City Council - Regular Meeting

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I'd like to call this meeting to order. The regular city council meeting on Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Thank you for all attending. We'll go ahead and start with the roll call. Vice Mayor Reed?

Here.

Council Member Pratton?

Here.

Council Member Sandhu?

Here.

Council Member Farmer?

Here.

Mayor Rodriguez? Here. If you'd all join me in a silent prayer and then the flag salute.

Thank you.

All right, salute pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Mr. Chair. Mayor.

OK, I apologize. We're going to go ahead and call a recess really quick. Everybody take a deep breath for about 10 minutes.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Would you please read the replay statement?

Bear with me. This meeting of the Galt City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cablecast on Metro Cable Channel 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and DirecTV U-verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.saccounty.gov. Today's meeting replays Friday, May 22nd at 9 a.m. and Saturday, May 23rd at 9 a.m. on Metro Cable Channel 14. Once posted, the recordings of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com.metrocable14.

Thank you. All right, are there any agenda approval additions and or deletions? I have one. Let's, if Council... is agreeable, let's move item H before item G. Does that work for everybody? Is there any other additions?

Could you clarify, Ms. Mayor, what that is to the public?

Yes, so we're gonna move the regular calendar, item H, and Items 1 2 & 3 under item H. We are going to do them after item F and Then we will go into item G Okay, it doesn't look like we have any presentations correct correct All right, could you read the public comments statement, please?

Under government code section 54954.3, members of the public may address the city council on non-agenda items. The public comments section is for the city council to receive comments except for brief responses to questions. No discussion or action may be taken on any item that is not listed on the agenda. Please limit comments to a maximum of five minutes. Consistent with the city council procedural guidelines, the mayor reserves a right to shorten the time limit for speakers to ensure the efficient and timely completion of all city business on the agenda. Thank you.

And do we have any regular public comment? We do. Ken Lee.

Good evening, council members. We're kind of ending the Chinese Heritage Month, May, so I thought I'd continue through the eyes of a Chinese American researcher that began 30 years ago. The key to the Chinese wealth in America came about because of our associates, with the Caucasians. Governor Ralph was our partner and mentor. President Grant assisted us with his right-hand man in charge of the custom houses. President Hoover assisted us in the overthrow of China in 1910, eliminating the last emperor of China. And the big four railroad men sold us their ocean miners. That became the China Mail Steamship Company. It cut our transportation costs down for our produce coming into our canneries. And in the 1800s, the development of the modern day canning process of sterilization and the new soldering process that supplied our foods worldwide, especially for President Hoover's food program, supplying 60% of the food to Europe and the military. That led the way to Chinese immigration in the seven canneries. They had 1,000 workers in each of them. We also had General Bidwell's ranch in Chico because that hired hundreds of Chinese, as well as hundreds of the Chinese cooks in San Francisco that we brought over. General Bidwell leased us his Chico ranch because Del Monte, got the farmers to boycott us. Buffalo Bill killed these images on our canning label because we wanted, it's called Buckskin Brand Foods. That made our operation an American brand versus a Chinese business operation. John Wilkie, who was the head of the OSS, better known as the CIA, allowed our opium enterprise worldwide. It was legal back then, making us the king of the Pacific with our ocean liners and shipping it. We established the Bank of Canton in 1907 to finance the Chinese businesses and rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. That's because the financial institutions refused to lend us money to rebuild. So we started our own bank. But Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as the other Caucasian banks, formed the banking commission to eliminate our bank. That was instrumental to basically paying the Chinese mercenary soldiers the general purchasing and our gambling interests. The biggest supplier's success in the Chinese America was the associations with wealthy Americans brought about by speaking English. My great-grandfather was an orphan at 13, and he learned English. He dressed like an American, and that's why he had these partnerships with all these great men. and basically we participated in the major food suppliers. We were the Rosie the Riveters, the Flying Tigers. We have four Congressional Medal of Honors in our family and we're working on two more. The Flying Tigers led the way for Chinese mortgages and education in college. That came about because they weren't coming back to America and that's why you have that program offering veterans those programs. And legal immigration is taught in ethnic studies for the last 25 years in the UC college system. We were the first family to use I want a lawyer during immigration. We supported America's values and language. We were taught to speak up, being the third generation and the second generation. We fought for our rights, and we led the way for change. Education grants for returning veterans, mortgage programs to buy a house, that basically got the Chinese out of the borders of Chinatown, and we were able to buy houses in any neighborhood we wanted, as long as the neighborhood agreed to it. And... So basically, this is a land of opportunity for those that are willing, earning our way versus wanting and taking from the backs of other hardworking individuals. And we were supported by Republican values since the 1800s. That's our political connection that allowed the Chinese to prosper and get the opportunities to basically get rich. My great-grandfather was the first Asian millionaire before 1910. On his INS papers, they asked him, how much money do you make a year? He said slightly over two million. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lee. We have Chris Brosman.

Good evening, City Council. Tonight, really, I was talking, or wanted to talk about maybe things for the future. In 2024, our city, under the threat of lawsuit by Shankman and Hughes, was forced, due to alleged violations of California Voting Rights Act, to do away with large elections. I know many of you council members were against it, but bottom line is to avoid a costly fight. We paid off Shankman and Hughes while also hiring a demographer to guide us through the process of making districts. But every time in these meetings that we came to, and I came to the vast majority of them, race was always an issue. It was a topic. And that race was determining where boundary lines would be drawn. Now recently, as I'm sure some of you are aware, Supreme Court recently limited, severely limited, the use of race for redistricting. And yet now our citizens are gonna face a future election that did include race. For me, really, it comes down to, I'm not necessarily against the five districts, I just didn't care for being shaken down by a big law firm, to be frank with you. The other side, race did determine it. And to me, there is a possibility of all those 175 cities that rolled over to this law firm being sued, in my opinion, and probably righteously so, if they were considering race when drawing these lines. Perhaps maybe the city should approach those 175 and say, hey, do you guys want to join in and try to fight this? That's more of a question for everybody. My other topic really is, I think all of us are getting tired of hearing about fuel stations. I know I can't talk about it. But let's talk a little bit about safety. Let's talk about safety in the Cimmerhorn exit or entrance to the ramp onto 99, how short that is. I think many of us that have gotten on or tried to get on during rush hour, or even now it's heavy traffic, it pretty much doesn't have to be rush hour anymore. That on-ramp is way too short. I know the state feels it's way too short. Why are we keeping it around? I know on the 27th we have a meeting on safety with the PD. I plan on being there and I plan on echoing that comment about that entrance because it not only causes accidents from people getting on because they don't get up to speed or they come to a dead park or whatever. but it always forces all the other lanes, and if you look at the number of accidents that are in there on that on-ramp, I think we seriously need to consider closing that one. I think we seriously need to look at extending a couple others, i.e. Twin City. I think that we need to start pressurizing the state to make our flow through Galt a little bit smoother in the morning because Shorter off ramps don't work. And extending an off ramp on Twin Cities, in my mind, would make that merge a whole lot easier, which that is always a bottleneck in the morning. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Brosnan. No more public comment. All right. Okay, item E, reports by city council members on regional boards, commissions, and committees. Mr. Vice Mayor.

I have nothing.

Councilman Pratt.

Yeah, I'll make it quick. May 11th, I attended the CGA, Consumer Needs Groundwater Authority, Fritz was there also, his first time, and I just wanna report out to you, he did an excellent job of explaining and understanding the situation. And I think from my last report, we've got the issue of there are citizens in Galt that are not paying part of some mandated issues. We're just trying to figure out how to deal with that, and I think he's got a good handle on it. So that'll be resolved soon. Same day I attended the cast meeting schools the city in schools Meeting it was an excellent meeting Somewhere I lost my agenda, so I don't have the detail maybe mr. Farmer can give you some of the detail, so that's all All right councilmember Sandu and nothing to report tonight councilmember Farmer

Stand by, folks.

He's waiting for the microphone to come on. There we go. 20th time's a charm. Yeah, I also attended the CAST meeting with Councilmember Pratton, and CAST stands for Cities and Schools Together, so it's an opportunity for two of the councilmembers to meet with two of the electives from the elementary and high school boards along with the superintendents from both districts, usually the police chief is in attendance, as well as the city manager, and we discuss things that the city and the school can work on together. Issues of safety are always discussed. The chief debriefed us on a recent active shooter training that was conducted, and so we appreciate all that that the PD does to be proactive and in those situations. One takeaway I just would leave you guys with was the, and that we always discuss, is enrollment. Enrollment in the schools typically is tied very closely with development in Galt, so that's why we discuss it. We talk about how many houses are being built, what the predicted estimate is of high school, or students being yielded per home being built, and so that the school districts can, then try to use that data to anticipate changes in enrollment. So although the perception is that a lot of houses are being built in Galt, unfortunately that's not really reflecting in our enrollment. The good news was the high school district is up about 100 students, which means we had a big uptick from eighth graders graduating in, but the bad news is that the elementary district at the time of our meeting was down about 132 students, which means THE NET LOSS GOING IN AND COMING OUT IS 132. SO WHAT THAT REFLECTS IS A LOT OF DATA THAT'S BEEN PUBLISHED, YOU KNOW, OUT IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW ABOUT DECLINING BIRTH RATES AND LESS CHILDREN ENTERING THE SCHOOL DISTRICT AND SO ON AND SO FORTH. SO IT'S VERY TROUBLING. IT'S GOING TO BE A BURDEN ON THE SCHOOLS MOVING FORWARD AS FAR AS FUNDING AND YOU CAN IMAGINE THE IMPACTS IT WOULD HAVE. I think that's all I wanted to share from that meeting and I think that's all I have to share from my recent meeting. So thank you, Ms. Mayor.

Thank you. Well, on Monday, May 11th, I attended the SACOG Policy and Innovation Committee. Most of the discussion was about the Assembly and Senate bills that SACOG is backing. I did finally get a brief summary of the big one that they want us to support. That's SBA. And in short, I'm just gonna read the summary. The bill shifts California's transportation funding toward freight efficiency projects that also reduce emissions, improve community impacts, and discourage a fully automated PORT OPERATIONS WHILE SUPPORTING CLEANER HUMAN OPERATED EQUIPMENT. SO THAT'S THE BIG ONE THEY WANT TO SUPPORT. THE OTHER ONES WE'RE ALL KIND OF WATCHING IS SB 4187 WHICH IS THE ASSEMBLY BILL EQUIVALENCE OF 736. And that's the Affordable Housing Bond Act that's coming, that will be out. And then also Assembly Bill 1903, which is, and I talked about this a few months ago, the condo construction is to help alleviate the liability for developer, condo developers that hope to incentivize more condos to be built, again, more housing. So that was... My only meeting. Okay, so we'll go on to item F, the information consent calendar. It is recommended that items one through four be acted on simultaneously unless a separate discussion and or action is requested by a council member. I will go ahead and read all four. The first one is receive and file warrants for period ending May 11th, 2026. Number two, minutes of the regular meeting of May 5th, 2026. Number three, award of bid for the Carilion Boulevard Safety Improvements Projects Contract Award, CIP 521M. And number four, a treasurer's report for period ending April 2026.

Madam Mayor, I'd like to pull item F3, just for the clarification.

Okay, anyone else? Nope, that was the one I was gonna pull. Okay, we can go ahead and entertain a motion about items one, two, and four.

So moved. Second.

Okay, moved by Council Member Farmer and seconded by Vice Mayor Reed. A roll call? Oh, I'm sorry, is there any public comment?

There is no public comment on after. Okay, a roll call, please. Vice Mayor Reed.

Aye.

Council Member Pratton.

Aye.

Council Member Sandhu.

Aye.

Council Member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez. Aye. Moved and approved 5-0. Okay, so item number three, Mr. Sandu.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The item number three, that's the Carilion Boulevard, I think, upgrade, I can say, or how we can make this. First of all, thank you for this step, bringing that project to the public, and especially, because this was asked a long time ago, because Carilion Boulevard is a two-lane, and there's always speeding problem. So I believe that you can have some kind of control, but I will ask public work director if can give, just tell the public what's the key element for this final design.

Good evening, Council Member Sandhu. The final design elements for the project were reached through discussions with the council and through public workshops that happened. I think the most recent one was in 2023, and those informed the final design. The key project elements, in addition to pavement resurfacing over a 2.1-mile stretch of Carilion Boulevard, include Wider bike lanes, narrowed travel lanes to help reduce speeds and provide additional cushion for the bikes. Rapid flashing beacons and rumble strips in advance of several key intersections. And we think this combination of design elements hopefully will reduce speed somewhat and provide a more comfortable and safer environment for bicycles and pedestrians.

Thank you, and you know the narrowing vehicle lanes we are making to 11 feet, right? Correct. And what's the sizes right now?

I think it varies. Standard lanes are 12 feet wide. No, but I'm talking about the Carillion Boulevard.

What's the size at this time?

I don't know. In most locations, it's about 12 and a half feet wide, so this will narrow them about a foot and a half.

Okay, and my understanding is 11 feet is well, the engineer report said narrow land can decrease the speed, right?

Yeah, narrowing the parent widths does tend to reduce vehicle speeds, although with striping, the effect is somewhat modest, so I wouldn't expect an enormous difference, but it should reduce speed somewhat.

Right, and the other thing, thank you for, you know, you guys get a lot of beds and give it to the lowest bed. I think that bed is 2.8 million to that project, right?

2.865 million, that's correct.

Right, and I believe I read somewhere in a engineering report, it said, well, because 3.7 to 4.2, and there is a lot of difference, so that means when the engineering report, they did something different way you guys doing, why is it so much difference?

What we we try to end up in about a in the middle of pack with our engineers estimates It's really a tool for us to establish reasonable budgets There's there's a lot of variability in bids and material costs sometimes Sometimes based on when we estimate made it versus when we bid well when we get real concerned is when we get a really low bids and they're spread far apart, which kind of tells us that there might be different understandings of the project and that can create problems for us as the project proceeds. But because we had a large number of bids and they're pretty tightly spread, we don't think that's the situation in this case.

Thank you, thank you for all the explanation and I will move that item.

Did you wanna?

I did, and Council Member Sandhu took one of my questions. So my concern was the difference between the engineering and the bid, right? So the engineering estimate was 3.75 million to 4.25 million, and the bid, the lowest bid was 2.865 million, which is almost a million dollars difference. And when I look at all the rest of the bids, all but one, bid were all underneath the engineering estimates. So that was my biggest concern was, the engineers estimated that it was 3.75 million and we award a contract that's 2.86 million. Are we gonna be in this position in 12 months from now, somebody coming before us asking for more money because the companies under bid us by a significant amount and they can't complete the project.

Right. Vice Mayor, we don't think that's the case because of the tight spread of the bids. We were almost in last place in this particular case, and we tried to be about middle of the pack. Again, it's primarily to establish a budget. The good news is we're going to save significantly based on what we thought it would cost. And again, we would be more concerned if there were wide gaps between the bids, which would...

indicate a potential different understanding of the contract or the contract of the work by the bidders yeah and and i i understand that uh and i do i mean everybody knows that i'm a very big opponent or a big supporter of multiple bids we've said it in many projects here and i i do appreciate the fact that you got 13 different bids on this project we're pleased by that as well yeah thank you and that's not the only one recently that we got a really good response to our advertising so

GOOD.

I'M GOOD.

MADAM MAYOR, I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ON THIS ITEM TOO. I WAS GOING TO ACTUALLY PULL IT. Well, what I think the three council members, my two fellow council members and myself all agree on is we've stated that we're happy to see that the bid was significantly less than what the engineer's estimate was. But I'm looking at this a different way, thinking with the $2,865,000 bid, where the difference between first and second was $3,000. It's like a sliver. And it concerns me, I know we have to take the lowest bid by law, but what concerns me is that the top three, so even with the top three, actually the top four bids, there's only a difference of 170 grand between the top four. So you have names in there like George Reed, Granite Construction. I know that these are, George Reed for one is obviously a company that Citi has done a lot of business with. We've been very happy with their work and so on. Has the Citi ever done business with MCK services before?

Not to my knowledge.

So that's my concern. My concern is that we have 13 bidders, all so tight, and the winning bid by literally a mere $3,000 is a company that I've never heard of next to two huge companies that we've done a lot of business with. Now, I know by law that we have to go with the lowest bid, and I'm very happy that these bids are very low. So I would not be upset if the council moved this forward, but I would just like to float an idea that... I rarely do this, but I feel like almost that maybe we should reject all the bids, because we have a right to do that, and ask these people to sharpen their pencils. I feel like it would save the taxpayers some money. I believe that these bids would go down with that opportunity with these top three people. I know that's something we normally do, and we are saving a lot of money, but it's so close, and... I just worry that in a world where we bid at $3,000 is literally, I mean, I know there's a contingency and they have to stay within that, but it's just so close. It's so close. And we have somebody who's literally like, obviously you do research on these companies and they have to be deemed as a, what's the word you use in the staff reports? Responsible bidders. Responsible bidders, right? And all of that. So I'm not going to push this issue. I'm just simply just floating the idea because it's so close. I would be very concerned if we didn't get a quality outcome from this company when we had two people that we've done a lot of business with that were that close that we could have given another chance to see if... They could be marked better. So anyways, that's what I had to say on this item, but thank you for the staff report sure Buckman It's it's very thorough and I do look forward to this project getting done finally Mr. Patton no comments I Wasn't gonna comment but because of the comments as a contract analyst I could tell you right now we're jumping up and down on bids like this and

Unfortunately, I understand your reservation because we haven't done work with them. At least at the state level, what you said could cause us to be sued. You can't reject bids because you didn't get the bidder you wanted.

Well, that's not what I'm suggesting. We have the right in the staff report. We always have the option to reject and re-bid, so I'm just saying.

We do, but usually for... you know like they were all too high or or they're too low or they were really spread and so we think that there's something wrong within the scope of work or something but you know I think our staff can be on top of these this contractor and make sure it gets done. I hesitate pushing this back any further because we've been waiting for years to get Carilion adjusted And anyway, so we did have a motion on the floor. Mr. Sandu moved to approve. Is there? I'll second. And Mr. Pratt in seconds. Roll call, please. Vice Mayor Reid.

That's you, I know. No.

Council Member Pratton.

Aye.

Council Member Sandu.

Aye.

Council Member Farmer.

No.

Mayor Rodriguez. Aye. Motion passes 3-0, or 3-2, I'm sorry. Okay, and we're gonna go ahead and move on to item H. And we will start in the city manager's office. He's not here, but.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, there's not anybody available at the moment, so you might wanna reshuffle the deck on that.

Unless you're comfortable presenting on your own. Okay. Fair enough. So we're at the item H1 is the countywide homeless model and we are being asked to go ahead and appoint a city council member as a representative to the countywide homeless model board.

