City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll call this meeting of July 14th. Am I echoing again? There's Got all my pieces. Thank you. She's happy now. There we go. All right. Hopefully, my echoing is done. Good evening. I'll call the meeting of July 14, 2026 closed session city council meeting to order. City Clerk, may we have a roll call, please? Councilmember Clark?

Present. Councilmember Lodge? Here. Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Mayles? Here. Mayor Krupa?

Here. OK. Everyone is present. Public comment period. City Clerk, are there any registered speakers on anything on the closed session agenda?

Yes, we do have one. Let me see here. Okay. Yes, Judith McPherson. Very good. Come up to the lectern.

And you will have three minutes and it should be showing on the screen. Is your is your green light on there? It doesn't sound like it's red. Do it again. It's not on. So let's stop her time and turn her microphone on. Oh, now it is.

Thank you. There you go. The green light. My name is Judith McPherson, and this is not the first time I've spoken here. I have a question about Item 5C, which cites Government Code 54956.9. Section D2 and E1, which is kind of a rare one regarding anticipated litigation. I think it means that there may be something that the city is aware of for which a person could sue the city, but that the person may or may not at this time know. I have a question why if something is known, it's not revealed. But anyway, I will digress. And in other matters, I've had an ongoing situation with our parking lot downtown as private signs are posted. And unfortunately, one comment was made from the council days some months ago that basically scolded me and my family for not allowing persons not having a right to trespass and park on our property and shaming us publicly. Since that time, I've been assaulted more than once. There have been multiple batteries that I've been involved in. It's kind of like I'm on social media. The mean old lady that owns property that, dang it, you know, I'm just going to go use it and I'm going to tell her how bad she is, et cetera. And just to update, a man named Trent Austin Booth was just sentenced to 45 days in jail for battery upon me with serious bodily injury in my private parking lot. And he's not the only one. There are at least two further matters. Thank you. But I did have a question about 5C. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Judith. No other comments? Nobody online? No. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. With that, we will recess to closed session. Good evening, everyone. I will call the July 14th, 2026 regular City Council meeting to order. City Clerk, may we please have a roll call?

Council Member Clark? Present. Council Member Lodge? Here. Council Member Peterson? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Mayles? Here. Mayor Krupa?

Here. The invocation tonight will be led by Pastor Steve Ryan, Senior Pastor. after which Councilmember Lodge will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please all stand? Is your green light on? On the microphone?

Oh, there it is. Thank you. Appreciate it. Father God, I just thank you for each and every person here tonight. I thank you for this city council and for the police officers and for the citizens here. God, I just ask tonight that you give everyone in this building supernatural wisdom. ears to hear and eyes to see exactly what your agenda is, not only for this meeting, but for the city of Hemet and this whole valley. Lord, I ask that you bless each and every person, touch their families and anything that they're hoping and believing for. Lord, I ask that you bring that to pass. I pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Please place your hand over your heart.

Thank you very much. We will move on to the city attorney closed session report.

Thank you, Mayor. For item 5B for one of the potential cases, the council gave authorization to initiate litigation by consensus. There's no other reportable action out of the closed session.

Thank you very much. Moving on, our presentation tonight will be insurance legislative update from the California Department of Insurance. Please, hi, please. Just go to the lectern and it should be all loaded for you. Okay. And you can introduce yourself if you would.

YES. SO GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS, AND EVERYONE HERE. THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE HERE TODAY. MY NAME IS JUDAH PINA. I AM AN OUTREACH ANALYST WITH THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF INSURANCE. PART OF MY JOB IS TO WORK WITH CITIES, COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS TO PROVIDE UPDATES ON THE INSURANCE. educate, so I cover Riverside County and San Bernardino County. So if you ever have any things going on, any community events, please feel free. I believe you all have my contact information to reach out with the resources or whatever it is asked. So, I know that insurance is not the most exciting topic, but I know it's one of the topics that is affecting a lot of our communities today. It affects homeowners, it affects businesses, even real estate transactions, right? Because we're going to buy our property, we need to have insurance. So, today I'm going to briefly talk about what's happening on our insurance market, what reforms are happening, and how these changes affect our communities. All right. So, this is a graph of the insurance market context. So, these are factors affecting our insurance market today. So we're seeing more severe fires, more frequent fires. Also historic inflation is affecting our insurance market. We know that the rebuilding costs and labor costs are going up or have gone up. Would it cost to build a home 30 years ago or 20 years ago is not what it is today. So that also factors in. And also the cost of reinsurance. Reinsurance is insurance that insurance companies buy to protect their policies. And when that goes up, that also affects our insurance market. So because of that, we're seeing fewer options for consumers. And because of that, we're seeing a growth in the fare plan, which the fare plan was meant to be the insurance of last resort and has become the first and only insurance option for many consumers. Okay, so these are a few efforts underway. One is the Safer from Wildfires. So Safer from Wildfires requires insurers to provide consumers discounts for wildfire safety actions that you take around your home. This includes building defensible space, things like having a fire-resistant roof, ember-resistant vents, things like double-paned windows and those things. If you reduce your risk, if you've taken any of these actions, your insurance company is required by law to give you a discount. I'm not gonna say how much, that depends on your insurance carrier. The second one here is the sustainable insurance strategy, and this allows insurers to use forward-looking catastrophe models. to evaluate your risk. So California was the only major state that did not allow insurers to use catastrophe models. Moving forward, they are allowed to use catastrophe models so that they can better plan for future risk. not just rely on past losses like they have in the past, but if insurers use these tools, they must also, the agreement, I don't know if the agreement's a word, but the agreement was if they are able to use these tools, they must also write more policies in high-fire risk areas. And we're already seeing happening insurers have filed and been approved to write in the state. And some of those companies are CSAA, USAA, and the four companies that work under USAA, California Casualty, Mercury, and Pacific Specialty are the ones that have filed and been approved to start writing new policies, especially in high fire risk areas. And there are more that have filed but have not been approved yet. So we talk about building a defensible space, hardening your home. We know that that does not come cheap. We know that replacing windows, replacing a roof is not cheap, especially for folks on fixed incomes. And that's where the Home Grant Program comes in. That's a California Safe Homes Grant Program. Sorry, it's not written there. And this is Assembly Bill 888. And what this program does, it provides grants to income-eligible homeowners in high-risk areas to build that defensible space and make those mitigation efforts like replacing your roof and changing your windows. It's been approved, but it's still in the works. So let's see. OK, so preparing for before a disaster is only part of the solution. We also want to make sure that recovery works after a disaster. And this is, so we've learned a lot from talking to wildfire survivors, hearing feedback from our investigations team that handle our insurance complaints. And our goal is simple. We want to make, we want consumers to be able to make a full recovery after disaster, not a partial one. And one of the major things that we've seen is smoke damage, right? About half of the wildfires complaints involve smoke damage. And there is no clear public standards when it comes to smoke damage claims, like there is when there's an earthquake. An inspector goes into your home, inspects your home, and says your home is safe to live in, or it's not. That does not exist for wildfire right now, I'm sorry, for smoke, sorry, for smoke damage right now. Another one we've seen is coverage gaps and delays. We've seen families run out of temporary housing coverage, replacement costs have been underestimated, and claims simply just take too long at times. So we are pushing for reforms that help speed up the claim process. We want insurance companies to plan ahead for disasters, and we want stronger coverage. Also the fair plan. So the fair plan was meant to be, like I mentioned, temporary, it only covers fire. It was not to carry the load that, it wasn't meant for folks to rely on it like they have recently, right? But it has grown significantly and the challenges that we see with the fair plan includes its limited coverage, it only covers fire, and the claims handling issues. So we want to focus on improving oversight when it comes to the fair plan, expanding coverage. And the goal is to transition people back into the traditional market and where they have options. So because of all of these challenges, the commissioner has sponsored legislation that has been introduced to improve recovery and strengthen protection. So one is the smoke damage. It's Assembly Bill 1795. This addresses one of the biggest complaints, which is smoke damage. If I'm talking too fast, please let me know. Smoke damage claims are complicated because historically there hasn't been. There is not clear public health standards when it comes to smoke damage. This bill here will create science-based standards. It would establish clear guidelines for testing and restoration. Smoke damage isn't just an insurance issue. It's also a public health crisis. So again, homeowners should not have to argue whether their home is safe to live in. And another one is, so it's Assembly Bill 876. This was introduced by Senator Steve Padilla, and this one focuses on recovery. So this focuses on speeding up recovery for homeowners and renters. It strengthens consumer protections and delays in the claims payment. Should I go back? So this focuses on, again, this will require insurance to have a disaster recovery plan. It doubles penalties for unclaimed practices, and it requires a five-day status for updates when an adjuster changes so that the consumer is not left in the dark. It will expand additional living expense coverage by 100 percent of what is on the consumer's policy, and it expands upfront payments with interest, sorry, penalties if late. So, this is designed to reduce delays and increase accountability. Okay, so this one here is Make It Fair Act. So this one here is because of the growth of the fair plan. The fair plan was created in the 80s when the riots in Watts were happening and no insurance companies wanted to cover it. That's when the fair plan was created. And it just stayed around, and many people are relying on it now. But because of the growth of the fair plan, there is a need for stronger oversight and modernization, meaning better protection. So this bill strengthens oversight and accountability. It includes requirements to follow the commissioner's recommendation and also requires operational improvements to handle claims faster. It expands coverage and allows penalties, again, if there's violations. It helps reduce the need for multiple policies and improve consumer protections. So, the goal is not to grow the fair plan. We want to stabilize the fair plan. We want to modernize the fair plan, and we want to transition people back into the traditional market. So, sorry, I skipped. Okay, this is just what I said. So, mandates compliance with insurance commissioner recommendations for exams and operational reports within timeline. And so, if you want, if anybody, if anyone wants more information on these bills and where they stand, you can do so by scanning this QR code to get more information and more detailed information on the bills that I just mentioned. And this is just a program that I like to mention that you can share with your constituents. It's the CLCA program. It's a state-sponsored program. It's low-cost auto insurance for income-eligible drivers. You do have to have a clean record within the past five years. Your car does have to be valued at $25,000 or less. But it's just what the state requires. It's just liability. But depending on what county you live in, it could be as little as $200 a year. This is a great resource for folks that are having a hard time with their insurance coverage. So if you want to stay updated on any of the bills that I just mentioned, anything happening with the insurance market, when that grant is able, when people are able to apply for that grant, I strongly recommend for folks to sign up to receive our consumer alerts. You can do so by scanning this QR code, if you're comfortable with that, or you can also just go on our website. and do that. So, we also, at the department, we have a bi-weekly webinar. The next one will be on August 19th, and that will be our health insurance webinar. And any of the ones that we've had, you can go on our website and view those. The last one we had in June was residential insurance, and then we have another one coming in on, so these are in October, and that's going to deal with business insurance. So, those are just great resources. We have a specialist, who provide updates on that, and you're able to ask questions. So, again, that's my update. If you want to contact the Department of Insurance, you can do so. A lot of people don't know that our department exists, that they can file or report fraud with our insurance. But I always tell folks, if you are not reporting, we do not know that it is happening. So, yeah, so here's our contact information. It's 1-800-927-HELP, 4357-SPALTS-HELP. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much.

Or if you have any questions, I'm open to any questions for her. Yes. Thank you. All right. I'm moving on to communications from the public. We will take public comment on items not listed on the agenda. And we will address public comment on agenda items when we get to that. That item. City Clerk, are there any registered speakers?

Yes, sir. Mayor. This evening, our first speaker is Michael Kennedy, with Charles with vineyard to follow.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and City Manager. I just want to take a minute to say thank you for all that you do. On social media, they're not fair to you sometimes. I know you find that hard to believe, but I appreciate everything that you're doing. I put my glasses on so I can see what I'm looking at. Thank you, Mary Krupa, for your quick responses when I send you the emails. And I appreciate the quick responses. And once again, I apologize for my, you know, sending you so much information and asking for information. And you've always been very responsive. And City Manager Rao, thank you also for everything you do in your team. We have some issues at McSweeney Farms. He's been very active in taking care of that, and I do appreciate that. I also want to thank the police department. I think they're doing a wonderful job. I know it doesn't get said enough, but certainly you can see the difference in Hemet with everything that you're doing, and we appreciate that. The fire department, nothing can be said more. They do an outstanding job. I might have mentioned once before that my wife had a heart attack a couple years back, and they were extremely responsive. And I know now with the fire season going that they are going to be quite busy, and we appreciate everything they do. So, I just want to thank that, and also, Mayor Pro Tem Mayles, I want to let you know that I voted for you, and since there's no requirement in California for voter ID, you'll see 10 votes under my, never mind, I didn't say that. Okay? And thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Next speaker.

