City Council - Regular Meeting

I'll call the meeting to order at 06:30. Our invocation will be done by pastor Penn from the Church of the Nazarene and council member Ochoa. We do the pledge of allegiance, please.

My honor.

Thank you.

I have a two part prayer tonight. It's beginning the beginning will be from Saint Patrick. Let's pray together. Christ, be with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right.

Christ on my left, Christ when I lay down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. Lord, we pray that it might be so that Christ may abound in and through our lives and for the betterment of our community, our High Desert. We pray your wisdom, Lord, for our council and our staff, and we thank you for their service. We lift up our military, Lord, who are in harm's way, and for we pray for a cessation of that which is so troubling. We pray for peace.

We lift to you those who are most needy in our community, and we thank you for the resources that are available, and we pray for those who provide them. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Can we have a roll call, please?

Mayor Bennington? Here. Mayor Perlten Poland? Here. Council Member Gray? Here. Council Member Lee? Here. Council Member Ochella? Here.

Thank you. Are there any corrections or revisions to the agenda?

No corrections this evening.

Thank you. Do we have any closed session reports?

Thank you Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. We did discuss real property negotiations as listed on the closed session agenda and no reportable action was taken.

Thank you.

Moving on to general public comments. Individuals wishing to speak during general public comments or on a particular numbered item are requested to submit a speaker slip to the city clerk with the agenda item noted. Speaker slips should be turned in prior to the public comment portion of the joint agenda or before an agenda item is discussed. Comments will be limited to three minutes for general public comments, consent calendar items, and new business items. Comments are limited to five minutes for public hearing items.

In compliance with the Brown Act, the City Council may not discuss or take action on non agenda items or engage in question and answer sessions with the public. The City Council may ask brief questions for clarification, provide a reference to staff or other resources for factual information, and direct staff to add an item to a subsequent meeting.

Thank you. We'll start with our voicemail, please.

This is Bob Nelson, still a nice neighbor, Thanks to part ownership of a ranch in Summit Valley, enjoyed by seven generations of my family since the nineteen twenties and bordered by Asperia City limits on the east, north, and south side. Although I am now enjoying a long vacation living with my daughter and son-in-law in Meridian, Idaho until I find a nice affordable place to live in this area. California government code section six fifty thirty six states quote is the policy of the state and the intent of the legislature to ensure orderly planning for specific functions such as water development, transportation, natural resources, economic development, and human resources by units of state government who exercise management responsibility for these functions. Today, the Hesperia City Council responsible for Hesperia's land use development favors urban sprawl. That is home built on the cheapest land post urban development with the present city residents taxes helping to pay to extend urban infrastructure to that urban sprawl with most jobs far away down Collin Pass.

First time I checked in 1998, eight of the denied San Bernardino County planning commissioners, each appointed by a county supervisor and approved by the board of supervisors, according to their statements of economic interest on file with the county registrar will result which then currently or had recently received income from commissions on the sale or brokering of real estate. And as that Maverick first district county supervisor John Joyner pointed out in his autobiographical sketch for the San Bernardino County supervisor compiled by John c Funk published by the county about night 2016, quote, county government was controlled by a few privileged and wealthy contractors and developers who, through campaign contributions, guarded the doors to all important elected positions in the county, end quote. And an LA Times article printed in 2022 identified the Inland Empire, primarily San Bernardino County, as being, quote, overwhelmed by unchecked growth and plagued by health or skills of development. By far, the nation's the nation's worst example of urban sprawl, a team of researchers said Thursday, end quote. The zoning map being used for this by the city council for god development in the Summit Valley region was originally adopted over fifty years ago in 1970, just before the law demanding environmental impact reports for new land development was passed.

Ten years later, without a shovel being turned, the zoning map adopted as a Summit Valley general plan expired as stated in the 1979 San Bernardino County general plan. However, thanks to p p, political pressure, that expired zoning map was included in the 1979 county general plan through a printing error on a very large multifolded zoning map for the city of Victorville. End.

Thank you. Al Vogler, please.

Hello, City Council. I'm Al Voegler. In 1997, the Atalanta Poker Parlor closed down. The owners of the parlor told the city that if taxes were raised one more time, the business would be closed. In the most expensive, most heavily taxed state in The United States, California, the Hesperia City Council is suggesting that taxes again be raised.

This time it is the sales tax, not the water tax fee or the trash tax fee. In 2023, Hesperia City Council member mister Byrd suggested that Hesperia residents needed to have backbone to help the city find more money. Money for the general fund which could be spent on anything the city so choose. Despite suggestions such as the city taking the San Bernardino County Board to court to obtain more of its fair share of the annual property taxes, nothing happened except the city spending $217,000 to hire a consultant to give advice about raising sales taxes. The town of Apple Valley recently passed a higher sales tax by hiring True North Research at a rumored $100,000 and True North is advertised as having the highest verifiable consulting success rate at over 95%.

A public records request was filed asking for the names of each of the Hesperia bidding consultants names, addresses, and phone numbers, and the amounts of their bids. We would like to know the specific polling techniques of Team CivX and the greater populations from which they derive their results and recommendations to assure accountability. It is incredulous to imagine that the voting Hesperia residents would like a higher sales tax particularly with gasoline as high as a confirmed $8.25 per gallon in LA. Is the Hesperia City Council willing to specify exactly how much money and the names of the projects on which the proposed tax will be spent? In the past, under similar circumstances, the city council would not give out that information.

Clearly, horrible road conditions and public safety sheriffs are the two most important city issues. Nonetheless, the city of Hesperia continues to spend money buying real estate and suggested raising property taxes as much as $600 per year near the golf course. Doubling sales tax income is pure greed. Thank you.

David Penn.

I want to David Penn, 17435 La Junta Street, Hesperia. And I want to thank the council for your service and the staff. And most appreciative, I put 30 panels on the roof of my house some months or years ago when my father was on hospice and needed 20 fourseven oxygen and air conditioning. He passed away and I now have a surplus. And for a number of years, the surplus has taken care of the delivery charge for the utilities that they like to pay.

All of a sudden, I think they woke up and said, we're not getting dollars from him. And what happens is if they charge $25 I give them 25 real dollars, and then when they pay me, they give me 7¢ on the dollar. And so even though I have an abundance of credit in my solar account, they want me to give them some hard cash. Otherwise, they're gonna graciously turn off my electricity. And I know there's very little that you can do about it, but I feel like I've spoken to somebody that will hear and I've spoken to everybody related to Edison and Company as far as I could go and as high as I could go for as long as I could go. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Kim Jones?

There's a couple times I've mentioned my dog, Ruben Jacob, that was stolen 09/09/2024. He was found March 12. With the help of the Harrisburg Animal Control, I wanna thank the management, Romina Gonzales, Veronica Puente, Alex Polito, front desk, Natalie, Shannon, Megan, Lauren, and Mark Villa Lobos, ACO. I think he's the animal control officer. It's a long and involved story.

He had been stolen out of my yard by some homeless people, and it would have been easy. You hold food out, and he'll come to you. That's when I seen the footprints. I knew he was stolen. Well, anyways, I don't know how long they had him, but he wandered away, got away from him.