Mayor, if I may step in, I can handle this item. Oh, perfect. Thank you for the introduction for the title. So the council may recall we brought this to you about a month or so ago, and due to the lack of information, we continued it till tonight. Luckily, tonight we have Emily Halkin here from the county to help us understand what's at play and to help us appoint a position. So Emily, go right ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Rodriguez, members of the council. My name is Emily Halkin. I'm the director of the County of Sacramento's Department of Homeless Services and Housing, and I'm here tonight with County Executive David Villanueva. And as Jenny said, we've been here, I've been in front of you a couple times over the past six to nine months, and it's lovely to be back again tonight. And over the past six to nine months and my presentations to you, we've talked about various ways that we as a community might want to coalesce around how we organize and operationalize our collective work around homelessness. During my past two presentations, while there was pretty collective agreement by the Board of Supervisors and at least the suburban cities around what our ideal organization might be, there was still a lot of unknowns, specifically around what the City of Sacramento was going to do, as well as the Continuum of Care Board. Luckily, over the past two weeks, both of those entities, the Sacramento City Council and the Continuum of Care Board, have both taken actions which indicate they are in agreement with the remainder of the cities as well as the county of Sacramento. We have all then coalesced around a similar framework. Certainly there are details to be worked out, and that's what we're asking for your participation in today. The framework that has been agreed to by the Continuum of Care, county board, the city of Sacramento, and I think by all the suburban cities, has some major characteristics, namely that there would be a single body, inclusive of a majority of elected officials, but inviting community members when we're taking actions as a continuum of care, which is a requirement of federal law, meeting in an open Brown Act body to both direct and make decisions around continuum of care activities, and then provide direction around other policy areas. Again, not taking or changing or shifting any approvals that you as a city council have over your budget or land use authority. So while we are very happy to have a framework, there are details to work out, including number of representatives per jurisdiction, frequency of meetings, and certainly some work to do to get us to a point where we have new bylaws specific to the continuum of care that are compliant with federal requirements. So today, but we also have an urgency to move forward. And this has to sort of run in parallel. We can't disrupt the continuum of care without having the new board ready to go. So what we're asking for your participation today is to appoint a single member to serve as an ad hoc planning task force. We imagine that service will last for three to six months. That task force will consist of your colleagues from across the jurisdictions as well as one or two appointed members of the continuum of care board. It'll be supported by staff of certainly the county of Sacramento, the cities, we hope your city, we recognize your staff don't have as much capacity and the county will be seeking external consultant support as well. That task force will then develop the new continuum of care bylaws. We'll come back to the continuum of care to formally vote those and then help us reseat the continuum of care board. The third phase, which is probably the most interest to some of you, is this ultimate governing body of elected officials. There's a lot more work to be done on that as well. but tonight's action will get us started towards figuring out what that body looks like in terms of seats, representation, frequency of meetings, et cetera. So today we're simply asking for a representative on the ad hoc task force at a later date, once we have all coalesced around what that body looks like, Each city will have to affirm their participation by agreeing to some sort of legal agreement, an MOU, a partnership agreement, and appoint a standing member or members to that ultimate board. So as Jenny laid out, what we are hoping is that the city of Galt will want to participate as we continue to move forward and appoint a member for this task force. That concludes my comments. I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, council.

Any questions? I'll kick it off, Ms. Mayor. Ms. Halk, right? Halkin, yes. Halkin, sorry. That's okay. So basically what we're asking is we're not looking for an official appointment to this hypothetical board yet. We're looking for someone to be part of the ad hoc to help shape what this board is supposed to be.

Exactly.

Okay.

Now you could choose at your discretion to say that same person continues on. Certainly you can make that decision but specifically the ad hoc is what we're looking for today.

Well, yeah, I think just what's challenging for those councils, we're in election year, and so some of us will not be continuing past December, others unknown. So, you know, someone who's appointed may not be the person to continue past. But my question is kind of the same thing that we had with staff the first time this was brought to us. I mean, I myself was part of the initial meeting in Sacramento where we were all in person and kind of brainstormed this whole thing in the beginning, right? So Councilman Pratt was there as well. But my concern is it might be difficult for us to even appoint someone for an ad hoc if we don't know where that meeting is going to take place, how often will the ad hoc meetings be, is it a Zoom meeting, is it an in-person meeting, is it going to be in Sacramento, is it going to be local, without knowing all that, because some of us have jobs, we own businesses, our schedules are kind of, you know, particular, so, I mean, do we have any idea of what that ad hoc would look like?

I appreciate that and I understand that. Certainly as staff we contemplate that we'll be doing a lot of work behind the scenes with the consultants so we'll only need to pull the ad hoc group together hopefully a handful of times and I do hear you on scheduling and locations you're quite a distance away and I think that we can take that into consideration and work on accommodations whether that be Zoom meetings or moving the meetings around so I don't have the specifics today but certainly can take that and as we seek a consultant make sure that they're prepared to to provide these facilitations in a variety of settings. But I would just imagine, I think the ad hoc will take probably six-ish months to get to a point of delivering new bylaws to the COC. I think the staff time might be more intensive, but I don't believe the participation of the task force should be more than at most once a month.

Okay. Well, to my colleagues, with that said, I would be interested in doing that, although it's likely that I would not be the official appointment at the end because of my term ending in December. So just know that if anyone's not comfortable with me being part of the ad hoc and then having to change that seat to someone else, I would not have a problem with somebody else wanting to be. I mean, only two of you here are locked in. past December so but I but if nobody wanted to do it I would be willing to but my suggestion would be maybe we actually talk about maybe an alt like an alternate so that if some reason they come back and say the meeting has to be you know 10 in the morning on in Sacramento on such-and-such day and for some reason that I can't then make it we need to have the alternate I mean that's just an idea I'm floating to you guys so

I don't know. Yeah, I believe that's fine. So the alternate, maybe somebody had that already termed.

I mean, it doesn't really matter to them if you have an alternate. That's just for us, making sure we have a body there. So.

So is the rest of council okay with Shawn starting it?

Yep.

All right, anybody want to be an alternate?

Okay, do we need a motion on that? Probably, just in case, since our attorney's not here. So, does someone want to go ahead and make that motion?

I'll make the motion that Sean is appointed as the representative for the ad hoc committee and that I am the alternate.

Okay.

I'll second that.

Okay, moved by Vice Mayor Reed and seconded by Council Member Pratton. Roll call. Vice Mayor Reed. Aye.

Council Member Pratton.

Aye.

Council Member Sandhu.

Aye.

Council Member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez.

Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you.

I do just want to make one last comment since the... director is here and I just want to remind everyone of our concerns when it comes to making these is that we, you know, several of us here are concerned that the larger cities and the larger jurisdictions are going to have more of a influence in moving forward in making the policy and decisions and everything and that we're going to have to abide by rules that work well in or work for Sacramento City, Sacramento County, but don't entirely work for the city of Galt.

I totally understand. I think that sentiment is shared by others. And I think that's why it's really important that you do have a representative on the task force. And we certainly will lift those up among staff as well. I also just want to share, thank you so much. We look forward to working with you. You are the first city other than the county to appoint, and I should have said they appointed today, Supervisors Desmond and Kennedy. And we imagine the balance of the cities will make those appointments throughout the month of May and June. So probably looking at convening sometime early in the next fiscal year, July.

I would like to say too that I am happy to hear the JPA idea was not the outcome. We were a little disappointed with that because we didn't feel like that was the consensus of the majority of the other cities. But I will say, Mr. Reid, that part of the ad hoc is obviously planning what this body will do and what its power will be and representation and so on. So I can assure you, Mr. Reid, that if you know me, that I will strongly make sure that our concerns as Galt are heard at that ad hoc. So can assure you of that. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. I look forward to working with you guys. Thank you.

Okay, moving on to H2, Parks and Rec Department, City of Galt Special Sponsorship Program Preview, Fiscal Year 2526. Mr. Solis.

Good evening, mayor and city council. I will be providing you a report, a follow-up from the May 5th council meeting where we discuss special event preview. I'm not gonna bore you with this as we seem like we have a full house and you might wanna get to that, but this is a summary of the objectives and goals. Here are the 11 submissions for sponsorship for this year. And with the recommendation that we ask you to review the special events sponsorship program request for fiscal year 26-27 and provide direction on the approval of events, monetary amounts, and or in-kind contributions, should the city approve all 11 events, total for the sponsorship program request is $41,029. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. And I know there are people... representatives of these groups in the audience, if you'd like to call them up to talk to them.

Okay, I'm assuming you have public comments cards, or?

None on this item.

Oh, okay. Are there any representatives for the events that would like to speak, if you're here? Okay. All right, council. Excuse me. Your thoughts.

Mr. Solis, sorry if I can catch my breath here. The amount that for the, if we were to approve the total for the applicants, is that, I apologize, I don't have the old staff report and I'm trying to find it real quick here. Is that total exceeded what we expected or is it in line with what we did last year? Kind of where it's at.

If my memory serves me correctly, it's about $8,000 more than last year.

Okay. All right. Well, I mean, you know, not to get into the weeds, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of nonprofits on here, a lot of organizations, school organizations, so on and so forth. Obviously the chamber's on here. All these groups do a lot of great things for the community. And to just put it bluntly, I mean, our city wouldn't be what it is without these events. It just wouldn't be. This is what makes cult special is that all these groups dedicate their time and their efforts to put forth these events and them coming to the city, asking for some seed money for these events each time, which we have budgeted such money to do so. I think $40,000 for, what is it, like 13 different events? I'm guessing 13, 14 events.

11.

11, okay, 11, I think is very appropriate. So I don't wanna get into each one. I think that some of them are very low, some of them are higher, but I think they're appropriate for what the events are. So I have no problem with it and I would support it tonight and I would make a motion to approve as presented.

I will support this and I will take a second on that.

Okay, any more discussion?

I only had one question about it. When reading the paragraph that says the sponsorship request shall not exceed $5,000 per event, but there is one that exceeds $5,000, how does that work?

The city council has the ability to... I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT.

I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT.

I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK THAT

I will comment real quick. Sure.

I just want to remind the community, yeah, it's 41,000, but many of these events bring in tax dollars for us, so it's not a total cost, a total loss.

I'm just going to share, I was sitting at a local restaurant with a friend who was complaining and said when she first moved into town, there used to be all of these events, and we don't have any events anymore. And so I first of all asked her, what events do we have anymore? And she named a few that went away, and obviously the community feels those events are gone. When I started to tell her about what we were approving tonight, or what was before us tonight, she said, well, I didn't think about those as community events. So with that, I am behind this, even those that go above that 500 threshold, especially that event, because that probably serves the families of our community more so than all of the others. This is a full family event and I think it has only grown and has been wonderful, so I also am behind it. So with that, we do have a motion by Mr. Farmer and seconded by Mr. Reid, correct? No, Mr. Sandhu, sorry. So go ahead and do a roll call.

Vice Mayor Reid?

Aye.

Council Member Pratton?

Aye.

Council Member Sandhu?

Aye.

Council Member Farmer?

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez?

Aye. Motion passes 5-0, thank you. Okay, item H3, axon in-car camera, body-worn camera and drone as first responder purchase and appropriation request.

Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor and members of council. I'm waiting for my backup to get in position as I present this item tonight. We have several people who have worked on this project. Before you is, as the Mayor said, a renewal of our body-worn and in-car camera program with some enhancements. And then the second item is the implementation, with your approval, of Adrona's first responder program here in the City of Galt. And so, If I can do this, I sit here all day watching people to use PowerPoints and I actually have to use it. So as you know, in 2021, several of you or at least two of you, I think Council Member Sandhu and Council Member Farmer were on the council when we implemented the body worn camera and in-car camera program through Axon. And that was a five year contract that we entered into and in July that contract lapses. Knowing that that was in play for about the last two years, members of the department to include Captain Small and Sergeant Hammock who are here tonight. Sergeant Hammock is in charge of our current field deployment drone program. have spent a considerable amount of time working on some concepts that we were trying to implement that we believe are reasonable to upgrade security and public safety in the community and deliver some real enhancements to the work that we do. So in 2021, like I said, you had the in-car and body-worn cameras that had auto tagging. And I think at some point we had Axon Performance added into that program. But this current proposal that's before you with a contingency includes a total cost over five years of $1.5 million. It renews the five-year term contract for our body-worn camera and in-car camera program with the Fleet III, which allows us to have a automated license plate reader program. Similar to what we have with the flock cameras that are stationary, obviously, in the community, but these will be attached to the car cameras in the cars when they're moving around town. It provides for some real-time alerts to the supervisors and the management team and the ability to live stream the fleet three car cameras. We have that ability with the body-worn cameras, but the newer system of the car cameras allows us to also get a different look in real time should that be necessary and clearly when we do post incident debriefs and other administrative reviews. We have an auto transcribe which essentially is a program that takes the information spoken during these transactions and uses them for our third-party platforms like Paragrin and other programs that assist our investigations crew. For example, looking for red cars or talking about a subject named Johnny or different things like that, we can pull this data that's from the cameras and use that in our analysis. The Oxon Performance is an auditing program that we use on the management side to make sure that we're adhering to policy and equipment usage of the body-worn cameras and the in-car cameras. There are two additional items, one you don't see on here because things have been moving quick the last couple days. The first one is AI Assistant. And actually, I picked this up at Cap2Cap. I sat in on an Axon demonstration at their office in Washington, D.C., And this AI Assistant allows our staff, it's really three points. It's our policies uploaded in there, so if my officers have questions related to existing policy on an item, they can ask it in real time and get that verbalization back from the AI Assistant. It's a closed system, so you're not out on the internet. It's all uploaded stuff. The second thing is it allows for real-time translation services between the officer and the public. So before we would use our landline program and or find somebody that spoke the appropriate language for the encounter that we were involved in, we can use that body-worn camera to communicate in English and let's say translate in Spanish. The Spanish speaker can speak in Spanish, and it'll translate back to English for our officer in real time in the field. So that's another thing that we're able to do. And then lastly, and Rick will probably have to bail me out here, excuse me, Captain Small, is the case law and other related items that are in that AI Assistant, correct? Have I missed anything in that? A, so far. Okay. And then the last thing that was added in late yesterday, and we've given staff, or we've given council an updated quote on the dais, correct?

Correct.

Madam City Clerk, thank you. In discussions with Axon and Scottio yesterday, they made some adjustments and added the auto-redaction. What redaction does is it blurs out faces and identifying information of subjects when we are using that If we need to use that data or that video in any way for a Public Records Act request or similar, maybe even a training issue or something that we present to Council, we protect the identity of those people involved, like children. You'll see that on a video we'll hear shortly. And we've had you do that manually in the past, but in discussions with Axon, and I appreciate their flexibility, they were able to rework some things and actually drop the cost slightly, but yet include that auto redaction item into their proposal for the next five years. And then lastly, we have the Drone as First Responder program. that we'll be talking more about, and I will have Scotty Obele me out on a majority of that project. But essentially, the Drones First Responder Program allows us to deploy what will be two drones. We envision those to be one at the Galt Police Department and the second at Station 46. We've already had discussions with CSD Fire on that topic. And so that allows us to deploy drones upon receipt of the call into the comm center by non-sworn staff that can fly those drones over crime scenes and other related issues that are going on in the community. It's an officer safety enhancement tool for us. It gives us eyes in the sky. It gives overwatch to the officers when they're doing different kinds of work. Or if we need to have a perimeter or something that would traditionally take two, three, or four people to hold, the drone can hold most of that in place without additional staffing or a reduced staffing. It increases our response times to things like traffic accidents and stuff many times. We'll roll... what we call code three or lights and sirens to these issues, but if the drone is overhead and sees actually this is just a fender bender, that there are not injuries, clearly people are exchanging information, that gives our officers the ability to slow down, less risk to the community, and also if we had something to address like new information in an incident, we can actually add additional staff onto the call or call for outside assistance from either fire, CHP, or others. There are three local or somewhat local agencies that we've looked at for these DFR deployments. They're the Elk Grove Police Department, of course. You know we have a very close relationship with Chief Davis and their staff up there, and we use their real-time information center. They have four drones in their community. They use a different platform than Axon. the Vacaville Police Department, and then the Concord Police Department. And myself and my team traveled to the Concord Police Department and looked at their Axon Skydio deployment there with their new Arctic. It was amazing. It was top-notch. It was very impressive. We looked at other vendors, and we looked at Flock, which we have with the cameras here in town already, Paladin and DroneSense, but ACCENT SCOTTIO WON THE DAY WITH US BECAUSE, FRANKLY, IT INTEGRATES CURRENTLY WITH OUR BODY WARM CAMERA AND IN-CAR CAMERA SYSTEM. IT UPLOADS STORAGE IN OUR EVIDENCE.COM. the cloud-based program that we use to transmit information to the district attorney's office on cases and how we share information with other agencies and in-house. It's utilized by other regional partners like the Sacramento Sheriff's Office and Sacramento PD. Most importantly, it's made in the United States of America, and that's an issue because Chinese drones are up for, well, some have already been banned, and there's discussion about a permanent ban of those Chinese-made drones. That is a D.C. issue that we are subordinate to. The staff that's here can, if you have questions more about that specifically, can tell you where we're at on that. What I understand is anything that's already been made and imported is good to use, but there's a limit on future imports. And then lastly, it's headquartered here in California. And so that's good when we have equipment replacement issues or other maintenance that we need to have. We have somebody we can actually drive to and get parts or swap out if necessary. Rick, I'm gonna have you come, or Captain Swell, maybe come up and talk a little bit about some of this stuff. But the waivers, other considerations were, if I remember right, that the waivers will be handled by Skydio to allow us to fly these drones. The elevation limit is 200 feet with the waivers that we'll have, and they're gonna assist with the setup both at the police department and fire. Do we have that correct? That's correct. All right. There's coverage and redundancy. We've selected to have two units. We could actually cover the city with one. But the issue is that these drones fly for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on headwinds and other environmental issues. And so we need to keep eyes in the sky on longer incidents. So having the second drone allows us to send one home and have the second one deploy so we have consistent overwatch or assistance from the sky. It gives us the ability to assist CSD fire on fires and other mapping issues, including CHP. And then, as you know, we have properties, rural properties, but pretty dense for a rural area outside the city of Galt served by the sheriff's office who has the same platform. So it allows us to assist them on those. And we do assist the sheriff's office as they do us on calls for service here based on their remoteness and our remoteness. And so that has worked well for us. It can help us with city facility checks, things that may be going on that we have concerns about, and then special events, Overwatch, like you've already seen with our parades, 4th of July and other things. The cost here is we are currently running about $100,000 in the body-worn camera program that we currently have. The new cost will be $157,800 per year, and that is with the increased programming that we've added into the body-worn program. And the DFR program for both drones and related equipment is $129,000 per year, and we have a contingency which is about 4.1% of the total budget. for things like electrical conduit and other things that we're gonna have to cover both at the fire station and at our facility, And it sounds like in talking IT, we may have some opening, some wifi capacity issues that we're gonna need to address in the first year. So we would have that money to make that happen. So with the contingency, the total contract is 1.5 million. Initial staffing like Elk Grove did, we're taking a play or we're taking their playbook and using it and they used a variety of non-sworn staff to include CSOs and we are going to use our dispatchers and then from time to time we do get some light duty staff and other folks that can assist us with that. As I've alerted my boss that in year one we would probably be coming for an additional position in year two to complement what we're currently doing. But we believe that as we build this program, that is our best approach moving forward. That additional position is a non-sworn staff position that's envisioned. related to privacy concerns because those are always concerns. The DFR is a mission-based program so they roll or they fly based on calls for service or activity by the officers. It is not used on just random patrol of the community that in itself would create issues for the community if they felt like there was too much of what I would call a big brother Going on in the community so when that deploys the camera use to and from the target location I'm gonna get the The wording wrong, but basically it's in the up position, so you're seeing the horizon. It is not looking down over the community as it's flying until it gets to its location. And then lastly, there's a transparency portal that I'll have Skydio talk about, or maybe Axon, related to how we post the flight patterns of all the flights that we do in the community. So if somebody had some curiosity about that, they're not gonna see the video, but they can see the flight pattern. And I don't remember, we have call information on that or is that just the flight pattern? Or we'll cover that in follow up. And then, Madam City Clerk, I think you have to click on this to see if we can play this video. This is just a quick video from actually Las Vegas on a lost eight year old that they did, go to the blue line.