Charles Vineyard. Please hold my time for a minute. Captain Monk, can you please come here, please? Cut them off? Thank you. All right. You can go ahead and start the time. Thank you. In the last two weeks, I've seen two people's life ruined or just put off time and destroyed because of the Hemet police screwing up on their paperwork and not handling stuff correctly. And, of course, the people that screw up don't get reprimanded, okay? After that, I've talked to Captain Mohaff. Oh, no, come on. Step on up here. No, no, Captain Mohaff. I handed him the information of an officer that pulled me over illegally, wrote me off for something false. He told me to show up proof, so I got proof, or I found out where you can get the proof, and it's not being found. It got sent from him and also the captain to Lieutenant Josiah, which they handed off to Gomez. Gomez, I have tried to reach in the last two weeks and never, ever responds, all right? So anyway, since I'm here today, I need Captain Mohaf, can you please come up here, please? No, no, no. Here's my public comment.

There you go, sir. There you go. There you go, sir. There you go. There you go, sir.

What that request is is because they've done it over and over to try to find out things or to try to get the videotape of the officer that illegally pulled me over for court so I can defend myself. They won't provide it to me, even though I provided my videotape to show proof I didn't do it. On top of that, it's also the request of the videos of the four officers that when I was in an accident with a female that was on probation of a DUI, was let go four hours later after running from the scene, which is a felony. They never ask her for her insurance. It's in their own police report. They screwed up, and my life is messed up. I'm going to trial against that right now, and I need all the videos from the officers that went to the person that caused the damage and fled from the scene. I'm tired of handing stuff into the Hemet Police Department, and they lose it. And then they claim you don't turn it in. Same way with a black African-American boy two weeks ago. He turned in his paperwork because he wants to be in the Air Force. And you know what? When he went back to get the information he needed for the Air Force, they told him that he didn't turn it in. Then he asked to speak to the lady. And you know what they told him? The lady's on a two-week vacation. This is a young man that was trying to get his life together also. and just tossed it to the side. Can't help them at all. Told them all well. Same way with a lady that lost her bike. Whether it was right or wrong, her bike was taken away. She could get it back. She went the following Wednesday, asked for it. They were told to come back on Thursday. She went back on Thursday. The police officer comes out and says, nope, you can only get it on Wednesday, which is crazy because the guy picking up the stuff for the police officers to put it in storage,

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker.

Ms. Next speaker is Rachel Duenas followed by Ricky Lindsey. Ms.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Good evening, thank you for having me here and allowing me to speak. I'm a rather new resident of Hemet. I've been living here less than a year. I'm very happy in this community. I'm very excited for different opportunities to serve. I've been currently looking into perhaps joining the Board of Education. I'm also a teacher in San Jacinto School District, or perhaps joining as one of the council members. And so in my research and in my initial pass, I was investigating what are the requirements. And what does this have to look like? That's sort of my world, how my world thinks as a teacher. And I was very surprised and shocked that there wasn't a requirement for passing a background check. And to be honest, I thought that was a mistake. So I called the city and I said, I asked the question, is there not a requirement for people who are serving the city to pass a background check. And it seemed rather crazy to me because looking through the job descriptions of every single person employed by the city or the district in any capacity, everyone is required to have a background check. And as our city is growing so exponentially, as a homeowner, I feel that there needs to be accountability set up. We should have the wisdom to institute this requirement if it's been overlooked, as I believe it has. institute it and make sure that going forward we have people of integrity who we can trust to make these decisions for our community. I find it a very important task and I hope that you will as a city council give it your utmost consideration to please institute if it is in fact a mistake as it is and correct it. I feel very strongly that we need to, like I said, have people of integrity and clean backgrounds, obviously, so that we can retain the community's trust and make sure that we are being served and handling things correctly. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for your comments. All right. Next speaker.

Next speaker is Ricky Lindsey. Followed by Terry Lund.

Good afternoon. First, I want to apologize. I haven't talked in front of people in a very long time, so I'm nervous, and I'll probably show that. I have a couple items, but I may not be able to get to both of them. My first one is the street paving that you're doing looks great. But my problem is I've been calling for years and years and years to get Wentworth repaved, which is where Sanderson, where Dunkin' Donuts is and goes to the airport. That is the worst road ever. I have a pickup. I hate driving on it. My motorcycle, I use 90 percent of the time, and I go that way because I want to bypass Stetson and Sanderson because it's just so much traffic. And there's a lot more. And now with the new buildings that are on there, the huge pipe company and the auto shop had built in an addition, and that new building on the corner, and I'm not sure what that little street is, the taxes are much better with them versus the ones that have been there forever, and I understand how that works. But when I called, the guys are super nice over at Public Works, because I bug them once in a while. I haven't for very long. I don't understand why they just do little potholes, why they can't go ahead and fill in the rest of that, because that is the worst road ever. And like I say, I ride my motorcycle 90 percent of the time. I'm the guy you'll see with the backpack and my dental hygienist and stuff. Yeah, I saw a guy one day with dog food in his gas tank. I go, that would be me. It forms just right. So I go and get my dog food even. So that's my number one. And number two is our bill with CRNR. As you probably know, we just got an increase for this month for $16, and all our bills are always itemized except for CR&R, and they need to start itemizing, especially with this increase, which I worked for a half-a-billion-dollar company, did tons of projects besides my job that I'm sure this is a fuel charge. Well, this needs to be itemized because when gas, Lord's willing, someday goes down, that needs to be reversed. AND THEM HAVING CART BLANC TO KEEP INCREASING OUR RATES EVERY JULY, IF NOT BEFORE, BECAUSE I AM DOWN FROM FOREVER. AND IT'S JUST UNREAL BECAUSE I MYSELF, A SINGLE RETIRED OLD PERSON, I CAN PAY $109 AND I CAN PUT TRASH OUT ONCE EVERY THREE MONTHS. And I've tried with you to ask for a waiver to not have it done. So, I have a truck, I can go to the dump, and my friend has a business that goes two or three or four times a month. I can just throw it in the back of his truck, but you won't give me that waiver. And I understand, but you can come by my house any time and see there's not a junkyard there. So, those couple of things are a top priority that's happening with me. And I'd really appreciate if you would think about both of those, especially Wentworth. All the way down when you hit and you hang a left and go to the railroad tracks by the fire department, all the way down to there because the railroad tracks are so bad that I have to slow down to go over them because my motorcycle will fall in the cracks between the tracks. Okay, thanks. Appreciate it.

Thank you for your comments.

Terry Larned.

Good evening. Mayor, council members, congressmen, future congressmen. I'm here to talk about tonight is the multi-chamber mixer that is coming up. It's going to be on Thursday. And it is going to have the Beaumont Chapter, the Hemet and San Jacinto Chamber of Commerce, the Banning Chamber, Moreno Valley, and Cal Mesa. So, it's a multi-effort. It's going to be held out at the Golden Era Golf Course. And Thursday, July 16th from 3 to 6 p.m. So, they're going to have a, it's going to be a good time. Putting together a contest by the Grandfathers for Golf. They have the free opportunity drawings. And other attendees are, of course, encouraged to bring some door prizes. and bring your business card for an additional raffle entry. So this is going to be held out again at the Golden Era Golf Course Thursday at 3 to 6 p.m. So it's multi-chambers. We're going to have an awful lot of people there and probably mayors and council members from other cities, too. So I wanted to make everybody aware of that. I was told by Linda this morning that if you're going there, you better tell them this. I said, okay, I will. And by the way, Wentworth is terrible.

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker?

We have no more speakers.

Okay. That ends public comment on non-agenda items. And we will now move into the public hearing. Would you please read the directions for the public hearing?

hearing will be as follows staff will provide a report and clarification of items presented the public hearing will be open for comments for those in favor of or in opposition to the item followed by rebuttal to any comments made the public hearing will be closed and the city manager may respond to any questions raised by the public the public will not have an opportunity to respond discussion will be brought back to the city council for direction or action

Thank you very much. Ms. Farris, would you please give us the staff report?

Yes. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Jolene Farris, Interim Public Works Director, City Engineer. And I'm here to present you with the update to our five-year capital improvement program and open the public hearing. This is consistent with the strategic plan item, quality of life. And I will start with project updates. So just a summary of the updates. We have 22 projects that have been completed and removed from the previously approved CIP. We have four projects otherwise removed, three modifications to existing carryover projects. We have 20 added or new projects since last update. 22 projects will be requesting funding for fiscal year 26-27. And we have a total of 115 projects. So the first two slides here are a summary of the projects that have been completed. I don't want to list them all off, but you guys can go ahead and read them.

And then the second slide, these have also been completed.

And then these are projects that have been removed. So 5721 was the clarifier units for the courtyard. That was deemed financially infeasible, so it was just removed. CIP 2400, it was originally a grant project that we applied for ATP Cycle 7 grant funding. We did not receive it. We then applied for a second grant with that and didn't receive it. So we moved these improvements into the fiscal year 26-27 SB1 rehabilitation project. CIP 2420, that was removed and it was combined with the CIP 5767, the 2324 citywide sewer main replacement project. And then another to be determined CIP, which was the citywide water main replacements, that funding was moved into the well 15 and 16 project to cover those costs. I think I have an error. I think the Menlo was moved into the 2526. not 26, 27, sorry. Our annual carryover projects, we have our annual pavement striping maintenance, our annual partner pavement rehabilitation and maintenance, and then our HVAC upgrades at city facilities. Those are just annual projects. And so here's gonna be a summary of the new projects that have been added this year. So we have CIP 5760, the Sierra Dawn streetlights. This project was previously completed by adding solar lighting to Sierra Dawn, but those ended up failing. So we brought this project back to replace the solar lighting with hardwired lighting. CIP 2513, that's the Palm Villas at State Street project. It's the street and multimodal improvements. It's part of the ASIC or Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant that we got with the Palm Villas and RTA. It was a joint grant. It constructs bike lanes and sidewalks along Menlo and then a multimodal path in the Railroad Corridor. It includes a paved bike lane and then a DG walking path. CIP 2523, it's St. John Place building improvements. It's going to rehabilitate the existing building at 5555 St. John Place, and it's going to be utilized by the police department's aero team as their headquarters. CIP 2525, that's fire station number two expansion, includes 1,200 square feet expansion for fire station number two with five dorms, an office, and two restrooms. CIP 2600, that's a community garden. This is located on Juanita Street, and City Council's already approved an agreement with the Green Coalition for the use of this property for a community garden, and it's currently underway. CIP 2603 is the Trash Enclosure Pilot Program. It includes improvements to existing trash enclosures throughout the city to help reduce scavenging, illegal dumping, and graffiti. CIP 2604 is the State Street federal funding. It's funding to, it was originally a larger scope project for a lot of State Street, but it's been reduced due to the amount that we received. So it now just includes Kimball to Devonshire. There'll be pavement rehabilitation, ADA ramp replacement for non-compliant ADA ramps. CIP 2606, this is a Hemet Master Drainage Plan Line C1. The storm drain project is located on Mayberry and Palm, and it ultimately connects to the Whittier Avenue storm drain, and it is funded by Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It'll alleviate flooding on Mayberry Avenue. CIP 2607 is the West Hemet Master Drainage Plan Line C, Stage 4. This is a storm drain between Sanderson and Kirby. It's also funded by Riverside County Flood Control, and it will connect to the existing system in Sanderson and Menlo Avenue. CIP 2609 is a security camera system upgrade. It installs cameras at City Hall, Fire Administration, and the Corp Yard, and that is currently underway. To be determined, CIP is the downtown parking lot improvements. It includes pavement rehabilitation for five city-owned parking lots, including the parking lot adjacent to the railroad, adjacent to Harvard Street, Juanita Street, and then the City Hall parking lot. Another to be determined project is the Cactus Valley Channel improvements. This was previously a project that the city had started and turned over to the developer who has yet to complete this. So the city is moving forward with completing the design, construction, and turnover to Riverside County Flood Control in the interest of the residents and public safety.

