City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good afternoon and welcome to our August 4th City Council meeting. I'll call the meeting to order at 3 o'clock. Our invocation will be by my favorite pastor, Pastor Tim from High Desert Church. And Josh, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Yes. Thank you. May we have a roll call, please?

Here. Mayor Pro Tem Pullen? Here. Council Member Gregg? Here. Council Member Lee? Here. Council Member Ochoa?

Here.

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

There are no revisions today.

Thank you. Closed session has been moved to the end of the meeting, so there will be no reports out. We will move 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 slip 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. Do we have any online speakers?

No, we do not.

Thank you. Any voicemail messages? No messages, just two in-person speakers. Thank you. I am not seeing that on my screen.

Okay, the first speaker is Al Vogler. Thank you.

I'm here today to talk about a topic I brought up four or five times in the past, and that's traffic safety on Rock Springs Road. Rock Springs Road is a four-lane road as you exit off of Main Street, Arrowhead, Lake Road, and then go east. And it abruptly becomes two lanes at Glendale. There have been multiple accidents there. There have been deaths there. April, there was another head-on collision. Last Thursday, there was another collision. At one point, I've given this information to the city council before, a man crashed into the telephone poles and became ensnared in the guy wires holding up the telephone pole, and his car was suspended in midair with him in the car. I know that if the city... had enough money to do an overlay on 7th Street, just in time for the upcoming election, that there's enough money to create a taper of the lanes at Glendale and Rock Springs. And instead of it abruptly going from two lanes into one, you taper it in a few hundred feet down to the east. I've made a public records request regarding Rock Springs Road and there were no answers because there is no documents. It's not in your plan. I don't see it in your capital improvement projects. I see a lot of other streets that you're going to do work on, but I'm going to guess that those streets do not have as many accidents as Rock Springs Road does. I know there are more accidents there than I'm aware of because my friends, neighbors, and relatives that live in that area tell me about them. The ones I truly know about are the ones that I've seen and witnessed. The one in April, the head-on collision, I have photographs of that. I have other photographs. So I'm, again, asserting that for the sake of traffic safety, that that... that intersection be modified from an abrupt intersection to one that has been tapered. It really is very important. Thank you.

Kim Jones, please.

Yeah, I'd like to thank Allison Lee and Cameron Gregg for voting no on that tax initiative. I know there's some of the people wanted it, but it's like I pay enough taxes and I think they were understanding that and other reasons why they said no. And I've lived here about 27 years. And it seems like all through the years and all through the elections, all I hear about is fixing the roads and our public safety, bringing in more fire and more sheriffs and such and infrastructure, but don't seem like much ever gets done. you know, it's on just about every candidate statement that I've seen. And I've requested some other ones for the most recent years because I'd like to see what some of the people in the different districts are saying when they run. And also the last meeting, I was very disturbed about the outcries from the audience here that it should not be done. You have to have order in these meetings. Whether you agree with the person or not, let them speak. And I know Chris Ochoa was trying to say something. I don't agree with what you're saying, but that was wrong for him to be interrupted by this fellow that was over here. And I didn't like it. And I've been in other meetings when that have happened. And I know there was a bunch of Democrats in here at one time. They were yelling and screaming, disrupting the music, using profanity, and nobody ever said nothing about them. And I was here then when the Muslim folk were in here, the anti-Semites. Nobody said anything about them carrying on like that. You know, but it needs to stop. We have to have order no matter what a person says. What we say here, you can dispute later or say later. And you folks have at the end of the meeting or near it, you can do your council comments. And if you say something that we don't agree with, we have to wait until next meeting to say it. So it's like you guys get the last word. So that's why I'm bringing this up. And I was just very disturbed at that. Even though I was for what they were saying, I was against the way they said it. And I was very disturbed about somebody showed me some of these Facebook comments referring to anybody that spoke out against this tax, calling us clowns. Well, excuse me, I'm a senior citizen, all right? It's pretty hard living like that. And the person, one of them that agreed, is running for the council. And I guarantee you, I won't vote for that person, even though the person didn't say specific. You just said agreed with the comments that Bridget Bennington's husband made, calling us clowns. And I'm very disturbed over that. Thank you for your time. Gina Whelan, please.

Whelan, sorry.

