City Council - Successor Agency - Housing Authority - Regular Meeting

Part of our proposal today. We also are ready to immediately start work, to analyze the city budget and to look for a path to optimize that and also for economic development opportunities. And finally, if needed, we are also in a position, and we've added SMEs to our project to do a forensics, or fraud related audit if if it comes to that. I I wanna be clear at this point. We have, we don't have anything that would suggest we have found fraud or encounter fraud or anything like that.

But as there have been some allegations around that, we just wanted to make sure we're we're in line with that. If I go to our task based approach, we're dividing up the work into three tasks. The first task is immediate. It's a budget risk analysis and a transaction interrogation to better understand the shortfalls in the city budget and to be able to explain that. The cost of that is a fixed fee for a $100,000, and we're making an investment into that beyond that fixed fee amount.

I'm already making an investment. Test two, which can be done in parallel, is a budget optimization and economic opportunity analysis, similar to what we did for the city of Orange we've done for other municipalities. The cost of that would be a $130,000. And then there's a potential task three. And I I wanted to explain how we're approaching this.

Forensics investigations can be costly. You know, you could pay 4 or $500,000 up to a million dollars for a forensics audit. We wanted to go into the budget and look at everything to start with and really do an interrogation of what we're seeing there in order to determine if the numbers tie out and if things work correctly. If we see things in that process would indicate a high risk of fraud, we would recommend then to go forward with a forensics investigation If we're able to tie things out to appropriately and and transparently to, bank statements, cash, etcetera, then we believe, you know, there'd be less of a need to go forward with this forensics and be more of just understanding and and providing an understanding for what happened with the budget. So our our recommendation is to start with task one and task two and then to hold for task three until we get in and do a further analysis to determine if that's necessary.

Okay.

Let me pause there to see if there's any questions. Okay.

So a couple of things. Just would you go back to the I think it might be the sec the slide before this. Yes. So the the last part here, it says potential need to address unintentional or intentional errors.

Correct. Could you define what's an intentional error? Yeah. An intentional error would likely fall under the the definition of fraud.

Okay. So it wouldn't be an error then. It would be an intentional action. Intentional

action. Correct. Okay. That's probably a better way of describing it.

Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. And, also, you've mentioned here the, negative press, which I I don't see I don't see it that way. I don't see that the coverage of press was negative. Thought Yeah. In my opinion, it was, accurate in depicting Okay. The situation. My question here is, why is that an issue mentioned in your audit? Why would you concern yourself with what's being said in the public?

We're we're just reacting to what we've been in we've been told. Right? So and I I wanna be clear as well. I don't view any press coverage as negative. Right? There I think there's an objective look at things. I think it casts some doubts on the city, but that's that's good. That's part of our democracy. The press is kind of your your fourth power, right, to help you there. So I don't take offense to anything they've said, and I don't view it as inaccurate or accurate.

But you don't take it into any consideration doing all of this?

Well, we know that it we we know there's there's information in the newspaper. We have read that, but it's not the basis of our of our of our audit. No.

Oh, okay. Because I think that's important that we're not trying to, in a way, create positive press just for the sake of that. No. This is not a PR stunt.

No. It's again, our our position is the press should do their job, and they're welcome to, report on things and view things. And we always feel like in a democracy, that's important to have that happen.

The other, in the same slide here, it says initial interview obtained through meetings with mayor, city manager, and staff. Have you conducted these, or are these part of the process?

We met briefly. Well, we came out for a day to understand, and we made an investment of our time to look at the budget to obtain information, to request additional information, and to make sure we had a a background on what the what the the scenario was so we could make a proposal.

Have you

watched the last the council meeting that this issue was discussed?

We've we've seen segments of it.

So you realize the council is not is divided on this issue issue least in the beginning. Yes.

Is there

a reason why you did not in interview or have initial interviews with other council members?

So you'll see in our next steps, the plan is to meet with each council member individually to make sure everyone we hear everyone's perspective. So this initial, meeting was more just to obtain, background information as a starting point in preparation for this meeting, and then our next step is to meet eat with each council member individually to make sure we understand their perspectives.

Right. I think there was some background information that I think other council members would have been able to provide you as well. Yeah. Okay. And then I wanna go back to the the the second slide, the the one after this.

Okay. Initially, when we discussed this, we talked about specifically forensic investigation because the reference of whether this is intentional or not Uh-huh. I think that is a very important question. Agree. We we made decisions based on the fact that it was presented to us in a certain way, only later on to find out that it was a little bit there was these these misallocations, and there was this, money was put in one pot rather than another, you know, padding the this the reserve.

That's the

I think our our intention is to look at that and to understand.

Why do we have to do all of those first two steps in this, you know, economic opportunities, budget optimization? I mean, that's really not part of what So you we have wanted to

look at.

You you don't you don't have to follow the recommendation. You could jump directly to a forensics audit, right, and forensics investigation. We think it'd be prudent to look at those transactions first because there's a potential that when you get into the transactions, certain transactions might bear out to be what they should be. There's potential that others would be maybe more problematic. So phase one helps you focus that forensics effort in a way that would make more sense, and it should be more economical, and it should get to your answers faster.

So that that'd be the recommendation. You you have, the ability to jump straight to the forensics investigation if you choose to do so. We just think it it's probably more prudent to look at this from that perspective first to make sure, you know, we follow the accounting, we follow the information. Sometimes there's misunderstandings. We've done this for other cities where there are misunderstandings. We're able to clarify that for people to the point where they felt like there wasn't a need to go forward. There are other cases, obviously, our forensic practice we've looked at and we've said, yeah, you have a problem here. You should should continue with forensics.

Yeah. I'm sorry. And this is really important stuff. Could you move the mic a little closer to you? I'm having trouble Certainly

helps. Yeah. Is that better?

Appreciate it.

Okay. So so, yeah, you have all options are on the table. You you can decide that, and we can go forward any way you you determine you'd like to go forward.

Alright. Thank you for the question so far.

Okay.

No. I'm I'm eager to hear the rest of the presentation.

Okay. Good. Well, we'll take it. We'll just do a next slide will be a little bit of a drill down for kind of what we're doing in each. Right? So task one is the budget analysis. So we'll go back. Our purpose is really to understand what actually happened, why it happened, and who's who's responsible with the idea of how do we avoid this in the future and how do we reestablish trust within the city and the numbers. We wanna come back and be able to communicate this in a simple way. So we're gonna try to avoid accounting, you know, talk, but really make it understandable for everyone.

And then really earn the right to move forward with confidence in the city. If it turns out that we do, do the interrogation of the, transactions and the the budget amounts and we find, problems that lend themselves to forensics and fraud, then we would let you know that immediately, and we'd we'd move forward in that direction. If we're able to tie things out and clarify misunderstandings, I think the city's money would be better spent in that direction first. And then we also plan to do an analysis on the budget process and kinda how things kind of became confusing for people and where the responsibility to their lives and how we can make that better going forward. That's that's the idea for task one.

Again, we've made already an investment in this to understand. We're doing it on a fixed fee for it'd be a $100,000. And like we've done with other cities, we'll likely be making an investment of our time into that just as kind of something we add to the city. Okay. Duration wise, this portion of the work typically takes five to six weeks to complete. Again,

if

we do find instances where it it appears we have problems with fraud, then we would immediately jump to that and then let you know and and move forward with that. Okay?

Actually, I do have a

question there. Would that also be included in the $100,000 fee, or would that be an additional fee if that were needed?

Yeah. I mean, we'd apply what we've done so far. But a forensics investigation, you don't really know where it's gonna go. That's why it becomes, like you know, I I would think for something like this, if we really started seeing fraud, you're probably into it a half $1,000,000. And we've seen it go as high as 1,000,000. Sometimes it's just one area, it's like a $102,100,000. It's really hard to determine. Right? And then there's gonna be a need to, as we go through that, you'll see things, and we'll need to work together to say, well, should we pursue that piece of this, or how how do you wanna proceed? So our intention is to be able to use this first piece in order to inform the second.

So that work would apply directly to what we would do there if we went to forensics. There is still a possibility that it's more, you know, accounting, maybe honest mistakes, something like that. But if it's not, then we can go the other path. So it's really designed to hopefully save the city money and to really focus the forensics in a direction that would make more sense.

Okay.

We go to the next slide, test two. A number of the cities, within California and, well, across The United States as well have, have challenges with, budgets and budget shortfalls and also with tax base and revenue. This is a service offering we do provide, to other municipalities. And the idea here is to go in and look at the budget to try to understand levers that you can pull to be more, fiscal responsible in order to, potentially decrease the budget. It's also, looking at services for the city and how to maximize the value to the residents for that budget.

And then it's, looking at economic development and abilities to increase your tax base. A lot of the cities we've worked with, we find it's not really an expense problem they have. It's a revenue problem. So if you try to maintain the same expenses you have for your residents and the same services, it becomes very difficult to do that without enough revenue base. So task two is really to look at those. That could be done, in parallel with task one. That could be done afterwards if you choose to do that, or you might choose not to do that at all. Again, all options are on the table. You're the city council. You can decide what you like to do.

Our recommendation, just knowing kind of what we've seen to this point, we think there is value in understanding the budget and looking for levers to be pulled and to put you on a potentially a better better footing for your financial future, both short term and long term. So we do recommend the task two.

And the fee attached to task two?

It's a $130,000.

Additional? Additional.

130. Correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. And then task three, I'm seeing potential task three because right now, I just wanna make sure everyone understands we don't have anything that would indicate fraud at the moment. That's something we would need to look at. But a a potential task three would be we get in and we see evidence or indicators of fraud, then we would move. Task one would help us pinpoint where those may exist and then move aggressively to to counter those.

So we have, a full suite of fraud and forensics, where this would be proposing an investigation. Often, as a follow-up to that, you might do antifraud solutions and and putting controls in place, etcetera. And you can see a little bit about our investigative approach that's been tried and true on the following slide. And, again, this would be be another decision by the city council to say, here's what we're seeing. We come back and say, here's what we're seeing.

We'd we'd help you understand that. And then you would make the decision to move forward or or not with a forensic investigation. Okay? So our recommended next steps. We think you should immediately address the concerns that you have through the task one budget analysis and transaction interrogation, which could lead to the forensics investigation.

We believe that it's very important that we get all the perspectives on the city council recognizing that there is a division and thought on that. And so our our initial investment with the city was really to go in and look at the numbers and try to understand that objectively. But we do recognize that there are various perspectives. And so our first step would be to go out and meet with each city council member to make sure we we hear that perspective and understand. We do think that there is enough of a concern for the ongoing budget and finances of the city that task two makes sense.

We believe there's a a need to look at the budgeting and analysis and pull levers to make sure that's pulled back in so you don't have challenges going forward with the budget. And we also believe there's a need to look at the tax base and revenue side of that equation as well. So we would we would advise you to perform test two because the earlier you can get in front of this, the more time you have to to correct and address. And then our our last recommendation would be we would monitor together the progress on on, task one. If we see indicators of fraud, then we would come back to you immediately, and we'd say, let's move forward with the forensics investigation.

If we're able to tie things out through the accounting and everything looks like it's where it needs to be, then we'd also share that with you, help you understand that perspective. And then it'd be your choice to decide that it's a good use of the city's money to move forward with the forensics investigation or not. So I will pause. Any other questions on the presentation?

I have just one follow-up question On the the process of the forensic Correct. Do you do you look at do you do public records requests? I mean, do you get emails? Do you get correspondence? Yeah. All of those things, you look at everything?

So we we do these type of forensics investigations for Fortune five hundred companies, for, large municipalities, for for government agencies. And so, yeah, we would we would use if you got into forensics, we'd be using interrogation of messaging systems, emails, a correspondence. We'd be pulling data from computer systems that I mean, we have a lot of tools at our disposal. So it really depends on what you see and how you wanna follow it, but we have the ability to follow whatever is needed. How long does the process take? A forensics investigation? Yeah. It you probably not gonna like the answer, but it all depends on what you find or what you see. Right? So if you find a a high amount of fraud, it's gonna take longer to get your arms around that.

If it's something more simple and straightforward, it could be more rapid. It it really is. And then it's just a matter of, you know, how aggressively do you wanna follow-up on certain indicators of fraud as you go forward, And that's a decision we'll need to make together.

I mean, are we talking months? Are we talking a year?

It's it's typically something like this, think, your months. I don't think you'd see it go to a year.

Okay.

Alright. I I don't have any more questions. Thank you. Okay.

Yes. Thank you. So just to clarify, so you've already been, hired by the city manager

We have authority?

