Active Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

We're gonna call to order the 04/18/2025 regular meeting for the infrastructure natural resources advisory committee. You read the rule.

Chair Suborn?

I am here.

Vice Chair Tuna?

Present.

Member bar Baradwaja.

Oh, you gotta try

it again. I don't recognize that now.

Member It's Baradwaja.

Baradwaja.

We're Manish. You can just say Manish.

But I'm here. Thank you.

Member Klingsberg?

Here.

Member Molina? Is absent. Member Sergeant? Here. Member Zarvas?

Here.

Thank you very much. Alright. We'll now go into public comments. If there's anybody from the public that would like to speak, do we have anybody online?

Nobody is raising their hand.

Alright. Well, there's nobody in chamber from the public that wants to speak about anything. So, if nobody online puts your hand up, then we'll move on to the consent calendar where we have the minutes for 07/21/2025. If there's no if there's no changes needed, can we have a motion and a second?

Motion to approve.

Second.

Alright.

Chair Subborn.

Aye.

Vice Chair Tuna?

Aye.

Member Baradwaja?

That's pretty good. Yes. Approve.

Member Klingesburg? Aye. Member Molina? Absent. Member Sargent? Aye. Member Sarvas?

Yes. Fantastic.

We'll now move on to regular business. We have the water rate study, and I think we have an overview on the ongoing water rate study. This is our second meeting, and it's an opportunity for us to provide some direction.

Thank you.

Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon, the committee. Todd Lay, principal water engineer. Thank you for having staff and Stantec back today, to continue our presentation on the Fullerton water rate study.

I have a much shorter opening this time around. And thank you for your suggestion and comments. Last time it was very helpful for us to develop this second presentation. Stantec will present on a recommended option with two different scenario today, off of the four options that we showed you last time. Also, Stantec's, the first scenario is one of the original options from last month with some minor adjustment to it.

And the second scenario is the first scenario with an option for advanced meter infrastructure, AMI improvement. Additionally, StanTech will also discuss the next step, cost of service rate design. Staff is, requesting, your feedback on this. If you don't have any questions before we begin, I'd like to hand it over to Stantec, mister Benjamin Stewart.

Thank you. And I'll, please ask the the committee to please hold comments and questions till after mister Stewart has a chance to make his presentation.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having me back with you again today. As Todd said, I'm going to be revisiting the rate study, bringing you some slightly modified scenarios narrowed down to two scenarios and then discussing where we go from here. Before I fully dive into everything, can everybody see my screen?

Yes, we can see it.

Excellent.

Okay. So today, we're going to quickly just kind of revisit what we discussed last time, just kind of a reminder of the topics of discussion during the last meeting. We'll touch on the rate setting process again just as a bit of a review to understand where we are today and where we're going. Then we'll dive into those financial planning scenarios that we've mentioned. And hopefully, looking to you all for some direction in terms of a preferred scenario with which we can move forward.

Because then from here, we will be diving into the cost of service and rate design steps. Models are largely set up, but an important input, the most important input, is the financial planning scenario. And so we'll talk a bit today about what that cost of service and rate design process looks like in a bit more detail, and then we can end with discussion and questions. So when I was with you all about a month ago, we provided a bit of background on what we did in the 2018, 2019 rate study, some of the changes that we made to the rate structure and just what was what we were thinking about at that time. We talked a bit about the underlying data and the assumptions that were embedded within our financial forecast.

We talked about some of the things that have changed since that last study, things like inflation and other updates since 2019. A lot has happened since that time. And we talked about four different financial planning scenarios looking at different pipe replacement goals and levels of ramping up to those goals as well as different timing on the non pipe related projects just to kind of understand the range of rate increases that we might be looking at under each of these different scenarios. And then at the end of the presentation, in the discussion, we talked about alternative scenarios that we might want to see and some topics for the future presentation. So that's today.

And hopefully, I've incorporated all of that feedback. So again, we looked at this during the last presentation, but I just think it's helpful to kind of rebaseline where we are in this process. Right now, the focus of today's discussion is on the revenue sufficiency part of the analysis. So this is where we're really answering the question of how much revenue do we need in the near term or the medium term to meet all of our financial objectives, to fund our O and M, to fund our capital program and meet our policy targets. So that's where we're at currently is that how much question.

At the end of this presentation, I'll talk a bit about how we get then into the next two steps, which answer the question of from whom do we need to collect these rates, and that's where we get into cost of service and how we allocate the cost. And then ultimately, how are we going to collect the revenue, and that is the rate design step. So we talked a little bit about this during the last presentation, but to talk a bit further about what's happened since the last rate study. One of the biggest changes that we're all very well aware of by this point is inflation. We had rate increases during that last study that were going to allow us to increase the pace at which pipe was being replaced, and that has happened.

The pace of pipe replacement has increased. But other things have happened that are outside of the city's control. And so I really wanted to just kind of reiterate that point with these three figures that we see on this slide here today. And these are really all related to that capital cost, capital improvement program cost impact. And so you can see that since I'm looking at this from basically since the last rate study, 2019, of course, the pandemic and then some significant inflation after that.

And you can see that construction materials have increased by over 45 since 2019. Construction machinery has increased by over 36% And water pipes and fittings have really jumped since 2019 up to a peak of 140% increase around 2022, 2023. It's come down a bit since that time, but it's still about double what we were seeing back in 2019. And so all of these things have also factored into what we're looking at today when we're looking at capital plans and a significant component of which is pipe replacement. So that's what we're kind of trying to address here with these rate increases.

Additionally, within our forecast, we're including the hiring of additional staff to meet the goals of the master plan and to help with delivery on capital projects. And yes, so that's really some of the drivers of the rate increases that we're seeing today as we get into these different scenarios. So a few modifications that we've made to the model or to the scenarios since the last meeting. Number one, we clarified that while we're hoping to get rates passed by January 2026, the implementation date would not be until 07/01/2026, which is actually fiscal year 2027. So within the model, we're delaying implementation of updated rates until 07/01/2026.

That will look a little bit different. We also looked more closely at those non pipe related projects. And you'll recall that during the last presentation, we basically moved those two projects or those that group of projects in two different ways. It was either as scheduled from the master plan, which put them all up within the first three or four years, or the alternative scenario was pushing them out into the more 2,030 to 2 and 35 range. And so what we did in this update is take some of those important non pipe related projects and just distribute them throughout the first five years of the capital plan.

So they come in at around 3,000,000 to $3,500,000 per year over those first five years in those non pipe related projects. The other thing we modified was to adjust the distribution of the capital costs. We originally had each of these projects, the entire project cost in the year in which those projects are to be budgeted. And so a $2,000,000 project was hitting entirely in one year. That's not really how these projects usually play out.

There's more of a multi year distribution of those costs with planning, design, construction, closeout, all of those different stages of the project. And so we took these projects and distributed them over three years with a 20% of the cost in the first year to kind of represent approximately some planning, design, maybe some early construction, then 70% of the project cost in the second year, then 10% in the third year for just kind of some closeout type costs. So this is intended to better represent the cash outflow or how these projects are actually paid for over a multiyear period. So that's really kind of forms the baseline scenario, all of those modifications. And then we've added a new second scenario where, as Todd mentioned, we include the potential to add advanced metering infrastructure at about $2,500,000 per year investment starting in 2027 and carrying out over the rest of the forecast period.

So the first scenario that we're going to look at, I think it's still helpful to just start with a scenario where we don't implement rate increases, we keep the rates fixed, and we can see exactly how far that can take us, how many years is it before we fall below our fund balance targets or fall into the red. Then we go to our first scenario, actual scenario of rate increases. And in this scenario, we are including that ramp up schedule in pipe replacement, starting with five miles of replacement in 2026 and 2027, six miles in 2028, and then seven miles per year thereafter. And then like I mentioned earlier, we kind of redistributed those non pipe related projects over that 2027 to 2031 time period. Part of the thinking on this scenario with the pipe ramp up and the distribution of those non pipe related projects was also accounting for that fact that we have also included adding additional staff to the team.

And so the idea that we're ramping up our capability to deliver on these projects and ramping up on the projects that we're completing every year. Then the second scenario of rate increases we'll look at is scenario one with the AMI added. So we've kind of changed the view on how we're looking at these scenarios, tried to simplify things a bit, really just focusing on what are the rate increases, what would the typical monthly water bill look like with those rate increases, And within those scenarios, what does the capital plan look like? And what is happening to our operating fund over the next over this rate setting period? And so obviously, you can see pretty clearly here with no rate increases over the next five years, by 2027, we're below our reserve targets.

And by 2028, we're falling into the negative on our fund balance. So this is obviously not a particularly viable plan, but I think it's helpful to just kind of level set on how far our existing rates could take us. So now if we look at the first actual scenario of rate increases, this is with that ramp up in pipe replacement, distributing those non pipe related projects over the first five years, distributing our project costs over three year periods. We kind of smoothed out the capital plan a little bit, and that's allowed us to do three years of 10% rate increases followed by two years of 7% rate increases so that ultimately by the end of this rate setting period, our fund balance is at the target. We're up to that seven mile per year pipe replacement goal and setting ourselves up well to move forward from there.

So you can see with this scenario, we're currently at a typical bill of about $75 per month at just under 11,000 gallons per month. And so by 2029, we're just below $100 per month and 2,031, up to $114 per month. Our second scenario just simply adds an additional $2,500,000 per year in that AMI implementation. And so you can see that when we add in that AMI implementation, it essentially bumps our rate increases in those first three years up by two percentage points. So we went from 10% to 12%.

And then because we're kind of front loading that a little bit, that 2031 rate increase can be slightly lower, down to 6%. But it is obviously a bit more of an increase in order to fund that AMI implementation. I should just make it clear that within these scenarios, because we are ramping up our capital and we are assuming 100% cash funding of the capital, so we're treating it as pay as you go capital. We are allowing the fund balance to dip below the target for a few years while we kind of ramp up our revenues to meet that, call it a steady state level of cash funded capital that we can carry forward starting in 2030. So then just to compare these two scenarios side by side in terms of that typical single family water bill, monthly water bill, you can see that by 2031, we're looking at about a five dollars per month difference between these two scenarios.

So it's not massive, but it is a bigger larger bill by 2031. So with that kind of understanding of our two proposed scenarios, during the last meeting, there was some discussion about sensitivity analyses, understanding that the future is uncertain, what would be the impacts rate impacts of different changes in the landscape. And so starting with the capital program, we wanted to understand what would yield about a 1% increase in the rate increases or bump in the rate increases. And this shouldn't really be a surprise based on the scenarios we just looked at where we added $2,500,000 in AMI and it increased the rate increases by about two percentage points. Basically for every $1,250,000 in added capital costs, whether that's more projects or maybe projects become more expensive, for every $1,250,000 increase in capital, we'd have to bump our rate increases by about 1% per year in order to meet that need.

Then to look at it a different way, because our financial forecast is pretty heavily capital driven, it's almost a one to one relationship where currently our baseline assumption is capital cost escalation at 3% a year. If that were to jump to 4% a year, we would basically need to raise rates by another percentage point in order to continue to fund that capital. So it's not terribly surprising given the fact that capital is a major driver here, but that just kind of puts it into context. The second component that we wanted to look at from a sensitivity standpoint is what happens if water consumption declines more significantly in the future than we're forecasting. Right now, I think we're keeping it pretty flat.

