City Council - Successor Agency - Housing Authority - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll now call to order the June 2nd, 2026 meeting of the Fullerton City Council. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Mayor Jiang.

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap.

Here.

Council Member Charles. Here. Council Member Valencia. Here. And Council Member Zahra is not in chambers.

Well, if I can ask Chaplain Moses Chun to be here today.

Okay.

Okay. Okay. All right. Please join me in the invocation this evening. Bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we ask for your wisdom and guidance upon this council. Remind us that the righteous man, though he stumbles, rises again. And so may this council persevere through every challenge, pressing forward with determination and service for our neighbors. Bless our city. Protect its people. May all that is done here tonight reflect faith and stewardship. Amen. Amen. If I can ask Mayor Pro Tem to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, sir.

Thank you.

Mr. City Attorney, any closed session?

There was no closed session.

Very well. Any expert aid communications to report? I'll look left.

Yes, I did have a conversation with City Ventures.

All right. Very well. Anybody right? Okay. Moving on to presentations. We have a presentation from Southern California Edison. on their scholarship program. So I will defer to Southern California's government relations manager, Ms. Tiffany Tran, to present the certificates to the two students. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor, city council members. We are just very excited to present to you two of the 30 Edison Scholar recipients from this year. What that means and what that looks like is since 2006, Edison International has actually awarded $50,000 scholarships to over 850 students who have chosen to study in STEM for their college time. And obviously the hope is for them to come back home, give back to the community that they are a part of. And we were just hoping to have this presentation for them so we can acknowledge the council members and just this great accomplishment.

So if I may, I'll ask our council to join me on the floor and we'll go ahead and acknowledge these remarkable individuals.

Absolutely. We'll have them say a few words afterwards as well.

Thank you.

She says she'll have them ready for the students. Yep, bring that up. And we'll take some photos. Manvir, you can wear your medal. And then after, yes. And then after we do photos, I'm hoping Manvir and Artha can have 30 seconds to a minute just to share a little bit of what their application's all about and a little bit about where they're going to school as well.

Okay, all right, let's get together for some photos.

All right, one more. Can everybody look over here, right at my hand? One more, thank you. Yes.

I hope everyone is doing well. My name is Manveer Singhanand, and I was awarded this Southern California Edison Scholarship, and I'm very grateful. I am going to UCLA this fall. So I actually want to tell you guys a quick story. And this involves Mayor Jung. So I was on the wait list for UCLA, actually. And I won another scholarship that Mr. Mayor was able to attend my surprise for. And he gave me a medal and he presented the check. And then the last thing he gave me was his business card. And he said, if you email me, we're going to get you off that wait list. So I emailed him. I was on the fifth day of, like, the wait lists coming out. I was accepted off, and I owe a lot to Mr. Mayor for, you know, believing in me and supporting me, and I appreciate you. Can you give a round of applause for Mr. Mayor, please? Yeah, overall, I'm super grateful, and thank you. I appreciate it.

Hello, everyone. My name is Arda Modares. Thank you for the presentation earlier today. I will be attending UC Berkeley and I I just graduated from Troy High School, and I'm really grateful for this opportunity and Edison Scholars, Edison International for recognizing us. And it truly enables us to have a lot less to worry about during college and focus on our studies. and also we get to uh you know get a network of really close friends in uh you know the 30 member cohort so maybe in the future you know any kind of opportunity that comes up we can help each other and uh yes i'll be studying data science and applied math i'm really interested in the field of computational linguistics so applications of computer science into the field of linguistics, languages, and how can we help communities that speak under-resourced languages to have better access to educational material, more through the help of computer science and data science and STEM. Thank you everyone for your time.

I apologize to the public and the council. If we can do it one more time down there so we can get these certificates to these remarkably two young individuals.

And two, three. All right.

All right, 123. Parents want to jump in? All right, look here. One, two, three. Beautiful.

Thank you, counsel.

All right. Madam Clerk, we'll go to consent calendars for our council. Any members of our council expressing wishes to remove any consent calendar items?

Yes. I'd like to pull. I'd like to pull item four and seven, please.

Okay, four and seven, any other council members? All right, very well. We'll go ahead and seek public comment. Please do not comment, folks, on number four or number seven, because that will be a regular item.

We have, it looks like 12 people registered. Alan, ABMA, there you are. Right in plain sight where I can't find you. Followed by that will be Gabe Holbert and Jim Ertle. I had a request for Spanish speakers. Do we have any Spanish speakers here today? If you wouldn't mind waiting until after all the English speakers go, because I could flip a button and you're my test run on trying to flip Spanish to English and we'll see if it works for you. So if you can hang on, we'll get you after. So thank you, Alan. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Alan Stubblefield. I'm president of the American Veterans Memorial Association. Our only function in life is to put on the Memorial Day events here in Fullerton. This year was the 88th consecutive ceremony that we've held at the Loma Vista Memorial Park. just over 10% of those whose final resting place is there are veterans. Some are marked, some are not. But we do our best to honor each grave with an American flag. Our veterans date from as far back as the U.S. Civil War to the present global war on terror. And our guest speaker this year was Lieutenant Colonel I've got certificates of appreciation for the mayor and the city council. For Fulton Public Works, they were out with a city truck on Friday and Tuesday. Gilbert was the gentleman in charge, joined by Stefan Ramon Arturo, Cesar, Oscar, David, and Dave. For the Fulton Police Department, on Monday during the ceremony, the Honor Guard, led by Sergeant Fu, Chaplain Schaefer gave one of the prayers, Corporals Franco and Domingo, Officers Orr, Mason, Cannell, and Wilder. The Fulton Fire Department had a very large contingent. It was great to see the chief there, along with Captains Langeway, Steely, Onishiko, Firefighters Nelson, Kuhn, Bale, and Engineers Arias and King. And finally, Parks and Rec on Tuesday morning, those 4,500 flags we picked up from the cemetery, then we cleaned them, pressed them, figured out which one needed to be retired, and that was all done at the senior center. So we've got thanks to the Parks and Rec and to Erica Lorenzano. So thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, next speaker is Gabe Hulbert, followed by Jim Erdl, and then Chris Jones.

Good evening, Council. My name is Gabe Holbert, and I represent Home Run Financing. We're a property assessed clean energy PACE administrator operating in California that offers energy efficiency, water conservation, and disaster resiliency home improvements through voluntary special property tax assessments. and over 360 California communities, including many of your neighbors, Brea, Buena Park, La Habra, Stanton, Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Tustin, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Norwalk, Lakewood, and numerous others throughout LA and Orange counties. California property owners continue facing higher temperatures, rising energy and utility costs, and drought, thus creating the need to adapt their homes to address these issues. The demand for measures such as solar panels, efficient HVAC insulation, water conservation improvements, and other measures has increased despite these upgrades being out of reach due to high price tags and limited access to affordable financing to pay for them. PACE is a transformational public policy in place for over a decade that solves this problem by enabling homeowners to finance these improvements with no money down at fixed affordable interest rates repaid through special property tax assessment. PACE delivers results not only for these property owners, but also municipalities as a valuable economic development and sustainability tool. Since AB 1284 was passed in 2017, the PACE industry has delivered best-in-class consumer protections, including rigorous underwriting standards, financial disclosures, and verifying the ability to pay, among other measures. California Statewide Communities Development Authority, CSCDA, which the city is already a part of, offers the Open PACE program who brings two residential administrators and numerous commercial administrators of Pace to your city. Numerous other cities in California have already adopted this program, including most recently Hawthorne, Calabasas, Lawndale, and Lakewood nearby. My team identified over 500 properties in Fullerton where homeowners have wanted to use it, but have been unable to as the city hasn't opted into the program. I'll happily leave that map and contact information along for you guys. We'd love to discuss how together we can work to bring PACE to Fullerton residents, make these home improvements more accessible to your community by passing a CSCDA PACE resolution at future council meeting. Thank you.

Next speaker is Jim Erdl, followed by Chris Jones and Yolanda Harrison.

Good evening. I'd like to first thank the previous presenter regarding the Veterans Day celebration. I'm sorry, the Memorial Day and the involvement with the city. Being a Vietnam veteran myself, I appreciate that very much. I'm here today to talk about our impending budget crisis. I sent an email to all five council members, and I appreciate the response from Mr. Dunlap, Mr. Jung, and Ms. Charles in reply to my email. I am generally opposed to a sales tax increase, as I indicated in my email to you, primarily because in many cases, government seems to waste a lot of the money that they take. The state is a perfect example. We have the highest gas tax in the nation, and yet we waste so much money. I recently drove from Fullerton to Burbank to my daughter's house to see my grandson and my son-in-law. And I was on five freeways, the 57, the 60, the 110, the 5, and the 134. And I can tell you that the freeways there that I was on are not much different than many of the areas that we have in Fullerton. And yet, the state has spent somewhere near $16 billion on the train to nowhere. So you talk about money that is wasted. That is why I am generally opposed to a sales tax. I don't feel necessarily, though, that the city of Fullerton is in that situation. I don't feel that they are necessarily overfunded. I don't think that they have too many people in most cases. In many cases, I think they are underfunded, and I think they do not have enough people in some of the cases. And from what I have seen with regard to the company that did the survey on sales tax, it may possibly pass, and I am a proponent of that in this particular case, and that's what I'm here to say. I believe that we should do that. The error of $10 million that somehow happened, hopefully we'll find out what happened, who, why, and how, and hopefully that will never happen again, but that has put us in a most precarious situation as well. The streets that we have, the problems we have with the streets are, everybody knows about that, and public safety with regard to fire and police would be very disastrous if we are not able to fund those areas in particular. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. Thank you.