No. We we have not been hired. So that would be your choice to to engage with us. We even made investment of our time to come out and look at the finance the financial budget, the transactions. There were certain items that were noted as concerning, and so we started looking at those. We haven't formed an opinion on any of that yet. But we just said, before we come in and speak with you, we'd like to have an understanding of what what what what is there and so we can have some confidence in what we're proposing and the right course of action. So we've invested a a day of our time together here at the city to look at financial information and ask some questions. And then we've also invested some time outside of that to go back and look at the information we obtained through that process.

And just to add to that, I am prepared to retain them under my authority. I just wanted to have this presentation first. Due to the cost and the potential scope of phase two, phase two would have to come back to counsel for approval and further discussion. But phase one, I'm prepared to to initiate under my authority unless there's some object objection by the council.

That is helpful. I I just have one quick question about phase two while we're while we have you here.

And Okay.

In case we do decide to go that route, I'm sure we would discuss it more in-depth. But you mentioned that you've done that kind of work for other cities in the past. What kind of I mean, I guess return on investment is the right phrase to use. What what, what do you usually find when you see that? Or or is it just that people need to you said it's a summarize a revenue problem, which means we have to deal with increasing revenue.

I I think typical, we do find a a number of areas where you can contain and save cost. It's in a it's across a multitude. It can be purchasing your procurement. It can be just process. It could be IT.

It can be just looking at the service you should provide and the value of that to the citizens and determining what services are out there. There's a lot of levers we can pull in that process, but we do typically find a large amount of savings that you can pull back into the into the city. On the revenue side, we look for for immediate opportunities in the form of additional revenues for the city. We also look at long term plays, longer term plays. Not long term, but longer term plays you can do with economic development where normally, if you're in a in a challenging, situation, you'll need to do something immediate to cover the short term.

And then you wanna do something longer term so you don't have to continue to raise taxes or continue to cut services for the city. And so that you try to build the economic base in a way where you have more revenue.

Thank you. And then a follow-up question. I think this is for staff. And I know we have a brand new city manager and and the other staff are from kind of about when I started too. But are we aware if if the city has ever done anything like that in the past, had that kind of analysis or look as he's talking about in phase two?

I'm I'm not aware of an external, look, of that depth. I know prior city managers have, commissioned an internal team to kinda look for efficiencies, but I think what Grant Thornton would be proposing in phase two is far more extensive than anything we've ever done.

Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions.

Yeah.

First, thank you for the report. I I think, you know, I I'll say it tonight. I said it two weeks ago, I said it a year and a half ago. I I think we need to give we've got a fiscal sustainability committee that's been formed with some citizens right now. We've talked in recent weeks about maybe increasing that to get to make it a little more robust in terms of size and also in terms of scope.

But I think, like, for me and I I I've had the chance to speak to some of the folks in Orange, and I know they were very pleased with the fiscal sustainability analysis. And they had indicated that they wish they would have moved forward sooner. So And I think for me tonight, you know, I I'm definitely prepared to move forward with the audit. But for me, I'm I'm also prepared to move forward with the fiscal sustainability analysis report as well. You know, we we talk a lot about expenses up here, and, of course, there's, you know, different forms of capital outlays and finance. Right? There's expenses and there's investments. I think at this point, we've really not seen a time more important, I think, in our city's history than now to kind of figure out what the additional options are. And I think this is a step in that direction. I don't think it's the I don't think it's everything, but I think it's a big step in that direction.

Kinda having somebody independently come in and kinda tell us, hey. Based on our review, this is what we suggest. And, you know, to the city manager's earlier point, we have had other staffers kind of make that suggestion over time, but I don't think that any of those suggestions have really presented us with the options that we need to really focus on our long term, you know, kind of viability and and sustainability, so to speak. Yeah. With respect to, I think, the audit, at least for me, you know, my hope would be that as you start to work on this, you know, if you're you work on things and you uncover things quickly, I would expect for us to get a report, you know, almost in real time, right, at a council meeting.

I don't know whether that's you providing that report or the staff providing that report, but just all you know? And as well, if there's, you know, no findings, right, I think those are also, that's also information that should be made widely public, shared on the city's social media outlets, and also posted on the website so that people can kinda understand. Because I do think, you know, that transparency and that sense of confidence is something that's important to, obviously, to important to instill in the public. You know? I've obviously had a chance to watch the meetings from the past couple of months a few times, and, yeah, I think it was it's interesting because I heard a a quote a long time ago, it really resonated with me.

And that was, you know, if you're not confused, you don't understand what's going on. And I think that was very reflective of some of the dialogue even up here on the dais. And so I don't think that that helped to, you know, in inform or enlighten the public as well because, you know, seeing people up here that are trying to figure out what's going on sort of on the fly and then share those, you know, thoughts openly. Right? Kind of spreading things that weren't necessarily factual. So I think what's really important here is getting all of the data, but then also giving us actionable items that we can move on as a council. Right? Because and also even our committee is the opportunity to move on those things as well because it's to me, it's it's absolutely critical, and I think it's something that we should move forward with immediately. So I I'm prepared to move forward with both, and and hopefully the my fellow council members will as well.

Just a a point of order, and I might need the city attorney on that one. I don't I don't think we can take any action on phase two tonight. I I will appreciate any sentiment towards going in that direction. Based on on what you've said, sir. I would just recommend that I bring phase two back in an agenda report for the next meeting.

We could we could certainly do that. I think the mayor pro tem certainly provided ample direction there. Councilwoman Valencia, any thoughts, questions, or comments?

No. Thank you, mayor pro tem, for saying some of the comments that I had. I was just curious how we would get the information back and what how we can just proceed to phase two.

Perfect. Typically, as we work together, we'll point out things to you. So it's not like a grand reveal at the end. We'll we'll share things with you as you go. And often in our experience, the city starts moving on those recommendations rapidly. We also do a a a final report that we will do a readout and a formal readout to you as the city council and and provide a recommendations in that final report. But we won't wait till the final report to let you know what we're seeing.

Alright. Very good. Thank you, sir.

Great. Go ahead. Just, I think just to make sure if we are to I mean, this whole thing is to rebuild trust with the with the community and also make sure that we're finding the truth. This is not an exercise in public relations, and I I wanna make sure that that is ingrained in this whole process that it's looked at objectively.

Yeah. We we've done a our professional standards as a CPA firm require us to make sure we don't have any conflicts of interest or or challenges. We've done that. We have no we have no conflicts, so we're able to be very objective in the way we perform the work.

Alright. Alright. Mayor Proton, final thoughts.

Yeah. I I did have one other question because I think what's what's interesting to note here is we've been so focused on the budget issue and, obviously, the kind of the expense overage, the variance, and things of that nature. But this actually stems from, you know, a a former successor or a successor agency owned property, formerly redevelopment. And so I think it's kind of created an interesting, I don't wanna say dilemma, but a situation for the city wherein, you know, if we're also looking at auditing sort of the kind of accounting process here, we may also wanna take a look at, you know, the transition of that former, you know, the former redevelopment agency assets to the successor agency to the city to make sure, you know, not just that we're understanding that all of these assets have been, you know, correctly accounted for, but also to potentially estimate any downside that the city may face in the future or or any other costs associated with those. So is it is that something that would also be included as part of the report?

Yeah. We we were looking at that as one of the, budget items or transactions that we would scrutinize as far as, you know, we'll help you understand that transaction. What you choose to do with that or the outcome will be up to you. Right?

Sure. Thank you. Alright.

I'd like to make one more comment. This isn't a question. This is a comment. Okay. Thank you. I just do wanna say thank you for your work, and I wanna extend a thank you to our city manager for acting on this so quickly and decisively. And I look forward to seeing your findings.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Have a good night. We'll move on to public comments. Before that, though, there are 11 consent calendar items. Any members of our council wishing to pull any items? Hearing none, we'll move on to public comment. Go ahead.

I have six people registered. First is Dylan Blackball, then Richard Andre, and Jensen Halstrom. Dylan, Richard, are either of you coming up?

Richard Reichard. He's gonna come up.

We're here representing Davis Engineering who Hello, sir. Still? Okay. So we're here representing the position of Davis Engineering, and there's a lot left out in the underlying paperwork. And so we're kinda shooting from the hip because nothing was really told the contractor what he had wrong.

He there was a letter sent in. Someone from the city came out and talked about having a part of the license that wasn't quite complete. Didn't talk about the arrest. Next day, he came out, and then he issued a statement saying, well, you're done for both reasons, and that brings us there today. Really, what we're trying to do is a little bit of information gathering.

We think we have the right facts, but we just need a little more of the the defense. I'm assuming each of you got one of our protest letters protest letters. If I didn't, then let me know. I'll get one. And you know what?

Rather than bring this back to you, which I do not, and I'm sure you would rather not have me do it, it has all the relevant points in here. I just wanna touch upon some of those that that really didn't occur here because we had a poor guy getting hasted out without any any warning or ever any evidence to speak up. Be of his part. The I don't know how much each of you heard about the billing the billing phase of this work. But, basically, everybody had their packets.

They submitted their billing on time. What generally happens is at some point afterwards, someone from the organization comes out to him and talks to him about

three minutes, sir.

I'm sorry. That's three minutes? Would I give him any extra time?

Go ahead, sir. Be brief. Okay. Thank you.

So, anyway, what happened was the some of the city came out and said, look. You know, we're gonna disqualify you because you have the wrong license. Well, there's a round and round about. It turned out that my client was right. The license was all that was required for. The individual leaves. The next day, he gets a letter saying he's been dropped because of the first instance they talk about and the second one that he knew nothing about. He's never had the chance to discuss it. And that's really why we're here. The we understand that there was a protest filed by the second low bidder.

By law, we're supposed to get a copy of that. We haven't seen anything. We don't really know. So we came in today with our I don't know whether trying to figure out what they were saying and give it our best our risk approach. I think if each of you would just take the time to go through the letter, it's short enough. It's clean enough. You can decide yourself. Did did this person comply or not comply? And you can get to the bottom and find out yes or no. And we're not here to argue against it.

If all of you say no, it's no. Right? But we don't think that's gonna happen. We think you'll get to the end and you'll say, I can't figure out why we let the CI go and and neither could we. And so we'd ask for two things. If you find out that the bid tabulations and the way it went about collecting evidence was wrong, that our bid we declared responsive and we'd be awarded a job. And my client was actually $20,000 lower than the second low bidder to save some money to the city.

Sir, I'll I'll I'll have our city attorney respond to you in in accordance with that. And I'm I'm sure you can email directly members of our city council individually. That may cure some of the the injuries you seek this evening to resolve. Alright?

If you ask him to call me if he'd like at least our input, I'd sure love to

Understood.

Speak to him.

Understood. Alright.

Thanks. And I

do believe I do believe the letter that he's referring to was sent to counsel

It was.

In email, and now it's been uploaded as supplemental communication. And then if there's any questions from counsel, we can address it during the item.

I will ask the city attorney to give a report during that time period. Thank you very much. Alright. Thank you. Madam clerk?

Dylan, are you speaking? You're up next, then Jensen Halstrom and then Jay.

Good evening. I'll just give you a brief summation real quick. So we represent represent Nieves General Engineering. We he submitted the lowest bid for city project number 44087, and we believe was wrongly rejected as nonresponsive. The city's own bid invitation established no mandatory distinguished or sorry, dis disadvantaged business enterprise participation, but merely urged the DBE participation. So without a mandatory goal

I'm I'm so sorry. I just I'm I've been trying to follow along, but this is on an agendized item, one of our consent calendar agenda?

It was yes. It was number it was eleven, and then that struck, so it became number 10.

Okay. So that's why

we're talking

about it. I'm so sorry.

No. No. That's okay. So it it's it's a bid for, for construction project, essentially. And Anyeves believes that he was wrongfully disqualified from receiving that that bid. He as as mister Andrade mentioned, he was considerably lower. And one of the main issues raised as the nonresponsiveness was the disadvantaged business enterprises, good faith effort, meaning he needed to reach out to minority owned businesses to get subcontractors. Right? Well, the issue arises that Nieves was planning on doing the entire contract 100% himself. He himself is a minority business owner.

And so our stance is, first off, he was responsive because in the good faith effort attachment he mentioned, he's gonna do 100% of the work himself. And second, just as a matter of public policy, if we were to, disqualify him because he did not partake in the the disadvantaged business enterprise portion, we'd be, by effect, disqualifying the very type of person that that was, designed to protect. So that is, our general argument. And then anything further, if the city attorney would like to reach out to us, we'd be more than happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Next speaker is Jensen followed by Jay and then Peyton Farrell.