And basically for every 1% decrease in consumption, we'd have to increase our rates by about 1%. That makes sense. We do have fixed revenue, but I think it's around 40%. And so the other portion of the revenue would be dropping at 1% a year, so we need to raise rates by another percentage point to cover that. Looking at that a different way, if we wanted to see if we didn't change our rate increases and consumption decrease by 1% per year over the next five years, basically our fund balances would get to about half of the target level by 2031.

So if I go back to this slide here where we allow the fund balance to drop below the target for a few years and then we build it back up. If revenue or I'm sorry, if consumption were to go down by 1% per year every year between now and 2031, our fund balance would be about half of the target level. So that kind of concludes where we're at currently on the financial planning and revenue sufficiency portion of the rate study. Just to kind of give an introduction and some context and framing for where we're going in the next steps, we'll talk a bit more about cost of service and rate design. So like I said at the start, this is where we move into the last two steps of the rate study process.

So we're answering the question of from whom do we collect revenue and by how much. That's the cost of service analysis where we're really looking at allocating costs to cost components or functions and then from functions to customer classes. And then from there, get into the rate design step where we then say, how are we going to collect these revenues and that's where we get into things like fixed charges, volumetric rates, tiered rates and that kind of thing. I'm going to talk a bit more about Prop two eighteen in some detail, but it's worth just mentioning right now that really a lot of the challenges of Prop two eighteen and a lot of the Prop two eighteen requirements really come into play in these last two steps, the cost of service and the rate design. I'm sure that folks are familiar with the rate setting process and the Prop two eighteen process, but just for a quick review, is Prop two eighteen requires that the cost allocated or the cost borne by each parcel, the rates paid by each parcel are proportional to the costing that those customers and parcels impose on the system.

And so that's really what cost of service and rate design is really necessary in order to address the needs of Prop two eighteen. And so in this process, right now we're in this cost of service rate study stage of everything. From here, once we get to our proposed plan and our recommended plan, we would ultimately go to City Council to review our proposal and ultimately have city council vote to issue a public notification that then will allow the utility to send mailers to all of the residents all of the and give them forty five days to review the material and issue a public comment or a public protest. And so that's the public comment period. And then finally, after that forty five day period, we would come back to city council.

Those protest votes would be counted. The public would have the opportunity to speak on the matter and voice their thoughts on the proposal. And then ultimately, if there is not a majority protest, so if 50% plus one of the customers don't submit protests, then the city council would ultimately vote whether or not to approve the rates and allow them to be implemented. I think one really important element of Prop two eighteen and as it applies to some of the things we'll talk about today and going forward is that Prop two eighteen really, really, really limits our ability to set rates that are based on policy objectives like affordability, conservation incentives, and other things like that. In other states, you can say, we would like to get to X percent fixed revenue for revenue stability.

You could have that as maybe an idea in California, but you would ultimately have to be able to base it on the cost and why the costs are proportional to that fixed charge. So ultimately, as we go through the cost of service and rate design process, every one of our inputs and assumptions and allocations and everything in the model and everything in the analysis really has to be driven by data and the cost causation and proportionality of costs to rates. There have been some developments since the last rate study that have even further tightened the screws on some of these dynamics. The Cozyar v. Otay Water District case and then even more recently, Pats v.

San Diego has really ratcheted up the scrutiny on tiered rates. And again, going back to my prior slide, the level of detail and the level of rigor that needs to go into basically justifying tiered rates on the cost basis. And so that has to do with, number one, how high the rates are in each tier, but also how much water is allotted in each tier. And they really honed in on this idea that or this question of why is a gallon of water above this level more expensive than the water below that level. And so that's really further intensified the standard for calculating tiered rates.

The second update is the passage of AB two thousand two fifty seven. It was passed in 2024, implemented in 2025. And essentially, it adds to that public comment period, basically saying that if you post your entire cost of service study to your city website at least forty five days prior to that public hearing, so that final vote date, then objections based on non compliance to Prop two eighteen must be submitted before that public hearing deadline. And then if you receive public comments that specifically oppose the rates on Prop two eighteen justifications, then you would address those comments with a written response. Those would then be reviewed at the city council meeting to decide whether or not those warrant an update to the rate proposals or if the agency is comfortable moving ahead and implementing the rates as they are.

One key element of this is and a key change is that if you follow this process, the only topics that you could be sued over essentially would be the issues raised during this comment period, during this comment and response period. So it essentially is trying to address the lack of administrative remedies that were available prior to the passage of AB two thousand two and fifty seven. And so basically, this is giving you the opportunity to, if you think there's a credible objection on Prop two eighteen grounds, gives you the ability to modify your proposal if necessary. And if you and then ultimately if somebody were to sue, the evidence would be limited to those issues raised during this period. Okay.

Enough of the Prop twenty eighteen tedium. Now getting into the actual cost of service process. So with the cost of service study we did in 2019, we really kind of simplified the approach. You may have heard of the base extra capacity method where we look at peaking and the costs associated with the additional capacity in the system to treat or to meet capacity needs and peaking needs. We actually kind of went away from that approach because it relies on a lot of assumed values with peaking factors that are really hard to justify with data unless you have AMI data.

And we really simplified it to say, to boil it down to three cost buckets. We're looking at the commodity costs, which are limited to the water purchases, essentially the source of supply type costs. We've got purchases, pumping and then the conservation program. So this really just narrows the focus down to the Orange County Water District and Met Water costs, the cost of pumping and then it can also include some capital costs associated with being able to provide that water supply. The second cost bucket is the account costs.

And these are really just the costs associated with having an account. It doesn't matter how much water you use, it doesn't matter how big your meter is. These are really costs associated with just general administration, billing, account management, customer service, those kinds of things. And so those costs get allocated to the account cost bucket and that cost ultimately will be recovered evenly across all customers. And then the last cost bucket is what we call the utility cost.

And these are really more of the fixed costs of your system. It's costs associated with the distribution system, the operations and maintenance of the distribution system and the capital. And so those costs are ultimately allocated to utility cost bucket and then recovered through a fixed utility charge that would scale with meter size. So following this approach, which again we implemented during the last rate study, it ends up yielding about 40% to 45 fixed revenue on an annual basis. So that was an overview of the cost of service structure that we were following.

Then when we then move from cost of service to rate design, because we really isolated the commodity cost to those supply related costs, it makes it much more straightforward to then size tiers and calculate tiered rates. So again, going back to the early slides about being able to justify your tiered rates on a true cost basis, we are ultimately recovering the lowest cost source of supply in your first tier. And so this slide is from the last study, but at the time about 75% of the water supply was coming from OCWD. That was your lower cost source of supply. And so we recover those costs within Tier one, and then we also size Tier one at a level at which it account for 75% of the water sales to the residential customer class.

So we can really kind of make this one to one relationship between your low cost source of supply, the amount of that supply, and the rate charged in tier one. Then moving from Tier one to Tier two and Tier three, this is then where we recover costs associated with your higher cost source of supply in met water. And the difference between Tier two and three is that we then add the conservation program related costs to tier three, with the idea being that it's really those high volume users that are driving the need to have a conservation program, and so we recover those costs in the third tier. I mentioned this a little bit on the cost of service slide, but then when we look at the fixed charges, the fixed charges recover the account related costs. So those costs are ultimately allocated to the account charge, and they're basically a fixed dollar amount for every customer regardless of meter size.

Then we add to that the utility cost, and that component of the fixed charge does scale with meter size using what we call a meter equivalency schedule. I've shown the meter equivalency schedule that we've used for your study in the past. And it really just, it aligns the it's a fixed charge basis, but it represents the capacity needed in the system. So if you have a larger meter, even if you're not using the entirety of your capacity on a given day, you have the ability to use that capacity. And so we're recovering those capacity related costs through the fixed charge that scales with meter size.

And so then just to kind of put this all into context in the region, wanted to show a comparison of your typical bills again at that 10,009 gallons per month on a monthly bill. And I'm sorry, should have color coded it differently. But you can see that currently you're a bit below the average amongst your peers. And then just to kind of show where a rate increase would put you, I used the higher rate increase, the 12% rate increase from the scenarios we were looking at previously. And you can see that that basically puts you right in line with the average amongst the peers that we've surveyed.

I should mention that we are looking at these rate increases going into effect at the start of FY 2027. I think it's probably safe to say that every one of these other utilities will probably also be raising their rates in that time period as well. So that average line would probably move up a bit as well. But just kind of as a snapshot of where things stand today, you'd be moving from below average to basically right at the average amongst these peers. And then finally, just to touch on the schedule, we are currently on August 18.

This is the second presentation with you all. We'd be coming back in a month to talk about basically the entirety of the study. We'll have numbers for that cost of service and rate design step. We would have proposed rates. And that would be the final presentation with you all before moving forward to city council in October.

That would be the presentation to council where we would be asking them to vote to issue the public notification, start that forty five day public comment period. And then in December, we would be looking to do that public hearing where we would count the protest votes ultimately vote whether or not to adopt the rates. And then we'd be done. New rates would go into effect if they were passed July 2026. So that's kind of putting us into the timeline.

Still early stages, but we've got a lot to do by October and December. That concludes my presentation. I'd love to hear some discussion, answer any of your questions. Yes, thank you for your time.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Appreciate that. We'll open it up for comments and questions from the committee. And I just have a quick one with Prop two eighteen. Is there a limit on the number of years or the percentage of increase that the city could consider for that?

There's not a limit on the percentage increase, but you are limited to setting rates for five years. So you need to do another study or yes, in five years at most.

Okay. Thank you. All right. I'm going to start to my right. I'll start with Member Bardwaja.

Thank you, sir. I've got three questions, and then I'll leave the rest for later so people can ask theirs. So we're looking at a I mean, from what I saw, and maybe I read it wrong, but over five years, a 44% compounded increase, I think that's going to shock most people. I'm assuming you've looked at any other way to deal with that, but I think most people that see that getting into that protest vote, I think most people are gonna immediately protest. I also wanna say thank you for going into the I think it's Cozier versus the Ote Water District.

I actually am a fan of what happened there. But is there any other way to do this and still accomplish the goals set forth by staff? I mean, because 44%, that's going be a big pill to swallow.

Yes, I can try to address those questions. I think starting with the second question first with respect to Cozyar, that case dealt much more with the cost allocation and rate But design in terms of the level of increase, we talked about the possibility of bond financing that would potentially that would probably reduce the rates early on, just depending on how much one would bond find how much you would want to finance. But it would probably then increase some of the rates in the out year. So maybe even beyond the five year period we're looking at right now.

Got

you. That's because of that added debt payment. When it comes to bonding, best financial practice would say bond financing is a totally legitimate and great option when you're looking at singular large projects that are maybe creating a brand new asset, like a new treatment plant or an upgrade of a treatment plant, something that is effectively new and going to benefit multiple generations of customers. So they call that intergenerational equity. On the flip side, best practice would say, you'd really like to be cash funding things that are more repair, replace, renew type investments, so that you're kind of doing that on a rolling basis year over year.

