about affordability.

Friction with Irvine continues. The latest California Energy Commission reports states that OCPA's emissions were nearly twice of that of SCE for the service tier that Fountain Valley chose, which is called Basic Choice. Now, OCPA's not offering any financial or environmental benefits for your residents or businesses. What's this 12 to 16% price rate hike going to cost the city? How about your budget?

How are residences going to feel when they find out all of them have to join OCPA in October? I recommend that you agendize a vote to exit OCPA now before service starts. And that's what the County Of Orange did. They joined, but then they exited before service started because they saw OCPA was in trouble. There's no honor lost in doing so. I recommend you consider that. Thank you.

Mike Rao.

Welcome. Thank you council members. I always appreciate your welcoming spirit. I come to appeal to your better angels, although I will say some hard things today. I'd like to discuss fiduciary duty.

You who are board members of OCPA have a fiduciary duty to protect the financial standing of the power authority. And as city council members, you all have fiduciary obligations to protect the citizens of your communities. But these fiduciary duties are in glaring conflict. OCPA has been losing a lot of money draining reserves to $40,000,000 last year and continuing. So last week, OCPA did a shocking thing.

They dropped their 3% discount on basic choice and fixed the rate to about $20 per month higher than SCE will charge. So city council members, what should your OCPA representative do? Accede to the power authority or protect your citizens, the rate payers from higher prices than SCE would charge. You see the conflict, don't you, in fiduciary duty. Don't forget, you voted for OCPA affecting every resident who will be opted in by saying it would save money.

Please exit OCPA before your residents and businesses see what a mess you got them into. A $20 per month rate hike on electricity will not be politically popular. As Vicky said before, please agendize this diversion of please agendize discussion of OCPA's financial impacts and consider exiting soon. Thank you.

Mister mayor, I think it would be appropriate at this time. I'm planning on giving this in my a b one two three four comment as the city representative for OCPA, but I think it might pertain better if we do it now if

that's okay. Sure. You have the floor.

Thank you. So at the last OCPA meeting, we voted to hold our rates steady. We are not raising rates at all. We are basing it based on what the 2025 rate is. In the last meeting, had speakers who came up and were concerned that our price went up 13¢ or 13%. And what we do is we follow OCPA. So I'm sorry. We follow Southern California Edison. So Southern California Edison raised their price. And since we were 3% below, we raised our price too.

And what was happening is Southern California Edison has changed their rates approximately six times per year, and it's like a roller coaster. And every time they change the rates, OCPA changed the rates right in line with it. So what I felt was better is let's take the rate that we have right now, and let's hold it for all throughout 2026. So if the rate goes up on the next rate increase 20% or 18% like it did last time, OCPA is gonna stay flat through the year. So the price you're paying will be the price that you pay for the entire year.

It is correct that Southern California Edison in January did reduce their price. It's my expectation and and I think what we've seen over history is that in their next price increase in two months or a month and a half from now, it's going to go back up, but we're going to hold steady throughout the year. So the price you're paying is the price that you're going to pay for the entire year. The other thing that we talked about, we set the budget for the year. We expect a breakeven budget for the year.

So that's kind of what we set the goal for. I also have some information that they provided on what OCPA does besides provide green energy and besides providing competitive rates. It's what they do for the community. Again, OCPA is a not for profit entity. And what they do with profits or with any excess that they do get is they invest back in the community.

And here's a few of the things that they did. So they had some pilot programs. They gave out rebates for 47 e bikes, 204 free level two EV chargers, and sent out 48 approvals for a thousand dollar rebate on residential battery storage. Again, green energy, it's the rebates and programs they invest back into the community. They've also given out almost 1,500 free energy efficiency kits and given away over $300,000 in grants to community based organizations.

I see a lot of people here from the various nonprofits in our community, and you could see OCPA is investing back in our nonprofits for community events. And then next month, staff will preview a new program that specifically supports renters with portable heat pumps and portable batteries to help them save on at home energy cost. They're also doing a green discount program that should be approximately 10% lower than Edison for those that are in need. So I was planning on doing that later, but that's just my quick update.

Okay. Thank you, Councilman Grannis.

Councilman Bui? Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Since I'm alternate on this subject matter as well, if he brings it up, I just want to bring out a few points. It is absolutely true that OCP have done a phenomenal job as giving back to committee.

It's not this committee, but any community that they're participating in. But we were under we always believe choice is always good for the community, right? And OCPA when they came on board, that was a choice for people to either stay with Edison or opt in with OCPA. The question here is, as the current rate, like Councilman Granges has said it, that currently, we'll be paying 12% higher. So the question is, if we are paying 12% higher because we no longer have the discount, then at that point then all the resident should not be managed to be put into OCPA.

They would have a choice to opt in, not mandate it. Currently, the way it's said is, when we roll out, you will be automatically rolled in and pay high tiers. The reason for having OCPA is capitalist, right? Capitalism, right? You understand? You have trained that you compete for the business. So Edison understand there's a competition that brings down the price. That's

We want to make sure the comments stay brief because this is a non agenda item. Understood.

I'm just putting the point why they why Edison weighed down the price, bring down the price is because they understand OCPA is going to take a market share. So they become a competition for Edison. So they work our way around. So my point is, if that's the case, then the residents should have a choice to opt in, not being forced by then you have to opt out. And most people may not know how to opt out. That was

my So just to clarify, state law states that you must everybody must be placed in and then you opt out. So if yeah. I know you're the alternate, but you must not attend the meeting. Well, you don't attend the meetings. But you but you have that state law.

We really don't wanna have a back and forth on this item.

Yeah. Yeah. I just

wanna clarify the erroneous information he provided. Okay.

Thank you. Are there any other request to speak on on scheduled matters?

I have no further request to speak on unscheduled matters.

Moving to public comments scheduled matters only. Do we have any requests to speak?

Just a couple on item nine and twelve.

Okay.

So we'll move into consent. Hey, we'll move into consent. Consent calendar items one through eight will be approved simultaneously with one motion unless separate action or discussion is requested. Does anyone wanna remove any item?

Yes, mister mayor. I'd like to pull item number seven.

Item seven is pulled for discussion. I will then ask for a motion on the balance.

I may I move to move approve items one through six and then number eight, please. Is that correct? Yes.

Correct. Thank

you. I'll second. Okay.

Please vote.

Items one through six and item eight pass five zero.

Item number seven was pulled by Councilman Bowie. Would you like to comment?

Yes. I do want to get clarifications. Last time when we vote this is to approve this item was last year. And my I just want to get a clarification. I thought my understanding was it was for a study session to figure out if we should move forward or not. I was looking at my note and that's my that was my understanding. So I just want to get a clarification on that.

We did approve it last year.

Right. We moved forward and I thought you'll bring it back some more details. But here is to move forward, so I wasn't sure if I

Okay. I'm sorry. I was not aware that it was to a study session.

Okay.

May, if it's possible, Lieutenant Williams can go ahead and present the item. And then based on the city council interests at this point in time, if you want us to continue this item for a study session, please direct us or if you want to go ahead and move forward with what staff is presenting tonight, please let us know. So, go ahead and proceed with the presentation.

Please proceed.

Okay. So staff is recommending that we approve a resolution a resolution for the city of Fountain Valley to implement preferential permit parking on specific holidays on Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and for Labor Day of twenty twenty six. We established this to provide parking for residents and their guests surrounding the residential areas around Mile Square Park and Centennial Park, and this is to allow them to have space to park in their neighborhoods during holidays and park events. There is no cost to the city to do this. All enforcement will be conducted during staff time, and residents who live around those areas within the residential parking district where they would be obtaining the permit would be given a permit.

They would have to show proof of residency that they do live in those districts, and they would be giving up given a permit that shows that they are able to park there on their public streets for those specific days. Staff is recommending that we approve that to go ahead and move forward with authorizing these permits.

You. Councilman Newley.

Thank you, mister mayor. So I I'm I'm sorry if I if I spoke some of my concern to our senior managers and our senior attorney at that time, and I didn't get a chance to talk with you to some of my concern. I hope they did get a chance to talk to you. So perhaps I can ask some questions so you could help clarify for tonight.

Yes.

So I was looking at the report, and obviously, there is going to be some change that needs to be made on the report such as, for example, in the report, it talks about six holidays, right? But on the report itself, it also talk about another date, February. So if I'm counting the six holiday plus that, so it's going to be very confusing. So how many days is it actually? So as if we could make sure we can if we approve the clarification, that is to remove on those day. And I I think my senior measure has caught that. Yes. When I

It's actually not Lieutenant Williams. It it was actually on my end. I included potentially Lunar New Year weekend, and so going back and forth. And I removed other areas, but I did not remove one category which is under the recommendation so that was not Lieutenant William, it's on my end.

