City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Sit down.

Did you start out that way? Telling you to sit down. Now it's live. Okay.

Knock on wood. I will call this What day is it? April 22nd special close session city council meeting to order. Deputy Clerk, can we have a roll call? Thank you, Mayor. Council member Clark, present. Council member Large will be joining remote via Zoom. Council member Peterson here. Mayor Proen Mills here. Mayor Koopa here. All members are present with the exception of Tom Lodge. Very good. Uh, are there any registered speakers for close session? No public comment today. All righty then. At this time,

I'd like to ask the council to add one item to close session. uh initiation of litigation would require twothirds vote to add it to the agenda. Okay. Uh do we have a motion in a second to add an item to close session? I will do a motion to add that item to close session. I'll second it. Could we have a roll call? Thank you, mayor. We have a motion by Council Member Clark, second by Council Member Peterson to add the item to close session. We'll do roll call. Council member Clark, yes. Council member Peterson, yes. Mayor Prom Mills, yes. Mayor Koopa, yes. That motion passes four to zero.

All righty, then. Now we will recess to close session and that will be downstairs. Correct. Okay. Material

Thank you. Yes.

Oh my goodness. Morning. Hi Dale.

How are you?

What are you going to supposed It's interesting. I don't know. So it's obvious. There is problem

investments. blame. doesn't make any sense. Like, do I turn around? Do I not turn around? together.

Yeah. Yeah, let me find out more information. Good. How you doing, sir?

Yes. May

I like that? Thank you so much. things are empty. Let's move. Well, we could do I mean I think last year at some point we did get up and just do that stand up table. I don't know how much.

Oh yeah. Do not take them and I was like very awkward. Doing great. Yes.

Way back and they felt that wasting too much. The whole purpose of show They're starting to go down.

She says two or three times. Good question. I missed the memo here. Come

on. Come on. top. Nobody Everybody set. Okay.

All right. Good morning, everyone. I would like to call the April 22nd, 2026 special city council meeting to order. Deputy City Clerk, may we have a roll call? Thank you, mayor. Before proceeding, I would like to remind the council members to keep your microphones turned on and position so the audience can hear. And this is meeting is being recorded via Zoom teleconference. With that, we'll proceed with roll call. Council member Clark present. Council member Lodge is absent. Council member Peterson here. Mayor Promos here. Mayor Koopa here. Four members are present with the exception of council member Lodge. Do we need to excuse him? I would.

Okay. I'd like to entertain a motion to excuse Tom from this meeting. I would like to run the motion to please excuse Tom Lodge from this meeting. Second. Okay. I heard that was unanimous, right? Okay. Please do a roll call. All righty. So, we have a motion by Council Member Clark, second by C by Mayor Protown Males to excuse Council Member Lodge is absent. We'll do roll call. Council member Clark. Yes. Council member Peterson, yes. Mayor Potmales, yes. Mayor Koopa, yes. That motion passes four to zero.

Okay. Today's pledge of allegiance will be led by Council Member Clark. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

I aliance 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.

Um, we will now have a report out of close session by the city attorney. Thank you, mayor. Uh, for the initiation of litigation item that we added, there is no reportable action. Uh, as to the personnel action, the appointment of interim city manager. It is my pleasure uh to announce that a motion from council member Clark and a second by mayor prom was made and unanimously approved to uh offer a conditional offer to no row through the interim city manager for the city of Hemmet. Uh a contract will be placed on the open session regular discussion item agenda for the next meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Very good. Congratulations, Noah. With that, we will move on to public comment. Uh, deputy city clerk, are there any speakers? Mayor, we have no registered speakers. Okay. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a comment on anything on the agenda? I heard something over here. Seeing none, we will move on to discussion item and the city manager will start us off with discussion item today.

Well, thank you, mayor. Good morning, everyone. This is one of the uh meetings I look forward to each year because the ideas that are born out of this exercise, you know, now for three years that uh we turn them into action. Uh, one of the I think more memorable experiences I will have um serving as your city manager is working on the branding initiative that began right here just a couple of years ago as an idea to uh talk about uplifting the city, its reputation, its image, and we see it today. Uh, it's really beautiful. Uh, this new logo, the icon, we're looking forward to um sharing that with the community in so many different ways. So um your ideas matter and this is the opportunity for us to get organized, prepare a work plan and uh move forward uh advancing your ideas. So um just an overview of where we're headed. U so I've already taken care of that. Um I like this quote. I've actually used it each of the last several years. Um, and I want to read it because it's probably as meaning it's been as meaningful, you know, in prior years as it is today. But strategic planning is the delicate balance between dreaming big and not being able to afford it. How true is that, right? We have some some incredible ideas. And if we had more um more resources, we would put more ideas into action. But this is the challenge. I I think it's fair to say with um our budget looking like a a $10 million challenge that we need to solve between now and the end of June, uh our ideas today uh are going to need to be uh either more affordable or in some ways uh costneutral right to the organization. There are a lot of great ideas that uh we can implement that uh

don't cost a lot of money. We're working uh with Christian Tikas right now on something we're calling the I love Hemmet project. It wasn't on the work plan. It was something that we initiated. Uh we also are working on another initiative with Christian called Paint the Town New. Uh he helped brand that. this was an opportunity to reach out to some of our um home building supply companies in town, ask them if they would be willing to offer some form of a modest discount on paint and uh talk about it uh with our community and direct them to our businesses. So, uh we love that partnership, but those are the types of ideas that are actionable and um we are getting started. So, um, some additional comments. Um, this is an opportunity to set realistic opportun, uh, realistic priorities for the coming year. Um, I've emailed you and I think we printed out copies for everyone. This is a list, uh, I call it reference material for the FY 2627 strategic plan item action item discussion. We have built 25 or more, I'm sure more, uh, but these are 25 items that we've built or initiated in the prior three years. uh that require ongoing some form of staff support. And some of these ideas are are not small, they're quite large. And so just know that uh we've already put in essentially 25 new items into the work plan moving forward because we've built those over the last three years. This past year, we added six items to the list. concerts in the park, the Hemet Youth Council, the I Love Hemmet, which uh we worked on, uh public art install installations, which are coming and will continue to come forward, the implementation of Hemtt 365.com, which is uh underway now, and the implementation of the new Hemmet branding initiative, which can it's really our our imagination is the limit

uh here. We can place these in so many different locations uh around town. Um, we're also going to discuss how priorities fit within the organization's capacity and the budget uh limitations before finalizing these. So, our our vision is we will bring back your ideas in an organized um presentation, potentially as early as your next council meeting next week uh for at least an initial discussion. We'll be inviting your feedback on items that you might want to be attached to as a liaison or a council ad hoc committee as we've done in prior years. It's an opportunity for you to get closer to some of those policy matters in the development of those policy matters and I know we've all enjoyed working together on advancing those. Uh we're also going to agree on how progress will be monitored and reported. That's been historically a quarterly update uh to the city council. We just had one at our prior meeting. So, we're going to this is just an overview of where we're headed today. Uh we're going to recap last year's workshop and accomplishments. Uh we're going to review the council vision and mission statements. We're going to have a discussion of strategic plan goal ideas. Uh we're going to work on uh developing those ideas and and go through a voting exercise. So it's really a prioritization exercise that we're going to call air, water, chocolate. Uh we'll discuss uh the monitoring and reporting and wrap up. Um there'll be breaks uh or a break opportunity in between here. So, uh, we'll pace ourselves. Okay, these are the same proposed ground rules that have been successfully used in the last couple of years. Um, these are listen to understand, assume good intent, seek consensus, stay focused, and enjoy the conver enjoy the discussions. Do those work for the city council?