Next speaker, Chris Jones, then Yolanda Harrison and Jensen Hallstrom.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Chris Jones. I'm here in support of agenda item number six. It's for Dave Music Fullerton. On June 21st, we join thousands of cities and millions of people around the world celebrating Make Music Day. We're especially excited this year because it falls on Father's Day, giving families a wonderful opportunity to spend time together and enjoy free live music throughout our city. Dave Music Fullerton is part of a worldwide celebration that takes place every June 21st, summer solstice. On June 21st, you'll find performances throughout the city of Fullerton. from the Fullerton Museum to Hillcrest Park to local businesses and historic Fox Theater. This year's event features 220 performers across 48 venues, with many of those locations being local businesses, turning the entire city into a vibrant, walkable music experience. This year marks our 11th anniversary. What started as a simple idea to bring free music to the city has now grown into one of the largest Make Music Day celebrations in the country. We're number two, I believe. Madison has more venues than we do. That success is thanks to musicians, volunteers, businesses, sponsors, community partners like yourselves who make this event possible. I'd like to thank the City of Fullerton. Their support and partnership has been essential to the success of day of music fullerton and we're grateful for their commitment to the arts and cultural uh in our community um i'd like to thank you for everyone who has helped make the music possible and i hope to see you all june 21st for some amazing music thank you okay next speaker yolanda harrison followed by jensen hallstrom and then jose trinidad castaneda

of the community. Wrong pillar, darling. That was my husband. It's bread. You thought I was just an upset widow with no voice. That was your mistake. I am, in fact, a professional chaos audio engineer.

You're in trouble.

Not the big checks you should praise, running off your madness every spring. The mama's passing coffee cans, trying to change a broken thing. I bust here and bust there from folks already stretched too thin. People are placing their... Watching you see that. You test your donors in private rooms while working folks pass jars around. Retirees and single parents still trying to stand their ground. You make a movement, it's a neighbor's choosing to give a damn. The folks who skip a little comfort just to put hope in someone's hand. Look at us, no handlers, no payroll, college talking points, dirty dot neighbors, receipts in hand, and everything you tweet.

You write your voice, bring a phone, you buy a ring, you get your own, okay?

You speak for free, you don't play.

What the voters say.

never ever piss off the creatives never ever ever piss off the creatives there are three videos that were made specifically for fraud and junk and that was just one of them next speaker jensen hallstrom followed by jose trinidad castaneda and i think we'll get on to our spanish language speakers

Good evening City Council and staff. Following my past public comments and my meeting with City Manager Mayor Jung and Director of Public Works Steven Weiss, I met again with Mayor Jung and I'm glad to report that it was actually a productive meeting that was hopefully the beginning of a more collaborative dynamic between myself and the city. There is a, at this point, a sense of how significant the Sequoia Memorial is at Hillcrest Park and Although the city is currently seeking proposals from local contractors for a full restoration this past Memorial Day, of course, there are still names on the memorial which are not fully legible and are weathered. So seeing to it that I'm not myself painting any more of the names, wondering what is some sort of timeline in which the city could at least have those names be fully legible. I understand that there is some sensitivity with the National Register designation, making it a historic monument. But also, I think it's very important to know some of the history behind this monument. So this is a comment from Robert Lutsch, who commented on a Facebook post regarding the memorial. He wrote, my father, Clark Lutsch, was a landscape architect who owned Sequoia House and Gardens Nursery. He brought two of these giant redwood rounds from Sequoia National Park in Central California on two army trucks with police escort. He then built the stonework support and mounted the redwood round for this monument. He did a great deal of the stonework around Hillcrest Park. The other Redwood Round was mounted in the same way in front of his nursery on South Lemon Street in Fullerton with a nursery name on it. I think it should also be part of the conversation moving forward. The completely missing war memorial, which is that of the 55... sequoia trees which were planted one for each name on the monument and as i reported previously unfortunately the last tree was cut down in 2015. in 1995 there is a landscape architect who reported the declining health of these redwood trees due to deferred maintenance and soil compaction so there's a great opportunity to replant this grove which is currently a completely missing war memorial a living war memorial thank you

Okay. Oh, Jose, I was about to skip you because you're hiding in the corner. Come on up. Glad you're good.

All right. Good evening. Jose Trinidad Castaneda. So tonight, I just want to highlight a couple of very important accomplishments and achievements that I've seen city staff complete or do throughout the course of their career. And more importantly, just how it contributes to the greater transparency and accountability values that the city shares. And so a couple weeks ago, I nominated City Clerk Lucinda Williams for the Innovation in Technology and Transparency Award, I believe it's called, from the Association of California Cities, Orange County Chapter. And the reason why is because I have been coming here since 2014, and for a few years, I was at every city council meeting, almost every commission meeting, and provided public comments across multiple years at every meeting. And so I have really seen the transformation that has come about because of City Clerk Lucinda Williams's Williams' work in promoting innovation in the way that citizens and the public engage with you all and our city at large. And so I came up here to provide this public comment just to highlight that because I feel that there has been a lot of claims to the contrary about the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability. But in just my over a decade of watching council meetings consistently, and even being the only person of color in the room, the youngest person in the room for multiple years on end, I have seen that's not been true. Those claims couldn't be further from the truth that in fact, Fullerton sits at the helm of Orange County providing the most transparency and the greatest number of innovations like we've just heard tonight and like the public comments will experience and express right after me. So I just wanted to highlight that because hopefully next year, all of the council members and all the senior staff nominate Lucinda for the great work that she's been doing for this innovation and technology and transparency award. Thank you.

No pressure now to make sure this works. Thank you, Jose.

Please bear with me.

You're going to get a lot of transparency because I have to do this manually. And believe it or not, I'm not staring at you. I'm looking behind you at the screen. This is why I need a second screen. I'm going to go from Spanish. I want you all now to do this at home now, too. To English. If it doesn't understand what I'm saying, remember, I think we did it right. All right, let's try this. Come on up.

Mayor Mrakas, i'm going to try it in English like probably should have done in Spanish but no it's just fine it's set up to do Spanish to English Thank you, let me read this. Mayor Mrakas, Good evening mayor. Mayor Mrakas, Young. Sorry.

City Council Chambers.

yeah if you say in Spanish it'll translate to English right now, so.

Mayor Mrakas, Well, when I start this. Mayor Mrakas, Mayor young and city council members. My name is Jose Perez. I'm here tonight representing the Woodchurch community. I live in Palm Garden Apartments. Our community is facing a critical and escalating parking shortage. So we have this issue maybe easy on us, Back in six months ago, we went through this and they kind of gave us a break ticketing our community in the parking lot area, in the parking section, until two months ago, a month and a half, two months ago, they started ticketing people parking there. So just our group here is a small group here that are Here today just that make you aware of what's going on with our parking. Situation there, thank you very much.

Spanish right yeah. Good afternoon, Mayor Young and members of the Fullerton Council. My name is Mireya Figueroa. I am here representing the Woodcrest community and we are here because we sent you an email this afternoon letting you know about the problem, as you heard from my colleague about the problem that is in the parking lot. La comunidad de Wilchris está alrededor de seis complejos grandes de apartamentos que viene esta Highland, Orange Store y Baker. Esto ha sido un problema difícil para nuestra comunidad. Esto afecta al estilo de vida de nuestros residentes de Wilchris. les pedimos por favor que consider en que nos den un permiso en el parque workers por que no hay suficiente estacionamiento a nombre de la comunidad les pedimos que traigan esto a la mesa Anybody else in Spanish?

So Spanish, come on up. I'll finish up with you, and then I'll translate it back the other way.

Ramiro Garcia. Gracias.

Buenas tardes, miembros del concilio. Mi nombre es Alma Chavez y soy residente de Palgarden. Estoy aquí para agradecer de antemano el apoyo que nos han dado como residentes y agradecer el trabajo que han hecho para mejorar nuestro ambiente. Nuestra vida en la comunidad de Wilkes. Agradeciendo al señor Amar por el apoyo que nos dio para marcar los estacionamientos en la area de Highland. Y el staff que cruza la Highland y la Baker. Muchas gracias, señora Amar, por su trabajo. También, pues estamos aquí también para agradecer su tiempo que ha servido en la comunidad. in el apoyando la comunidad del distrito cinco y pues esperamos seguir contando con su apoyo hasta que termine su tiempo de trabajo y también esperamos el apoyo de los otros concejales con este problema que estamos teniendo para los parkings. También otro tema que quería hablar con ustedes es que no sé si sepan de los apartamentos que están por la Commonwealth que son nuevos edificios. Esos edificios no los vendieron a nosotros como bajos recursos que los iban a hacer para que la comunidad pudiera vivir ahí. Yo fui a aplicar por uno de tres recámaras quieren. que nosotros como personas ganemos 7,500 para agarrar un apartamento de tres recamaras. Yo tendría que tener un sueldo de 45 dólares por hora para vivir en ese edificio. Los de dos recamaras quieren 5,500 que sea tu salario mínimo mensual. Nuestra comunidad somos bajos recursos. No ganamos esta cantidad por hora. Entonces, sí nos gustaría que pusieran un poco de empeño en ver qué se está haciendo con esos edificios porque a nosotros como comunidad nos pidieron que los apoyaran y que los iban a hacer bajo recursos. Muchísimas gracias por su tiempo.