Good evening, council and staff. I'd like to start off by thanking council member Zara and council member Dunlap for your very sensible, input and words on the matter that I described during my previous public comment. I clearly don't wanna have strife with the city council and staff in the city that I've grown up and and live in and take a lot of pride in. What I what I'd like to do is to continue informing this council on exactly why I did what I did and, what exactly my work, in the future in my future collaboration with the city, I'd like to see. I'll start off by showing a newspaper clipping, which entails the entire redwood grove that was planted around the Sequoia Monument when it was placed.

And there was a living redwood tree for each name on that memorial. Nobody would really know about that now because all those trees were neglected, and the last one died in 2015. The newspaper clipping here starts, redwood trees as living war memorials will be planted in Hillcrest Park Sunday morning at 10:30 by the men's and women's chapter of the Fullerton Isaac Walton League under the direction of the park superintendent. There were 55 trees planted in total. And maybe a little hard to see on the screen here, but this is the actual tree, the ancient 2,000 year old sycamore from which the ring that became the monument was selected.

There is a very rich history here, which I I've tried to bring awareness to. I've met with city staff multiple times at the memorial. I've met with Bruce Whitaker. I've met with Dennis Quinlevin when he was deputy public works director. I attempted to speak with Steven Bice regarding this, and we it was so hard to get in in contact with Steven Bice, unfortunately, regarding these concerns.

Last year, I I was told by mister Bice that he would meet with me. Never followed up on that. So I'm looking for a collaborative effort here. The city didn't know about these this Redwood Grove being neglected and and dying. It can be replanted and cared for. There are redwood trees in in Orange County. If you've seen the Brea Grove, you you know what I'm talking about. It could be done, and it it is a special tribute. This is a forgotten memorial. Thank you.

Next speaker is Jay, followed by Peyton Farrell, then Karen Lareda. And then anybody who's not registered but would like to speak in chambers, please, make sure you line up so we can get you to the podium.

Hi. This is the first time I've done this, so sorry if I I'm doing this wrong.

But I wanted

to comment in relation to the cannabis dispensary agenda item. Just wanted to encourage the council to reconsider its current and continued approach towards cannabis dispensaries. I recently learned of the city's $10,000,000 deficit, and with such a large deficit, the city needs to consider ways in which to raise revenue, Sales tax for a growing industry, especially in California, is that something that is feels like we're leaving money on the table. And that sales tax that is bleeding out to other cities, and they're just bringing it here. As the city navigates the path forward for the deficit, I just would like to encourage the council to reconsider that for the sales tax.

And I also really wanna discourage leaning into fees and fines, as that particularly targets, low income residents. And that is a fiscally unreliable way of of managing that. So really short, but, yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Next speaker is Payton then followed by Karen, and then we'll go to the folks who are not registered.

Hello, city council and everyone in attendance. My name is Payne Farrell. I'm a new business in full new business owner in Fullerton. We opened Uptown Burger three months ago, and we are very excited to be in business in Fullerton. Thanks to everyone on city council who made the permitting process very fast. It's my first time doing this, and that was very helpful. So thank you for that. We're having a ribbon cutting on April 30 at 2PM. We are at Commonwealth, and we're next to Ralph's. We would love to invite everyone down there. We'll have complimentary food, and we would just like to have a great time with everyone there. Yeah. So we'd love to have you guys down there April 30 at 2PM.

Ralph's Shopping Center, Harbor Boulevard.

Yeah. They're in our

shopping opposite direction, go on.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that.

Self promotion one zero one. You gotta learn that in business. Yeah.

And it is an excellent burger.

Good evening, Karen Lareda. While recognizing that council need not respond to questions posed during public comments, As a member of the public, there is no clear opportunity to get the answers we consider relevant to the responsible and prudent governance of our city. Clearly, the current mayor who likes to boast he has served as mayor four out of the most recent five years, has not seen it part of his duty to work with the executive staff to ensure that fundamental city practices are being administered properly. Consequently, the city is faced with severe budget shortfalls. Therefore, we, and I do mean that to be inclusive of the council, staff, and the public, cannot assume that our revenues are being put to the highest and best use on our behalf.

As we begin the process of determining next year's budget, it is only logical that we need to know our starting point. So, again, I ask, how much money is actually in the city reserves and in the general fund? Senate bill eight two seven now requires council members to attend fiscal financial training. Clearly a good idea. My question, therefore, is have all council members attended said training?

And if not, when are they scheduled to do so? Since council, excuse me, is not inclined to answer questions posed in this format, perhaps they could request that the city manager, mister Manfro, and his appropriate staff draft responses to provide them either directly to the poser or to the public in general at the earliest opportunity. It is appropriate at this point to acknowledge the professional, courteous, and diligent efforts of staff to serve the people of Fullerton. For those of us paying attention, it is not difficult to distinguish between those who do the work and those who do not. Make no mistake.

Being a council member requires a time and effort commitment. Along those same lines, I request that all council members make clear and succinct reports regarding any and all meetings they attend as representatives of the city. Mayor Zhang, who represents Fullerton on the Orange County Water District Board of Directors, seems to think that sending memos to some difficult to access site is good enough. This attitude is consistent with his well known lack of transparency and accountability. We need changes.

I wanna take a second to thank councilman Dunlap this evening for bringing up the redevelopment agency. It is important that we understand the transition and any lingering impacts. Thank you.

Good evening. I want to start out by echoing what many people have said here and to me personally. The city of Fullerton has the best, most educated, experienced, hardworking staff in all departments. Just as important is that they are courteous and go out of their way to be helpful, spending as much time as needed to resolve a need. I just had this experience this morning with someone in the water billing department.

If our city could be known by these wonderful people, Fullerton would have a good reputation instead of being known by unpopular policies that often go counter to what most residents want, seem fair, unbiased, and transparent. I also want to speak to the process of choosing which company will be contracted to serve Fullerton's waste disposal needs. Again, I want to highly commend the head of public work, Steven Bice, and his team for the time, hard work, well thought out process used to rank the companies that applied to be considered. A council ad hoc committee was unnecessary. It only accomplished interference and disregard for what staff had painstakingly determined.

To send back staff back with a do over with additional companies added to be considered in addition to the top three that had been determined by the process is unfair to staff and to all but especially the top scoring companies. I strongly object to Valley Vista's plea to allow them another chance. I have gone to many interviews in my career. In some, I did well and was offered either a second tier interview or a position. In others, I was offered neither.

I never considered calling the companies to say I did not do well, but please put me in with those who did. That is not how it works and that is not how it should work here either. The process needs to be fair and transparent for all. This is again where our wonderful staff comes through and I want to thank them and to let them know that so many of us see what they have done thank them and appreciate them. Interference by an unnecessary ad council ad hoc committee is causing mistrust in the process.

It is situations such as this that give Fullerton a bad reputation as not being fair, unbiased, and transparent. Also, the council vote to move forward was not valid in my opinion. Council member Charles had been kicked off Zoom by a technology glitch as were others. When the city clerk took the vote, she stated council member Charles had already logged off. That is not accurate.

It is not on the agenda tonight to take the vote. She cannot just register her vote in my opinion. She was not present when the motion was made, discussed, voted on nor was she given the opportunity to make alternative motions and must wait for a future in my opinion it must wait for a future meeting when it is agendized. Everything in the process must legally wait until then. We cannot break rules for our convenience. Thank you.

Good evening city council. Elijah Manicero District 5. I wanted to start by just asking that the invocations are changed a little bit because I've watched a lot of these meetings, and the only invocations that are given are always Protestant or Catholic. We have a Muslim council member. We have a Jewish council member, and this is a diverse city.

So I would like for it to be inclusive with how they're handling that. I wanted to also briefly respond to Dunlap's recommendation to expand the committee, if he's referring to the ad hoc committee. I think that needs to be looked at if that's even possible, if we're expanding the scope and we're expanding the size of the committee, ad hocs have very stringent rules. Lastly, I wanted to talk about the signal light that was denied last meeting. It was a safety issue, and there was no good reason to really deny that.

The only issues that were raised had nothing to do with safety. They had to do with traffic. And in my opinion, safety is more important than traffic, especially when cut through traffic is easily mitigated. So Nick asked for, it was brought up. I think Ahmad brought it up too, but they asked for it to be brought back to council if action was taken just to share what, actions are being taken.

And I would like that to be brought back to counsel to find out if this safety issue is going to be resolved. Fred said he wants it in an email, but I think the public deserves to know if that's something that is going to be resolved because cars should not be driving into people's backyards. It's just not something that we should this council needs to take action to make sure that doesn't happen. Lastly, it was also put on the commission quite a bit that it was their fault that that and also staff that it was their fault that this item took forever. But you guys voted on it in March, and it didn't go to TCC until June.

But that's because they didn't have I think it's because they didn't have a full committee because, Nick, you didn't make your appointment until May. And in June, when it was put on the agenda at TCC, Ahmad's rep was there, Shaina's rep was there, no one else was. So they had to cancel it because there was no quorum. So it took a long time largely due to the appointees that you guys put there. Lastly, I just wanted to say that, yeah, committees, these cancellations, like half of them were canceled after June.

It matters for them to meet. Committees serve the purpose of refining policy and also providing legitimacy for those policies. Angelie was here advocating for bike rules because the police department reached out to stakeholders and they engaged them. So that should be done. Thank you.

Good evening. Helen Higgins district two. First I'd like to say, Councilman Dunlap I really appreciate your comments regarding the task one and task two. Oh my god. For, the presentation given this evening.

I think it is critical to have that done and, I'm really glad to hear that you're on board with that. So thank you. I came up here this evening just to give a big shout out to the staff of Fullerton. I have been dealing with staff members on and off since 2002 when we first raised the Coyote Hills issue and then subsequently through various different issues. And I just want to say that I've never had a bad experience when I have gone to City Hall, when I've come to City Hall here and spoken to various departments.

I always got courteous, informed information, and I really appreciate it. And, actually, I prefer almost 100% dealing with staff rather than city council members most of the time. Thank you. And

looks like this will be our last speaker, and there are no hands.

Hi, council. My, name is Steven Sherry, District 2. And I very clearly believe there needs to be a forensic audit first, and the city manager should just handle that process, not council as I believe it's a conflict of interest. This is like a restaurant had a fire, and the presentation says we should find more patrons to be seated for the next dinner service without figuring out how the fire happened or how to prevent it from happening again. The trust has been severed with the public, and we can't move on without an audit first approach.

And it spills into every aspect of the city, roads. Right? We all talk about it. How can we have a conversation about increasing CIP spending when you can balance a budget? How can committees or staff operate for the public when we know there's no money for anything compared to cities like Buena Park or even Placentia?

Right now, we have a situation where mayor Jung has been the mayor for four of the last five or six years. While rotational system would probably shield any one council member from a pattern of abuse, the fact that mayor Zheng has been mayor for so many years, including consecutive years, I believe he bears significant responsibility for the situation and for others. The largest donor to the mayor and his majority on the council is also a good friend of the beneficiary of of a massive donation from Valley Vista Services, an unqualified trash hauling company ranked very low by the city, but it was artificially promoted by the mayor and the council. Nick asked for three companies at most. You all chose six, sidelining and confusing staff, as Steven Weiss mentioned last week, when it was he was requesting clarity, which he did not provide.

Why I bring this up is that Tony Bouchard, a large individual political donor in Fullerton and the major funder of the mayor and his voting block, is also on the city's budget sustainability ad hoc committee. Several weeks ago, I attended that meeting, and mister Bouchalla recommended that the city shake down our trash hauling company by including a $10,000,000 loan request in our trash hauling RFP. I did some research, and none of the companies in the city's RFP list have ever done anything like this except Valley Vista Services with the city of industry. This was right before a massive fraud investigation. So let's use logic and assume the only company to fall for this would be Valley Vista who made considerable political contributions to the council majority.

This loan would, of course, include interest for Valley Vista services, which would which would make money off of Fullerton's crisis. This is not a conspiracy. It's a series of public statements and actions by the council that demonstrate a desire to put political donors and appointees above the people of Fullerton. Because of this trend and lack of transparency, the mayor being primarily responsible for all the city's actions as a de facto strong mayor and the nebulous and corruptive contributions towards the city council majority, I believe the city absolutely must lead a forensic audit first.

Thank you.

Good evening, city council, department heads, and and dedicated city staff. I am Zee. I became familiar with the city of Fullerton when I relocated here in 1978. Due to priorities, I was not present at the April seventh council meeting, but I did have these comments ready to present. At the March 17 city council meeting, the information about the budget deficit was shared that indicated that the city revenues may well fall below 3%.