An elderly couple, he wandered in their yard, and they felt bad, took him in, and the homeless come up and said that that's my dog. You know, it was a group, and so the the couple bought him from the people or paid him, you know, and they've been taking care of him all this time. Now I didn't know that he had a microchip. I got him in 2012 from the Hispari Animal Control, And I asked over I was just over there a little while ago, and they told me that they started about 2012 eclectic microchip and 2020 required. Now the dog that I got recently, Rachel, I knew she had a microchip.

Matter of fact, they had to put a new one because the old one wasn't working correctly. But, anyways, it's very I I I'm really emotional and everything that how it happened. Some guy called me and left a weird message on my phone on the March 11 saying he wanted to buy my truck, and I'm like, it's not for sure. How did you get my phone number? And, eventually, he mentioned the dog, something about his parents have this dog. He sent me pictures over the phone. They were my dog. And and I contacted the pound and the police, and they said it's probably scam. The next day, I went to the pound, and the lady, Alex, she did checking. Sure enough, he was shipped.

They they got the people, whatever. Well, anyways, the people decided to let me have him back. He's 14 years old. He's not in good

health. They said they love him, and

then I and apparently so. They he looks like a hippopotamus, but now he's so fat. But they tried to take care of him and everything and and his medical condition and everything, but I'm just thrilled to

get him back. And, oh, by the

way, the pound will help anybody that can't lift a dog to take him to a vet. You have to notify them two weeks in advance, and they they will come out and help you. And I guess that's why I'm just emotional over it. But, anyways, I got him back. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Hesperian News and Politics.

Good evening, and good to see you guys. Sorry for not beating at the last meeting. I was a little busy. I'm going to be very simple with my comments today. First, let me start with the basics, something positive. Thank you for addressing the safety issue on Summit Valley Road where we basically had a bunch of accidents because we all you guys have driven this road. People pass illegally all the time thinking they're speed racers, like they're in some Tokyo Drift, and next thing you know, you either have a near miss or you get into a collision. And we've had fatalities. We've had serious accidents. And, like, I I I lived less than 10 houses away from Summit Valley.

So and I stay up late doing homework or editing videos. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard the echo of the sirens late in the night. And you can always tell because you'll hear, like, the fire department, you'll hear the police, and it's like 20 sirens in the night. And you know something bad happened on that road. And I've driven Summit Valley a few times. It's not perfect. We all know it needs extra passing lanes and things like that. But I'm very thankful for this effort because it felt a little safer driving this road. Now, had to drive a little slower because you get people that, you know, they drive slow, but I would rather deal with that than to run the risk of getting into an accident on that road because someone wants to go and save two minutes trying to pass us legally. So thank you for that.

Thank you for that effort. Hopefully, they hold up well. I did want to ask though, because a lot of people have told me they want an extra lane on Summit Valley Road, and I know that's not something that happens overnight. I wondered, is this like a county issue that we can't get an extra lane? Is it a funding issue? Or, like, is there a certain senator or congressman, a citizen's need to bark the tree up of so that way we can try to get this road an extra lane? Because we're gonna get more housing, more people up here, and we're gonna need it, especially because people are using this as an alternative route to their I 15. I'm sure, I'm not alone in doing that sometimes. So, lastly, just also wanted to comment on do we talk on the agenda items right now or later? Okay, cool. So for general comment, that's all I have. So thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Brenda Dahl, please.

Council members. I apologize. I didn't realize that the Maple Basin was an agenda item when I filled out my form. But I appreciate you guys getting it finely dredged. I noticed this morning that the porta potty was in place and there were a couple of machines there. But I would like to know why it did take three months for it to get taken care of. My accident was on Christmas Eve and it's there's no excuse as to why it took three months. I also wanna know what the city is planning on doing to make sure that the breach never happens again. I would also like to know if we can get someone to fill in the trenches that are on mission between Maple and Oakwood. Cars are still parking on the street.

People are having to walk in the street because nobody can walk on the side of the road. It is a huge accident or a huge potential accident with people walking and cars driving when cars are literally in the roadway. So if we could get somebody to take a look at that and possibly get it fixed, it would be greatly appreciated. And council member Ocha, you're looking sharp today. And council member Lee, I hope you're doing great. Anyway, thank you.

Christina Carlson, please. Going on?

Christina Carlson? She's not in here.

Okay. Well, we will move on to the joint consent calendar. And if she shows up, we will take her comment. I have a motion by council member Greg.

Madam Mayor I think we have a discussion on item number three so I'm requesting to pull item number three from the joint consent calendar and approve the rest.

Shocked that they didn't show up for their public comment. So, first by Councilmember Greg, a second by Councilmember Lee on all the items removing item three. Can we have a vote, please?

The consent calendar minus item three past five zero. Thank you.

Casey, Robert Davy, you have a comment regarding this, please?

Yeah. My comments on the treasury report, just one line item. Just on the on my handout, it was page three of five. I had a question about the the period ending January 31. It says the two gas tax, the $2.00 9 gas tax r m r a with a balance of 2 point or 12,300,000.0.

My understanding is that that's for road maintenance and rehabilitation account, which is restricted state gas funds. So I guess I just wanted to get some clarity from the staff on do we have any know what the projects that have been allocated for that that 12,000,000 has been allocated for? And if they haven't been allocated yet, what projects do we anticipate allocating? Those $12,300,000 And in addition, do we have an update on Maple? Is that part of that?

Has the bids closed? Has the contract been awarded? And with the weather, we might have one cold spell, but that's probably gonna be it, to dig that up and replace Maple Avenue if we can get a time frame on that. So that's all I got. Just want to figure out where that $12,300,000 has been allocated for, what we can expect on the roads. Thank you.

Christie? I don't know if Mr. Berkshire has the detail for the $12,000,000 here. The projects funded with RMRA are a combination of the annual street improvement program. It includes the capital improvement program.

And the projects are numerous. Casey can speak to this a little bit. Again, I don't think we have that level of detail. However, in June, during the normal budget approval process, the City Council does consider the capital improvement budget annually, and they approve which projects are included to be funded. And so, that process is done in a public hearing here in the council chambers, and robust presentation on each of the projects is done by Cassandra Sanchez, the city engineer, and her team.

And so, great level of detail. However, if you'd like that information prior to that, I can provide that information to you in the next several days. Casey, do have anything to add?

No, it's very high level. I have the budget here. It's a prior year road project, street improvement project and there is Maple Avenue of 2,000,000 and then 2526th Street improvement project. So total budget allocated was 6,000,000. 12,000,000 is there, you have to keep in mind we have been receiving revenue this fiscal year that will be reprogrammed as the city manager was talking about during the CIP budget.

The projects are listed in the budget under the CIP, is that correct?

Yes. That project information is available on the city's website under the CIP And if you have questions about the projects as presented, I'm available to answer any questions or someone

from

the engineering team, if you have a technical question about a project, can also answer those questions.

Do we have any council comments additional?

Have. You say with that I hope that Mr. Davies questions were answered and I think Rachel did a great job with offering additional guidance on that stuff. With that I'll make the motion to approve item number three.

Thank you. First by Councilmember Gregg, a second by Mayor Plutam Poland.

Motion passes five-zero.

Thank you. Moving on to new business. We have a staff report by Casey.