No, that doesn't, I can't.

Oh, I'm sorry, okay.

Oh, there he is, okay.

So if you can play that, that just gives you an idea of what you would see. I know some council members have seen the on-the-ground demo last week, but in case you haven't seen it, it gives you something.

42-29 East Wayne Avenue, break. It's going to be involving a 8-year-old juvenile that was locked in 40 minutes ago.

I don't think you're in a direction of travel.

Unknown.

We're arriving now. We're just now starting our investigation. Okay. Our juvenile is going to have blonde hair, wearing a white shirt, blue jeans, white Jordans, and a possibly black jacket break. Unknown direction of travel, approximately 20-25 minutes ago.

20-23.

20-23 is going to be possibly wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants backpack.

Copy.

20-23, you can tell me at 20-23, I'll help ATL. Is there any way we can get a hold of future watchers if they can ATL the camera at boulder and idiot?

So here, obviously, they locate the child. You'll see how some of the video redaction works.

You'll be walking westbound Swain Avenue from Sand Hill.

There's a possible westbound Swain from Sand Hill.

Who is that? You know what's possible?

It's CFR 59. Copy.

It was a westbound from where? Swain?

Swain and Sand Hill.

1,020 from Sand Hill on the north side. He's looking right at the drone. He looks like he has a yellow backpack, black pants, and looks like a green jacket. Backpack. 303.

And so, and you can pause it, Rose. And so that happened to be the child that left the home and they recovered the child successfully. And the issue here with the drones is it covers a wider range of area and a quicker time. As you can imagine for all those here that drive vehicles, you can see only so far, our officers can only see so far on these details. And the grid searches that we do are labor intensive. and time-consuming, and so the fact that you have an overhead view of that, you are able to cover much more of an area much quicker to have better and more successful resolutions. We had a wide range of videos that we could bore you with tonight, but I thought I would just give you one idea, seeing the overhead view of that, and what you can expect from our drone program. So with that, as I mentioned, my two staff that are here, we also have Adam Smith with Axon, Thank you Mr. Smith for being here and then Mr. Jackson Butler from Skydio. So they're both here to answer questions because I rather suspect staff has some questions about this program and what that means to the community and how they work. And so I'm gonna lean on these folks for the details and the weeds on that and prepared to answer any questions that you have but the item is before you and I think that's my presentation.

All right, council, questions, comments? Anyone want to start?

I'll start it off. So thank you, Chief, for the presentation, and thank you for, what was your name, sorry, from Maxon? Adam Smith. Adam and? Jackson. Okay, thank you for being here tonight. I think any time we talk about new technology, it's always very exciting, any ways that we can I mean, this council talks about quality of life a lot. Quality of life, obviously one of the main things in that is public safety, obviously is probably top on that list. And I think this council has been very supportive. At least every council I've been a part of for the last eight years has been supportive of increasing the tools for our police department, if our budget allows, of course. But there's always a concern, too, with things like this, like with the flock cameras there was concern about. You know, Big Brother and facial, you know, lots of concerns about, in the day and age we live in, we have technology, you know, in the forefront, there's always concerns about giving up privacy for safety, right? Safety versus privacy, there's a balance. But I, for one, actually think that... that we should embrace these new technologies. I feel that anytime you have more eyes on something, it's more transparency. You know, body cameras obviously adds transparency. I think from the public perception, having a body camera is a good thing. If there's an incident, then that's not just the officer's word against the public. We have body camera footage. With the drone, it's just another set of eyes on the scene. So it's another angle of if something were to happen. Whether that was a bad incident or good incident or whatever, I feel like that's a good thing. So I think that the goods far outweigh the bads when it comes to this kind of stuff. I do think that. One concern I have is with, you know, when we have a call to service, say in the middle of the night, you know, we only have so many officers on duty at one time. And if there's a call, like a burglary or something that's substantial, you know, you're pretty much going to have all units, right? Which leaves the entire rest of the city uncovered. So then if you have another call... and you have two units that are, you know, over off Marengo Road, and then you have a call over on, you know, Meadowview Drive, you know, how long is it going to take that officer to drive all the way out the other side of town? And if he goes, you know, lights and sirens and everything, it creates a public danger, whereas the drone's not going to create that danger with traffic and hitting somebody at an intersection or something when they're, you know, traveling at a high rate of speed. So I think in that aspect, the drone is a huge asset to get there. and determine if that's something that, you know, we need to pull an officer up. So one question I do have is that who would be, so if we have, say, two officers on patrol and then a sergeant, say, at night, and correct me if that's not very accurate, who is the drone pilot? So if those two, who is the drone pilot? Is it somebody back at the station? Is it, do we need an additional person that's now on duty that night to be operating the drone? Can you answer that stuff for me?

Yeah, so it will be somebody back at the station. It'll be a non sworn staff and it's going to be a combination of our community service officers and our dispatchers. And then ultimately a full build out. We will complement that with at least one staff person that I mentioned earlier in my presentation to make sure we have coverage. Now it's not likely on the regular that we will have. additional staff on what I call deep graveyard, something after 2 a.m. to 6 or 7 a.m. in the morning. But certainly on the swing day shift and swing shift hours, we endeavor to be flying on the regular with the exception of any weather grounding issues that we may have. And Skydio can talk about that.

Okay. And One of the questions we always get from the public in the past was, and this was regarding the flock, was the storage of data. And there was some public comment made a while back about there had been a story about data breach and some of that stuff. Data had been compromised or whatever. I think what the public would like to hear, I think, would be reassurances that any data from the Axon body cameras as well as drone footage, whatever, any data, any video that is stored safely. And we're just looking for, you know, maximum reassurance from our department that that is the case. Someone could speak to that.

Thank you for having us, appreciate it. So with the department's evidence.com, everything is stored in evidence.com in the cloud. We are CJIS compliant, which is the highest level of security that you can have. No one outside of the department can have access to their evidence. You have to have a specific username login to be able to get in. Not even Axon can get in there unless they were sharing their screen for any reason. But beyond that, there's no one that can be able to get into their evidence without their permission.

Okay.

And everything also has an audit trail across the board. So anytime any piece of evidence is ever clicked on, it's tracked and a department can run an audit trail to keep track of whoever's clicking on any piece of evidence, sharing it, looking at it, doing anything with it.

And this contract I assumed includes, the renewal of this contract I assume includes like a certain level of servicing for cameras. Should they break or what? I mean, can you just touch on that briefly? I don't need like a super detailed...

Absolutely. So every camera has a full warranty. So if you run it over with your patrol car, I'll replace it free. You know, it's completely covered. It also comes with every two and a half years. It's replaced with the brand newest body camera that comes out. So right now that we have the Axon body four out, I'm assuming the Axon body five will be coming out in the near future at two and a half years from now, they'll get a replacement of all their body cameras to get the Axon body five.

Okay. Um, And lastly, and I'll let my colleagues speak, of course, because they have playoff questions. I would like to just maybe from Captain Small or maybe from Officer Hammock or if there's another officer here, I would just like to hear firsthand from one of our officers. Just give me just a hypothetical scenario that you think that would be something just for the public that are here with the drone, specific to the drone first responder that would be good.

No, I appreciate that question, because that's really what this is about. It's about public safety, but it's also about providing our staff with the tools to be successful and to be safe as much as possible in a very dangerous profession. So we jokingly refer to what's called a galt perimeter. Typically, a perimeter is a minimum of four officers, and then you have somebody searching inside that perimeter. There's many times, unfortunately, just because of our staffing levels, we don't have the luxury of having the required staff right away to do operations like that, and so we make do, we get creative, I would put our officers up against anybody in terms of ability to make good decisions in those types of situations because we have to, and we can't rely on numbers until they start showing up. Now, we all know the Sheriff's Office, CHPL, they're gonna come down and help us, but it takes some time for them to get there. And so the DFR program in particular helps to address that issue. It allows for, first of all, the drone to get there before we do. So we kind of have an idea of what's going on before we get there. And then once we're there, we have eyes in the sky letting us know what's going on on the ground that we won't see. And so it helps to prevent putting us and our staff in dangerous situations that can be avoided by having this technology available. I've worked here, as you guys all know, from a patrol officer up, and so I've worked those shifts, and I know what that feels like, but Sergeant Hammock and GPOA President and Corporal Mike Little's here also. I think he's doing public comment, but they can both speak to that same experience if you want to hear from them as well.

Is the drone equipped with thermal and anything like that, or is those options that can be added later on?

Yes, sir, and thank you for having me. It is equipped with a Boson clear camera, yes. It's a thermal.

Thermal and night vision.

All right, well, that's all the questions I have at the moment, so I can allow my colleagues to speak. Thanks.

All right. Vice Mayor Reed? Oh. Yeah, go ahead.

I don't have a lot of questions. I attended the demonstration on Saturday and all my questions were answered there. It's very impressive. I'm 100% in support of this after seeing that and what it can do. And I know a lot of focus here is about what it can do for the police department. I think we've all established that, but we also want to focus on what it can do for the other sides of public safety too, right? So being a dispatcher for as long as I was, we had access to the city of Stockton's stationary cameras and we used those to help track where incidents were because how many people are driving around the city of Gauld at night that aren't from here and they get in a vehicle accident and they don't know where they are, right? They can launch the drone and it can help pinpoint where these people are at, help find people. One of the instances that we brought up on Saturday was during the rainy season, we get people that are stuck in places that they can't get out of. And there's no way for me to tell you I'm in front of the house that's at this location because they're out in a field or in somewhere else. And these drones can actually help pinpoint these locations with latitude locations to help the first responders actually figure out where they are when the callers themselves don't even know. So the demonstration on Saturday was amazing. I think it's great. And that's it.

Mr. Sanduk.

Thank you madam mayor You know I have a few question and also like to make a statement public safety is very important you know everybody's like to be a public safety and Appreciate this effort bring to the council. You know this look like a very good program and first of my question is is in California, we have around 480 cities. Why is this program is a new program? Why is just only a 10, 12 cities? Why is not on the other city?

So the program, I mean, the Drona First Responder Program can be expensive. I mean, it's expensive for the city of Gall, right? We have some capacity, so we're able to do it. But the larger jurisdictions struggle. And as you know, currently, there's a hiccup in the economy. And with that, there's been, with the larger agencies, massive budget cuts. I think SACPD lost 60 positions as an example. And so... when those things happen, those discretionary dollars do not become available. However, all those jurisdictions have a similar program that we already have with the field drone deployment. I would tell you that the reason why we're bringing this forward is because a couple years ago I pledged that we would be full force on technology advancements in the organization because I felt that is the place that we can maximize our resources by spending our dollars. And we've done that with a prepared product that's also now part of Axon, which is our AI Dispatching Assistant. We've done that with Peregrine, we've done that with Starchase, which is an alternate vehicle, a disabling mechanism beyond the spike strips. We're looking at and demoing AI report writing for the officers. So this is just another piece of that puzzle. And really it comes down to the policy decision makers and then ultimately and probably foremost getting it through my boss and convincing him that this is important and just all jurisdictions can't do it. So GALT is on the forward cutting edge of technology, which is amazing. We've had just on the PREPARED project, multiple agencies come to us and view it, and we've traveled throughout the state to talk about the program and how that's benefited GALT from a small to mid-sized agency in the state. So that's really all I can say about it, but there's more than 10 or 12. I mean, how many Skydio, how many clients do you have in California specific?

I'm not sure exactly in California, but nationwide we have over 500 customers.

Okay, so nationwide, just Skydio, but there's many other vendors, but Skydio Axon Partnership has 500 clients, so...

Okay, thank you, Chief. The other thing is this drone is kind of, you know, like in safety with the officers, safety with the other, if there is something, you know, emergency response. But I just want to make sure as a public, you know, this is very carefully considered privacy and the civil liberties. What safeguard will be replaced to protect residents' privacy?

Well, first and foremost, those drones are not used for curiosity patrol or proactive patrol, I guess, as you can call it. They're used for detail-specific calls for service, which we will put on the portal for transparency purposes so people can see the activity and the why and how. I think that's the first thing. Second of all, when they're flying, they're flying at, what's the proper term? Is it the horizon view or what term do you guys use?

Yeah. So just to touch on that really briefly. So when the drone takes off, it's going to do a 360 spin to understand its environment. And then it's going to just look at the horizon with a zero degree angle on that. We call it the sensor package on the front of the drone. And it's not going to break that unless it's commanded to do so until it actually arrives on scene and looks at the call for service that it's been directed to look at.

And so I guess those, and then lastly, I run a department that is loaded with policies and procedures and case laws and high liability on a regular basis. And I think that the work that the men and women of the Galt Police Department have done demonstrates our ability to use technologies and provide a public safety model that's expected by the community. And we take violations of policy seriously and we address those directly. You hear about some of that in my annual report, generically, but we have a process to make sure that we have compliance on the staff and the use of our equipment.

All right, my other, just a clarification because did we have a recent policy on the drone or any policy on the drone when they fly this drone or no?

Yes, we have our team lead is Sergeant Hammack. He's in charge of the members of the department that have the required FAA training to fly our current drone program and we have a sitting policy that's available online on our department policy that is specific to drone use.

All right, and did we have any oversight, independent oversight drone policy can we check like in safety public reporting or what kind of public reporting when the drone can have their flight, right? And then it's going to is can we civilize, can we videotape? Did we have any policy can oversight or no?

We have no independent third-party oversight of the Gulf Police Department.

All right, and that's it. That's my question. This is for the public.

Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Pratton.

Just a couple quick questions. Those were all great questions. Answered most of my stuff. You said it flies at the horizon. What is that in feet?

Yeah, so the gimbal angle is the angle of the sensor package or the camera on the front, and it's preset to just be a zero degree, so just straight ahead at the horizon. It's not like zooming in or going to that thermal camera. It's just going to look straight ahead. Right, but it's up 50 feet, 100 feet, 1,000 feet.

We can't go any higher than 200 feet, so around, what, 150, 180, somewhere in there?

It would be up to the department how high they want to fly, but generally we recommend somewhere between 150, 200 feet.

I think you answered the other stuff. Yeah, due to the quick response and the transparency to the public on this project, I absolutely support it.

So it's funny, your questions get answered, and when I hear the answers, I come up with more questions. First of all, and it may have been in the report, and I apologize if I missed it, where is this funding coming from? Is this just straight from the general fund, or is it Measure R?

No, it is a general fund allocation that'll be made based on available funding that was identified by finance, and I don't know if they want to add more to that. Or the city manager.

This is just, it's coming from the general fund available fund balance. Okay, okay.

That negates what I was going to say, though. But because when people complain about our tax right now because we're a little bit higher, I just want everyone to remember that we do have Measure R, which brings our sales tax up. But it does help to pay for police. And so just remember that when you're paying your extra $0.50 on your $100 purchase that, you know, think of the policeman.

It absolutely makes a difference, yes.

One of my other questions is in the video when they were searching for that child, so let's bring that to Galt, if you're searching for a child or a suspect. I personally have had police officers jump my back fence, run through my backyard chasing someone. We talked about the drone not... you know, looking into people's backyards. But in cases like that, they will be doing that, correct?

That is correct. When they're on scene providing oversight to whatever the detail is specific to a law enforcement action or a call for service, they will have that view. No different than the CHP helicopter or the sheriff's helicopter and those other aerial programs.

Right, and that's kind of where I was going with that. In addition to your insurer now is checking your roof with drones, so they're up there anyway. And I understand they're private entities, but I don't know what's worse. So my other question is probably a general question. I don't know that there's an answer here, but it was a discussion that came up in the SACOG meeting and I think came up at CAP2CAP for one of the safety meetings, and that was with these drones. that are there to protect us, but you have private citizens who want to see too and so they throw their drones up. Do you have countermeasures? I mean, how does that work?

That's a really good question that I actually haven't gotten before.

So Skydio drones that are built by Skydio actually now have global deconfliction, which means that if, you know, the two drones that the Gulf Police Department will have are on some sort of collision course, they're aware of each other and they can deconflict. To my knowledge, there's no deconfliction with like, say, a toy or something. But that's why really, really tight management of the program is super important. And that's what we'll support on.

Yeah, and we heard the same thing at CAP2CAP, and so it's an initiative at the federal level to have established guidelines for personal use of drones and where they can take potential control over the use of those drones by technology approaches. And it's a big deal because the Olympics are coming and world cups here or nearly here those kinds of things so But there isn't a national solution to that and it's a one-off. I mean these happened that you know They've happened in West Sacramento at the baseball stadium up there on opening night different things like that So they do have those incursions, and we just have to address those one at a time and this program doesn't allow for addressing that specific nationwide problem

Okay, but you can divert your, I mean, your two talk to each other so they don't hit, but if someone privately was out there doing something, it doesn't see obstacles in its, or just the person doing it?

So it does see obstacles and avoid them. It's one of the big strengths of our platform is that autonomy. It uses basically six very small cameras around the drone to understand where it is in time and space and avoid obstacles, which Vice Mayor Reid, you saw, He tried to run it into the side of the building and it wouldn't let him. I did, yeah. I got in a little bit of trouble for that one. But the thing with that is that very small moving objects, it's not going to see and avoid reliably. So it's not a claim that we would want to make. However, it can see and avoid objects. It's just I wouldn't want to claim that it would see a small toy and avoid it in real time in this form.

Okay. And we are staying under that 200 feet, I'm assuming, because of aircraft and...

Yeah, it's an FAA requirement.

Yeah. And just an FYI, I know about five years ago, the federal government was trying to come up with legislation to get rid of those. In fact, it came to the point it was more about firefighting in federal lands and stuff. and they were fighting to allow law enforcement to shoot them down, which could get interesting in a city, but there is legislation, or someone is right now, I did get wind from my daughter that someone is trying to move forward with something like that, so we might want to watch that and support that legislation to give law enforcement a little bit more teeth to be able to force others down when they're out there.

I just have one quick follow-up question as far as money. So this is coming from General Fund, but this is not the whole entire amount. It's not a new, because we're actually renewing a contract. So we've currently had the Axon body cameras. So that's already been, that money is, we're just re-upping that contract. There's a slight increase or whatever you mentioned because of some features. But the actual, but what I'm getting at is the actual budget for the PD is not increasing by the whole entire 1.5, it's actually going up because the only thing we're really adding is the first responder drone stuff, technically, right?

And some enhancements to the existing body-worn cameras and additional costs there. Yes, that is technically true. I believe finance intends to pay the contract upfront in full to not to have the recurring charge, if I'm correct.

That is correct.

So the full amount will be paid and we will not be encumbering the city's budget year to year on this or using the additional, I don't want to use the word extra, but additional revenue to make that happen for the five-year program. Right.

I just, the point I was making was to Layla.

Yeah, this is not gonna increase their budget. This will just be a one-time cost, and then once the contract, or once that 1.5 million, it'll go away.

Right, but the body contract, we've had the axon for some time now, so that would go, right, so there's a trade-off for that, okay.