Yes. Okay. We also have a bike rack. Uh the bike rack will be one of these two pads of paper. But if we have ideas that are something we want to follow up at uh at a later date, we're going to write that down so that we can come back to that. Uh so uh that's how we'll track that. Uh Jenny and Brenda will be assisting with that and and Christian as well. Okay. Uh just to look back on the current year, uh when we had this workshop last year, uh we developed 30 staff and council action items. Uh we've been present we've presented three quarterly updates to you to date. Uh I view it as a balanced u action plan that ensures the goals are achieved. Uh doesn't mean that we always are able to finish everything in a single year. So one of the examples of that for examp this this year is uh the interest in transitioning to weekly street sweeping. So, the first step was to begin conversations with CRNR, uh, who provides street sweeping services for the city today and begin working on an amendment to the contract. Um, and when we started that conversation, it really grew to a larger conversation about the quality of their fleet, uh, the age of their fleet, um, interest in using AI technology as a force multiplier for code enforcement, uh, cases because there's technology that will take a photograph of every house picking up trash uh, once a week and then kick a report over to the code enforcement team. It's remarkable what some of the technology can do today. Uh but we we are now at a point where we've negotiated uh terms for that. Uh we've it's grown from simply an amendment to transition the sweeping from once a month to weekly. Uh there will be a a significant implementation uh process associated with that new signage uh on

every street and the timing and dates uh that those uh sweet streets will be swept. We need to hire a park enforcement operation whether that's contract or inhouse. And so just know that the second half of that initiative born in this room uh a couple a year ago is going to take uh and bleed into the second year uh in order to achieve that. But we like to look backward at some of the items that maybe didn't get finished in a single year, continue that work because it's a council priority. Um and that happened a lot with it uh over the last 12 months because we had a number of initiatives in in three years ago that uh needed to go in sequence and so because of that we had a number of items in the past 12 months that got done as well. And then we're going to make sure that we ensure that uh either council ad hocs or you serving as a liaison is synced with the strategic plan action items. So, we'll have that fun conversation at a future council meeting. All right. So, we're going to begin by and notice the branding. By the way, uh we are using a brand new uh PowerPoint. So, some of the words may be the same, but the look and feel is more professional. We see that our horizon is here, right? Um and we've even updated some of the the pictures that are inside here to align with that colorful branding. So, thank you, Jenny, for helping me with this. Um, but we want to begin with uh an open conversation, council and staff around the table. Um, because we're a team. So, this is why it's important to have our executive team and key staff here along with our council. Uh, but we want to begin with a conversation about accomplishments that uh we're proud of that have happened over the last 12 months. And we'll have a couple scribes. I think if we can also have a scribe here, we'll go back and forth and just start begin to jot these down so that we can document um over and

above what we documented in the 2025 year in review. So, let me pause and I will open it up uh for council members and staff. Staff, I I think we have a couple of microphones that might might need to be shared, but it would be helpful if we try to speak into the microphone so we can capture that. And if if everyone's too shy, I'll just have to start calling on people, right? So, you want things in the last 12 months items that uh we're proud of that have happened over the last 12 months for the organization

infrastru infrastructure. Uh we've been working on our roads and I think people are starting to see the progress that we made on the roads. Great. Thank you. Anybody just jump in? Developed a concept for a design of Weston Park. That's right. That's coming back to you next Tuesday for final adoption. Looks great. The significant increase in adopted streets within our city. We have I is it quadruple now? It's close to 40, quadruple in three years.

I think the crime statistics looking better and also response time for the fire department with the addition that's huge. With that said, I'll add the some of the crime statistics. Homicide decreased by 40%. Rape decreased by 30%. Robbery decreased by 26%. Burglary and vehicle thefts also down. On average, response times have decreased by 10%. and priority one's response times have decreased by 7.5%. Yeah, that's pretty significant. And it's due to bringing our police force and our firefighters up to what was needed uh under measure use uh requirements.

It's uh we have the largest staffing in 15 years I believe on the force the the actual people on the street and with fire. I know I heard fire also. The u implementation of squad 4 has further redu has further improved the response time, right? Uh for the department despite the rising number of calls over the past I mean really they're not stopping. They're still continuing to increase as the city grows. Yeah.

Okay. Thought I saw a microphone ready to go over here. uh finance implemented a new financial system after a year of development where vendors are now paid weekly instead of bi-weekly and a lot of stuff is more electronic now work electronic workflows electronic file storage thank you process sorry HR process 48 new hires and 23 promotions it's a lot of work but the accomplishments of our economic development department and the fact that we have gotten a Cal Ed award two consecutive years.

Congratulations to economic development. We haven't talked publicly about that new award, uh, but I believe if I'm not mistaken, it has to do with initiating new events, uh, including the drone show, entrepreneurial, um, concerts in the park,

soft pit, the fast pitch, which happened this week, and we have another local entity heading to a larger competition. Good news there in concerts in the park. We received a GFOA award of excellence for the fiscal year 2526 budget. We completed uh several facility improvement projects at um police department and fire station one namely and then uh also a little bit at Kovll with the new generator. The uh code compliance division implemented the vacant property registration and boarding certification in June of last year as well as hosted the abandoned vehicle abatement meeting for the region at the library with over 50 attendees. Um our housing division uh kicked off the uh CDBG um senior home and Americans with Disabilities Act repair program and we're currently assisting 16 income qualifying households with critical house repairs. Thank you. And I'd like to add the um sharing of cameras with businesses for our police officers so they're able to put their theft program in in proper perspective and get um our thefts down which um I think they come down considerable amount. Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. And I have a few more to share along those lines. Operationally, we expanded our capabilities in a meaningful way. We moved our AROT team to 7-day week coverage which significantly increases our ability to address homelessness, quality of life issues, and proactive enforcement. We began a small scale of bike patrol. I think Jackie, you were the push behind that. Um, we don't have them there out there all the time, but our special events, Christmas parade and whatnot, we're going to have them out there. Um, improves visibility, engagement in key areas. We deployed a full-time drone as first responder pilot, improving our situational awareness and response times. Also cut

down on overtime doing that. And we strengthened our real-time information center. What uh Prom Males was saying um dedicated analysis providing daily operation support for seven days a week now on our real-time information center. And I have one key statistic I left out. Really important. Use of force incidents decreased by nearly 26% last year. Wow. That's with our population still rising and a number of arrests going up at the same time. Did you include the arrow second arrow team in there also or I did. Yeah. Okay. seven days a week. Now, we implemented the arts and culture ordinance for the city of Hemet and have Did we approve that? The first

We approved the design for the first mural that is going to go downtown. And um it's exciting. Keep going.