And there's probably some projects that you could qualify as being debt eligible under that paradigm. But much of it is with the pipe replacement being a big component of this, that is much more of the type of project you would traditionally think of as being a cash funded project. Short of that, I mean, it really comes down to if we're concerned about that level of rate increase, and I completely understand that is a pretty substantial increase over five years, no arguments there. It is the only real option, I would say, is scaling back of the capital plan. So if that's delaying some projects or delaying that ramp up in the pipe replacement pace I think we

delayed quite a bit on a lot of things. I think David would agree with us and Jeff. But is there a reason why we're so far behind? I mean why this and I'm not looking for blame on anybody, but does anybody know why we didn't institute some of these things before some of the increases before? I mean, since especially looking at similar cities, we are below what their average is. Does anybody know why we didn't do that earlier?

I don't know. There's a specific answer to that. I think you could look at the city as a whole and say, you could look at our storm drain, look at our streets. Correct. I would offer an opinion that the city in general is not in favor of increasing revenues to address situations. And I think we're coming to a head with that, as you can see.

So years of not addressing it with some forethought. So I'll ask just one more and then I'll give it up to, the four other people to ask. So I would highly suggest that we look at this in conjunction with the tax measure that I think the city is going to try to propose and roll some of that, in with infrastructure and say and look at how much that may be covered, whether it's a half cent, 1%, whatever it ends up being, half percentage point. Has anybody, calculated how much that would probably bring in and would that offset these increases so that we're not hitting people with two different increases like hey by the way not only is the possibility of this tax measure going to increase what you're paying you know with every sales purchase but now you're going to pay an additional 44% compounded increases over five years. Has that been looked at at all?

Yes. I don't think we have

right now.

No. I think the intent at this time is to separate the border and keep that separate from any possible additional or separate infrastructure revenue measures. It would be more focused on the streets than

anything else. We obviously need the streets and the water because I think that's causing some of our street issues. But I would just close with this part right now. I would highly look at that because I think if this passing is subject to protest votes and we're putting forward a possible tax measure, I don't think people are going to go for both. And I think just from a mark I hate to use this term from a marketing perspective. From a palatable perspective, for me at least, I'd rather do one rather than both if we can tie them together. So maybe if that's looked at again, say, hey, look, this percentage, is it a half percent, 1%? Does anybody know what the possible whatever it is, this is what we're looking at bringing in. Maybe it doesn't have to be 44% over five years. Maybe it's 20% because this other measure is going through.

So just from that standpoint I think from a strategic standpoint I don't think anybody can argue that this money is not needed. I don't want to see less projects. I don't think anybody who's looked at our streets and our sewer issues would be okay with that. I think we need it. I would just say maybe we can look at a different way to present it so that's more palatable to the public. Thank you.

And I just want to respond to your first question about the postponement of infrastructure replacement. You know, as you probably already know, Fulton's not the only city that have delayed infrastructure replacement. If you don't know, I came from, LA, and LA at one point, was at between three hundred to four hundred year replacement cycle. And pipes that were installed back in the thirties, forties, fifties, they don't last three, four hundred years. Now they've gone up to at around one hundred year replacement cycle, which is probably still not fast enough to replace those pipe that was stalled during those time.

What we are trying to tackle is those cast iron pipe, which are delayed. I think the last presentation we had like 50% that might be over seventy And years so the impact that potentially could happen, of course, we also may, we've our leak rates have gone down a little bit, but I don't think it could be just a period because we kinda tackle some of the pipes that we're leaking, you know, but they're not gonna last a 100 years, these

And old I think they need to be replaced. I don't think anybody can argue with that. Correct. So

Yeah. I'm glad you understand that. And so that's why we recommend the sixty year replacement cycle, especially for that 50% of cast iron pipe that were installed, you know, back in

the Absolutely.

In the fifties. You know? So Thank you for that. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Albert Cleansburg.

Yeah. I know we're we're kind of focused just on water pipe replacements, but I think you had also mentioned the other utilities as well. So if we're not just looking at a 40% increase in one utility, I mean, we're looking at multiple utility increases across the board?

I would like to get David to clarify that. This is specifically for water.

Is specifically

water Water infrastructure only. So pipelines, reservoirs, pumps, pump stations, wells, treatment.

But then when we look at are we always also going to see electric and I know we're kind of getting away from gas at this point with more electric but there's other utilities out there. Are we having the same issues with our other utilities or infrastructure as well?

Can you get closer to the mic member, Birdwaja?

If I understand it right, I think what Yeah. What my fellow member is asking rightfully so is, are we now going to have to spend a similar amount or a drastic increase for our electric lines or for our electric infrastructure or for our gas pipes and things like that?

Well, obviously, I can't speak for the gas company Edison. But if you look at past history, trends are up. I don't think trends are going to go down. So I think in general, you could easily argue that additional other utilities will have additional costs as well.

I need a pay increase.

Can we get more pay for what we do here?

Thank you. All of those.

And twice the time off. Yes. All

right. Member service.

Can I ask that we stop the presentation so I can see your face a little bit bigger, Benjamin? Thank you. And thank you for the changes that were made to the I don't know if that's gonna help me. You're still a a small thumbnail on our screen.

I think that's on our side of our I I don't know. Julia, can you adjust that or Christie?

No worries if we can't. I will I will

Make Benjamin a bit bigger. He's earned it.

That's great. Thank you

so much.

Oh, boy. I wanna thank Stantec for making some edits to this presentation based on comments from from the last time. That was definitely noticed and appreciated. Of course, now I'm going to go reference a slide. I appreciate seeing how our rates are comparing to other cities. It appears from that graph though that our fixed charge significantly higher than any of the other utilities. Just is that an accurate assessment? A proportion of the total bill.

As a proportion, yes, it's higher. I don't know if I'd say significantly, but it is at the higher end. It's not the highest fixed charge amongst the peers. But yes, it's higher than a good number of them.

But proportionally, it may be the highest amongst our peers.

Yes, it may be. There's a couple that might be close, but yes, that's at the higher end

for sure.

I think that, that would be an interesting topic for future discussion. I know that I have received comments from others about our about the fixed charge and whether or not that is an appropriate placement for us at being the highest fixed charge proportionally. Second question was about the probably for staff. What is the objection period, right? What is NRAC's role in that forty five day period? Who's making the decision whether you're going to go with an administrative remedy? And is council involved? Are we involved?

Council will get involved at the end of that process. I think we'll staff will obviously receive all the objections, review them. And I would imagine and I would probably encourage that we come back to Interact to review those objections and our proposed responses to them that they would go to counsel.

I I would concur with that. And if we need to make a motion to make it so, I would I would make that motion. I think that the choice here whether or not to exercise that option seems like that this is the first time that that's happened, right, because that that law was passed a few years ago. I wanna make sure that we are protecting the city against future litigation and that we are giving due diligence to the considering those methods publicly. Final question, or I'm sticking to my three question limit as established.

AMI, how did that come about as one of the scenarios that we're looking at? And this would be the time for staff to advocate for why we need to include it in the benefits that we'll receive from that.

Not my area of expertise on the AMI. Richard, will you be able to assist on this one? So AMI has been definitely been talked about for a number of years within the Water division. I think Richard can give a little bit background on why it's we would like to implement it.

Yeah. I think to start is if you look at all the other cities around us, we're the only ones that don't have it. That's kinda the beginning. And then second is it's been mentioned previous times in these meetings that we've had that it's something that we wanted to move forward towards. So we thought we would throw it in there, give you the option. Is it something we might want to do or not want to do? That's kind of why we threw it in this time.

Okay, thank you. It's being the one difference between these two scenarios kind of feels like we're here to decide whether or not we're going to move forward with AMI or not. And I am very much in favor of that, but we do need to weigh all of these other projects. I don't know if that was just the one to remove. There are benefits that come with that though, so that it might make sense to when we're when everybody's getting the shock at seeing that bill to tout the benefits that they're getting from it.

Finally, one comment before I pass it on. Not pictured in here is the cost of delaying some of these projects and increased water main breaks. And so we need to keep that into consideration as we're not going to be delaying any of these projects to save money. They'd be delaying it to then possibly put us in a fiscal emergency later. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to continue on. Vice Chair, Tuna?

First of all, I definitely agree with and I'm thankful for all the prior members' comments and concerns. I guess what it kind of makes me also want to understand better too is when we see these scenarios for this five year period, we have that scenario zero of not making any changes. By implementing these changes, so we do have this 44% compound pretty much increase, what does that then look like for the next five years? Is that do we have some estimation and some visibility scoping back a little bit to see we're just going to do this again then compound it again and again. Like what is the kind of how can we assuage this and say that we're doing this to get this ahead of it.

So yes, that we're not having water main breaks and all these other severe catastrophes, but it's going to even out long term or we can't make that promise.

Yes. I could speak on that briefly. Within our forecast, we are looking at a ten year horizon. And I'll say that as we have the model set up right now, it's showing that after 2031, kind of once we get our revenue up to that level where we're cash funding this level of capital investment, it is showing much lower rate increases, something more on the order of inflation. But I say that with a big caveat that we to be completely honest, that's what we had said last time.

But then the slides that I pointed at earlier with all of the inflation, that was definitely not factored into the model at that time. And so now we're addressing that issue as well. So I don't want to say that that's a guarantee, but if costs were to increase at more of a traditionally or historically typical level, then yes, I think that it is feasible

that we

would be looking at something more like inflationary rate increases. Right.

I just want to make sure it wasn't like we're seeing now again with that drop down within three years at current rates, we're in negative basically in our fund. So just in it, obviously, can't predict the future despite wanting to. But with all the other cost of living increases and things that our people are facing, it's all adding up around the board as everybody else has said. So I just want to make sure that there is some glimmer of hope should things stay at least as they are mostly.

Yes. That's exactly why we do this with a ten year model, even though we wanted to make sure that the focus was on the period that we're really making decisions on right now. But but that's exactly why we set up our models with that ten year view.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Member Sergeant?

Thank you. First of all, want to thank you, Benjamin, for the description today. It was very well accepted. It was a good job. I want to pick up on the opening statement coming from Munich.

I have the same concerns that he has with sticker shock. My biggest concern is looking at your budgets and comparing other cities because people don't look at other city comparisons when they get pissed off when their bills come in, especially electricity and everything else. So my biggest concern at this point, I think, is is as a resident, I thought, what would I think if I saw this? Well, first of all, if you come to me and tell me I'm gonna be 45 more than I paid four years ago, what I'm gonna do is get rid of 45% of my usage. So we're gonna lose that money anyway.

You're not gonna retain it. For your fixed cost, you may be able to raise the fixed cost to be a customer charge just like Edison does. You pay a fee for having an account. That you can't you cannot complain because you have to have that and pay that fee for that account. So we'll retain that money. Yes. We will. Because we're saying for us to keep you in account, this is what it cost us. But now if I tell the homeowner, well, you're going to be paying 45% more because look at the water you're using. What the family is going to do is cut 45% usage, and we're not going to get that money.