Yes, sir. That's all I have.

Okay, do we have any public comment? We do, we do. We have Michael Little.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council, public. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Michael Little. I'm the president of the Gulf Police Officers Association. Tonight, I'd like to speak on behalf of our support for this new contract. The members of the GPOA are encouraged by the technology forward approach that the city leadership and the police department administration have continued to take when it comes to public safety. In modern policing, technology plays a critical role in improving efficiency, increasing transparency, enhancing officer safety, and ultimately providing a better service to the community. This proposed contract represents a major investment in the future of policing in Galt. Updated technology, improved systems, and the implementation of Drona's first responder capabilities will significantly enhance the service our officers are able to provide to the residents and businesses of the city. Like many agencies across California, staffing remains one of the biggest challenges that we face here in Galt. With limited on-duty officers available at times, it is critical that we can equip our officers with tools that help maximize efficiency and improve real-time decision-making. Technologies such as Jonas First Responders act as a force multiplier for our officers in the field and allow limited staffing resources to be used more effectively while still maintaining a high level of service that our community has come to expect of us. Drones' first responder technology will also greatly improve our ability to gather real-time information during critical incidents. Due to Galt's geographic location, our regional air support assets in the region often are delayed based on our location and the amount of calls that they serve in their greater region of Sacramento. In many situations, our officers are forced to manage rapidly evolving incidents without immediate air support, and in times it will take sometimes air support almost an hour to get to us. Having the ability to quickly deploy a drone locally will provide officers and supervisors with immediate situational awareness during incidents involving suspects, major collisions, perimeter searches, critical incidents, and public safety emergencies, such as natural disasters and flooding. That real-time information allows officers to make better decisions, respond more safely, and coordinate resources more effectively while incidents are actively unfolding. These tools will also allow officers to gather critical information faster, improving evidence collection, and assist investigators in solving cases more quickly and efficiently. Just as importantly, this technology included in this contract will help reduce the amount of time officers spend tied up completing reports, handling administrative tasks, or sitting behind a computer not on the street. Any time we can reduce paperwork and increase efficiency is time we can put officers back in the field where they are most valuable, proactively patrolling neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and assets that everyone pays for. The members of the GPOA fully support efforts to modernize our department with tools that improve effectiveness, accountability, and service. We appreciate the willingness of the administration and city council to continue investing in the public safety and embracing technology that will help our officers as well. We believe this contract is a positive step for the city of Galt, the police department, and most importantly for the citizens of Galt. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Little, Officer Little. No other public comments? Okay, I did have one more question. See, someone talks and that's one of the questions. Does it have a spotlight? Sorry. Do they have spotlights?

Yes, they do. Okay, so. Yes, and a speaker as well and a parachute for safety.

All right, anything else?

And not to overkill the presentation, because I know the department heads love me right now. The one item that was near and dear to Captain Smalley, he brought it to me as an option, is that the connection between the body worn cameras and the Skydio platform, allow for instant tracking to the body-worn camera should we lose communication with an officer in the field. So if they get in a foot pursuit or something happens or we just lose communication altogether, it'll respond to the last known location of either the car camera or the body-worn camera. And so that is an added feature for officer safety for my staff.

Not to belabor the discussion. So I will move to approve as presented.

Okay.

Second.

Okay, moved by Council Member Farmer and seconded by Council Member Sandhu. Roll call, please. Vice Mayor Reid.

Aye.

Council Member Pratton.

Aye.

Council Member Sandhu.

Aye.

Council Member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez. Aye.

Motion passes 5-0. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Okay, gonna go ahead and move back to item G, and we'll start with item one under G, Dry Creek West. Ms. Carloni.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. We're just getting situated up here. I'm gonna turn it over to Stacy Schaefer, our associate planner, for this item.

The clicker is up by Chief.

Good evening. Tonight I'll be presenting the Dry Creek West Public Hearing. The proposed Dry Creek West project is a 28.39-acre undeveloped site located just south of Bossow Road in the approved Elliott Ranch project, west of the Dry Creek Oaks senior development, east of Crystal Way, and north of the Dry Creek Ranch Golf Club. A quick background. This project site was included in the city-approved Dry Creek Oaks subdivision project in 2015. You can see the entire project site outline in yellow there. This project included an approved ISMND for the entire site, the Dry Creek Oaks Senior Subdivision that has been under construction since, and it also included a general plan amendment and rezone of our current project site from light industrial to commercial and high density residential. Tonight is specifically about the area in red you see. The Dry Creek West project is proposing a commercial mixed use section, 160 single family row homes, senior triplexes, and an assisted living facility that will be developed at a later time. Tonight the City Council is being asked to consider resolutions for the addendum to the 2015 Dry Creek Oaks subdivision project ISMND, a general plan amendment for a portion of the project site to medium high density residential, a rezone of a portion of the project site to medium high density multiple family residential, a tentative subdivision map, design review, and a conditional use permit for multifamily in a commercial zone. More design detail on each component will be given later, but here you can see the site plan broken down into the three major components. The first component is the commercial zoned portion to the north, which is proposing four mixed-use buildings featuring retail space on the first floor and three separate residential apartments on the second floor. The second component will be 160 single family homes in four and five unit row configurations known as row homes. And the third component will feature 68 senior dwelling units in triplex style buildings that will be for rent. There are quite a few entitlements for this project we'll be going through. The overall land use changes are showing here. The existing on the left and the proposed on the right. We're gaining additional residential but still meaning commercial for the area. The first entitlement for the project is the CEQA addendum. The project site, as we mentioned, is within the 2015 Dry Creek Oaks subdivision project. That project included adoption of an ISM&D. The majority of the proposed development is consistent with what was anticipated for the site in the 2015 project and was fully analyzed within that adopted ISM&D. The portion of the proposed project requiring the general plan amendment and rezone, however, was not anticipated to have residential development and therefore required the addendum. After analysis, the city's CEQA consultant determined there was no substantial evidence that the project would have a significant effect on the environment beyond what was already evaluated. The second entitlement request is a general plan amendment. The current plan has commercial and high density residential land use designations. The proposed amendment retains commercial at the north and changes the land use designation from high density residential to medium high density residential to allow single family row homes and the senior rentals. The southern portion of the site will remain high density residential for that future assisted living facility. The third entitlement is a rezone. The current zoning has commercial and R4, which allows a density range of 14 to 30 dwelling units per acre. The proposed map has commercial R3 and R4. The R3 zone allows eight to 14 dwelling units per acre. And the project results in a density of 10 and a half dwelling units per acre, which meets the requirement of the proposed R3 zone. The fourth entitlement is the tentative subdivision map. The tentative subdivision map allows the creation of the reduced commercial lot, 160 single family residential parcels, lots for the parklets, and the map also creates a parcel for the senior triplexes and a parcel for the future assisted living facility. The fifth entitlement is the request for design review for the three major components. First, the commercial and mixed-use development. This will consist of four buildings on roughly two acres in the northernmost portion of the project site. The buildings will be two-story with retail spaces on the first floor and three residential apartments on the second floor for a total of 12 apartments. The buildings will feature stucco, color variation, and rock veneer. There will also be overhangs over the first floor windows and doors. The project will feature a community plaza area between the second and third buildings that provides picnic tables, tiered seating and cafe tables and landscaping. Also a dining patio area next to building four with dining tables and umbrellas at each. The fifth building will be in the east corner of the lot and is set to be a community market but the use and design will be established at a later time. Design review for the single family row homes. Proposed are 160 single family homes that are in four and five unit row configurations. In the row configuration, each unit is structurally independent on its own lot, separate from adjacent units by an air gap extending from the foundation to the roof sheeting, which makes it a single family residence. They do share the roof and exterior wall with adjoining units, which gives the appearance of an attached product. The elevations include a combination of stucco, board and batten, and rock veneer with majority of elevations including a front porch design. The project will feature one light near the garage door and one light near the front door for each unit. And there is a different garage door style and front door style per plan. Per the Galt Municipal Code, the project must have 320 parking spaces. The project is providing 442 private spaces plus additional street parking. The single family row homes component also features three proposed parklets you can see circled on the screen with some of their featured amenities. A homeowner's association will maintain the community amenities as well as the front yard landscaping of each home. The design review for the senior three unit buildings will feature 68 units for rent. All are single story. Each three unit building will feature two two bed, two bath apartments, and one one bed, one bath apartment. There is one duplex in the community. The elevations for all buildings include stucco, trim work, and design enhancements. The elevations are cohesive and mimic similar duplex style communities in the city. Each building will have attached single stall garages that are alley loaded. A garage is assigned to each unit featuring a light next to each garage door. Here you can see the fencing and wall renderings. There will be a good neighbor fence between the row homes. The corner and side lots, yard lots, will feature the elevated cap and trim style fencing. And the sound wall will back the row homes on South Carilion Boulevard and be placed between the row homes and the commercial lot. The horizontal wood fence will be placed with screening shrubs between the senior triplex buildings. The communities will also have their own entry signage on South Carilion Boulevard, as you can see there, with the row home signage on the sound wall at the entry, and the senior home signage will be standalone near their entry. Our final entitlement request is for a conditional use permit. The Gault Municipal Code requires a conditional use permit for a multi-family, three or more dwelling in a commercial zone. Staff has found all required findings have been met and that the commercial and residential uses are compatible with the surroundings. Staff have outlined general plan policies and proponents of the project that substantiate the findings for each entitlement the city council is required to make.

Here are listed just some examples of those.

At their April 9th Planning Commission meeting, the commissioners voted 5-0, recommending approval of the addendum, general plan amendment, rezone, tentative subdivision map, design review, and conditional use permit. They did add two new conditions to this design review, being one, all garage doors for the single family row homes and senior triplexes will be nine feet wide unless the developer provides evidence that it is not feasible. And two, rock veneer will be added to each post of the arched columns up to the trim at the front door entry to each of the senior triplex units. Staff recommends you open a public hearing and upon closing the public hearing adopt a resolution approving the addendum general plan amendment tentative subdivision map design review and conditional use permit and introduce and waive further reading of the rezone ordinance for the Dry Creek West project.

Thank you.

Thank you. This is a public hearing, correct? So we need to open a public hearing? Okay, so officially we've opened the public hearing. Does anyone have any questions or would you like to hear from the public first? Public, okay. Do we have any public comment?

I have one speaker card that came up with the item of G2 with no name. I'm sorry, with Liliana, is that for G2? Lilliana Gamboa. Right, it has no number and it has no subject. I have nothing on here except a name. So, okay, we'll skip it.

She's not coming up. No other public comment. Okay. Maybe I'll leave the public hearing open if she possibly wanders this way. Any discussion or questions from council?

I have some questions. Stacy, I'm sorry. I'll just call you Stacy. I would call you by your last name. Schaefer, there you go. So... This project was approved in 2015. We're making changes, you're asking us for rezone changes. So this is not the city council, this is just for the public. This is not the city council approving a home development tonight. This is a project that was approved in 2015. This is us making tweaks to that project, correct?

Correct, yes.

Yeah. So, basically, essentially, when looking at the before and after, really what we're doing is we're reducing the commercial piece of it to allow for more of the high-density residential part.

Correct.

Essentially, right? So, I mean, it looks pretty straightforward. I don't want to get into the weeds of the design stuff, I mean, because that could just belabor the whole thing, but... One concern I do have that seems to be echoed sometimes with the planning commissioners is that we see a project that has multiple variables in it. In this case here, we have high residency residential. We also have the rental units, and then eventually there's the care home location that's designated for that. So sometimes we'll have a project that comes before planning, and they'll have these different aspects of the project, And then, you know, there's maybe one piece of it that really jumps out that's like, oh, we really like that. You know, God really needs that. And then what happens is it gets approved and then they build the piece that we don't like and then the other stuff never happens. So what I'm wondering is, on this particular, what I like here is I like the rental items. Because as we know, everything's for sale, there's not a lot of rentals, rental market's very tough in Galt. And so I really like that part of it, and I think that's a big asset to the community. So my question is, what phase is that particular piece of this project, and what's the likelihood that we'll see that being built? Can you kind of give us a timeline, what you think?

For the commercial mixed use portion?

For the, not so much the, I get the mixed use is like retail on the bottom and then some apartments on top. It's a real small amount, right? I'm talking about the bigger piece, the bigger rental piece, the 68, was it 68 units?

Oh, the senior triplexes?

Yes, that. Is that in phase one, two, what?

I do have, so the single-family row homes will be in three phases, and the commercial mixed-use portion will be started when the third phase of the row homes is started.

Okay.

The senior triplexes, though, if I can introduce the applicants actually to address the senior. Sure, please. Sorry, thank you. This is Tanner.

Tanner Judkins with Riverland Homes. So we're the applicant and the future developer. We're the builder across the street at Drake Creek Oaks. And to answer your question, we see the exact same need and exact same opportunity you see. And the benefit of doing this in your apartments is it reaches a different market than what would otherwise we'd be reaching in the for sale market for the seniors across the street at Dry Creek Oaks. So the intention is to proceed with the row homes and the senior apartments at the exact same time. And then we've made a deal or condition with the city that we start the commercial development with the last phase of the row homes. And the thought process on that is we're very confident in the senior apartments. We need, in our opinion, we need more rooftops on that side of town to really make that happen. neighborhood commercial viable and have that make sense and be successful. By the time we get the senior apartments built out, the row homes, Drake Creek Oaks across the street, Elliott Ranch makes significant progress. I think that timing will work out really well to make that successful.

Okay. And so with that rental piece, would the landlord be Riverland Homes or would that piece of the project then be purchased by some other entity that would then rent it out? Explain how that would work.

We currently intend to build that out, own that, and rent that ourselves.

Okay. All right. Only because we've had some spotty, like less than reputable rental corporations that have run rentals in town that we've had issues with. So I just worry about that, especially when it comes to seniors. Okay. So my only question, and I understand the commercial piece, I get that. And honestly, that piece of it is great, but it's not one of the ones that really speaks to me like I like the other, is I think a bigger, important piece. I do like the park amenities, you know, the small playground, the little, you know, you show it's like some pickleball courts or whatever, that kind of stuff. So it's important that those things are in there. I do have friends that live in the one across the street. I've actually walked through those homes. I was actually surprised. They're actually really nice. I won't take that personally. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're a nice product. I'm not a big fan of new homes, but yeah, very nice. And so I do think that, and for those of you maybe watching online or in the audience that don't know where this is at, if you go over the overpass on Central Galt and you go down out Basa Road, and where the new Carilion Boulevard has now teed in. It's right there on the right-hand side, that big dirt that goes all the way down to the golf course. So it's been, you know, it's kind of behind the crystallite block or the old crystallite block or whatever. So I don't think I have any additional questions. I mean, the design stuff is what it is. I just, I get what we're here tonight to do is just do some tweaking on the rezone to allow some slight changes to what was originally approved. So that's all I have for now. Thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you. Mr. Reid.

I just have a couple of things. One, I think the senior rentals are long overdue. We desperately need those in this community. We hear it several times, almost every city council meeting. So I'm very excited about that. And for that opportunity, I did have a couple of questions for the city staff, and I don't know if it's Ms. Schaffer or Carloni. In this business, what type of businesses would be going in there? Do you guys have any idea? Because I don't know how big the... Or the assistant city manager, yeah.

I'll chime in because I was over in community development when this project came through so I got to work with Tanner and one of the requests that we had was specific to this development as it being more of a neighborhood shopping center. meaning that the people who live in the neighborhood could frequent this location. So there's a very similar project, and I shared this with Tanner and Ripon, that we frequent a lot. My son plays baseball at a park nearby, and so it's very walkable. There's a coffee shop that has a drive-through for bicycles so people can bike through the neighborhood and go in with their families and get coffee. There's outdoor dining, there's outdoor seating for the cafes, there's a wine tasting room. It's just, it's a true neighborhood center. And so that's really kind of the intent there would be that neighbors could gather and it would be someplace where you could enjoy sort of the outdoor area in addition to the retail and restaurant environment.

Sounds great. And my last question is for the future project, any idea when that assisted living facility could be built?

Did you have...

Assuming the project gets approved, which we hope that happens, you know, we're not going to wait on marketing that. I mean, I think it's a, we've done some pre-design on that based off of what Eschaton and Oakmont and some others have done on site. So, you know, I think we mocked it up for a 88 bedroom facility to just give you a context for size. And, you know, the goal is, you know, we've had a lot of jokes with the Dry Creek Oaks residents, you know, about the, you know, that being a strategic location. for that site. But the short answer is I think that it makes a lot of sense with having Direct Creek Oaks across the street, you've got the senior apartments there. The reason why we are definitely not gonna be the ones to develop that is that needs to be the operator. The operator who is gonna go do that, they need to buy that piece or maybe we would partner with them or some opportunity out there, but that really needs to be driven for that and we would go market that and we would let the market determine that.

So I was just wondering if anybody had any idea on how long in the future, because this is gonna play into my next conversation with the fire chief, as everybody knows. But that's why I was just wondering, that's all.

Mr. Pratt, nothing? Mr. Sandhu.

Thank you, Miss Madam. I have just for the clarification, you know, on that applicant, what's different with CRV and Riverland Homes?

So right now, the developer, CRV, is the original developer who got the project approved back in 2015, built out, developed the Drake Creek Oaks lots, and also started this west half. So mass grading has been done. If you see it out there, there was work that was done. We purchased the lots for Drake Creek Oaks from CRV. We've developed a successful relationship with them. A LITTLE BIT OF A BACK STORY, THIS PROJECT IS A LITTLE BIT UNIQUE IN THAT IT HAS THE SENIOR LIVING COMPONENT AND IT HAD THE COMMERCIAL COMPONENT AND SO NOBODY WAS REALLY ABLE TO, PEOPLE STRUGGLED TO MAKE THE TWEAKS TO MAKE THIS WORK. WE HAD A UNIQUE VANTAGE POINT BEING ACROSS THE STREET BUT WE ALSO HAD VESTED INTEREST FOR OUR COMMUNITY THAT WE'RE SELLING AT DRAKE RAKE OAKS TO MAKE SURE SOMETHING NICE GOES IN THAT MEETS THE CITY'S INTEREST. MEETS OUR INTERESTS, MEETS THE COMMUNITY'S INTERESTS, AND SO WE APPROACH THE DEVELOPER, AND WE HAVE IT UNDER CONTRACT, AND CONDITIONED TO CLOSING IS THIS APPROVAL. SO THE SECOND THAT WE GET THIS APPROVED, WE WOULD BE CLOSING AND MOVING FORWARD WITH THE DEVELOPMENT PLAN.

THANK YOU. THE OTHER QUESTION MIGHT BE FOR THE STAFF. DURING THE PREVIOUSLY, HOW MANY ACRES WAS IT COMMERCIAL? NOT THE PROPOSED, BUT ORIGINAL?

14 points, just over 14.

14 points. And how many acres are we going to in the new proposal, the commercial?

It's just over two. There'll be one lots, two acres, two and a half acres.

Okay. My question is, as a commercial, why we want to decrease the commercial than making more residential? since the commercial getting more revenue than residential, because residential only property tax, commercial, you get property tax plus the sales tax, whatever they have.

It was the project that they proposed, but even with the amount of commercial that they are bringing, they're still having to wait for more rooftops to come in to make it financially feasible. So even to put the, even to use the commercial in the smaller space that they are, they're having to wait on the phasing for more homes.