Council member Ahmad Zara began to ask hard questions. Brother Jung made made statements about the council member that he was belittling the city staff. In addition, council member brother Nicholas slammed his hand on the tabletop as his face turned red. As a citizen, I wanted to have many, if not all, of council member Amadzara's questions answered. Me thinks you two brothers protest too much.

You two brothers should want the answers. If you don't want those hard questions answered, answered, why not? Thank you to our city manager for putting forth this idea for an audit. Now, at the April 7 meeting, brother Jung had an issue with a correspondence that he sent out. Brother Jung stated it was the fault of his, quote, fat fingers.

Fred Fat Fingers Jung, I have not studied your hands or your fingers, yet a man of your small stature is highly unlikely to have fat fingers. If I ever find myself lacking morals, ethics, values, principles, characters, integrity, I might decide to blame my long legs as the issue for my missteps. The fact about you wishing to wanna be the mayor for four of the last five years, you, brother Young, will own the budget issue as you put yourself in charge during this fiasco. I've seen your campaign signs around the city. They're really pretty, and I really think the one stands out most is by the dairy at Ornithorpe And Ray.

It's a nice big sign. But any of us who know the facts are gonna make sure it's publicized what the budget has done under your control. I say again, go knights, go lancers, go hornets, go titans, go cougars. Thank you for the time that all of you up there do. It's not an easy job. God bless you, and stay healthy and be safe. Good night.

Good evening, mister mayor and council members. My name is Curtis Campbell, activist, for our veterans, Cal State Fullerton students, OCTA bus drivers, senior sit senior citizens, and other low income, neighbors. These are my recommendations. The floating observer, page eight, is a article. I'm I wanna share with you that article.

It's kinda interesting. It's it goes like this. Outdated code booklet in Fullerton Sparks calls for better public access. This is the booklet that they're talking about. It's a big, thick booklet.

Very thick code booklet is in the library so you can use it as as used as a reference book. This is by this article was by Sososky Kennedy on 04/12/2026. A residence of Fullerton is is raising alarms over the availability of the city's municipal code booklet, which is currently outdated and hindering, public access to crucial legal information. The most current version of the booklet available at the local library is dated, 2024, prompting concerns about, fairness and the enforcements of city laws. Curtis Campbell, which is me, a local advocate, okay, voiced his concerns highlighting the negative impact that outdated information can have especially on vulnerable populations.

The bulletin municipal code booklet contained laws that are essential for the residents to understand and follow. He stated, with the current edition being being from 2024, it falls it fails to reflect many of the codes that are now being enforced and do not align with today's standards. Gamble, which is me, pointed out that the importance of the municipal code booklet for the homeless community, which relies on accurate legal information regarding emergency shelters codes. He noted that many of the homeless individuals have faced harassment from local, law enforcement and received unfair citations due to their lack of access to up to date codes. I urge I urge the city to distribute the 10 updated copies from the clerk's office for the appropriate from the for the appropriate departments and issue and issue the the laws of 2026, he added.

Municipal codes are essential for our residents. They outline legal rights and responsibilities. When they when these guidelines are outdated, it can be a con confusion and a be confusion and potential can I finish? Okay. It can be confusion and potentially in inadequate treatment of residents.

Many locals are calling for the city to take immediate action to make current the current version of the code booklet more accessible, particularly for pub in public spaces like the libraries and other departments. As of just one more paragraph. As of now, city officials have not provided a clear timeline for distributing the updated code booklet. For more information or questions, call the Fullerton City, clerk's office at 714-7384 6350. Thank you for your time. And, the municipal code book needs to be updated. Thank you very much for your time.

No one online.

I do have an appointment, and, I my understanding is is that counts mayor pro tem Dunlap, makes his and then I substitute to add mine.

Okay.

That's how it was explained to me.

Sure. So well, since the motion is written into the agenda, you can just go and start with your substitute.

Okay. Thank you. I would like to, make a substitute motion that we approve mayor pro tem Dunlap's appointment, along with my appointment to the, youth, committee youth advisory committee, who will be Lila Kim.

Sorry. I had to be had to listen closely. Thought I was getting appointed to something. You scared me when I started. So I'm trying to I gotta dodge those. Okay. I'll be appointing Gretchen Cox to the community. I think it's Community Development Advisory Committee.

Is that that? There you go.

Alright. I'll seek a motion for those two appointments. So moved. Alright. Sorry.

I didn't

didn't I made a motion. My substitute motion is the motion, so you can second it.

Yeah. There's a second.

I'll second.

There you go.

Yeah. Alright.

There was no original motion? Just a substitute motion?

I suppose so. So the motion is in the agenda. So council member Petros offered up a substitute to what was written in the agenda.

Okay. And the second was, I'm sorry, Dunlap. Correct? Yes. Okay. Okay. Where where is my list? Sorry. Wrong sheet. Council member Charles? Aye. Council member Valencia? Aye. Council member Zara?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap? Aye. Mayor Jung?

Aye. And then, I took this out of order. Forgive me. We'll have to go to the, staff communications reports. I did have our city attorney if you can elaborate on that project in terms of just the scope of what you can Certainly. You can brief counsel on or or what you can't on.

Certainly. So this is in regards to consent item 11, and we did have some gentlemen come up to speak on this topic so I can address it. It is a construction contract, and staff has made and I consulted with staff before this and made a recommendation in regard to awarding the second lowest bidder based on issue of nonresponsiveness. Determination of nonresponsiveness was made based on the facts before the, before the staff at the time the agenda was posted. And specifically, discrepancies were identified in a first bid dispute submitted by RJ Noble, who's the second lowest bidder.

Those discrepancies were identified as, one, Neves claimed a 100% self performance, but also listed a subcontractor. When they there was a follow-up request to them to clarify this, and they confirmed they were gonna self perform, and the subcontractor was a a backup, which is not really a categorization that we're familiar with. And then I, of course, the lack of documentation, the bid packet did request good faith efforts in securing, disadvantaged business enterprises, and there's a worksheet for them to complete to identify. On that worksheet, they just said in a not applicable, intend to self perform. So based on the contradictory information that staff had at that time, the recommendation was put forward.

Following agenda posting, NEEFS did submit their own bid protest. They have the due process opportunity to respond where they, and for the first time known to us, identified themselves as a disadvantaged business enterprise. So when it comes to this item, right now, it's on the consent, but, the council has three options. You can, you know, move staff's recommendations, move forward with the second lowest bidder. However, in this kind of case, the council does have authority to waive discrepancies if they determine them determine them to be immaterial, as in they don't have a material impact on the financial aspects of the contract and, do not create an unfairness to other bidders.

So in that circumstance, you can waive it and award to to Neves. The third option would be to reject all bids.

Alright. Okay. Alright.

11.

Can I ask a clarification question about So if if we were to pursue the third option, would that mean that everyone would rebid at that point? Or

Yes. If you rejected all bids, then the project would have to be rebid. Now there were some concerns rated by staff, which I would want them to address about timing because this does involve CDBG funds, but they would have better expertise on that.

Alright. Director Bausch, anything to add?

Yeah. So the project is located, next to Pacific Elementary School as well. So the the bidding and timing for construction was specifically planned for the summer. So if we did reject all bids, not there'd be potentially issues with the financing of the project, but the schedule. So if we did reject all bids, we'd have to rebid, which would push construction into the fall fall quarter of the the school. So not ideal.

Alright. Any other questions on this matter from k.

Is are we then pulling item 11 to discuss? Are we leaving it on consent? We're leaving it consent.

We find other options at that time. Council member Charles, do you have anything to report this evening?

Yes.

Go ahead.

I'm also thinking we should pull item 11 off of consent. I don't know if I'm able to do that at this point, but it seems it needs further discussion.

I'm happy to oblige that.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. And apologies for the confusion earlier about what we were talking about or whether it was on the agenda. We have a lot of construction contacts on our agenda tonight in street contracts, so it was kind getting lost in the shuffle. I just do wanna say thank you to all the public commenters. I I know that it is difficult to get up here even for folks that do it all the time. It's something that you put yourselves out there to do and and appreciate all the public's input. I do agree about the invocations, but I'd also like say that, I asked for that in 2023, and and we did that, for quite some time. I think we just might be in a stretch where we happen to only be able to get, Protestant and Catholic.

We did have, rabbis and imams, and it was a very multi faith, for about a year and a half there. So if we can go back to that, I would encourage that as well. And but I do wanna also thank, our, police chaplain for doing a a lovely invocation tonight as well. This is nothing against that, obviously. Since our last meeting, I went to the Fullerton Women's Festival, which was fantastic, and I wanna thank the planning committee at the Fullerton Museum Center for putting that on. It's it's our third annual festival. I hope to see many, many more and look forward to next year's. Also attended the Orange County Mosquito Vector Control District Meeting. And from that, I would like to report out, that we are seeing June levels of mosquitoes already from the March traps. Right?

So in April, we know what what we were able to trap in March. So this is gonna be a bad mosquito year. It already is. Right? We're already seeing what what we would normally see in the summer. So please start taking precautions now. Get rid of standing water in any outside areas you might have. I know it rained a little bit today, but please make sure remember those eggs are microscopic, so any any amount of water is is bad outside standing water. So please get rid of that. And especially when you are going to be going to visit one of our lovely parks or any of the other natural wooded areas that we have, our trails, make sure to wear your bug spray.

We already wanna start doing that. Just think think that it's already summer at this point, essentially. I would also like to second, the commenter, that I would like to see that, report on amount in the reserves and in the general fund. I think that's a good idea, And I think it could also be part of what's released by our new CPA firm. They said they were going to be giving us updates as we go. I think that would be a great thing to include in that update. And given our current situation, I think we need to lean into transparency that that would be a good thing for us to do. I'd like to let everybody know that my city hall hour office hours are going on. Thursdays, twelve to two. This week, I will be in City Hall.

Next week is the last week of the month. I'll be in Tri City Park, which is Fullerton. I know it feels like Placentia, but it's actually bordered on most sides by Fullerton. So I'll be there on the thirtieth from twelve to two. Also, I'll be holding a food and security town hall next month. We hope to hold it this month, but we're gonna have to push it back to May. And that's something that one of my student interns from Cal State Fullerton is working on with me. If you don't know what food insecurity is, I'm glad that you don't have that situation. It's folks that are not able to, have regular access either to healthy foods or to be able to afford food at all. So we're going and, of course, that's what all all our food banks are for and and all those kind of resources.

So we're gonna be talking about community resources at that forum, but also getting input from the public. We're gonna it's gonna be a listening town hall as well where we're getting input from the public about what we could be doing better as a city and and get some ideas going around that, that we can maybe think about for next year's budget. Thank you. It will be in May. Watch for a firm date as soon as we get our panelists confirmed, but it'll be either Monday the eleventh or the eighteenth.

Nothing to report this evening. Thank you. Sure.

Thank you.

First of all, I'd like to, thank congressman Luke Correa for, bringing back some tax dollars to our fire department. I was, it was attended a very nice ceremony in the Czech presentation. So, the congressman was very gracious to to come and attend. And, and I wanna thank, our chief, Adam Lozier, for and and the entire fire department for really pushing for more of these types of, efforts to bring back some money, and the money will be it's $250,000 that will be used to upgrade our alert system. That is the the system that, you know, when a 911 calls in, it alerts the fire department, immediately to go out.

And our system is antiquated from the nineties, I think, and some some of it is even older, some of the parts of it. So this is gonna be a really good upgrade, and it will improve our response time to help save, lives when and be at at the community, needs when when they need it the most. So this is very important. I do want to also just to on the point of of revenue, we talked about that. You know, I I think I've made my comments on on, regulating cap cannabis last at the last meeting, and, I think everybody knows my position on it.

I think it's better to have safe regulation that brings back revenue than than not. And the current status quo that we have is, not sustainable. I was thinking about it because we enacted an ordinance back in 2020, late twenty twenty, and it was rescinded immediately by a new council majority that was sat back in '20 early twenty twenty one. And then it was at mod the modest numbers were coming in at that conservative numbers, 3 to $5,000,000 annually in revenue. And so imagine five and a half years of misrevenue.

That's a lot of money. You know, an average about $20,000,000 that we've lost. And so something just to look back at. We've had a lot of other missed opportunities for revenue in the city as well over the last several years. And and, you know, some are small and simple, like going after businesses and and their patios or, little bump outs and, all kinds of little petty things, but also, no business plan for for the city.