And that's my what my fear is, is what's going to happen with these charts and all these budgets. And we're all projecting that this is going to happen. They may that may not fall that way. That's all hopeful thinking. Now another thing Nunez said, now we're going to turn around and we're going to say, hey, we want $05 sales tax increase. So how do we kind of go back and say, what's going to be the most success successful plan? You know, we can ask for a million dollars and get a 100,000. But what's going to work the best? I think we're going to be with fixed cost, raise the fee for having the service. But watch what we do with water rates.

Because if we go too fast, we're just gonna lose all the way around. That that's just my comment. And I appreciate, Benjamin, your job was excellent. I understood everything you said and and I saw a lot of red flags coming up through the whole thing. So thank you so much.

You bet. Alright.

Thank you. So a few comments. I do wanna bring up and just kind of mention and maybe we can discuss a little further some of the comments that were made or questions. So I think one thing that the public needs to remember is what got us to this point, and that is years of neglect. And why it happened, how it happened is less of a concern than the fact that we are here, and it is something that needs to be addressed.

And I'm talking about neglect that happened thirty years ago, forty years ago, fifty years ago, and things that didn't get taken care of in the can kinda got kicked down the road a ways. Well, it's time to pay the piper. You know, this is work that absolutely must be done. So that's that's how we got here. I'm a fan of having the higher fixed fee for the meter because in times of drought, in times of reduced usage, there is a baseline cost to have water available, not necessarily used, but available.

And we can't have it available if we don't have the infrastructure to support it. That meter fee goes towards helping support that infrastructure. Being able to have the pump stations maintained, have the meters maintained, have the reservoirs maintained, and the wellheads. And we now have treatment systems that we weren't dealing with ten years ago. That's completely new to the city to deal with contaminated water.

These are things that we have to consider. Again, I'm a fan of the fixed fee or the higher fee for the meter just simply based on those facts as a baseline cost. The sales tax issue. First of all, I think we're getting a cart in front of the horse here a little bit with with even discussing it because there's nothing that I've heard that is concrete and being proposed. But I do understand the concern there.

I will say this. If this rate increase is approved kind of as outlined in in general terms, I think that could be a part of the sale of the the initiative is to say we can reduce that, the increases that were planned by a certain percentage. Now is that gonna save, you know, 2%, 5% over five years? I I don't know. And I don't even know if that's baked into it.

I think there's a whole lot of unanswered questions that have to be considered. And to hold back on doing this or to take into consideration that at this time, I don't think is appropriate. The automated meters, I think it's a great idea. We've had so many issues from our current old meters that people don't understand how to look at. A lot of times they don't know where they are.

It would be good if they could look at it and get real time information. It would be good if we could get real time information. It would go a long way towards reducing the number of issues that we run into with customers saying that the meter is our problem and not theirs. And I think that would help. And I I think, generally speaking, if you can measure it, you can manage it. If you don't know it's there and you don't know how to measure it, you can't manage it. And as a homeowner or property owner, I think that's a problem. That's all I have. That's all I wanted to bring back. And I'll do one last session if anybody has any closing thoughts on this.

I see member Bardwaja's hand is up. Member Bardwaja, the mic is yours.

All right. Now I have six more questions, okay? Just kidding. So a couple of things. I appreciate everybody's opinions and input on this. I'm going to bring it back to a couple of things. I think the trash increase takes place soon July or next year. Did we just have it? Apologies if I don't remember.

We are actually working on an RFP to be released. That's a new contract that needs to be in place by 2027.

Before or after the strike?

I couldn't tell

you that. So along with that, are we seeing as someone brought up Edison is definitely raising their rates. Everybody's raising their rates. I think you absolutely have to look at all of that together. And I think for me, I would like an honest explanation as to how we got here.

I think you have to be honest with residents and say, look, we got here because of years of delayed maintenance or whatever it was. I think it would be a bad idea not to give them an honest answer because I think people are pretty educated. And I think with things becoming so easy to obtain, it's easy for a false narrative to be spun out there. Mean, you can look at Reddit to the blogs and y'all call the, you know, the observer a blog too. It's there's all sorts of information that'll get out there.

Doesn't mean it's right. I think that also the sales tax initiative, it's just from hearing you know the mayor talk and other council members talk I think a lot of them are in favor of it. So I think we'd be shortsighted not to consider how that's going to be put forth. I don't know if it changes things on the 44% compounded increase, but I think we have to be strategic in how we do this. I don't think anybody can argue that this needs to happen, right?

But you have to be really transparent with the public so that the false narratives are easier to combat. And so that when you get people out there that are saying well wait a second you know I don't make enough for this or I don't make you know at some point you have to also understand it's not always based on what you can afford. It's what the city has to do to move forward. It's no different like when we have our water dispute panel. You know, I get it. You know what? You're not happy that you're having to pay for this water that, you know, your leaky toilet caused or whatever it was. But the city can't just absorb that fee. So taxpayers are going to have to do something. And I am not an advocate of tax.

Taxes the way they are now. But I would just suggest look at how that's going to affect it. If that tax measure goes through, I'd like to I'll tell you, I think we need it. I think it should go through. Everything's become more expensive.

But

I'd also like to see how we can put these things together so that it's got the best opportunity to pass. And again I think that history is important. You don't have to make it the centerpiece of your presentation but as long as you get it out the way hey look you know what we probably should have raised these before then some people understand like, hey, I absolutely got a benefit for however many years. And I think I like how you, Benjamin, you also showed that chart. Here's where the other cities are.

The only thing I didn't see there is where those other cities are going to be over the next five years. I would highly suggest if you could show something like that, I know you're not going to get it from every city, but at least the surrounding cities, Anaheim, La Mirada, La Habra, Buena Park, at least a couple of them, it'll make it a lot more palatable for people to say, well, okay. Everybody's doing it. It's not just us. So thank you.

I'd add to that Golden State Water, because they are one of the providers for the city of Fullerton. I don't know how does anybody know offhand how many customers? No idea? I thought it was Golden State Water. Somewhere in Fullerton. It's suburban. It's small being 10 homes or thousand? Maybe hundreds? Okay. I appreciate that. But I would like to see their rates as well. I think that's a fair discussion point.

All right.

Last thoughts as we move down the line? Okay. Yes. Member Sergeant.

Thank you. I only had one one. I wanna echo what Munis said. I'm I'm in favor of how we got here. When I ran for city council, twice, there was a huge study on how come we're broke, how come we're behind, what's going on. No questions were ever answered. I was a candidate. I did town halls. I had to answer questions. I did my research. I sat with Ken Domer. I did all the books, looked at it. But nobody ever gave me the answer. How the heck did we get here? What yeah. Kick the can. That's what city council was saying. I I remember that Ahmad Zahara said it's sitting in that chair right where Menish is sitting. He said, yeah. We who cares?

You have to pay. We've been kicking the, you guys have been kicking the can too long. We didn't kick the can. They did. We're not the managers. They are. So let's find out why we're here and maybe all of us can put our heads together as the advisory committee and help to not let that happen again. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you. I will add to that. You know, I've been serving as a volunteer as an elected for, I think I'm on my nineteenth year. I think next year is twenty years. I don't get a pin for it. But for twenty years ish, been involved. And I will say early on when I did get involved, it was because the can had been kicked down the road for decades. And for the last twenty years, I know I have and I know many in this room have worked towards, improving the infrastructure, seeing the neglect, and trying to move us in the right direction. Unfortunately, it's like, trying to, you know, turn a a aircraft carrier around in the ocean. It doesn't happen very quickly.

And it doesn't happen without a lot of people like the folks here on this committee pushing and prodding to do that, staff being very responsive and understanding, and the general public being vocal. So, you know, if that's if we wanna go down the road of of how we got here, I I'm not gonna, you know, say we don't need to or or it's wasted effort. I just don't think it answers the real question of how we're gonna move forward.

I think you just do a little bit. I don't think you like I said, don't make it the centerpiece, but you gotta just say, hey. Look. This is what took place.

Yeah.

If it takes you more than twenty seconds, you've gone too far because they've already stopped paying attention at that point.

I mean, know twenty years ago when I was getting involved, it just was not a priority for the city council or the staff. I mean, public works would work with what they had, but there was just no priority to do public works projects. It was not a big push from the council. There were a lot of pet projects thanks to what was it called back then? Redevelopment Agency.

Thank you.

Yes. I see

it, sir.

Now the successor successor agency. So I think a lot of it came from that, people with their pet projects and a lot of money and focus there, and there wasn't the eye on infrastructure except in those areas. And it just the nature of the way it went. But sure. We can go down that road. Member Sarvas?

I would like to move that we ask Dantec to proceed with scenario two.

All right.

Can we put that scenario back? Yeah, please. Mr. Stewart, take your time getting there. And then I'll ask my committee members if anybody right off the bat has a second for that for us to consider.

I'll second.

We have a motion and we have a second. Now let's bring up scenario two. Scenario two is scenario one plus AMI implementation. Okay.

So this is scenario two. And which one were you saying, Greg?

Is this And

if it helps, I can

go back to the description here.

We do a side by side. Oh, there we go. Thank you.

Yep. That's better. Thank you. So assumes five miles and thank you, Julia.

Thank Christie

for that. Assumes five miles of pipe replacement in fiscal years '26 and '27, six miles in '28, seven miles year after year. Redistributes non pipe projects over the five year period.

The difference is the AMI?

Yep.

Can you just quickly summarize what the benefit of that would be? Is that okay to ask him that for?

Absolutely. We a motion to second. We're contemplating it. If you have any further questions about it, if staff could try to answer his question or Mr. Stewart, if you could answer his question as to what you think the benefit would be for AMI implementation.

It's actually like another $10,000,000 right? Or maybe more. No, it's $12,000,000 Am I doing that right? 12.5?

Two and a half year after year. Yeah.

So the benefits of AMI is there's a lot of benefits. One of the first ones is the ability of all our customers to actually see what they're using every single day. Another really good ability of AMI is for us to capture leaks as they happen. So within twenty four hours we can go back and see it. Another good advantage is possibly pressure. We can see what's happening throughout the system. That's all I can think of.

Those are actually really important ones.

Those are important. But what kind of preventative maintenance would that lead to? Or would that lead to, hey, we won't have a sewer exploding or pressure line or fresh water line exploding? What will that lead to?

Yeah. So the pressure profiling will allow us to see what's going on throughout the system with pressure. So if we see a spike in one area, can kind of fix that. It allows us to be a little more proactive because we would see certain areas that are bumping up. And we could say, hey, we need to fix what's going on over here with our pumping, where we're pushing water, whatever it is. Additionally, we'll help the residents most because if a resident right now, as you know, if it's every two months, if you have a leak, it could be two months This before you would allow us to go out and knock on the door the very next day. Hey, you have a leak. Can you fix it? And additionally, for a lot, you know, we've talked about, the bill disputes. We even know exactly what happens to every single resident.

And I think we'd really limit bill disputes because we'd be able talk to a customer right away. Hey, there's something going on here. Can you fix it right away? Or if somebody has a large bill, hey, I didn't do I didn't use that water. Didn't use that water. Well, let's go back and look at your AMI usage. You run your water every single Monday Monday through Friday, 07:00 in the morning, your irrigation is going off. So I think it would be a benefit in that.