Buenas tardes, concejales. Mi nombre es Sandra Mejia y vengo acá antemano a darle las gracias anticipadas para que nos apoyen para los parking. Ya como está la situación económica ahorita que tenemos bajo desempleo en nuestra comunidad y hay muchas personas que a la semana les están dando de tres a cinco tickets y se me hace injusto. Las personas hemos hablado con ellos y están dispuestos a que ellos entrar a las 10 de la noche y salirse antes de las 7 de la mañana para que ustedes consideren de darnos los estacionamientos de los parking que están en el parque. ya que vamos ellos este dice que están dispuestos pues para no este que luego llegan los visitantes al parque o luego juegan los niños ahí es estar vacío en la hora que ellos llegan espero que antemano nos nos apoyen con eso gracias anyone else in spanish okay

Old English, maybe? That'd be fun. Thou doth protest too much. All right. So three years ago, I stood here and I asked council to be ethical and pass a sales tax or put a sales tax on the ballot if you were going to before voting for things that bankrupted our city. And I was ignored because I'm usually ignored when I'm here. I'm used to it. It's fine. But I'm once again going to ask you to demand ethics from the people, from your subordinates, which will probably fall on deaf ears, but I am asking you to do that. because over the last couple months we've watched as you've been misled endlessly by staff when it comes to our budget issues one of the biggest ones is the 2.9 million dollars that went missing that staff said to you and the fiscal sustainability committee oh well outside auditor found this this last year and that's not true that actually shows up on the acfr your budget documents from 2025. This is a known issue going back to 2018, 2020. It's based on a property. I had to look it up because they've never told you what that was about. That's the property that the new Chase Bank sits on over by McDonald's. It's four parcels consolidated into one, sold several years ago in 2022. Why is that just coming up now when they knew about it a year ago? My concern is it's an ethical problem, is that staff is kicking the can and hiding the ball to justify passing a tax. And we've seen that time and time again with ethical lapses that are a very big problem. I'll point to Ms. Thomas, as she's aware that I brought this up on the sub-stack that I wrote on. I'm not trying to impugn her character here, but if you want to be beyond reproach, she cannot sit in meetings where Grant Thornton Advisors is delivering conversations, giving talking points, because her husband works for their company out of Los Angeles in their auditing department. The city manager, or Ms. Palmes, I'm not sure who, decided that the public didn't need to know that. City manager decided the public didn't need to know that. That's a conflict of interest when a lot of the money that's been misallocated comes out of her department. Whether it predates her, it's from her terminal and position or not is irrelevant. If you want to be beyond reproach, she should leave. She has not. At one of the Fiscal Sustainability Committee meetings, Ms. Perez stood up and asked her questions while Grant Thornton was giving a presentation. That's actually against the law ethically. I would also point to the fact that we don't have a budget today. That's a direct violation of the municipal code. You don't have to pass a budget today. That's not what the code says, but the city manager's job dictates that he has to give you a budget by the 5th of June every year. This is the first year that hasn't happened. Doesn't mean you have to pass a budget, but it has to be on this agenda at the latest. Now, the mayor or any two council members can agendize whatever they want, but the city manager's job was to put a budget in front of you. And again, it feels like it's just hiding the ball in this ethical game of we're not going to tell you the truth. We're not going to tell the voters the truth until we put a sales tax on the ballot as a last minute problem. Because now we're not going to have a budget until what, end of June, maybe July, already into the next fiscal year for a sales tax that won't even help with this budget? And if there are auditing issues and we needed to have the audit from Grant Thornton before we could have a budget, then why did staff have to demand that? Or sorry, why did council have to vote to have that audit this year? That seems like something that should have happened last year. So I'm just here asking to demand ethics and better accountability, just both you and the people on all of these issues going forward. Thank you.

Good evening. There are so many very important things that I wanted to address tonight. Instead, because it relates and applies to everything, I want to explain the marble jar theory of trust. The marble jar theory of trust, popularized by researcher and author Dr. Brené Brown, explains that trust isn't built overnight. or through grand gestures. Instead, it is accumulated gradually, one marble at a time, through small, consistent acts of care, compassion, respect, reliability, confidentiality, honesty, and integrity. It applies to all relationships and all settings. Every time a person exhibits these behaviors, a marble is put in their trust jar as trust is built over time. Dr. Brown's daughter gave the example of being late to lunch. Her friend squeezed over in her seat so she could sit with her and not be alone. Another was not laughing when others heard something embarrassing about her. Dr. Brown trained CEOs, bosses, and leaders of companies in this method. If a CEO goes into a difficult decision-making meeting and says, trust me, whether they are trusted depends on this theory. The boss that stops a worker in the hallway to ask how their very ill family member is doing and other such caring acts has accumulated many trust marbles in their jar and by how they live and treat people. They will be trusted. When they need to say at a difficult decision-making meeting, trust me, they are, because they have shown themselves trustworthy through many innumerable small but important acts. There are so many decisions that need to be made by this council, some of which need voter approval. One example is putting a sales tax measure on the ballot. Currently, there's much distrust by the community members of the council. Even if a proposal warrants support for the good of the city, many will reject it because trust has been lost. I ask you individually to ask why and whether your actions have contributed to this mistrust. I ask all of you individually to look at your accumulated marbles in your trust jar. If there are few or none, please self-reflect and ask yourself why. And then make a conscious effort to change. I ask everyone to do this self-reflection, elected members, staff, and members of the community. The city of Fullerton needs elected members of council to be trusted leaders who can propose and make decisions that are good for Fullerton and all of its people. We need not always agree, but we need to trust each other. Thank you.

Hi, so I'm just here to reiterate concerns about the fact that we don't have a budget or even a proposed budget. We haven't had any budget meetings for residents to attend. And I think especially given the deficit that we're facing, it's really especially important for us to be able to discuss as a community, especially if severe cuts are going to need to be made to some programs for us to decide as a community what we do and don't value, what we can and can't tolerate losing. So I also noticed that for the next agenda, even the tentative agenda, there is no plans to discuss the budget. So if there's any clarification that the council would be able to provide on that, I would really appreciate that. Thank you.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to share my views on a couple of things that have happened in fullerton and recently. Back in March or April I hand delivered to you. Invitation to attend an event on March 2nd with fullerton is a home a pilgrimage to all of the sites in fullerton where there has been ice activity. This was an interfaith. action, and we had speakers from the Jewish faith, Christian, Muslim, and others. What really struck me with this event was that each group, no matter what their faith was, were speaking to the need to protect people who are vulnerable, and that we all need to welcome the stranger. I know I've spoken a number of times about helping our immigrant neighbors, and I hope that there will be a way forward on that. Woody Allen was purported to say that 90 percent of success in life is dependent on just showing up. And I wish to thank Doctors Charles and Zara for showing up on May 2nd to successfully show that they care about their constituents and their immigrant neighbors. The other events that occurred it was right out side here on the line, a couple weeks ago when the city council meeting was cancelled. So group of of residents decided we would have our own community council meeting we followed the same protocol of the 3 minute limit for public comments and many folks came there was about 70 people in attendance. Everything was very civil. I had expected there might be some ranting and raving, but there was none of that. It was a very relaxed kind of atmosphere. The same problems we hear about every city council meeting were brought up. The roads, legal aid for immigrants, housing, the budget. But we also heard about successes of city council. The union Pacific trail reopening the patio at the lace on me restaurant. And one of the things that I value is that we have the pride flag flowing. Up in our in the front of the city hall now that's flying there. That was one of the first things I ever spoke to city council about and so I'm glad to see it still going. The only difference was the absence of all of you that have made for some tension in these meetings. And I think you have some work to do. So thank you.

And this looks like our last speaker in chain. No, not yet. We do have a couple of hands in Zoom when we're ready.

I said good afternoon. My name is Runny Deer. I come from the Mazat clan, the Deer clan, Obsidian Knife clan, and Heart of the Mountain clan. And we stand on the lands of our ancestors, the Tongva, the Gabrilenos, which is a state recognized I'm an enrolled member of the Tongva Nation, or Tongvar or Quiche, where there's many bands here in Orange County throughout Riverside and LA County as well. I wanna first thank the city mayor and everyone here with all your due respect. This is my first time here and I've been wanting to come. I was here for the Cinco de Mayo, the meeting that was canceled, but I am here in memory of my cousin, Armando Rizava. He's an alumni from Chapman University. Born in Mexico City, Tenochtitlan, Mexica blood, Aztec blood. I'm also a native from Oaxaca, Zapotec. So I want to just thank the city again and also for the big move that you guys made in your city. There is no more Fullerton Indians. We've never been from India. We respect Gandhi. We respect the Hindus or Hinduism. But we've been fighting for that for a long time. And right now we're fighting to change the name of the colonist. But I want to take the time to educate our people. history and many other things. Isha Chilanka is Turtle Island from Alaska to Argentina. We didn't cross the borders, the borders crossed us. From Crazy Horse to City Boat to Pacamaru to Zapata to Toiporina. Captured by the missionaries, by the priest, Los Españoles Los Conquistadores Los Colonistas. Y estoy diciendo que es tiempo para hacer un cambio. And the ice rifts have been happening. It's nothing new. It started in 1492 from enslaving our women and missing and murdering indigenous women and children and men. That started in 1492. City manager, I hope... I may know the offense, maybe if you're Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, Hispanic, Latino, whatever is politically correct. Thank you for all the work that you've done and everyone here. We've had a problem. When I was attending Fullerton College, I graduated from there and went to university, got my bachelor's in fine arts and minor in creative writing. I would like to maybe one day work with somebody or somehow someone can fund changing the East Street becomes Raymond on 91 freeway, that bridge from East Street, from those road tracks all the way to Orange Store. That's been very horrible since 1997, 1998, and we're in 2026. We're actually in the year Cali Casa, the year house and the Mexica asked the calendar. Not just Vietnamese New Year's or Chinese New Year's, we also have our New Year's. Mexica people. But yeah, just thank you all for listening and all due respect. I don't know what background you come from, but thank you so much for listening and hope to see you guys soon and hopefully we can make that change. Thank you. Oh, and keep getting rid of your grass. There's no water. Put desert plants. Thank you, guys.