And that is funded with the CFD.

Another to be determined, the McSweeney Parkway lighting. Currently, there are damaged walkway bollards within the park area, so the project will replace these with 14-foot pathway lights. We have fire station three and five backup generators. Just pretty self-explanatory, installing backup generators at fire station number three and five. Fire station five improvements, this includes constructing a metal building that will house the brush engine as well as a concrete pad for building and electrical installation. And then we have five additional fiscal year CIPs for fiscal year 30, 31 and includes the regular projects that we add every fiscal year, slurry seal project, pavement rehabilitation or SB1 pavement rehabilitation, citywide water main replacements and citywide sewer main replacements. And so here's a financial summary of all of the projects. So this is the overall CIP. It shows what's previously approved. So we have about 73.9 million of previously approved and allocated projects through the different various funds. 2026, 2027, we have new requests of 21.7 million. And then projected requests for the following years. For a total cost to complete, the current CIP of 159.5 million. And then this is a summary of the breakdown for just the new request for 26-27 by fund. And obviously the zeros are just really small. There's actual money there. All right, so staff is recommending that city council open the public hearing and take testimony, if any, and then adopt the resolution approving the fiscal year 26-27 through 2030-31 capital improvement program for the city of Hemet. I'm here if you have any questions.

Any clarifying questions you want to ask before I open the public hearing?

Can we go back to chart 19, please?

To chart 19? Or page 19.

Page 19, okay. Okay, security camera systems upgrade. Is this things to do here?

I'm sorry?

Are these things that we're planning in the near future?

It's actually in progress right now, being installed at City Hall right now.

Are we working on the corporation yard?

That hasn't started yet. Right now they're starting at City Hall.

Can we hold that corporation yard because we're not sure what's going to take place there? I'd hate to put up cameras and have to remove them right after.

I mean, we can take a look at that, but I think it's going to be, you know, two to three years minimum between now and by the time we would move anyway.

I thought this was something that was happening within the year or next year.

It would always take, you know, a couple of years to get a new corporation yard constructed before we could move into it.

Oh, I got you. Okay. So you still want cameras there until then? What's the cost in putting cameras up?

I don't recall exactly the split. I think we brought that to council a few months ago. It was taken by IT. And I'd have to- Tens of thousands? Total, with all the three facilities, I believe, yes.

I'm just saying that we're trying to save cost here and putting them up and then having to take them down right afterwards is just an added cost. We've done without cameras this long, so.

I have it in the CIP as $329,000. How much? $329,000. Oh, my God. We're all three of those.

Ten times more than what they should cost, but okay.

Okay. All righty. At this time, I'll open the public hearing. City Clerk, do we have any registered speakers, either for or against this item?

No registered speakers, Mayor.

All right. With that, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to council. Whoa, we are getting that echo again. Any questions or comments from council members?

I have one more question.

Alrighty.

In my notes, I have something about an enterprise permitting and licensing system for economic development. Can you tell me what that entails?

Yes, that is an existing CIP. That's for our new Tyler system. They're our new permitting software.

We're permitting? Yes. And when is that due to go in?

That is due to go live on August 11th.

This year? Mm-hmm. Good, because we need it. Okay, thank you.

Mm-hmm. Other council members, questions?

Nice report. Thank you. Lots to do, really lots to do. So, the facilities, sidewalk, library, badge, and those kind of things, those are within this year's?

Everything that's projected for 26-27 is being allocated for this year, plus the current allocations. Okay.

That's all I needed.

Thank you. Good job.

Councilmember Lodge?

Thank you for putting on the lights.

You're welcome. Yeah. Councilmember Peterson. I'm good. Okay. I do have a few questions and some comments. As far as the, this is in the already appropriated dollars of the $73 million that we hope is going to get done very soon. Do we have a timeframe on the Warren-Devonshire traffic signal?

So that is still an environmental right now. I actually have a meeting the beginning of August with RCA because we have to do some temporary construction easements. So it is moving along, but environmental, as you know, is not fast.

Okay. And is the Esplanade improvements that are going to go in with San Jacinto, does that include the traffic signal at Warren and Esplanade?

That is going in as part of the San Jacinto project, yeah.

Okay. All righty. Very good. And the catch basin trash capture devices, that's in progress, correct?

That is going out for bid in the next couple weeks, yes.

Okay. And the Stetson Channel gates that we've been talking about for, what, three years now?

Yes, so there is a gas line that crosses the channel right there. And so the cost to build another beam and put that on is quite expensive. So I actually just had a meeting today with flood control about that we're looking at potential alternatives that would be less cost effective. Otherwise, cost is pretty high. It's a lot higher than what we budgeted. So trying to work out every option that we could have to lower the cost.

Okay, I appreciate that. And just kudos for the left turn pocket at Kirby in Florida, protected left turn. That is a major step forward on the information that Caltrans almost grudgingly gave us last year, that this was something we could do across their state highway. But I'm thinking that maybe sometime in the near future we could, instead of, because there's other streets that need that same thing, But one of the major problems, intersections, is State and Florida. And if we could talk to Caltrans maybe about doing the traffic flow at State and Florida the same way it's at San Jacinto and Florida. East-West goes at the same time, which is fine because they have turnpockets. But north-south is the issue. But if we could have northbound going at one time and southbound going at another time, that would alleviate a lot of the problems at state and state in Florida. Okay. Just something to think about. Yeah. Maybe ask .

I'll bring that up in our next quarterly meeting, yeah.

Appreciate that. And I do not have any comments. Do we have any other public comment of any kind on this item?

No, we don't.

Okay. Then can I have a motion from council?

I would like to propose to adopt the following resolution of 2026-123 for the City Council of Hemet to approve the fiscal year 2026-27 through 2030 through 2031 capital improvement program CIP for the City of Hemet. Authorize the Administrative Services Director to establish total project appropriations in accordance with the CIP for new requests only.

All right. May I have a second?

Second it.

We have a motion and a second. Everybody, please use your little monitors to vote. Is that coming up? You all voted?

Are we all voting? I thought I voted.

You want no?

Yeah, I put no. Okay. As long as we're gonna be putting cameras in a place where it's temporary, I'm not gonna vote yes on it.

Okay. And you confirm, yep. Did everybody confirm? Yep. Okay.

I've got mine.

Okay, that passes with four affirmative and one no vote from Mayor Pro Tem Mayles. Moving on to our receive and file. Are there any questions or comments on anything on the receive and file? No?

I don't have any.

I do have some clerical corrections on the strategic plan. We have several items that says was approved by council on December 9th of 2026. We haven't reached 2026 yet. But I'll get with you afterwards. And that was the those were the only things and I also wanted to just say on the quarterly grant report that the amount of grant money received in the city on this is $1,986,918. So we are doing quite well on that. Thank you, staff, for all of the effort you're putting in on that. And with nothing else further, these items are received and filed. Moving on to the consent calendar. All consent calendar items will be enacted simultaneously unless requested by an individual council member for separate consideration. Are there any members of the council that would like to pull any consent items for separate consideration? Okay, 17G. 17G, yes. As in George?

As in George.

All righty. Any other items?

17N. N as in Nancy? 17G.

Let's start with you said 17 N is in Nancy.

Okay.

Anyone else have any items to pull? No. No. If I could have a motion to approve Items A, D, E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, and O.

Did you say M and N? No, M, A, and D, and O. I'll make a motion to approve those items you just listed. All right.

And I will second it.

We have a motion and a second to approve those items. We can vote on those items. Everybody's voted and confirmed? It takes a little getting used to this new system.

Okay?

And that passes 5-0, 5-0. So okay, moving to item B.

I'M LOOKING AT THE TOTAL INVESTMENTS HERE, THE TOTAL EARNINGS, BUT I'M JUST WONDERING, OH, OKAY, THANK YOU. WITHIN INTEREST RATES WHERE THEY ARE TODAY, ARE WE MAXIMIZING OUR INVESTMENT EARNINGS WHILE STILL MAINTAINING LIQUIDITY NEEDED FOR THE CITY'S OPERATIONS? I MEAN, I'M LOOKING AT.

ARE YOU ON THE RIGHT ONE?

B, RIGHT?

ITEM B UNDER THE CONSENT CALENDAR, NOT UNDER THE RECEIVING FILE.

I am so sorry. Okay, the purchase on Tim Moran. Right. It's a $90,000 purchase that we've made also in the 2024, 2025, and now 2026. And I'm just wondering, in 2024 and 2025, did we use the entire $90,000 in each year?

So, in fiscal year 24-25, we used a little over $85,000, and then this last year, 25-26, we were a little over $87,000.

Okay. So, pretty close to 90. Pretty close, yeah. My question is, even on 17 , which is the next one that I pulled, we utilize a NASPO Value Point Cooperative Purchasing Contract, which provides competitive bid pricing for items . I'm just wondering why we didn't use some type of competitive bidding process for also.

So with B is Tim Moran Ford. And so with that as genuine Ford parts, motorcraft and genuine Ford parts, there's not really a way to – they have their MSRP pricing. So if we do go out to bid with that, really what you would do is ask your Ford dealerships in the area what kind of discount they give you off of MSRP. Other than that, you would have to list 10,000 parts from oil filters to drain plugs to wiper blades and get a price on every single item. We did look out, and there are a couple cities have done it that are in larger areas with dealers all around them. And they just did the discount off of MSRP. So Tim Moran does give us a discount. They give us a legit discount. Plus, they're right around the corner from our corporate yard, so the availability for parts and service is super fast.

Well, I'm happy we're using our local car dealerships. I like that idea. I just was wondering why we didn't use some type of value point cooperative purchasing unit in order to get our parts, so.

Usually when they do those co-ops, they go out and they reach out to a bunch of different places and get competitive pricing from different people. With this, it's just Ford parts. So we could do the same thing and just reach out to the local Ford dealers, but you'd have to go to Temecula, Riverside, Redlands, LA, and just ask for those because they are Ford OEM parts.

Okay, so thank you for answering that. I pulled B and C because I was using C as the guideline for what they did there. So I'll go ahead and approve both 17B and C. All right.

We have a motion to approve B and C. Is there a second? I'll second it. There's a second? Okay.

Thank you, Greg.

All righty, everybody vote. And those two passed 5-0. Moving on to item 17G, Mr. Lodge.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, I was just wondering if we could table this for until our next meeting. I need some more information before this is approved.

No, you can't get the information tonight?

No, I can't. I've been trying. Noah's been trying. Unless we have it.

We should have all the information that's necessary. I've briefed PD and they're ready to answer questions.

Hi. You snuck up on me.

Ask Captain Brock anything you want.

Okay. It doesn't seem like we should be spending another $50,000 on this when it's, are we paying for the roll off, number one, the dumpster?

So I'm not sure if the city's paying for the roll-off. I know that the Valley Salvage gave two quotes in terms of fees, $1,225 if no roll-off's provided, $200 per linear foot if the roll-off is provided.

So a 30-foot motorhome is costing us $7,500 to destroy, basically. Yes, sir. That's ridiculous. There are other tow companies in town. Every other entity around us, RSO, San Jacinto, everybody else makes the tow company just eat it. I don't see, you know, we don't have a lot of money, so I don't see why we're spending this. I'm just wondering what, out of the rotation, how many does he actually pick up or does he subcontract out to be picked up? How many will be picked up since January? You know, there's just little stuff I'd like to know.

Yes, sir, and I do have some of those answers for you.

Okay.

So originally after council passed the ordinance in November to approve this ordinance, a request for qualifications went out. Those qualifications were spelled out in the ordinance saying if you would like to do this for the city, you have to meet these qualifications. Based on that request for qualifications, the city received one qualified respondent. So that was the person that they went with. However, there is a provision in the ordinance that if there's other companies that would like to join that rotation, there's a way for them to do it in the ordinance. In terms of numbers, we received, the police department received a notice to proceed from the city in March. Since March, the police department has had 11 RVs towed. Out of those 11, four have been returned to the owner after they pay storage fees and things of that nature. Five have been lien sold, and let me make sure I have my numbers right here. or five are facing lien and two are pending dismantling. So none have been dismantled at this part because it's a long process before that company is allowed to do that.