Okay. And another concern that I have is talk about indefinite permit validity. It's concerning because over time, you know, the resident might no longer be there. They might move out to a different city but because the the detail sticker is forever, in other words. So how are you going to enforce that? Identify, you know, those who are current resident and those who are not resident.

So they do have to come in and apply and fill out an application to show proof of residency, and then we do keep that on file at the police department. The permanent decals are typically not used for the holidays. Those are in specific parking districts where it is parking by permit on a daily basis. Those are usually not used for the holidays. So they would not use the permanent parking stickers on holidays.

Okay. And another one is I was concerned about residents that have special needs services such as health care providers and they come on the holidays because they just made the phone call but yet they don't have a sticker. And if our enforcement comes by and find it and obviously they will issue them a ticket because they don't have the proper decal on the car. Do we have mechanism to ensure that those people who come and service those who needs internal health care will be will not be cited?

Yes. We do. There is a way that they can contest or appeal the citation through our third party, which is p ticket or turbodata.com, and they can just put their comments in there and explain why they were there if they did not have a guest permit inside their vehicle, and that can be dismissed.

Okay. Great. Alright. Thank you.

Mister mayor.

Start with councilor Yeah. Granted and then

Constance. Lieutenant Williams. The residents who we have these parking passes for voted to put this in, didn't they?

They

did. So this is something they asked for and they want?

Correct.

And this is something that we've been doing how many decades?

Probably about twenty to thirty years.

Twenty to thirty years. We've been doing this that the residents want, and we're doing it. So I'm not concerned that somebody who used to live there may wanna go park, not at Mile Square Park, but in a neighborhood surrounding it. You know, if they do, well, that's fine. Know, I I think the issue is not an issue. So with that, I just need to make sure the residents understand this is a long standing tradition that the residents themselves voted for.

Councilwoman Costerstein.

That's what I wanted to say too. Ever since I was elected to city council, we every single year, we go over this. And thank you so much for your presentation. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

I'd like to move the item.

I'll second.

Can I clarify? So are we including February or not?

No, we're not aware that there's any activities going on at this point in time.

Okay. Alright. Thank you.

Okay. So we've got a motion from Councilman Grandis. Is there a second?

Yes.

Sorry, Rick.

Just waiting on councilman Constantine.

Oh, I'm

sorry. Item number seven passes five zero.

Okay. Moving into administrative items. Item nine, annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended June '20 06/30/2025 presentation by finance director Ryan Ryan Smith. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council. This item tonight is a presentation of our annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year that ended last June, 06/30/2025. So the audits that were completed last year, we we had our annual city audit, and that included auditing all the city's financials, and that's summarized in this this report. We had a GAN AUP review, and that has to do with appropriations limit that the state says we have to be within an appropriation limit for the city, which we're well under.

And we also had a Measure HH AUP review. So the the auditors looked at our Measure HH expenditures and verified that the information that we're presenting that we will present to the Measure HH committee and ultimately to this body was was accurate. So some of the highlights of the last fiscal year. Our total net position for the city is 222,000,000. That's an increase of 18,600,000.0 from the prior year.

The net position of governmental activities, and that includes our general fund, special revenue funds, and capital funds, increased 12,500,000 since the prior year. And the net position of our business type funds, which includes our water, sewer, and solid waste funds, increased 6,100,000 since the last fiscal year. Citywide revenues were 125,000,000, which is an $8,100,000 increase from the prior fiscal year. And the citywide expenditures were 106,700,000.0. That was an $11,000,000 increase.

The total general fund balance was 88,900,000.0, which represented an $8,800,000 increase from the 06/30/2024 general fund balance. So the governmental fund balances, the combined fund balances were 116,300,000.0. And again, these are general these are governmental funds, which is general fund, special revenue, CIP. Our general fund balance, 88,900,000.0. That included 88,600,000.0 in revenues, 79,800,000.0 in expenditures, which ultimately led to an $8,800,000 general fund increase.

Other governmental fund balance was 27,500,000.0, a $200,000 increase, and that included our special revenue debt service and capital funds. So some of the highlights of how we got to the $8,800,000 surplus. It it's it's somewhat subjective to say how exactly the surplus, but we can look at our differences between what we had budgeted. So where did we where did we have gains against our budget? So we had 1,600,000.0 in interest earnings in our one fifteen trust accounts, and that that's not budgeted.

Those accounts are invested and are completely dependent on stock market returns for the year. So we don't try to predict what the stock market's gonna do for the year. So this last fiscal year, we had 1,600,000.0 in returns for that for those accounts. We had 1,400,000.0 in unrealized gain in our market value of our city's investment portfolio. So that's gain on the the market value of what the holdings that we have in the portfolio.

That isn't realized currently. It's just the market value. If we were to sell our holdings, we would then realize those those gains. We had $1,000,000 in interest above our budget projections. So we continue to have a good interest environment in our investment portfolio throughout the year, and it led to $1,000,000 more than what we had projected through the budget process.

On the expenditure side, we had 3,200,000.0 of unspent CIP funds, 3,300,000.0 in salary and benefit vacancy savings versus what we had budgeted, and 3,000,000 in operation savings versus the budget. And one thing we do want to note is that we had an 8,800,000 surplus. We also have about $13,000,000 in capital projects scheduled over the next two years that are going to be using reserves to do those projects. So this surplus will go right back in to those projects that are going to be completed over the next two years. The proprietor proprietary fund net position, our water utility fund had 43,200,000.0 fund balance, which is a 4.5 or sorry, net position, is a $4,500,000 increase.

The sewer fund, $18,000,000 net position, which is 1,700,000 increase. Our solid waste fund has 1,300,000.0 fund net position, which is $26,000 decrease. And our internal service funds had a total balance of 18,900,000.0, which is a $1,800,000 increase. City recently received our GFOA certificate for the prior fiscal year ending 06/30/2024. The reason that this is important is that it it shows that the city's ACFR report is following the GFOA guidelines, which are set out for every city to ensure the readability of the the document.

So regardless of what city you look at, their annual financial report is gonna look almost identical. The only thing that's gonna change are the the numbers and the the circumstances in them. So our recommended action tonight is to re receive and file the annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2025, and I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. Finance director Smith. City Clerk Miller, are there any requests to speak?

We have one request to speak. Steven Schwartz, who was on Zoom. Steven, I'll ask you to unmute.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

We can hear

you. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the finances. I realize this is the finances for last year, and we're now in the next year. But I didn't notice in the information, at least in the agenda, that the twenty year plan was included as part of this. And as a member of the HH oversight, I was hoping that whenever we talk finances, we would be looking at that.

I think it's very important for you to keep in the forefront so that residents are aware that HH has made a big difference in the last eight years. And that when we don't spend money wisely, it's HH money that we're spending, which we can't spend for protecting our pensions or our services. And that twenty year plan really shows that well because it shows when it sunsets in twenty thirty seven that the city, because of HH, will have a balanced budget and will be able to exist without sales tax. We forget that, then we get to 2037, and we still have a problem. So I'm just bringing this up for people to be aware of because there's plenty of decisions that we make that have to do with with our finances.

And I guess the other question I have is with that twenty year plan, if we expose ourselves to any other legal problems with the charter city, is that gonna impact us positively or negatively? Thank you.

I have no other request to speak on this item.

Are there questions from council?

I do. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to congratulate you on the this report. It's really thorough. If anybody's interested in reading through it, there's ton of great information that shows there's reports for that show you over the last ten years various financial information.

And I wanted to point out along with you know, Mr. Schwartz's comments. For the last four years, we've made an additional pension payment of $3,000,000 per year to pay down our pension liability above and beyond what we are required to do. And that's, you know, being good stewards of the city's fund. So I want to point that out.

And also, in addition to Mr. Ryan Smith, he mentioned special thanks to Peter Samey, our Accounting Manager Robin Harnish, our Finance Manager and Deborah Beckley, Accountant. I wanted to thank all of them individually and job well done. Thanks.

Any other comments from counsel?

Do. Mayor?

Councilman Bui.

Okay. Well first of all I've dive into this report and it was extensive. There was a lot of data in there. But I did not find any material that raised concern of red flag were identified by the independent auditor. So congratulation to our senior managers on you as the or our Finance Director.

There was no compliance violation as well, so which is good by the city. But what I find a little bit lack in the report, and I'd like to see if we could add that in the future is the council member annual spending total by name. It was not identified. The quarterly council member spending report is not itemized in the register of demand either. It's just book.