Okay, and my question is you feel if you have a less commercial is more feasible to hold a lot or that's why you guys are decreasing commercial to the residential?

Yes, and a slightly more complicated answer. So one of the things that we watched happen across the street is that GALT, and staff can correct me if I'm wrong, multifamily is an allowed use in commercial with a conditional use permit. And so what a couple developers were trying to do was ignore the senior component, which we know is very important to GALT, but also pursue very large multifamily for rent projects, That honestly would cause us to panic a little bit and cause our community to panic. And so that's a two-part answer, which is that the first part is 14 acres for this site, way too much commercial. Just doesn't make any sense. And the second part answer is, well, then what's the opportunity there? Right. And the opportunity for our community was to get a for sale product that also achieves density goals for the city that gets meaningful density goals and also gets rentals for the apartment. So this was a this was a negotiating effort that we worked with with the city for quite some time with city staff. We also involved our Drake Creek Oaks community members to get their feedback. And this is kind of the the deal that we came to. So we had a fair amount of thought put into it.

And my next question is, there is another R4, the rest of them, and then you guys are asking from R4 to make R3, and that's density going backward.

Can you give me your... Yeah, so I don't know if we can go back to the map to just help give everybody just a little bit of perspective. To get more density on this site, so just to give you numbers, the allowed density on this site is... if you didn't even use the commercial. So just on the two high density pieces, right? You're talking about allowed use that's already been environmentally cleared and everything in the 2015 plan of 600 plus units. And the only way you get there is by going up. And so those are three story buildings. These are big apartment complexes. It's just not something that we felt made sense to us, to the site, to the community. And the nice thing about the row home configuration is, I would call it very suburban-friendly. So we have full-depth driveways. We have 20-foot driveways. You have a backyard. Some of the higher-density stuff gets alley-loaded, so you don't have your yard, right? So you have a paseo with an alley-loaded garage. It tends to feel a little bit more urban, and this product really makes sense. The way that we calculate density, though, is... We get hit for it, so we needed to go down to the medium-density residual to make that accommodate. I will also tell you that there's a drainage easement, a 60-foot drainage easement, that is not buildable, and we get kind of penalized for that in the density calculation, which is kind of in the weeds in the math, but something that we needed in order to make this project make sense.

All right, thank you. And this is what that these all these questions for the public. But this was an infill project. And I know this land sitting down for a long time. And I support that project because infill project, when it developed, you know, if there is any land infill, what can happen there can be homeless, there can be some other problem. And thank you for bringing the project and I will support that project.

If I could just piggyback on your question. I think to answer a little more your question, Council Member Sandhu, is I think way back in the beginning, it just seemed like the envision for this site was a lot more commercial, might even have been industrial even before that because of its proximity to Crystal Light and all those other manufacturers over there. But I think that as the surrounding areas have developed, especially with Dry Creek Oaks, It has kind of changed the perception of what this area looks like, and I think I agree completely with what they've done here, that 14 acres is way too much commercial there, especially with the potential of the Summerhorn Ranch project across the way. I don't think there's really a need for more than that over on this side, and I think that to have, I think the senior element, the senior rental element is really the cherry in this project, in my opinion. And I am happy to hear that that's planned to be in the, you know, that there is a plan to do that and not just in the future sometimes. So yeah, I don't know if that helps you, but.

Okay, did we have the public speaker show up? Okay, with that, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. And would Councilmember like to make a motion?

I'll move to approve as stated in the agenda. Second.

Okay, moved by Councilmember Pratton and seconded by Vice Mayor Reed. Roll call, please. Vice Mayor Reid. Aye. Council Member Hatton. Aye.

Council Member Sandu.

Aye.

Council Member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Okay, moving on to item G2, consideration of no more gas and galt appeal of Planning Commission's approval of Galt Ranch commercial development, consideration of CEQA findings for an approval of Galt Ranch commercial development. Are there any statements from Council?

Yeah.

Give me a sec.

Madam Mayor, I would like to make a statement. Since I own the property adjacent to this project at 10-684 Schemenhorn, I will be recusing myself from that project. And give me some time to leave me from this room. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sandhu. Mr. Farmer?

Yeah, thank you. Although I actually have no conflicts of interest and no property near this project at all either, I'm actually, and I have not demonstrated any bias or such against the project. Out of an abundance of caution, because there has been some accusations by legal counsel for the appellant, I just decided that I would, to preserve the integrity of this process, that I'll recuse myself as well. So I will be joining Councilmember Sandhu. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, as they exit the room, I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit of introduction. I think that's why you all have been here. And excuse me, because I'll be reading so I don't miss anything. This item is for consideration of No More Gas and Galt's appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of Galt Ranch commercial development and consideration of CEQA findings for an approval of Galt Ranch commercial development. This appeal hearing is being conducted pursuant to the authority contained in the Galt Municipal Code and state law, including Galt Municipal Code sections 18.68.050 through section 18.68.060. My role as mayor will be to act as the presiding officer of this hearing. Although styled as an appeal in our municipal code, this is a de novo proceeding. This means that this appeal will afford presentation of all evidence and testimony relating to the approvals requested by the applicant. Council will reevaluate information presented to the Planning Commission in addition to testimony brought forward by those appealing the Planning Commission and any additional testimony the applicant may have. The City Council's role in this matter is to decide whether or not it would like to approve and make requisite findings in connection with the applicant's Galt Ranch project and the associated entitlements and approvals. In short, Council's role tonight is to determine whether to approve, deny, or modify the requested approvals for the Galt Ranch project. Staff is recommending that the city council consider testimony and evidence from both city staff, the applicant and any designated speakers on behalf of the applicant and the appellant and any designated speakers for the appellant and any other public commenter. After the hearing, council will be asked to render a decision to approve or deny in whole or in part the applicant's requested approvals. The contents of the appeal and its supporting evidence and all information in the administrative record are before the council, the public, and the appellant. Here's how the hearing's going to work and proceed. First, I will open the public hearing and ask council members to disclose the nature and substance of any information or communication regarding this appeal that they received prior to this hearing. beyond what has been included in the packet and is now a part of the record before us tonight. Then city staff will have the opportunity to present its staff report and answer any questions the council may have. Then the appellant or any appellant designated speakers in support of the appellant will then have 15 minutes to present its position that it would want the city council to consider tonight. Then the applicant or any applicant designated speakers in support of the applicant will then have 15 minutes to present their position with respect to the project. The city council will then have an opportunity to ask any further questions of the applicant or staff or of the appellant applicant or staff. After the council, has had the opportunity to ask some questions, after which I will open it up for public comment. In the interest of time, I know we've been here for a while, so it's probably already happened, but if you wish to speak and haven't filled out a speaker sheet card, this would be the time to do it so we can move forward quickly when it's that time. Other public comment will be received, and then council may have more questions for the appellant, applicant, or staff. Then after those questions, the appellant or applicant's designated speakers have an additional five minutes if they would like to address for their closing remarks. The clerk will keep track of time allotted to the applicant and appellant speakers and our public speakers, so please be aware of the clock so we can move this along. After it appears all the evidence and testimony has been submitted, the council will deliberate and then close the public hearing and render its decision. Written notice of such decisions shall be given by mail within five working days after the date of the decision. Madam Clerk, can you confirm what email address the applicant has agreed to accept service of the written decision?

Clerk at cityofgalt.org.

Okay.

And can you please confirm what email address the appellant has agreed to accept service of written decision?

Pardon me. I lost my spot. Sorry about that. On the last page.

I would just suggest that when we have the applicant or the appellant team present, they can just confirm on the record the mailing address that the written notice decision will be sent. That way it'll be clear on the record. We just ask the applicant and appellant when they speak.

Thank you. Okay, are there any questions as to how this is going to work? Okay.

Okay.

Okay, council, are there any council members that should disclose the nature and substance of any information or communication you have received regarding this appeal prior to this hearing beyond what has been included in the packet and is now a part of the appeal materials before you?

I did meet with Dr. Dahlia on the project, but we did not discuss this appeal.

I, too, met with Dr. Dalla, a member of the No More Gas and Galt, but that was before the appeal. Okay. We're ready. We'll go ahead and open the public hearing and staff. It's your, ball's in your court now.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Rodriguez, Vice Mayor Reed, and Council Member Pratton. I'm Kristen Bitts, Principal Planner with the City of Galt Community Development Department, here to present Galt Ranch. Give me just a moment to, is there a way to, thank you, appreciate that. In the heart of our city is 45 acres of vacant land and it's land that has been planned for development for decades. With a general plan designation of commercial and a zoning designation of highway commercial, the site has long been recognized by city leaders and city staff as a prime location for regional and highway-oriented commercial uses. These uses rely on visibility and access from freeway corridors and major intersections, which this site offers. In fact, the development potential of regional and highway-oriented commercial uses here is so remarkable that it was a driving factor in construction of the Central Galt Interchange. It's also the last remaining significant commercial zone property within city limits currently, and after two years of working on the development application, I'm pleased to present it to you tonight. Planning and developing a commercial site as large as Galt Ranch is a heavy lift and several entitlements are required. We have an environmental document, we have a master site plan that ensures a cohesive design with all of the parcels working together and offering a community feature and pedestrian activity. We have a tentative parcel map that will subdivide the property into 20 parcels and two lettered lots. We have conditional use permits for all of the drive-through uses and one conditional use permit for the convenience market. There's a minor use permit for one car wash, a master sign plan for all of the signage on site, and then finally design guidelines which include architectural treatments. The anticipated output of the fully built site is substantial because it increases our sales tax and property tax revenue. And as a result, Measure Q and Measure R will also receive the benefit of additional funds. And this is critical as Galt loses approximately $5 million in sales tax annually to other cities such as Elk Grove and Lodi. One of the entitlements for Galt Ranch is the conditional use permit for a convenience market for the Maverick gas station. And that's shown here, their proposed site on the left side of the screen. Maverick is not a truck stop. It is a retail fueling station that offers diesel fueling for larger vehicles. It does not meet the characteristics associated with full service interstate truck stops such as Love's or Pilot. Traditional truck stops typically include long haul truck parking, overnight accommodations, full service restaurants, showers, laundry facilities, and other amenities that are geared toward extended stays by commercial drivers. They are designed to function as travel centers for long distance freight traffic. That is not what Maverick is. Maverick does not offer overnight truck parking or lodging or shower facilities or long-term truck staging areas. The Galt site will have fuel pumps, including diesel, commercial fueling islands, two CAT scales, and an RV dump station, but it does not function as a truck plaza or interstate travel center. So in short, Maverick is a retail gas station with a convenience store that happens to accommodate diesel vehicles, not a full service truck stop. And the presence of diesel fueling alone does not define a use as a truck stop. Many gas stations provide diesel fuel for pickups, delivery trucks, and commercial vehicles without operating as an interstate truck travel center. The site is designed to separate passenger vehicle circulation from commercial fueling areas to minimize conflicts and maintain safe internal circulation. Access is designed to align with the broader Galt Ranch circulation framework. Trucks are not allowed to park on site, only to pull into fuel and then head back out on the road. Key conditions of approval of the project include condition A26, which is tied to the tentative parcel map, prohibiting truck idling, loitering, and long-term and overnight parking. So overall, the site design reflects a modern fueling station with convenience retail, integrated into the larger Galt Ranch development, and is consistent with the highway commercial zoning designation. Galt Ranch requires an adoption of a California Environmental Quality Act 15183 checklist and approval of the before-mentioned discretionary entitlements that I just went over. The Planning Commission, at its February 12th, 2026 meeting, approved the Galt Ranch commercial development project, including the checklist and all associated entitlements, including the conditional use permit for the Maverick gas station convenience store. On February 20th, 2026, the city received an appeal to the Planning Commission's decision. The City Council, as you mentioned, is now tasked with taking action on that appeal. I will now introduce our environmental consultant for the Galt Ranch project, Rod Stinson of Rainy Planning and Management, their vice president. And Rod can guide you through the city's checklist approach before turning it back to me for further staff recommendations and introductions for the remainder of presentations.

Thank you, Kristen. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, Rod Stinson, Rainy Planning and Management. I think I'd first just like to start with a discussion of the approach that was taken here for the CEQA clearance. A typical CEQA evaluation would look at the proposed project in against in the context of the existing conditions at the site. The 15183 section of the CEQA guidelines provides for a streamlining exemption whereby you look at a different baseline. The baseline is the general plan EIR. And in particular, you're looking at whether the proposed project or anything about the site would result in something that's unique or peculiar as compared to what would be allowed under the general plan and analyzed in the general plan EIR. It does also allow for the project and the city in this approach to take advantage of any implementation of city policy or code that's uniformly applied across the city. That wouldn't be something that is unique to this project, but it's applied to all projects within the city. And so what we've done is prepared a modified CEQA checklist. CEQA provides an Appendix G that has a checklist of all the different topics and all the different questions we need to answer. And so this modified checklist goes through and analyzes whether there's anything peculiar about the project or the site that would meet any of those criteria under 15183. As part of the appeal, there was a comment letter that was included on the original checklist. That letter was bracketed, and so every comment within that letter and all of its attachments were responded to in writing and those were included as an attachment to the staff report. And some of those comments required some revisions to that original checklist and that revised modified initial study checklist was also included staff report. The changes that were required were for clarification and amplification purposes. We did some additional analysis. We did a health risk assessment related to the gas station and the truck trips. A project-specific noise report was done. The other point of clarification was related to the remainder parcel that is not a part of the project related to the future potential for housing on the project site. So anyway, the document was revised for those reasons. Through those additional analysis, it simply bolstered and confirmed the conclusions that there isn't anything unique or peculiar about the project, and the analysis is included in your packet as the substantial evidence to support those conclusions. So that's it, thank you.

Thank you, Rob. So the staff recommendation is to receive presentations from the appellant and applicant team as Mayor Rodriguez clearly or previously spelled out and then receive public comments, receive closing remarks and then in the end staff does recommend that the city council consider the resolution to deny no more gas in Galt's appeal of planning commission approval of the Galt Ranch commercial development and adopt the project resolutions. and now we can start the timer and the appellant's team, if you could please come up to the podium to start your presentation, thank you.

Does Council have any questions for staff over this stuff?

No. Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, city council members.

Sorry, may I just interrupt you? Excuse me. Stop the timer. I just want to make sure we get a mailing address so we can send the written decision before we start your time.

Absolutely, and I did provide a business card. Would you like me to approach you?

I have your business, I have it right here.

Yeah, right here would be perfect.

Okay.

This address, thank you.

Perfect, thank you.

Got it.

Thank you.

Appreciate that, all right. Any other questions? Mayor and council members, thank you so much. My name's Diane Kinderman. I'm counsel with the law firm of Fenimore, and I'm co-counsel with Mr. Ed Yates, who's been working on this project previously. He was unable to be here this evening, and so I am making this presentation on the behalf of No More Gas and Galt. Thank you for the clear directions on everything and for giving us the opportunity to talk about our appeal and the reasons for the appeal. And there are really three items that I'd like to raise. We provided a letter. I'm sorry the letter was so last minute. We were very much rushing trying to be able to accommodate the time frame provided to us, but that was the best we could do. So I apologize for the late delivery of that letter, and hopefully you got the printed out copies that we provided. So the three things that I would like to bring up that we touched on in the letter, well the first item has just been a subject of discussion. I appreciate Maverick and County Council trying to work with us on this, and let me say I do want to thank staff and County Council for working with us all throughout this process for answering our questions, promptly returning phone calls and being all around courteous. So you have a great team here and I wanted to thank you for that and acknowledge them. So back to the original point, and so we had talked about a continuance. Because there was a voluminous amount of material provided to us on Thursday evening, we did not have an opportunity to be able to connect with all of our consultants to be able to, and the consultants, I mean the technical experts, to address the technical materials that were presented to us. So we'd asked for an extension of time of 30 days to be able to connect with our technical consultants and be able to respond. So I'm going to reiterate that request again and perhaps you may want to make a decision on it now or you want to think about it. So that's the first item that I'd like to touch on. There's a distinct possibility and knowing the quality of work that Rainey does, there's a distinct possibility that most if not all of our issues were addressed, but again, I'm not a noise expert, I'm not a traffic expert, I've worked with them, I understand the concepts, but I could not testify as an expert in those areas, which is why we need them and would like to have an opportunity to have them look at this material to see if things have been addressed. And I have a feeling that many of them probably were, but I can't say that because I don't know. So with that, we would appreciate a continuance. So the second item that I wanted to talk about is really the content of the materials that were provided by the city on Thursday afternoon as part of the staff report. And because we've not had an opportunity to thoroughly review everything, that all that we could present was the materials already presented and repeat and incorporate those by reference, stating all of our concerns. Because once again, we can't answer yet whether or not they were addressed in the materials presented late Thursday afternoon. So our response to the staff report to Maverick's letters, substantive letters, again, we repeat and incorporate by reference our prior letter from February 11th that was submitted to the Planning Commission before the February 12th hearing when the Planning Commission approved the project. And then the third item is the separate letter from Maverick on the economics. I think that I've addressed that thoroughly in our letter. I think it's somewhat specious. We call that in the law also a red herring. I think it's a distractor. I don't think they had any evidence to show that Dr. Dalla has no other interests other than benefiting himself economically. He's shown himself to be a caring member of this business community and will continue to invest in it and continue to do so. We provided ample evidence supporting the environmental concerns here. So to say that he has nothing more than you know, an economic concern is simply untrue. There's no evidence to support that. The very interesting texts and emails and all of that, you know, any litigation attorney is going to tell you that's all hearsay. It's very specious and, again, it has absolutely no merit. So I'm not going to dignify it with much more of an argument, and it's already in our letter. And so with that, I would request, number one, a continuance to give us an opportunity to properly respond to the technical materials provided, and in the alternative, if you're not willing to give us a continuance and you will make a decision based on what we have provided again today and what the city has been able to provide, supplemental materials, I would request again, on behalf of No More Gas and Coal, that the appeal be granted and the project be denied. Any questions for me? And I'm happy to answer questions later.

Yeah, I have a question. Who is No More Gas in Galt?

No More Gas and Galt is the entity that I represent. Dr. Dalla is a member of that. I know there's been a question about that, so I'm happy to clarify that for you. He is a member and he supports it. There are some individuals here from No More Gas and Galt as well who might like to speak up also. So I don't want to usurp their time either.

Sure. So when I met with Dr. Dalla, I asked him that question. He told me he would provide me with a list. I've not seen that. I know he's a busy guy and all that. So is it possible for us to get a list of who these people are? I mean, I don't know if they live in town, if they live in San Jose.

I will certainly ask them. That has not been presented to me as an issue. I was not aware of that. I will be happy to ask my clients and see if they would like to provide a list to us. Excuse me, a bullet catching my throat.

Yeah.

We could submit that, a response to that in a period of days if city council would, or the mayor would like that.

I'm interested. So on Thursday you received what exactly? How much stuff are you talking about that you received?

Well, quite a bundle of supplemental comments as well as technical reports. And we need to be able to talk to the technical experts who are the actual experts that the appellant brought into this prior to the planning commission meeting. So we'd like to revisit with them whether or not they have issues and comments on what was provided. So we, like I said, there's a possibility that many of these issues were addressed, but I don't know because I haven't had the opportunity to confer with them, nor have they had an opportunity to review it, the materials.

Okay. We got our packet, what, Friday?