We have no economic, business plan. I think that is, shameful because that is where we need to invest to make sure that we're bringing in proper revenue for the city. The walk on Wilshire, I think, was a really good opportunity to vital revitalize, downtown and bring, more foot traffic to the downtown. And now if you go there, it's just a bunch of cars few cars driving down and hardly anyone on the on the sidewalks. So we've had these.

There are missed opportunities in, with, in my opinion, bad negotiations with, certain individuals who took over assets of the city for really very little money when others are taking over assets and bringing in, hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. The Summit House brings in now about $700,000 into the city. Meanwhile, you know, we all know this. The train station building is bringing in at best $40,000 a year with its potential restaurant. I mean, there are a lot of things.

The hotel, there were some delays in that hotel, no doubt, but it was being pushed away in a in at a hotel project in the downtown. That would have generated about half $1,000,000 just in TOT tax annually. We have opportunities in the city to bring revenue, But it's a city that just doesn't want to do it because it's it's operating in a a different way, not with a vision for the future, but with a reaction to what donors and consultants and people who influence politicians. That's that's how the city is operating. It's the politics that is ruining it.

And, you know, I see folks get excited when one particular council member or other suddenly sees the light and says, oh, yeah. Sure. I'll go I'll go along with this thing, and they get thanks. Don't thank council members for doing the right thing. That's what they're here to do.

You know, it's easy to say yes to something and audit when everybody found out about the issue, and it became a public issue. But I wanna remind everyone that this was going this was downplayed early. Just go back and watch the videos. Look at the staff report. So I'm glad we're in at least a better place where the public is now aware.

There's a lot of eyes on this council, and that is healthy for democracy. Now having said this, I'm curious about the training, the new training, because I I we didn't receive anything on that. So I will definitely be looking into that. So we'll we'll get that. There are some things that I'd like to agendize to to create some improvements.

I would look to at the there was the issue of the house at Cornell Avenue. Those ADU that was came up in in a reservation zone. And I think in looking at this and studying the issue and talking to Fulton Heritage and the residents there, I think what we need is to update our design standards. We have not updated those, and especially that we have a lot of, ADUs coming up, and there's no, it's a gray area, as as far as design standards there. So one thing I'd like to agendize is that we

Mayor Pro Tem has asked for that already. It's, it's on It's

last meeting. Talked about it. It asked for it to be on the agenda, the last meeting. You're talking the two the two story on Cornell with the with the one But not not we had directed staff to bring back the design standards for ADU, the historical zones, such, and talking about the protections. We talked about it at the last meeting.

Because according I talked to Fulton to to Fulton Heritage folks, and they they did not seem to to have that, information. So that's why I'm bringing it up right now. But if it's agendized, is there a time that it was agendized?

May meeting.

I'm sorry? May meeting. May meeting. Okay. Well, in that case, then we are, good on that one. There is another

I'm not aware that we have it as calendared yet, but I I do know it was asked for.

Okay.

Yeah. And to add just to add on, we did confirm with Fullerton Heritage. Our responses to them was related to the work as it relates to the design guidelines. But I did mention to them just today that I would talk to city manager to see what that time frame would look like because it is a it is a full thorough review and work that would be required of planning at this time with other competing priorities. So we need to kinda see what that looks like for the timeline before we bring it. But we will bring it back to council per mayor pro tem's request at the last meeting, with those options to council to decide.

Okay. Because I I I spoke to Ernie Kelsey from the, the Fulton Heritage today, and he told me that this is not in the works. He he seems to have the impression that this is just pushed away, pushed aside.

No. I I've

talked to Ernie. I had coffee with him, and we talked about it. I told him that's we talked about it at the last meeting. I mean, if you wanna get some urgency behind it, maybe that's that's great, but we had asked for it at the last meeting. So

Alright. I would like also to bring to I the the at the next meeting, I think this is important, the issue of the state of the city. Again, we are having a state of the city this year without any council or public knowledge of this of the process of how, you know, how much it'll cost this time, what's the process. We don't have a formal policy on the state of the city. So every year, we unfortunately have to look at this individually.

So I don't know for this city for this year what it will cost. So I'd like this to be brought to the council with also the option of canceling to have some direction of canceling this year's state of the city. Because to be honest, you know, with the condition of our roads, the finances, the budget, the $10,000,000 discrepancies, I don't know what is there to brag about. So I'd like us to to consider this to be you know, these are all very just PR stunts, these status of cities, and I I think they need to stop. So I'd like that to be on agenda is this for the second for the next meeting.

Yeah. I'll I'll second the discussion of of what state of city budget's gonna look like and how much we're looking at spending on that.

Last year, mister city manager, did it cost the city any money?

I believe with donations, I believe we actually and ticket sales, I think we made some money on the event.

Yes. We'll have that report

That ready for council on the next next agenda.

Yes. I I have one final thing, which is I think I'd like to bring back a policy because, again, this is very inconsistent. We I certainly and I know that the mayor pro tem did not have knowledge. Maybe he had. I don't know. But but from his re response last time, seems like he did not have knowledge of that letter, cease desist letter that went out to mister Holstrom. I think there needs to be consistency on this. This never came to to counsel. This never came to closed session. So how it originated and how it got approved, it beats me. So Why why don't you ask,

mister city manager, how did it originate?

I mean, it's just at a staff level. We were looking at our options for trying to curtail the behavior that we had concerns about and, city attorney and staff prepared the letter.

Well, I I'd like to bring back a policy, if I may, to set up that that any any kind of legal action, any letters or anything like this of some sort that especially pertaining to our residents, need to come to counsel and it cannot be initiated at a staff level.

Mister city manager, how many, cease and desist letters do we send out a year? Do you know? No. I have no

no idea on that.

This is

not a disc I'm just asking for an agenda. So if I if there's a second, there's a second. We can have that discussion. But I'd like this to be a public discussion.

You know, I I will say well, I don't know if this is sorry. I don't wanna interrupt your council report. But my my own thought is I I mean, look, I think this one in particular bothered me and it look. I'm not gonna say that he was he was obviously I think he and even he would admit that he was doing something that he he shouldn't be doing. However, I think he felt that he was doing the right thing because it had been neglected.

And so I think the the thing that bothered me about it was this is obviously somebody that cares about the community, has been here to speak on a a number of issues. So I don't I don't necessarily see it as, you know and frankly, I I don't care to be involved in because I think there are plenty of cease and desist or other legal matters that should be handled at the business level that I think department heads, the city manager, and and counsel can work out. I think this one in particular is a little different because obviously this is somebody who again is very, you know, vested in in, you know, kind of the urban forestry here and has has tried to take care of things. Right?

Again, I I just would like this discussion to set a policy of what comes to council and what not doesn't. We can have that discussion, but I think it's important that we we set some policy, some standards so that there's clear, a clear direction to staff so that it's not arbitrary like this or, you know, something of this nature could come to council and then whereas others may not, but we can set those standards. I think we just need to make sure that we're setting standards.

Yeah. I'm I'm interested in that as well. I think I'll second that. I do think that it's it's useful to have a discussion on policy on this, and and it would have been good to have at least been informed, but also, I think, a discussion in closed session on whether we take an action or not. I mean, we we have those discussions all the time. So I I think it it'd be good to talk about the policy so we know where the lines are.

Yeah. We can bring something back for discussion. I mean, that something like a cease and desist, I don't think would necessarily get into closed session, unless we really thought we were looking at litigation, which in this case, we clearly weren't. I think the real issue here is that the letter came from the city attorney. I don't know if the same discussion would be had right now if it just came from line level staff, but, yeah, we can talk it through. Thank

Sure. So I had the opportunity to attend ribbon cutting and grand opening for Le Bon's bakery, which is here in Fullerton. You know, I guess it's just in time for summer. It's a Middle Eastern bakery, which will be, I guess, good for your taste buds, maybe bad for your waistline. But it was very delicious, and I would encourage you all to attend. It's in the about the 800 Block Of Chapman Avenue, and they've just opened they're open all day, actually. The hours, I think they're open till, like, midnight. So but I I highly suggest you check it out. I would also like to congratulate you know, we've got so many good high schools and so many good schools in this community. I think one of them that's often overlooked is Rosary High School.

And I'd like to congratulate Rosary as they are just a few months away from a significant milestone in the history of their school. They're gonna be having a groundbreaking for kind of the next stages of their growth plan. And this is actually something they've been working on for over two and a half years. It's taken a lot of time both with their not just the school, but working with the diocese and also with the city. And so, you know, they actually kicked off a meeting this weekend where they kind of showed their vision and talked about growth of the school and it's exciting and hope you will follow along and root for Rosary along the way.

We talked a lot about the financial circumstances facing our city And I I also wanna make sure this is something we talked about last time, and it's I think, especially with some of the costs, you know, that we heard from the consultants still fresh. You know, we need to make sure that we're going after the auditors that missed some of these things in the first place that we are seeking, you know, you know, they're covering some of our expenses and perhaps seeking damages. I'm sure they've got, you know, errors and omissions insurance coverage. And so I think that to the extent we can recuperate some of those expenses, we definitely should. To the extent we can recuperate any any damages, I don't know what the terms of the contract, but I think it'd be good to look at and understand those as well.

You know, of course, to kinda help offset some of the costs that we're facing. And, you know, lastly, I I don't typically address, you know, sort of the political campaign talks because I think it's inappropriate for city business. And, you know, of course, we all know that this is a privileged microphone. And as part of our democracy, we can get up and we can say anything that we want. And that's the beauty of our democracy, But it doesn't make it true. And tonight, an individual got up and had suggested, I think, not once, not twice, but on three occasions, that a certain donor was a large was the largest contributor to my campaigns. I wanna encourage everybody to take the time to go explore those campaign statements. They've all been filed in accordance with, you know, our city's guidelines, in accordance with the reporting guidelines. They're not only online, but they're also in person. You can walk right across the, you know, the hallway there.

But, you know, I just I wanted to clarify because someone, again, asserted three times that, there was a single individual that was the largest contributor to two campaigns that I ran over the course of, you know, the six and a half years that I've been on council. And, I just wanna point out that is factually incorrect. So thank you.

Alright. Moving on to, consent calendar. Number 11 was pulled by council member Charles. I'll seek a motion for the balance one through 10.

I'll move the balance.

Second. Good. Madam clerk, please call the roll.

Council member Charles? Aye. Council member Valencia? Aye. Council member Zara?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap? Aye. Mayor Jung?

Aye. We'll go ahead and address 11 at the end. Public hearing item number 12, city vacancies and recruitment retention efforts report. And I believe our director of human resources, miss Laura Mercier, is gonna make the presentation. Is she here?

Yes. I'm here.

Oh, there she is. Alright. Please.

Thank you. Yes. So tonight I am doing the annual city vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts report. Next slide, please. So just quickly by way of background, AB twenty five sixty one was enacted in 2024 to amend the Myers Milleyson Brown Act, which governs collective bargaining.

This requires an annual presentation, into the status of vacancies and recruitments recruitments as well as retention efforts. Now as we are aware, starting in the early twenties, twenty twenties, the city faced great challenges in its recruitment and retention efforts. This was due to competition package that had fallen below market, resulting in employees leaving the organization and us having a very hard time in filling those positions and that individuals did not want to apply for the city of Fullerton. But I'm happy to say that since that time we have seen a great improvement. Next slide, please.

So this chart reflects where we were and where we are. So again, you can see in 2122, we reached a high of a 25.5% vacancy rate. But since then, we have steadily been decreasing to where we are today. So as of April 1, 65 vacancies for a vacancy rate of about 10.3. And you can see we've kind of plateaued over the last two years hitting, you know, somewhere between that 10 to 11% vacancy rate, and that's what we've been seeing month after month.

Now what has improved, since 2021, primarily are labor agreements. In 2023, we entered into multiyear agreements with all of our groups, which increased our compensation package packages. This, in turn, led to less resignations from the, employees. Last year, we saw 57 resignations compared to the 44 that we've seen this year. So, again, those number of resignations have, just dropped year over year.

Additionally, we've seen increased interest in applicants to the city of Fullerton. Although we've conducted fewer recruitments this year as compared to last year, we've seen an almost 40% increase in application application intake. Next slide, please. So this chart here reflects or shows the summary of vacancies by bargaining unit. So you can see the executive unit is sitting with the highest percentage at 27%, and this is due to three vacancies.

We currently have a vacant director of admin services due to a resignation, director of human resources due to a promotion to city manager, and deputy director of administrative services due to a retirement. The two director positions are currently being underfilled, one by interim, one by acting. You'll also notice that the Fullerton Management Association and the dispatcher group are sitting at about 16% vacancy rates. The Fullerton Management Group, is reflecting 10 vacancies, but, that's somewhat deceiving in that five of those are currently being underfilled by positions in other units. So, really, there are only five vacancies, but we have to reflect 10 in that five of those are not filled by management, unit employees.