But what is it for? I think the public it's fair for the public to know what we spend the money for. The city manager spending under 50,000 if it's possible to have a report on that as well. It's just dollar amount, but itemized will help us because it's not tied into any contract or anything because it's under $50,000 threshold that we authorize the city manager. And I think that will be helpful for the public to see the full transparency of each one of us. And let's talk about oversight, right? And I think a good oversight is make sure the public could see all that numbers. Thank you.

Councilman Grandis?

Yeah. I I would like to add to that. I'd also like to see how much the city attorney is charging per council member as well because I think that's gonna be very telling.

Absolutely. Yep. Any other questions from counsel? I did want to make a comment. We're looking for an unmodified report. It's kind of a way of saying no further action, but that's actually a good thing. And so congratulations on receiving an unmodified report once again. I think this is a receive and file item, so no vote. Correct.

I'm sorry. One other comment I want to make is I don't want to end on a negative note, but that's great. We had this surplus. I understand we have some projects that are delayed that, you know, would have used some of these funds. But I think it's again, I wanna say that in the past, prior to you coming on board, we as a board, all of us, didn't always trust the numbers that were coming because they were all over the place. And you've done a solid job, and your entire team needs to be commended for that. So thank you.

Thank you.

City Manager Lee?

Yes. I wanted to go ahead and add as well. I want to show my appreciation for my executive team, especially my finance director and his finance team. His goal to have an accounting manager to achieve this report before the end of the calendar year and he did accomplish that with the hiring of Peter. So, great job on his accomplishment in that area.

And he always strive to continue to improve in those area. And I want to acknowledge and point out that our finance team, our team in itself actually go above and beyond the standard requirement of the reporting and that needs to be recognized and show appreciation. And I really appreciate City Council continued support in our city staff and the work that we do and the positive impact that we've done with my executive team.

Great. Excellent work. Thanks so much.

And if I may, I just to echo what council member Harper said, my team really does the the the most of this work. And Peter, our accounting manager, has come in and really given us good structure and got us this report before the end of the calendar year. And also Robin, our finance manager, Deborah, our accountant, and Jenny, our management analyst have done a lot of work to get this report to us in a timely fashion. So I just want to recognize them as well.

Great. Thank you so much. Okay. Moving on to item 10. Approve the agreement with Hoag Corporate Health for a three year term to provide NFPA fifteen eighty two compliant annual fire train firefighter medical evaluations replacing the current provider, Concentra. Presentation by fire captain Nick Fasulo. Welcome.

Thank you very much. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm really excited. This is the first time I've got to give a presentation to everyone here at Citi. Alright. Also, like a longtime listener, first time caller situation.

No

pressure.

Yeah. There's a lot of pressure. I thought this was gonna be pretty straightforward and then we had all this tonight. So yeah. Thank you. I'm working on this presentation for you tonight about changing our annual health our annual physicals, the health care provider that we're using from Concentra to Hoag Health. I tried to keep this relatively brief, so hopefully, we can just jump right into it. I got a little cheat notes here. Let's see if I can do it. Okay.

Quick background on our annual physicals. We've been the city of Fountain Valley has been allowing firefighters to have annual physicals for years and years now. It's no secret that due to our profession, we're at increased risk for multiple injuries and illnesses, and this is an avenue for us to address that problem. The intent of physicals is really just for early prevention for injury and illness so that we can address things and hopefully prevent health problems from getting worse and address them early on instead of later stages where options and treatment isn't gonna be as effective. Along with that, another objective of our physicals is something that we don't, or gets overlooked on occasion.

It allows us long term trending of our medical data for ourselves so that we can trend our physicals, lab work over a long amount of time. If you remember, we recently added, as an example, the heavy metals testing in our annual physicals. And that's gonna afford our members and our staff the opportunity to track and establish baselines and make sure that we're not gathering these heavy metals over the course of time. And if we are, we can address it in a timely fashion. These are types of the objectives we're hoping to get out of that out of our annual physicals.

The annual physicals have always been contracted through qualified health care providers, and historically, we've used the same provider to provide workers' compensation services as well as our annual physicals. So it's been the exact same provider. Basically, we're going to the same place for both. The city's current provider for these services is Concentra, and Memorial Prompt Care was our previous provider. So that begs the question, why are we considering a change?

What what's the reason behind this? Combining workers compensation services and annual firefighter physicals under a single provider has led to some interesting administrative challenges in the past. One of those challenges being billing. We've had bills sent directly to to firefighters when it should have been sent to the city. That was a big mess, hard to undo.

Another big challenge administratively that happens when you're all under the same roof is confidentiality. As you know, really workman's comp is one lane and our annual physicals are another. When you're in the workman's comp lane, the communication about the patient, there's a lot of discussion between the city, there's a lot of communication that goes back and forth, but our annual physicals are confidential. Sometimes that line gets blurred because we're kind of using the same person to do both.

Over the last couple

of years, there have been some observations, some variations in the consistency and the thoroughness of individualized evaluations at Concentra. The current provider and staff, they don't specialize in first responder patient population. Concentra is really great at the workman's comp. They're kind of a one stop shop. However, we've identified the goals of our annual physicals are really specialized evaluations of firefighters and the risks and the ever changing risks that we're being presented with when it comes to our health.

The fire service is trending towards a proactive, preventative, and evidence based care that addresses our unique stressors for firefighting, causing improved functional physical fitness and occupational disease prevention and minimize injuries along the way. So we started to look around, tried to find out what our options were to address this and maybe find a better provider for us. Myself, Chief Psyche, Tanya, we began to ask other agencies what they've been doing. Well, turns out Hoag Health, created a actual first responder program for annual physicals. We toured their facility.

We met their staff. They answered all of our questions. We met with their physicians. We were very, very impressed with their direction, what we saw. Their goals are our goals on what we want to accomplish in these physicals. Hogue is an established local healthcare system that's providing consistent, high quality, comprehensive annual physicals. And the real kicker here and what really sets them apart is their physicians are familiar with the firefighter's specific occupational health needs. They know what's coming. They're trending with what's important. New things are happening all the time, like my example of heavy metals.

That's a new danger on our plate. Hogue also provides part their physicals are completely NFPA fifteen eighty two compliant, and they're also they also meet all the OSHA regulations that we need them to adhere to to be able to complete our physicals. I talked a little bit about the surrounding agencies that use them. They have an excellent reputation. We did our due diligence making sure that the reviews from other people were very, very good.

Kind of continuing, Hogue is really the most well positioned health care provider to support our firefighter specific preventative health care because they really are on top of the evolving problems that we're we're challenged with. We feel like they're going to be able to, like I said, partner with us in a very comprehensive way that we think is gonna be great. Let me see that I got ahead of myself a little bit. Onto the important part, the financial analysis. I'll skip to the good part about this.

There's no additional budget impacts that are gonna occur from us moving our contract from Concentra to Hoag. We were able to utilize a piggyback off of the RFP that Huntington Beach used, so it transitioned very smoothly. And if you look at the slide, can see that currently we're the there will be an intrinsic or an immediate cost savings, excuse me, by going to Hoag. The per employee cost per physical is less at Hoag than what we're currently paying at Concentra. So we feel like we're going to get better service, a great product for less.

So that's why I thought this was gonna be an easy one for me to start with. Our recommendation is to approve the agreement with Hogue Corporate Health for a three year term, and that's what I've got for you. Any questions?

Just checking. City Clerk Malarny.

We have no requests. On this item.

Okay. Okay. Are there any questions from council? No?

I think you

Actually, just just a quick comment. First off, man, you're a pro. Great job. You got to do that.

It's I said, can I say some jokes or anything? It's almost like, brand new chief is here.

Be

careful. Know how hard

it was for you not to make faces.

You're right.

I'm struggling. I couldn't

Now this is a great program. I know you guys put effort into this, and you say you're saving us money. I mean, it's a no brainer, so appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation. Thanks. Great delivery. You nailed it.

Appreciate it.

I'll move to approve.

I'll second. Okay.

Motion and a second.

Item number 10 passes five-zero.

Okay. Thank you.

Next is item 11, amendment number two to extend contract number 21Dash50 from 07/01/2024 through 06/30/2026 with Airwave Communications Enterprises in the amount of $541,083.35. Presentation by police sergeant Bill Hughes. Welcome. Good evening, everybody.