Thursday evening.

Thursday evening, our packet. So we have to go through this stuff, too.

Right.

But I'm prepared.

Of course.

I'm ready.

Well, thank you. We appreciate that. And why we're not, if I... might I be able to respond to that? Why we're not is because we have to make a record, a legal record, and I could not testify on noise issues as a noise expert. I'm a land use lawyer and I'm an expert on CEQA and land use issues and environmental issues, but I'm not a noise expert, so I could not testify to that. I could not testify on traffic. I am not a traffic expert. That is why lawyers have to rely on them. We know a little bit about it, I can certainly converse about it, I can know what makes sense, understand what makes sense, what doesn't, what's required for CEQA. But I could not make a record and testify that that is correct or not, because I'm not that expert. That is why, and your voluminous, your stack of exhibits, I apologize for that, being late again, The thickness, it's the same letter that you got on February 11th, and we just were repeating and incorporating by reference as our support. The rest of it, the first stack of it were some emails that addressed the request for the continuance.

So when I read the appeal, though, I don't see any reason why it needed to come to us so late. That's concerning for me. We got that last minute, but if you read through it, it's stuff I think that was discussed early on.

Yeah, I don't have a response to that. I was not involved in the filing of that.

Okay, yeah, and I'm not here to debate. That's all I have.

But I appreciate your comments, and we'll... look for further direction on the list that you were interested in. Thank you. Ms. Rente, nothing?

I am curious about that list. Are these type of organizations a matter of public records?

Not always. No, they're not. In fact, when I am sometimes on the other, the shoes on the other foot for me, and I'm representing someone in Maverick's position, we do sometimes request, for example, let's say in a Clean Water Act matter, many times environmental organizations will come after a client for a Clean Water Act violation so that I can run a conflict check to make sure I'm not dealing with a potential client of mine who may have contributed to to that organization, I'll ask for a list, and oftentimes they refuse to provide it, and we've just not taken that issue to court. So on the issue of environmental groups under CEQA, I do not know that, I don't think there's a mandatory requirement for it in CEQA, but I'm certainly happy to ask the client out of respect for your question and see if that is something they could provide a total or partial list of.

Yeah, I agree that it is important to know at least where they live because if the majority of the members are outside of this area and the majority of the financing for it is coming out of this area, then that is a concern. It's always a concern for a small town to have that outside influence trying to dictate what our town, our city should and shouldn't do. So I agree with Council Member Pratt and I would like to, at the very least, know where they reside.

But in CEQA, the way it's crafted, it does allow members of a community to participate and people who are not members as well. So CEQA does allow that. I don't know the answer here, so.

And I appreciate you looking into that for us. Thank you. I do have, well, I guess, NEVER MIND, I DON'T HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU. I'LL ASK IT AT A DIFFERENT TIME. I'LL BE HERE.

I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE YET.

DO YOU HAVE OTHER SPEAKERS?

DR. DALLA WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK AND IF ANY OTHER MEMBERS OF NO MORE GAS WOULD LIKE TO COME UP.

AND THEY CAN ALSO SPEAK DURING THE PUBLIC COMMENT AS WELL. THANK YOU.

Yeah, just to make clear, we paused the time when the council started asking questions, so that way you can maximize your time. You have nine and a half minutes. So whoever on the appellant's team would like to speak, anyone that doesn't get the opportunity to speak would also have the opportunity to use public comment.

Thank you kindly. Thank you. I'll be here for any future questions. Thank you for your time. Perfect. Thank you.

Well, good evening, everyone. I think everybody's waiting for this. So good evening, city council members, mayor, city attorney, police staff, manager, and all the wonderful city staff who has been working with us for a long time. My name is Dr. Dalla, and let me make something very clear. I'm not against any development in Galt. And I have invested heavily into this city over the last five years. And it is not an outside influence. And I have developed some of the best looking and modern looking buildings in Galt with 76 gas station and dental hub building in Twin Cities Road. So I believe in responsible growth and development. When I first heard about this project, I would say three, four years back, I was actually interested in participating in this project. Maybe a hotel, maybe a mixed-use development, or another quality commercial project, right? But when you see a large piece of land like this, most people expect like a meaningful anchor development, like something that truly becomes a gateway of the city of God, like a target, safe way, release, or something like Delta Shores. But instead, the first thing, and it's ironic, being prioritized by all the city is a large truck fueling facility with truck scales from out of the state corporation and who has only eight corporate stores in California. And one of them has been denied by city of Rockland. And they said, you know what? We don't want your truck fueling station in city of Rockland. Get out. So we have Chevron, 76, Arco, Valero, everything in City of God. And they're still saying I'm the only opponent? Really? So, but after studying their plans, you know, I looked at the truck movement, flow, congestion patterns, because we dealt with Accidents on Simmerhorn Road, and you know there's a wonderful presentation for drones getting to the city of gold amazing idea for 1.5 million dollars right and adding more tracks I Realized very early on that it won't work Right in this corridor. This is not the place as a developer I asked the city a very simple question What exactly is being planned? and why we are misleading the residents of Galt again and again. That there is an in and out, that there is several other uses. They are portraying like, oh my God, in and out is coming. Really? I requested the site plans and details about this development a year and a half back, but the city was not providing the documents or giving any clear answers. That forced me actually, I'm a dentist, full-time dentist, forced me to hire an attorney, Mr. Yates, great Mr. Yates, and pursue an action under California Public Records Act, which is CPRA, that anybody in the public can ask the city officials to get a documentation what is happening in the city. And they didn't respond, or didn't give all the information. So that resulted in lawsuit, Dalla versus City of Galt. And I'm the bad guy. And the city lost that case and did the settlement agreement with me And ultimately, these taxpayers, residents of Galt, paid more than $120,000 taxpayers' money from their general fund to defend that settlement agreement. And in that settlement agreement, it was written that if Maverick does any other reports, they should be available to us on a timely manner. What did they do again? They put this everything on Thursday evening. How can you, on a Thursday evening, Friday you call a consultant for noise, traffic, everybody, hey, we have a city meeting appeal coming in, draft a response. How this is possible, is it? So the records that should have been public from day one were held by city on purpose so that no one can oppose this development. And unfortunately, we are here again. Even after the settlement agreement, Citi agreed to provide these studies in good faith, and yet some studies completed months ago, the noise and air quality was done in March and April by Maverick, but was not disclosed to me, Deanne, or Mr. Yates. and were made only to public a couple of days ago. So Mr. Yates sent a letter that we might be potentially doing a CPRA lawsuit again, and we were going back and forth with Mr. Spondolino, the city attorney, for an hour to go back and forth. And we will challenge that. This is no transparency. This is no good faith. And the people of Galt deserve better. This project sits on one of the most important gatesway of Galt, connecting the east side and the west side. Around it, you already have neighborhoods. Imagine, planned high density residential, 10-acre, 500 feet away from the project site with truck fueling. Come on, guys. Senior living communities, Dry Creek West on the Basso Road, changing the zoning, and the Elliott Range development. Those guys are not here because this is not developed. That's what Maverick does. They go to each and every city who just falls into their prey. Here you go. They got approved in Elk Grove, yes. Why? Because there's no housing next to it. Yet, we are talking about bringing heavy diesel truck fueling operations directly into city limits. And what happened to the promised Simmerhorn Road roundabout, which we were talking about in general plan in 2030, 10 years back? Kimberly and Hahn, they said, you know what? We don't need a roundabout. We'll just make a Galt Ranch Road directly from the C Street. Who owns a lot of land up there? Council Member Paulson, the left, because he owns the land up there. Is he ready to give away? Is other parcel owner ready to give away? So what's gonna happen? In and out never gonna come. It's four phase project. Phase one is Maverick, and the property owner will just get a lease money from the Maverick and just develop that. In the staff report, it is just clearly shown that how everything gonna be staff level review from moving on forward. So let's also be honest. So I would just say, you know, so my only question to the council is, are there any enforceable conditions, any timelines, or any bonds you guys will require the developer for this 41-acre mega development project? that can actually build the remaining commercial development being promised to the public. Are we gonna be watching this after 10 years, and I can mind, and I can come back in 10 years and see there's only Maverick, right? And then you guys gonna be like, shit, we should have put some conditions of approval that before they open their store, before they do anything, they should have five restaurants operating. Can they do that? No, it's a lie. Are we simply approving a truck fueling operation at one of the main gateways into the Galt and hoping the rest comes? I respectfully urge the council demand the complete environmental report, no exemption. before you guys make the permanent decision. That's all. So I represent No More Gas. You guys have seen what Maverick has presented on me, and I don't care, honestly. So we're going to fight this, and we're going to fight this to the end. Thank you. If you have any questions, I can answer.

Thank you, Dr. Dalla. Council, any questions?

No, I think...

I think I appreciate your presentation tonight. I'm glad you came. I was concerned because I thought you wouldn't. I mean, the conversation, you had an opportunity to discuss the whole project. I don't think that's what we're here for. We're here to look at the appeal. So I'm going to limit my conversations to that.

Council Member Reed? No? Okay. I just want to clarify a couple things that you said. Maverick, and this might be a staff question, Maverick did those studies? Or you said that Maverick did the air quality and traffic studies? No. Rainey did it? Okay. That was part of my confusion. That didn't make sense to me. I think I'll hold my other questions for the attorney later because some of the things that you said have me thinking. So I'll have to suss it out in my brain a little bit further. But thank you. I do appreciate you coming. Thank you. And I appreciate the conversation that we had. Thank you. And it's been quite a while ago. So thank you.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

So no more gas and gulps. You have a minute 36. Does anyone want to speak? Diane, do you have a follow up at all or no? Okay, so you want to just go ahead and forfeit the minute 36, okay. All right, so let's go ahead and move on to the applicant. The applicant will now present their position with respect to the project and you have 15 minutes to.

Is there a PowerPoint? Yeah. So now it's time for the next presentation. Thank you.

Just want to make sure that we have an address for the applicant to mail a written decision.

Todd Myers, 185 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah.

I'm sorry, that was 185 South State Street?

Yes. Excuse me for that. South Lake Tahoe. 185 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Salt Lake City. Thank you.

If you could pull up my presentation.

Absolutely.

There should be two slides before this.

Right there, give me just a second. Where's my IT guy when I need him?

He left.

No, he's sitting on the first row.

Oh, there he is.

Bottom right. Get up here, Rodney. Come show me. Here he comes. Give me just a minute. Rodney, faster.

And to make it more difficult, if you can remember to mute it or turn down the.

We did earlier, yeah. Okay, thank you.

Oh, I was gonna do that. Wait, come back.

Wait, I'm sorry.

Remember the volume?

That's done. Okay, perfect.

Thank you, go ahead.

Thank you. Again, my name is Todd Myers. I'm with Maverick Convenience Stores, but today I'll also be speaking on behalf of the Development Gulf Ranch, Gulf Ranch, sorry about that. Maverick came to town, oh, probably about two years ago.

I'm sorry. Thank you.

And at that time, to be perfectly honest, we would have loved to have heard that we could just go develop our site and not worry about anything else. But as Kristin has showed you on your, you have a land use map that shows this area's commercial. But you also have a general plan that dives into that and it shows you policies. And piecemeal is not what the city wanted here. And so we began working with the developer to develop this whole site. There's connectivity for pedestrians, for bikes, for vehicles. I don't know if you've ever been to a commercial area where, you know, you go to one store, then you go out on the street, then you go to another store. As you look at this, there's connectivity there. In the center of this development, there is a gathering place for people. It's shaded, there's pathways, there's landscaping, there's benches to sit on. It creates a place, a sense of place. And you also then get into some theming and architecture. They have given us some leeway for national companies because our buildings are kind of our theme, and so we kind of tie all that in together. And then also I've included the sign. Sign's very important to business. But it's also a time that you can have some more connectivity throughout the whole development. This particular sign is one of the ones that will go out on the freeway. That does two things. First of all, it pulls people off of the highway and into your community. They're going to shop here. They're going to go to this development. They'll probably go to the developments on the other side of the highway, too. The other thing it does is it brings those businesses here because they know they can advertise on these freeway signs. That's very appealing to us. It's very appealing to In-N-Out Burger and many of the others. If you could start this. Let's dive into Maverick. That's what we're all here for. Many of you have not seen a Maverick, so I just have a quick little video so that you can kind of see what our stores are like. And as you go in, they're well stocked. There's Nice room spread out. It's supposed to be very comfortable feeling. You may notice there's not bars on the windows. We're trying to create a friendly environment. And in the back here, you have where we have our food products. That's a very important part of our business. So as we, you know, in the past. A C-STORE BASICALLY MADE ALL OF ITS REVENUE OFF OF GAS. WE TRY TO HAVE A BALANCED BUSINESS. SO AS GAS GOES DOWN IN THE FUTURE, THE STORE NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO STAND ALONE TO BE ABLE TO STILL FUNCTION AS A GOOD BUSINESS. LET'S DIVE INTO SAFETY. THIS IS A COMMON THING THAT COMES UP IN THESE HEARINGS. THE FIRST OF ALL, WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SEE IS WE HAVE BETWEEN 50 to 80 cameras. They're high definition. We get your crime reports at each city we go to and that determines how many cameras or whether or not we even wanna be there because it's important to us. We also have programs where we work with the police. And then the design of the building. We have the big glass that is out front. Again, there's no metal bars dividing us off. We want people to be able to see inside the store and also be able to see outside. That's a key to part of our safety program. And then also with the lighting that we use both with inside the store and outside the store. Our people is what makes us successful. We call them our adventure guides. And a couple of things I wanted to point out here. The adventure guides get the exact same benefit program that I receive. The exact same medical, dental, vision. They all have the opportunity to take advantage of. Roughly 75%. OF OUR EMPLOYEES DO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT. THAT'S ABOUT 15,000. SOME OF THE OTHER BENEFITS INCLUDE BOTH LONG-TERM AND SHORT-TERM DISABILITY, TUITION REIMBURSEMENT. OUR ADVENTURE GUIDES BECOME OUR BEST STORE MANAGERS. LET'S GET THEM A DEGREE. AND THEN YOU ALSO HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS, PAID TIME OFF, AND OTHER BENEFITS. ONE THAT'S NOT LISTED ON HERE THAT'S KIND OF FUN IS IF YOU, YOUR KIDS, If they get good grades in high school, junior high, we have the Make the Grade program. They get Bs and As, they submit that, their parents submit that to their employer, Maverick, and they get paid for those grades. We're very proud of that. And then we have Maverick University. Maverick University is our training program for each position within the company. So if you're going to be working the register, you need to know How, what about alcohol sales? What are the laws? And so they have these video trainings and they have tests they have to take. And depending on the position, they have more and more classes they have to take, such as what about spilled fuel? And the different sizes of the amount of spilled fuel. They all need to know that kind of information. Inside the stores, we try to keep those racks low enough, again, for visibility. We have high ceilings. It just feels more open, and it helps us quite a bit with the environment we have. When you come in, if somebody didn't say welcome to Maverick, we're upset. That's a key. We want you to feel welcome. We hear all the time, mainly here in California applications, that we are a truck stop. So I thought I'd include a floor plan here. And as you look at this, you can see there's no lounges, there's no showers, there's no laundry. There are large restrooms. And this one has one of the larger restrooms, and it's because it's close to the highway. If we have big, clean restrooms, people get to know that, and they're gonna jump off of the highway, and they're gonna come into Galt, they're gonna come here, they'll probably find the wayfinding signs the development has, and probably go see the other businesses within that development. The site plan itself, yes, we are the first business coming off of the highway. And for good reason. We are a business that serves the traveling public. And so they're gonna be able to come in and get to the facility pretty quick and easy. Truck stops are typically 20, 40 acres. We're about four. So again, we're not a truck stop, nor do we have the parking for trucks. If a truck comes in, they're gonna go to fuel, they're gonna leave their vehicle in the fuel lane and run in the store. They're gonna be on site 20 to 30 minutes. Vehicles are on site typically about seven minutes. As you look at the canopy that is just to the east of the store, that's for vehicles. There's seven different fueling dispensers, and they'll have all of your gas offerings, including diesel. And then to the south of the store, you have the commercial court. That's where the trucks go. But it is a mixed-use fueling. Again, you're gonna have your unleaded, you're gonna have your ethanol-free. So if you have the expensive RVs and boats, and you don't want the ethanol, we got a spot for you to come in. If you are a landscape company and you got your van, you got your trailer that you're pulling, it can be difficult getting into the typical fueling position. But down in these commercial courts, you have easy circulation. Finally, Maverick is planned to be the first shovel in the ground, and we are critical to this project. That intersection right now will be changed to be a three-legged intersection. We're building half of the frontage of Crystal. We are building the full frontage on Galt Ranch Way, including the backbone for the utilities. And the traffic light, we're also the ones that are designing and will be installing that. So we're a critical partner within this development. At this time, I'd like to turn our time over to our CEQA attorney, Casey Schrock.

If we can get, oh, do I have control over this?

You do.

Am I doing it? All right, I did it. Good evening, my name is Casey Shorrock. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmember. I'm outside CEQA and Land Use Council for Maverick. I work for a firm called Somek, Simmons & Dunn, and we primarily represent agencies, and we represent them in a lot of CEQA and land use matters. Before becoming an attorney, I was an environmental consultant. Attorney is my second career. I went to law school in the middle of my life. I saw that look, feel that. And I was an environmental consultant for the better part of 20 years. So I wrote CEQA documents, and I managed large CEQA projects. So I get to wear a lot of hats when I'm reviewing projects like this. And I come at it from a lot of different angles. And in my professional opinion, wearing all of these hats, The city has done an excellent job here with this environmental analysis. I will note that Maverick has submitted two letters to the city council. They're attached to the agenda report and I'm happy to answer any questions about those letters or anything else, any other questions the city council may have. I just again thank the city staff for their hard work. Again, great job analyzing the project. The city relied on an abundance of well-organized and articulated analysis from a myriad of experts led by Rod Stinson at Rainey, a consummate professional. The determinations, recommendations, and findings made by city staff are based on this large amount of substantial evidence. The city went above and beyond. They substantively responded to appellant's concerns in a response to comment document that was part of the agenda packet. They prepared additional environmental analysis in response to appellant's concerns. None of this is required by CEQA. But in fact, this type of well-rounded analysis and responsiveness is in a lot of ways what CEQA wants, although there's no requirement to do that here. CEQA does want this. They want cities to analyze these projects to the best of their ability. They want this back and forth between agencies and the community. There's a lot of statutes and CEQA guidelines provisions that support the work that the city's done here. But to be clear, no more is required here. And in fact, while CEQA does encourage this kind of thorough analysis and this back and forth and this responsiveness to public comment, although not legally required here, it discourages extraneous analysis that would oppress or delay social, economic, or recreational development or advancement. And this is written into the CEQA guidelines, section 15003 subdivision. You know, agencies aren't here to generate paper. They're here to vet a project. The city's, you know, in that same vein, the city's decision here to rely on CEQA guidelines section 15183 isn't just appropriate, but it's essentially required here. The city has to make an exemption determination when it first starts considering a project. CEQA requires it decide whether or not a project is exempt from CEQA review. And then once the city determined through thorough analysis prepared by Rainey, and I'm sure a lot of consultation with staff and outside council and the city's legal council, once it was determined that section 15183 applied because of the general planning IR and because there are no impacts that might be peculiar to the project or the project site, the city was precluded from requiring additional environmental review. In our letter, in our response letter to the appeal that we submitted to the city, we talk about a recent case where a court went so far as to chastise the city for not relying on 15183 and refused to uphold the city's determination to prepare an EIR without properly considering 15183. So the city's done exactly what CEQA wants here, and any more would be too much. uh... it's worth emphasizing again I know it's been discussed but this appeal may target only Maverick but it has the practical effect of delaying other Galt Ranch development like In-N-Out and Quick Quack. I know that Dr. Dalla talked about you know what are the guarantees well the way that business works is that you start one and then another comes and then another comes you know Maverick is the first to put a shovel in the ground, but they won't be the last. Is it possible that none of this moves forward without Maverick? I don't know. But I do know that they've been integral to this, and they've tried to be a great partner to the city and a great partner to the community. And I do also want to address, I know that Mayor Rodriguez asked the question, but I just want to confirm that Maverick didn't prepare any of this analysis. The city's consultants did, and again, did a great job. You know, this is a good project. This is great for the city of Galt. I think that there's a lot of public support for this project. I'm happy to answer any questions the city may have. We would request that the city council deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's approval. Thank you. Thank you.