The dispatchers again at 16%. I am happy to report that that number is going to change as we are onboarding a new dispatcher here either this week or next week. So that vacancy will drop to two, which means that percentage will drop to 11%. Next slide, please. So this slide shows the recruitments that we've conducted and the eligibles have been established.

Again, earlier on, I indicated that we received a uptick in the number of applications received and some notable ones, that you may or may not be able to tell on this chart, I apologize for that. But for administrative analysts, received 458 applications. Librarian, we received 514 applications. Library clerical assistant, 876 applications. And police records clerk, 785 applications.

So again, an increase in in applicant, received. We are still struggling with, receiving qualified candidates for our water related positions due to the level of certification required for those positions as well as the competition from water districts who generally do have a more, lucrative compensation package. Next slide, please. So this is an example of a recruitment flyer used in our recruitment efforts. HR department does meet monthly with all of our directors and their teams to review their vacancies, discuss, you know, prioritize the recruitments as well as discuss recruitment strategies.

All of our, recruitments are advertised on the city's website as well as governmentjobs.com. And in turn, there are other sites that will pick up our recruitment such as Indeed. We do advertise in specialized websites for certain positions, such as BC WaterJobs, American Public Works Association, and Government Finance Officers Association. Now although we have made progress in this last year, we need to work harder and establish a more, prolific social media presence on sites such as LinkedIn and, Instagram. We are working with the city manager's office to generate a cohesive messaging, to strengthen our recruitment related media efforts. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Public hearing. And, counsel, you will, want to have any questions. Let's ask those now before we get to public comment. Anything? Alright. Very good. Let's get to public comment. Madam clerk.

I'm

showing no one registered, but I do have someone right here waiting to go. It looks like we have one more folk person lining up after this.

Very good.

Good evening again. Thank you. That was an excellent report. City vacancies and recruitment and retention. I'm very pleased to see that vacancies has dropped as well as separations.

Also, it's really good to see 40% increase in the number of applicants while the quality of applicants continues to improve. All excellent news. My question is in regard to the reports page two, which states the city may re excuse me. The city remains well positioned to recruit and retain new employees. I certainly would love that to be true, but it seems to be in contradiction to all of the general budget discussions that we have been having. Could someone please explain that.

Hi council. My name is Steven. Cherry district two. I didn't get to finish my comments, last time, so I apologize. But first, I wanna address council member Dunlap's comments that were directed at me. I said the council majority has benefited from him being the largest individual donor, Tony Bushell. I did not name you specifically at all. However, I would say from an outside looking in viewpoint, you seem to go along with his policies, including having benefited from the efforts of his blog and rigorous ly defending the renewal of his vastly under market lease at the Fullerton

Transit Center. Agenda item, please.

If you really don't want me or the public making true comments about your desire to appease mister Bashalla, you should probably try voting like it. You can blame me all you want, but I'd suggest looking inward. What do you want your legacy to be? I also wanna condemn council's comments made last week about staff in the Transportation and Circulation Commission in regard to the signal project on Euclid and Valley View. Staff and council did considerably more research and even delayed a vote in August to seek more clarity before voting again to agree with staff's proposal after the staff reported, report was exhaustive and was, like, over 50 pages long.

I also met with the mayor to ask about putting speed bumps on Valley View to address resident concerns and was told speed bumps were not an acceptable remedy. We moved forward with the facts and discussion, and you based your vote on who donates to your campaign and who votes for you, which is fine, and I totally get that. Just say that and don't blame staff or our commission because it doesn't hold water. Thank you.

Elijah Manicero, district five. Obviously, we're in a tough financial, situation. And usually, when that happens in cities, the first things that they cut are vacancies. And I understand that those discussions may be necessary, but I wanted to speak to the vacancies that I would like to not be cut. The planning department in particular, next week or the week after, you are going to have a builder's remedy project that you're gonna hear.

And that builder's remedy project is a result of a lot of planning staff leaving this city, including the head of the department, Kelly. And, when they left, the housing element was decertified. So I think it's important that planning is prioritized because we have a lot of, housing bills coming down the pipeline. And if we do not have the staff necessary, it won't be very hard to have your housing element decertified again and to have more Builders' Remedy projects. Buddha's Remedy projects are they're a lose lose politically from your perspective, so you should not want that.

In addition, I know that I think the definition of vacancy is a bit narrow because there are some we don't have a permanent finance director, for example, that's serving on the it's it's an interim finance director, which I think, given the financial situation we're in, is a bit embarrassing. We also have Daisy serving as the deputy Centimeters and the parks manager, the head of parks department. Those are two separate roles, two separate departments. They shouldn't be, handled by one person. So I would consider that a vacancy as well.

Having close to 30% vacancies of executives, I think, is something that needs to be filled sooner rather than later. And in particular, to the parks issue, they have different roles and different responsibilities. Parks are focused on advocating for parks, and the city manager's focusing the city manager's office is focused on how that fits into the broad spending of the entire city. So if you put those two together, there's a conflict there. So I think that those two roles need to be separate.

So, yeah, I would say prioritize planning and prioritize the executive roles as well. Ellis has been gone for a while. I think it's time to get that position permanently filled and all the other executive positions as well. And there's probably other departments that need to be prioritized as well, but those are the two that I wanted to highlight. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Zee. On this issue, I think that council member Zara might have spoke about it in his comments because there's a lack of pursuit of economic development. So I don't know if we have a position for economic development, but the city city certainly needs to find somebody who can spearhead some ideas for economic development. Of course, you know, my idea is AM, Auto Mall.

I've presented a lot of facts about the amount of tax dollars it would bring forward. I've listened to a lot of naysayers, of elected officials. One is when a park has an auto mall very close, we wouldn't attract anybody, and I've pointed out many times that Santa Ana opened an auto mall three years after Tustin Auto Mall opened, only have 10 dealerships, but is their number one revenue generator in the city of Santa Ana. Something to continue continue to consider and lean into if we wanna have a balanced budget. Thank you for your time.

Bless you.

I Anybody? Have some questions. In the vacancy summary table, there is the the largest number of vacancies, if you look at just the number itself, is from the municipal employee federation at 41. Could you explain what positions these are specifically, like any or or just overall? I I mean, we're talking about maintenance, what you know, certain public works positions?

Yeah. The majority of them are probably our senior maintenance workers. Now bear in mind that this reflects a point in time. So these were the vacancies as of April 1. We currently are in the process of onboarding, some senior maintenance workers. We have some conditional offers of employments that that are out. So this number in the next couple of days is going to, be reduced. But I I would say the bulk of them are in our our entry level senior maintenance worker positions.

Okay. And then the second would be the Management Association ten. What are those positions?

Four four of them are senior, admin analysts, are currently being underfilled by administrative analysts. So those positions truly aren't vacant. One is a senior civil engineer in water, which is underfilled by a non regular, which we are looking to onboard. The remaining give me one moment here. The remaining management positions are we have a couple civil engineer.

Well, actually, those are not management. I apologize. Econ development project manager, Parks and rec position. So they're they're in over a couple different departments. The the remaining five management positions.

Okay. And for the executive, there's three vacant. Is that does that include the parks and rec

That position is not budgeted so I'm not counting it as a vacancy.

So these are only the budgeted ones.

Correct.

And so potentially there are more like parks and rec director was taken off the books completely that would be needed.

Correct. So if if yeah. If if we were to add that back into the budget, obviously, it would reflect as a vacancy until we'd be able to fill it. But it it currently is not budgeted.

Right. So so this doesn't really reflect, the, the staffing needs. It just it's whatever has been budgeted and then the the positions that have not been filled from those.

Correct. With each budget cycle we do evaluate the budget needs. If with the next budget cycle coming up, you know, positions may be added. Some positions may be eliminated. Again, those are discussions had by each department with the city manager to determine how best to staff up each department.

Right. And so these executive ones, which one which three are these?

Director of administrative services. So currently, we have Steve Oblos as the interim, director of human resources. So I'm currently sitting as the acting HR director and then deputy director of administrative services.

Okay. And then thank you very much for the presentation. I just have one more follow-up question to our city manager. In the past, the practice has been to maintain a certain level of vacancies that was a practice that has happened in the past here in order balance the budget. So it was used as a method, accounting method to balance the budget. It seems here, other than maybe the municipal and and management, we have very few vacancies to to to use that method.

It's a I I would say it's an imperfect method for sure. Many of the departments are holding the it was a 3% number that was put forth by the prior city manager. So many departments are holding that. Others are trying to achieve savings in other means in lieu of two three percent vacancies. So

Alright. So so you think that maintaining vacancies is is not a good practice as as far as budgeting practice?

I'm not a fan. I I get the practical implication because it is we are a personnel centric organization. That's the that's the cost center for for this city. So by maintaining a vacancy, you can get salary savings. It's not a perfect method.

Sometimes those vacancies are backfilled by overtime. Sometimes a consultant is brought on to backfill. So it it's kinda difficult to measure the ongoing savings. Right. And it I think as time goes on, if the budget stays tight, I think keeping vacancies on the books can, provide false hope and and provide a false sense of how the organization is actually staffed versus if they came off the books entirely.

To one of your prior comments, where where you said that this vacancy list doesn't necessarily reflect, necessary staffing, that's obviously a subjective analysis, but definitely there are several of the department heads that would tell you and tell me that even if they had all the positions on the books filled, that they would look back to prior years where they had more and ideally they would get more. Now clearly, that's just a that's just a discussion and the current financial situation doesn't necessarily warrant that, but, your point is well taken.

Thank you very much. That's all.

Yeah. That covered my my major question. I was wondering, you know, very specifically the 3% vacancies that I remember departments were told to hold. It looks like they're really concentrated among the Municipal Employees Federation. Is that a correct assessment here?

Not necessarily. Each department determined how best to achieve that 3% savings, and so we have seen them across the the different bargaining groups. So for instance, the POA, that we are holding some police officer positions against corporal, FMEF, the municipal employee association. There are some FMA positions, so they it does cut across all bargaining groups and and levels.

The, the total list is is much more than the 3% holds. And so, like, for example, in public works, they had a lot of vacancies even before they were directed to maintain a 3% hold, if that makes sense.

So the 3% would be incorporated essentially, and it wouldn't be on top of the other vacancies, or would it be on top of just just to try to understand

the Essentially, it'd it'd be a number that would kinda be on top. I mean, the reality is public works as as a major example had plenty of vacancies before the directive of a 3%.

Okay. And that directive is still in effect now, but it and for the next budgetary year, it sounds like you're reconsidering it.

I'm reconsidering it. I I can't say I'm reconsidering it in a in a positive fashion. Obviously, right now, we're in the beginning stages. Not quite the beginning stages, but we're still in the middle of budget production, and we are facing a a significant shortfall. So, it's difficult for me right now to authorize bringing people on if I don't know the long term, viability of their future employment. So I am trying to be careful right now.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Councilwoman Valencia, anything to ask or add? No.

And I know that you'll come back with us with your decision on how you're gonna move forward. So thank you.

Mister mayor pro tem, anything? Alright. Then I'll seek a I'll

move the item.

It's receive and file, I believe.

It is? Yes. Oh, it is. Thank you. Okay. On to next public hearing item, it's Fullerton Municipal Code recodification.

Thank you, mayor and council. I'll quickly give you update on this one. The city has spent the last year and a half or so with our code publishing vendor to recodify our municipal code. Recodification is a clerical, ministerial, administrative process that reorganizes and updates municipal code for better functionality without altering any of the substantive substantive sorry. I cannot say that word.

Substantive content. I did a cursory search quickly today, and I couldn't find any indication of the last time Fullerton were codified, so it's possible, we never have. It's certainly not in my fifteen years with since I've been in the city. Any clerk who's been to one of my new clerk nuts and bolts trainee has heard me say, not every ordinance goes into municipal code, but everything in the code comes from an ordinance. So that's sort of how our municipal code is built.

It's essentially a cut and paste of various ordinance sections that have been adopted over the years and put into one place for easier reference. But over time, that cut and paste can become sort of sloppy. It makes, the difference ordinances can make the coal code, more difficult to use. Recodification is a holistic legal review of the code that recommends reorganization where it's needed for better use. It standardizes punctuation and grammar.

It updates outdated terminology, updates some old citations, and some other suggestions that would make the code either easier to use going forward and without altering the substance of the content. That word, I can say. For example, the code has many outdated personnel titles like city administrator, which is now the city manager, or director of maintenance services and director of engineering, which we now call the director of public works, which codification will update. Parts of the code also refer to also outdated or recodified state codes. So some of the reference numbers may not match what is on the books now.