Good evening, mayor and council. Actually, will be hearing very little from me. Tonight, we are continuing our conversation with the sales tax, but, with us tonight, we have Joy Kumar from Team Civics who I will trade spots with just shortly. And virtually we have Doctor. Tim McLarney. And to my side we have Michelle Collins from IT. She's going to be making sure that the meeting is running with Doctor. McLarney virtually. So she's the expert with IT. And so with that, that really concludes my presentation. I'm gonna stand up, and I'm gonna let Joy take it over with the results of the polling.

If I could, I'm sorry, miss Carlton, I you weren't in for public speaking, so if you don't mind, can we take the three minutes to listen to missus Carl Christina Carlton? Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Josh.

I have two things here. I had to surrender my dog and then I got a bill in the mail for $1,000 and I didn't know if that was right. Charge me $1,000 to surrender. And then I got another bill for $3,600 when I was building my cage. At the hearing, the supervisor said, as long as I was making progress with the control kept coming by and saying, it's not done enough, and they're charging me $500 every time they came.

So now the total is up to 3,600. Just both of those, I didn't I need help. I don't know if they can charge $1,000 just to surrender your dog.

Not only that, they

they showed up

to my dad's house, they were we felt kind of harassed because they the animal control showed up in, like, bulletproof vest, and they said they were gonna bring a search warrant. And it's almost like we're being bullied. And then, also, we don't know why, you know, they say that they were gonna euthanize him for being deemed a nuisance. And we wanna see if there was any way that you guys can explore other options of instead of euthanizing animal animals because he wasn't, you know, causing a threat or he never was he never bit nobody or anything like that.

They only they only they only picked them up one time, and I still got a bill for $3,600. This sounds wrong.

Okay. Melinda, would you mind talking to the Carlsons? Melinda will discuss with you Okay. The situation.

Okay. Okay? Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for allowing them to speak. Okay.

Thank you, madam mayor, council members. I'm Joy Kumar from Team Civics. We are a communications and consulting firm that works with cities and counties across the state as they pursue potential revenue measures for the ballot. With me tonight is also doctor Tim McLarney from True North Research. I will actually be turning it over to him to go over the results, and then I can share with you a timeline of potential next steps as you go through this process of deciding what might be right for the city of Hesperia. So with that, I'll turn it over to Doctor. Tim McClarney.

Thank you, Joy, and good evening, mayor and members of council. Doctor Tim McLarney, president of True North Research, and we are affirmed that for the past twenty five years has specialized in working with cities and other types of public agencies in using surveys to help them develop a statistically reliable understanding of the communities and the customers that they serve. Today, my business partner and I have worked on over 1,500 research studies for public agencies, and about 500 of those studies are what we call revenue measure feasibility studies, like what we're gonna be talking about here tonight, where the goal is to understand if it's feasible to move forward with some type of revenue measure. If it is feasible, to determine how might you go about structuring that measure in a way that it's consistent with the type of measure that your community is interested in supporting. As I go through the presentation, I welcome questions from counsel along the way or at the end, whichever is your preference.

And I know at the end of the polling slides, we have one more slide that Joy will will talk about in terms of process. So just to confirm, you can see the PowerPoint presentation that I have up on the screen. It's a blue slide. Okay. So with that, I'll go ahead and jump in. So before we talk about the, results, helpful to take a moment to review the purpose of the study as well as the methodology. In terms of the purpose of the study, as a revenue measure feasibility study, we're really trying to address three bullets you see here on the slide. The first is answer that basic question of, is it feasible? And what I mean by that is if you as a council were to choose to move forward with placing a measure on the November ballot for voters to decide, does that, measure have a reasonable chance of success? The answer to that question isn't always yes.

I can tell you there's, many times where I've done this type of feasibility research. And when we get the data back, there's just no clear path to get you from where you are today to where you need to be to have a reasonable chance of success on election day. And if that's the case, I'll be the first person to tell you that. When we do find feasibility, that second bullet kicks in gear, which is understand how you might go about structuring this measure in a way that it's consistent with the type of measure that your community is interested in supporting. There's a lot of sort of facets and aspects to a revenue measure that ultimately need to be, decided before you place on the ballot.

The research can help guide that. And then finally, it's an opportunity for us to understand role that information plays in in shaping voters' opinions about your, proposal, and that obviously can, help in terms of future communications and engagement. So in terms of the methodology or how we went about conducting the study, we use the same methodology here that we always use, when we're looking at the feasibility of a revenue measure. And the first question we ask ourselves is what election is this measure being considered for? Because as you expand or shrink turnout, right, with different election environments, you will tend to get a different profile to the group of voters who are participating and expected to cast ballots in that election.

So in this case, we're looking at that upcoming November. So what we did is we identified every voter within the community. That is what we call likely November voter based on when they registered to vote and what types of they participated in since this point since that point as well as demographics. And then we use what's called stratified and clustered random sampling to choose a sample of voters that matches that likely November universe on all the dimensions that we know tend to drive how voters behave when it comes to the type these types of measures. So the balance in our sample by age and gender and partisanship and household party type and where they live within the community, that balance matches that November universe, and that's one of the real keys to making sure that this research is reliable.

Once we had pulled our sample, we reached out using three different methods, email, text, and telephone. Everything's PIN protected so that only those individuals that were part of our random sample and that were invited to take survey can access the site. They can take it one time only. And then folks have the option of taking it either by telephone or online, whichever is their preference. We had set out to do 500 completed interviews.

We actually walked back in the door with 606. So we had a really good response from the community. I just passed along those extra interviews. And the nice thing about that is that with a random sample of 606 interviews, it allows us to estimate the opinions of all of your likely November voters within a certain margin of error due to sampling, and that is plus or minus 3.9% at the 95% confidence level. So what that basically means is that we can be 95% confident that the results I'll be sharing with you tonight are within 3.9% of what we would have found had we spoken with all of your likely November voters.

So I mentioned our sampling plan and how one of the keys is to make sure your sample is well aligned in terms of the profile to the likely November universe. This slide just shows you how closely our sample matches. The middle column here shows the distribution of your likely November voters by age, party, household party type, whether they're a homeowner or not, as well as the council district in which they reside. To the right is the distribution of our sample. And you can see here that we're basically either spot on or within one or two points on every one of those categories.

Okay. So on to the results. We like to warm up, respondents in our revenue measure surveys by asking them a few questions just to kinda get them thinking about their their community a bit. And the first of these was to ask them overall how would they rate the overall quality of life in Hesperia. Would they say it's excellent, good, fair, or very or poor? And what you see here is you got about 44% of respondents who said it's either excellent or good. You got about 41% who rated the overall quality of life as fair, and you got about 15% who said poor or very poor. We followed this question up with an open ended question where we said, alright. If the city government could change one thing to make Asperry a better place to live now and in the future, what change would you like to see? This is an open ended question.

Meaning, we didn't provide them with the list that you see here and say choose one of these. They got to just tell us in their own words what was top of mind for them. We went back and reviewed those verbatim responses and then grouped them into the categories that you see here. For being an open ended question, you have one really dominant answer, obviously, and that is improving infrastructure, streets, and roads. Nearly half of respondents came up with that on their own top of mind. Right? That is unusual. Usually, don't have one category that stands out like that. So, clearly, there's a priority there. And then improving storm drains and sewers and then improving public safety, providing more sidewalks on down.