Well, yeah, it's a 30-day, and then you've got to drain all the fluids. Correct. I'm just trying to think of other ways to save on this cost. I mean... I like this whole ordinance from the beginning and getting the blood off the streets, but there's gotta be a cheaper way to do it.

And we don't know that we'll use all of that money at this point since it's our first year. It's our best guess. We went back in our records to examine how many RVs were towed in the past, use that to make an assumption on how many will be in the following year. Right now, since March to July, in the four months, we only have two pending dismantling. So it's lower than what we thought, and that's what we're hoping for.

Yeah. This is just an allocation, so it doesn't mean that they're going to actually spend that much.

Yeah.

It's like budgeted. Yeah. Okay.

I have a question. So the motorhome and the owner of the motorhome, is there any retribution? for the money that we're having to pay for to do these services being put back on the owner?

Not that I'm aware of, but I can ask the city attorney.

So under our code, these vehicles are designated as public nuisances. And we do have general authority to seek reimbursement for the cost of abating public nuisances. So in theory, yes. In practicality, our tools are primarily aimed at enforcing that recovery against real property. And since many of these are not tied to a specific parcel of real property, it is oftentimes challenging to find a hook that we can leverage in order to get that cost recovery it doesn't mean we don't try it just means you won't see that as often in these cases as you would in the traditional code enforcement case can we try i mean we can try i mean it's somebody's purchase that is now our problem i'll give you i'll give you two examples right um if you had a rv that was operating as a public nuisance on a piece of private property so for example on someone's driveway right then we would have a nexus to proceed with cost recovery against that property however if the rv that was the public nuisance was either trespassing or or operating on public right of way, we wouldn't have that nexus to go after the real property to seek the recovery. Now, there are other ways, but as a practical matter, we're looking at somebody who has an asset we can attach. And if you're living on public streets in an RV that's a public nuisance, you're unlikely to have a lot of assets that we can attach. Oh, I get it.

I get that. A lot of times they are gifted to these people. But that still doesn't negate the responsibility of the person that purchased it originally.

I see where you're coming from. You know, we tend to, when we're attempting to get cost recovery, we don't want to spend more money chasing it than we would recover. Right. But we can certainly evaluate to make sure that we're looking at each case and if there is a viable recovery method that we are pursuing it. We're not just writing them all off.

My experience has been most of them has just been tweaker mobiles. No, I know. I wouldn't lay a dead dog in those. I mean, they're just disgusting.

No, they need to go.

100%.

No, I'm not arguing that.

The amount that we're spending for... potentially spending on dismantling them. There's got to be a cheaper way. Make a deal with the dump or something, you know, haul them up there.

Can you two make sure that you're on microphone when you're talking?

Make a deal with the dump and haul them up there after the fluids are drained, you know, or whatever, take them to the corporate yard, which they wouldn't like, but cut them up, put them in the roll-up in there. There's got to be, even though the money's allocated, I just, I just think there's got to be a cheaper way. Thank you very much.

You're welcome, sir.

Okay.

Do you have anything else for me?

Unless you have any more questions.

I don't have a lot of questions. No, I'm good, thanks.

We entertain a motion or a denial.

Pardon me?

You have to make a motion or a denial, to approve or deny.

I deny this motion right now, the 17G, the funding on the Tow Rotation Motorhome Vehicle Program.

Okay. You're making a motion to deny. Is there a second to this motion? Okay. Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to approve.

I make a motion to approve 17G.

All right. Is there a second? I'll second it. Please vote. And that passes four affirmative and one no vote from Councilmember Lodge. All right. Thank you very much. Moving on to item 17N, as in Nancy.

Mr. Mayles, that's you. Yes. Anybody at the podium? Or am I talking to you?

Just me, sir. Can you step over there, please?

No, I'm just kidding. Okay, my question is, March 11, 2025, we had a signed contract with Townsend for $90,000, and they were going to be our mouthpiece in either Sacramento, Washington, and other things, and for grants. June 8th of 2026, we get a second amendment for $30,000. That was just last month. Now, July 14th, 2026, they're asking for another $100,000. My questions are, let me get to my questions. Can staff summarize the measurable results Townsend has achieved since March 2025 to, what am I looking for? I'm sorry? To justify the cost. Thank you, sir.

So obviously, I haven't been in this seat the whole time, so I don't, I'm not intimately familiar with all of the grants that they've worked on, but they have worked on several that I've worked on, and they've provided very valuable input. One of those was an earmark that we did receive, and that was where we got some funding for State Street.

They get a percentage of the grants when they give us, or?

They do not.

They do not. What other resources have they provided?

And they're very efficient in getting letters of support and talking to all of the representatives and helping the city position itself to get as much funding as possible. I do have routine calls with them to get legislative updates as well as grant updates.

Whatever they do for us legislatively.

They provide letters of support and letters of opposition that follow our legislative platform.

Isn't that what he's here for?

No. He said no.

Just for lawful information. Okay, I got it. Okay. That's okay. So you're justifying the 30,000, now 100,000 additional.

And the 100,000 is because it's expanding in through this fiscal year. The rest of it was for, it's based on time.

The only reason Tom and I are asking these questions is because here we put a freeze on a lot of our first responders. And we're here spending money that, like, we have money to spend, which I was told a meeting or two ago we're at a deficit of $4.0 million or something like that. You are absolutely correct. And that's why I voted no on the other agenda item that went through, because I don't believe we should be putting cameras in a – in a area where we don't even know if it's gonna be there in two years, three years. It's wasting $200,000 or $300,000 of what he said the cost or she said the costs were. And so I'm just looking at savings and I think we're all looking for savings.

Yeah, and in this item, I think I can say that I think they'll pay for themselves, and I think we'll get, you know, we'll collect money from grants that they will help us get, and that'll help fund their costs.

Can I get someone from administration to give me a second on that? Absolutely.

Okay. I'd like to point out, too, that we used to have a funded position and a person that did the grants, and we have that unfilled now, so we're saving money from that job.

And frozen, yes.

Yes, it's frozen. So we're saving money on that person, plus, like Noah said, they're helping us get money.

Okay, so you're telling me that they've given us more than $220,000 in grants?

I know we received over 800,000 on the earmark that they helped us obtain, and I know there's other ones that they've helped us get in other departments as well. Okay.

All right. I appreciate that. I'll go ahead and approve 17N.

Okay. There's a motion to approve. Is there a second? I will second it. Please vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, moving on to discussion action items. Our first one is 18 A. And can we please have a staff report on the introduction and first reading of ordinance number 2079, amending and restating chapter 66, Article Two of the Hemet Municipal Code regarding excavation, street cuts, encroachments and restoration of public right of ways. Who's going to do this?

Would the interim city manager like to introduce it before I get into the details, or do you just want to take it?

You can go ahead and take it.

OK. Mayor and council, the proposed ordinance is a new modern uniform and legally supportable framework for managing excavation and related work within the city streets. And I can go through the principal provisions if the council would like. Very good. So I would say that from an overall policy perspective, The council has emphasized restoration of the city streets. And one of the things that I think hurts more than anything is after we've used the limited funds that we have for this endeavor to create a section of beautiful, pristine, uniform asphalt and striping, and then someone comes along six months later and does a three-foot-wide trench down the middle of it that not only is aesthetically displeasing, but also structurally impacts the quality and longevity and life of that major infrastructure asset that the city just invested a significant amount of money in. And so, in looking at the existing ordinance that we had, existing ordinance did have a basic framework for permitting and rules, but it really lacked that uniform standards on what the city expects if you as a utility, the city itself, private developers who need to do street cuts, what the city expects. And so having put that in an ordinance and expressly authorizing the city engineer to develop those city standards, what we hope to see is, one, the investments that the city council makes in the streets last longer and continue to look better. Two, you will have uniformity across the entire community if you have a utility operating on the east side of the city their rehabilitation work should look the same as a utility operating on the other side of the city we're not asking any utility developer or anyone else to subsidize the paving of the streets We are asking that they do no harm to the investment that the city council and the city have made. There are, we've enhanced the moratorium that the city already had on street cuts in newly repaved roads. And we've discussed a lot about the objective and technical standards for when a excavator needs to go beyond that three foot wide cut that drives everybody crazy and move towards when they need to do a full lane width repavement, when they perhaps may even, based on the cumulative amount of damage that they've done to the street, when they may be required to do a half width or even full width improvement to the infrastructure that they've affected. I think the critical part of this is that this is uniformly applicable. This applies to the city itself, right? So these rules would be applicable to us as much as they would be to anybody, and it's to ensure that we are continuing to treat this asset. Well, the other side of this is that the city is looking at liability minimization. That's been a significant issue for the past several years. One of the city's greatest liability events was directly related to the public right of way and another agency's involvement in the right of way. The city cannot wash its hands when a utility, another public agency or private third party enters into our right of way and someone gets hurt. We are inevitably going to be one of the parties that is sued. I'm not pointing any fingers. It's happened multiple times. But in each case, ensuring that we have an active permit with indemnification in favor of the city and adequate insurance that protects the city will ensure that the city's limited general fund resources can continue to fund public safety and infrastructure improvements and not fund legal bills and settlements and judgments. So I think that covers the majority of it. I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have. This has been a long-standing conversation that we have had with our water districts, the gas company, private developers, and I think one of the things that has come up over and over and over again is everyone wants to be treated the same. And so that's one of the things we wanted to have here was a uniform framework that we can apply to everybody that is fair. Happy to answer any questions.

I do have a question. When we open up the road or we're doing work, are the other agencies that are pertinent to that area also notified?

That's a great question for your interim city manager slash public works director.

it all depends on the on the location and what we know is there and if it's an emergency or if it's you know planned work, but if we know there's a gas line right next to the work we're going to be doing, they would be on site, as we do any excavations so basically, yes, they are told, because I know like him it's real good about. There is always coordination between the other utilities, yes.

Okay, because there is nothing worse than to come by a road that's been rehabbed and then.

I think to your question is the city lets the utilities know in advance of our upcoming CIP projects. Maybe, Noah, you can talk about that. So they know when we're going to be redoing the street so they can get their work done first.

Okay.

Yes, and currently it's at least like the year as we just, you know, updated our CIP and we know what the locations are going to be, we advise all the utilities where we're going to be paving, and we give them an opportunity to come in and do any work that they need to do before we come in and pave. And if we have to delay that paving because they've notified us and said that they have work to do, we will delay the paving until that can be completed. Well, sure. That makes sense.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from council?

Have our local utilities providers seen this ordinance and have they, you know, gave their information and put on anything that they don't like on here?

So, this ordinance was published as part of the backup and made publicly available, but did we specifically send it to every utility that we deal with? The answer is no. I'm not aware of any feedback that we've received. We will, this ordinance implements a framework. I believe that the issues that utilities may have are with the city standards that get adopted pursuant to the ordinance. But those standards are going to be basically best practices, Green Book and Caltrans standards. So there may be some conversation back and forth. I'm aware of at least one. public agency who disputes any ability of the city to regulate their activity in the public right away. But I don't think that there's a valid legal justification for that position. And having a well written uniformly applicable ordinance will allow us I think, to move the ball forward in the discussions about agency.

Is there any clause you can put in and if they don't fix the street to probably properly maintain cars, motorcycles and if they get an accident from a dip or something that caves in that they're responsible for?

So, you know, one of the important parts of the ordinance is it does allow us to enter into memorandums of understanding and annual permit agreements, especially with those operators who are in the right of way as a regular matter, of course. And one of the provisions that we'd want in there is indemnification and insurance in favor of the city. That doesn't mean that they're going to ensure the city for every accident that occurs. But if an incident is directly attributable to the work that they've done, perhaps they put their traffic cones out incorrectly. Perhaps their contractor did a poor job in the work that they did, resulting in a popped tire or a bent rim. The city's taxpayers, especially the general fund, shouldn't be subsidizing their liability. Right? And so I think that's where this comes from. So that would be a conversation we would have with them. In our experience with the public agencies, the utilities that we've talked with, almost all of them universally understand this. And it's not controversial. Thank you.