That's excellent. So the AMI I mean, that

I don't want to call it a fluffed estimate. But I mean, is that an actual estimate for an effective and meaningful system or is that like a pie in the sky the thing also drives itself program because I've seen you know where sometimes good intentions are missed you know they they go off the rail so I'm asking you a $2,500,000 a year 12 and a half million lead to an effective and efficient system? Or is that going to be some kind of Rolls Royce that's going to need a bunch of maintenance down the street down the road?

No. So actually so the best estimate we've gotten so far for a full deployment of AMI is about $20,000,000 This gives us 10,000,000, but that starts to get the ball rolling.

Got

it. Now additionally, the most important thing is we don't want to do a full AMI payment in the very beginning because as you know infrastructure fell. So if we said, hey, let's do a full deployment. Let's do 20,000,000 this year, what happens is in ten years and everything starts to fell, it all fails at the same time. So this approach, 2,500,000.0 a year, we divide it up. So that way, as we go for rate studies in the future, we're able to replace it as it starts to fail and we're spread it apart.

I'll just ask, so how much is this adding to the rate increase every year, do you think?

1%, was it, Benjamin?

It was about it basically was a 2% bump in those first three years. It took us from 10% to 12%. Okay. Because we are doing it on that kind of even $2,500,000 per year clip, it's kind of like the pipe replacement. Once we get the revenue up to the level two cash fund, that 2,500,000 per year, necessarily It's continuing to add pressure in the future.

I think it's a good investment. I think it only benefits from doing that. So thank you.

And if I could add to the AMI too, we are aggressively going after grants for AMI. We recently put one in last fiscal year for $2,500,000 $4,000,000 total. We're going to continue to do that. So we're hoping that through grants and other funding that we can actually fund this thing in total. This is a start for us.

Thank you.

Fantastic. Alright. There is a motion and a second. I think we do need to open it up for public comment before we make the, vote. So is there any member of the public wishing to speak on this? If you would like to speak, please raise your hand.

There is no one online.

No one is online. No one's in the chamber. Alright. Well, we'll just bring it right back, and we'll ask for the roll call vote.

Chair Seibel?

Aye.

Vice chair Tuna? Aye. Member Bardwaja?

That's pretty good. I agree.

Member Kingsford?

Aye.

Member Sargent?

Aye.

Member Sarvas?

Yes.

And member Molina is absent.

Thank you. Mister chair,

can I ask for some clarification? So you voted on moving forward with scenario two. You also talked about other items to discuss. Is that something you would like to discuss as part of the report and bring to counsel, or how would you like to address that?

Because

our obviously, our preference is to take one scenario and not confuse the matter.

Correct. So can we go back to the schedule, the dates? Because I think we'd like we would like to hear back on some of the answers that we've or some of the questions that have been asked. So if we could come back, I think, on September 15 and maybe provide some of those answers that were, or answers to the questions that we asked. I think that would be good. As far as how it's presented to counsel, I think we need to have that information, and then we can help you develop what that might look like to present to counsel. Does that answer your question?

I think so.

And is there any objection to what I just said from the committee? Okay. No objection.

Okay. Yep.

And is that it for mister Stewart? Is he ready to log off and go pour himself something cold to

drink? Yes.

Thank you, mister Stewart. Thank you

Thank you all your presentation.

We'll see you, I think, September 15.

Sounds great. Great discussion. Thank you, folks.

Alright. Take care.

Okay. I think we're moving on. We'll take a look at the infrastructure report update, and I think we're covering streets. We love roads.

I'll I'll kick this off with just a although, we don't have any of the public, really joining us today, sometimes they do review the meetings over time. So just for the benefit of the public and some of the newer members. Real quick, very quick update of why what and why we're here. So I did go through this before, but very quickly back in 2020, I think the chair was the only member on the committee that was part of that, you know, original report that looked at the infrastructure, many different items in infrastructure, the conditions, funding, and the needs, and basically laying out what a preferred funding level would be to address all our infrastructure needs. Back, about six months ago, nine months ago now, INREC requested that we look at those look at this report and maybe update some of the the infrastructure needs and funding levels and with a focus on the assets, our funding, and community engagement.

So I think what we're gonna start with is updating the asset data sheets on, you know, different meetings. The one we'll be handling here. Staff will providing the quantity, the current status, and and any regulations that we'll have to deal with. And what we're requesting from INRAC is your opinion and recommendations on what type of annual maintenance and rehabilitation we should be doing, the time frame you would suggest to try and address it within, and also some levels of preferred funding. So really gonna be asking a lot of you guys in the next few months.

In the past, it was a lot of staff giving recommendations. I would like to kind of change that around and see, have interact the committee provide the recommendations with that. Hey. Gotta change it up a little bit. So with that, I will switch it over to Juan.

Alright. Thank you, David. Alright. For this month, like David mentioned, we're gonna talk about streets. The goal is to provide an overview of our street network. This will give the committee and the public a clear picture of where our street stand today and, most importantly, help guide discussion and recommended strategies and funding priorities moving forward. Please note that in this presentation, alleys are not part of the overview. Those will come afterwards. Alright. So let's give some back work background on our street network.

City maintains two main types of streets. Arterial streets cover approximately 71 miles of roadway and are two to three lanes in each direction and carry high traffic volumes, some featuring some landscape medians. Second being local streets, which cover about 226 miles, are single lane per direction, primarily serving residential areas. Our streets, you know, are typically designed to last twenty to twenty five years, but with maintenance. You know?

If but with maintenance like slurry seals or, granite overlays, we can stretch our lifespan longer. Factors that affect, pavement life are delayed preventive maintenance, traffic volume and loading, age of the pavement, utility cuts, storm water infiltration, the soil and the base material underneath the street. And so, you know, the type of pavement, whether it's PCC or a or asphalt. So how does the city assess and evaluate its street conditions? The PMP is our primary tool for tracking payment condition and planning maintenance.

The basis of the data in the fact sheet for streets comes from the PMP report. Arterials are required to be inspected every two years, and local streets every six years. Although, we're a little bit more proactive, right, on six years? It's every

Yeah. So for residential streets, we actually do a third of the streets every two years.

Yeah. Yeah.

Each segment gets a pavement condition index or PCI score from zero to a 100. The fewer issues like potholes, rutting, or cracking, the higher the PCI. This plan or PMP gives us an objective measure of road conditions and helps us prioritize where to invest our resources. Latest PMP was completed in May 2024 with the next update update being in 2026. I like to highlight that OCTA requires the PMP to be in place and maintain to qualify for allocation of measure m two funds.

Alright. So let's take a look at where our Fullerton's PCI scores and what was found in the 2024 PMP report. So result show that arterials overall are in good shape with an average PCI of 75.6, which are good. Local roads overall are in fair shape, with an average PCI of 65.6. If you combine both arterials and local streets, overall, the city averages a PCI score of 69.3.

This means, well, if you take a look at the the pie charts, it means that while streets are in decent shape, however, there's still a significant share of streets falling into lower categories, especially our local roads. So if you take a look at this, you know, very poor local roads, 28% in comparison to arterials, which is 6%. In terms of the PCI rating compared to other cities in the county of Orange, Fullerton ranks fifth from the bottom out of 17 other cities. County average county average of the PCI score is 79.1, with 86 c six being the highest PCI rating. So let's kinda take a look at a map of PCI rating of very good streets.

About 37% of all streets are in good shape, very good shape with PCI score of 86 to a 100. Another 13% are rated good, where treatments like crack sealing and slurry are appropriate. So if you combine both of very good and good streets, about half of our total streets are in very good or good condition. But it's important to keep keep up with preventative maintenance to avoid slip slipping into more costly repairs. This map shows the PCI rating for fair streets.

Overall, we are at 15% of all streets are rated fair. These are eligible for thin overlays, granite overlays. On the other spectrum, we start getting into the poor streets. And these are PCI scores between 41 to 59, and 13% of all streets are in poor condition, neither needing thicker overlays to bring them back to a 100% PCI score. And as we move on, this map shows the very, very poor streets, with PCI scores of zero to 40.

23% of all streets are in very poor condition, requiring, a full reconstruction. So when we look at the lower condition category, the key difference emerges between arterials and local streets as you as I pointed out earlier. You know, only 6% of arterials are in very poor shape compared to 28% of the local roads. This last group is the most expensive to address, and without sufficient preventive maintenance, more streets risk moving into this category. So what does that mean as far as dollar figures and, you know, trying to, address these deficiencies?

Table here breaks down the estimated cost per mile for different types of street, treatments. Now bear in mind, this is budgetary and includes soft cost. This this really shows the range in cost depending on the level of work required. Slurry seals, this is the least expensive option. It's a preventive maintenance to extend the life of streets that aren't still in good shape.

Thin grinding overlays, which range between two to three inches. Those you could see how costs rise significantly here ranging from 1.1 to 2 and a half million per mile. This typically is applied to streets in fair condition where the surface is warm but the base is still strong. As you get into a thicker grinder overlay between four to five inches, these project cost roughly between 1.5 or 3.1 millions million per mile. These are used on streets in poor condition where deeper structural repair is needed.

And as you get into the very poor street conditions, full reconstruction is required. This is far by far the most expensive treatment depending on the site and the project cost range between 2.3 to $5,000,000. Please note that with certain treatment types, ADA improvements are required. So, basically, everything is other than slurry seal. We are mandated to do them.

So the takeaway from this table is that invest investing in preventive maintenance like Fluricea is far most cost effective than waiting until a street deteriorates to the point of needing overlays or full reconstruction. So let's so what are current estimated costs? So if we if we wanna address everything, all the streets at once, we'll we take the number of miles total miles in each category corresponding per the cost per mile. It results in roughly 227,000,000 for local roads and another 100,000,000 for arterial streets. You know, this this this would be a grand total dollar figures for a total investment.

However, realistically, there's no way we're gonna be able it's not practical to do everything, you know, in one shot. So this is where nor do we have the budget for it. So I think this is where we gotta take a look at our current budget forecast and and plan ahead, and prioritize which streets and what types of treatments we should be doing each year.

One thing I'll add to that going forward is it would be good if you used some sort of a benchmark for what is, like, best practice When you talk about what cycles we should have and why, I think that helps, especially do we have any civil engineers up here? I know member Molina is. Mhmm. But for those of us that are not civil engineers, it helps provide some context as to why.

Sure. So with our current annual program and our budget, currently, the city is typically completing about one mile of arterial streets each year, along with two and a half to three miles of local streets. And we are also bringing, performing slurry seal treatments. I know that was something David did bring back, recently, within the last few years. So we're funding's available where we've been doing some slurry sealing around the the city.

Keynote is in some of the challenges as you guys are all aware, and I know David's mentioned them previously is, you know, funding gaps. You know, the overall need to for our street rehabs far exceed the resources, that we currently have. The back the backlog of streets that we have, you know, will be slipping into poor and very poor conditions, which, you know, it's it's gonna grow faster that we need to address them. General fund limitations, you know, very little general fund money is available for streets, and what is available is minimal compared to what's required. Development and utility fees, you know, it's it's, these revenue streams have remained stagnant or below market, which means they aren't keeping up pace with the rising cost of infrastructure.