Alright. For this in a nutshell, City of Fallon Valley entered into an agreement with Airwave Communications up in the City Of Commerce for upfitting of police vehicles in July 2021. That was a one year contract, which expired in 2022. Despite the expiration of that contract, Airwave Communications continued to to upfit our police vehicles for us, and it was caught the lapse in the contract in 2023. We entered into an extension that was amendment number one that ran from 2023 to 2024.

Same things happened again. We caught it though. And so I stand before you to extend their contract through June 30. After that, the plan is to go to RFP, go out to bid and see what's out there in the market. Staff is recommending that we extend this contract. The total amount of the contract from 2021 through 06/30/2026 not to exceed $541,083.35.

Thank you. City Clerk, Bill, any request to speak?

No requests to speak.

Okay. Any questions from council?

Yeah, have a question. So just for the public, can you explain what these guys do and how it works with our police vehicles?

Yes, sir, absolutely. So essentially we buy our police vehicles through a company called Sourcewell. We get the vehicles, and they're not equipped with any emergency lights and sirens, none of the equipment that we require. So what happens is, is we contract with Airwave Communications and Commerce. We deliver the vehicles to them and they make them patrol ready putting all the necessary equipment in the vehicles for our officers to use out in the field.

How long does it take to for them to outfit a vehicle?

Typical build time is one and a half to two weeks depending on the build and the car specifics. We do have different cars that provide different functions to the city. For example, we have a community resource officer vehicle that's waiting to be built out and that one will be very specific for our outreach officers in the field.

And the typical build, the dollar amounts are pretty substantial. It's about what 30,000 a vehicle for the extra equipment?

Correct. Currently a typical build will cost anywhere from $26,000 to $30,000 per vehicle. We are at the point now to where we've transitioned away from Dodge Chargers, we've moved to the Explorers, those required specific sets of equipment like different sized light bars and stuff like that. We are at the point now to where the lifespan of some of those vehicles that we've transitioned to with that equipment, we're able to reuse some of it, which should provide some cost savings this fiscal year.

All right. Thank you for the extra information. I'll move the item.

I'll second. Okay.

Item number 11 passes five zero.

Thank you, Sergeant Hughes. Next is item 12. Item 12. Charter City direction to staff on language of proposed charter, designate a newspaper for publication of notice, approve communications plan and outreach materials, authorize city manager to engage survey consultant and outreach consultant. Presentation by city attorney Burns.

Great. Thank you, mister mayor. Members of council, We are here again to discuss Charter City. I know the council has had several previous discussions, and the audience has heard this as well. Several council meetings, we've had town hall meetings. Last November, council voted to move forward with a simple charter to place on the November 2026 ballot. During those meetings, we had also received several requests for follow-up information, and we're continuing to provide or try to provide answers and better answers to council's questions. So we have two people here tonight to assist with that. The first is Carl Berger. Carl Berger is the city attorney of Bellflower.

Bellflower recently switched from general law to charter. Carl was integral to that process, so he has some good anecdotal experience based expertise on the whole process. Also with us on Zoom is Drew Corbett. Drew Corbett was either the city manager or the finance director at Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, and San Mateo. Two of those cities were charter cities.

One of those cities was a general law city. So Drew has anecdotal experience based expertise on the cost of operating as a general law city versus the cost of operating as a charter city. I'd like to first ask Carl to present on the first issue, which is going to be his Bellflower experience. Then we'll ask Drew to make some brief comments on operational costs before I come back and we address the four matters on the agenda, which is picking language for a charter, designating a newspaper, approving an outreach plan, and if council desires, providing discretion of the city manager to engage some consultants. So with that, I will turn it over to Carl.

And Carl, as we've discussed, I believe counsel in the audience have heard a couple of these on on Charter, so they're of the background. So maybe we can be expedient to the background portion and leave lots of time for the Bellflower experience and any counsel questions of Carl specifically.

Alrighty. Thank you very much for having me tonight. It's a joy to be here, see if my fellow public servants. As Colin mentioned, the city of Bellflower has had the experience of going through the charter experience and and development. And I'm assuming that I just clicked through here in order to to do the PowerPoint. So let me

You can use the mouse or the keyboard. Choose the

arrow keys. Keyboard. Got it. Even better. Again, my name is Karl Berger. I'm a partner with Burke, Williams, and Sorenson. I also serve as city attorney for the cities of Bellflower and Monterey Park, various other cities as assistant or deputy city attorney. I think you've seen most of this, so I'm not going to dwell a lot have a lot of time on this. Stop me if you have any questions. I'm sure the city attorney and the city manager have have gone over these.

Two types of of cities. You're currently a general law city contemplating going to a charter city. This is the brief information with regard to how many charter cities there are in California. The core municipal affairs, I'm assuming that you've gone over municipal affairs and and what charter cities specifically are able to govern in California. Again, stop me if I'm going too fast.

Additional municipal affairs matters of statewide concern. So these are things where the California Supreme Court has identified items that are not municipal affairs and charter cities must comply with these particular laws. Easy examples, vehicle code. Can't change the vehicle code specific for the city of Fountain Valley. I know that you have discussed in the past litigation specifically.

I think the most litigation that's been in news has to do with Huntington Beach. There have been other Charter City pieces of litigation that have been discussed in the news. I'm happy to discuss those if you wish. I will tell you that my advice to my client, the city of Belfour has been, why don't you let the people with the deeper pockets litigate on your behalf and see how how the litigation comes out and then we can ride on the coattails or or not. This is a brief overview of how Huntington Beach has has been engaging in its various battles with both the state and the governor and HCD. Recent outcomes, important things

to that. That's two folks.

Prevailing wages and state funding. I will tell you that for the city of Bellflower at least, the charter effort initially went along the lines of we don't want Sacramento telling us what to do. And that has been the primary mantra since this first came onto the radar for the elected officials in Bellflower. As you've seen in the previous slide and you heard from your audience, the idea that charter cities are able to thwart the efforts by Sacramento to continue to erode local control has had mixed results. So really the focus in Bellflower at least has been on other things.

One of those things has to do for example with chartered cities are not required to pay prevailing wage for public works contracts. Now that's an important distinction because the definition of public works contracts has been much expanded from what you would read in the statute and interpreted and instead interpreted by the Department of Industrial Relations. So for example, Bellflower is very proud of its downtown business assistance program, but when you provide grants to private businesses that are trying to start up, that triggers the possibility of prevailing wage for those particular private projects because you're providing public money for those private projects. And the DIR has interpreted that as being a public work for which prevailing wage must be paid. So one of the things that the city's charter has done in Bellflower is distinguish between traditional public works projects.

You go out and see a freeway, that's a public works project. You provide a grant to a new business that's in the downtown in order to get them started either through paying for permit fees, whatever it might be, that's not a public works project according to the city charter for Bellflower. Briefly went over this, greater local control. I touched on the prevailing wage. One of the other benefits that we can talk about has to do with selecting your own bidding process, particularly with regards to public works projects.

As you're aware, ordinarily the public contract code requires you to select the lowest responsible bidder for for public works projects. The city of Bellflower's charter says, no. You don't have to select the lowest responsible bidder. You can select the bidder that has the best value for the city. Meaning that's not just the lowest price, it could be the lowest price and that's part of the consideration, but it's also the best contractor to be able to deliver the particular project for which you're looking for.

Challenges and concerns, I'm sure you've discussed this before. Once the charter has been approved by the voters, any subsequent amendment to the charter also has to be approved by the voters. So it's important to craft your charter so it gives greater flexibility to you as the city council to be able to implement the voters will pursuant to the charter. It says here legislature can restrict charter powers. What we've not to get too hyper technical on this, it's actually the California Supreme Court is the only one that can interpret whether or not there is a law of statewide interpretation or statewide application.

So while the legislature will frequently adopt statutes that say this is of statewide application and applies to charter cities in addition to general law cities, the true test of that is if that statute is ever challenged and brought up to the California Supreme Court and that court concurs with the California legislature. What you've seen in the lower appellate courts is that the appellate courts have said, in the case in particular with Huntington Beach, well, either legislature said this was of statewide importance or it didn't, but the legislature can go back and change that statue to make it of state wide importance and applicability. But we have not yet heard from the California Supreme Court on some of those cases. Not that I'm advocating that you go to the Supreme Court, but I'm just pointing that out as a hyper technical observation. Believe this is just some of the the Charter election results that we've that have occurred at least in the past twelve, sixteen years.

Bellflower has been most recent passing with almost 80% of the vote. Again, stop if I'm wrong. I want to go quickly through these so that you can ask me any as

I Actually, the last

one is really critically important that you skip through.

Go ahead.