I was gonna say good afternoon, but good evening. I'm just here briefly for a couple of things. I do have to agree with Kim Jones. Social media is evil, we already know that, but I think there should be more restraint and more, how do I say, professionalism even if the people who are commenting are family members of the council members or any city entity the bottom line is you know we all come here as concerned citizens to voice our opinions and our concerns to the people that we put up in these seats and you in turn are supposed to listen to us and help you know guide us and help fix things that are going wrong in our city and a lot is going wrong still i mean i'm just you know The animal shelter, well we already know, it's getting better thanks to Romina Gonzalez, she's amazing. And I really hope that she continues being a part of the animal shelter there and continues to have the support of the council and the city manager's office because there's been a lot of good things coming out of there. It would be great also if the Paw Mission was available for the community members, not just for the animals that are coming out. of the shelter or like people who, you know, have adopted and then, you know, need to get them fixed. So maybe that should be the next step, you know, help the community fix the problems with fixing the animals. Also, to touch bases on the clown issue, I am not a clown, okay? We can agree to disagree, you know, a lot we say up here you don't agree with and a lot you say we don't agree with. But at the end of the day, it's called respect. And again, touching on that, I don't appreciate being called a clown. I know that we get talked garbage about after meetings or whatever, that's fine. But when we come up here and we speak on social media, and even when other city members of the community speak on social media, they're voicing their concerns and their opinions. We all are allowed our First Amendment rights. That's true, but the bottom line is there should be no name calling, especially from a council member's spouse, and then, again, a future possible future council member who's a candidate who agrees with it. At the end of the day, you represent us. You are here for us. You can't control what everybody says on social media. That's the bottom line. You can't. But at the end of the day, it's just being tactical and just having respect. I know you guys don't get a lot of respect. I totally get it, and I'm sorry that I missed the whole meeting, you know, last meeting, because I heard it was a woozy, you know. Thank you to both council members, Ellison Lee and Cameron Gregg, for listening to the majority of the people on that issue. But, you know, at the end of the day, yeah, people in the audience need to respect you guys and need to respect whoever's speaking up here. But then again, you know, it's a whole team effort. Bottom line. Thank you.

Rihanna, I'm going to mess up your name. I'm sorry. You go by Nana. Come on up, please.

How y'all doing? It's good to see all y'all. So, first of all, I'm going to disagree with you guys on some things, but I think it is good to call out the clown comment, because at the end of the day, yeah, these are our citizens. We have to be kind to each other to an extent, and calling each other clowns isn't really productive. But what I will say is, let me tell you why people are saying that. It's because we're over here complaining about how We care about low-income families, but why don't you all think about the fact that people have to pay for alignments, tire repairs. They've got to pay for the risks from their underfunded public safety. Okay, higher response times, which all that, by the way, contributes to insurance costs. Cameron Gregg, Allison Lee, y'all voted for that. Y'all voted to fuck that up more, excuse my language, but you did. And you know what? I'm disappointed because I hate taxes. I was raised by two Republicans. Both my parents are Trump supporters. They're good folk. Okay, but... They also know that our taxes are from the state, from the county. They don't go nowhere. Our money from the city, it'll go somewhere, provided that we hold you guys accountable, of course. If you don't spend the money right, we vote you out. That's how it works, okay? But at the end of the day, what is better? Is it better to go and force the low-income folk to be at the mercy of these reports for when they go? Because I know you've got to report it to the city and you get reimbursed basically for these costs if you get like a damage to your car from the roads and things like that. Are we basically just going to be at the mercy of the city? Are we going to be at the mercy kind of like how we're going to be at your mercy with your little GoFundMe that's raised $200 whole dollars? $200. And you understand it's for $1 million, which is a mile of road. So you just got to hope we can raise a million a mile. But you think people can't afford a sales tax. Come on now. I hate taxes too, but I also want my road fixed. I want our cops to have enough staffing. I want our fire department to have enough staffing. I want EMS to have enough staffing. It costs money, okay? We have 100,000 people. We are no longer a small town anymore, okay? because I'm angry. I'm sorry. I'll calm down. Okay. But you get the point. Okay. What's better? Is it better for us to go ahead and go with let's pass the cost down with the sales tax that's going to take pennies versus we're just going to put the low-income folks, we're going to put them at risk. with damaging their car, getting into wrecks on our roads, having low response times. I know all of y'all have dealt with that. And no disrespect to our shared farming because they are doing the best with what they got. But you voting no, you voting no, you're failing them. That's all I got to say. Y'all have a good night.

Do we have any additional public comment cards? No more white cards, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Moving on to our joint consent calendar. Do I have a motion to move the consent calendar? I have a motion by Councilmember Gregg, a second by Councilmember Ochoa. Can we have a vote please? The item passes 5-0. Moving on to our council committee reports and comments. We'll start with council member Greg, please All right.