Yeah. May I like to add we brought an additional $15 million in investment with two tax sharing auto agreements. That's very, very massive for us. We've also released two CDBG grants, which is really hard to do on economic development standpoint. Cities don't necessarily go that route. So, kudos to council for having that vision to do CDBG. And we've we've played around with two different kitchen grants. We did the downtown kitchen grant and we did also the actual kitchen grant and all the events that we've been able to to not only launch last year, as it was mentioned earlier, but we also partner up with other different organizations to host the the Rodel de Soul event. the um we had the wonderless food truck festivals, the diia delos muertos, so community events was in last year. And then another thing I would like to add, we did the commercial facade improvement program. Uh we continue to uh really hone in on that. And our monthly business connect calls. They were averaging four or five people. Now we're up to 70. This Thursday we might have the highest record as well. So I'm going to can continue on, but I'll pass it to Kathy. I know she has a couple more things. Kathy

library has uh opened a fifth day. We are open Tuesday with open access in the morning from 7 to 1. We have quite a few people who come in and then we're open to the public from 1 to 5. Very busy day and the three of us run a lot and we're so pleased to have the community come in. Additionally, we've had enhanced children's activities and enhanced adult programming, arts, crafts, puzzles, games, bingo. Uh, lots of exciting things happening here. And then we partnered with the police department this past year with Chotober and Trunkor Treat. And that was a great big success. I look forward to continuing and bringing fire department in to join us that for Chotober this year. Um and then just increased library participation at community events.

Uh clic uh we went from an open to close ratio of 15 and a half days to now six days. And and um we also started the uh hope initiative which uh is a monthly meeting for our um resources that deal with homeless um and service to homeless out here. And we are uh we have 18 groups that meet uh monthly at least uh to collaborate to share resources and to uh help our community.

Thank you. Uh we also received uh approval for funding of two storm drain CIP projects uh that are funded from Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. Yay. Uh the fire department has received a number of new apparatus. Uh we have two new engines uh that'll be coming into service within the next month. A new ladder truck out at station 4 and a type six brush patrol. Um, so we're real happy about that long process. We found a location um for a community garden. It is designed. We've partnered with the green coalition to operate it once it's constructed and that is in process.

We're we're getting ready to launch Hemmet 365, which I've been told the city's been trying to do for years. We got it done this last year. We had a great ad hoc committee. This is a calendar of events that anybody can use and put their event on. We want people, nonprofits, businesses, any activities that are going on in the city, we want them when it goes live within weeks and it'll be a community calendar and it'll be wonderful. Yes.

Quietly behind the scenes, uh, and hopefully it's still in progress. The Southern California Air Quality Board is looking at putting a monitor, an air quality monitor, hopefully over on Park Avenue. They have specific requirements, but that's a huge win for us here in the valley. It's not completely in agreement yet because council hasn't approved it, but it is in the works and hopefully will help us with a little bit of information. Will that be on Tuesday's agenda or two weeks out? It'll be a couple weeks out.

Coming soon. Coming soon. Coming soon. Uh, from an investigative standpoint, uh, our teams delivered strong outcomes this past year. Multiple major cases were solved, including armed robberies, human trafficking operations, and complex burglary cases. A lot of those were years past, but the the case goes so long, sometimes two to three years. But, uh, we got we got some with over 50 years sentencing. So, that's a great that's a great thing. That means it's a strong case. Several homicide cases result in convictions and significant sentences and we established a cold case unit this past year to ensure we continue pursuing justice even in the older cases.

There's a joint venture between risk management and the police department to show a united front at the Palmer conference to speak to the risk uh insurance. um and they are beyond impressed at the lengths that the police department has gone to to mitigate risk and they're being used as an example for other agencies. So, it's um we've made a lot of progress on that side. You I believe it was last October uh we uh held the second annual girls empowerment camp. Yes. which we look forward to do again this year under the leadership of engineers Samantha Harper.

Chief, have you hosted any other recent events for younger folks? I'm sorry. Have you hosted any other recent events for younger folks? Yeah. Well, we had the Fire Explorer Academy, which technically didn't happen in 25. I didn't know if I wanted to go over that.

Anything in the last 12 months is fair game. 110 uh fire explorers from California, Nevada, and Arizona coupled with about 40 different of their adviserss for the week. Uh it was an excellent activity, big success. After the graduation, uh it was notable that parents and grandparents and and um young kids, the explorers were all crying outside because they made it they made it through. Thank you for your participation during that event as well. Thank you. Um the city conducted four employee recognition events for all employees to participate.

Thank you. That last one was a lot of fun. Hopefully there's no video. Brenda, it looks like you're running out of paper over there. I'd like to contribute one because Jenny's writing and Jenny spent a lot of time working on uh Oh, Christian, we need help. We have some first responders that are helping Brenda. Nothing to worry about.

The one item I want to add to the list is the HMT branding. Uh what a lot of what a great experience that was. Incredible community outreach u council engagement and really a beautiful logo and and um icon and tagline. And for the council uh awareness, we have put an RFP on the website today that would invite um ideas from any merchant that would like to enter into a non-exclusive FRA license agreement with the city and sell products like shirts, hats, cups, you name it, whatever. Uh mouse pads, whatever it might be. Um, and so we will we will plan to help pay off the the cost of the entire branding initiative over time and more and raise awareness about the new brand. So that's a lot of fun that RFP is live now.

Very good. I don't know if it happened in the last 12 months, but the time and temperature at city hall is a big deal with the community and they love to tell us when it's off by five minutes or four hours or whatever, but it gets two degrees. Yeah. Or the degrees. Yeah, but that that's that's really, you know, it's a small thing, but it's a big thing. And the public absolutely loves it. And uh so thank you to everybody that was involved in that. And our next project is the library, right? That one's coming soon also. Yes, the contract has been awarded.

So next year, you can celebrate the accomplishment of getting this one um back up and running. Anything else?

Yes. Thank you. So, I'd like to um I'd like to provide kudos also to the planning division who is um the uh backbone um of our of our city who aids with all the events that we have in the city um processing and coordinating with each department um the the necessary documentation necessary to ensure that our uh wonderful events that are happening in their city are um organized well, properly and safe. Um the planning division also is long range and current planning. Uh we help facilitate development in the city. The planning division conducted 31 development review committee meetings as well as um the planning commission considered over 40 items um in 2025 for consideration for approval. anywhere from the grant programs to ordinances, uh, new development for construction, new track developments, commercial development, and um, there's just a lot of information that's provided to them to help provide recommendations to the city council. We're really proud of that.

Thank you.

Beautiful. A couple more things landed in my head as we went around here. We also landed the we uh, launched the job lead section on the economic page. We update that. Uh right now we're trying to do it weekly, but we uh get quite a few hits on that one. So, we're very excited. Go on the job lead section. Also, uh kudos to Jennifer on the uh social media aspect. We've been able to grow that 5,000. That's goes back into the branding. People want to know our story. They're curious. They're picking in uh what's he doing? We'll tell you what we're doing because we got 500 views in one of the videos. for a city like us, folks. 500 500,000 views on a video. It's like a unicorn, but we were making that happen. We also had the the Christmas toy giveaway. We passed out over 2,000 toys. We did the Hammet Cruise the We reestablished their partnership with the Tinsel 5K, so we can host that. And we welcome Planet Fitness Valley Hot Springs. We did a fan tour I believe last month. We brought Hollywood. Hollywood is aware of him. And we also after some digging of two years, we got invited to join the SoCal Wine Country EDC. So those are a couple that popped into my head.

I want to mention that Hemet did a team for the Bedrock Trail Run. We had a marvelous time that was important. Um we memorialized uh council with the help of city attorney and city manager. um help memorialize our relationship here at the library with the Hemmet's Club. Yes. And we're very grateful for that. And then lastly for me is we've secured several uh grants from the state library to help enhance things here at the library. More to come on that later.

Thank you. Several additional street lights were installed at dark intersections mainly on the east side of town. Um there was a couple that were not at an intersection but on Hemmet Street as well.