So I I think everybody needs to understand there are two types of adopting a charter. One is whatever the city council tells you or involving the community and having a charter commission to help us write a particular charter. There there's things that you're mentioning that I think is important to get the residents if we decide to move forward there them to weigh in on. You mentioned that a just a basic charter, just a two page charter.

I'm sorry, Mayor. I'm sorry to interrupt. Do we have a translator in the room? In the back. Shouldn't they be translating because there's people in the mind aren't understanding everything. But I think that's what they hear.

I think he is.

He's in the back. No.

There are two in the

back. Who are they translating to?

I have no idea.

Somebody hasn't asked for I translation

I just wanna make sure that it's They are available. They're available.

Okay. I I guess my question since you brought the why haven't they been translating since the beginning? Why just this issue? Anyway, that's not relevant to this. Sorry. So I lost my train of thought. What

was this? You were you were discussing the difference between having a

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Having the community involved versus our own and then having a basic charter. One of the questions I asked you was if we need to change the charter, what kind of you know, if we do a basic two page charter, we're just the simplest of simple. When we go to change the charter, we have to go back and do a general election. Correct?

That's correct.

Okay. Let interrupt that one. It depends. If you draft it, is all the change can be done through municipal ordinance change, the will of the people?

So let me first address the question between a charter commission and a city council enacted or city council proposed charter. It is true that there are those two methods. The city council commission is is actually elected into place in order to help develop a city charter. The alternative is for a city council to place a proposition onto the ballot for a charter. Now, the assumption is when you hear city council doing that that there is no public input.

Mhmm. My observation and my experience has been that's no city council that I'm aware of would want to do that without public input. So for example, in in Bellflower, there were two council members that were appointed to an ad hoc charter commission Perfect. Or or committee. And they came back and recommended that an additional seven individuals be added to that committee from the public appointed by the city council so that there could be a complete participation by the public and so that the charter could be well crafted when it's presented both to the city council and then ultimately to the voters. Very smart. So that went through a four meeting process over a period of time in order to craft a charter that was palatable to that committee and could be recommended to the city council before ultimately going on to the ballot.

So it wasn't just the five council members who came up and voted on a charter and put it on the

charter? That's correct.

Okay. Thank you.

To answer the question about amendments, yes. Amendments would also need to go back to a general election. I mentioned earlier that that it's important for charters to be well crafted so that most of the things that the voters intend to be implemented by the city council can be implemented by the city council so you don't find the need to go back to the voters continuously amend the charter in order to react to whatever the perception is that you need to have in the charter. It's preferable and I always advise that we have representative government and the voters should be able to trust that their their representatives are properly implementing their will through the charter. So to answer your question council member, every time there's a change in overall policy of the city, it's not strictly legally required that you go back to ask the voters as long as you have a well crafted charter.

That's

great. The only two area that is should be go back to the voters is two area. One is raise tax that needs to go back to voters. And second, if we were going to change our pay scale that goes back to the voters. But everything else, they can do through the amendment without going back not going to have to go to the voter ballot.

Those sound like policy decisions that the city council could make when when crafting the charter and I have no no

By by doing so, there's an importance to that so people need to understand the distinctions. The importance of that, it doesn't cost us money to make the change and those change will go throughout the wills of the people.

I'm sorry, mister city attorney. Can you clarify that? That's the only two things that could ever go back for a a voted election?

No. It's it's a policy decision of how you craft the charters as Carl was stating. If that is something you wanted to put in the charter, we could put that in the charter. That's a that's a policy decision, those aren't there's no there's nothing out there that says that those can be the only two that a charter would require to go back to the voters.

And mister mayor, members of the council, I I'm not here to advocate on any way to draft craft your charter. I'm here to provide you with my war story to helpfully help you make your decisions about whether or not to do it in the first place. And then if you decide to do it, how to craft it. Those are all your policy decisions and your city manager and city council city attorney can help you with those types of things. I'm happy to answer any questions.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Colin and I had talked about what he he termed the the simple charter. I would say this is the bare bones charter, but it is certainly a simple charter. Simply taking what's already in the California constitution and proposing that as your city charter, that is certainly a charter and you can certainly work with it. My direction from my electeds when in terms of crafting a charter was what I call the KISS principle which is keep it simple staff. That way it's it's an easy charter for you to understand and read but it's not so simplistic that you aren't able to have a better understanding of what that charter is supposed to do and what the voters intend for your council to do.

This is the timeline. I believe this is the legal timeline for putting together a charter and the types of public hearings that are necessary and what have you. And going back to an earlier question, council member, it's the actual legislation for how you get something onto the ballot for charter consideration requires and anticipates that there will be public input even if you haven't gone through the the process that I described that Bellflower went through, which is to have a nine person committee making recommendations to the city city council.

How how many how much time did Bellflower take to put together the committee? How how many years from the start to finish?

The actual charter committee was formed, I think I have the exact dates but I'm just going off the top

of 2019, we all received that same report. Yes. It's the question you're asking.

But it's the actual time period was over a summer. It took about four meetings before a charter was crafted and and presented to the city council for consideration.

And how long did it take you guys to select that committee?

That was pretty much one meeting. So the the two council members were appointed. At one meeting, they came back and asked for additional seven seven individuals, all of whom were appointed. It was a Brown Act Committee because they were appointed by the city council, required public input, public comment, and expected it and and asked for it. So it was it was a very open transparent process.

Didn't they first initially start this in 2022 and they were late to get it onto the ballot? So they literally had two years to talk about it, think about it, discuss it, and come back and do it.

It was actually it started in 2019. In 2020, the council decides a policy decision not to put it onto the to the ballot for various reasons. And then, yes, it was reactivated in 2022, and we missed the window for within which which is described here in terms of our our timing for public hearings. And so it was delayed again until 2024.

So, basically, five years, but

Yes.

Breaks in between. Okay. Thank you. That's what I needed to know.

The cost for charter adoption are listed here. Believe these are just ballpark figures. I can't tell you off the top of my head. You know, I went to law school, not to finance director school, so I can't tell you the exact number. So but these are the the numbers that we we came up with based upon the information that we had certainly from Bellflower and the anticipated costs.

And I believe the consultant is also on on Zoom to give you a more better understanding. Public outreach and education. I will tell you that the city council and the city manager in Belfour went through an extensive education process for for the city and and for the public to understand what was being proposed and why. I know certainly, don't know if any of you know the name Jeff Stewart. He was the city manager at the time.

He was a long time city manager within the business and he made it a personal goal to go to each one of the fraternal organizations, chamber of commerce, what have you, along with council members in order fully those service clubs and also to to interview and and answer any questions from any members of the public that were interested. I'm sure you've discussed this so I'm not going to discuss it again. I will note that the last bullet point, council compensation, that was a concern for the Bellflower City Council, particularly in light of the events in Bell back in twenty thirteen ish, which we have all had the ripple effect of dealing with. And so it's very important for the Bellflower City Council to make sure that the Charter itself addressed Council compensation and how that would be allowed and regulated. So the Charter for Bellflower links back to the government code in terms of how councils are compensated so they can't pay themselves more than what the general law allows.

I'm glad you brought that up because I did look into the Bell matters. The fact is it's because they did not put a proper guardrail in place. That's the bottom line. It has nothing to do with the generosity. It could in the generosity, it could be the same thing. It would have proper oversight, same concept.

Well, that's not correct. The state law sets what the maximum compensation council could be. So a general law city could not pay themselves a $100,000 like Bell did.

Which is the guardrail from the state. In the Charles City, we could do the same, put a guardrail.

Okay. Just said that a general law city could have the same issue as Bell and they can't.

No. If if it's reference to paying compensation to the employee because that's the bill, that's issue of the bill.

No, no. I was talking about the compensation to council members.

Oh, council members. Okay. Yes. Let me answer that part.

No worries.

Thank you.

We talked a little bit about this, the development of how the the charter was put together, how it was drafted, the input for that. As we mentioned or I mentioned, I was off by a month. It was February, not March. But in any event, it it was eventually recommended to the city council in October 2019 following basically a summer of committee meetings whereby they crafted the the wording of the of the charter. Voter engagement, we briefly talked about that.

What was really important in the Bellflower experience at least was the community surveys. As a policy matter, the city council always has a citywide survey every two years just to see how the city's doing, seeing how citizens are prioritizing public interests and and what have you. This particular survey was very specific as to as to the charter issue. And as you'll see in 2022, it was at 67% approval. And as you'll see on subsequent slides, it actually went up, which reflected the eventual vote on the matter. You had a question, mister mayor? Okay.