So the recodification would correct those. Such things as the Myers Millis Brown Act has a section in the code that has been suspended since we added it to our code, so we'd like to correct that. Also clarify that recodification is different from codification. Codification is just our standard quarterly or biannual process to integrate newly adopted ordinances into the code. That cut and paste process I referred to.

And, yes, at some point in the future, we'll probably have cut and pasted enough during the regular codification process that we'd wanna look at another recotification recotification, but hopefully not another fifteen years or so until we have to do that. But for tonight, staff request, city council introduce the ordinance that will adopt the recodified code, which again does not make substantive, oh, got it, substantive changes to code revisions.

Alright. Thank you for that. We'll go ahead and open the public hearing. We'll seek public comment.

Please. Line up. We don't have anybody registered otherwise.

I just wanna say I think it's terrific that we're getting this done and that we all need to be grateful to, Curtis Gamble because he has been absolutely persistent in bringing this to all of our attention repeatedly.

Thank you. Next comment.

I'll be brief. Since this is an ordinance, it's gonna come back. It's adopted. It's introduced and it's adopted. The draft of the new municipal code, it's wasn't included. So I would just like to ask that that could be made available to the public before its adoption at the next meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, miss good evening, mister mayor, city council members. My name is Curtis Gamble, activist for the homeless, the veterans, Cal State Fullerton students, the OCTA bus drivers, senior citizens, and other low income neighbors. I appreciate Lucinda's speech. She said everything that I wanted to say. Perfect.

And I appreciate her for bringing you up to date that this booklet probably has never been really updated. They call it all those fancy words that she were saying, you know, clarification, all that stuff like that. But the basic thing is it hasn't been updated. And this has been going on a long time since actually the death of Kelly Thomas. That's when I became very interested in the municipal codes, and I began to follow them very closely.

And I've been working on this for years to get it updated, and I appreciate you, mister mayor, for getting this done. Many men have been before you that did not get it done. Your signature is on it, so I appreciate that. And, also, the municipal codes is is a is a is is a book of federal laws, state laws, city ordinance. Whenever a law is passed, which is usually every year they pass laws, it comes down to the council, the federal laws, the state law, and then the council will make it a ordinance.

They will agree on it and make it a ordinance. It's very important because earlier when I was talking, the police, they enforce the codes, and the community has no idea of what they're doing. This book is a reference book in the library. People can use it, but if it's outdated, it's not gonna do any good. And that's why we have all the confusion.

Our emergency shelters, we opened up 15 of them. It has the this book has the codes for the emergency shelters in here. All 15 of our shelters are operating differently, causing a lot of confusion to the poor homeless people and the residents community. As a matter of fact, count supervisor Shaffey just said a couple weeks ago that the I think the Kramer Shelter, they replaced Mercy House with PATH, a new organization, because it wasn't getting any people out of there. It wasn't housing the people.

So we have to follow these codes specifically all the way through. The police officers out there, they're giving people tickets. People are getting three, four, five tickets, and they have no idea what to do. They have nowhere to go. They can't come to the library and get this information because this book is outdated. This book is also online also, so people can pull it up right online and get the information that they need. And so we need to get this done and get it back to the company, the publishing company, and get it get it online as soon as possible. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Good evening. I'm Zia, longtime resident of Fullerton. I just want to say I'd like to see a final document for review by the public before a vote is taken. Thank you for your time. Go titans. Go hornets. Go lancers. Go cougars.

There sorry, Mara. There is one hand in Zoom. Jane, you should be able to unmute.

Great. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. I hope I can be heard. Over I, the past, several years, you've heard me, advocating pretty often to see if we could see, red lines when there are proposals.

So in other words, there's a new proposal and then we see that document that has everything in it. But I've always asked if we could have red lines which would show you what's been changed from the original. So I hope I'm missing something here, but I was really surprised not to see well, actually, not even a red line of the new municipal code, but but not even the proposal the proposed new municipal code. So, like I said, I hope I'm missing something. I know that the agenda item did say that it was available for review at the city of fall, but it didn't occur to me that I wouldn't see it also in the agenda packet.

I'm hoping that one can be provided so everyone can look at their favorite sections and that Curtis Gamble could also look at his just to make sure that there isn't anything that inadvertently, you know, doesn't correspond or doesn't make sense or introduces a new issue and so forth. So if that can be done before you vote on it, I think that would just provide a more informed decision. One last thing, I noticed that the ordinance title says that it is a ordinance of revising, amending, restating, codifying, and compiling existing city ordinances. I'm paraphrasing, of course. But those include many more words than just recodification.

So just to be sure, think we should, you know, get a chance to look at the document to to ensure that it's error free. Thank you so much.

We'll go ahead and bring this back. I'll go ahead and close public hearing and see comments or a motion from our counsel.

I have a question.

Go ahead.

So I I'm just asking this because I've tried to use AI tools, and I understand AI is the wave of the future. And, god knows, we're looking at it a lot in Cal State Fullerton. But was do you know if AI was used in terms of, the process that the company used to recontify it?

I don't believe so. They did a thorough legal review. And, I don't think AI CRISPR verify AI, but I'm sure human if they used any human eyes were on there on the back end.

I'm glad to hear it. And because I've I've tried to use those tools, honestly, I find that they're full of errors and factual inaccuracies. So I'm glad that we're not using that. And then will it be available for us to look at all as an electronic version that

the department

electronic will version. The the company sent us a 1,500 you've seen our code book, 1,500 page document, and it's not they don't have a red line version. But the the version that we have, that's the final draft is available for public review in the clerk's office.

Thank you.

Any other council members with questions or comments? Or I'll again seek a motion to move the item.

I'll move the item. Alright. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

I'll second.

Very good. Madam clerk, please call the roll.

Council member Charles? Aye. Council member Valencia? Aye. Council member Zara?

Aye.

Mayor pro tem Dunlap? Aye. Mayor Jung? Motion passes.

Alright. And now on to, regular business. It's the fiscal calendar 2627 road maintenance and rehab account funds allocation. Mister Grantham, our favorite topic, sir.

Yes. Lovely. Lovely streets. This is my annual presentation on SP one. You've all heard it before, but for the benefit of the public, I'll go through some basic background. SB one, Senate Bill one is basically a revenue that everyone pays at the gas pump or your car registration. It is base it is, revenue solely for street measures and street improvements. The revenue has been increasing every year, and next year we anticipate to get approximately $4,000,000. Next slide, please. So we've receiving the funding since 2018.

These are the list of the projects that we've done or allocated funding for over those years. One point out, we try to distribute the work across the city as best we can equaled equitable distribution as best we can. We initially focused on arterial streets, but over recent years, we've also, been focusing on residential streets and also preventive maintenance with these funds. Next slide, please. There are several requirements to maintain our funding.

One of them is public review, reason I'm here tonight, but we actually do two public reviews. The first one is through INREC. That was at March 16. Second one, obviously, is being here today. And, also, the city council is required to approve a resolution that identifies the streets or the projects we're gonna use the funding for. Next slide. Every year, we look at potential arterial and also local streets. These are the arterial streets that we looked at. Several of the streets, are we don't feel eligible right now for different reasons. For example, Euclid and Yorba Linda actually have, federal grant funding for design purposes for next year, so we took those off of the potential list.

Also, Commonwealth, which everyone loves Commonwealth for that section. Everyone knows about it. We have a water main project scheduled, hopefully next summer. So we'll be doing the street work or look to program the street work at that time. Next slide, please.

Street projects, focus on water main replacement projects or sewer, but in this case, it's all water main replacement projects where where we've done water mains. Also look at streets that, serve schools. So for example, there's Parks Junior High, so we looked at Parks, Road and also Acacia, from Chapman or Commonwealth North to Victoria. Next slide, please. So what are we recommending? Two projects. The first one is a residential area off of Euclid and Bassentry. I had purposely held this project back a couple years because there are two water main projects that we're doing in the area. We finished the first one. That is the purple area.

We are in construct we're about to start construction on the second one, which is blue. And then once we're done with that, we can kinda do the entire neighborhood as one project instead of splitting it up in multiple projects. That cost is about 3,700,000, and and will be a a rather a rather thick grind and overlay rather than a full reconstruction. There's curb and gutter. There's minimal sidewalk in the area, but there's a lot of trees that are doing a lot of damage.

Next project, please. So with the first project costing 3.7, with an estimated $4,000,000 revenue, we have 300,000 left. So our recommendation is to supplement the existing funding on the State College Boulevard project. This project has does have, previous SP one funding. We are really, really close to finally getting the federal approval to move forward with construction on this project.

So because it's been delayed, we know costs are going up. We feel that supplementing the budget is the best option at this time. Next slide, please. So with that, the recommendation is to adopt the proposed resolution with the two projects noted for 2627. I'll take any questions.

Any questions from council?

I I have some Thank you. Could you go back, please, to the, the slide of the all the projects that were considered?

Arterial or residential?

The arterial. Yeah. Thank you. So one of the the roads, I understand that three and eights you're saying are not recommended. So three is the Euclid Mhmm. And the eight is

Yorba Linda Boulevard.

The Yorba Linda. Could you explain again why they're not recommended at this time?

So we actually applied for maintenance funding through the OCTA, which is, administered a federal grant program for complete reconstruction or rehabilitation of those roads. We were awarded funds to do design only. So next year, we will be doing design on those projects, which will make us much more competitive when we reapply for those funds to do construction. So since we've been granted funds to do design, it makes sense not to use s p one funds to do the work right now. I'd rather do the s use the funds to do work next fiscal year instead of delaying that work.

What would be the cost for that? For To the Euclid, for example. How what's the cost of

I don't recall off top of my head. A grand and overlay is probably going to be 2 to 3,000,000 ish. But because we got federal money to do design, it'll push us back a year.

So and and how much is that federal design?

It's 300 and about $300,000 each. It's a little different. So

explain to me how is it that a a grant, which we all are appreciative of grants, is actually, in this case, I see is counterproductive. What's the point of the grant if we if the road's not gonna get repaired, and it's it's actually costing less than others? Like, you can get more right now.

Well, this is why we're having a discussion. We have, obviously, so many roads that need work on them. The longer we wait to do work on them, they can get worse. If we have funding and then get this designed with grant funding, we we're much more competitive to get additional grant funding to do the work. So in some respects, this allows us to do more work. It may be delayed a year, but allow it has possibility to do more work on our roads.

I don't know. Okay. I'm not getting the logic because I think our arterials should be a priority, and we shouldn't be delaying them because that's where the most traffic goes. And it was on my understanding a few years ago that we were going to push to get our arterials all all done in a in a timely manner, and it's, you know, it's been eight years on for me almost now, and we haven't completed those. No.

Which brings me to number six, which is the Commonwealth. So earlier, I think, a couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with mister Vice about this one. I've been asking for this one for years now, for about three years now since the first section of it got fixed. This is a road that I I was told that this year would it would qualify that the water mains would would be due for replacement this year.

Right. So the water main is programmed for next fiscal year for design and construction. So we anticipate construction of the water main will be next summer, and we would combine the water main project with some sewer work and and the street rehabilitation.

That was what I was told last year that it would be this summer, but now you're saying it's next summer.

It is next summer. Correct. A lot of that has to do with the we're following the water programming and the water funding and how they're getting their projects out.

Right. This has been very, very frustrating for a lot of the residents who live a long night, see their neighbors just down the road, get their road fixed, and then the rest of this road. And Commonwealth is a very well traveled road. Yes. And, yeah, that's just all very frustrating. Could you go to the the the street roads? The the local. Yeah. So from these, the then so it was most of the money is gonna be spent basically on one street road. Is that what it is?

It's one project area number three. Number three. That's it. So that's The vast majority

of this.

Of this. Yeah. The so none of the other districts, none of the other areas will get anything then?

Not from s b one funding.

No. Could you explain why this particular one was was chosen considering it's

the largest In 2021, through INRAAC, we came up with guidelines, slash policies of how to address our streets. One of them is to focus on areas and, locations that have water main and or sewer main replacements. This is one of those areas.

No. I understand that.

So that that's the reason why I picked it. The streets are in poor condition. We've done a water main project going on two years ago, and we're about to finish up the second one. And it allows us to do the complete neighborhood in one time as opposed to piecemealing it.

Okay. Alright. So this is it for this SB one funding. That's it? For Yes. Two projects?

Yes.

What's the total mileage? I mean, it's

I did not calculate the mileage. Okay.