Good evening, City Council. Elijah Manicero. I wanted to first just point out that the video feed keeps cutting out into black every few seconds. I have a question specifically for the City Attorney. In June 2025, Fred Jung met with Chad Wanke, the Placentia Mayor. and representatives from Verigy regarding a potential agreement. On December 31st, 2025, Chad Wainke gave the maximum contribution to Fred Jung's supervisorial campaign. At the May 5th, 2026 City Council meeting, Fred Jung donated, I'm sorry, Fred Jung voted to approve an agreement with Verigy without disclosing the fact that he received donations from their lobbyist, Los Angeles Mayor Chad Wenke. And 10 days later, following that vote, Orange Sunshine PAC made a donation of about $2,400 to Jung's supervisorial campaign. Wanky serves as the treasurer and principal officer of this pack. So, um, I just want to know if this was a violation of the Levine act and, um, whether this item needs to return to city council or what appropriate remedies would be available. Um, next I wanted to talk about the three, two vote that occurred last meeting regarding the development at Harbor and Hermosa. A staff was very clear that you need an objective quantifiable health or safety standard that is being violated. None was provided and yet you guys voted no on the project. We are not in a financial place to be taking risks with state law. And I think that there is a broader pattern of engaging in bad faith with state housing laws. Our housing element was due in October 2021, and we didn't have one at that time. In 2022, we received a lawsuit threat, and we ignored it. We ended up getting sued. The Attorney General joined the lawsuit and took it over, and we adopted our housing element in February of 2025. So we were supposed to do it in October 2021. And yeah, I don't think that we're engaging with state housing law in good faith. And I think that that is what HCD is going to find too, as they look at this builder's remedy case, if you guys approve it next meeting. So I would just like to ask that you please exercise fiscal responsibility and good governance, because that vote last meeting didn't adhere to either of those. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council members. My name is Curtis Gamble, activist for the homeless, the veterans, the Cal State Fullerton students, the OCT bus drivers, the seniors, and our low-income community. Recommendations. Can Fullerton Navigation Center or the rental La Paz mobile home park, all ages, be used as a daytime low-barrier emergency shelter? The daytime shelter would be open to all between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. SB4 allows all Fullerton churches to build affordable housing on the church property by right. Rancho La Paz Mobile Home Park is located in the city of Anaheim and Fullerton. It's located in the Anaheim SB2 industrial by right zone for emergency shelters, recuperative care, and medical respite. Rancho La Paz also... offers emergency shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing units. OCTA slash OC bus drivers and the Fullerton churches should be allowed to do shelter referrals when the police department and the Hope Center are not available. The Fullerton Municipal Code reference book should be updated along with updating the online copy of the Municipal Code booklet. The OC Board of Supervisors just renewed their 2026 contracts with PATH, People Assisting the Homeless, for $15 million and also renewed the Yale Navigation Center for $30 million over three years. Mercy House was replaced by PATH as Bridges of Kramer's Shelter Operator. Again, we need to We need to allow Rancho La Paz mobile home park residents to receive some of the $1 million a year from the county funding for housing of shelter residents from Bridges and Kramer and the Yale Navigation Center. Thank you for your time.

See no one else here in Zoom. Ilse, you should be able to unmute.

Ilsa, go ahead. Good evening, Mayor Young and City Council members. My name is Ilsa Miranda. I live in the 5th District. We are asking for help and answers. What would you do to address the issue of parking around our area? When I refer to parking, I refer to daylight parking, specifically on Woodcrest Park and surroundings. We are very exhausted. Neighbors are getting tickets after tickets after tickets. They could barely make the to live in basically in the area of Fullerton. Everyone knows how expensive everything is right now. So we would like an answer. When I say answer, please give us a... If you guys agree to do parking permits, if you guys do agree to maybe sign up for parking, give us those answers because this... Like I said, our neighbors are already tired. And every single time that I wake up to go to work, there's no one parking around the park. So what changed? What changed? What are the consequences of parking during the daylight at the park and obviously overnight? This is something that just happened that I don't see anyone around there. So I would like you guys to maybe guide us, help us to get the situation and make the neighborhood not pay for more tickets. Can you please help us out? The ladies have been very brave. and talk in public, and we will like answers, not just the comment. We need to know where are we going with this parking situation, specifically on Woodcrest, Baker, Orangethorpe, Highland, Richmond. And thank you very much for your attention. Have a great evening.

Next speaker, Arnel, you should be able to unmute.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, my council and staff. Just really quick, I've been trying to watch the council meeting via video and Zoom works, but the stream is not on the website. And so the only way that you can engage or watch the meeting right now is on Zoom. So if there's any way that that can be addressed, that would be great. Thank you.

And our last hand. David, you should be able to unmute.

Hello, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is David Martinez. I'm the state policy manager with Streets for All. And I wanted to take a moment to talk with you tonight about funding cuts that are facing Metrolink. See, the OCTA board and OCTA as a whole is proposing cutting funding to Metrolink. Metrolink is a vital resource for thousands of riders across Southern California. People use it for all kinds of activities to go to work, to school, to vacation, take it on the weekend down to the beach. It's a great trip. Unfortunately, these proposed funding cuts can end that. They can make it so that no one can get to the beach. They might reduce weekend service or completely eliminate weekend service. For Fullerton, I especially enjoy going out to your walkable downtown. I honestly think it's probably the best station area that Orange County has near a Metrolink station. So I don't want to have that option taken away for visitors like me or for residents that you serve. So for Mayor Jung specifically, since he is on the OCTA board, there is a way to fund Metrolink without cutting into other essential OCTA programs. OCTA is currently proposing spending $26.5 million on a hydrogen bus space in Garden Grove and another $19 million on a hydrogen bus space in Santa Ana. Those two bus bases combined would serve 100 hydrogen buses when OCTA will only have 50. Each of those bus bases would have the capacity for 50 buses, so we don't need both projects. And as I'm sure you've heard, director slash supervisor Doug Chafee mentioned quite a few times now, hydrogen buses just don't work that well. So we don't even know if we're going to want this technology in the first place. cutting this hydrogen bus space proposal and instead funding Metrolink will improve public transportation for thousands of riders in Southern California and will provide so many with the opportunity to get around using a method of travel that is not going to clog up our streets. So I urge Mayor Chung to help out with this request and the other members of the council not on the OCTA board to talk to your OCTA representative, either Mayor Chung or for the other fourth district representatives, including Supervisor Chafee and Mayor Pro Tem Leon of Anaheim. I encourage you to talk to them. and say how Metrolink is a critical resource for everyone from students at Cal State Fullerton to visitors to your wonderful downtown. Thank you.

No more speakers on Zoom.

Hello. I'm just here to echo the previous comment. I share the same concerns about funding cuts to Metrolink. This is a critical resource in our area, and I also echo the calls for our council members to advocate for maintaining Metrolink funding, even though it's not a direct responsibility of this council. It is an indirect responsibility, given that you're our elected leaders. Metrolink serves a vital service in our area. Without it, you would have thousands and thousands of more cars on the road and all of you would be subject to increased traffic congestion. You'd be surprised how many commuters use Metrolink on a regular basis. There's also recreational users of Metrolink who use it to get, for example, to downtown LA, to Oceanside. There's folks who simply take it to the monthly bike rides that we have here in the city from, say, Santa Ana or Irvine. It really serves a vital purpose. We spend billions upon billions of dollars on freeway widening projects through OCTA Measure M2 that don't actually improve congestion and that just kind of waste money and worsen everybody's health. This is actually a productive use of OCTA funds. It gets cars off the road and it provides people a way to get around without having to drive. So I urge the council to do whatever they can to preserve Metrolink funding. Without it, our roads will be significantly more packed. We won't have a way of getting around. and everybody will be mired in increased traffic congestion. Thank you.

All right. Okay. John Potter, we've got staff communications and also reports, let me ask, Mr grant them, can you work with the good folks at woodcrest regarding their daytime parking issues or absence, if you can inform them the path forward how to get permitting in that area.

Actually, permitting is not suitable for that area. Based on the citywide program, we have implemented what we can in that area. The areas, the streets directly adjacent to the apartments do not qualify. We've opened them up for non-permit required parking. So there's parking 24-7, an overnight parking there. And then you've got the... And because... The permit parking is adjacent to single-family residences. They wouldn't apply for permits in that respect. If you'd like us to look at opening up or use of the park, I'd need direction from that. And if you would like us to look at a very specific parking area,

options only for this area we would need direction from council to do that okay why don't um you provide some options that are available rather than subject matter experts that aren't here uh none of us from public works folks so um if you can provide some options that may be a better path forward okay all right we'll do okay and uh mr city manager if you can address the budget issue I had a concern question regarding that. If you can update the public and the council on what you sent us the other day.

Yes, well, the speaker is correct that the municipal code does require me to present a budget prior to June 5th. That is not happening this year as I've communicated with you. I do want to wait for the results of the task one of the Grant Thornton audit. We are to receive those on June 16th. And so I want to have that information at our disposal so that we can move forward and have budget discussions with all of that information that could be in there. Right now we're scheduled tentatively to have a budget study session on July 14th with adoption hopefully on July 21st. And then the community meeting in between those two dates, if there's any desire for additional dates or earlier sessions, certainly could entertain that by request of the council.

All right. But we do have scheduled public events for the community to attend beyond just the study session, correct? Or we are going to anyhow.

So again, we will have the additional study session with council right now on July 14th. There'd be a pretty short period of time between adoption on the 21st. So if you would like me to do some community sessions in advance of July 14th, I could do that. It's really up to the council whether you want to see the budget information prior to the community or after.

i think it's a good idea to do it beforehand i think everybody would be in agreement up here granted not an agenda item but you know i think that's a good a good forward yeah respectfully that was something we i mean that was something we voted on we made that determination that we should have no less than two i want to say we talked about holding the meetings in different parts of the city to try to facilitate those you know public meetings and get the feedback so i don't know why Again, this isn't an agendized item. I think you have clear direction and a reminder from the mayor pro tem of what we voted on. All right. Understood. Thank you. Very good. Mr. Dora, Councilman, do you want to start us off this evening?