I want to mention the Hemet Youth Council because uh this was their inaugural year. Uh we had a we have a big uh group of 19 young folks around town. uh we had so many projects moving through the system that they were they were a terrific resource in uh having them take a look at uh Simpson Park, having them take a look at the branding initiative. We had them participate in in looking at the Western Park plan. So, they've been a really nice sounding board for us. They raised a few uh different ideas or issues that we weren't thinking about sometimes. So, they covered some of our blind spots and we really appreciate them.

For it, um, we completed our, um, 10-year IT sustainability plan. Um, and we also were able to get a, uh, a new hire out of it. Thank you, Scott. uh fire department. We uh with the help of the city just uh concluded the acquisition and purchase of about four acres behind station 4 behind that training center for a training center expansion project.

Yes. All right. Well, that's a really long list. Jenny's still writing. Uh let's give ourselves uh a round of applause for all the work we did. So, I'm going to jump back into the PowerPoint and if the slide will advance. There we go. Did I get it right? I'm going to go back one. Okay, good. I didn't want to miss anything. Oh, it's going too fast now. All right. Uh next up is we want to take a moment just to pause and read uh both our mission statement and our vision statement. Um we made a couple of minor edits a few years ago, but it's always a fresh opportunity to look at this with um new eyes and so I'm going to read this and we'll pause and see if the council has any comments uh on the mission statement. The city of Hemet will be a destination of opportunity and empowerment for its citiz for its residents, businesses, and visitors by capitalizing on opportunity, striving for growth, and promoting diversity, inclusivity, and respect for each member of our community.

I think it looks good just the way it is. I'm seeing a lot of nods. Okay, great. Uh on the vision statement, the city of Hammet shall be a model of excellence in local government, a safe, wellplanned, welcoming community with equal opportunity for all. At the end, I would like to add your horizon is here. Amen. Like it. All right. So, um Elodie, I'm going to ask you to help me note that so that we include that in the vision statement and update that. Isn't that great? The branding initiative still alive and influencing us.

Does do any staff people have a disagreement or anything on the mission or vision? I mean, you guys are out there, too. Okay. And everybody nodded. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. This next slide is a little harder to read, so my apologies for the specific objectives. I'm going to have to get a little closer, but um the strate strategic plan is actually about five years old. And the left column here, quality of life, economic opportunity, community engagement, partnership, and collaboration, and organizational effectiveness are essentially the broader goals. objectives were established five years ago that are a little dated perhaps because it it was an era about five years ago. Uh I do think that from an organizational perspective next spring after the next election as as we get together for this type of a meeting next year, it may be a good opportunity to go back to some of the pillars and make sure that these still represent uh the council's um overall goals. So, as I think about these uh as I've thought about these over the last couple of years, the one that I think might be missing uh in an overall goal uh and we've done a lot of work on this topic is infrastructure. Whether it's IT infrastructure, streets, taking care of our buildings, uh our fire stations, and our police station. We've done a lot of work on infrastructure, but it's actually not uh captured in the organizational strategic plan goals. uh unless we read it into some of these other ideas. But that's just an example of maybe we're ready for a future conversation on the larger uh overall operating goals. Um but that's uh just food for thought. Wanted to get your reaction to the existing overall goals

uh on community engagement. I think this last year we've really been proactive in uh bringing in the public. So maybe we, you know, we say deliver messaging. I would like to have that change or add something to involve them more. Okay. So we'll be looking for an edit to the community engagement objective one to make it more inviting to the entire community that they could participate as well.

Okay. on that, excuse me, on that same line in the community engagement. Number three, we cannot increase the community's pride without the community's help. So, how do we change that to bring the community more into that statement? because it looks like it's coming from our side and it

yeah I think when you ask that question I think the answer may be in some of the ideas that will come out of the goal setting I think we can answer that question with some of the initiatives on you know so for example the merch shop it's a small small uh idea but it and it will generate revenue which is a nice way of adding some more um revenue to the organization and diversifying our revenue base. But um the brand itself is a is probably an opportunity for us to ignite that conversation somehow in the community. Is it through some form of partnership with the the chamber of commerce? Is it through some partnership with a a a community committee that comes together at at the request of the city manager or the council? Is it council ad hoc that wants to work in partnership with our communications staff uh or other folks? I think uh there's a lot of different ways that we can speak about pride. I think uh when I look around town, some of the concerns I have is u people not necessar you know whoever owns the property or lives in the property not necessarily taking care of the the business or the residents uh to the expectation of every you know of maybe uh other neighbors, right? Uh I think the transition to weekly street sweeping is going to solve some issues for us on that space. But we should be proud of the community that we live in. We have one of the most beautiful valleys uh one can imagine. I think our logo and branding starts to capture that idea, right? And I think people that um have followed the branding initiative know that one of the messages is that uh we're close to everything. We're affordable. or a place where you can build your California dream and making

sure that everyone in the community hears that message and embraces it um should be helpful. Uh I've talked to another branding person in the past about and I've probably mentioned this to a few folks. We needed to get organized as a city first and begin to see the progress that we were making before we really told the story. Now we have stories to tell and we're beginning to tell that story. Uh, but there's a lot more work to do on Pride, right? We want people to take more ownership. I mean, when you look at In-N-Out Burger in the morning, they're out there sweeping and cleaning, it's impressive. It's it everything is spotless every single morning. But not every business does that, right? I I do drive by houses and I wonder why isn't that house weeding the the weeds in the front? Or maybe they can install some desert landscaping. This is why we like ideas like the partnership with businesses on painting the town new. Um, but I I wonder if there are other things that we can do that we can dream up in this meeting today that help answer that question.

Yeah, I'm thinking on that maybe change the word increase to seek the community's help to restore pride in our community. Yeah, because it has to come from the people. Uh, in fact, point in point in on that one is the city attorney's comment to me this morning that Kathy Kanes was out at 7 o'clock this morning picking up trash in front of the library. That's pride in community, pride in what you do and thank you for for sharing that. That that's very telling and I think we all need to do that.

Thank you. I will tell you as I backed out of my driveway this morning, I stopped and picked up a piece of trash that was in my front yard and now it's in my the front of my car. But it's it's just it's small things, but it's just doing it and and Christians I love him weekly or monthly cleanups. These are things, but I think it's seeking the community's help, not increasing. So Kathy between sharing it. Perhaps you might want to thank you. Perhaps we might want to add to quality of life. Enhance public enjoyment in community events and amenities. That's quality of life. Elodie, were you able to capture that idea? Okay. All right. Uh safe to move to the next slide. Okay. So, um this slide is about uh the materials that uh you've been provided. Uh it's a little different this year than last year. So the source material you have are uh we recently brought you the work plan status uh of our uh current year work plan at your last council meeting. So you can find that under the the link to the April 14th council meeting. Uh this year for the first time we engaged with a planning commission about a month ago and did the same exercise but in a smaller way with them to solicit to solicit some ideas. So everything you see in yellow here are ideas that were presented and dreamed up by the planning commission for your consideration. Uh in