Any other questions from council? Nope. Do we have any public comments on this card?

Yes, we have one public comment. Nick Canitas? Yes.

Make sure the green light is on.

Green light is on. Okay. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, members of City Council. My name is Nick Kinetis. I'm the Deputy General Manager with the East Emissible Water District. And I have a number of prepared statements regarding ordinance number 2079, specifically related to the process, the collaboration, the need for review. But before I get there, I do want to start by saying that EMWD truly values its longstanding partnership with the City of Hemet. EMWD shares the city's goal. of maintaining safe, high-quality public infrastructure and streets for the residents and businesses of both agencies' customers that we serve. In fact, EMWD has been engaged with the city for a number of years with a desire to establish an agreement setting forth standards and other requirements for EMWD to complete street repairs associated with its water system work. These ongoing discussions have continued up until most recently just last week with what I believe was a very positive and productive meeting with your interim director of public works and assistant city engineer. So this is why we're a little surprised and disappointed with what appears to be a lack of stakeholder outreach and collaborative process leading up to today's introduction of this ordinance. This comprehensive, highly technical rewrite of the city's paving requirements is a major policy overhaul. Yet EMWD's first opportunity to review the draft was only when it was published as a part of the public agenda packet for tonight's meeting. For an ordinance that explicitly seeks to regulate public agencies, water districts, and critical utility infrastructure, introducing it without any prior consultation with those major stakeholders is highly unusual. and counterproductive. Good public policy requires collaborative drafting, not unilateral action. EMWD has not had a reasonable opportunity to fully analyze the operational, financial, and legal implications of Ordinance Number 279. While the draft ordinance purports to apply to municipal water districts, EMWD has yet completed its legal evaluation of the text, EMW expressly reserves its position on whether and to what extent these municipal regulations can legally apply to municipal water districts operating under state statutory authority to maintain its own water system. Rushing this draft forward without joint review with stakeholders risk creating conflicting standards, slowing down emergency utility repairs, and potentially driving up costs for city residents. So to ensure a meaningful collaborative process, EMWD respectfully requests that the city council postpone the second reading and adoption of ordinance number 279 to a date at least 60 days out and ask that the city attorney and the city manager meet with EMWD technical and legal teams during this interim window. In closing, I'd just like to say that EMWD is a community partner. We serve the same residents and businesses as a city, and we look forward to working collaboratively toward a framework for street paving and restoration that works with both agencies and the community. Again, thank you for your time. Appreciate your consideration.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Question for city manager and legal. Since this is the first reading, our second reading would be in 30 days, and then this ordinance would become effective 30 days after that. Is that correct?

That's correct, Mayor. So because the City Council only has one meeting in July and one meeting in August, the earliest this could go into effect is approximately 60 days from today.

Okay, so that would take care of your 60 days for conferring with staff on getting an MOU between and having all the specifications. Because while I agree with you on a lot of that, I stand very firmly on the decision that this council can make regs and ordinances that apply to the city in the best interest of the city.

Yes, we're estimating approximately 60 days to work with the city attorney and city manager to really just understand the ordinance and work through any differences of opinions that we may have on it. Absolutely. 60 days is, we think, a reasonable timeframe.

Okay. Very good. Thank you, Nick. Mayor, I did just want to point out that the ordinance specifically contemplates an annual or blanket permit that can be applied for by a utility, another public agency, or some other entity that is doing recurring work within the right-of-way. So there wouldn't be a requirement to come in and get a permit for every single time that they need to do work. This is something that we've negotiated with other public agencies without incident in the city.

All right. Okie doke. ARE THERE ANY OTHER PUBLIC SPEAKERS ON THIS ITEM?

NO OTHER SPEAKERS.

THANK YOU. COUNCIL, ENTERTAIN MOTION OR DENIAL?

I WOULD LIKE TO move it on to its second reading that gives him 60 days before anything. I fully support because citizens speak very clearly about our roads. And so when we're investing our taxpayer money, that's we're doing it in their good faith.

Okay. So let me clarify that. A motion to approve in a second. We vote on this. This is the initial reading. Second reading would be in 30 days. It would become an ordinance 30 days after that, which is 60 days. Oops, time to negotiate the annual whatever. This additional step we have to take with those utilities.

That's correct, Mayor. So today it is introduction and first reading. Okay. At your next meeting, approximately a month from now, we would have second reading and adoption. And we can certainly give the council an update on discussions that have occurred since today. That would be appreciated. At that point. And then if the council adopted it on that day, it would go into effect 30 days after that. Okay. Very good. Yes.

Because we do have our partners, our utility partners that we work with on all of these things. But our main goal here is our streets. yeah yeah oh yeah especially with the 32 million we've sunk sunk into them in the last couple years so we have a motion by council member clark all right and a second by council member male i'm sorry mayor pro tem males everybody vote

And Mayor, before everyone votes, if I can read the title into the record, please.

Absolutely. I jumped the gun there.

Ordinance number 2079, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Hemet, California, amending and restating Chapter 66, Article 2 of the Hemet Municipal Code regarding excavations, street cuts, encroachments, and restoration of public rights of way. All right. Now you can vote.

and that passes 5-0. Very good. Moving on to 18b, can we have a staff report on 18b?

I will be kicking that off once we get the PowerPoint brought up. This agenda item represents an important step in the council's ongoing efforts to address the city's long-term financial sustainability while maintaining the essential services our residents rely on every day. I don't have a clicker though. We'll pass this back and forth. All right, the items I'm gonna cover is gonna be the current financial status of the city, updates on our road conditions. We're gonna get an update from the fire department, an update from the police department. We will get a presentation of a recent feasibility study. We'll get a technical and procedural overview from the city attorney. And then finally, we'll get a recommendation. So several of these slides you might recognize from some recent budget workshops or budget adoption. This table here shows the city's revenue trends each fiscal year since 22, 23. I will highlight that while inflation rates have steadily increased over this time, the revenues have lagged and sales tax, if it had an increased with the inflation, we would be seeing an additional 4 million in revenues today. And this slide illustrates the significant cost drivers over the same time period as the last slide showed the revenue trends. As you can see, the liability costs being the largest cost driver, there's many cost drivers here that have increased much higher and larger than revenues. So if you recall, starting with our first council budget workshop, we had started off with a $13.3 million deficit. Several cost reduction measures were implemented between that workshop and the workshop on May 12th, where we brought it down to a $7.5 million workshop. $1 million deficit at that workshop. Then on June 9th, we received some further good news in regard to the SAFER grant extension and took some additional measures to get the deficit down to a $4.5 million deficit. When we brought the budget for adoption on June 23rd, we had made some additional cost-saving measures, and we ended up being right around the $4 million structural deficit. I'll note that several of the cost-reduction measures taken this year will not be sustainable long-term, and the true problem is larger than $4 million. For example, the Safer Grant will expire, and there will be no more extensions or savings in that realm. In 2024, the council adopted a 40% revenue policy reserve policy for the general fund. This is projected to decrease and require a revision to the policy by the end of this fiscal year, as we're projected to be down to a 32% reserve. I'm going to briefly talk about our pavement and our road conditions. The bar chart represents the total pavement area that the city is responsible for maintaining. And then it's categorized by the pavement condition index category. And that's anywhere from very poor to excellent. The pavement condition index is a rating from zero to 100 with 100 being like a brand new perfect street and zero being completely failed. The chart on the left is from our 2022 pavement survey and the chart on the right is from our 2025 survey. as a side note we'll be getting a full report pretty soon on our 2025 survey as you can see we've made some serious progress over these three years bringing the pci from a 52 up to a 63. this is because the council made some additional investments and made fixing the roads a priority and provide additional funding during this time the effort cost around 36 million dollars However, it is estimated in present dollars to take an additional 44 million to get our network from the 63 up to a 70 and 77 million to get it from that 63 up to a 75 PCI. At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to our acting fire chief, Kevin Coleman.

THERE IT IS. GOT IT. YOU GUYS HEAR THAT? OKAY.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF COUNCIL, AND OUR CITY MANAGER.

THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TONIGHT TO SPEAK TO YOU. MY NAME IS KEVIN COLEMAN, BATTALION CHIEF AT THE CITY OF HEMET. I AM HERE ACTING FIRE CHIEF, OUR CURRENT INTERIM FIRE CHIEFS ON VACATION. I want to take a few moments to talk about some of the current and future challenges that our fire department continues to deal with on a daily basis. While we've made some meaningful improvements over the last few years, the demand for service increases and it continues to outpace our resources. One of the biggest things that we have to deal with, obviously, is population growth. A growing community equates to additional call volume, both on the fire and the EMS side. The city of Hema is projected to experience a 54 percent increase over the next 16 years in residential growth. OUR POPULATION IS GROWING AT ABOUT A 9.3% RATE FASTER THAN THOSE IN THE RIVERSIDE COUNTY. SO AS CITY POPULATION GROWS, SO DOES THE DEMAND FOR SERVICES AND FOR FIRE AND EMS. included in that problem is our response times. So our response times for either a fire truck or an ambulance, a squad, or whatever unit it is, is a combination of dispatch time, it's a combination of turnout time from when we receive the dispatch in the station, and then the travel time to the scene. NFPA recommends six and a half minutes, 90% of the calls for us to get to on scene. In 2024, our average response time was seven minutes, 23 seconds. To McSweeney Ranch, we were about seven minutes, 36 seconds. In four seasons, you can see well over 10 minutes. October of 25, with the help of the SAFER grant, we were able to implement Squad 4, which is now Medic Patrol 4, and you've seen a reduce in the average response times citywide by 24 seconds. Unfortunately, this unit is currently funded by that SAFER grant that city manager Noah was talking about earlier, which expires March 1st of 2027. You also see on this graph overall average starting in 2014 of about 8 minutes, 30 seconds. It continued to grow, and then it went down in 2018 and 2019 to 7 minutes, 8, and 7.21. And the reason it went down during that period of time is we implemented a squad at Station 1 at that period of time. And then the squad went away due to budget reasons. And then we we ended up increasing our call volume after COVID in 2021. And we're having an average overall of about eight minutes, 28 seconds. But overall, with the new squad, things have improved greatly. It allows that domino effect that occurs within the city of Hemet to decrease. Call volume. This graph right here shows from 2018 to 2025, increase of about 15 percent from 2018 to 2025. We went from about 17,000 calls to almost 20,000 calls just this last year. The NFPA recommendation is 2,500 responses for every fire engine. Once you hit that 2,500-unit response, that's the justification for additional units out of that station. If you look at the graph and the The spreadsheet on the right, you'll see in 2018, everything that was in pink, everything that's listed there, engine one, two, and three, were over 2,500 calls at that time. Fast forward to 2025, you've got almost all of our units well over 2,500 calls. So, we were maxed out on the number of responses that we can handle per unit. Call concentration. You'll see on this map, and this is a heat map, it'll show the outer areas that are kind of a grayish color as it centers into the middle of the city in Station 1, 2's, and 3's district to the hotter areas where you'll see the majority of our calls. And these are concurrent calls that happen at the same time, and these are concentrated calls. The problem is you'll see the outer areas of the city, whether it's south to McSweeney Ranch, if you see it out to the west at Four Seasons, or you see it out to the east at Station 5. When we have structure fires, traffic accidents, things such as that, we pull all of our units into the center of the city. You have a cardiac arrest, a drowning, a car accident, or another fire in other parts of the city, then that's when you have problems. It creates additional challenges for us to cover all those calls during that period of time. Cost considerations. Cost to construct a fire station is approximately $1,000 per square foot. A standard two-bay fire station costs approximately $10 million to build. NFPA estimates the working lifespan of a fire station is approximately 40 to 50 years. Three of our fire stations right now are at that period of time. One of them is a double-wide that was put in in 2006 that was supposed to be temporary. Recommendations. So you guys might have seen this in the past. Our ex-deputy chief, Ryan Webb, put this together. The stations that are in green on this map are either new stations or relocated. In the center of the map is going to be Station 1. It was just remodeled this last year, and it has a very good working life still established with it. Station 2 definitely needs a new remodel. Station 3, I know some of the council members have visited Station 3, and we have some major problems at Station 3 with termites and the location. It needs to be not only rebuilt but relocated, and you'll see the section there where it's relocated. Station 4 is in good working condition. Station 5 is the double wide that I mentioned. The location is a good location. We just need to build a new fire station on that location. Station 6 would be south near McSweeney Ranch. I know we do have some funds available for that already. Station 7 would be proposed out near Four Seasons and cut that long response time from 10 minutes down. And then Station 8 would be out towards the west side, west of Station 4, but there's no city-owned land available for that as of yet. Any questions for fire department?