What you see in this slide, and you'll see it in a couple others in this poll, is there's a real priority or emphasis placed on public works within the community followed by public safety. So then after that, the last warm up question we had is we asked folks to tell us, generally speaking, are they satisfied or dissatisfied with the job the city of Sperry is doing to provide city services? And what you see here is about, an even split, right, between, about 46% who said that they were satisfied, got about the same amount, 45% who said they were dissatisfied, with the rest being unsure. So after those warm up questions, we get right down the business of what we call the initial ballot test. And the idea behind the initial ballot test is before we get any deeper into this discussion with a respondent, we start talking in more details about how possible sales tax revenues could be spent as well as presenting arguments pro and con related to a proposal.

We wanna present to respondents a mock up of what we think that 75 word ballot statement could look like and get their reaction. It's a really good gauge of where your voters are at on the natural with respect to disposal because we haven't presented them with anything beyond, the wording you see here. This 75 word ballot statement takes the form of a legally compliant general sales tax measure, sets the tax rate at 1%, and provides about $15,000,000 annually to do the things that you see there up in the bullets. So that is a language we tested, and here are the results. So at that initial ballot test, we had 65% of likely November voters tell us that they would support this proposal.

You had 24% who were opposed, with the rest unsure. So in the state of California, for a general sales tax to be approved, you need a simple majority, 50% plus one. We are sitting at the initial ballot test about 15 points north of that simple majority that's required for passage. One of the striking things about your results and, again, I get to do this for a lot of agencies, testing a lot of different ballot measures over my career of our research has helped raise about 42,000,000,000 in voter proof measures around the state. But in digging into your results, one of the interesting things is how consistent they are across different subgroups because that's not always the case.

In fact, it's not typically the case. So you see here on the next slide, this is the levels or the initial ballot test for this measure based on whether they are a homeowner or a renter. Right? Based on where they live in the community by council district, and you can see all of these are north of 60%. You need 50% plus one to to be successful.

So every one of these categories is north, but it's also really consistent, right, over over across the community. And then when you get into this slide, normally, we see pretty big differences by age when it comes to these measures, and that is, you know, the younger subgroups tend to be more supportive significantly than the the the than as the older as you get older, they tend to drop off. Here, we see every single subgroup is above the the simple majority. And the big one and the striking one for me is bipartisanship. Yes.

We're seeing differences here between, say, Democrats and Republicans. Democrats checking it at 78%, Republicans at 55. Your independents are kinda in the middle at two thirds. What is striking to me is somebody gets to do this for a lot of communities around the state. This gap being about 22% is on the really small side. I do and I've been doing polling this last cycle where gaps of 50 right out of the gates are common between partisanship. We've just become a more a little more hyper partisan as a society. You're tending to see, you know, bigger differences in how Democrats or Republicans view things. But yet when it comes to this measure, we're seeing much smaller gaps. And, again, even, Republicans are supporting this at above the simple majority.

Okay. So after the initial ballot test, we get into the projects and services section of the survey. Here is where we're trying to do two things. We're we're trying to first educate respondents more about what this measure would accomplish than they could possibly glean from that initial ballot test. Right? The initial ballot test, you've got 75 words to describe your measure. Here, we got to unpack it into all these potential uses, and then that way, they're getting a better idea about what the proposal's about. The other thing it allows us to do is understand of all the ways you're thinking about potentially spending the funds, how do voters feel about each of those items, and which of these are ultimately their priority. What you see here again, I mentioned sort of public works being a dominant theme in the survey. You see it here again.

Top of the list, fixing potholes. 82% of respondents said they would strongly favor spending some of the money on that. Right? Paving and maintaining city streets, 84% on that. On down, you can see that a lot of these projects up here are getting really, really strong support and high favorabilities. That said, everything on this list is popular. Even the lowest rated item here was checking in with about three quarters of voters say that they would favor spending some of the money on that item. So if you, as a council, were to choose to move forward with a measure on the November ballot, there's going to be an election cycle. Right? And during that election cycle, there will be a lot of discussion and debate in the community about this proposal.

You'll have some folks who'll undoubtedly go out and talk to their neighbors and friends and advocate on behalf of this measure. Right? Talk talk to their, neighbors about why this is needed and why they should vote yes. You might also have some folks who step up and say, this is a terrible idea. Shouldn't be doing it, and here's why.

For this survey to be a reliable gauge of the feasibility of a general sales tax measure for the November ballot, we need to simulate that discussion and debate in the space of the survey so we have a good understanding not only where your voters are at on the natural, which was that initial ballot test, but what happens after they hear positive arguments, like they will, and what happens after they hear negative arguments, like they will. So, shown here are the positive arguments we tested. I think here again, we've we've seen this infrastructure theme pop up, and we've got a couple arguments at the top here that test particularly strong. The first one was because the city doesn't have a full network of storm drains. When it rains a lot, we experience severe flooding, damage to streets and property, and expensive cleanup.

This measure provides funding to install storm drains where they are needed most. And the second one just is a little bit of an educational item form that, you know, the city of Asperia has 1,500,000,000.0 in unfunded street repair infrastructure projects that need to be completed. And the longer you wait to address those needs, the more expensive that becomes. So those were the top two positive arguments. So at this point in the survey, voters have now heard more about this proposal than they did at the initial ballot test. We had a chance to talk in more detail about how the funds could be spent. We conveyed positive arguments. We've yet to get to the negatives. So we circled to what we call the interim ballot test. Present that same 75 word ballot statement again and say, now that you've heard a bit more, where do you stand?

And what you see is that support ticks up about three points from where we were at the initial ballot test. You're now sitting with 68% support. 22 of folks were opposed. Got about 10% who were unsure or preferred not to answer the question. So we are sitting 18 points north of the simple majority required for passage of a general sales tax.

And then we get to the negatives. And the idea behind the negatives is I wanna pressure test voter support for your proposal by peppering them with a series of negative arguments, giving them reasons to vote no. The reason for that is I wanna know, should you get opposition, should you have critics out there that are vocal and get their message out, how much damage does that do to your yes vote? Right? How resilient is your yes vote should you get opposition?

So you can see here that we tested a series of negative arguments. The top one there is just the the typical argument you will hear against the general tax that there's just no guarantees on how the funds can be spent, which means the city can divert money to pet projects without any, say, some voters who can't trust the city. You're gonna mismanage the money. So that was the number one. But you can see some of these other negatives get some traction as well.

The real question, though, is what happens afterwards, and that is here. So the negatives cool us down about six points from where we were at the interim ballot test, but we're still landing at 62%. So even after testing opposition arguments, you're about 12 points north of that simple majority that's required for passage of a of a general tax. So throughout this survey, we've been testing ballot language for a 1¢ or 1% sales tax. At the end after the final ballot test, if anybody was a no or a not sure, we also stepped it down and asked, okay.