And I know this this has been even been brought up in the previous presentation with water rates. It's the rising cost of construction and materials. It's just, you know, costs have escalated within the recent years. So each mile of road that we wanna complete is costing the city more money than in the past. So I think with that, you know, it's it's I wanna pull up the the draft, the fact sheet If I could get to it, let's see where it's at.

Oh, here he was. Here we go. Let's see if I could zoom in. So this information is, you know, that I just presented is summarized in this section somewhere or manner. And where I think, you know, it shows the latest conditions of the data, the cost estimates, and the program context.

I think this where where we're really seeking input on is the recommended strategies and the associated costs and where we wanna put money moving forward. You know? And as we close this presentation, the main question to the committee is, you know, how should we prioritize our annual street program given the current funding reality? You know, do we continue spreading resources across both arterials and local streets or focus more on heavily on one category, whether it's arterials or just local streets or preventive maintenance versus full reconstructions. You know, in the event that new funding becomes available, should we emphasize, like I said, and concentrate on certain treatment types?

I think you you briefly mentioned this, chair. What cycles should we be looking at? Eight year cycles, ten years, or should we be looking even further? So I think with that, I like to get from the committee your input specifically on these strategies, and how, you know, we move forward and update this fact sheet So that way, we can provide clear clear representation to our our public. So with that being said, I'm gonna open it up, for any comments and feedback.

I think it's safe to say that there's a lot more work than we can afford.

Pretty much.

I I think the starting point, at least for me to have this discussion, is if you go back up to your local and arterial numbers, just right up there, if we were to triage those and say, but what is the best practice and how often should we be doing these things to get these cycles improved? That that's a series of metrics that I think I need to hear from you Mhmm. As as really as an expert on this. And then from there, we can say, alright. If we have this many miles of of different types of roadway that we are concerned with, what is our priority?

I think we need to really start honing in on those those poor and very poor conditions, I think that needs to be a priority. And that's for arterial and local and and definitely on the local. I think there's when I'm talking to to folks, we will joke about the arterials once in a blue moon when you drive on them. But the arterials now are so good because we've made headway, because you, gentlemen, have worked really hard and your staff has worked really hard to bring that to us and and get all of us on the same page that the arterials are really in great shape by comparison. Right?

Which is good. But we still need to get the rest of the arterials. I think 12 miles, that's still pretty rough that we need to look at. But when it comes to local, it's huge. We got a we got a lot of really bad roads.

So it's time to twist that investment around and start looking at local residential roads and how we strategize and prioritize those. I like the program that we have for slurry, but I think we can I think if we had more money available, we would slurry more? And I think we should slurry more. There are some really good roads out there I saw built, whether it was by a developer or just over the years from, that are now, you know, public streets that have been repaved, they could definitely benefit from it. You know?

And when you start walking on, you feel the aggregate start to get loose, little bits of fine gravel, it's time. And, and I know you guys have been working towards that, but, obviously, we need more money. So what what level is that for that quality of a road to be able to do all those things? You know, what does that look like? You know, we have some some numbers here, some percentages. I think that helps tell part of the story and how much we need to do. But, you know, we need to while we're addressing the poor and very poor, we need to maintain those good and fair. Right?

So that they don't slip down.

That's right. Because as soon as those they slip down, we're not gonna be able to use some of our special allocated funding. Right? I I think was it gas tax? Is that the one that we can't use or Measure M? Or is it one of the others?

We don't have any gas tax to use on streets anymore because the maintenance picks it up. But m two, you can use on streets. No problem. So

there you go. That's my 2¢ for now. Kinda flipping it on set. I think for a while, we did make arterials a priority. It was, and it's clearly worked. You've done an excellent job of raising those numbers. Still gotta focus on that 12 miles, though. Alright. I'm gonna open it up to committee input. I'm gonna start on my left and start with member sergeant.

I agree with the chair a 100 that you guys are doing a great job on the other streets. It looks really good. A lot of areas look fantastic. Even Orangethorpe looks great on most of it, which is nice for me because that's where my office is. Thank you.

First of all, the very poor streets, unfortunately, I live in the majority of those areas and you guys were just up on Grand View. And you did two major patches on Grand View. They were like 15 by 22 of them in front of a commercial a partial commercial residential house. It's a forklift repair company in the middle of our neighborhood, and they had all brand new patching down out in front of where they drive their forklifts. I noticed it and took pictures.

I thought, what the hell? Why are we paying for this guy? He's running this, it's a semi what do they call it? A light commercial, ordinance or something. And they did that and I didn't wanna feel jealous because our streets, you know, are are falling apart and you can you can crash in your car because the holes are so deep. But why did we fix Grandview that? Well, we don't have the money. And I agree with Greg a 100%. We the streets that are so deteriorating that there's four inches piece of concrete laying in the streets. I know we don't have the money and we've got ahead because you've done such a good job according, you know, to the studies you're showing us tonight, and we're doing really good on some stuff.

That would be fantastic if we could start going after the worst. You know, look at the worst scenario. Can we start to fix a little of the worst? What do we need to do? I mean, that that's the majority of my concern as a resident here And looking at the streets in those rural streets with no you know, that that's a bad area. It is just really bad. It's getting beyond bad. It's it's almost unsafe for a for a mom to be walking their kid in a stroller. It's it's almost like, you know, we don't have a sidewalks in our areas. So that's said that this that makes me happy that we've been talking about it. Thank you.

Vice chair.

Definitely agree with everybody else that, you know, I think it's time we definitely focus on the residential streets. And, I mean, the pyramid just needs to get inverted. We do need to be looking at the absolute bottom of the barrel, which is almost half of our streets. And that's, you know, an awful state to be in, unfortunately. And the more we do water projects, that's obviously gonna tear up.

I live on Lantana, and that's been you know, was tore up in the last two years, and we don't know when that's coming around. Probably five more, I think, because next time I saw any discussion up on the on the map. But, you know, it's again, it you know, we're we're dealing with all these things that are just coming to fruition right now, and it's really tough. But I think we do need to set those benchmarks of what we would like to do, you know, that we have to be clear on what we need to accomplish and what we you know, what that's gonna look like in a very clear way. I mean, you know, getting $2,500,000 from the general and infrastructure funds is obviously not sustainable to accomplish anything, and we need to be pushing putting pressure on our officials to get this done.

And be I mean, that's that's two houses, you know, in this city. Like, that's they're giving us a pittance. We need to say we need these things. This is what's happening, and the residents deserve it too. You know? We need to figure out the funding on there, and they need to sort it, and we need to put the pressure on them. So I just appreciate all the work you guys do, and if we can clearly elucidate what needs to be accomplished and, you know, worst case scenario first, let's get those things done the right way.

Thank you. Member service.

I agree with the other comments about the need to focus on more of the local streets given the difference in PCI. I calculating the average correctly? It's just weighted for number of miles?

Correct.

Okay. Thank you. The the reality of it though is that there are so many more of those local streets in poor condition. Like if I'm doing the math here right, we could tell you to focus just on local streets with very poor condition and spend the full budget on it. And Christy's kid is gonna be a senior in high school when you're done. That's eighteen years. Right?

Yeah.

I we we need to put more of a focus on here, but this the amount of money that we have cannot make a dent in these streets. I don't know if you can improve that average PCI with a full budget if you if you focused on very poor. So there does need to be a focus I think here to increase those those fair conditions. I hate to say it, but I think that we need to let the arterials drop. I I think that those need to approach fare.

If we focus our money on the very poor local streets, the average city PCI is gonna go down just by the just by the number of of miles that are here. So are we prepared to see the arterial roads average decrease? And I think that we need to. I think that we need to be able to have more of an equitable distribution across those streets. But we've got to be very careful about messaging this.

Right? People see the arterials. Everybody knows which arterial roads are broken, and when the conversation goes around local roads, I hear, well, the street my councilman lives on is looking real great, right? Or the NRAT committee members, they get all taken care of. And we know that that's

not That's true.

How come

you guys got that? Why did you get

this is what I hear from our neighbors.

Missed one meeting and you guys got streets?

Going to leave that comment there. I don't know how that helps you. There are two priorities that I see, focusing more on local roads, and that's going to come at the detriment of the arterials, to try and bring them both into that fair range. And we need a lot more into this budget.

So are you saying focus more on local roads versus arterial?

Yeah. Yeah. I think we do need to have more of a focus on locals because of this the disparity that's on the screen right now. We need to bring that that those local roads up to be more more even with the arterials. The only way that we're gonna make any improvement citywide is by increasing the budget though. It's not about moving around Right. A few dollars any anywhere. One so the going back to the estimated cost, is the the last time we updated this sheet was 2020. That's the one that's on the website right now. The data sheet, I mean.

Yes. On the

data sheet.

Yes. We

just saw from Stantec some of these increases of, you know, 50% over five years. But when I compare the slurry seal costs, this is a 277% increase. Some of these costs have gone up way more than inflation. Is there am I missing something that's not in the construction inputs? Why are these costs so inflated?

A lot of the labor costs have just gone sky high. Yep. You know, for I think I've mentioned this before for we we assume a thousand dollars a day for one person to show up.

That's that's you're they're getting paid a thousand dollars?

No. Fully fully burdened Prevailing wage. Prevailing wage. All benefits paid. French brands. And

those are contractors or those cities?

Yeah. Those are contractors.

For an eight hour day.

Yeah. So for a crew of four, you're I'm already at $4, and they haven't done anything yet. Now you add in all the equipment and the materials, and, you know, it's that's why it's very expensive, and we try to be as focused as we possibly can because it's usually the labor cost that that they get you.

And that's and to Greg's point, it went up that much in the last couple years, Paso rate of inflation.

Or did we miss it last time?

Were were those numbers as well? COVID.

A lot of back in 2020, I I would say that other ways to look at it, you could say that maybe the budgeting wasn't done necessarily correctly, missed a few things. I would say definitely when we do I we update our budgetary costs every year, and we are conservative. We prefer to be on the slightly higher side than on the slightly lower side. I'd rather be as transparent as possible rather than trying to show someone a good number. I'd rather show someone a real number.

A lot of our costs do come in under these budgets, but these are what we consider based on recent bids that we're getting, the costs per mile. And they've definitely gone up 200%. Starry seal oil costs have gone up and down. Products have gone left and right. But a lot of it has to do with labor

costs. Okay.

I I appreciate the more conservative approach, and that's probably the other the other factor in here is staff's approach is more real now. Thank you for that. Last question. When we accomplish these ADA improvements, is that a one time upgrade?

No. We wish.

That standards change. You hope yeah. You you hope it is. You know, sidewalk, that hasn't changed in years and years. I don't expect those requirements to change. Curb ramps is the biggest item. Mhmm. They do change their their they have changed their requirements, and they become more stringent. They've added things. They've taken things away. So anytime we do a job, we have to look to see, does it meet current standards? If it doesn't meet current standards, we have to address them. And we pay around $10,000 per curb ramp. Damn. So an intersection is $40 right off the bat.

And you look at, you know, how often contractors do the curb ramps and have to rip you know, rip out half of it after they've done it once or replace half of it because Percentages. Yeah. It's just the tolerances are so ridiculously tight. It's it really is pushing the the edge of our ability to do construction within those tolerances. I mean, it's it's pretty amazing.