No?

Thank you.

I'm shorter. All right, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, city staff. Thanks for letting me talk tonight, and I'll... Just going over some of the stuff that we've, thanks to your guys' support and the hard work for our men and women, we have seen a dramatic property crime and violent crime drop, trending down over the last couple years. We've been in a good place overall for the city and our department. We're already property crime for 2024. We won't get the 2025 hard numbers until about October when FBI releases them. But Hemet is trending down below the state average, and we're on par with the national average as far as property crime.

Whoops, and I messed that one up.

ON OUR VIOLENT CRIME TRENDS, AGAIN, WE'RE TRENDING DOWN. WE'VE BEEN TRENDING DOWN FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. AND I'M PROUD TO SAY THAT HEMET IS BELOW THE CALIFORNIA AVERAGE FOR VIOLENT CRIME. AND WE'RE TRENDING CLOSER TO THE NATIONAL AVERAGE. So just looking at some of our numbers, again, the 2025 numbers, these are our in-house numbers, so we're not quite the official FBI numbers yet. We have been tracking down on our violent crimes or crimes against persons. You will note that you may see four homicides for 2025, but two of those were ruled self-defense by the DA's office. We're just waiting for those numbers to change. But everything else has been trending down, including our rapes, robberies, aggregated assaults. RAPID START PROPERTY CRIME, AGAIN, EVERYTHING IS TRENDING DOWN EXCEPT FOR LARCENY, WHICH IS OUR THEFT. WE KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO GO UP BECAUSE WITH OUR ORGANIZED RETAIL THEFT GRANT THAT WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, WE'VE BEEN DEVELOPING A BETTER BOND WITH ALL THE LOCAL RETAIL STORES, AND WE'VE MADE A LOT MORE ARRESTS FOR THE SHOPLIFTING, TAKING A ZERO TOLERANCE STANCE ON THE RETAIL THEFT SIDE OF THINGS. Since Major U, we've been, again, with your guys' support and the hard work of our men and women here, we've seen a constant increase in staffing, which has in turn provided better services for our citizens. Our current authorized positions are 85. That's after the six frozen positions for this fiscal year. We have 84 of those 85 positions filled. We have incorporated a couple of reserve police officers. One thing I'm excited about is our police volunteers. We're almost up to pre-COVID numbers. During COVID, unfortunately, we dropped down to the 30s. We've been trying really hard to boost our citizen volunteers, and we're almost up to 60 now. I believe the highest we were in the 70s at one point in time pre-COVID. So if we look at our volunteers plus our budgeted positions, we're around 196 positions at the department. If you have any questions, I can answer them now. I think we've done a lot of great things at the PD and just looking forward to what we can do in the future. Who's turn is this?

All right, now we have Adam from FM3 that's gonna present the polling results.

Hi, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, Adam Sonenschein with FM3 Research. Happy to be here to share the results of our recent public opinion research study that we did on behalf of the City of Hemet. Starting off with the methodology of how we went about doing this survey. This was conducted May 19th to the 28th of this year. We were conducting this survey among people registered to vote in the city that would be considered likely to vote in the November 2026 election, meaning they have a past voting history. or they've recently registered in an active form that shows an interest in the upcoming election. We have a margin of error for questions asked of everybody of plus or minus, let's call it five for easier math. There are places in the survey where half the people were asked wording a little different than the other half of people. In those cases, the margin of error is higher because we're looking at half the number of respondents. We reached people a few different ways. We did phone calls with live telephone interviewers on both cell phones and landlines. We also sent emails and text message invitations for people to take the survey online. They could do one or the other, not both. And the online survey is protected. It's not like one of the ones that shows up on Facebook or next door and you could take it 20 times and send it to all your friends. We have some history here doing surveys for the city going back to all the way to 2008. We offered the survey in English and Spanish. You might see something that doesn't quite add up to 100% because we've rounded decimal points. Starting with the perception of funding need for the city, you can see some of that tracking information here. We asked two questions at the top. It's, do they think there's a need for additional funding to provide the level of city services that residents need and want? The bottom, it's specifically for public safety services in Hemet. So, these are two separate questions. In both cases, in the current results, the May 2026 results, it's in the mid-70s percentage of voters who think there's a great or some need, 73 percent. When we look at the general question of need, 74 percent for public safety. You can see in general, it's always been in that 70, 75, 73 percent range, again, going back 10 years. For public safety, similarly, you know, 74, 66, 70, 72 over time, within a pretty similar range to each other, even after you've had some prior measures and changes going on in the community. We, primarily in this survey, were charged with testing the viability of a measure, whether if you put something on the ballot, it would be likely to be supported by voters. We find the best way to do that is to draft a 75-word ballot question and see how voters respond to that. Not trying to get ahead of you, not saying this is the final language, but just to understand how people respond when they hear this question. So this is the one that was tested in the survey. We labeled it the Hemet Public Safety Essential City Services Measure. We are clear that it's a measure funding general city services such as, and then there's some illustrative examples there, related to public safety, libraries, financial stability, keeping public areas safe and clean, homelessness, wildfire risks, safe, clean drinking water, reducing unsafe driving, repairing streets and potholes. attracting retaining businesses then you get some legally required language like establishing a one cent sales tax providing approximately 16 million dollars annually until ended by voters then there's some fiscal accountability provisions that are inherent in the measure we often find that voters are not aware of that and they always have concerns about how funding is being used in your city and elsewhere so we mentioned that there's oversight spending disclosure and all funds are controlled locally In terms of the initial vote here, when voters just hear that ballot question, we find 66% and two-thirds of voters support the measure, 26% said that they would be likely to vote no, only 8% are undecided. As a reminder, this would be a majority vote threshold measure. You need 50% plus one for the measure to pass. and this is well above that when it's at 66 percent. And even if our survey sample is, we randomly got a sample that's too optimistic, and with that five-point margin of error, you could say, well, maybe it's 61. That's still well above the 50 percent. It's statistically equally likely as high as 71. So we feel that this is starting in a good place when people just have the first opportunity to reflect on the ballot question. As you'll see, as they learn more, there's some changes, but still within the realm of being supportive. Just for context here, looking at the feelings on the measure across the council districts in the city, there's at least 59 percent support in each district. You can see at the bottom of this slide here the percent of sample. That's the percentage of the city's likely voters from each council district. So, in most, they're well over 60 percent. Again, District 1 at 59. The next slide is looking at some of the priorities for the measure. And sorry, in the translation of our slides to your system, the font color gets a little funky, so it's probably hard to read the green on top of the blue there. But I could just, I can see it if I squint just right. So, I'll let you know that the top priorities are looking at public safety, clean streets, drinking water, supporting local businesses, as well as fiscal accountability. They were given a range here, the respondents of the survey, extremely important. That's the blue, very important in orange, somewhat important as the kind of light gray, not too important in blue, don't know in green. And then we've taken extremely and very important and put that on the right. The things that rated at the highest reducing drug-related crime, for reference, that's 63 percent of voters who say that's extremely important. Another 30 percent, 31 in the very important, so that gets you to that 94 percent. One of the things to just take away from this slide is the large number of priorities that very large numbers of voters are saying is extremely important to them, or at least very important to them. We don't typically see so many things in the 80s and 90% range. for extremely or very important, oftentimes there'd be one or two, you've got many. And your voters are saying there's a lot of things that they want to see addressed, which reflects back to that mid-70 percent range who think there's at least some need for additional funds. If I continue and look at some of the other public safety things here, you see funding 911 emergency response, that gets 57 percent, extremely important, plus 35, very important. Keeping public areas safe and clean is at 61, extremely important. Preventing and reducing smash and grab robbery is 62, plus, again, that 27 percent in orange. Rapid response to fires to reduce property damage and loss is 60, plus the 29. And then, as I mentioned, as a general-purpose measure, you have multiple priorities you're hoping to fund with this measure. It's not only public safety, and that's reflected back in what your voters say is important. Things like removing trash from city streets and other areas gets 90 percent extremely or very important, with 49 extremely important. Providing safe, clean drinking water is at 88 percent. Attracting and retaining local small businesses is 88 percent as well. So, a number of different priorities. And then I mentioned earlier the fiscal accountability. That gets reflected back here. Requiring public spending disclosure, 91 percent, extremely or very important, including 64, extremely important. And requiring all funds used locally is also a high priority. But go to the next slide on this same question, note again on the right-hand side the number of items in the 80s and even in the high 80s for extremely or very important, and how few people are rating any of these things in the blue bars for not too important. They want these things to be done. Here we still see a mix of public safety and other items. This is where repairing streets and potholes comes into the mix at 87 percent, with 54 extremely important. You can see also addressing homelessness at 84, with 65 extremely important, actually one of the highest extremely important. reducing unsafe driving, and then a number of public safety. Funding public safety generally, reducing wildfire risk, maintaining natural disaster response, funding fire and paramedic response, maintaining first responder equipment. All these things voters are saying are really important to them. And then lastly, within kind of the realm of the highlights within this question, some of the things that are still high priorities, if you notice the green on this slide is still very, very small, too small for us to even put a number on. This is maybe not as important as what you saw in the first two slides, but again, more public safety tracking sex offenders and parolees, improving park safety, funding police patrols, restoring anti-gang programs, preventing and investigating property crimes, and then some of the other items that filter in as well. One of the things we wanted to do in this survey was understand what happens when voters hear from the city and others in the community who want to share why the measure is important. We know it's not just where people feel today, but there's a long time between today and November, and if we simulate what they're likely to hear, how does that impact their thinking on the measure so you have a sense of maybe where this could be landing in November. We don't have a crystal ball, but we can give you a sense of what happens when people hear things. So, in this question, we've given people a number of informational statements, and we've asked them if the statement makes them more inclined to favor the measure or not. The dark blue here is much more inclined, and the orange is somewhat more inclined to favor the measure. When we asked about a variety of things, a variety of statements, we found a few that resonate at very high levels here. One related to issues of drug trafficking and gang activity, local control, making sure that you have funding that can't be taken away, that can address unfunded state mandates, and that fiscal accountability that I mentioned earlier. All of these in the 80 percent range, give or take a couple of points on a measure that, as you remember, had 66 percent of voters saying they were supporting it. So, we're well above that in terms of the way they're responding to these. Others that they responded to quite strongly in terms of feeling like it's making them more inclined to favor the measure relate to the water and the need to make sure that you can continue to provide safe and clean drinking water. Overall quality of life improvements in the city, including 911 response, well-maintained streets, senior library programs, et cetera. your fire response times and making sure that residents have fire stations nearby that can meet that national standards of response times and your need to address homelessness within the community. Lastly, others that resonated well and maybe not quite as strong but close, talking about wildfires and the need to be better prepared, some of the data on your current road conditions, crime and the fact that you've made significant progress but there's still many calls for service and the police department needs to be prepared for that, and helping to attract more businesses to the HMET area. When we provide that information and re-ask that same 75-word ballot question you saw earlier, the support goes from 66 percent yes up to 70 percent yes. So, about a four-point gain here. You can see that the definitely yes, those people who they're more intense in their support for the measures actually crossing the 50 percent threshold just with those people, not even counting those who are Maybe a little softer, they're probably voting yes or they're leaning towards voting yes in their own words, not in our terms. Now, we also wanted to make sure that we provided information that could come from potential opponents of the measure, things like, you know, our taxes are too high and the cost of living and the city doesn't need this money and all of that. And then we re-asked the ballot question a third time. And what we see is that the support is maintained at about 65 percent, basically where they started. Right? They started at 66 to 26. The information that's more on the side of why this measure is important is provided at 70 to 25. But then we come back with the more opposition statements, and it's still holding 15 points above the 50 percent threshold that's needed at 65 to 29. So, a couple of conclusions and then happy to take survey-related questions. We think a measure for local funding for the city with a one-cent sales tax has strong support, seems positioned for success in November, if that's the direction you want to go. That's bolstered by a very strong sense the city needs additional funding, both generally and for public safety specifically. lots of priorities for how the funding could be used from this measure. Public safety, clean streets, drinking water, supporting local businesses, repairing streets. You could identify probably a half dozen more that large numbers of voters say are important to them. In addition to that, voters are more inclined to support the measure when they realize there's local control of all the funding, all the money is going to stay in Hemet, can't be taken by the county or the state. And there's fiscal accountability and transparency provisions on top of all of those services that could potentially be funded. So, I will stop there. And again, happy to take questions you may have.