What if the tax rate were set at a lower amount, one half percent? Would you vote yes or no? What you see here on the slide is this that question was only asked to people who weren't supportive of the 1%. So you we had 62% support at 1%. If you were to say drop it to a half percent, what you see is you pick up less than 1% of folks switch over to a definitely yes. Right? And only 5% switch to a probably yes. So what we're seeing on this slide is really consistent with what we tend to see when it comes to sales tax measures. Other types of measures, voters tend to be pretty rate sensitive. So if you wanna talk about a parcel tax, they're gonna be rate sensitive.

You talk about a utility user tax, they're rate sensitive. When it comes to sales taxes, the difference between 1% and half percent, we usually find, you know, three to 5% difference at most in terms of the support levels. Voters just aren't as rate sensitive when it comes to sales tax measures. Okay. So what does all this mean?

I got a couple slides, and then I can pass off to to Joy. So I'm gonna circle back first to that overarching question I mentioned at the outset of this presentation as being the main motivator for why you do this research, is to answer that question of is it feasible. If you, as a council, were to choose to place this measure on the November ballot, does it have a reasonable chance of success? Based on these poll results and my experience doing this for a lot of public agencies, I think the answer to that question is clearly yes. In fact, a lot of times, I'm giving what I would call a qualified yes.

It's a yes, but. Right? And I list off a series of qualifications. Here with the strength of your numbers, I think this is just a solid yes. You have a very clear wide path forward to a measure that could be successful on the November ballot should you choose to take it. Why the yes part? Well, that's everything under the positive signs here. Right? We saw that, you know, you know, voters value the quality of life in the city, but they also see room for improvements, particularly in the area of public works. That translated to solid natural support for this measure to fund city services.

We saw right at the initial ballot test with just the 75 words, we had 65% of folks who said they would support this proposal. All of the projects and services that you're thinking about spending the money on were popular. We have positive arguments that resonate with voters. And most importantly, at each point in the interview, when we circle back to respondent, we present that same 75 word ballot statement and say, now that you've heard a bit more, where do you stand? Every one of those ballot tests was well above the simple majority that's required for passage of a general tax, and that was even after we tested opposition arguments.

So when we see those pieces in place, that's what we wanna see for a measure to have a reasonable shot of success on election day. That said, there are a few challenges that come out of the polling or when you think about kind of what a November election might look like. So we did see there was some receptiveness to those opposition arguments. Right? They cooled us down about six points. And so you wanna keep that in mind as you're thinking about what type of measure to place on the ballot. And we also have these unknowns. And I put the un part in parentheses because in some way, things, we already know about them. We already know about tariffs. We already know about inflation.

We already know that people are concerned about cost of living and the trajectory of the economy. You know, to the extent that people feel these things right now, that's already baked into your results. Right? I mean, we've polled during this time frame. What we don't know is what the next six months is gonna hold. Right? What other shoes are gonna drop? And so we also don't know what types of other competing measures might share the ballot with you. I mentioned these challenges and unknowns not because I think that these create insurmountable obstacles for your measure to be successful. I mentioned it mainly just because you when you're putting a measure on the ballot, you wanna put a measure up there that can withstand some adversity.

Right? That should some of these dynamics or the economy turn a bit in the wrong way, should inflation increase, right, or should you have a local competing measure, you know, you don't wanna put a a measure on the ballot that can't withstand that kind of adversity. I think you have that kind of measure, right, that can withstand some of this. But, you know, you always wanna go into an election cycle eyes wide open about, you know, making you know, you can't just sort of sort of assume blue skies and tailwinds all the way to November. Right?

You're some things are probably gonna bumps in the road you're gonna hit, and you just wanna be have a measure that's capable of surviving that, and I think you do. So, finally, sort of some observations and recommend and recommendations. First of all, you know, as I wanna just kinda remind us all that, you know, although I'm really proud of our methodology and we've had a pretty amazing track record over the years in terms of using polling to understand if measures are feasible for the ballot, At the end of the day, a poll like this is a snapshot in time. It is not a crystal ball looking forward to election day saying you're gonna get 65% on election day. Right?

It tells us where we are today with your voters in terms of their natural level of sport. It tells us how they're likely to react to the types of information that will they'll encounter during the election cycle. You know? But, ultimately, what happens on election day isn't dictated by what your poll says today. It's dictated by everything that happens from this point forward. So I mentioned that because as promising as these results are, and they are promising. Right? You know, it's just kind of a reminder that we gotta make smart decisions about the measure you put in front of voters so that it's well aligned with the type of measure that they've said they're interested in supporting. And you gotta put the work in in terms of communications. And so with that, couple recommendations.

Terms of service priorities. Obviously, as a general tax, you cannot earmark these funds for any specific purpose. That said, when you look at what voters' priorities were, clearly, public works side of this was the priority from your voters' perspective. So, you know, you want to be thinking about spending these funds on streets and potholes, keeping the city safe, clean, and well maintained, storm drains, infrastructure, and nine one one response. Those were their priorities as they'd like to see these funds allocated.

And in terms of communications, there's really two paths forward as Joy will talk about a little more. One is the conversation that you as a public agency can and should have with your voters to help them understand kind of the the background of this and raise awareness about what the city's ongoing needs are, particularly when it comes to infrastructure, and start to build consensus on a proposal. And then separately, there would need to be a an independent campaign. That's, you know, private dollars, private individuals who would go out and advocate for this measure once if US council decide to place it on the ballot. So with that, what I'd like to do is hand it over to Joyce. She can talk more about kinda what that process looks like, and then I will obviously be sticking around for any questions counsel may have.

Thank you very much, Tim. So I find that this is a helpful timeline as we're looking at what the future might bring. As you know, tonight's information is just a piece of the overall look at what a potential sales tax might be like. You heard the survey results from members of the community, and it is just one part of the conversation that we hope to have over the next few months. In order to qualify for the November ballot, the city only has to act on a resolution and an ordinance eighty eight days prior to the November.

That is 08/07/2026. So I like to look at this as a timeline that looks backward from that date. You do have two city council meetings in July, July 21, where you could potentially adopt a resolution, And you will also have a meeting July 7 where you could hear an initial draft of that resolution, make refinements, and the ordinance. All of those things could happen, by that date to qualify you for the November ballot. That is when we look at this timeline, we have, three arrows that are blue.

Those are all permissible activities that a city may do when they're considering a a potential revenue measure. We are right now at number one. That's testing this potential measure. So, now, you have this opportunity for the voter survey to look at potential timing for a measure, you know, the tax rate, what is the political environment. Those are all things that we've been doing so far.

And I wanna thank all of your city staff for being so helpful as we were putting together this information so that we would have good information about the city and the city's needs to make sure we had a great value alignment with the community as we did this survey. Between now and June, what we would recommend is continuing to work with the city on non advocacy communications. So, we're not asking people to take a position. What we are only doing is providing facts about the needs facing the city and asking for continued engagement from the community so that we have an opportunity to hear from them and share that information back with you. That may be in the form of mailable surveys that are not scientific but allow everybody to answer, whether they're registered voters or not, doing community either town halls or other types of presentations where we can hear from residents and community members, and any other consensus building that we think would be helpful and helpful information to the council as you consider moving this forward.