Thank you, Bridget So first I'll address Donna's comments on this and and support the reasoning behind my vote if you actually looked at the agenda you realize that there were over 1,100 families on an agenda item that were behind on their water bill alone and How do you expect them to pay additional within the community? The vote is what the vote is. It's done, it's over with. The biggest thing and the most important thing is moving on from that and coming up with a solution. I mean, there's tons of solutions to go through, but whenever we start getting down into the brass tacks of things, no pun intended, We went over budget by multimillion dollars for Rancho Bridge. That money could have gone into our law enforcement or roads or anything else there. There's so many instances of that. I mean, if we just actually dug into the amount of additional spending that we didn't account for initially, I think a lot of people would be shocked in that. So again, I support my vote. You look at the vote, it was a 60-40. Why wasn't it a simple majority vote to go out to the voters as a simple majority vote? So there's lots of things that are intertwined with that. Do I think that it was the best thing to move forward with that? Maybe. But the thing is, I don't think that we explored every single option left available to us, considering we're already from the state with the highest taxes in the nation. Things aren't getting any cheaper. More tax initiatives are set to hit the ballot from the state. Where does it end? That's my only question. If 1% is voted in now, does that mean that 1% is going to be proposed on a ballot again in a year or two years, just like Victorville tried to do? So again, as I have full faith in our staff in being able to work within the means that we have. And I have full faith in us to try to come up with a solution to supplement what could have been. $15 million is $15 million. It's coming out of somebody's pocket regardless. So those are the things that I looked at for that. Addressing the Rock Springs, is there any way to find out if we have an easement on the east side of Glendale? on the eastbound lane there to where we may be able to put in an emerging lane from that turning. Maybe it'll help with accidents in the future, but if we have the easement already available, it's something that could be minimal to save some accidents down the road. Other than that, that's all I have.

Council Member Lee.

On July 22nd, I attended the Caltrans D8 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new southbound I-15 way station. I think this was a long time coming. For this scale house, it is in a great position to make sure that the large trucks heading down the pass are safe and brakes are good and not on fire. I do think that was one of the best things that Caltrans has done in our region. I'm looking forward to National Night Out tonight. Not looking forward to being out there in the heat. It's definitely a little warm. My biggest issue on the sales tax was the council members that are sitting here on this council want that tax initiative. I get it. We need it. But if we have a council in two, four, six years down the road that doesn't want to spend that money from the general fund for roads and public safety, that's my issue. I would have liked it to have been earmarked. I know that takes a greater amount of votes to get that through, but that is my biggest issue on that. I do think we need to do something with our roads, and we do have a lot of ways that we can cut spending a little bit, and maybe we can get some of those roads accomplished. Who knows? Maybe you're going to bring it back in two years and have it earmarked. I don't know how that's going to be. My quote for this evening is, count your blessings. You will have a different perspective. Thank you.

Council Member Ochoa.

Of course. Thank you, Mayor.

I had a great weekend. I spent it in the community. I was invited by the High Desert Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to represent the city at Conexión. It was a great forum there. It was just a lot of great information, a lot of great businesses coming together. We got to hear from some local leaders and had a great time. Then I went and did a ribbon cutting over at the Hesperia Boxing Center Jim over now on Mariposa Road, which was a great experience, a small business opening up in history is always something to celebrate. We were able to present them with a certificate from the city and they really appreciated that they weren't expecting a lot because it was short notice. They weren't expecting us to show up, but it was they were really appreciative to have us there. In other areas, I do want to present some solutions. I had, in all honesty, had prepared a very lofty Ochoa Hour commentary, but I think a lot of the things that were said by folks and my fellow council members, it would just be beating a dead horse. I don't want to do that. So what I would like to do... is present the solutions next council meeting we have an agenda item coming up where we're going to be looking at what we're going to be cutting and what corners we can cut what areas we can look at and what i would like to propose that we add to that agenda item is looking at our assets to see what we can offload and sell to help us bridge the gap primarily starting with hisperia lake And then with our library. With our golf course and with the animal shelter, I think we need to be making smart, strategic. Conservative moves at this point of being fiscally responsible is the only way we're going to bridge the gap and get back into the black. Right now we are in the red. We cannot look at any other reality from that. We need to be able to ensure that we're coming up with funding to put more sheriffs, deputies on our streets and funding our law enforcement and protecting the rule of law in the city of Hesperia. Moreover, we need to be able to pay our bills. So we have to make some sacrifices as a community. Thank you.

Mayor Patem, Josh.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think everything's already been said. I had no committees this last couple of weeks. I will say I do appreciate the comments about social media and conduct in here in the chambers. With that being said, I think the five of us are in a position, we will get beat up and we'll take that and we'll accept that. But our staff, they work hard. They don't deserve to be beat up, just like the public doesn't deserve to be beat up. So with that to the staff, thank you guys. You guys take a lot of beating too, undeserved. That should come towards the five of us, not you guys. But just like I said, the public doesn't deserve it either. So with that, end of comment.

Thank you. I had no meetings in July. I have the coffee update this Friday. Try agency tomorrow. I went to Big Bear to stay out of the heat, and it was 90 degrees, so I'm just going to stay home and stay in the heat with my pool. But I had a great weekend as well. It was relaxing. Next, we have invite you all for National Night Out. I was coming down and forgot that smoke tree was closed, so I had to turn around and park in the parking lot here. I thank you to Rachel, Pam, and all the Hesperia staff. You continue to amaze me and I'm hoping I'm speaking on behalf of all the council members. You do all you do regardless of all the restraints that are holding you back. We're getting the work done. Appreciate our field staff. Thank you police and fire. I ask you to stay safe. It's hot out there and yes, fireworks are still illegal. Do we have any city manager, city attorney comments? Then I will adjourn the meeting at 3.25, thank you.