Female Speaker 1, any questions from counsel at this point or comments?

I guess I'm surprised simply because I hear a lot no, no, no. And if these registered voters are saying yes, it seems maybe we should put it to the voters to decide. Either way, I think during annexation that holds time of my life, I can't get back. That was the biggest thing was potholes, potholes, roads, potholes. I mean, that was and, you know, we heard it. We listened and we heard that. And maybe this is what we should do is put it to the voters.

Okay, questions or comments?

I just feel so badly for some of the other departments. You know, it's like public safety gets a lot of our budget every year, and everybody complains about our streets. And poor NOAA over here, Public Works, they get beat up all the time. But the percentage of our budget that goes to things like Public Works, the library, and such like that, They just get a fraction to work with every year. And if this would be passed, we would get $16 million more each year to help repair our streets, to open the library another day, And we need more policemen, we need more firemen, and we desperately need more fire stations. So I think you can see I actually was on this committee and our directors were really surprised at the feedback that we got. That was such a resounding positive response that People want better services and we need better services. So, you know, we should have over 100 policemen funded now, if not more, because we've grown that much more in recent years. And I know we need more firemen. You know, I live in four seasons. I'll just give you an example. Our call times are over 10 minutes and it should be around six and a half minutes. Someone in Four Seasons right before 4th of July had an emergency. Not through their own fault. It took the fire department 20 minutes to get there. And this lady was choking. And luckily, her husband was a veteran. And he got her to the point where she could breathe. But the fireman had to actually get her stuck piece of meat out. So if he hadn't known, first aid and CPR and whatever he did, you know, we might have one less citizen like that. So there is a is a strong need for more support. So our departments can serve us the way that they should be serving us.

Joe, you have comments?

Has anybody, anyone thought about how, if this goes through, how the $16 million would be allocated? I know right now that our first responders receive 72% of funds, and our streets are proof that we don't put enough money into the streets, so will the allocation go towards infrastructure more, or how would that work?

Mayor, did you want to feel that?

Yes. Yes. That is something that will be decided by council.

Okay.

I mean, there's a need. It comes through a budget every year. We have a CIP every year. We have needs analysis when budget is done. Those decisions would come back for final decision to council. Okay.

Okay, where does this put us with our neighbors on their taxes? How would I put this here? What would Hemets combine? No, no, that's not what I want. What are the taxes in the surrounding areas? Are they, right now we're at what, 8.75? That's correct.

So Riverside County in general ranges from the county's minimum of 7.75 all the way to 9.25. So it would put us at the highest in Riverside County, but I know there's many other jurisdictions that are gonna be looking at doing the same thing.

Okay. Okay, that's the questions I have for now.

You'll come back. Did you have something to say, Tom?

No, let's just put it to the voters.

I've sat on the feasibility study ad hoc for this also, and we had discussed taxation. And I said, you know, let's find out what the polling turns out, but it's not going to fly. And every one of us in that room were absolutely shocked at the results that came back and that our citizens understand the need that we have at this point, the need that they want. for streets and additional police and fire and drinking water. It was so across the board that it was absolutely mind blowing to hear the results of the polling that Adam showed us. I like the fact that it's local, that the state of California cannot come and take it away from us as they have on so many of the funding avenues that we have had. And that there will be, if it goes through, you know, that there'll be oversight like there is in Measure U and the citizens are involved in it.

I think I like the part where it's everybody, whereas it's not just the city of Hemet.

We had talked about that on whether or not we should do a bond funding, which goes on your property tax, which is then, yes, only people who own property here. It's our local citizens, but everybody drives our roads. And it's just one of those things that, you know, What do we do with it? People that pass through, buy gas, drive on the roads, buy anything. Oh yeah, everybody purchases anything. Taxable. Comments from legal on city manager.

I think the next part of the presentation was going to be Steven just kind of covering the technical and procedural portion of it.

Yeah, so you have in front of you resolution number 2026-129. And first off, I just want to thank the city clerk for giving me resolution numbers before the city council meeting instead of just having resolution number XXXX for every meeting because we can actually track them now. But in any case, you have the resolution here, which is the City Council action tonight. So there is an ordinance attached to the backup, but the City Council can't adopt that ordinance because it's a tax ordinance. Only the voters of the city of Hemet can adopt that ordinance. So what you are adopting is a resolution that is submitting that ordinance to the voters. So if you look at Section 2, that's exactly what you're doing. You're submitting that ordinance to the voters. Section 3 you are calling for an election in order to have that ordinance be considered. It's going to be consolidated if you approve this resolution tonight with the general municipal election held on November 3rd, 2026. You're required to have tax measures consolidated with general municipal elections in the state of California. Section four has the ballot question. It's stated there in the resolution. It is essentially the same as what you saw on the PowerPoint. However, I worked with the city clerk to make sure that we're counting the words correctly, because it has to be 75 words or less. And so I think all of those items are there. I think we changed the order slightly. And then in terms of the full text of the measure is available from the city clerk or from the registered voters, that's essentially the ordinance which you see attached to the exhibit. It makes it very clear that a majority vote is required. So that's 50% plus one voter. Section 7 makes it clear that in order for this to go to be approved tonight, you require a two-thirds city council approval. with five council members. That means you need four affirmative votes for us to be submitted to the voters. This is consolidated with the county's general election that's being held on the same day. And the rest of this is routine language that we include any time we're calling for an election. So essentially the ROV will be handling the election, working for the city clerk, and the city is authorized to reimburse the county for its reasonable costs in conducting that election. Additionally, you are directing me to prepare an impartial analysis like I did the previous elections for this matter. You set the rules for ballot arguments. Since this is a council measure, the proponent, the argument would generally come from the council. And so the language you have here is it authorizes the mayor and such other eligible signers as the mayor may designate subject to all the rules to submit that argument in favor of the measure. Rebuttal arguments are also permitted. We will get a ballot number. hope for a good one. It's sort of it's sort of the luck of the draw from the county. I think we were lucky to get measure H for him at one time. We'll see. We'll see what we get. So that that's, that's all there is really on the reso. The ordinance itself, if it looks really familiar, it's because it is following the Strongly recommended language from the State of California, CDTFA, California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. They want to see very specific language in the ordinance that's coming from the city. So if you look at Measure U, it has virtually identical language. I strongly recommend that we not editorialize and make changes to the language that CDTFA has recommended. We have submitted the draft ordinance to CDTFA, and they have approved it administratively, saying this language they can implement if it is adopted by the voters. That's really critical. There was a city up in Northern California that decided they wanted to get creative with the language. They sent it to an election, their voters passed it, and then the state refused to implement it because they had made some changes. This would go to the election November. We would have the results presumably by the December city council meeting when all the other election results come in. It would go into effect for the quarter beginning April 1st, 2027. through June 30th, 2027. That would be the first quarter where it actually goes into effect. The city would receive it. Where's Tiffany? August 2027. We're here in July of 2026 now. If this is adopted tonight, if this is passed by the voters, you will not actually see the revenue until approximately August 2027, so next fiscal year. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

You mentioned reasonable cost earlier. What's the reasonable cost?

The city clerk may have an idea of what a city municipal election will cost coming up. I don't want to put her on the spot, but

Right now, it's about $130,000, give or take.

$1.30?

$130,000. $1.30? No. About $130,000. $130,000. It all depends on how many other jurisdictions are part of or consolidated with the county as well with the election.

The more democracy we have happening, the cheaper democracy is. Absolutely. Hopefully, some neighboring jurisdictions also have some elections. I'm looking at it.

in a way where, you know, we have businesses that want to come in, but they're warehouse businesses and they get shot down constantly. You know, there are a lot of people that are anti-warehouse. Maybe, you know, and that's tax revenue coming in that we're saying no to. So if they'd rather pay a penny tax and they feel that that's what they'd rather do than have a warehouse come in, as long as we get revenue coming in, You know, I'm not a tax person. I don't like taxes. I don't like, you know, even being a part of raising my hand and saying, yeah, let's tax. You know, I don't like it. I'm a business person. I want to see business come in. But if we're limited to the business that can come in and they protest certain businesses that want to come in, how are we going to generate tax revenue? So maybe this is the only route we have here. I don't know. I'm wrong.

Tell me. Okay. If there's no more questions or comments from Council right now, do we have any registered speakers on this?

We do not, Mayor.

Okay, so I'm just going to ask, is there anyone out there that would like to make a comment on this item? Whether for or against? If you do, please come up to the lectern, state your name and you will be given three minutes.

Rick Lindsay again, and I'm with Mr. Mills.

I can't hear you. You have to talk into the microphone, please. I'm sorry.

I'm with Mr. Mills that I don't like taxes any more than anybody else, and I think 1 percent is, I don't think 1 percent will pass because, you know, even though the perspective says that's what you want or need, start at a quarter because I don't think you're going to get 1 percent. Even though we need all the things that you're saying, But our economy, the way that it is this last year and a half, and it's going to get worse. And even to go to the store and afford food, and then people will say, and pay more tax? I myself, I don't see it. And I'm a numbers person because I worked in finance for a half-a-billion-dollar company. I did tons of projects besides my jobs. I just look at it realistic and being a penny pincher my whole life, and I just look at reality. And I don't think a 1 percent, I don't think you'll be able to get it. I think maybe a quarter, but it's not going to fulfill your, what, 16 million, or I don't remember what it was. But when you start high and you don't get it, you wish you would have gotten low, I think. Anyway, thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Hello, Charles. As far as the 1%, like the 3% with Measure H and Measure M, we never know how much money is in that account. We also don't understand that the money that comes from our state to help our city that you do the budget with, I have no clue why I think it's Measure M that We have money to take out to fix streets like mine, to fix streets like his that are devastated. I was promised from this man over a year and a half ago, the city management, that the street was going to be repaired. But then again, he blames all of you because you take all the money away. But if you're going to do a 1% to make sure that you guarantee that the public streets, the people like me who owns a house that's paying insurance, that's paying taxes, my road's going to be taken care of. My road is devastated. My street is devastated. Mexico has better streets than mine. All right? And all of you ignore it. And this man over here just constantly lies. He'll feed you smoke.

Sir, we don't put up with bad-mouthing staff. It's not bad-mouthing. It's the truth. It's what's happened.

It's not bad-mouthing. No, I'm sorry. It's not bad-mouthing. It's true. It's what's happened. Okay. The streets are devastated, ma'am.

Our streets are very bad. We understand that.

So if you're going to do it, dedicate the money directly to the streets, not to the library, not the cameras that help protect the police. All right? Let's dedicate all of the money to the streets. Then when you get all the streets done, any money left over, you can put it to the library. You can give the police officers extra cams on their buildings. All right? You can take your extra vocations or whatever. All right? But let's take care of the public, especially the streets. Make sure, don't be like all these other people in Congress or whatever that writes a bill that sounds like you're going to protect us, then all of a sudden we put $100,000 into a gardening when my street is $100,000 and it would have been repaired, but you don't care about it. So if you're going to do it, designate all the money for that, then after the streets are done, it goes to whatever. Quit putting in little loopholes. We know that's what you're doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your comments. Okay. Anyone else? Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy, I like that. I think that there's no question the fire departments, police department, the public services need the money. Just like when I voted for Mayor Pro Tem Mayles, I'll be voting 10 times for it. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Is there anyone else? All right, seeing none, I'll bring it back to council. Do we have anything other that we have to do, say?