Council, any questions for her?

Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? All right. So being the, sorry, I got a scratch in my throat. Being the CEQA attorney for Maverick, I'm assuming that you have went through this process countless times.

I've been through this process a few times with a few different developers, yes. And in agencies.

So, and I am not one, so I don't even come close, so that's why I'm asking. With all the work that's been done by the city and their other consultants, how does that compare to some of the other projects that you have been through?

You know, I hear where you're going with this, and I actually had a statement in here about this, but I didn't want to go too over the top here. GALT has set, this is the gold standard for environmental analysis in this regard. Not only did they do the correct amount of analysis out of the gate, and not only did they use the correct pathway out of the gate, but then they added more in response to comments. The response to comment document alone in some ways sets a new standard. So I would say that they have exceeded what most jurisdictions, what a lot of jurisdictions in the state of California would do, especially for a city of this size. And I think it speaks to the importance of the project.

Thank you.

Council Member Pratton.

No, not at this time. Not at this time.

Thank you. I think I'm good for right now too. So the applicant, you have 30 seconds left. Do you have any other speakers? Okay, okay. All right, so we can go ahead and move on to public comments. Madam Clerk, how many speakers cards do we have? We have 21. In light of the time, the lateness of the hour, let's go ahead and move the speaker, the public speaking to two minutes apiece. And so maybe Madam Clerk you can call two or three up and they can line up so we can move it along so everyone can be respectful of everybody's time that they have.

I'll have Gail Weber, Michael Little, and Paul Salinas come up.

Good evening, Council. My name is Gail Weber. My husband and I moved here 31 years ago from South Sacramento looking for a place that we could have our RV on. We secured two acres outside in the county. We had trucks with fifth wheels, and we currently have a 40-foot diesel pusher. We have never been able to fuel up in Gavelton. because of logistics of trying to get a truck and fifth wheel or a 40 foot diesel motor home pulling a car into any fuel station in Galt. We have always had to go outside the city or we've had to fuel up our truck prior to connecting it to our trailer. So we have a diesel motor home that holds 100 gallons of fuel. We go down to Jayhaunt or we go down to Interstate 5 and Highway 12 and fuel up there. So we essentially have not paid any sales tax on fuel for those vehicles and those trips in this town. I also look at the name of this group, No More Gas in Galt. I don't see how one business owner can say, I can't have any more competition in town. It's the public that decides which businesses fail and which businesses succeed. So you essentially could have 10 pizza parlors in this town next to each other if the zoning permits it. The pizza parlor can't say you can't have another pizza parlor in town. the public will decide which pizza parlor survives. The same with coffee shops, grocery stores, and everything. So it's the public that's gonna decide whether the Maverick fails or it succeeds, and whether the rest of the businesses that are gonna come along with this fail or succeed. So I don't see how one business owner has the right to stall and to post misunderstandings on the Facebook pages and stuff about what this project is not. It is not a truck stop. It is a fuel stop and one that myself and a lot of other diesel owners are really looking forward to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Weber.

Good evening, Council. My name is Mike Little, President of the Galt Police Officers Association. Members of the GPOA recognize that this project represents far more than simply adding another business to our city. It represents growth, investment, convenience, and economic profits for our residents and continued progress towards the future of the city of Galt. As our city continues to grow, it is important that we continue to providing services, business, and infrastructure that meet the needs of both current residents and the families who will call Galt home in the future. Projects like this create opportunity, employment, and resources for our citizens. At the same time, we also understand that developments of this size can create concerns within the community. Some residents worry about increased traffic or commercial growth may bring unwanted activities such as, and I'm quoting here online, prostitution, drug use, thefts, or other quality of life crimes. These concerns deserve to be acknowledged, and I want you to know that the members of the Gulf Police Office Association are looking forward to the opportunity to combat this and not allow it at all. Our officers take tremendous pride in protecting the city, and we will not allow illegal activity to take hold just because the city of Gull is growing. I also want to say this respectfully. The GPOA believes that strongly in facts, transparency, and truth, and I encourage every community member to look up this project and all attachments online that are a part of it. There is a group that is possibly spreading misinformation while on the backside has been working to purchase something for themselves as well. We would like all transparency to be acknowledged, as we expect the same for our members as for the community. The GPOA is excited to see this development continue inside the Galt Ranch, and we stand ready to support that growth and work alongside the city leadership, businesses, and community members to ensure that developments become positive additions to the city for years to come. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, council members, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity. My name is Paul Salinas. I am the president of Helping Hand Association, an organization that advocates for seniors, veterans, and others in need. I heard somebody say, one of the speakers say, it has nothing to do with economy. Folks, my members, they're from Gall, that is a very important issue. Our senior citizens are using and going deep into their pockets to survive. To have a service station, that's great. And we support it. Maverick, as we understand, is competitive to Costco. If somebody knows what Costco gas prices are, they're 10 to 15 cents cheaper For us, that is very important. So from our perspective, we're saying that we support this particular project and we recommend that you deny the particular appeal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Salinas. Thank you. Can I get Diane Kinderman, Dr. Devandala, Andrew Soto?

Well, we will have an opportunity for the five minutes after. They had a, they filled out a speaker card.

Yeah, I would just give everyone their public comment, even if they asked for it. I don't wanna, so if you're somebody that filled out a card and your name was just called, come forward. Seeing none, go to the list.

I have Andrew Soto, Hector Soto, and Hector Soto Sr. They're coming.

And then, Rose, after every speaker, call another name so we have a line that's...

Hi, my name is Hector Soto Senior. I own a small car wash here in town. I'm not here so much against the Maverick. It is the car wash that I'm opposed to. I don't think our town has enough vehicles for what we have already. I know there's one particular car wash on this side of town that's struggling and I believe they're probably going to go under pretty soon and as soon as the new car wash goes down they'll be gone and it's a shame because I hate to see an empty building on the side of town and everything else flaring up nicely on on the opposite side and traffic is my other concern. We know that entrance to the highway is already bad with all this traffic coming in. I just think it's going to be terrible for everybody around. And I'm not a public speaker, so that's all I got to say. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I get Jacob Wolfe?

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL. MY NAME IS HECTOR SOTO, LONG TIME RESIDENT OF GALT, CALIFORNIA, GREW UP HERE AND ATTENDED A LOT OF THE SCHOOLS HERE AND I JUST WANT TO SPEAK SPECIFICALLY AGAINST THE MINOR USE PERMIT FOR THE CAR WASH. FRANKLY I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE THOUGHT PROCESS OF PROVING ANOTHER CAR WASH. I BELIEVE WE ALREADY HAVE ABOUT SEVEN. WE HAVE TWO DIRECTLY ATTACHED TO the gas stations on Semihorn. We have, I think, five going up the 99 corridor, so this would make six. You have Triple Crown that's already struggling in the struggling area of Galt, and then you're gonna have Gillies. I believe a majority of these car washes are, LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED. I THINK OPENING IT UP TO A LARGE CORPORATION TO POTENTIALLY COME IN INSTEAD OF DRIVING FOOT TRAFFIC TO OUR ALREADY ESTABLISHED COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND STAKEHOLDERS WOULD BE A MISTAKE. SO FROM MY PERSPECTIVE AS SOMEONE WHO DRIVES THROUGH THE CITY EVERY DAY I DON'T THINK THE CURRENT MARKET WOULD SUPPORT ANOTHER CAR WASH. I DON'T THINK WITH THE ADVANCES GULP RANCH DEVELOPMENT, IT WOULD ALSO SUPPORT IT EITHER. I BELIEVE THE MARKET IS ALREADY PRETTY SATURATED. SO MY CONCERN IS JUST THAT IT'S NOT GOING TO STRENGTHEN THE LOCAL ECONOMY. YOU ALREADY HAVE THE GULP CAR WASH IN THE GULP SUPERMARKET AREA THAT'S DELAPIDATED AND JUST A SITTING BUILDING AND TRIPLE CROWN LIKE MY FATHER SAID WAS PROBABLY GOING TO GO UNDER SINNER RATHER THAN LATER. So, fully support responsible growth here in Gall, and I understand development is important, but for that minor use permit, I would question whether or not that's gonna be a good business decision, already considering how many car washes we have on the 99 development. That's all I got, thank you.

Thank you. Are you Jacob Wolf?

I'm Jacob Wolf.

Okay, if I can have Robert Nelson, Dave, I'm sorry, Gene Davenport, And Andy Nguyen.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I'm an 18-year resident of Galt. My family had a dairy here. My mom grew up with 11 children. I JUST WANTED TO SAY I'M OVER A TWO DECADE BUSINESS OWNER IN STOCKTON. ONE OF MY CONCERNS, I LOOKED OVER THE PROPOSAL, THE WHOLE PROPOSAL, THERE WAS A MENTION OF A HOTEL AND BECAUSE I OWN A LOT OF COMMERCIAL PROPERTY IN STOCKTON LIKE MARCH AND I-5 AREA, I JUST WOULD ASK THE COUNCILMEMBERS IF THIS DOES MOVE FORWARD THAT MAYBE YOU CONSIDER BUDGET OR INDEPENDENT HOTEL, PUT SOME RESTRICTIONS, MAYBE A MID-LEVEL. INDIVIDUAL HOTELS. I LOOKED AT A CORPORATE OR A I LOOKED AT A CORPORATE OR A CHAIN OWNED HOTEL WITH MAYBE A CHAIN OWNED HOTEL WITH MAYBE A FLOOR OF EVERY NIGHT, LIKE A FLOOR OF EVERY NIGHT, LIKE A CERTAIN $60 A NIGHT OR CERTAIN $60 A NIGHT OR ABOVE, WHAT HAVE YOU. ABOVE, WHAT HAVE YOU. I LOOKED AT THE DEPARTMENT OF I LOOKED AT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. JUSTICE. THERE'S A STUDY, 83 PAGE STUDY, THERE'S A STUDY, 83 PAGE STUDY, THEY DID WITH ARIZONA STATE THEY DID WITH ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY WHERE CALLS FOR UNIVERSITY WHERE CALLS FOR SERVICE 60% HIGHER FOR I can tell you I meet monthly with Stockton Police Department. We have a extended stay hotel across the street from In-N-Out right there at Margin I-5. It is a huge hub for prostitution, drugs, and that's in the Brookside area. I can just tell you from my experience in meeting with them monthly that that is a huge problem. I understand Galt's a little smaller. A police officer came up a couple speakers ago and said that they were going to take care of it, but there's a lot of things that hide behind hotel rooms that you don't know and are not aware of, so I just encourage you to look at that and maybe put some restrictions on if there is a hotel planned to put some restrictions on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Rob Nelson. I've lived in Galt all my life, all except for four years when I was a baby. Went to all the schools here. My first job was here. I work in West Sac now, right down the street from a Maverick that was put in probably within the last five years. The only thing I see in there is I see families, I see workers, I see truck drivers coming in, getting fuel, areas clean, organized, well stocked, like you said. The pictures they showed on the screen look just like the Maverick down the street from where I work. You know, one of the things I put in here, you know, a little competition doesn't hurt the public. You know, I hear no more gas, I think. Well, someone just doesn't want the competition. Competition drives down prices for the consumers. You know, bringing in these other restaurants and these other stores are going to support our tax dollars. You know, we have to increase tax dollars so we can have the... infrastructure in the city. We want the drone. I think that's a great idea. That costs money. Property taxes alone aren't going to cover that stuff. We need growth in commercial. Do we have too many Mexican restaurants? No. You know, why can't we have too many gas stations? You know, restaurants, commercial, we need, you know, I like the small town feel, but we need to grow with the population. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you. Andy Nguyen, Serena Quezbong, and Antonio Cardell.

Hi, I'm Gene Davenport, I live in the city of Galt. As pertains to this project, I think it's this overreach of the general plan that I was a part of, of the formation of that general plan, the 2030 plan. I think projects like this need to be looked at differently and with more of a homegrown approach. Good stewards look at what they built and what they're going forward with. This project is not good for this city, period. Nothing personal against Maverick. I shopped at Maverick when I was on the road doing vacations. But things that the city needs aren't 26 gas pumps, a 6,000 square foot convenience store, five high-speed commercial fueling stations, truck scales, and a waste station. That is, by all definitions, I don't know what schools you go to, that's a truck stop, period. I don't care what anybody else says or done, I look at it as what it is. Now, if you go to Twin Cities Road and drive eight miles to Elk Grove, you're gonna find another Maverick in a little while. eight miles down the road. People say about, you know, you wanna shop locally and you're gonna do this and the tax money that's gonna come in. There's so many other things you can do to raise tax money if you just open your mind and quit being so closed minded. You can get a dispensary in this town. I mean, why hasn't that, it's a legal product. I don't drink or smoke, but I would support somebody coming in with a dispensary because of the tax base. But CEQA lawyers come up and they say this is a good project and you have to follow it. CEQA lawyers can make water run uphill for a temporary basis to get what they want across. Thank you, Gene. Time's up? Time's up. That's too bad. But I'm sorry if I offended anybody. I appreciate, Chris, all you've done for this town, but this project isn't one of them.

Thank you. Do we have Andy Nguyen? Andy Nguyen, going once. Serena Casewang? Serena? Going once. Antonio Curiel? We have Antonio Curiel II. Okay, Antonio Carrillo the second and Randy Altazar. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead. Okay, so I'm just, you know, I'm not an expert by any means. I just, you know, live in the community and I have older children and I have some younger children. I don't really like The gas stations, I don't really like apartments next to my home. I kind of want to live by other single family homes. The same thing with like, I love the small town feel. I actually moved from San Jose. And when I came to like the small town, I'm like, this is great. This is what I've been wanting. But I already know there's nothing that's going to stop the growth of Galt. Nothing is going to stop it. So we don't need a particular business to help us grow. It's going to happen, right? It's just growing, right? And so I know that when I take my kids to do fun things, Sometimes I have to take them to Stockton, to the Jumpy Land place. Or my wife wants us to be doing more dates and stuff. And I'm like, OK, we can do Elk Grove or whatnot, if you want to find something nice. Or I got to go to Sacramento. But I think it will be nice to have some nice eating or maybe a movie theater or something that's local, that's good for the family, good for the kids. I'm not against the gas station or Maverick. I don't really want my kids working at a gas station, to be honest with you. I don't want them to get attracted to this quick little money. I can get money for my grades. I'd really rather them almost just stay home and focus on their college and stuff. I would love to see something, I know I don't get to dictate what happens, but I would love to roll the dice again and maybe some other investor is gonna wanna put something that's like more family friendly. And I'm not really worried about all the tax dollars. I know money makes things move, but the city's gonna grow. I watched Elk Grove grow like so fast, right? So I already know golf is gonna grow.

Thank you. Antonio June II.

Go ahead. I'm kind of against building another gas station because I feel like this space could be used for something else, something more beneficial to the people of Galt. Right now, people, they like drive to other places to go have fun or for like recreational areas, you know. And... I feel like if another gas station is built, that space could have been used for something else, like something more beneficial to the community. Places like skate parks, water parks, things like that, they could help our youth stay out of trouble, and I think that's pretty valuable. That's about it. Thank you for your time.

You're welcome. Thank you. We have Randy, Eric, Baines, Maria Soto, and Monica Cervantes.

Good evening, my name's Randy Becker. It's the first time I've been here. As a resident of the surrounding area for over 50 years, and a newly co-owner of a home, I do a lot of traveling. What is stated earlier, is only from the opponent, is only about competition. That's as clear as it is. We spent about a year on social media defining what Maverick was because the opposition stated what it wasn't. But in their mind, they were driving a clear identification of what it wasn't. It's not a truck stop. I spent 33 years behind the wheel up and down 99, Interstate 80. If I'm looking for a truck stop, I'm going to go on Highway 12. If I'm looking to get fuel quick, I'm going to Chad. I'm not coming to this place. It's too congested. It is actually built for the traveling public. Great project. If you travel across the United States, you're looking for projects like this, because it's going to have a fueling station and eatery places to go. Bathrooms, they mentioned about large bathrooms. Those are important to the traveling public. This isn't necessarily built for Galt residents, except for if you've got a large RV, a boat, if you've got a commercial company where you're coming in, getting your Gatorades with your equipment in the morning, and you're out. So I would hope you guys would see through this. This is about purely against competition. That's pure and simple. So thank you.

Thank you. Eric, is that correct?

Yep. Okay, thank you. Hello, my name is Eric. I've been a resident of Galt for about seven years. You're my wife, Maria. I moved from Stockton. So just moving out here, when we were deciding where we should move, the first place was Galt because it's comfortable. I can walk around at nighttime. I don't hear police sirens. It's certain things that you don't hear in the city that you don't hear out here. So with Maverick being open, being open 24 hours, Yes, it's good for taxes and bringing money into the economy, but we also got to look at what about us golf people, the ones that came here for comfort, the ones that came here to get that peace of mind. I know I've been a trucker before, so we already have the outlook of, hey, that's a truck stop. We can't go to each and every person and say that that's not a truck stop. What that brings in is people that we do not want. We don't want people that's coming here from different towns that's going to put certain things into our community. And that's the main concern. That's the big debate, in my opinion, with Maverick being open. It's just what type of people are going to be stopping here. Yes, it looks nice. Yes, it's beautiful, things like that. But it's just the main thing is what type of people it's going to bring in. And I guess we'll see when it's open or if it's not open. Thank you.

Thank you. Maria Soto, we have Monica Cervantes, Catalino Cervantes, Nancy Emmanuel Sandoval. Go ahead.

Hi, my name's Maria and I'm with No More Gas and I agree with Dr. Dalla that we already have nine gas stations here in Galt. I don't think there's a need for more. Galt's maybe like seven to eight miles, radius. There is no need for another gas station. I grew up here and I just recently moved back eight years ago. So Growing up, there was really nothing to do. Even now, it's like if I want to go watch a movie, we have to go to Stockton, which I don't prefer to, or Elk Grove. If you want to go do anything recreational, even like at least Lodi Lake has a trail or something like that. I feel like that area has a lot of greenery where they want to do all this stuff. So maybe doing something more like that, maybe something more creative for the kids I feel like there's not really so much I have a bunch of nieces and stuff but there's nothing to really take them to do like maybe the golf flea market on Tuesday or Wednesday but that's about it the first Saturday of the month we might go to the little market but that's temporary something where we can just go out and have a nice night out with them having I don't know go bowling go do something fun and not have to go out of town Yes, the Maverick will maybe lower the gas a little bit, but like we said, the taxes are because it goes into our community, it goes into the road repair, into police, into lots of things, so I don't mind spending a little bit extra to keep it here in town. Thank you. Thank you.