prior years the city manager had recommended, you know, maybe up to 10 ideas from time to time. This year I've backed off of that because I know we're busy. I know we built a lot of programs and this is your work plan. But these are some ideas from the planning commission uh that we we've put up on the wall for your consideration. The handout in front of you includes the dot voting uh air, water, chocolate, and how those um were voted on and prioritized by members of the planning commission. So, you can see the collective. I think we had four members that night, Monnique, is that right? I think we missed one. I think Dana Hill was away, but uh Dana still contributed ideas. He just didn't have a chance to vote on the exercise. And then finally uh on that same piece of paper there's um material about the initiatives that have been launched in the last three years uh that are continuing to require staff time to advance. So the process that we're going to go through is we're going to begin with a brainstorm. We need to take um a lot of time for that. So you have been given some pads of paper. Uh we're going to uh let you spend some time uh writing down ideas that we'll help you put up on the wall because not everything sticks to this wall apparently, but those those white circles certainly do. So, thanks Brenda. Um then we'll do some council report outs where you explain the ideas uh to your colleagues. Then we'll go through a dot voting exercise and we'll talk about the currency. I believe that the currency may have been reduced this year. So instead of five dots, you may have the slide might say four dots, but uh the council with three votes can give themselves 20 dots if they want, right? Uh and then we want to make sure that we clarify with the staff u questions that they might have. One of the important challenges uh here is uh when we

identify an action item to work on for the next 12 months, it needs to be something that is specific and measurable. So cleaning, we want to clean the streets is just too general, right? Uh if we want to um if we're targeting something, uh we want to be able to say within, you know, we want to accomplish something within a certain amount of time or by a certain percentage, uh by a certain date and be spec be specific about what the task is. Um and we'll have more examples of that, but um let me go back actually and go back here. Uh any questions on this before we take a b a brief break? Yes.

If the planning commission has already put up something up there, that's fine. We don't need to repeat it.

That's correct. And if and we'll go through one of the the steps here is as you come up with your own ideas, we may see duplicates, right? And we'll try to condense those. That happened with the planning commission, too. They had a number of overlapping ideas and they basically we just put three of those in a row and uh picked the one that was probably most representative of the idea. And this will be iterative because it's going to take us at least one meeting uh a follow-up meeting at least one maybe two to refine the work plan. And there may be times and I think we did this with a Q2 update. With a Q two update we consolidated two items. So, as we thought more about it, had to do with economic development, we thought it would just be easier to synthesize to sync those. And so, just know that this is a bit of a living document, even though it's what keeps the organization focused over the next 12 months. Now, I know limmericks were um quite prevalent last year. Thought maybe we overdid it with limmericks after that vacation I took to Ireland. So uh I have a new inspiration this year. It does come with some chat GPT is it uh it's definitely AI in enhanced uh so this is uh we're embracing Dr. Seuss this year uh for this first break. Um let me read it to you with flip flappity papers flip flappy papers and zoomity zest. They'll wonder what goals will s be simply the best. They'll doodle a noodle, then say, "Yes, that's the one." And build out a year full of progress and fun. How about that? We'll take a a short break.

There we go. Okay. I I think that Dr. Seuss was a hit. So, you know, we can think about this next year. Continuing Dr. Seuss, right, Noah? Okay. This looks very familiar to our council members. You've been through this before. And um today as I mentioned the currency has changed from five dots to four dots. Uh so you have the good news is you have 12 dots to to work with 12 forms of currency. Your red dots are considered error uh dots. These are musthaves. These are the items that are of greatest importance to you. Uh air is required for life. Right? We can't go very long without it. That's why we're describing this as air. water. We need water, but we don't uh need water as frequently as we need air. So, it's definitely a need. It's important. Uh these are your blue dots. Are those blue, Brenda? Yes, they're blue. And then finally, our chocolate uh brown dots. These are the nice to haves. These are things that we want. Uh we don't have to have them, but they're valuable. Uh they're not necessarily critical. And so this forces that prioritization that we did not do three years ago when we ended up with 40 I think it was 84 83 ideas. One item fell below the line. It wasn't as important but everything else was important. We're going to have a lot of great ideas up here today. We just want to try to pull out what are the highest of high priorities. So the process is going to be um first we're going to we're going to pause and let you dream up your ideas and then we'll go through the the process of the voting. So, let's take at least probably 15 minutes um writing out your ideas. We have pens. Do we have darker pens for them to write with?

Okay, everyone has a dark pen. Good. Write as legibly as you can because um we'll all be taking a look at that. And then if you haven't uh you've had a chance to look at the planning commission ideas so you know what those are, you can steal some good ideas or amend their ideas. Um and then uh we'll begin in about after some 15 or 20 30 minutes, whatever time is needed. So take your time with your ideas. Uh the staff is available to answer any questions you have as well. Feel free to get up out of your seat and ask uh questions of the staff. Thank you. I think council member uh council member Peterson already uh yelled bingo. So we're going to go move on to the second game now. Yes. So we we'll just uh take the ideas, write them onto the big yellow sheets so we can see them. If you need to take a second sheet, you can always attach it or synthesize the idea. And then we'll ask each of you once we place we'll have some staff help you put them on the walls. And then uh we'll have each council member walk through their ideas and share them with our colleagues.

I think we're we're almost there. Still have some ideas coming. Connie, do you need more paper? All right. So, procedurally, what we think may be easiest is to have you just stay seated, read your ideas, and then we'll have the staff help put these up on the wall for you, and then it'll be a time for clarification, questions, etc., uh once we start to see them up on the board or up on the wall. So, mayor, uh how would you like to proceed in terms of

uh I would suggest that we each do one as we go down the line so that we don't hear one monotonous voice after another. Okay. So, my first one is left turn pockets on streets crossing Florida Avenue as in Lion State and Kirby. I need a runner. Joe, you you're next.

Okay. Mine are all based on cost, based on trying to not spend after going over our budget. Um, we could, my mother used to tell me that I had a a champagne taste with a beer pocket book and um, I've learned the hard way during my life. So, um, and you know, I realize and I know now after so many years that you can't keep spending and spending and not have the money in order to, you know, um, get your wishes, you know, taken care of because people lose jobs and people, you know, we freeze positions and I don't like that. So, my first one is close all open items that we have now, which we have a lot. uh before adding any new ones.

And I'll give that a blue. That's an air.

I've been talking about this for a while now. I think the city needs to establish a community resource center for PSP and other public safety events. This would be no cost to the city. In fact, SCE will pay a facility if it's indoor up to $1,500 per day or if it's an outdoor one, they'll pay up to $500 a day. I know in the past when we've had big outages, the mobile police vehicle was used for people to charge their um devices and such. And a few years ago, there was a mobile uhce van in town that was giving out snacks and water and stuff and nobody even knew about it. So, I would like to see a permanent facility during emergencies.

Thank you. So, in city hall, we have a seating area with a captivated audience. Can we get a TV monitor with a rolling 300 Hemmet 360 or social media postings, info on upcoming city events, etc. for the citizens and patrons to view while sitting patiently waiting. really push for economic development committee with the chamber of commerce to assist our Energizer Bunny who is our economic development director and also get the business community more involved in getting things going. I've been talking about this for the longest uh with our city manager. If we acted more like a business, we could probably save money. So, I'm saying be become uh business savvy, create GPA, our JPA, for example, buy equipment to fix our own streets, partner up with cities around us, create a JPA. I've talked to the city manager about uh starting our own animal control. Um, and Bulmont now has called us and said if they want to be a part of their animal control, uh, create a JPA, which I believe, you know, that's great. We'll save money because now we're paying what, $1.5 million to the county where now we'll pay them probably under a under under a million. But we could have created our own and made money off it with all the other cities and became like a business where we're profiting instead of just paying one way. Uh we could fix our own streets if we had our own equipment. Uh partner up with other

cities locally. Create our own animal shelter. I said that pull in surrounding cities to use our services. Uh if a grant isn't available, no, this is on something else. If a grant isn't available for minor projects, uh don't move forward with it because right now we just don't have the money to for side projects and um so again JPA's Thank you.