Then in June and July, we would look to finalize those documents should the city wish to continue to move forward at placing something on the ballot in November and, again, us coming back in July with an opportunity for you to make final decisions. So, no decision has to be made until those dates in July, but it gives you an opportunity to have that ongoing communications and considerations from your community. The fourth item is yellow because that is an independent campaign committee. As you know, council and the city are not allowed to advocate for or against a potential measure. You know, we can't use city resources in order to do that.

Individuals can do things on their own, but the city cannot use those resources. That's why we talk about that as a fourth bullet. That is a separate issue, and those are things that people commonly think about when they think about lawn signs or mail or door hangers that advocate a position. So, we just leave that up there to show that is something separate that is not part of the city's process as we go forward with this.

Make sure I don't pull this out. I just wanted to clarify, and I and I apologize. We we have on here an error that I put in July 7. We know that that council meeting isn't going to be held, so we'll bring that in June. So I just wanted to point out that mistake on this that I made on this slide.

With that, Tim or I are happy to answer any questions that you may have.

So

my question is, is that rather than having this as a general sales tax increase where we can't earmark that, did we look at placing this as restrictive to where it can only be used within a certain amount? And did that change any of the polling that was presented?

We only looked at a general sales tax for this measure. As you may know, general sales taxes require 50% plus one. It is a very strange thing in California that if you have a specific purpose, so if you say we will only use it for this one thing, it actually, and it really is restrictive, it requires two thirds, 66.67% to pass. For that reason, it's often almost impossible for cities to reach that two thirds amount, and you'll see that almost all of your neighbors surrounding you actually have considered general sales taxes, and Hisperia or excuse me, Victorville and Apple Valley and Barstow, even Redlands down the road have all passed general sales taxes having considered both options. So for that reason and considering your neighbors, we stuck with a general sales tax.

And now considering our neighbors, was there any kind of analysis done where they stacked up against with their polling to where it actually ended up being the result having the results at the end of the election? And where does that that number stand? Is that where that 6% came into play, or is there other metrics involved?

I'm sorry, I don't understand the 6% part. I just want to make sure I'm answering correctly.

Plus or minus 3%, is that what you're asking?

No, that was just the deviation. But whenever you start communicating and things like that, there was a 6% deviation factor in there. So I was wondering if It was on the negative arguments. Yes, the negative response.

That was in reference to

the negative arguments and how much it changed. And it just it dropped from 68 to 62.

I'm just curious about considering our neighbors and they went through the same process where they were stacked out. Were they at the same kind of 66 or 68 poll numbers and then the actual results of the election came in significantly less or in par with that? Did we look at any of that?

I

would have to look at I don't have those numbers directly in front of me. I would have to look at those. Tim may have a couple of them from like Redlands and Barstow, but I can say I've worked with Tim in many communities and the margin of error, he's almost always right on. I've been able to outperform him a couple times just because we've done huge community engagement and we've, you know, been able to bring people to the table that way. But, you know, the one time that we saw numbers below polling was obviously March 2020.

I also worked on the city of San Bernardino's measure in March 2020. Their polling was still within the margin of error, even though it was at a difficult time. So we see a pretty pretty good consistency depending on the conversation in the community and what work is done by the city to engage your residents. And Tim, I apologize. Please feel free to add to that.

Yeah. I would I would just add that some of the in the macro view, when we recommend measures for ballot based on the polling, 93% of the time they have been successful. And so sometimes we're recommending measures for ballot that are a lot closer to the line. Right? They may if it was a simple majority measure, they may have 53%, 54%.

Because we understand in that community that if you're waiting around for 60%, you're gonna be waiting forever. Right? You're just never gonna quite get there, and so it made sense given that election environment settled to have them go. So we've occasionally recommended for clients that they go even though it looks a little more dicey, because it was probably the best scenario for them to go. When I look at your numbers here, I don't see anything dicey in these numbers.

And we have really strong support in the sixties throughout this survey. And, you know, you have a you have a a measure that is positioned squarely in what your voters clearly prioritize, and that's public works and public safety. And so we tend to find, by the way, just sort of getting back to that question about a special tax versus a general tax, we tend to find general taxes are more attractive than special taxes because when you do a special tax, you have to narrow your measure to a particular sort of single use. Right? It's earmarked for this purpose.

It's not and so they whereas general taxes can cover sort of public works, public safety, parks, all these things, special taxes are gonna be narrowing down to one of those things. And anytime you narrow that purpose down to one thing, you tend to shave support.

Alright. Thank you.

My question would be when were the what were the actual dates that the survey was completed?

Okay. I'm a pull that right here. So we were in the field February 21 to February 26.

Okay. So with that being said, was there anything in the sample questions that would indicate how our voters feel today with the raise the rising gas prices and the inevitable demand or cost of goods going up?

Yeah. So we obviously, that post dated our polling, right? And so if there's a rising gas price impact, we won't see that in the poll. We'd have to sort of think about what impact that might possibly have. I can tell you that in the poll, in our negative comments, we made a point of talking about cost of living and affordability and, you know, made the negative our opposition arguments for testing those themes and and trying to hit on if some people are sensitive about that.

We were trying to pull that out to see, okay. When we remind you about affordability, when we remind you about cost of living issues and, you know, taxes, how does that impact your support? That's part of the reason why the support went down about six points from where we were at the interim ballot test. But, again, we still landed at 62% the final ballot test after testing negatives.

Hi, Tim. This is Councilmember Ochoa. A quick question. Did you do polling by city district, or was it totally random?

So the way we do it is, you know, I mentioned at the outset the stratified and clustered random sampling. Stratifies means you first break your voter file down by different characteristics. One of those characteristics we broke it down by was sub geographies like council districts. Right? And then you can randomly select within your strata. So that what that does, it ensures that you get the right balance. If we didn't stratify and cluster, it is possible that we would do a random sample, and every single one of the interviews would come from one trustee area. Right? That's mathematically possible if we just did simple random sampling. But because we do stratified and clustered, we make sure that balance is perfect.

And I think you if you saw on that slide earlier here let's see. Backing up. It was the one on the sample right here. Council district is obviously one way of looking at these sub geographies within the community. And here is the balance of likely November voters by council district.

It's not, totally even as you can see that because council districts, although they're meant to be even in terms of overall population, they're not necessarily even in terms of adults or registered voters. And so you see a little bit of difference there, but you can see how this was the distribution in in the voter universe. Here is the distribution in our poll. So we're within two points of where we're supposed to be on every one of those subgeographies.

And real real quick, it was six zero six respondents. How many how many, surveys were sent out?

Oh, so we're typically in terms of who we start to reach out to, we're probably 40 to one in terms of your, you know, your starting point. The reason for that is not everybody's got good contact information. Some people are just not gonna be reachable. Some people refuse, etcetera. But here again, that's why the stratified and clustered random sampling is so important because what happens is if I know, for example, that I'm reaching out to somebody who's she's a democrat, she's a female, she's between 50 and 60 years of age, she lives in a particular part of your community.

If she refuses the survey, I can replace her or I can't reach that person, I can replace her with somebody who shares her exact same profile. And it's that profile that is so predictive of how people tend to vote on these types of revenue measures. That's why even in a day and age where not everyone's gonna take the survey and not everyone's reachable, right, we're only gonna complete with a a a small percentage of the total people we start out with, we still, nevertheless, have results that are as predictive as they are.

Thank you, Timothy.