Yeah. And to that point, you know, contractors are requesting survey stakes for to make sure it's precise and they build it so they're not ripping it out.

So that's a good point. It's they may be charging us 10,000, but now we have to pay for the survey crew to come out that day, and that can be $4,000 per day of a survey crew. Granted, you can split that up into the four ramps, etcetera, etcetera. Then you've got our inspectors out there. So, I mean, the cost to do a curb ramp is horrendous when you break it down.

Does that factor into decision making other than the raw cost of it? I'm worried about how we're balancing accessibility with which projects we choose.

It it is it is thought about, but it's definitely not an overriding factor. I think really the overriding factor is can we do slurry seal or do we have to grind an overlay? If we do grind an overlay, curb ramps, concrete work has to happen, and that's just the cost of the project.

And the increased accessibility to I can now push my stroller up.

Yes.

Okay. I think that you answered my question. Thank you.

Member Klingsberg.

I guess my question is in looking at sort of the very poor, poor, is there a way to factor in sort of rate of deterioration? Meaning you may have two roads that are very poor, but one of them was redone twenty years ago and one of them was redone forty years ago.

Oh, yeah. We'll definitely look at the history and pick.

Yeah, because, you know, I do a lot of cycling and there's a section of acacia from Orangethorpe to the Anaheim border that is absolutely horrendous, which wasn't that bad ten years ago. But because I ride it every week, I get to see the rate of deterioration versus other sections of road I've been riding that haven't been done that are still in pretty good shape just because because there's not semi traffic five days a week. So

I think arterial versus residential is a big factor in that. You know? A lot of the residential I let me back that up. There's streets that, I think, twenty ish years ago, were just getting their first real rebuild of a roadway or grind an overlay Mhmm. Where it had been decades of slurry seals put on top. And it it does work. You know, if you slurry on a standards on a regular schedule, it works. But, you know, taking off for the last thirty or forty years of doing a lot of slurry sealing affected it. So a lot of the residential streets are in really rough shape.

And, again, going to going to that, I live right near Troy High School, so we've got not Dorothy, but Melody sees a lot of Troy traffic, whereas Virginia, which is the street I live on, only 50 yards away sees much less traffic, but the rate of deterioration on Melody is much greater.

Thank

you. Member Bird Wajah.

You know what? I'm kind of torn. I hear what Greg's saying, I like that, especially being the one member who didn't get his street repaved. But I mean, no matter how much we talk about this, we're never gonna I think all of us will be retired. By the time it gets done, is there a way to balance it a little bit more? I mean, know the arterial streets get used a lot you know by most residents but I mean that is quite a bit and we're more than 20 I mean we're more than a quarter 28% are very poor. I'm pretty sure mine is in the ultra red extremely poor.

So one thing to know with our arterial streets, and it's not to say why there's a large disparity between local streets coming back coming from general engineering division, typically larger developments that are conditioned to repave the roadways, front arterials. Those are the larger developments.

You mean like the pines and whatnot?

Like the pines. Like the Goodman project off in Orange, Dorp, and Kimberly in State College.

So they're doing it to your specs? I mean, that where they're

re Yes.

Okay. So they're getting okay.

That makes sense. So they're

Didn't think about that.

In a sense, arterials are getting some love, additional love, because of these developments.

Okay. So they're already getting that weighted the effort towards it is more weighted than we realize. Would that be a fair

It certainly helps. I mean, we don't have a tremendous amount of large developments that are required to do a significant amount significant length of paving but whatever we do absolutely helps.

It adds funding releases funding or relieves funding for those areas too.

Is

moving forward do you think that yeah, because we share so many slides, it's hard to remember sometimes. How is the map looking for the local roads for the very poor sections?

It's the same. It's been spread out. I think the one area we could point out is the Southeast. In general, it's pretty decent. We we've if you go back in time, it's certainly decreasing. It's decreasing. I we've we've taken care of a lot of a lot of the standalone areas and we're down to more an entire neighborhood now.

So now these are the ones that are poor. I mean I see my street is absolutely poor and I appreciate that being in there but is there a plan to where that we can look at that shows these are the future areas over the next five years or is that So and I I It doesn't have to be tonight. I don't want to hold everybody up.

So to a great degree, I stopped creating that map because we were focusing on water and sewer projects.

Got it. Okay.

So we couldn't and any other money that came up, then we would have that discussion and see where to focus the money on it. So Okay.

Water might

be Having that five year plan is is when you have sufficient funding to do the typical maintenance activities, which why we're having this conversation is we don't have that.

Mhmm.

So maybe I can throw it a different way at you, throw questions. Should we look at what would it take to make a significant increase in PCI or payment conditions over ten years or twenty years or five years? Because we could come back with slightly different scenarios of how much that could cost.

But we don't have

I I don't think there's an easy answer to this, but some of this we would like to, in the future, have you know, do we present it to council as an FYI to them? Is it something we can use when we get into community engagement to put out to the community? So should we be looking at a ten year program to try and address the streets? Would you prefer you know, my concern is if we focus the vast majority of our funds on local streets, then we're we're just gonna have the fair streets come down, and we're still in that can't catch up mode.

So you'll stay in that mode longer Yes. By the time that you get to the arch the local streets. Right?

So it this is very much a catch 22. We could say, hey. If we had a ten year program, this is what we can accomplish. And I guarantee you, it's not gonna be every single street that needs work. Okay. But you would see us the residents would see a significant increase in the the citywide conditions. So do is the committee more in favor of that, or is it more in favor of no? Go around this the city in, you know, every every year, do something in each quadrant of the city and and do it? Or is it, hey. Come back with you've got 20,000,000. How would you deal with it?

Personally, I I have two things I'm gonna say. I and I'll give the mic back. I don't wanna benefit the local streets by forfeiting an earlier, you know Demise. Demise. That's what we're thank you.

Of our arterials where we're all traveling on. I mean, I travel up and down my street a few times a day, but I travel much further on past entry than I do on my street. So, you know, obviously, the selfish side is, of course, I don't want to look out and see eight different colors, cracks, and that god awful, you know, light gray from the stupid sci fi nonsense that happened. Not just opinion, but fact. But for poops and giggles, because I don't want to say the other word, I'll open another can of worms.

If that mysterious tax does happen, have you guys looked at how quickly a lot of these things would be taken care of? Because I think it would accelerate the repair or the remodeling or whatever you're calling it, resurfacing. And again from a palatable standpoint I think that also helps people understand why that would be important to pass.

Yeah. I mean we started that thought process. We haven't put it down anything in paper to bring to you. My thought process is, okay. We'd probably get around $20,000,000 a year

Okay. From the tax?

As a as a budget. So we've got existing eight you know, I I I I would I would not stand behind putting a 100% of the money on of an infrastructure tax into streets. I'd put a, oh, a huge chunk of it, but we have other infrastructure that needs work.

So But you don't

let's just say, you know, with existing funding and new funding, let's say we get to 20,000,000.

Two and a half times where you're at now.

Right.

Right. How would we spend that over the next ten years? And I think I would put a probably right up front because it's quick and easy to do. We get your first thought of money in. I would do a lot of slurry seal. K. As you're working away working away at doing, you know, design of the other streets. But we we we need to stop. I think we're probably getting to the point where we're be told to start figuring out how where you'd I would think so. But I think it's gonna be my initial reaction is it's gonna be trying to spread out the money to to certainly work on the local streets but not ignore anything else.

So I don't wanna like I said, I don't wanna hijack the discussion because we're talking about something a little bit different here but that does help and creates a little bit of context. So then bringing it back to this and thank you David for actually knowing that stuff. It's always impressive to see that. I'd like to see a little bit more towards the local streets, me personally, but I don't want to cause the demise for arterials at the expense of arterials because that's where a lot more damage is going to happen to vehicles, more accidents Because 25 miles an hour, even the speeders at 35, are not going to cause as much damage as somebody doing 50 or 60 on an interior where it's not smooth, where it's cracked, or whatever.

All right. I'm going to start back over on my left. And as quickly as you can and succinctly as you can, let's get through this so we can give, staff the appropriate directions. Member sergeant.

I just wanna make, two comments. Number one comment was that if and I know this is not in our department and we're not really in a position to discuss it but city council has discussed the fact and speculated that yes if they did do the sales tax there would be a $4,000,000 reserve after we got our money back in our budgets to where we needed to be. We were at a $9,000,000 deficit when that conversation came down. And they're saying if they raise a half a cent, so there's something to look forward in that. That was my first comment.

That's a study they did that came straight from counsel. I listened to them. Secondly, the streets that you're showing on there that the vice chair and I were just looking at the poor streets. I rode my bike on those streets in 1972 is when I started riding my bike on those streets. Those streets have not been repaired since 1972, and I can verify that because I rode my bike to Laguna Lake every day in the seventies and went fishing every day and drove all those streets. So, Greg, the chair was absolutely on target. Some of the streets have not been touched since the seventies. So I don't feel bad saying the arterial streets, yeah, pay attention to them, but let's not turn our head on the emergency.

Thank you. Vice chair? Oh, I'm sorry. Did I I didn't mean to cut you off, members

No. You're

you're done.

That's good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Vice chair.

Yeah. I mean, definitely, we can't ignore all the things, you know, either too. You know, but maybe something like an 8020, seventy thirty where we're just shifting again the pyramid, inverting it a little bit and saying it's time to really put some weight into this. And it's gonna be more noticeable by the residents. That's gonna quote a lot of this rate too. I mean, we're asking them to pay a lot more for other things like this. And if their streets aren't all messed up, maybe we get less, you know, holes in our tires and wear wearing wearing wow. Wearing away at our vehicles and things like that. You know, a little less out of pocket, looking forward to. It, you know, yeah. So I think, you know, that's kind of where we need to be for sure though.

Thank you.

Thank you. Member Sarfas.

I think it would be helpful to see a plan over probably ten years. It needs to be and nothing shorter to make an improvement. Maybe we're aiming for an average PCI of 70 around there and there's a lot of work you can do in between focusing on very poor

or not.

But I

think we need a need a benchmark to try and say, here's we could prove it to medium fare and this is what it would cost. Does traffic volume go into the calculation of what street to go? Because I think that

It's a it's a consideration, but honestly, no. It's not huge on my list of where we need to go. All the other factors take precedence over traffic volume.

It it seems like if we're gonna go we're gonna have to split these very poor local roads. There are there might be some that have significant more volume in those, if we can focus that.

So there are there

are collector streets within a neighborhood. Certainly, we've looked at some of those because of the when we're looking at, oh, I got a little extra money, where could we go? I've looked at the residential collector streets, but mostly in front of schools the last couple of years just to address something in front of a school to make it safer obviously for the drop off and pick up in those areas. But, as a general rule over the last few years, traffic volume has not been an overriding reason to pick a street.

I think those are good priorities to keep, and maybe we expand that circle a little bit to if if it's a it may not be a quantified volume thing, but, you know, we can see from this map. I think you're doing a good job of the the access to a single community should be prioritized over something at

the end.