Actually, I do on that just real quick. Sorry. Yes. Over here. So it's 67% voter support. That's good. So if it were 50% or lower than 50% or at what percent do you think is a fair number to move forward with?

You're asking an attorney about fairness.

So if it weren't 50%, I mean, Bellflower wanted to do this, and they went to the residents, and the residents said they wanted to do this. So that makes sense. And I've said since the beginning, if the overwhelming the residents want it, I'll I'll vote for it. So I I was just curious if if they didn't have that and it was five o with your counsel. Right? They all wanted Yes. So you had a unified council and you had a unified community to do it to be successful. I I'm just curious if that survey came back. I'm asking opinion. If it came back at less than 50%, would you have done it?

I will speculate on behalf of the electeds that were in office at that time. I do not think that it would have moved forward if it came back at any number around 50%.

Okay. Thank you. I agree with that. That makes sense.

Karl, can I also elaborate on that? I believe it went from 67% to 73%?

Correct.

And what was the rationale? How did you increase from 67% to 73%?

So Richard Bernard who is the FM three representative that conducted the survey, as I pointed out to him the other day, he has a real doctorate, I just have a Juris doctorate. I can't pretend to know how he does the survey questions other than he bounces them off very adeptly. I can't explain the increase other than the outreach that I mentioned before, which was through the city manager and the elected officials going out to the community explaining what this exactly was and making sure that the concerns that that were expressed within the community have been shored up. Bellflower is a very conservative community. It's actually where prop 13 was conceived, was on the back of a napkin down the street or so I'm told by the historian.

But in any event, that particular council and especially those electeds are very concerned about making sure that whatever they are doing is fully supported by their community because they don't want to go too far out on a limb. Just since I'm here for war stories, I'll tell you, Bellflower licenses cannabis dispensaries. That's the longest council meeting I've ever sat through. It began at 05:30 p PM and ended at 6AM. So I but there was 72% support from the community to engage in that type of regulation which convinced the council to actually get it down that road.

And that particular tax that was enacted by voters at nearly 78% what brings in 3 and a half million dollars of revenue to the city on an annual basis. So I give that war story from the standpoint of would the council move forward if there was even a question that there wasn't community support and the answer to that is no.

Okay. Thank you.

This is an example of the dedicated web page. It's still up. Anyone can go there today and and see it. This was the public hearing process for 2024. And as as the council member mentioned, the updated survey results showed an increase in terms of support for the charter and I can only attribute that without any objective data to the output and outcome by council members and the city manager for making sure that the community understood what was being proposed.

The next few slides go through what I call the simple charter. Colin may call it more complicated charter.

Simple plus.

Okay. I like that. Simple plus. I'm happy to go through any of these. I will tell you that these were specially crafted given the concerns that the community had that I talked about which was most of the community and certainly the city council do not like outside agencies coming in and telling local government how to run their local government.

Their elected officials, the people elected them to be in office and they do not appreciate either the state or the county or anybody else coming in and trying to explain to them how they should be running the city. So the opening part of the charter is we the people believe that nobody else should bother us. I'm paraphrasing. Municipal affairs, we briefly talked about municipal municipal affairs that is really the core of any charter which is the City Council's ability to adopt regulations to be able to implement municipal affairs of the city. I'm gonna go through these quickly because you may or may not want to copy these but this is simply each article in my simple plus charter is reflected in these particular PowerPoints.

Fountain Valley, I've not participated in any of this. So I will call and provide me with the dates and and what happened. And so this is the historic overview, which I'm sure you participated in. So there's no need for me to elaborate on that. And, Colin, tell me anytime that you want to jump back in.

Cost to date provided by Fountain Valley. 2026 outreach strategy, I did provide all of the information to Fountain Valley that Bellflower used in terms of mailers and what have you. One of the things that I did encourage Colin to consider is once a decision is made of of moving forward and an impartial analysis is written by the city attorney, to use that impartial analysis for purposes of educating the public. It is presumptively objective and so you don't run into an issue with regard to people challenging those mailers from the standpoint of whether you're engaging in advocacy or not after the matter's been placed onto the ballot. Stop me if you're ready.

This looks like all you. Let's see. Here

we go. So with council's approval, I'd like to have Drew come on to talk very briefly about operational costs as a general law city versus operating as a charter city. Rick, can you bring Drew up?

He's on.

Drew? Hi. Yes. Can you hear me?

Slightly. Slightly.

Alright. I will I will speak up. Are you able to hear me now?

Better.

Okay. So, good evening. Drew Corbett, principal of DKG Consultants. As Paul mentioned earlier, I have extensive experience working, in and with local governments. I have worked for the cities of Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, and San Mateo.

So two charter cities, one general law city, serving, in a as the finance director for both Menlo Park and San Mateo and as the city manager for San Mateo. And as it relates to this discussion, my input is related to generally, the the scope of administrative operation of general law in charter cities. And what I would say is that that in my experience, there there's not a wide gap administratively between general law and charter cities. And I think there's two two main reasons I would point to this from my perspective. Number one is I've not found in my experience that that the government code is overly restrictive as it relates to the administrative operation of general law cities.

You know, you'll have the government code tell you what, but not necessarily tell you how. And so I don't find that that general law cities are are more restrictive with respect to being operationally efficient and administering the the city in the best way possible, you know, less so than a a charter city. The other thing I would say is that, you know, charter cities do have greater administrative flexibility, in comparison to general law cities, so they do have a better ability to to manage themselves based on local conditions. However, in my experience with charter cities, both working directly for them, working in my consulting capacity, I've done an interim finance director assignment in a very large charter city, is is that in all those cases, the the government code was still used as sort of a guiding principle in terms of best practices and transparency. And and one example I'll give you from from the finance world is is the treasurer's report.

If you are a general law city, you're required by government code to produce a monthly treasurer's report, with your investment holdings. You know, what I found is that in general, in in charter cities, even though they're not required to provide this report, because of their charter status, that for the most part, what I find is that they do provide that that they do produce the report. One one of the cities that I worked in, San Mateo, continued to produce the report on a monthly basis following government code even though it wasn't required to in city of San Jose where I I served as interim director for a a small period of time. They produced a report on a quarterly basis, so they they take their opportunity as a charter to still provide the report for for best practices and transparency purposes, but they they opt to to be, you know, a little bit more administratively efficient by doing it quarterly rather than month monthly. So so that's generally what I find is while they have that greater flexibility, they use it as it makes sense to them, and they often still use the government code to sort of guide guide the decisions on what they're doing administratively.

Drew, can I get a clarification to what you say that you said generally General Law City can do pretty much what Charter City can do? That's what I heard at the beginning. Am I correct? That's what you said. Right?

Yeah. In my in my experience, in terms of the administrative operation, terms of the the things that they're wanted wanting to do with respect to, you know, automating certain operations, sharing services, doing some of those things that that that they're not restricted because of their general law status, and they have the same, you know, similar abilities to to do some of those things that a that a charter city would do.

Okay. Clarify this for me. To my understanding, General Law City can do to a certain extent. For example, contracting and procurement. Charter City can go much farther than General Law City as well as development fees and process, labor and HR rules, elections, court enforcement and land use can go much farther than a General Law City cannot do. General Law City is that's a statue from the state, that's it. But General General Charlie City can make those change based on the will of the people, and we'll make those change through municipal court ordinance.

Yeah. I mean, I you know, so what I would say is is, again, in in my experience, you know, in in working in charter cities, specifically as it relates to procurement, yes, there are certain abilities to operate, with greater flexibility than a general law city would have. However, you know, if I compare, a a procurement policy in a in a general law city with a procurement policy in a in a charter city, not necessarily going to see a significant amount of difference. I think as as was mentioned before, there's a greater flexibility in terms of some of the contracting, you know, some of your your flexibility with respect to selecting bidders based on value versus versus bid price, which which is a good thing and and good flexibility to have as a as a charter. But in terms of, like, the administrative process, I I typically find that they're pretty similar.

They they go through the same process, the same evaluation where where you gain the gain the advantage is the ability to, you know, potentially have greater greater flexibility with your overall selection. So they're not necessarily gaining a ton process wise, but they they are potentially gaining on the back end if they feel like, they're able to to choose a, you know, choose a contractor based on value versus just on price. In terms of some of the other things you mentioned, you know, again, I I have not seen in my experience significant restrictions on general law cities from being able to operate in their in their best interests and and do the, you know, do the things administratively that that make the most sense for them.