I would like to see weed abatement in the city three times a year, not twice. If you look out there right now, everything is brown. It's like two feet high. We don't have a mandatory weed abatement program until the end of June 30th. We need a lot of weed abatement right now in our city. I go by houses that have huge weeds right up to their front door right now. And um we talked about pride earlier. It's not only a safety issue, but it's a pride in community. And I would like to see weed abatement three times a year.

Thank you. Along the same lines, uh, several citizens constantly bombard me. They would like to see, we I would like to see us create an online informative, see it, click it, fix it type of informative reporting that gives you the progress and disposition for better transparency and more citizen education. all generic um street uh identified. So we're not dealing with confidentiality, but we are targeting certain locations. And for instance, having one report, one section reported and the case number by street. um a second investigative determination whether it is isn't whatever a process in the system whether that reported case is 30 60 90 you could have just a 30 a 60 a 90 category and have those cases sitting just by numbers underneath it. Um and then if that reported complaint is not say a code violation then which department did it get referred to? Very simple. Then a lot of the information gets to the people better transparency.

Thank you.

Oops. This is kind of piggybacking on what Connie just said is progress reports on the website whether it's for street repair or any you know sewer water repairs anything like that to see click fix things that are going on just have progress reports so that everybody knows what's going on

well everyone here knows I have a problem with prevailing wages wages. I don't know how governments can even function with these prevailing wages. I only know one industry and that's computer industry. And not to throw uh Mr. Under Underwood under under the bus or anything, but that's the a business that I put 36 years in and ran a business and I know pricing. I know, you know, what the cost of of goods are. I have a son that runs uh uh one of the biggest law firms um in the United States and um you know I run things through him now because I've been out of the business for a while. I can imagine how much more we're paying on our streets. Uh when actually when I became on city when I came on city council, I think it was a quarter million dollars a mile. Now it's a million dollars a mile and pro probably still going up. And I know the cost of living has gone up, but I I don't know how uh we got into prevailing wages, but I think um because when government pays two to three times more for the cost to get a job done, government ends up with negative cash flow and has to start freezing uh positions, which what with what we're doing now, having layoffs. And um we can't go backwards in life. We got to go forward in life and especially with our first responders. Um, you know, we've come to a we come to a time where things are good, things are working out. You know, we we're getting the crime off the street, the homelessness off the street. Fires are being fought with no deaths from fires because we're we're there and getting the job done on time because we have the manpower, woman power to get things done. So when you have to you know uh pay two to three times more for

costs your budget you start losing money in the budget and you don't have money to pay for other um important uh things that like first responders mayor prom on the on the prevailing wage is there an idea that you have uh to address that I I know that we've had maybe one conversation about charter city approach approaches to certain things. Is this related to a charter city concept? Is your idea related to a charter city concept? Maybe. And oh, chartered city concept. That would be nice. I mean, if that if we can get rid of prevailing wage. Yes.

Well, it's it's state law, but maybe the attorney can clarify what a different change in status would mean for certain types of contracts. Uh so the the city does have some limited ability to alter our arrangement with the prevailing wage statutes uh as a charter city. Uh that is the current only recognized pathway that I'm aware of that would allow us to address that issue. Uh so if that's something the city council wants to look at, a charter uh has to be proposed to the voters. So you're having an election. uh there's a substantial amount of work that needs to go in to preparing the charter. There's a lot of public outreach that you're required to have. Uh but if that's something the council wants to do, a lot of cities have very short charters that say we will run according to state law except for prevailing wage. Um so you you're not the first elected official to be incredibly frustrated by that um and seek to address it. So if you'd like to do that, if that's something the council wants to do, we can. just know that it it is a pathway that requires that we prepare things, have public hearings, and go to the voters.

And what other benefits do we have or do we get uh being a chartered city?

Um that one's one of the primary ones. Uh the other one uh usually addresses governance structure. So, uh, you know, you see some cities have seven council members and then an atlarge mayor who has some veto powers and those kinds of things. That's how you end up with those things. You have to do a charter. Um, you know, I think most charter cities don't go down that road. It's just typically the very large ones. Um, but there are a few other things. I mean, I'd be happy to to walk uh you and the council through uh what are typical components of city charters in California if that's something you were interested in.

How does that work with um u term limits? If we become a charter city, the term limits still remain. Uh so they they can so both a charter um and term limits are both voter initiated, right? Uh matters. Uh that can only be amended by the voters. Uh so uh it it can it it doesn't have an effect one way or another. It just depends on the language that you put in the charter. No matter what, it would still have to go to the voters. It would have to go to the voters. Okay. And how does um elected mayor fall under charters?

Um so you have elected mayors under general law and you have elected mayors under charters. So whether or not you're a charter, it doesn't that isn't what makes the difference. So it would still have to go to the people then. Uh if you're talking about a charter that has an elected mayor, yes. If you're saying just going to an elected mayor under general law, not necessarily. And that was we did have a brief conversation on that at a previous meeting. Okay.

But if you wanted to So being elected does not change the powers, duties, or authority of the mayor under general law. Whether elected or appointed, it's the same role, presiding officer of the city council in a city manager form of government. Now, you do see a few cities, large, very large older cities um and some counties recently uh that are moving to an elected executive. That's commonly called strong mayor. You do that under a charter. Um but that that power has nothing to do with whether the mayor is elected or not. Those are two different questions. Yeah.

Thank you. So mayor prom is a friendly amendment to when we think about the idea as as the council members think about that idea up here. Is it fair to say that the consideration of the ideas related to prevailing wage would be in the context of a charter amendment? Yes sir.

Okay. Thank you. This is an easy one. Um to engage our community more. Um I would like to see a city art competition similar to the beautifification and Christmas contests we have and we could hold it during uh Riverside County's arts and culture month which is March. I'm going to save because it's both the same. I would like to see a downtown downtown arts alive whether it's a first, second or third or fourth Saturday of every month uh Weston Park and surrounding areas an evening like 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. to include also the high school different departments that do uh woodworking, uh agriculture, eggs, that kind of thing. and then especially do a citywide Ramona week where banks, city halls, businesses, etc. decorate, dress, celebrate festive style with a Friday before the Saturday opening um to have some theme of a quote unquote cookoff like a chili or some taco um sort of thing. And the committee the community businesses participate and the community votes. That's exactly right.

Thank you.

We're We're all getting new get the news out. This one is the hemmet happenings. The brief 30 second social media updates. Get the good news out. Have screens at city hall and the library that scroll all of the good news 247. Okay, Jackie, you're next.