It's a catch 22 because, theoretically, you wanna work from the inside out, not the outside in. Because you don't want to fix the street and then next year have the heavy trucks drive over a nice street to get to the bad street. So it's a catch 22 there. So it's it's a balancing act of where where do we go knowing that, okay, later on, do we are we gonna be driving heavy trucks over it or in a short period of time?

You. Member Klingsberg?

I guess my last comment would be, again, looking for sort of efficiencies. You know, we've got some huge water projects coming up, maybe doing an overlay of the very poor roads with the water projects because maybe it's cheaper to do two projects at the same time versus we're gonna tear this street up, have to pay to get it partially repaved Sure. And then tear it up two years later to get it fully repaved. So I think that is a way to maybe save a little bit down the

road or

in the near future. Absolutely. Certainly.

I think you had that at one point.

Seeing that overlay of

We definitely were focusing on that the first five, six years ago. We still focus on that. It's just that the water projects, they have more water projects than we have street funding. So that's why there's that gap now.

Alright. Member Birdwaja, did you conclude your

You know what? I think I'm good. Thank you.

Thank you. So it sounds like there's definitely a move to a maintenance program for arterials, not so much the big investment in arterials. And I don't want to say it's not a big investment. Slurry seal and maintenance is a big investment, but certainly not at the same magnitude as grind and overlay or full rebuild. And then, yeah, we we still gotta address the the residential.

So I am in favor of looking at what a five year plan looks like based on our current revenue, a ten year plan. And I also would like to see if we did the maintenance that we are supposed to be doing on top of the capital improvements, what would that look like over the next ten to twenty years? And

Are you looking for, like, PCI or just dollar wise?

Dollar wise. If we did the maintenance that we're supposed to be doing on everything and everything was up to you know, we gotta catch up. That's a number. So we gotta get our PCI up.

Be the cost?

So that's one number. And then what's the ongoing maintenance? If everything was great, you know, in a, 75% or or better, what would be the ongoing maintenance cost? Because that's really the minimum threshold that we should be aiming for. And then on top of that, all of the new construction or new rebuilds, I guess, that need to take place. Okay. I think you've had plenty of input. Hopefully, that gives you some guidance. I don't think we need to take a vote here. No. We've provided recommendations unless somebody wants a hard motion, David.

No. That was fine. Thank you.

Okay. We're now moving oh, I gotta take public comments. Any member of the public online? No member of the public online or in the chamber? We'll keep moving along, go to CIP project status. And, I think we've covered most of the CIP, so this should be

Yes. Should be, quickly completed here. Alright. So our monthly, capital improvement program update. Design building faces for streets only. Update from last month, there's several projects that have been added. These are projects six, ten, eleven, and twelve.

Do you wanna share your screen?

Oh, sure. Sorry. I thought I was sharing. Let me see here.

I have a good imagination, but not that good.

Alright. Alright. Let's try this again.

There we go.

Alright.

Here we go. Okay. So as I was saying, design bidding phase for streets only projects from last month's project six. Ten, eleven, and 12 have been added. So we started ramping up design on these. So you're moving on to water. Not much updates from last month. Only one is on project eight that has that is going to cancel tomorrow for construction award contract. It involves removing, and replacing deteriorated an old water mainline pipe. Alright.

Projects that are either in award phase or construction phase. From last month to this month, several projects have been taken off from this list. I think in this past few months, there's been a lot of activity of short projects that have been completed. So with that being said, I'd like to show some project highlights. This is actually a project down on Acacia, North Of Victoria and South Of Melody in front of Acacia Elementary.

This was a this is a pre this is the intersection of Dorothy and Acacia, and this is the existing condition. So fast forward, this is what that intersection looks like now. So this project involved a grind and overlay and with ADA improvements as we previously talked. So this kinda gives you a this gives you a preview of how it looked before and after. And this project was completed before the school year started, so that was one of our main goals and on budget.

Alright. Another project to highlight, this is part of our Crown Crown Area project, Tiffany Place. This is one of four streets that got redone. On your left, you could see existing condition. You could see that there was a water main that was actually done previously before the pavement.

On your right hand, you you could see the street around the same angle once it was completed with, you know, new ADA improvements and the roadway paved. Alright. So miscellaneous CIP project updates. Just to highlight a few, Lemon Balencian traffic signal. This was also fronting a school, and I know it came to the wire, but improvements were completed before the school started.

I think what the only thing remaining is just the modifications to the traffic signals as far as synchronization and, you know, timing concerns. The airport, the tower renovation that is, currently at about 90% design. We anticipate that this will go out to bid, you know, within the next few months, probably in November. Moving on. Maybe, David, you wanna give an update on city?

PD, city hall renovation. We have a $2,500,000 federal grant from HUD. They have approved that. So I'm finalizing the environmental, which is quite intensive with that, especially with dealing with historical buildings. So I am hopeful I will get approval approval in the next month from historical people and move that forward. We are in the process of RFPs for design. What are the other ones? Oh, Indy Park gym. We're moving forward with that. We've done some abatement of asbestos yeah.

Just asbestos in the in the gym with the tile and the glues. So now that we've ripped everything out and since the gym is closed, we ripped everything out to now allow the architect to go in and see what's happening behind the walls. So I think we'll have a much better design, for the improvements there. And then finally, FCC generator. We've done pretty much all the work there. I'm just waiting for the generator to show up, which is about fourteen months from when I ordered it. So, hopefully I ordered it last December, so hopefully next February, we'll have it installed. We'll have a backup generator for the community center. It is incredible, the delay.

Alright. So on to the next slide, staffing and engineering updates. No change from last month. We haven't lost or gained any employees. We're still actively working on the civil engineer for the CIP division. So with that, concludes my presentation. I'll open it up for any questions, comments or concerns.

Thank you very much. Any comments or questions from the committee? No. Okay. Bring it back. Any public online at this time? Okay. We won't be, we tried to take public comments. I'm gonna deem it received and filed without objection if there is none. No objection. Alright. We'll move into staff and committee communications, and I'll start with staff. You don't wanna talk about anything,

No. We're no. Nothing at this time. Thank you.

Well, let's talk about my vacation. No. I'm kidding. I think there's some people near me that really wanna go home. Alright. We do have a couple of important subjects for the next meeting, and we'll see you then in September. And we are adjourned.

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You're all set, sir, whenever you're ready.

Good evening. I'll now call to order the closed session meeting of the city of Fullerton City Council, 07/15/2025. Madam clerk, would you kindly call the roll?

Mayor Jen?

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Charles? Here. Council member Dunlap?

Here.

Council member Valencia?

Present.

Council member Zara?

Here.

Alright. We'll now hear public comments on closed session items. Any members of the public wishing to make comment? Good evening.

I'm so glad I'm allowed to speak at closed session. I just wanna thank everyone, staff, council, for the most wonderful meeting on the twenty seventh. I learned so much, and I couldn't believe

Miss Milton, do do you mind if I interrupt one moment, You wanna make comment about the closed session. This isn't just general public comments.

Oh, no. Well, I wanted to say thank you. Can I for things that I don't necessarily want the entire the entire public doesn't need to hear? Am I allowed to do that? I was told I could.

Well, anyway, the meeting I wanna say that the the the the staff, everyone did such a wonderful, wonderful job on the twenty seventh for the CAS pre meeting. It was eight hours of a lot of learning, and they treated us like you you treated everyone that was there. There was a 109 signed up, and we were treated wonderfully with a wonderful pre pre meeting breakfast, breakfast, and a wonderful, wonderful lunch. I really, really thought it was absolutely fantastic that you did it for all the attendees of the meeting. And I'm just curious to find out if all the other cities that this gentleman does classes for treats their attendees as well as I was treated and everyone else was treated on the twenty seventh.

That's what I wanted to say because, as I say, we were treated so wonderfully, and I didn't want it was something that I didn't want to cause a problem with a future public private meeting. So thank you for allowing me to speak, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the meeting tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? All right. We'll recess the closed session. All right.

Good evening. I'll now call to order the 07/15/2025 City of Fullerton City Council meeting to order. Madam City Clerk, would you kindly call the roll?

Mayor Jen?

Present.

Council Member Dunlap?

Here.

Council Member Zara?

Here.

You'll notice I'm talking slowly as we wait for Mayor Pro Tem to get to the mic. Here. And I believe Council Member Valencia is nearby.

Alright. I may ask Deacon Tony Mercado of St. Mary's and our city of Fullerton Police Department Chaplain to please give us the invocation this evening. Sir. Good evening.

Good afternoon, mayor and city council members. As we have such a diverse community in Fullerton, I just wanted to extend this prayer, but I'm gonna start as I do my faith tradition. I invite you to extend as you do in your faith tradition as we begin in the name of the father and the son, the holy spirit. Amen. Good and gracious god, I just wanna thank you for such a wonderful day. I want you to please continue to grace and bless our city council members as they discern what is best for our city. Let us continue to thank our first responders for all that they do and keep them safe and keep all the constituents here in the city of Fullerton safe and enjoying the summertime. We ask you this in Jesus' name. Amen. Father, son, holy spirit. Amen.

And if I can ask our mayor pro temp to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you for that, madam mayor pro tem. If I can get a closed session report, mister city attorney, anything to report?

There's no report this evening.

Alright. If I can ask any members of our body, any ex parte communications to report? Look to my right. Seeing none, left. Very well. We do have two presentations this evening. I will ask the first is the Association of California Cities in Orange County. I'm going ask our Executive Director, Ms. Chris Murray, make this presentation. Good evening.

Good evening.

Good to see you again.

Mayor Jung, it's so lovely to see you and members of the council staff, thank you for the opportunity to present here this evening. I appreciate it. We do have a presentation for you and I did provide some materials. If you have any questions afterwards or at any time, please don't hesitate to let me know. But it's a pleasure to present here tonight.

Our next our first slide, please. Thank you. A little bit about ACCOC, not just for all of you, but for the members of your community who are with us and watching. ACCOC is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2011 to represent Orange County at all levels of government, regionally, state, and federal, to give us a consolidated voice, a collaborative voice that, came together on public policy, on education for our officials, our staff, for our community members, and on advocacy. And, our three pillars, education that empowers policy that is collaborative and advocacy that is service oriented.

We are currently made up of 26 member cities and have more than 55 affiliate members, which include our large public agencies, our universities, our healthcare community, our nonprofit community and others across the county. Next slide please. This is our current Board of Directors currently chaired by Jamie Federico from Dana Point and our second sorry, our first Vice President, Ms. Tanya Dobbe, Councilwoman from Los Alamitos and the others you can see along with the affiliate board members across the bottom which as I mentioned include a lot of our public agencies and large employers. Next slide.

These are our member cities. As I mentioned, we have 26 currently. We're actually in open discussions with about five others who are looking actively to come back. So we're working steadily toward getting back to full strength. A lot of folks dropped off during the pandemic and we've been building back since then.

And next slide. It's just a cross section here of the 55 plus affiliate members to give you and your community members an idea of who's engaged with us actively representing Orange County together. Next slide. Really want to emphasize today is that education is such an important part of what we do and it's our education programming is available both to our our elected officials across the county, our community members and city staff. And most of our programming, literally 90 plus percent is at no additional cost.