And and counsel, we asked Drew to to discuss a very narrow scope, is the operational cost differences, and that's and he he's an expert at that. So I I I don't want Drew to get pulled too far out of the the fair warning that I that I gave him that that the topics that he would discuss. Carl is here, and he can talk about any any differences of that Bellflowers use or that cities can use once they become a charter city, the public contract, and the prevailing wages, any of those questions. Drew is more kind of a cost guy. Did the costs go up? Did the costs go down? Did they stay the same once he went from a general law to charter city?

That's a fair question. So Drew, did the cost went up when you transitioned from general law city to charter city?

The the the two charter cities I was with were already charter cities when when I arrived. So I I did not go through the the initial chartering process. I've gone through charter amendment processes. I would say, you know, I I started with a charter city, went to a general law city, ended with a charter city, and and I would say there was not there's not any material difference in overall administrative cost of running the city as a result of of being in general law versus versus being a charter.

Okay. So I want to make sure I understand this. So you're saying that there's no administrative cost increase moving from a general law city to a charter city. Is that correct? Is that what you said?

I would I would say that not moving to because I didn't I didn't move from a a city becoming a charter. So so but I would say that unless you write your charter in a certain way that puts admit additional administrative burdens on you, and and so I don't wanna sound flip with this answer, but, you know, the charter cities that I worked for were were not just simple charters. They were, you know, they were extensive charters, and they put additional administrative onerous on staff. So they were, you know, they had things that that they required that you you wouldn't necessarily have under a simple charter. But all things being equal, a general law city and a charter city are are not going to be administratively different in terms of their overall and in terms of the overall cost of operation.

So so my biggest concern with everything councilman Bowie was just saying is, you know, the advantages he is saying is an advantage is a disadvantage to me because we don't have you know, we can have fraud. We can have corruption in terms of the bidding process versus the guardrails that are put in forth from the state. And I've heard three times already that as a general law city, we have to take the lowest bid, and that's just not true. We've had already Maggie, our city manager league, a couple of times this year, the lowest bid didn't win. It was based on a scoring system, based on experience, based on knowledge of the community, based on different things.

So to say that a general law city has to take the lowest bid no matter what is just blatantly not true.

Mister mayor, if if I may just clarify one thing about my previous comments. My observation had to do specifically with public works projects. That is a very regulated area of bidding under the public contracts code that general law cities must apply must use. So I can't speak to the example that you gave in terms of scoring or what have you. Those are usually done either in a design build context or they're done in a purchasing context, which is different than a public works project context.

So for any public works project that is over a million dollars, you have the ability as a general law city to use what's called the design build process. That does involve sometimes scoring systems or other types of things. But the day to day public works projects that you think about, streets, sidewalks, whatever it might be, those are very heavily regulated by the public contracts kit. One of the first ordinances that the city council in Belfair actually adopted was to revamp the entire public works methodology of delivering public works projects. And the reason for that was that for formal types of projects, it cost the city 15,000 to $25,000 to bid out formal bid processes.

You have to publish in trade journals. You have to publish for sixty days. And then at the end of that process, when you open the bids, you do have to take the lowest responsible bidder. Now, responsible bidder is a loaded term. It basically means you have to have the contractor's license and demonstrate that you're able to finish that particular project. But I can't tell you the number of times in my entire career where the Lowe's responsible bidder has been anything but responsible from the standpoint of actually being

able to

practically deliver a public works project.

No. I agree.

I agree. Okay. I don't know. I think at this point, these people have been waiting a long time to talk. I think we should give it to the public at this point.

We appreciate the presentation and I agree. We've

I don't know if you have more to present. I'm just going present

the forward discussion action item. We can do that after the public's had a chance to speak.

Mister city clerk, do we have any request to speak?

Just a couple. First first speaker, Michael Relich.

Hey, Rick. Can you call up, like, four people at a time?

And following Michael will be Chris Cluey.

Maybe have him come forward. Have, like

Good evening. My name is Michael Relic. I've lived in Fountain Valley for forty years. My two children are proud products of the Fountain Valley school system. They both graduated from Fountain Valley High. My one son is actually a property owner, a proud property owner in Fountain Valley. You know, I love this community deeply. I think it's always been a place that stood for stability, and it is a great place to live. That's why I've chosen to live here. But I'm here tonight to voice my strong opposition to the proposal for become a charter city.

In my four decades as a resident, I've seen this city thrive as a general law city. Our current system provides predictable legal framework that has served us well for generations. I see no systemic issues that require us to abandon the protections of the California government code. Now becoming a charter city is a solution in search of a problem and it's a costly one at that. Between the legal fees to draft the charter, the cost of the ballot measure, and the inevitable litigation that follows, we are looking at spending hundreds and thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.

In an era that we should be focused on infrastructure and public safety, spending money to rewrite our constitution seems to be a waste of our limited resources. And then I know the whole argument's about local control, but we only have to look at our friends at Huntington Beach to see how that's played out. They spent millions of legal fees fighting housing mandates. And we saw from the list there, lost, lost, lost, lost. This charter hasn't been a shield for them.

It's been the magnet for losing lawsuits. Why would we wanna follow that path? So finally, a charter opens the door to the city to change the rules on how we award contracts, which we just discussed, and how we tax property transfers. I trust our current leadership, but the charter is permanent. It removes the guardrails provided by the law and gives future councils too much power to change the rules of our government without sufficient oversight. Now, Fountain Valley isn't broken. We don't need a charter to be a great city. We are a great city. You know, I would stress for the council to please keep us, the Fountain Valley, a general charters as a general law city. Thank you.

Chris

Cluey. After Chris will be Bob Doe. Hello. Hi. I'm Chris Cluey.

I am a Huntington Beach City resident. I'm here speaking on behalf of my own personal experience living in a charter city that is currently wildly out of control. And I would I can't tell you how to vote because obviously this is not my city, but I will say I really enjoy Fountain Valley. My kid goes my younger kid goes to Fountain Valley High School. Like this this is a great city. Like you guys are doing it right. Huntington Beach, it sucks right now. And it is entirely due to our charter because our city council thinks they can do whatever they want regardless of what it's costing us as taxpayers. They won't even tell us how much it has cost us as taxpayers to wage their endless legal against the state. And as you saw, we just keep losing.

Alright? We are losing not just money. We are losing business in Huntington Beach. People don't wanna go there because they don't like how it's being run. We have crony council members giving contracts to their friends because they can do that, because that's in the charter. So I would highly recommend you listen to the people of your city, many of whom seem to not want to install a charter. And again, just look at your past. You guys are doing it right. I mean, I saw the gentleman at at the beginning during the the study session. He was talking about how good you guys are doing.

Like, why do you need to change? It's working for you. So please listen to the people here. I'll actually be brief because normally we only get like sixty seconds to talk in Huntington Beach. Again, thanks to our city council. So yes, that's just been my experience. So thank you for allowing me to speak and have a good night.

Bob

Do. After Bob will be Mary Ellen Pascucci.

Boy, that's a tough act to follow. Yeah. My name is Bob Doe. I've lived in Champton Valley for forty two years. And I have just recently been made aware of this issue from a friend of mine, Lee Martin, who who couldn't be here today. And so I reviewed the November 25, meeting where this was discussed, this issue, And what I was struck by was mister council member Grandis asking, what's the plan? Several times. What's the plan? What's the plan? It seemed like a good question.

I think an even better question is, what's the problem? What what problem are we solving by moving to a charter? And I I done a little research only in the last couple of days, and I I can't think of the problem that we're solving. We know that it's gonna cost money. We know it'll cost explicit you know, explicitly cost and implicit costs.

People, you know, going for outreach and setting up elections and that kind of stuff. And we know the risks, which mister Cluey has very clearly, you know, mentioned recently. I I don't see a tangible financial benefit. There's been no benefit up on the PowerPoints in any presentation. I've seen costs and I've seen the amorphous, well, we can manage our city with more flexibility. I just don't understand what the benefit there is. So I'm a definite no on this proposal. Thank you.

Mary Ellen Pascucci. After Mary Ellen is Vincent Morrison.

Hi. I want to express my concerns regarding the city's intentions and its pursuit to become a charter city. My impression is that a majority of the feedback from the community has been against a charter city, and that feedback has been disregarded. The placement of this charter city question on the November ballot flies in the face of public opinion. The more information presented to the community regarding the effects of becoming a charter city, the more negative my impression.

I see an unnecessary expense and negative effects for our city from this effort. Thank you.

Vincent Morrison. After Vincent will be Rudy Huber.

Hello. Thank you for for hosting another of the info sessions. This is the third one I've been to. I think I've been to most of them so far. And each time, you're really honoring the values of bringing out more information.