What's, what's our deficit? Although, I think the next one, we're talking about the budget. So I'll I'll leave my question to the next, next one. So for now, thank you.

Alright. Any other council members? Very good. Alright, sir. Thank you.

Nope. Public comments, please.

I think we can all agree that there's no topic in Fullerton more frustrating than streets. I do want to thank, mister Grantham. He's an example of the kind of staff that we are very lucky to have. And I I understand how difficult it is to have to pick one street over another or one neighborhood over another, but the reality is that we don't have the money to do them all. So one of the questions that I had was it looks like that we need 500,000 from grant funding contribution in order to meet this goal.

I do appreciate that staff notes that the final allocation will be based on available revenue during the budget process. But I would like to know if the city does not come up with that 500,000, are the other funding sources at risk of being lost? That certainly has to be considered in everything that we do. And then just as an aside, do we have a single grant writer for the city or do we have grant writers that specialize for the various departments? I mean, we wanna make sure that not 1¢ is lost that might be available to us. Thank you.

I'm Zee, longtime resident of Fullerton. I wanna thank mister Grantham for the for the presentation. I'm here to advocate for curbs and sidewalks for the 1819 Hundred Block of West Page Avenue. We have children, kindergarten to sixth grade, that walk in the street to get to Orangethorpe Elementary School. In the street is traffic.

There's not another school in Fullerton that I've noticed that does not have a sidewalk and a curb for safe passage for five to 12 year olds to get to school to get an education. They're not there to mess around, to play sports. They're there to get an education and then come home. Yet they walk in the street, And, it's a shame because one day, the speeders have come down, they are gonna pick somebody off, and then this council's gonna have to make a decision based on reaction versus proactiveness. I wanna reserve my minute and fifty seconds for a later talk.

I I think on the do we we have to vote. The last one, we a motion is necessary.

I sent the motion. So I'll

I'll make a motion to pass the item.

Council

member Charles? Aye. Council member Valencia? Aye. Council member Zara?

Aye.

Mayor Per Tim Dunlap? Aye. Mayor Jung? Item passes. We'll

we'll do it again. Alright. This next item is basically requesting feedback before we finalize our c I p CIP budget as it relates to our street rehabilitation approach for next fiscal year. Next slide, please. So as I touched on previously, our street rehabilitation approach is based on discussions and conclusions we came up within right back in 2021.

I won't go through the entire list, but, really, it's focusing on the streets. We're avoiding the alleys, trying to distribute the work as best we can equally throughout the city, and combining the work with utility work or as quickly as we can after a utility job get to the street work. Next slide, please. We also look at our methods. If we had an open checkbook, I would be reconstructing or what we call full depth reconstruction on our arterial roads.

However, we don't have that, so we're we're doing the method of grind and overlay, which we do have good existing materials. So we just take the top layer off and put it back. It it's it's it's a tried and true method, and it's been working quite well. Same thing with the local streets. Those I would prefer to reconstruct on a more regular basis, but a thick grind and overlay, or the chip seal, slurry seal has been working quite well over the recent years, and we've had good results. So we're gonna stick with it. Next slide, please. Just for information, we do a budgetary street cross, update every year. Obviously, street costs are going up. The cost you see on the screen are fully burdened cost, which means it's not just the cost to pave the streets.

It is engineering, construction, inspection testing, but also the curb and gutter sidewalk repairs, the curb ramps that we have to do by law, and signing and striping and everything else. Next slide, please. So our potential funding for next year is shown on the screen. We talked about SB one at 4,000,000. M two is right around 3.2.

Infrastructure fund, 3.5. General fund, I would like to get at least 500,000, but, obviously, that's off a discussion as the budget goes through. We've applied and very hopeful to get $350,000 of CDBG grant, which we do every year. And then as I mentioned before, we've obtained $614,000 in federal grants. I will point out that this is a slightly elevated, budget than recent years, the exception being the ARPA funding years.

Reason being is, we've put more money into streets, from m two than we typically do because our traffic projects, we actually have a, a gap year, so to speak, on traffic projects. So we don't need to put as much money on our traffic there, so we've put that money in streets. And, also, our infrastructure fund was a nice surprise. That, gang went up about a million dollars, from the year before, so we've put a big chunk of that money into our streets as well. So typically, our budget is a little bit less.

So next year, we're looking at something a little higher than normal. Next slide, please. Just to give you an idea of where we've worked over the past three and a half, four years, the green is slurry seal, preventive maintenance, try and keep the steep streets in good condition. It's a very effective, cost effective way. The blue streets are more rehabilitation streets.

And as you can see, we try our best to distribute throughout the city, but we are following a lot of the water main projects, and the water main projects are more in the North than they are in the South. We have more problems in the North with our water system than we do in the South. Next slide, please. These are the current projects. The vast majority of them, are gonna go out this summer. Council's actually awarded a number of them over the last two meetings. Excuse me. The the items that have dashed, do have grant funding either solely or, supplemental funding. So those are in design. Those won't go out this summer.

They'll be slightly delayed other than State College, which I hope will be built in the fall pending Caltrans final approval. Next slide, please. So what are we looking at next year? This is a fair list of arterial projects, but, let me go through them really quick. State College, we talked about a supplemental funding. Harbor Boulevard, city Of Anaheim, we talk with our neighboring cities about what project they're doing. They have a project that goes up to the 91. We're just gonna extend that. It makes sense. There's a lot of traffic control, lot of Caltrans interface, so it makes sense to just piggyback on their projects, to extend it up to Orangefare.

Talked about Euclid and Yorba Linda previously. Those are design only, thus the federal funding. Harbor Boulevard's complete streets. We need to allocate our local funding match for that grant funded project, so we're doing that this year. Euclid Malvern area is basically Malvern East Of Euclid. We have a major sewer project where we're gonna be re installing a new siphon under the channel. While we do that, we'll also replace the water main. So we're gonna end up paving a long stretch of Malvern East Of Euclid. Water and sewer will be contributing to that, but we need to, provide some street funds as well to finish that up. I really do think we'll have money to do Rosecrans, but I can't guarantee it a 100%.

So if budget allows, we'll be doing Rosecrans in the area just west of Gilbert Street. Next project. Local streets. SB one is the first project that was approved. Thank you. The other two, Courtney Ash, Cannon Shepherd, are water main replacement areas done in the last year or two. And then the other project, c b CDBG funded project. We picked a street, an area kind of in the Southeast area of the town. We haven't been there, with the CDBG funds before, so we're going there now. That is we'll be looking to rehabilitate the street, also putting curb and gutter where it only has curb right now, as well as fixing all the sidewalk that's broken up.

Also, do plan to do pavement treatment projects. I'm not quite sure where the streets are, but it will be focusing on the South Side of town. With that, next slide. There they are on the screen, everything but the slurry seal, which I again said we'll be focusing. We're gonna try and do a a neighborhood in the South Side of town.

The recent pavement treatments that we've used have been very successful. They're cost effective, and I'm looking to do that again. Just we need to get through these other projects first to make sure we have sufficient funds to do a significant pavement treatment project in the South Of town. With that, next slide, I will, request you approve our recommended approach or give me other direction.

Alright. Very good, sir. Let's go ahead and take the public comment.

I approve this item. I saw that the road above Cal State Fullerton is in the design phase. I'm not sure how far along that is, but I spoke about this at the fiscal committee, but I think that we need to make alternative forms of transportation better to reduce the wear and tear on our roads. If people only have one way to get around, then they're gonna drive and they're gonna put a lot of wear and tear on our roads, And walkability is horrible in the city. Bikeability is horrible in the city.

We have no housing around our, train station. We, have a lot of issues with alternative forms of transportation. So I think I understand we don't have a lot of money, but, especially around Cal State Fullerton, a lot of people use bikes. They use, scooters. I walk on the sidewalks.

They always almost hit me. So I would like to have better sidewalks and better, bikeability around Cal State Fullerton. And not just Cal State Fullerton, but also around, going down State College to Chapman. There's a commercial area there, and it's really underutilized, and it's also, I believe, a high ah zone. So there might be housing there, and there might be Cal State Fullerton students. So improving the way that people can get from Cal State Fullerton to that commercial area, and also improving the active transportation around Cal State Fullerton, I think, should be a priority. And if those are still in design phase, I'd like for those to be prioritized. Thank you.

Yeah. I got one. Yeah. I think, yeah. Think the important thing to note because I think actually council what was that? Oh, I think, councilman Zara had actually alluded to this as well. Yeah. Part of the frustration is just articulating and, you know, director Bias, you'll recall the meeting we held over by Hermosa Elementary School last year or two maybe two years ago now. But, yeah, I think really being able to articulate, especially because, you know, in recent years, we've actually done a lot more road repairs. You know, that might seem funny. We've actually done more road repairs than we have in in prior years. And so I think being able to articulate not just the sequencing, but also, like, helping people understand because those were some of the questions I know that I got. It's like, you know, it's like opening the floodgates. Right? You do the water infrastructure and parts of the neighborhoods get their roads done afterwards.

And then the streets that aren't repaired after, yeah, those folks are, like, angry and they're like, wait a minute. Why did you leave my streets like this, but my neighbor's street is, like, perfect. Right? So I think just being able to use the resources that we have, kind of articulate, like, the game plan and let people know, hey. As part of this budget cycle, this project was approved. This is going to be coming in after, and it's gonna be pro it's either programmed or it will be programmed. Think that would eliminate a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration from residents. Because I know, you know, I've I've gotten that concern from several of the projects, you know, got that have gone on not just in the district but around town. So that's that's the only thing. I I think we need to look at continuing, find ways to improve kind of how to put that information out there to, you know, to residents.

Thank you. I have a just a question and maybe a couple of comments. My question is right now, just can we get an update on our infrastructure deficits? How many more miles of road need to be repaired, and what is that cost?

So I think if you wanted to fix everything right now, we're over $200,000,000 to fix everything right now to make it all about a PCI of 90 or it looks fantastic.

And that's just roads. Sorry. Really quick. That's just roads?

You're talking

water mains.

Oh, no. I'm talking just roads. That doesn't include alleys. If you wanna jump on sewer, sewers is probably one of the better infrastructures we have, but we still our revenue is decreasing there. So we do have to delay some of our, CIP projects, for that. And water is again, revenue is decreasing. Our costs are going up, so, we can't get as much work as done as we used to. And then streets, just in general, we have 300 miles of streets in the city, and I think it's close to 50 of those need some significant love and

care. So we're pretty much at the same level we were Or maybe seven years ago when I first got on there.

So Up on here. Yeah. Over the last since I've been here, we we our PCI has gone up, but we've plateaued right now. We're starting to creep down. So we it it is a little better. It's just hard to see it.

Right. If we were to I think I asked this question in the past. These these this deficit, just to clarify again, this is off the books. This is not programmed in our in our budget. We've not we're we're not budgeting for any of this. Right? This is all deferred maintenance.

Yeah. I mean, this has been this has been happening over the last twenty years. And, you know, we've had these discussions before, and it it's really showing itself now. The budget we have, to a great extent, maintains the conditions that we have. We need a significant increase in funds to make a significant difference to our street.

So at 200,000,000, I think for annually, you can handle what up to maybe an additional 5 to 10,000,000 annually?

A nice budget of 20 to 25,000,000 would be just fine for me.

So in a in a in addition to this or just what As a total. As a total. So, know, maybe in another 10,000,000 annually. I'll I'll I'll take it. For for the next well, for the whole yes.

No. I mean I mean

But so 10,000,000 a year in addition to what we have

I I

more or less will get us, 20 years.

I I I mean, I look at it this way. If I could have a budget of 25,000,000 for ten years, you would see a tremendous change, and we would be in a position where we could drop that budget and still maintain a good condition of streets.

So I remember back in 2019 when all these discussions started happening and where, I think, early twenty twenty, there was a discussion on measure s. Obviously, measure s was a general Mhmm. General tax, so you couldn't dedicate anything. But I I think as part of, the discussion, we created the infrastructure fund, back then and with the anticipation that if measure s passes, there's half the the that money would go into this fund. Right.

I'm glad it I'm glad we kept it, and I'm glad to see that there's more money accumulating. But just to clarify this for the because because a lot of times we forget some of these things. I just wanna, the infrastructure fund is, basically a, 50% of all sales tax that come in, over a certain baseline will go into this fund.

Right? It's sales tax and and property tax generally. It's it's basically the the general fund revenue over a certain amount. 50% of that goes to the infrastructure fund.

Right. So that that I mean, it seems like it's a significant amount. It's good. It's a good part

of my