I was looking up and saw Mr. Dora. Oh. It's an interesting device. Hopefully, the technology will improve and maybe switch automatically and get more accurate. I remember back in 2019, my first year, I was asking for Spanish translation interpretation. And we were able to do an interpreter, but this technology wasn't available. So I'm happy at least to see it begin here. the uh so i i don't wanna i know it's selection night so for those who haven't voted you still have an hour or so to go and vote um i'll keep my comments short there's a lot of things that we could talk about but this is an important month of june's pride month and i think it's important that we We celebrate our diverse community in every way. And so it's meaningful, not just for LGBTQ community, but everybody who feels that they have been persecuted or have faced hate over the years. And that this is something that we can all celebrate together. I think it's important that we... we share in love and kindness, not, and I've said this before, not just in gestures, but also in our actions, in the laws that we make and in the support that we provide our communities. So I just, I do want to say for the gentleman on the naming of the school, that was actually not the council, so we cannot take the credit for it. but that was the school district to do that. Yes. But with that, I hope it's a pleasant month for everyone. I hope we can celebrate together. And this Saturday, please come and join the Pride Festival and Parade at the Fulton Museum Center. It's In the morning, there's airport days at the airport. So you can go to that and then go straight to the plaza and the parade at 1.30. It's a bicycle parade that starts at Wilshire and Raymond and goes all the way down to the Wilshire to the plaza. And there's going to be a festival there all the way till the evening. So it's going to be a fun full day and get sunscreen as well. Thank you. That's all.

All right. Councilwoman Valencia, anything to report this evening?

I just have a quick comment. Thank you. I don't wish to pull any of these items. I just would like to express my deep and heartfelt appreciation to our city for waiving the fees for these upcoming events. In this time of financial challenge, their thoughtful decision provides meaningful relief and support to our community. Thank you for your dedication and leadership during these difficult times.

All right, Council Member Charles, anything to add this evening?

Yes, thank you. So I would also like to echo the acknowledgement that we live and work on Tongva Keese lands, and I appreciate that. I put that in my newsletter also. And happy Pride Month. I do look forward to going to the BU Pride Fest, as I always do. And after stopping at Airport Day, I wanted to thank staff for putting on the great Coffee Fest event at the Hunt Library. The Memorial Day event, for those of us who were there, many of us, was very moving. I hope everyone will be able to join us next year. I have quite a few military veterans in my family going back generations, and I care very much about this cause. So I really encourage you to come out on We also have Veterans Day coming up in November, so please come to both of those. I did also attend the ribbon cutting at Point Common Affordable Housing Community along with my colleagues and along with the others who were thanked in the many speeches that day. I was not one of the speakers, so along with all the wonderful speeches we had, I would also like to thank Councilmember Zahra and former Mayor Jesus Silva for pushing this project along this affordable housing. I look forward to more affordable housing here in Fullerton. I do need to give a report from the Orange County Mosquito Vector Control District, unfortunately. We now have two cases of typhus in Fullerton. So that is an issue that has to do with fleas and transmission. You get typhus from infected fleas on your pets. So please make sure that all your pets have as much flea control as you can possibly do. You wanna not have that near your house. And in terms of mosquitoes, also it was announced this morning that we have the first identified West Nile virus positive mosquito. Not human case, but a mosquito was identified in the traps as being positive for West Nile virus. So please take precautions by getting rid of standing water near your homes and wearing your mosquito bug spray when you go out, especially into wooded areas. I also want to encourage everybody who's eligible to vote and remind you that you can cast a provisional ballot if you're eligible to vote but haven't registered. You just have to vote in your home county and be in line by 8pm. And that my office hours on Thursdays from 12 to two in City Hall. If you'd like to get my newsletter, you could come see me at their open office hours come see me during those times. If you'd like to get my newsletter, you can message me on Facebook or on Instagram or email me at shana.charles at city of Fullerton calm. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor Rotem, anything to report?

Yeah, sure. Just a few things. First, I'd like to congratulate the Fullerton High School Tribe baseball team on their CIF second round finish. It was a big step up in competition for Coach Hill and the team, and they did a great job this year. I'd also like to congratulate Sonny Hills on their CIF tournament. It's actually only their first appearance since 2022, so they've had quite a bit of rebuilding, and so very proud of the kids there. And also, since it is summertime, we're, of course, kicking off, I think, an important tradition here in Fullerton, which is the start of the District All-Stars. And for those of you who have lived here long enough to know, we've long dominated youth sports, specifically Little League, in this district. And so... East Fullerton, Golden Hill are actually celebrating their 70th anniversary seasons this year. And Golden Hill is looking to repeat, you know, kind of their dominance as having won the districts in a number of different divisions last year. So I want to wish the boys and their families good luck on a great summer season ahead. Thank you.

All right. Let's go to consent calendar. I'll move consent. I'll second. And again, four and seven were pulled by Councilman Zara. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Charles. Aye. Council Member Valencia. Aye. Council Member Zara. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap.

Aye.

And Mayor Jung. Aye. Item passes.

All right. Our regular business item, Safe Streets and Roads for All Safety Action Plan. I'm going to call on Mr. Grantham again. Aye. Thank you, sir. I will have our City Traffic Engineer introduce this topic.

All right.

Very well. Good evening.

Michael Plotnick, Good evening, Mary Mary john and fellow Council members, my name is Michael planet and the city traffic engineer for the city of fullerton staff brings to you a request to adopt a resolution approving the safe streets and roads for all or SS for a safety action plan. SS for a program was developed to ensure that cities are working towards the elimination of roadway related fatalities and serious injuries. The city safety action plan was developed to enable the city to go after future funding to implement those plans. The Safety Action Plan was a collaboration between staff and our consultant, Lochner, in addition to input from the public. I will now turn the microphone over to Carlos Velasquez, a principal from Lochner, who will take you through the Safety Action Plan, and Carlos and I will be available for questions after the concise presentation.

I like that concise. That's a nice descriptor. You set the tone well, so let's get into that.

Well, good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. My name is Carlos Velasquez. I'm a principal and project manager at Lochner. We are a transportation consulting firm who led the efforts along with the city to complete the safety action plan. So, um, I believe I have about five minutes, so I'll be as concise as I can be, but I'm available for questions if you have any others. So as Michael mentioned, the SS4A is funded through federal funds that look at comprehensively addressing traffic safety issues in your city. So there are three main goals as part of the SS4A program. First is taking a comprehensive aim at improving roadway safety. So we're not just looking at making spot treatments where there was an accident one time and now we address it. We wanna look at the city as a whole to ensure that we're addressing the causes and the mobility factors tied to that. Secondly, the main focus of this project and the program is to reduce traffic related deaths and serious injuries. So we wanna eliminate traffic deaths, people who are killed by traffic collisions and serious injuries as well. And lastly, by instituting these goals in benefiting all roadway users throughout the city. Next slide, please. The project started about two years ago where we started with data collection. We had a comprehensive community engagement process, developed the proposed treatments that we'll hear about shortly, and now we're at planned adoption. Next slide. So as part of the plan, we conducted six engagement meetings. Three of those had our team attend ongoing pop-up events. So this was at farmer's markets, at Halloween events, and any other events that were being held by the city. So we went ahead and had a booth there, We had maps. We had very interactive sessions with the community where they told us where the issues are and elements that they would like to see as part of this project. We also held three standalone community meetings where we met with members of the public and identified, again, very interactive. We laid out maps and we had good conversations about traffic safety issues and things that they would like to see. Our project also had two community surveys where we collectively received over 250 comments from residents throughout the city where they told us again about where the issues are and things that they would like to see as part of this project. Next slide. So coupled with our community engagement process, our team underwent a very comprehensive quantitative data analysis where we looked at the overall city and we identified where your areas of highest need are. because we have a limited timeline and limited funds, we cannot do everything everywhere. So what we did is we developed a prioritization criteria based on the factors that are listed there on the left side of your screen. So we looked at social demographic factors like poverty rates, housing burden, unemployment. We also looked at transportation access. So we looked at barriers, vehicle access and collisions and then community access. So we identified all of these factors. We collected all of this data and we essentially put it all on the city map. And what you see in front of you there is the areas that are in darker red are the areas that rose to the top in terms of overall need for improvements such as those laid out in this plan. Next slide, please. From that process, we identified about 380 total treatments that are shown on this map here. And as you can see, the map of treatments closely follows where the areas that were darker on the previous slide are. So I'm not going to go through all 380 treatments. What I have here is an example of some of the things that are being proposed as part of this plan. I want to say that the elements that are proposed are generally shown to address specific collision factors as part of this project. There are also best practices as part of just general industry standards. So these are typical treatments that are implemented as part of these projects. As you can see here, we have a range of different treatments like retroreflective backplates. This is adding a very visible outline on specific traffic signal heads to improve their visibility. We also are proposing several curb extensions. So this is extending the curb at specific crossing locations to reduce the crossing distance for people who are crossing those streets, reducing their exposure to motor vehicles. We're also augmenting the safety and visibility of crosswalks. That's shown on the third square to the left, sorry, yeah, to the right from your screen. So that's adding flashing beacons to specific crosswalks to, again, improve visibility for people who are crossing and then more curb extensions and lighting improvements. Next slide. On survey number two, we asked the public about these treatments and if they agree with these treatments. And as you can see on these charts here, most of the respondents strongly agree with the implementation of these traffic improvements. And again, I could get into more detail during Q&A. Next slide, please. And same here. We asked about specific treatments like leading pedestrian intervals. This is essentially a green head start as you're going to cross the street while walking. Most people like that. Same with high visibility crosswalks, ADA curb ramp improvements. Generally, people felt these additions would be very positive. Next slide, please. So what we did as part of this project, again, we have over 380 treatments proposed. We wanna provide a pathway to implementation for the city. So what we did is we took all of those treatments and we developed 10 specific projects where we grouped a lot of these projects to allow the city to then go after grant funding. So essentially they can say, okay, project number one, which is Southwest area, this is a project that we can go and submit a grant application for. So we are ready to do that work for them. So then Michael and his team can then go after specific treatment or specific grant funding based on those projects. Next slide, please. And that's what we show here, a level of prioritization. So in the next five years, the city can go ahead and pursue funds for the three projects shown there on the left, based on their general score of prioritization, and then so on and so forth in the next 10 to 15 years. Next slide. And then lastly, our team also went ahead and developed cost estimates. So essentially, we went ahead and costed all of these 10 projects where we grouped all 380 proposed treatments. And as you can see, the overall program would cost about $36 million. Again, this isn't saying that you're going to have to allocate $36 million of your budget for this project. The city would then go ahead and pursue federal grants, state grants, and other public monies that would be available for these types of projects. I think that concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Folks, it's a necessary resolution to be eligible, like our staff said, for the grant program from the Department of Transportation, $5 billion money. So certainly we would act on that. We'll take public comments. Thank you, sir.