Monica Cervantes. Monica Cervantes. No Monica. Catalina Cervantes. No, Catalina? Nancy Sandoval?

Hi, my name is Nancy, and I'm here tonight to express my opposition to the proposed gas station. I believe Galt already has sufficient numbers of gas stations. Instead, we should prioritize developing that the community can enjoy, such as dining in restaurants and retail stores. I feel like a Delta Shores would be perfect for that area. Every time we need to purchase anything, we do have Walmart, but it's only Walmart. They're always out of stock out of everything. I feel like a Target would be perfect. Everywhere you drive, Main Streets and Galt, there's a gas station. I think it would serve a lot better to do retail stores, and it's not about competition, it's more about what does the community want. We want retail, we want dining restaurants, we want stuff for our kids. I'm a mom myself, I lived in Galt my whole life. So I support the no gas. Thank you.

Thank you. Manuel Sandoval.

Hi, everybody. I'm here with no more gas stations in Galt. I've lived in Galt my whole life. There's already nine gas stations here in town. We would like to see more stores, which would give more opportunities for young people like me and teenagers around Galt. It would also give, it would also help our community in a way. Thank you.

Thank you. Liliana Gamboa, Chris Brosman, and Ken Lee.

Hi, everyone. I'm here to propose that we use the area to create a fun recreational space for young and God. having a dedicated spot for kids to play and gather. It's a way to support a community. I have lived here in Gall my whole life, and it would be an amazing way to bring back Boys and Girls Camp experience. I remember growing up here in Gall and having a water park for our kids. Summer's around the corner, so I support no gas stations, no more gas stations. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you.

Chris Bussman.

Got to make this quick, but so two minutes is fast. First of all, everyone's like wanting entertainment. Well, the only way entertainment comes, guys, is having tax revenue coming through or someone that wants to spend their money. We live in America, America is the land of the free. Said we are a breed competition. Said we don't get to tell our neighbors what to do. Said this is the way it should be. Dr. Dalla has a vision for our community, but he doesn't even live in our community. Dr. Dalla says he's courteous, and yet he brings big dollar lawsuits against our city. and brings big dollar lawyers to our town. I guess maybe that's a positive. Dr. Dollar is a lawyer. Dr. Dollar's lawyer says he's concerned with CEQA and the environment. I don't know who bought that one, but it wasn't me, but for a man that owns a lot of gas stations, and went public against the gas stations in Elk Grove as well as being in Galt against the Maverick gas stations. I think there's an ulterior motive and we all know what that is. Dr. Dahl, I ran in multiple Facebook campaigns trying to create a lot of division in our town. Said that's not exactly what I consider a good neighbor. In fact, his own labor claims it's not relevant. Dr. Daly claims to be concerned about the citizens of Guelph, but he's happy to sue us, take our tax dollars out of our community, unless he gets his own way. He's full of intimidation. I don't like intimidation. I charge intimidation. It torques me off. Said all he is a millionaire that wants to have where he can control our city's destiny. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Ken Lee. Having worked in corporate Chevron gas stations, competitions usually check prices every day and adjust the prices to be competitive. Most gas stations focus on food profits, not the gas. Gas prices are too high in Galt, and like Safeway and Costco, it drives down the prices. And basically, believe it or not, competition is good. It spurs business having to set goals. I eliminated some of my business competition, and I lost business instead of gaining business. A limited time parking along the backs of the fast foods for the trucks would be nice, because they have to eat too. You don't want it behind Maverick. I'd rather they sit down and eat rather than eating while driving. A short break in time helps revitalize the drivers on long hauls. Having a trucker's permit while getting my training with England basically have a little bit of experience. These trucks are already on 99 and they're not adding to traffic flow. Development of another commercial site between A and C Street will encourage bigger national change to come. We need the traveling public from out of town to gas up, eat, and shop golf. That is our slogan for local employment opportunities. And basically, don't forget property taxes from this site. Also, having development, it rebuilds Crystal Way roads. It will basically make it a full-fledged truck route and handle the weight of the commercial traffic. Also, fleets of businesses will gas up there because they usually have corporate cars as well as the trucking firms. They all have corporate trucks that gas up at certain gas stations, and so that helps out.

Thank you. And that concludes all of our public comment.

Okay, thank you, everyone. We got through that faster than I thought. Okay, did that trigger any questions, or should we go with final remarks from the appellant and the applicant? Okay.

Are we, or after they go, are we gonna be able to do our final thoughts?

We'll be able to answer questions, or ask questions, and then have a little bit of discussion, and then we'll close the public hearing.

Am I changing the time back to 15, or what's my time schedule?

Five. Five. Would the appellant like to conclude with five minutes? Okay.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I don't think this will even take five minutes, but you never know with a lawyer, right? So, I wanted to comment on something that Council for Maverick said, that CEQA does not require any more opportunity for the appellant to respond and she was referring to what I believe was a section 15088 under the CEQA guidelines when you're in an EIR scenario and there are comment letters sent by the public and then the jurisdiction, the lead agency provides responses to those comments. It is true in that scenario that a lead agency does not have to provide the public an opportunity to respond to the responses to comments, or you would be in that never-ending cycle. But here, we are in a hearing de novo. This is an appeal, it's a hearing de novo, as though the decision wasn't made, you get to hear new evidence, and not allowing us to respond to the volume of materials is dis-advantaging and prejudicial to the appellant in being able to make its record on this. So that's why I urge you to grant a continuance and allow us to respond. This is not a section 15088 scenario. It's a de novo appeal. And if you don't do that, otherwise we would request respectfully that you approve the appeal and deny the project. And with that, are there any questions for me?

I do.

Okay. Thank you again. Oh, and we will provide the list.

I have a question for you.

Oh, I beg your pardon.

So yes, I do want to focus on the fact that this is an appeal. This is not about whether we're going to build it or not. So we discussed earlier the packet and the timeline and that sort of thing. So I want to go back, and I'm not sure if you're the right one to ask or not. You'll have to tell me if this is... It should go somewhere else, but the... I'm going to go back to the letter that you sent in the application, and as I stated earlier, when I read through it, it looks like it's mostly stuff that, I mean, you guys already had made those decisions. When this packet went out, I'm not seeing anything in this letter that's telling me that something that's in here, I mean, it's 1,700 pages, so yeah, I might have missed something, but I don't understand what's new that you're appealing for.

were appealing from the decision that was made on February 12th and there was new material provided to us so in appealing that we made specific comments during the hearing to then reiterated those in the appeal and And the city came back addressing perhaps some of those, but with a lot of other materials saying, well, here's our staff report for the appeal. And that included a lot of technical reports that we have not had a chance to review and respond to. I mean, review them, but we didn't have a chance to contract with even contact, some were on vacation, our consultants who had provided all this information in the beginning. So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question.

Yeah, I'll be specific. Which items in the application refer to what you were given on Thursday?

In my letter, it refers to the items given to us on Thursday as technical reports that we still need to respond to with our experts that would be able to address those issues with us. If there were any left, maybe they've all been addressed. But again, I am not a traffic engineer. I'm not an air quality specialist. I can't state that I am and certify that I am. So that's why we need to refer to that.

I understand that. I appreciate that. I just... If we want to talk about what we're doing here, we're talking about, you know, I'm going to go back to the other piece that I had a problem with, and that is that we got this last minute. But I think the information that you got, you had, and I don't know, is there, I don't know, Frank, where I'm going with this.

Yeah, I'm still listening and learning.

I mean, my decision has to be based on making a decision whether we approve or disapprove of what we're doing, right?

Correct. Your decision is to decide based on the record before you and all the evidence and testimony before you whether or not you want to grant or deny the appeal and then approve or not approve all the project entitlements.

Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe I can help Matt a little bit, because I think I know where he's going with this. First, let me ask this. Did you know that the city would respond? You didn't think that they would respond at all to your stuff?

We did not know that they had contacted their consultants to prepare additional reports. No, we did not know this. Okay. I had no idea we were gonna be presented with anything like this.

But you knew that they would respond to your original appeal, correct?

Not with that level of information, no. Some jurisdictions don't. Some may, some don't. Some kind of reiterate everything they've already said. This one didn't. You did extra, which is to your credit. We appreciate that. I just don't know what that extra says yet, balanced against a viewpoint of an expert in that topic.

So that actually really confuses me because if other jurisdictions don't go that, I guess, extra mile, you're saying that this jurisdiction, then what would they be deciding on, I guess, the body?

They just read information in front of them. That's what they do.

So our problem here, your problem here with us tonight is that we went the extra mile.

I and we appreciate that and that's why we pressed I didn't say that was a problem I said the problem is we haven't had any time to respond to it.

And I understand the extra analysis.

When they repeat the same thing another jurisdiction does that, that's an easy letter, that's easy to respond to. It's all the same but this is new. You have put new evidence in the record and not provide us an opportunity to respond to it.

But then I'm going to go back to you submitted the appeal. I would assume we're anticipating a response to your appeal. I mean, don't other jurisdictions, it would come out, the city's response would do a staff report. And so knowing, I guess where I don't understand, and I think this is where Mr. Pratton is stuck, knowing that a staff report was coming, WOULDN'T YOU HAVE YOUR PEOPLE READY TO LOOK AT THAT STAFF REPORT, REGARDLESS OF VACATIONS OR ANYTHING ELSE, TO BE ABLE TO REVIEW THAT SO THAT YOU WERE PREPARED WITH WHATEVER CAME OUT IN THAT STAFF REPORT, PREPARED, LIKE WE HAD TO PREPARE OURSELVES for this evening's thing. I guess that's, is that kind of where you're at, Matt?

I would have had I known they were coming. I think that's great. Ideally, in a perfect world, most jurisdictions don't respond, and that is a credit to the jurisdiction, and we appreciate that, and I said that in the letter. that you may have answered all our questions. I don't know. Perhaps you did. But because you did this, we think it warrants our ability to respond to it, especially because we're in a de novo appeal scenario here. You may choose not to do that. I'm asking the question if we might be able to do it. And normally, we don't see this much. We don't see a lot of extra studies. In an EIR scenario, you might. You know, you've got responses to comments like, oh, you know, we really should, let's bolster the record and add more information. You don't usually see that in an appeal. And so in that regard, it was unusual. And again, to your credit. But If I had known that I was going to be seeing this level of studies, I would have had everybody kind of ready. Are you running down? Can you look at this quickly for us? What can you do? But I didn't know that. And I'm not criticizing anyone for not telling me that. The law doesn't say you have to tell me that. But I'm just asking as a courtesy, can we respond to it? You may choose to not do that. I know you're anxious to make your decision on this. But I ask the question. And whatever, you know, you'll decide whatever you decide here. But we would appreciate the opportunity. But again, you may not agree to that. So that's why in the alternative, we stuck with our appeal request, which is that you not deny the appeal, but that you approve the appeal and deny the project. So I understand everyone's anxious to move on here.

Yeah, Mayor.

We just asked the question.

To clarify, not completely what you were talking about. I'm just looking at the issue of my decision is based on what was sent to us, listening to what she has to say. You know, have we given them a bunch of new stuff that hasn't already been answered, which is what she just said, and that's fine. So that's where I'll make my decision.

I think I'm, well, this is probably part of a discussion. Maybe we need to go on. Did you have anyone else that wanted to speak?

I don't have anything else, unless you have other questions for me, I'll be here. Thank you for considering it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, does the applicant have five minutes?

Again, Todd Myers with Maverick and Galt Ranch. As you look at that map, you see Maverick is just a small percentage of this overall development that's coming your way. But I got to tell you, and I want to take the opportunity now to compliment your staff, because even though we're a small portion, they treated me very good. If I called They answered the phone, or they quickly returned my voicemail message. They responded to my emails. They're very knowledgeable. I enjoyed reading your staff report. That was one of the better staff reports I've read, and I read a lot of them in this job. So I just want you to know how much I appreciated your staff. Thank you.

Casey Shorrock again from Maverick. I just want to clarify a few things based on Ms. Kinderman's comments. So to clarify, when I spoke earlier, the city's responses to comments here, the way that it bracketed, the way that it responded to the comments, that's not required by CEQA, that's something you do with an EIR. And the city did that here, I assume out of an abundance of caution and to be thorough, but it's not, legally required. The city's also, you know, the city's, even in an EIR, an appellant or an opponent doesn't necessarily get an opportunity to respond to the city's responses to comments. And responses to comments can include additional technical material. So the appellant's opportunity is to respond here at this hearing. we're all here. They have an opportunity to respond. They did respond. No more is required here. And I think that Ms. Kinderman, appellant's attorney, was accurate when she said the law doesn't require that they be given more opportunity to respond. It would be a courtesy. It's a courtesy that doesn't have to be extended here. And we would urge the city to not EXTEND THAT CRITICY AS IT WERE EXTEND THAT CRITICY AS IT WERE BECAUSE THEY HAVE HAD AN BECAUSE THEY HAVE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY. OPPORTUNITY. MAVERICK DIDN'T HAVE ACCESS TO MAVERICK DIDN'T HAVE ACCESS TO THIS MATERIAL UNTIL THURSDAY NIGHT THIS MATERIAL UNTIL THURSDAY NIGHT EITHER. EITHER. SO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR TIME SO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR TIME AND WE ARE HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY AND WE ARE HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS. WE AGAIN REQUEST THAT YOU DENY WE AGAIN REQUEST THAT YOU DENY THE APPEAL AND UPHOLD THE PLANNING THE APPEAL AND UPHOLD THE PLANNING COMMISSION'S APPROVAL.

COMMISSION'S APPROVAL. THAT JUST TRIGGER to read it and to analyze it?

Yeah, I mean, like we said before, these aren't our consultants that were preparing this. This is a city's. We didn't have access to this beforehand. We reviewed it and found it to be thorough. And that's our comment on that. That's our response. But yeah, we reviewed it.

were you anticipating it coming earlier or having, I mean, you knew it was coming just as a staff report.

You know, it is correct that not every local agency, especially smaller agencies, respond in this way or respond to the appeal in this way or even directly address the appeal in this way. But it happened here and that's wonderful. It just provides additional information for everyone. But it does happen. It is not uncommon for agencies agencies, small, big, and large, or small, medium, and large, to 72 hours prior, or even sometimes a couple extra days, submit significant amounts of additional material. And that's not out of the ordinary. It doesn't just happen with EIRs. It happens with exemption determinations. It happens with negative declarations. It happens with any number of CEQA-driven analyses. So what I'm hearing is GALT is an overachiever. And we have drones. Certainly, this was, like I said, I wasn't lying when I said this was the gold standard. But it's not totally out of left field. It's not out of the ordinary. From my perspective, when I'm on the other side of this, and I am on the other side of this, we are expecting material like this at the 11th hour. And it can be difficult. to substantively and technically respond to it, that's also true. But that doesn't mean whatever side I'm on, that additional time is required. Certainly CEQA doesn't require it, and I don't know of any law that does.

Any other questions? All right, and you have two minutes and 39 seconds left. Thank you.

It's late, I know everyone wants to go home.

Thank you. Okay. Council will now discuss and have the opportunity to ask any final questions of staff or the appellant or applicant team. Are you ready to close the public hearing and deliberate for real? Okay.

Do we have to go in like a small little tiny room like a jury does? No. Right out here in front of everybody.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and close this public meeting. Thank you, everyone who spoke. And I will open up for discussion or deliberation.

You can go. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to say it.

All right, so. I'm going to go back to our decision is we were provided this. We need to decide whether it holds water. And that's the point I was trying to get at is that is the question, right? Did we give them a bunch of new information that we hadn't provided them before? That sort of thing, right? So when I boil it down and read what we've seen before, what came in on Thursday and what they're asking the appeal for, I would have to agree with the no more will be required. I believe we've given them everything. Now, you know, if we appeal it, if we go with the appeal and they come up with something, I don't know, they'll sue us at that point. If we deny it, they may sue us. I don't know. I'm not an attorney. I'm just making my decision based on this. And I'm supporting to deny it.

Vice Mayor Reed?

If you'd like, I can go. No. I mean, our job up here is to sit here and do what's best for the people of the city of Gall, right? And so we get put in a lot of easy situations where we're like, yeah, that's a no brainer, right? And then we get situations that are like this, where we hear from multiple parties, multiple citizens, and it puts us in a position where we have to take everything in, digest it in a short amount of time. I mean, we have to make a decision based on information that we heard in the last two hours on top of information that we got on Thursday. And I think that, I mean, I have, a lot of people have said a lot of different things on why it's happening, what's happening, their thoughts on it. And I have my thoughts on it as well. But when it comes to, and that all has to do with the project, but when it comes to the appeal, I think that the city has done a wonderful job on getting all the documents put together. Do I like reviewing things at the last minute over the weekend? No, but I have to do it all the time, right? I'm called in the middle of the night to do all kinds of stuff that I don't like to do. But we still have our job that we have to do and we have to get it done. And so because I don't see anything blaring that would make me want to approve the appeal. So I myself am also in support of denying the appeal.

Boss Lady? Well, I would have to agree. It was a long Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday night, falling asleep with this on. And I feel like I did my due diligence in reviewing their appeal. I feel like the city did their due diligence in the original presentation at planning. I feel like our planning commission did a phenomenal job in reviewing. And then the appeal came, so I'm taking it all in. I do just want to say I think it is unfortunate that there is a lot of misinformation out there, which is fueling two sides. Fueling, no pun intended, I just said that. But what I do think is interesting, it's late, I'm sorry. That's how I keep myself awake. I do think it's interesting that Dr. Dalla and several of those who said they're affiliated with the No More Gas and Galt brought up Delta Shores as an example. They want Delta Shores there. The interesting thing about Delta Shores is that on their main street, the turn into Delta Shores is an ARCO gas station. So I don't know that that was a great example to sway me. Maverick, if this is all about the Maverick, I am not inclined to turn to to approve an appeal based when I feel like the majority of the appeal has been answered. And I think emotionally, from a lot of the public members, emotionally it is fueled by, again, sorry, is fueled by misinformation. And so although I very much appreciate the public comment, and I'm very proud, especially of the youth that came in and spoke, I think that was great. I don't want them to think that they were not heard, because they were, but I too, with all the information in front of me, and not feeling rushed about it even though it's 1015 at night, I too do not support the appeal, so.

Let's make a motion.

Okay.

Can I get to do it? Sure. All right, I can put them both together.

Yeah, you can make a motion to, based on your conversation, it would be a motion to consider, to adopt a resolution denying the appeal and adopt the resolutions approving the project as presented. Okay, so moved.

Moved by Council Member Pratton. Second. Seconded by Vice Mayor Reed. Roll call.

Vice Mayor Reid?

Aye.

Council Member Pratton?

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez?

Aye. Motion passes 3-0. Okay, if I can find my regular agenda.

Communications. Okay.

We're not done yet.

Hey, tell the city staff not to leave. We're not done.

We're gonna conclude here shortly.

All right, if you could please exit quickly and quietly. We do have a little bit more of the meeting to do, so.

Thank you.