I know the last time, mister Bui councilman Bui, you mentioned, like, there were it was an opportunity for people to ask questions, and there weren't a lot of questions. There was a lot of anger or mentions and, like, statements of of against the charter cities, but you mentioned that not a lot people are at they're taking the opportunity to ask a lot of questions. This is the one of the first times where there is a lot of really good information about what next steps are as well as in the agenda, there was outlined alternatives for the outcomes of today's meeting. One of them was take no action and wait and get more details. Details.

And that was alternative number two, I believe, mister Burns, in the in the agenda that you outlined. In the agenda, it also outlines the series of outreach steps that are planned and has been mentioned by mister Grandis, mister Booyah, everyone, that there is a huge factor on what the Fountain Valley public, the city, the people want to have. And a lot of this is was mentioned for the city of Bellflower, it relies on how educated they are, what are they hearing, how are they learning about this. And so you have these four points in the outreach plan of city events and mailers and the agenda items was like, yes. Cool.

We'll approve those and then move them on, and we only have so many months to get these done. What's the language on these mailers? What's going to be going on? As he mentioned, there's a big focus on objectivity. However, many, many people are being swayed by misinformation.

As we know in today's environment, it is really easy to lay out a case that says this is gonna solve your housing problems, or in the absence of saying in nice, really big, bold letters, this will not solve ADUs, this will not solve these problems that people really want it to solve, people will be misinformed by omission that it's going to solve the problems they really care about. There is a huge effort that needs to be done to pull in more people from the community, have really well thought out planned activities. If we want to have a charter city, if we're if it's a solution in in the search of a of a problem, we we should be engaging more with the community and not just informing them, but getting them to engage in this process. Have them show up to these events and draft out their own plans, their own ideas. What concerns you?

What do you wanna see in a charter? Why don't we have kindergartners out here right now saying, what are the problems you wanna see in Fountain Valley's charter? Where are our students involved in in the high school beginners government classes? This should be a the year of governance engagement at the schools. Vincent, your time's up.

Thank you.

Ernie Hubner. Can just make make a quick comment on mister Morrison's shirt? I love the mystery science three thousand theater. Thank you for raiming. Alright.

Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Rudy Huebner, and I strongly oppose this effort to change from a general law city to a charter city. And that's primarily because, as many people have pointed out, you know, why now? When the city has been operating as a general law city for nearly seventy years, and as we just saw in the budget report, we're doing well. We are in a very, very good fiscal position.

And then we also saw in this presentation all of the costs that are going to be associated with this effort, both the cost to the city staff and the cost to notice properly all of the residents. And that is something that's come up time and time again where residents have made it very, very clear. I'm not getting these very important messages. I even spoke to people today, and I said, are you coming to the council meeting tonight to talk about this? And they said, what council meeting?

And so there's been a history where residents have come and stood where I'm standing now and have said, why don't I know about this? And so to Glenn's point, you know, what is the plan? So far, the plan has not been a very good one. And staying a general law city avoids a lot of these legal administrative costs, of drafting, defending, and maintaining a charter. You know, why are we changing all of these things now when the things that have been serving us well for the past seventy years and like somebody else said, what is the problem we're trying to fix with this?

I really don't see a benefit to this exercise. I just see a detriment where it's a waste of our tax payer dollars to even go through this exercise. So, again, I'm strongly opposed to this idea of becoming a charter. And I wanna add in closing that if there are any council members who are running for election or reelection in 2026 who are supporting this charter measure, you will not have my vote. Thank you.

Next up is Julie. Julie? After Julie will be Vincent Gonzalez.

Thank you very much, mayor, council members. I can't get any better than what Rudy just said and what everybody before me has already said. And, again, why now? And I'm strongly opposed to this. It gives you guys way too much power. Doesn't look very good.

Vincent Gonzalez. After Vincent is Katie Wright.

Thank you for finally addressing the issue of charter city operating costs. The city's response, however, is pathetically inadequate. On page five zero two of the agenda, the city's two sentence analysis states, the main additional cost to becoming a charter city would be incurred if the city determined on a case by case basis to initiate charter litigation. Aside from litigation costs and discussions with various cities and Drew Corbett of DKG Consultants, staff has been informed that there is negligible change to general operating costs between charter cities and general law cities. Let's break down the so called cost analysis.

What are the various cities with whom staff has discussions? I imagine it included Bellflower, and yet Bellflower as a charter city is barely a year old. That is not enough time to assess any cost differences. Didn't the city also talk to Oceanside, Lancaster, Palmdale, which have been charter cities for fifteen years and therefore have more cost data and to share with us? Were these discussions phone calls or Zoom meetings?

Given how important this this issue is, didn't you have face to face meetings with these cities? What sorts of cost information was shared during these discussions? Did the city take notes or minutes during these discussions? If so, weren't these notes or minutes in the agenda? Did the city retain consultant Drew Corbett to do a cost analysis of Fountain Valley operating as a charter city?

If so, why is this analysis not included in tonight's agenda? What exactly does negligible change mean? Is it $10,000 $100,000 $1,000,000 With respect to the city conducting a case by case determination whether to initiate charter city litigation, wouldn't this determination require a legal and financial risk analysis each and every time? And why aren't the estimates of these analyses included in the agenda? How much staff time would be spent every time the city needs to do this case by case analysis?

And wouldn't this case by case analysis be triggered every time the city is asked by other charter cities such such as Huntington Beach to join their ongoing charter city litigation and ask us to help pay their costs? Hell no. Finally, where is the cost analysis of obtaining voter approval every time we need to change the charter? Before you vote on spending more money on communication plans, consultants, etcetera, the city council must close those data gaps and direct staff to conduct a more thorough and comprehensive operating cost analysis beyond a mere two sentences. Indeed, one does I do more cost analysis when I go car shopping.

I compare gas mileage or EV range, maintenance, reliability, resale value, etcetera.

Choosing to

become a charter city without sufficient cost is like choosing to buy a lemon.

Vincent.

Thank you.

Thanks, buddy. Your time is up. Katie Wright.

Howdy. There's a problem with trust, and there's a problem of who's promoting this the hardest. I wander through the city website under the agenda center, and it goes back way, way, year after year after year after year. It shows this year, last year, the next year. And if you click on more, it'll give you more.

I went to 2021, specifically February 16 meeting of the city council, and I found the most amazing clips. And I saved a few and posted them today. Hidden within a huge mid year budget, which included police, locker room expansion, potential expansion for the fire department, lots of important big city spending. This huge midterm budget, most of us don't pay attention to what's going on. Most of us don't read in the deep weeds.

Three, very alert, very attentive members of the city of Fountain Valley residents were paying attention and came up and spoke right here because they found something hidden within that budget where a brand new city council member had put in a request for the city to pay somewhere between 8 to 800 8,000 to $8,500 to relocate the door to his office because he didn't like that it faced the same hallway with the bathroom for Feng Shui. This person wanted us to pay over 8,000, somewhere between 8 and 9, quoted 8,500. Three people came up and spoke. One of them was Anna Kitsuki. One of them was Tracy Cameron, now Tracy Cameron Quisel, thank you.

And one of them was Steve Nagel. Bear in mind, Steve Nagel was the previous resident of that office when he was the mayor and city council member right here. Prior to that, he was, oh gee, fire chief. So someone very familiar with the city and the city spending and what's a value and what's not a value. The very first thing Ted Buoy tried to run on us was paying $8,500 approximately to change where the door of his office was because he was offended that it faced onto a hallway with a bathroom. This is on the city's website. It's documented. It's filmed. Anybody can find it. I found it.

I shared it. I find these things and share them. If you find it, point them out to me. I'll put them on my YouTube channel. I will take them and I will post them on Facebook. I don't put my opinion into it very often. If I do, it's to a point where I'm not altering the video. The video's right there. I say what date I found it, where I found it, and you're all welcome to do the same. There is a trust issue here and the person promoting this is the same person that tried to run through that bill on us. Thank you very much.

Marjorie Ray. Marjorie? I like to respond to that. That is why we're bringing to the public to let people, hey, this is what I'm doing. Is April okay on board? It's okay. We didn't do it. Thank you very much. Marjorie?

After Marjorie is Gary Goodshaw. Goodshaw. Well,

I concur with my name is Marjorie Ray. I've been a resident here in Fountain Valley for fifty years. I was active in the Chamber of Commerce when I had a business, kind of knew what was going on, and there seemed to be usually a sense of consensus within the board. They worked things out and found something close to consensus. We have been, as somebody fifty years I've been here in the in the city, general law has worked just fine.