I have two people registered for public comments. Jensen Hallstrom and then Jose Ternadag Castaneda. And at the moment, I have no hands in Zoom.

Very well. Thank you. Good evening.

all right good evening again city council and staff i appreciate the uh intention and uh hopefully the successful implementation over time of these uh treatments as as they were called i'm particularly interested in the intersection of gilbert and malvern the vehicular bridge over the brea creek channel right there is what I believe the only bridge over a creek channel in Fullerton, which does not have pedestrian access. If you've ever been at that intersection, this is the bridge that is immediately south of the intersection of Gilbert and Malvern. And on each side of the bridge, there is maybe something like a 16-inch wide curb before the guardrail. For example, the Basque Bridge over Brea Creek does have pedestrian access, just as pretty much every other one does throughout Fullerton. But this one in particular is an issue that I highlighted at the last Planning Commission meeting when it was brought up in the open space element upcoming item for Council's consideration. I thought it was going to be at this meeting, I guess a future meeting, And the interest of that plan is to also improve accessibility, especially from district five and four to the very large open recreational spaces that are mostly within northern Fullerton. And this particular intersection is a huge obstacle to accessibility for anybody living in the Gilbert Park, you know, Olive Park neighborhood, Valencia Park neighborhood. If you want to get on the north side of Malvern right there at Gilbert and Malvern, it's very, very dangerous. I've seen people, they still try to either try to... precariously walk along this very narrow curb or they walk in the shoulder of the actual lane. And sometimes, you know, trucks are coming through on that right turn lane, making a right to go east onto Malvern. And so this is something that I see there are some supposedly some of those treatments. It looks are focused I mean it looks are focused over at that intersection, especially as the bass and tree tree farm parcels are one of the most. That has the most potential for open space value to district for in 5 as being very accessible open spaces, I think this is something that should be focused on thank you.

And Jose Trinidad Castaneda, now I see you in the audience.

So I just want to have a resounding affirmative to approve tonight's plan. I was one of the public members at the November 13th, 2024 meeting, and I was glad to see that all of my input had been incorporated in the final documents before you tonight. I just want to highlight that this is a an extremely detailed plan that's before you. The costs, for the firm to have generated some of the cost estimates for these projects and then consolidated them and grouped them so that we have the best means for going about applying for and competing for those public funds from the federal level, that stands out. That really stands out and it makes me proud that you guys chose this vendor. It makes me hopeful that you choose this vendor again for future projects because it's not something that I have seen across other cities completing their circulation elements or other cities completing their any, you know, any elements. This is down to the nitty gritty and I hope that you guys pass this tonight. Thank you.

Looks like we have at least one person not registered too. Anybody else? Now's your chance to line up.

Hello, I am chair of the Active Transportation Committee, although my comments here are my own and don't represent the Active Transportation Committee. I was very fortunate to have had some involvement in this project. Very grateful to the consultant for allowing the public to participate in this way. I attend in every neighborhood meeting. I was on the community advisory committee as part of this project, and so I'm very familiar with it. Our staff report, so the project, the spirit of the project is excellent. It addresses significant issues with socioeconomic inequity that we see reflected in traffic violence in our city. Unfortunately, people who are underserved in our city are the victims of traffic violence, injuries, and fatalities. more disproportionately than those in more affluent areas. And this project absolutely reflects that and reflects the need for us to take significant action. The staff report said that Active Transportation Committee unanimously supported the project, and that's not quite accurate. I think this project is fantastic and we need this project to pass, but I say that with reservations. I have concerns that the project perhaps could go further in its recommendations and a lot of the recommendations are not quite adequate for the problems that we have at hand given the number of traffic injuries and fatalities that we have in this city because our infrastructure is so poor and so unsafe. The reason that this is important, the reason that I want to see this addressed is because you saw the implementation horizon. We are talking about changes that will affect implementation grants for a generation, and if we don't get this right now, we'll have to wait until the next round of road improvements, and who knows when that will be, when we get the opportunity to make these changes. We need things more than just bike boxes. We need intersections that actually protect cyclists as they go through intersections. We need protected intersections. We were told that roundabouts, which are data proven to save lives, raised crossings, that these were not suggested because our council wouldn't go for them. I'm going to read between the lines and make my own interpretation, but because our council is not supportive of more innovative traffic treatments that actually save lives, which is why I always ask you guys to please support staff in more innovative measures to save lives on our streets. a lot of issues were not addressed in this report that i would have liked to see addressed um we need safer pedestrian infrastructure we need a lot more school treatments for kids to be able to go to school safely but a lot of that wasn't reflected um in this project so i'm really grateful that that the city actually tried to do this project i'm grateful to our consultants who took the time out of their days to meet with members of the community and make these recommendations But I have significant concerns that the project doesn't go far enough to address the actual problems that we have at hand. There's so many more innovative things that we could be doing that were not reflected in this project. And I really want to see that go further because this is our one chance for generations to make these changes. Thank you.

Good evening, Council. Elijah Manicero. I'm going to echo a lot of what Anjali said. The report from the consultant makes it clear that there is a high need for these improvements, and this is a long-term federal grant. We could do a lot, and everyone knows how bad our streets are, how bad our infrastructure is. There's a lot of potential that we could get out of a grant like this, but the plan that's presented, while it will improve safety, it's not reflective of that need. um it the things that are most effective um in preventing traffic deaths are things like uh uh like protected uh left turns which we are severely needing in the city when we have the green light and you're waiting for the trucks to pass and then finally you get an opening and you go you're not always looking for pedestrians um at that point because you're just waiting for an opening um people get hit a lot here whether they're walking or cycling and um I wanted to speak also to what Anjali said about the fact that there were political considerations in the plan and how the plan was formulated. I just wanted to raise a process issue with that. Staff received the approval to go after this grant in June. It was in 2023. They received the approval. So at that point, what staff should be doing is they should be making their professional recommendation of what the best policy is. Don't make political considerations. Put it in front of council and let them vote on it. Let them make the modifications. Don't water it down beforehand. You got the vote and this is free grant money. If they don't want the improvements, make them say that in public. you know but put the best policies forward because i think this plan i support it but i think it's the floor and it should not be considered the ceiling at all because we are in desperate need of making alternative forms of transportation better because that's the only way that we're going to fix our roads that's the only way to reduce the wear and tear on our roads is to improve the demand for other forms of transportation so thank you

Well, I brought up about lighting at intersections. I'm happy to see that some of those have been corrected. One of the important ones, Pomona and Commonwealth, I see the improved lighting. It's very bright there now. I'm a fan of those lights that brighten up and dim when you walk underneath them. I think that would be a great safety feature at crosswalks. Instead of like blinking lights, if you push the button, then that particular light would brighten up on that crosswalk. I think people would notice that a lot more than the traditional lights. I think a lot of these safety issues could be overcome by more enforcement for aggressive drivers. I think I would say that's a bigger cause of accidents than than the infrastructure. I'm eager to, I'm looking forward to, I don't hear much about it, but I'm looking forward to the improvements that will be made up on Harbor Boulevard. I hear a lot about State College and Gilbert or something like that. But Harbor Boulevard has a lot of people that walk up and down that street. Bicyclers are always trying to cut across through traffic so eager to see at the Planning Commission they said that should be that should be started sometime in the fiscal new year so that's about it thank you so I'm reading through this agenda item I have a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts and I'm

not going to get into that for the most part. You have a 207-page document in there. The public input part of it is really lacking. At the most, there are 240 self-selected comments online, often addressing rather obscure points. What I want to say is implementing this would be very useful. But I think you can get much to the same place by implementing the bicycle plan, which has been around since 2012. Maybe you could even get farther. I think the main thing is to provide safe routes for bicyclists, safe routes for pedestrians to get through the city. And we have not done that. Thank you.

All right, we'll bring this back. I'll either look for a motion or comments from council. I have some questions. Why don't you start us off, sir?

If I can have, I'm not sure if staff members were there. It was a question on political considerations. Was that a factor at all in looking at these and designing this program? Were political considerations important? on how this council would vote were part of that discussion?

No, we never take political into effect. We look at data, and we use the data to make determinations based on designs.

So the specific issue was on the roundabouts, I believe. Was that brought up at all?

That's... The roundabouts are part of traffic calming. This is looking at what we can do to reduce fatalities and high severity injuries. So we're not looking at redesigning the streets necessarily.