Um, I would like better coordination of grant opportunities, grant opportunities that the city can apply for. I know we used to have somebody that did that. We no longer have that filled, but I think we need better coordination somehow. I see things come through and I'll send it to Chief Ariano. I'll send it to Noah. I'll say, "Did you get this?" You know, I don't know who's monitoring that now. And I think I go to Cal Cities and I go to some of these breakout sessions and people are saying there's so many grants out there and they have received thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for their projects. I think our city is really missing out on this. So whether it be a department point of contact that looks at those daily, weekly, whenever they come in or if we could have somebody do that as you know when they first come in, you know, they look at what's available and that would be their job. I mean it shouldn't take that long for somebody to monitor that on a daily weekly basis. So I I really think we're missing out on a lot of grants. So I'd like better coordination of that. I agree with that and I'm wondering if we couldn't partner with the college and have them do I mean maybe Dr. What was that gentleman's name the other night here for the um fast pitch? Yes. whether he could generate a group there that would have that kind of access and kick it out to the different cities where that would be that could be a grant writing position sort of in the college scheme of things. Just saying. And finally, mine is uh council community emergency OES. um very similar to what you're saying to

have a group that has a preparation documents and staging for public access. So if the internet goes out, where is this kiosk or information location going to be? Have it out there documented. I have been in three really major earthquakes where the only radio we had was up in Crescent City which was still two hours north. And it's that kind of thing. If we're needing to be community orientated and transparency, let's include them and us so that they know where to go, where's the water going to be, where are the gas shut offs, that sort of thing. One location. That's my idea.

Okay. My last one is to revisit the volunteer recruitment process. And I know legal is involved. we can still revisit it and make it a little bit easier stream. We used to have 110 volunteers at the library. We had volunteers at city hall and uh we don't seem to have that anymore. So that's in previous years we uh requested pan handling signage and I see it's awaiting CALR approval but I've been asking for littery littering signs with fines posted. We have a new ordinance that we passed this last year. I think we make need to make it more public. Um we need to make it more visible with signs and uh more social media perhaps. Um and along with that, not necessarily uh the penalties, but um just a reminder for everybody, you know, just have a few signs around town, keep him beautiful or you know, uh you know, rather than just being um like say no littering allowed, make it a positive thing and and try to you know, put that seed in people's minds to not litter.

Nice. And I got two more. Um, I'd like to see better trash enclosures in key shopping areas. I know we talked about this before and it wouldn't probably cost us a lot of money hopefully just to have better lids and better containers on uh trash enclosures in key areas in town. And I know we're doing a lot with the arts and culture, but um we've got so many talented artists in this valley and um I'd like to see us enhance the art in public spaces and uh start painting some utility boxes, hydrants, and of course, we're going to start our first first mural. So, more to come. And that's all I have. Are we out of yellow stickies? Okay. Um, so there's a lot here. And, um, are there any questions that the council members have of each other? Uh, some of your ideas that you've shared today. Let's begin there.

Mayor, tell me a little bit more about the volunteer program that you would like to see reinstituted. I know laws have changed since we were very very when I was very active with with the library. Um, and the the police department doesn't seem to have too terribly much trouble getting their volunteers, but we don't seem to have anything any place else. So, I'm not sure exactly what the process is at this point. I I know there's legal involvement in it. I know that everybody has to be live scan, but that's not new. So, uh, whatever our policy is, speed it up, get people in the library, especially.

Yeah, it might be actually our recruitment strategy. We've had an open invitation on the website for months, um, almost the entire year for the library. And so, maybe we need to go to the community in different ways, right, beyond just the website. But I think we can dream up some ways to reach out to some uh, folks in town that might be interested in that opportunity, whether it's city hall, the library, or somewhere else. including the police department

because I know um there's there's people in the community that used to volunteer for the city and they're trying to find other things to do, you know, to fill their day. But um I I just think we can do better. And even if we went to the schools, the high schools and colleges, and it it doesn't have to be an intern program. It's just like you've got three hours, two days a week. Can you come and help? I mean, stacking books, shelving books isn't a big deal, but it's needed. Did that answer your question? Okay, great. Just real quick, how how how are we doing with the uh digital signs?

The digital signs, the Lamar billboards are scheduled to go to your next council meeting next Tuesday, I believe. Okay. The report is written. I haven't reviewed it yet, but it needs to be published to tomorrow or today or tomorrow. Are we planning to put a digit a digital sign? I can't say that word. A digital sign at the uh city hall anywhere? No, these are the Lamar billboards are only for Acacia, Florida and Sanderson and Dominiconi. That anything at city hall would be a different type of sign or digital sign

because we can advertise that way because not everyone goes to our websites. Maybe the 365.com will work, but we'll see. Any other questions for each other? Would it be helpful? I know you you have in front of you a list of all the ideas from the planning commission. Did you want to discuss any of those or seek any clarification? A couple of us attended the meeting and we could potentially interpret any uh for any comments that they made that uh might need some additional clarification. You know, I looked at this and some of these if our and if our planning commission doesn't know what's going on in the city, then we have a problem. So, we have a problem because a lot of these things are already in progress and our planning commission doesn't know about it. So, what does that say about us getting information out? It says we're not doing a job. Um, so I guess that goes back to the communication, getting the good news out. How do we communicate with the public? How do we get the good news out? The good, the bad, and the ugly. I mean, it's it's what what it is. But I that was really eye opening to me that I'm looking at this and I'm going, "Well, that's in progress. That's in progress. We're doing that." Yep. Okay. Uh and our planning commissioners don't know,

right?

That's a problem. Mayor, I included Mr. I call him Dana White, but it's Dana Hill. in that theater specifically for that reason. Because if he has something that comes up in front of him planning wise that's even within the vicinity of the theater, he's in the no. And so maybe we should include in that instance when we have these sort of things that would have a potential um to have them see it come across their desks to know what's going on. I agree.

Okay. Any other questions? Uh or I I know we've been talking about a senior center for several years now and um I think you had said maybe we'll put out another RFP. Has has anything been done?

Well, what we were hoping to do is uh put that into the budget. So, it's requires about three positions. We think the cost is about $500,000. And so it's a trade-off among competing priorities, right? Uh we can do it um that way or we can potentially go through another RFP process to see if someone would be willing to operate the building without asking us for $500,000. That's what happened the first time. We went out to RFP. They said, "We'll do it. Um but we need $500,000 to operate it." And that's essentially what it would cost us to operate it. So in both cases, we were required to front $500,000 a year to help it operate.

Maybe we could look at a hybrid type situation with the use of our very talented volunteers, one staff person perhaps and some volunteers or get a unit of of the police department in there to I don't know. I mean just something we have to think out of the box, right? Right. And I think maybe if we separate the Simpson Center from the the senior center, correct?

And start with the senior center that may be a way an easier way of moving forward. It may not require three. Um some of the three is public works helping to clean the buildings at on a daily basis. Um and then with two is programming and management of the administration, the calls and the emails that go back and forth between the community and classes and so forth. Okay. All right. Uh, any staff members want to comment on anything they've read uh from the planning commission or any of the ideas uh that the council has come up with just for clarification purposes?

Okay. Yeah, we do understand that when we put those things up there, it comes down on you guys.

Yeah. It helped me already. Thank you for that slide. So, back to the dot uh slide. We have four red dots that are the air, the musthaves. These are these are the highest uh and greatest importance. The blue dots are the water. These are important. Uh and the brown dots are the chocolate. These are the valuable but not critical items. And so, um we have a number of ideas. Um, take your time as you walk. Uh, I encourage you to talk amongst yourselves. Maybe barter a little bit. Uh, if if three of you believe you need fewer dots or more dots, let us know. We can we can have the mayor lead a a change on the dots, but we thought four would be a good number for this year knowing that there's a lot in motion already. And as you point out, there are a number of items that are continuing that still need work. Can we buy more?