Any additional questions by counsel? Thank you. That was a receive and file. Thank you very much. Great presentation.

Thank you all for your time tonight. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

We do have public comments for this item. Okay.

Let me get back to that screen. Don't have

Oh, Jessica, can you We can call Al Vogler to the podium. Al Vogler.

Good evening, City Council. I'm Al Voegler. The proposed sales tax increase doubling the amount the city currently receives, raises questions about where taxpayer dollars are being spent. Many expenditures on real estate and rights of way may be viewed as unnecessary, particularly considering very poor road conditions and insufficient sheriffs for public safety. Examples of the unnecessary spending include 4,300,000.0 for golf course operation and management, 1,250,000.00 operational loss for a five year golf course management contract, 525,000 for 10 acres of flood control property, which did not have the benefit of a licensed appraisal, Purchase of 15.5 acres adjacent to the golf course believed to be over 1,000,000.

Purchase of vacant land near City Hall very recently rumored to be 260,000. There are other examples. One which might be outstanding is the loss for the city of Hesperia when the widening of Ranchero Road was terminated and a new contractor had to be hired. Recently, the code enforcement offices were moved to the Northeast corner of the city, ostensibly to save money. However, the move was very inconvenient to the public, which may need help.

The former central city location was far superior and more conducive to discussions with staff. Imagine having to drive from Ranchero Road all of the way to Santa Fe near Bear Valley Road using gasoline costing significantly over $5 per gallon, perhaps on a dirt road in part. Would raising the sales taxes result in the return of code enforcement to city hall? Will the city of Hesperia provide voters with a list of the projects additional sales taxes would pay for prior to any election or city generated publicity? Despite whatever the unbiased result of the team CivX survey concludes, please do not put a sales tax increase on the ballot.

Unfortunately, the city's Horizon publication was not used to inform taxpayers of the sales tax meetings, including tonight. Thank you.

Kim Jones, please.

I'm like, please no more taxes. You know, I've heard that the county takes quite a bit from Hesperia but gives her a little back. Is there any way you can, like, talk to them and get more of our stuff back, you know, that they're taken down south? And I'm like, I could care less about street lights and pavement, you know, the like that. I moved from my animals to livestock.

You know, I like the dirt, and I like the dark at night. I wanna see the stars. I I'm sure you know, I understand what you folks are, you know, talking about like that. But all these tax like the Brown put on all this, raising the the license plate renewal, For years, my truck was, like, $50. Now it's over, like, a $160. You know? Is this gonna happen here? And it's like, please don't no more taxes. I go to the store and you buy, like, toilet paper or whatever thing. It's going up and up and up. Try living on Social Security. The only thing I can think of is, like, the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. But thank you.

The Sperry News and Politics, please.

Why are y'all trying to tax us more in this economy? I'm a just be straight to it. Okay? I also wanted to ask, so from what I understand, Horizon is like the newsletter you guys put out about meetings and topics like that. So why are we not announcing this tax potential tax increase and the surveys that we're doing on it?

Because I feel like the public should know about that, especially because a lot of like, I don't I also wanna ask too if the surveys were door to door because I don't know about you guys. When someone comes, knocks on my door with a clipboard, I don't answer it. So I think that's kind of important to consider when you're considering the kind of people who filled out these surveys because you may not have gotten the most accurate result that you kind of need. Secondly, I may have missed it in the presentation, but is it true that you're proposing to double the tax rate? Because that's a significant amount. If it was just a little bit, that's fine. But that is huge, okay? We already pay a ton of money in this town. We already got a lot of low income folks in this town. We really need to make sure that we are only increasing this if we absolutely have to.

Last but not least, I believe so if we can ASAP, I want to know the exact just not just me, our citizens. I want to know the exact tax rate or maybe, like, just a general idea of how much because I know it may, like, it may not actually be double. You may just go up a little bit or just like a quarter. So can we get an idea of, like, at least a variant of, hey, we wanted to increase it from this amount to this amount? That's kind of the range of what we're discussing right now. So that's what I would love to know so I could pass that on to our citizens. With that being said, that's all I have for tonight. I hate having to have taxes on the agenda, but we do need roads and stuff. I just wanna make sure, like a lot of these folks said today, that we get it done right because, yeah, there has been a lot of money spent in this town and look at our roads, look at Maple, look at all the potholes, you know, it's it's terrible. I do appreciate the efforts.

I just wanna make sure that we're doing it in a right that excuse me. That we're doing it in a way that's not gonna put more people at risk financially, and not just them, but the city too. So we need to make sure we do the right thing. But other than that, thank you for being here tonight. That's all I have to

No more speaker cards.

Thank you. Moving on to council committee reports. Allison, can you please start us off, please?

Thank

you. I want to recognize Boy Scout troop fifty that has been sitting here all evening. They are trying to get their citizenship in the community badge, and we have several young folks that are here with us. Joseph Avia, Are you here? No?

Juan Bastillo, Joseph Chaddiz, Sebastian Govilla, Daniel Harley, Ethan stand up if I've called your name Ethan and Teddy Olson, Rafael, and Dominic. These young folks are here to get a badge, the citizenship in the community badge. And they do need to speak with council members. So if any of us want to stick around after, maybe we can have a little conversation with them. I will stick around after to help out to get those.

And I know two of the young men that are in this group, Ethan and Teddy, are you both here? You two are on the path for your Eagle Scout ranking, is that correct? Okay. When you get that, would love to have you get a hold of me again, and

I'd like

to talk to you once you get that. So have your mom, Carrie, get a hold of me once that happens. Thank you for coming here this evening. You guys can sit down. Sorry.

I'll make you stand the whole time. Eagle Scout is really a prestigious honor the Boy Scouts, and there are not very many people that have that. I know a couple. We have one president, Gerald Ford, that has that, Eagle Scout, Neil Armstrong, Colin Powell, Sam Walton, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Charles Schwab, Justin Timberlake, Derek Jeter, Harrison Ford. Those are just a few of the people that I looked up and have rank of Eagle Scouts.

So thank you for joining us, and I will come and talk to you guys after the meeting. Moving on here. On the seventh, I went to the Hisperia Community Health Fair at Sultana High School. That was a good turnout. I enjoyed that. And yesterday, I went to my VVTA meeting, and the Monday municipal mile was very well attended yesterday. And I know our staff works very hard to make that work, and you guys do a great job. And I see only Kelly. I I don't know who else. I I Tammy was there and Jennifer.

That's a great event. So come on out to the park on Mondays, 05:00, and join us to walk a mile. And I wanna wish wish everybody a happy Saint Patrick's Day. Wish everybody a happy Easter on April 5 because we will not have a meeting until then. And I wanna say thank you to our city manager and to Melinda Sayer.

I had a resident reach out to me with a problem, and I brought it to the attention of Rachel and Melinda. And it was completely fixed with less than twenty four hours. So thank you very much. That resident was very happy, and I appreciate everything you guys did to make that turn out well. And also, I want to bring up that the Spring Fling Vendor Boutique and Car Show is happening at Sultana High School on March 29.

So please head out there to join in the fun. They're gonna have a vendor boutique, a clothing drive, a car show, and it's at Sultana High School. So please join that event, Sunday, March 29, from eleven to four p. M. I wanna thank the folks in the back for everything you do and staff, and that's all I've got. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Council member Chua, please.