Got it. Another question, does this plan have, like when looking at these grants, how are you, it seems like you put things together, group them together in certain projects. Is that how these grants work? Because what if you find an opportunity in another area? or maybe a portion of a project, how would you, what's your strategy in implementing this grant wise?

We group the projects together because of their locations, but it doesn't mean we have to do all those projects as part of a grant. So typically, grants have a minimum amount. So if we don't have enough, we couldn't go after certain grants. But we can always use part of it, the whole thing, or maybe the whole plan if we get a large enough grant. But it's so many projects, it would be overwhelming. So that's why we broke it into 10 projects. But from those 10 projects, we can also pick and choose parts from that if there were other funding opportunities.

I was just trying to, because the amounts are very large. These are massive amounts of money. So I was wondering how, what the strategy is in the grant writing and looking at these grants. Some grants, because I don't want to miss out on grants because they don't fit the larger sort of group project. Yeah. So I hope there's a holistic approach to this and a sort of a flexible approach as well.

What does help if we have a good-sized project and then we show that it's fulfilling underserved communities, that helps us do better on very competitive grants.

Okay. And when does this start, the grant writing?

There is, well... They come up every now and then. So for this one in particular, it was already due. So we would have had to brought this. But part of one of the plans in there, we did apply for the SS4A so that we could get additional funding so we could finish our Nutwood project. So it was part of it. But as other funding opportunities come up, we'll apply for and we'll be watching them.

Is there... And maybe this is, I don't know if this, whoever's going to answer this, but is there adequate funding still there? Because I know there was cuts in funding federally. I know the state also doesn't have.

This funding's still there. It was already set aside. They're not cutting any of that funding.

Okay. This was the funding from the previous administration, correct? Yeah, and this is the sixth year of it. The bipartisan infrastructure, right? Yes. Okay. And then one final question. Does any of this include any road repairs? I know sometimes we get these projects where you get, you know, you're working on something, but there's additional money and then kind of pave the road above it.

This is not including road repairs. However, we did propose a project to add sidewalks down a much needed street.

Okay. Is that the one by Orange Thorpe School?

Yes, on page.

On page. All right. Perfect. Thank you very much. That's all I have. I appreciate the work that you've done on this, and I appreciate our staff for doing this. Nothing is perfect, but I think this is a good start. So thank you.

All right. Any other comments or motion? Yeah, I'll move the item. Great.

Second it.

Very well. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Charles? Yes, sir. A very happy eye, and to make this a floor, not a ceiling, I think is a good idea.

Councilmember Valencia. Thank you for helping District 4. Aye. Councilmember Zahra.

Aye.

Mayor for Tim Dunlap.

Aye.

And Mayor Jung.

Aye. And the final item on the regular calendar is implementation Brown Attic update, the 707, including technology and outreach policies. Madam Clerk, I'm going to assume you're doing this, yeah?

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this item with you this evening. The irony is that I think the universe has a sense of humor because part of the item in front of you tonight is the technology disruption policy. So apologize for our tech issues. just wanted to give me a good example in case questions came up i guess so on the next slide um senate bill 707 this is a bill that was chaptered last year it's an evolution of several pieces of legislation since 2020 addressing remote participation and legislative body meetings not only for members of those bodies but also for the public It's a very long, tedious, technical bill. So if you're wonky about this stuff, hop on in here with me and we'll read it together. But for the rest of you, I'll just hit the highlights because I don't think you need to get too far in the details unless you really want to. I will note that this bill sunsets in 2030. So on the next slide, we talk a little more about what the bill does. It expands public access to legislative body meetings. It modernizes the teleconferencing rules for the elected officials and adds some language access for communities with significant populations of non-English speaking residents. Next slide is a little wonky, but I wanted you to see who has to follow this rule effective January 1st and July 1st of this year. We fall into the cities with the 30,000 population or more, but in case you stumble across an entity that is not following these rules, it might be because they don't have to, not because they're ignoring them. So I just wanted to let you know. Throughout the legislation, it talks about eligible legislative bodies, which is city council, and eligible subsidiary bodies, both of which are very difficult for me to say, which are our boards, commissions, and committees. So I just wanted to give you that definition as we go through this. On the next slide, we talk about the phasing. There are two phases. Phase one already took effect January 1st. I have a slide to talk about a few details on that in a moment. In phase two, which is upcoming, and I have about four weeks to start panicking about that, is a whole bunch of other things that we have on slides also coming up that we'll talk about. Next slide talks about phase one and what we had to do or what we've done already. We've distributed the Brown Act to all elected and appointed members of the city council. The AB 922 bill, which talked about social media interaction for elected officials and how to avoid inadvertently creating a meeting online, that became permanent. There are some new rules about reporting department head compensation, which will let the person to my right worry about at some point when we need to report that to you. It clarified that for ADA reasons, you can't allow remote participation for your legislative body members and The Brown Act already has rules about disruptive remote participation for, I'm sorry, disruptive participation for people in chambers. It was kind of assumed the same rules apply for anyone participating remotely, but the bill made it clear that it does in fact apply for those folks remotely and in person. The next, thank you, next slide. Also, consolidate some of those rules that we were working under since covid for the just cause and the emergency and when can you participate remotely and when can you not and how many times can you do it and do you have to disclose if someone's in the room with you it did a little more clarification of those rules, put it all in one section of government code, which makes it a lot easier to look it up and set the caps, declared what the closures you need to make. If we get to that point for you to participate in that way, I'll get into the details with you. that's what all went into effect on january 1st now on the next slide taking a deep breath before i stress out about this phase two kicks in july 1st it requires a lot of things a mandatory two-way public access for city council that part i don't have to stress out about because we did not go away from our two-way participation for council since covid so unlike these other agencies that didn't never went there or have to go back and have found out about it in the middle of a budget year and had six months to implement, we are not in that boat. So we can check that one off the box or check that box off our to-do list. It also allows optional public access for boards, commissions, committees. It implements some mandates for what we have to put on our web page in regard to our agendas and how people can participate and access the agendas. We add some rules for public agenda translations and some rules for language access. The rule says that any particular community group that speaks English less than well, if more than 20% of that group falls into that category, we have to translate agendas. 20%, I found, after some research, is a very high threshold, and there are very few cities that reach 20%. We are not one of them. We are more in the... I think our highest is... 8%, but don't quote me on that. I'd have to go back and look at the numbers now. But we do not have to mandatorily, if that's a word, do the 20% translation rules. On the next slide, I will show you the action that we are requesting tonight. What you are required to do by July 1st is adopt a city council technology disruption policy. This is different from the people disruption policy. There's a lot of technical stuff in that, but in a nutshell, what you'll need to do if for some reason we had even more issues tonight and prevented the public from participating remotely, council would have to recess for up to an hour while staff works to iron out the issues. If we figure out the issues before that hour is up, the meeting can just reconvene as planned. If the hour expires and the issues are still not revolved, the council can reconvene and choose to adopt findings that the need to keep the meeting going outweighs the need for remote public participation and you have to vote to make such finding and a whole bunch of record keeping requirements that'll fall on me if and when that happens. I also put in here a technology disruption policy, a similar one just for the Commission's committees. It's not required, but if you'd like to require that same process for the committees, it's in there for your adoption attached to their Rules of Procedure. And the other part that is required but doesn't necessarily need a resolution is attempts to make further outreach to unrepresented groups at Council meetings. I've seen that a lot of cities are adopting a resolution. It's fairly generic, but it does state the intent to get to that point. It's a nice best practice to have that resolution on the books, but it's not required. And do I have one more slide? I have one more slide. So my request and next steps, again, is to adopt those three resolutions that I just mentioned on the prior slide. We will quickly get all the needs of the requirements of the bill in place by July 1st. Then there is an option in the bill for staff. Is Anjali still here? She may like this part. For committees, you'll remember when we were going to youth and senior committees, I was a little insistent that we named them committees, not commissions, to make it a little easier to identify groups that we have that are solely advisory to council, have no decision-making authority. The law does now allow those groups to meet fully remotely if needed. if the actual legislative committee agrees to it and takes an action to vote in favor of that, and if council votes to allow it and has to do a continuing resolution every six months, I believe, to still allow fully remote participation, which I promise would be not technical, even though that was a technical explanation. But if the interest is there, I will take my SB 707 roadshow to the commissions and committees and let them know the new rules and see for those that apply if they are interested in doing fully remote and come back to you with a resolution if there is any interest. And I think that's it for me.

All right. This is another necessity that's required by state law, a resolution to pass. We'll go ahead and take public comments. Seeing anyone in chambers.

And I have two people registered, Ruth and then Jose, one more time.

Anybody on Zoom? All right. Good evening.

Good evening, council members, Mayor Jung, and my name is Ruth Zemke. I'm a 45-year resident of Fullerton. I live in Councilmember Dunlop's district. I'm a member of the League of Women Voters of North Orange County's Observer Corps. I regularly attend these meetings and report to our members on the Fullerton City Council, along with fellow members Pam Berg and my husband Wayne Zemke. Our reports are regularly shared with you and available to you, but we do not comment ordinarily during meetings. One of our basic elements of the League, however, is observing whether the Council's meeting the requirements of the Brown Act for open meetings and citizen participation. In general, the League speaks with one voice. As a member of the Board of Directors of the League of Women Voters of North Orange County, I'm that voice tonight. A League of Women Voters of the United States' basic principle behind any of our actions is that democratic government depends on informed and active participation by its citizens, including open meetings. We further believe it's a citizen's right to know, to understand, to participate in government decision-making. Based on these principles, we recommend that the Fullerton City Council's approval of staff recommendations go ahead to meet the new technology requirements of the Brown Act. We are pleased to see over time that the city council has already made available remote access through its cable and televising of the council meetings through participation, comments by phone, by Zoom. We hope they will continue to use high quality, latest available technology and manage to make it work as we all struggle to do in our own lives. and maintain this kind of participation by our citizens as a valid part of your meeting process, including recessing when remote access is disrupted as now required by the Brown Act. We further strongly support the approval of the resolution presented by city staff to make reasonable efforts to encourage participation from individuals and groups that have not traditionally engaged in public meetings. An example, I think, of one method already in use is the closed captioning that we see on our transcript screens here in the council chambers. It also is a boon to hearing-impaired attendees such as myself. Thank you, and I hope you will approve these resolutions.