Well, they're we're they're selling for seven figures today. Uh yeah. All right. So, uh this is the engagement time. Uh council members, take your time at, uh applying the dots and u we'll go from there and then we'll we'll have a a chat with the staff after that. Can we have questions for the staff members while we're up? Feel free to talk to any of us about questions you have about any of the items.

Council members,

we're going to need to know How do you pronounce your last name? This is chocolate.

This is air. Water. This This is one big one. All six of those are related.

Okay, I think we're getting ready. Um, next step is for me to review these briefly, make sure that we captured the council's voting accurately. I'm going to read some of these that I see with dots. I'll probably Why don't I go from right to left? Are these one or is this This is all one. Okay.

Okay. This is one. These six are one. Let's start here. This has a lot of red dots and a little chocolate. This is a really nice meal here. Uh so this is about uh communication videos, status page, progress reports, seating area with rolling monitors and TV information, brief 30 seconds to tell all the good news that's happening in Hemet. Fair to say. Okay. This is all about communication. This is going to be the the focus of our work plan. Uh this is a an air I'm sorry, a water a water dot downtown arts alive uh Saturday of each month. um coordinate with the schools. Uh there's opportunities for uh building communications on Ramona week, banks, city halls, businesses, etc. This was council member Clark. And it coordinates with art and public places, utility boxes, etc. What we'll do is we're going to bring you everything that has a dot will show up on the the draft um work the draft work plan. And if there's any idea that didn't have a dot that you still want to advocate for, you can still advocate at that next council meeting. Okay. Here, um, two dots. Become a business savvy, create JPAs, uh, work on streets, animal shelter, surrounding cities. Um, mayor prom on that one. And is this separate? This is uh the charter city prevailing wage issue has a red dot. Economic development committee with the chamber of commerce. This is a current year work plan initiative and uh what we when we create a committee if the city manager works with staff to create a committee. It's not a Brown Act committee. When a council creates a committee, it creates a Brown Act committee that requires meeting minutes, agenda posting, 72 hours, etc., etc. So, we have in motion a plan to work with about seven people about seven people. We've identified

those people. Uh, we've been through two rounds and we just haven't formally launched yet. Want to give a Ben a breather until after now. He he he gets to wait until after next Thursday. Next Thursday is apparently a big day. Something's going on in in this room. City art competition. Uh, I like this idea. I think this is another way of pride. I was thinking about the the mayor's pride comments when I saw that. That's something that uplifts the community. Better coordination for grant opportunities to apply for. A lot of interest in that. Um this is a capacity issue too and this is also challenge. There are challenges with whether we are eligible and so we do and at the department level what our practice is is our department directors know that no one knows that he's looking for road money. Uh chief is looking for money for police. Uh we're looking for infrastructure money. We're looking for money but it always doesn't always help but it doesn't always land as competitive as we want it. But we have a lot of attributes of this city that make us uh more competitive today because we didn't have anything shovel ready a couple of years ago. Now we we have a number of projects that are shovel ready. Uh weed abatement like that. Uh community resource center that makes money red and a blue community council and community emergency OES group. Probably going to need some more clarification on that but maybe I can follow up with you council member. uh revisit uh the volunteer process. A lot of dots on this. Uh close all open items before adding new ones. Uh thank you for acknowledging that. We do have a lot of work going on. Uh left turn pockets has uh blue and and chocolate um water and chocolate littering signs. Um what's the status of the CALR signs? Do we are we close? If you say something, I'll repeat it.

Okay. So, we have the permit signs are going up next week. Good news. Question on that. Yes. Is that just for the pan handling? Is that just for the pan handling or are there actual littering signs also? Yeah. So, they're two different things. But keep him at beautiful may be an there may be an opportunity to use the new branding and logo and come up with something different. I've seen cities do this in in other communities. Um expanding opportunities for partner. Yes.

I just want to make a comment on the lefthand turn one that is in process at Kirby and it anything that goes across Florida has to include CALR which is you know takes two years. It's been a year in planning just to get to the stage we're in now. So that's just a clarification on on the the time and energy it takes to do anything with CALR.

We're we're still working on the great project under Sanderson and Stson if you can imagine it. There's a lot of coordination with the flood district a gas line and we're still at it. I know it's getting closer but it's it's a complex some of these individual projects can be very complex. uh expanded opportunities for private public propert uh partnerships in the downtown like the city of HMT and the theater, better trash recepticle in key areas, shopping areas. This is something that uh I've tasked public works with already because with our new logo, there's an opportunity to attach some logos to the side of a trash recepticle and really uplift the brand. And we have at least three different varieties of uh trash receptacles just on Harvard Street alone. And so they're working for something that will work. They were working on something that's affordable, that looks good, that has staying power, and works operationally for us. Uh so we're we're starting with some ideas. This should be a relatively affordable way to really spruce up downtown. Um and I provided Noah some feedback on a product that didn't work in a different city over the weekend, so he knows we're not going to buy that one. Little too much plastic, not metal. Um my understanding in speaking with a mayor or overhearing the mayor is a lot of this is already happening. Uh so this is back to awareness. This one has a couple dots. Bring back a senior center. So there's some enthusiasm for that. Uh identify temporary opportunities for vacant buildings. I like that idea. I think there's an opportunity to partner with the chamber on this. Um and then a traffic signal traffic signal timing analysis citywide. Uh any clarification on any of those? What we can do is we'll work on taking sort of the highest number of votes and looking at the the red dots and then working down as you've seen before and then we'll put together a draft work

plan and then we'll have a conversation about ad hocs and committee members. Does that make sense as next step? Okay. Let me check out our next slide. So, thanks everyone. That was a lot of good work. Helpful focus. Oh, next slide. Okay. So, we are we'll bring this back to you maybe as early as next Tuesday. It depends on how fast we work this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Uh if not, it'll come in two weeks. uh and then we will provide quarterly updates once that plan is adopted uh for the next year. Um so next steps uh we need to make sure I think all of all of these ideas are are achievable from a funding standpoint with maybe the exception of how how do we fund that senior center? That's a question mark. So when we talk about aligning these ideas with budget, that's a good example of one that um may need to have some budget considerations associated with it. Um and then of course we're going to review those at a future council meeting or meetings. So um you know you can only do so much Dr. Seuss and I I'll tell you there was an encore request for limmericks um from some of our sta at least one staff member was looking for an encore of our limmerick uh efforts. So this is chat GPT 2026 uh as a closing concluding limmerick. There once was a council so bright who planned out their goals just right with a logo brand new and a bold tagline too. They'll lead with fresh vision and might. Hey. All right. Y.

So, I just want to say thank you to all of our staff uh that work so hard to accomplish all of these tasks and more each and every day. Want to say thank you to the council members for bringing your energy today and through the years. Uh I will miss this kind of an an experience. Uh I've enjoyed this. I think if I ever did something on the side someday down the road, it might be helping councils set goals. I really enjoy this. uh this type of process. But um thanks again everyone. Um this has been a very good morning and productive and very helpful for us moving forward in shaping next year's work plan. All right.

Any final comments from council? That was fun. I didn't do it last year. I wasn't part but I liked it. It was fun. It's crazy how we're kind of on the same page, too.

It's good to be able to have a conversation with with staff. So, any members of staff want to have any closing comments? We appreciate that you put up with us. And like I said, everything that goes up there, we know it comes down on your shoulders and you are much appreciated. So, thank you very much. And we don't have any from the public. So with no further ado, this meeting is adjourned to the next regular city council meeting on April 28th, 2026. Thank you all for joining us. We are adjourned.