Thank you, mayor. I was a little busy this month. Finally, things are I think maybe the ice is thawing. But I promise it won't be the Ochoa hour, I promise. On March 4, I, had the pleasure of attending, the VMI State of the City for Victorville.

It was, pretty impressive, but we're still the best city in the High Desert. Just have to say that. Three, on March 15, I was invited to, speak at the Women's Empowerment, sixth annual High Desert Boss Bombs Convention. I presented them with a certificate on behalf of our amazing mayor. And then on threetwenty one, I was at the Salva, community, event where they were, with the help of assembly member Juan Carrillo providing some, services for immigrant populations that are in the process of paying for their citizenship, and they received lawyer assistance with that as well.

It was a great community event. A lot of resources were out handed out. And, oh, I almost forgot. On March 10, I was, invited to attend the Hope House Taco Tuesday fundraiser, where I was asked to be an emcee. And I got my Van A White skills going and helped them with their community drawing. So that was fun. But that is it for me.

Councilmember Greg, please.

Alright. Thank you. First, Kim Jones, I'm glad to hear that Ruben was reunited with you. I I know you've been speaking on that numerous meetings, so that's always a a happy moment, and I'm glad that our staff was able to facilitate that reunification with Ruben to you. And, you know, thank you for our staff for that.

I want to address the Summit Valley Road that was brought up about how that's being improved. Unfortunately, a lot of that area is managed by San Bernardino County. So in order to get it widened, the Board of Supervisors, they have their meetings, and that may be, who have a lot of our residents to go down there and maybe voice some of those concerns with the Board so then that is brought to their attention as well. We do what we can within city limits, but most of that is in the San Bernardino County area. Seeing this sales tax feasibility study kind of opened my eyes to something else that we probably need to do within our community.

When we look at some of the concerns that residents brought up, streetlights, parks, those things aren't under our purview, and yet our residents believe that they are. So I think we need to make a conscious effort to steer residents into the direction that those frustrations and and some of those things should go over to the Parks District. The city of Asperia does not handle the street lights within our city, and we don't handle parks. We have an entirely separate governmental agency that handles that. They have a board as well, and residents should be approaching their representatives in that matter as well.

Regarding the the sales tax, trying to figure out if it's doubling, it's not. It's 1% of what it is now, 7.75 now, so it's proposed to go up to 8.75%, correct? So I don't want there to be that misconception out there that we're talking about going to almost 15% sales tax. That's not the case. I would hope people would do a little bit more due diligence on that.

They start hearing that stuff, always reach out to us as well. We can help steer that conversation to at least factual basis. During this time, obviously we have lots of servicemen and women fighting overseas. So, you know, obviously in this time, I want to make sure that we maintain our thoughts and prayers with them on a constant basis. It's always hard to be away from your family, fighting for everything that we enjoy on a daily basis and often take for granted. So please keep our servicemen and women in your thoughts and prayers. Folks, slow down. That was some of the issues as well with this tax. Right? More enforcement.

Our folks in the back are already tapped, strained. They do so much with with so little of what we're able to to provide to the community. Slow down. Get to where you're going safely. Give our folks in the back a little bit of a breathing room with this. That would make their job a little bit easier. Other than that, madam mayor, I don't have anything else.

Thank you. Mayor pro tem Poland, please.

Thank you, madam mayor. Cameron pretty much touched on everything, but I'll echo what he said. Kim, I'm glad you found your dog, and I'm thankful to staff for helping out Kim. That was very nice of you guys. With that being said, I will echo, keep our military and our law enforcement in your thoughts and prayers. Our law enforcement have increased stress on them too during this time, so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. I attended SBCTA general policy and the board of directors meeting this last couple of weeks. I will also say happy Saint Patrick's Day. Please be safe tonight. If you're going out, please call an Uber, call a friend, call someone.

Don't drink and drive, please. And the last thing I'll say is with the heat wave coming in this week, please take care of yourselves. Make sure you're not out in the heat. If you are out in the heat, make sure you're hydrating. And remember that, as it heats up, those grasses are going to dry out. So we're prone to wildfires. That's what couldn't say. Yeah, we're prone to wildfires with the grasses. We didn't have a lot of snowpack this year, so please be careful out there. So that's it.

Thank you. I too ascended ascended. I'm talking like you. Attended VMI. It was the state of the city of Victorville. It was really well done. I participated in Read Across America at Cottonwood Elementary School, and that was a lot of fun. I did kindergartens all the way up to sixth graders, and I'm all the sixth graders, they chose the book. And, yes, it was doctor Seuss's tongue twister. I struggled with that. Probably drank half a gallon of water, but it's a lot of fun. I always enjoyed that. Participated with Today's Women's Foundation. We had our first in person coffee. It's back in the city of Asperia.

It's the rock stars of America. Rock stars of tomorrow, and it's right over here at the Eagle Plaza. So that was fun. The lady that owns Olympic Flame, Gilda Ortega, she presented, and, wow, what an amazing young lady she is. So it was a great presentation. We did the Monday municipal miracle my municipal mile. I will the three m's yesterday, and we had a great turnout. It was a lot of fun. We had dogs. We had we had so many people.

It was a lot of fun. It was pretty hot, but thank you to staff handing out water and snacks, and it was just a great turnout. And thank you to council member Cho for kicking that back up. This is the second time we've done it, and we just we we had over a 100 people yesterday. So it was a lot of fun. I the SBA workshop that was put on by the city was at economic development. I've received a lot of positive comments on that. So great job on that, bringing up our small businesses, our future business owners. So appreciate you guys doing that. And the tax, again, it's not doubled.

It would be 1%. So it is 1%. 1%. 1% that would go up. And do note that our neighbors neighboring cities have passed it on their ballot, and they so when you go to buy in our neighboring cities, you're paying that extra 1% that is going towards their roads, their public safety, their fire.

So I hopefully, we will move forward to positive outcome on that, but, again, it is 1%. Thank you. I would also like prayers to our men and women who are fighting. Keep them in your prayers. I thank you to police and fire, and I can't even say it any better than council member Greg. Slow down. Red lights are red lights. They're not hurry up and gas through lights. So avoid there's so many people that are running red lights. It's terrifying to even be driving.

So slow down. Make it easier for our public safety. I wanna thank staff for doing an amazing job, public works, and our code enforcement. Our code enforcement been pretty busy now that it's hot. They're out and about, very responsive. Take advantage of the is it the HARP program for the legal dumping? Use the app. Call it in to advance disposal. I'm noticing a lot of illegal dumping going on. I guess spring cleaning, they're putting it on our right of way instead of taking it to the dump or taking advantage of our cleanup days.

I believe that is all I have. I, thank you to this council. It's amazing to sit up here with you, and, I love all your ideas. So with nothing further, I will ask, are there any comments from the city manager or city attorney? Hearing none, thank you, everyone. Thank you to the Boy Scout troop for joining us tonight. And we saw the Eagle Award, Cameron and I, when we were first on council, witnessed. Yes. So it's it is awesome. So congratulations, and, we will join the meeting at 07:57. Thank you, everyone.