I wholeheartedly agree with the previous public commenter that the city has made strides in providing more language access through its transcription services via Zoom. And I just encourage you all to adopt and approve the requested resolutions tonight. In addition to directing staff to seek input on having committees if they so wish to do all remote meetings. So that way there's not competition for use of space here in council chambers. So that way that logistical challenge can be resolved digitally. And I also want to point out that The city of Fullerton has consistently provided digital access and remote access for public engagement. I think even right around the time of the pandemic, if not before, and that stands apart from other cities having interrupted or on and off delivery of remote access participation. And so I know that in the city of Buena Park, they had removed their Zoom access for years now, and that should be coming online by July 1st this year by the deadline, but it'll be sad to see if they don't achieve that deadline in comparison to our city, which has consistently delivered transparent and two-way civic engagement here. So just want to highlight that, and thank you again.

Anybody else in Chambers? Now your time is lining up. Otherwise, I do have one hand in Zoom after this.

I support this item. That's about it for that. I'm not sure what the shout out was for. I appreciate it. I figured that was the case. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say that the reason for ATC, Active Transportation Committee meeting cancellations generally has not been lack of quorum. It has been lack of agenda items as provided by staff. So we missed about six months worth of meetings. I am grateful we had our last two, but our issue has not been lack of quorum. Our issue has been lack of agenda items. Thank you.

And in Zoom, we have one hand. Julie, you should be able to unmute.

Good evening. Thank you. I just have one thing to add about the Zoom because I often do participate on Zoom from home. There's been several times when I join a meeting and the whole meeting is muted out. And then there's no way to reach anyone because typically, you know, the meetings at six or whatever, and nobody's in city hall. So if this is going to be part of where, you know, we have to have the access and be able to participate, if we can't hear what's going on, because the screens are muted, the feed that we're receiving is muted, then we need to have a way to be able to reach someone. So perhaps in you know, some of the paperwork of the access of how we participate. Perhaps there could be a number or someone should be checking the Zoom feeds prior to every meeting or during the meeting that things are working properly. Because if it goes out, we don't have any way to tell anybody that we're not, you know, seeing the full thing or hearing it to be able to participate. So that's all I had to add. That would be very helpful. Also, I did like the fact that you were doing the translations and things, but being on Zoom, we did not get any translation on that. So I don't know if that's something that can be added too. I'm assuming right now it's only in chambers, but it would be nice to get the translation of our fellow residents on the Zoom feed too. Thanks very much. Have a good night.

All right, we'll go ahead and bring this back. I'll seek a motion for these resolutions. I'll move the item. I'll second. Very well, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

This includes all three resolutions, correct?

Correct.

Council Member Charles? Aye. Council Member Valencia? Aye. Council Member Zara?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap? Aye. Mayor Jung?

Aye.

Item passes.

All right, we'll go to item number... Madam Clerk, do you have to read those resolutions? I don't want to skip that process. Are you okay? All right, very good.

uh four and seven we'll take them in in order uh council mozara you pulled four and seven please advise um so i don't have any particular questions i've had them answered but i felt that it was necessary to explain we had some questions on on both of these items um so and i already informed a city manager to maybe do a little brief presentation and provide context for these both these items

Thank you. We'll start with number four, which is the Notice of Intent to Withdraw from the Independent Cities Risk Management Authority, commonly referred to as ICRMA. I'll provide just a brief overview and then if we have additional questions, either myself or staff can fill in. The city as part of its risk management program participates as a member of ICRMA. ICRMA provides a number of resources for participating agencies. Some agencies pool. their liability coverage. Other cities like us, we use it as a group purchasing mechanism for various layers and types of coverage. Our program is pretty complicated, but we do purchase some lines of coverage through ICRMA, and we do purchase others outside of icrma with an independent broker icrma also serves as a conduit for us to receive various services like claims management insurance reviews different consulting that we might need along the way So what this item actually is, though, is a notice of intent advising him of our intent to possibly withdraw from the pool. It does not mean we will withdraw from the pool. But if we wanted to, we have to give this one year notice. We have provided or with this action would allow us to provide that notice and then we would go out to the marketplace through our broker to see if there are other pools or other lines of commercial coverage options that would be better for us. One of the concerns we have and Probably the main driver for this decision is the shrinking of the pool. The pool once had 35 member agencies, now down to 12 and could soon be down to seven. That obviously, the reduced pool size diminishes economies of scale for some of their services and could reduce purchasing power. There's also been some changeover in pool management, which I think some members may not be satisfied with. I don't know if that's the case with us. I haven't heard that necessarily. But what we're doing right now with this is just giving them proper notice that we're basically going out to the marketplace to assess our options. If we do find alternatives, then we would come back to council with a thorough report and recommendations, but it would have to be approved by council at that time. So this is really just giving us the flexibility that if we do find another option, we would have provided notice in adequate time to be able to exit the pool. But again, we have not made that decision.

I think the mayor might have at least left the room, left the meeting. Any other questions before we take public comments?

No, that's it.

The mayor left completely. All right, so we'll go to public comments on this item.

No one registered on this item.

Okay, so this will be our last public comment here.

I have a suggestion to consider joining the California Joint Powers Authority based out of La Palma as they have growing membership, 33 members and counting, and it's very close by. So the economies of scale could provide additional benefits if the independent cities risk management authority is shrinking because of South L.A. County gateway cities leaving that organization as well.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, seeing no other public comments, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing at this point, and we'll bring it back to council. Is there a motion to move the item?

I'll move it. I'll second.

Great. Please call the vote.

Council Member Charles. Aye. Council Member Valencia. Aye. Council Member Zara.

Aye.

Mayor Bertram Dunlap.

Aye.

And Mayor Jung is absent.

All right, and that brings us to the next item, which I believe was item seven.

Yes, with that one, again, just to provide context, the questions I had received were why this particular street or neighborhood was selected, and then what about other neighborhoods like Richmond and Woodcrest, and if they would be in the pipeline for this?

So the Derrick Circuit over north of Cal State Fullerton is one of our many problematic circuits. We received the power from Edison through that transformer. They've actually replaced the transformer recently. It failed again. So based on our available budget, the number of lights that are in that circuit, that circuit fits the criteria that we had in the available budget we had. So that's why we are recommending to move forward with taking these lights off of the series circuit, put them on solar. It would be our second major project. The first one on the Bassenshire area has gone very well. Residents are very receptive, thankful, and supportive of what we've done. So we think it's going to move forward in a very positive manner for that area. The next area that we're focusing is actually on the southwest of the city near the city border near Buena Park High School. We call it the West-West Circuit. That has about 59 lights. So that cost is probably in the region of $250,000 to convert it. So when the funds become available, we're likely moving into that area. Again, that has been another one of our problematic circuits. It's currently working, kind of. But there's a very good possibility that that transformer could fail at any time. So we're looking at that one. But we need the funds first before we can move forward.

I know this is a broad problem we have with our light infrastructure. What about the neighborhoods of Woodcrest and Richmond? Because we've had those problems there.

Do they qualify? It's one of those things. Nothing is set in stone as far as West-West. If another circuit goes out and Edison is unable to repair it and we have available budget, that would likely jump to the head of the queue. So we have a guide where we would like to go, but nothing is set in stone.

Okay.

This is, I mean, I think this is a great solution. It's forward thinking. So I'm happy with it. And thank you for providing the context.

Thank you. So we'll go to public comments on this item.

It's not a good thing.

Okay, so I know.

Okay, so I also requested to pull the item. It's the series circuit problem has been going on for I don't even know decades. So this is nothing new. And I just want to strongly encourage and give support for council members are to override and prioritize woodcress enrichment communities from you know, being put down on the bottom of the queue. They need to be put ahead, in my opinion. I don't know how many years ago, I think it was 2020, 2021. My grandma slipped and fell because the light right off of Woods and Woodcrest was off. The whole neighborhood was off for weeks and there was complaints submitted to the city. So the city narrowly avoided lawsuit for not providing lighting in that area, not sanding down and leveling the sidewalks in that area. And had we moved forward with a lawsuit against the city, to cover the medical expenses from my 83-year-old, or at the time, she was an 87-year-old grandma, from falling in front of her home, then that would have far outweighed the cost for replacing the series circuit lighting. The series circuit lighting was the impetus for me organizing in Fullerton to join the Orange County Power Authority years ago, And so I know that this is such an important item for just the everyday resident. So again, strongly encouraged to move Woodcrest and Richmond ahead. And not to say that any one community is more important than the other. I have family living in every single district in the city. So it's not, none of this falls in deaf ears. But when I think about this, I think about the emotional connection, like the horror of seeing my 87-year-old grandma at the time falling because of the darkness that the city was responsible for. Thank you.

Is there one other speaker? No? Okay, so we'll bring you back to council. All right, any other comments?

I'll move the item.

Okay.

I'll second it.

All right. Please call the vote.

Council Member Charles. Aye. Council Member Valencia. Aye. Council Member Zara.

Aye.

Mayor Propan Demlap. Aye. And Mayor Jung is absent. Aye.

All right. Well, I believe that's the end of our agenda for tonight. So we'll go ahead and adjourn. Good night, everybody.