There's nothing further from staff other than the recommendation to send this to the voters.

All right, then it is up to this council now to make a motion.

Well, I make a motion that we put this on the ballot and let the voters decide.

We have a motion to put this on the ballot for the voters. Do we have a second? I'll second it. All right. We have a motion and a second. Please vote. Push your little buttons.

I'd just like to make a statement before I vote.

Yeah.

I'm not one for raising taxes, but this is not me raising taxes. This is the people making the decision whether they want to raise the tax. So I'm going to vote yes to give them the decision on what they want to do. I just wanted to get that out.

Okay. Wow. That's unanimous. All right, legal, we know what you have to do. What actually is, what do we do next?

I believe you give your committee reports and then we go home. But I'll be drafting an impartial analysis. Mayor, you'll be drafting the argument in favor and finding signers. The city clerk will be very busy transmitting and doing public notices and coordinating with the county to get the ball rolling. But as for the council, there's nothing further to do.

Okay. All right. Very good. Well, with that, Adam, I would like to thank you for coming and making the presentation on the polling results tonight. And thank you, Captain Mowat and Battalion Chief Coleman. Thank you very much for your presentations and city manager and city attorney. And thank you all, all of you. So we are going to move on to city council and staff reports. So I'm going to start with Connie.

Lookie there, that's our youth council member. He got a full ride scholarship to Stanford.

Okay, did you select all of them?

You interviewed all the students? This one right up here was on our youth council, and he was phenomenal. So. Very good. I'm in the middle of the, it's very good. I'm in the middle, or we're in the middle with Elodie, or no, Jen, it's Jen that's doing our interviews with us. It's great. Again, kids that I want to take 40 of them, and we can only take 11, promise. So I then also last Saturday had the fortune to go out to Brubaker Field.

You're really echoing. I know. I'm trying to push it away. Is your little black box, is it turned down? OK. Sometimes that helps.

Is that helping?

So far.

Okay. So Brubaker Field softball, Little League, Hemet Little League. I watched Victorville win their way to Missoula, Montana. And they're going to go up. and maybe end up in New York for the Little League finals for softball. So it was a nail-biting, it was so awesome that day to sit out there with everybody and yell, you got a girl, and we had great softball pitchers. I remembered why I love it. And then I asked, how come Hemet didn't have a team? We need a softball little league team to represent us for this. They didn't have talent or they didn't have a coach that wanted to do it. I'll do it next time. It was great. I'm telling you. These girls had so much, little all the way to like 14, 15, very enthusiastic. And the look on their faces when they would slide into home or make home before the ball was infectious. And it gives me goosebumps because I know that sent a lot of girls on to the next level. They need to know that they can do this. It was awesome. So, thank you, Brubaker Field. I have a shirt, but that shirt is at home because I've had a horror of a day at work. And I will bring it next meeting and present it. It's a wonderful all-star shirt. And so, that's my two cents.

Thank you.

Ms. That's wonderful.

Tom.

Well, first off on the softball, those girls that are tossing it underhanded at 75 miles an hour scares me. But as you were saying, we're doing our interviews for the Youth Council. We've got a couple of rock stars, just awesome kids. continuing Thursday and then next week with some more interviews. It's filling up fast, but tough decisions. Like, you know, Connie said, it's like we could take 40 of them, but we wouldn't accomplish anything. So, this year we're going to, last year's experiment worked. So, this year we're going to actually get some stuff done out of them. It's going to be great.

Ms. Very good. Thank you very much. Jackie.

Okay, on June 25th, I had the pleasure of representing the city at Dr. Schultz's open house and farewell. He was the outgoing president for MSJC. He was there for 25 years. And following that, several of us went to the Cal State University San Marcos State of the College at Pechanga Resort for a breakfast. And there we met Dr. Tawny Dotson, and she will be the new president of MSJC. She's a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel with over two decades of military leadership and experience in higher education administration. And there's an upcoming event to meet her, too, that we were invited to, so we'll probably learn some more about her in the next week or two, I think it is. And we all were at the San Jacinto 4th of July Parade and it was it was really a nice day and thank you that to the city of San Jacinto and then the next day, of course we had our drone show and It was a well attended event and I want to thank all city employees that helped with that and It was awesome. The volunteers that showed up and public works and it was so easy getting out of there this year. It was just a piece of cake compared to last year. So good job, City of Hammett. It was great. So it was really, really enjoyable. And I know Ben Sandoval put a huge amount of work into that. So thank you, Ben. I went to the Riverside County Habitat Conservation meeting, and we passed a new Stevens kangaroo rat mitigation fee schedule. It hadn't been updated since 1996, so it was long overdue for an adjustment. So it was approved to have Individual single-family home builders still pay the low $250 flat fee, and agriculture will pay $500 per gross acre, and all other development categories are $900 per gross acre, and those involve bigger businesses and residential areas and such. and we will have some homework. So our adoption process, we have to do, each agency will have to do an approval for this and bring it forward to the council on that, for approval on that. So that was that. Yesterday we had a really good arts and culture meeting, and we talked about the Hemet 365, our new website, to publicize any event that you're having. I want to remind everybody of this. If you're a business, if you're a nonprofit, you know, any kind of nonprofit, be it church, you know, anything, anything. So what we want you to do is go to Hemet365.com, and then if you have a special event, put it on there. Go look at it once. And we want to have people populate it. We just found out yesterday there's a registration for it, but we found out you don't have to do the whole registration. You can just put your flyer on there for approval. So we want everybody to know what's going on in our valley. And tomorrow evening, we are all looking forward to this. We have the mural. ribbon cuttings and it's going to be a fun, fun evening. There's going to be a car show. There's going to be food refreshments. You can meet Rosie Cortez, who was the professional artist that mentored 11 other emerging artists from our area. And you can meet the artists in that. And it should be a really, really nice evening. Also, We are starting a community garden, and there has been two meetings now, I guess, one or two meetings on that so far. But they're looking for volunteers of any type to help with that. It can be for publicity. It could be for, you know, helping build the structure, maintaining it, whatever. So there's an upcoming meeting July 16th by Zoom at 7 o'clock. Or next Saturday, the 18th, they recommend you bring a blanket or a chair, and you can go to the garden spot at 143 South Juanita, and you can learn more about it and maybe put your name on the list to volunteer for it. So that would be really, really fun. We're excited about that, too. And Public Works is helping us with that, too, so thank you to them. And we are also working on the... Application and Guidelines for the Art in Public Places. And it's almost done. It's in several drafts, and it's almost ready to come for approval. And I want to thank Emery, Monique, and Nathan especially. And if I missed anybody, I'm sorry, but they really put a lot of work into putting this whole document together. And Ramona Ball. They've had a lot of good concerts. They're only $15 pre-sale or $20 at the door. And there's a couple of upcoming ones. On July 25th, Generations of Country will feature Keith Urban and Johnny Cash experience tributes. Then on August 8th, because we're not going to have a meeting the 2nd, Tuesday in July, so I'm giving you August too. August 8th is Foreigner Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick Tributes. And then this is for the newer generation probably, and I actually like these two people. So on August 22nd, it's called The New Outlaws, and it's tributes to Post Malone and Jelly Roll. So two very good current artists. And don't forget the Ramona Market is on July 18th, and it's from 4 to 9 o'clock. So I don't want to hear anybody say there's nothing going on in Hammett. That's my report.

That's a lot to do. Yeah. Ciao.

I WANT TO PASS ON MY REPORT. I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING, BUT I DO WANT TO MAKE ONE MENTION ON ITEM 17J THAT WAS NOT PULLED. WE HAD AN AMENDMENT APPROVAL FROM WRCOG. THEY WERE GOING TO GIVE US $200,000 FOR OUR PROJECTS THAT WE HAVE, AND I WAS KIND OF UPSET ABOUT IT, BUT I'M GLAD WE HAVE A GOOD REPRESENTATIVE OVER HERE, CONNIE CLARK, THAT'S OUR PERSON THAT GOES TO WRCOG. and they are giving us not $200,000, but $1.9 million for our projects. I believe the Esplanade project and other projects out there in the city, which offsets our having to give money for our general funds, so I'm pretty happy about that, especially when I talk bad about them at one council meeting because I didn't think they gave us enough money, but they did, and I appreciate it, and I'm sorry. That's good.

Okay, all of the regional meetings that I go to are dark in July, which is awesome. But Noah and I did, this was the end of June, we went to the ribbon cutting, groundbreaking for the Mid-County Parkway, even though it has been started and under construction for about three months, four months. And the last Business Connect, we had very good speaker and Connie Stoffel from the Southern California Wine Country Economic Development Council. She had some really good points on how to bring in different types of businesses and industries and the medical and the tech and all of that stuff, not necessarily having to approve huge million square foot warehouses and data centers and things like that, but you could get smaller, three and four hundred thousand square foot buildings that a lot of these other tech industries want to go into. So, it was extremely good. We also had a follow-up on the Diamond Valley Lake MOI Committee, and we met the THE NEW GENERAL MANAGER FOR METROPOLITAN WATER BROUGHT HIM UP TO SPEED ON THE AGREEMENT THAT WE HAD SIGNED BACK IN 2016, 2017 FOR EDUCATION, WHAT WAS IT? EDUCATION, RECREATION, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AROUND DIAMOND VALLEY LAKE, SO HOPEFULLY THAT RENEWED COMMITMENT WILL BE COMING BACK TO THE COUNCIL FOR APPROVAL SOMETIME BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR. THE ONLY MEETING THAT I ACTUALLY HAD WAS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS, AND THERE'S A LOT OF STUFF GOING ON THERE, ESPECIALLY WITH THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE AND CONNECT SO CAL, WHICH IS THE NEXT FUNDING CYCLE AND PLANNING CYCLE FOR THAT IS COMING OUT, AND I BELIEVE I believe Hemet staff is currently working on that. Applications for the F-TIP is coming out. All sorts of funding type rules and regs that are constantly changing. But one of the interesting things, we got an update on what they call looking forward to the Olympics in 28. But through that was an update on how public transit and transportation in private vehicles and trucks has weathered the World Cup. And they did really good. So they were talking about the amount of traffic for World Cup on a daily basis coming in and out of L.A. They equated it to having the traffic that would come to two Super Bowls in one day. And that was happening every day. Now, the Olympics in 2028, they're estimating that the traffic associated with that is going to be like seven Super Bowls every day coming in and out of LA. So this transportation and how do you maintain the flow coming up with that certain freeways are going to have designated traffic lanes, that if you're coming to this, you're going in that lane, and going here, and the different signage, the busing, Metrolink, all of this stuff, is everybody is really working together. And I hope it works. Any of you wanting tickets for the Olympics? They're expensive. A friend of mine just bought some for the, what was it, for volleyball. Five people, $1,700. I said, how are you going to get there? Take the train. Take the train and then take a bus. But also on that, Riverside Transit Agency has been one of the official mass transit buses in downtown LA for World Cup. And they have had a specific route. And they're getting rave reviews because they have nice buses. wi-fi on them and they go here and they pick everybody up and they drop them off over here and doesn't seem to be any problem good wayfaring signs people with the number you know the big finger up in the air and this is where you get information so everything seems to be going good and they're working really hard on it so i'm hopeful another two years and we'll see what happens uh other than that i don't have anything so i'm going to turn it over to city manager

Thank you, Mayor. And it is truly incredible the transportation planning going on for the Olympics. I was at a public works event a couple of years ago. They were already working really hard on it. So it is amazing. Just one thing for me, we'll be transitioning to our new development permitting software on August 11th. But the last day that we'll be using our existing antiquated system is going to be August 3rd. So there's going to be a transition period there that everything will be hand entered and manual so hopefully everyone will bear with us it will be better once we get fully implemented into the tyler system and there will be growing pains as change as always with change but um it'll be much more efficient in the future very good and seeing as there is no further business this meeting is adjourned to the next city council meeting on august 11th 2026 thank you for joining us we are adjourned

Yeah, I expect a lot of people here.

Huh?