City Council - Regular Meeting

Please let me know when we're ready. Okay. Okay, welcome everyone. We're about to just get started for a special City Council meeting for the City of Hollister. June 29, 2026. We're starting at 530. Can we do roll call, please?

Council Member Pichet? Present. Dr. Resendez? Here. Council Member Morales? Here. And Mayor Stephens?

Here. Okay, and Dr. Resendez, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Great. Thank you for that. So let's go right into the agenda. We have a few items to go over. Hopefully, they're pretty quick. So we don't have a super long meeting. So start with 4.1 resolution approving a memorandum of understanding for service employees, international union local 521. And we get a staff report.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Tonight, I am presenting for your consideration a successor Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the Service Employees International Union Local 521, also known as SEIU. The current MOU is set to expire on June 30th, 2026, tomorrow, and the proposed agreement before you is for a one-year term beginning July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. The proposed MOU is the result of good faith negotiations between the city and the union. Throughout the bargaining process, both parties engaged in open, respectful and productive discussions with a shared goal of reaching a mutually acceptable agreement. The union recognizes the city's current financial position and worked collaboratively with the city to reach an agreement that maintains fiscal responsibility. As a result, the parties mutually agreed to maintain the status quo with respect to salaries and employer benefit contributions. The proposed MOU does not include increases to wages or city paid benefits. Staff believes this agreement reflects a balanced and responsible outcome that supports the city's long-term financial stability while honoring the collaborative bargaining process. Accordingly, staff respectfully recommends that the City Council adopt the resolution approving the successor SEIU Memorandum of Understanding for the term of July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027.

OK. Thank you for that report. Any questions or comments from council members? OK. Let's go to public comment. Any public speakers on this one, Daisy?

We have no public comment. OK.

great um okay let me bring it back any other i'll move to adopt okay my second okay um and any we don't need to do roll call right okay is on zoom so it is we probably should announce her and do a roll call um vice mayor did you get did you hear the presentation for this item I did, yes. Okay, great. Okay, so we're going to go ahead then and do a roll call vote on this item.

Yeah, and then if we can also have her announce her 707.

Yeah, go ahead. Can you just read the little blurb, Vice Mayor?

I'll be participating remotely tonight under the just class rules of the Brown Act as approved under Senate Bill 707. I will have my camera on at all times and understand that all votes will be taken via roll call. There are no individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room at my remote location.

Thank you so much.

Okay. And I think it's 18 years and under, right? I think it's under. Okay. Okay.

I was confused. Sorry. The blurb that I received says older. So yes. Okay.

Thank you for that, Vice Mayor.

I'm solo. So yes. So that makes it clear. Okay, great.

Thank you. Okay. So let's just go ahead and do a roll call vote on that item.

Council Member Shea.

Aye.

Dr. Resendez.

Aye.

Council Member Morales. Yes. Vice Mayor DeAnda. Yes. And Mayor Stephens.

Yes. Okay, great. And can I just do a quick little thank you to, especially to our union, SEIU union. I know that oftentimes negotiations can get a little contentious because there's a lot of things that are riding on the decisions that are made through that process. So I appreciate everybody sticking through this really difficult process and working together to come to an agreement. We hope that we'll continue that kind of partnership with the unions. I look forward to having more and more good partnerships with them as we move forward with other decisions. So thank you so much to all the staff, city manager, attorneys, to HR and the union. So thank you everybody for sticking through it. Okay, let's move on to 4.2, information report on 2025 Consumer Confidence Water Quality Report. Staff report, please.

Mayor Mrakas, Good evening, Council, Mayor Microsoft management as the public works department. Mayor Mrakas, So the presentation before you is an informational report on our two thousand and twenty five water quality consumer confidence report. Mayor Mrakas, And then Mayor Mrakas, So the The purpose of this report is to provide customers of our water system with information about the quality of the water they use and consume. It summarizes where their water comes from, shows total consumption over the course of the year, and provides the results of required water quality monitoring. So just some highlights from 2025. We had zero detections of E. coli, total coliform, and PFAS. You know, that's a lot of people's concern about that. Nitrate levels now are historic lows. We completed over 800 water quality tests that were done by our water division. And results from our water production continued to show that we were able to meet customer demand. Next slide, please. In 2,025, the city of Hollister produced over 1,000,000,000 gallons of water of that. Twenty-nine percent came from the city of Paulster's own groundwater wells. Eight percent came from sunny slopes, groundwater wells. Thirteen percent came from the assault water treatment plant, and fifty percent came from the West West Hills water treatment. Additionally, if you can see in the graphs, water consumption rose only slightly from the previous year, which is a result of both of our work replacing aging and leaking infrastructure and informing customers about water conservation strategies. Next slide, please. For the 2025 calendar year, as I mentioned before, there were no detections of PFAS, E. coli, or total coliform in our water supply. Another highlight is that due to extending dead and means at our airport. installing new mixers at our park hill water tanks and increasing flushing throughout our distribution system, we are now seeing historic lows for total trial method things which used to be a massive issue for our system in the past. Lastly, we are continuing to work on a compliance strategy in regards to our hexavalent chromium issues. As you may be aware, we have already received approval for our plan to come into compliance from the State Water Resources Control Board. We are now finalizing an operations program and permit amendments to formally adopt the strategy. Next slide, please. So with that, at this time, I'd like to open up for any questions that the council may have.

okay thank you for that um report any questions or comments from the dice uh vice mayor any questions from you no okay okay do we have any public comments cards on this one okay and then jay are we taking action on this or this just receiving a report

No, just receiving the report.

Okay, well, good. Well, thank you so much for the good news. I mean, it is always good to hear that we have good quality water. This has been kind of a rough thing for the public this year because there was some misinformation. Also, a lot of confusing information that got out to the public. So it is really good for us to, with all really strong confidence, be able to convey the information that's on this report. So thank you so much for that. Appreciate it. Okay, so let's move on to the next item, 4.3, resolution approving the formation of a financial oversight task force. Can we get a staff report, please?

Madam Mayor, council members, at the last meeting a week ago, we mentioned the fact that we would strongly recommend the creation of an oversight body of some sort. The council then indicated that, yes, bring us some ideas. And so what we have in front of you is a concept that I had already researched leading to the meeting last week. If you are ready to make a decision today, great. If not, we can definitely come back to you in August, but we wanted to at least give you a preview of where our thinking is. So right now, the proposal is to create a financial oversight task force. This task force will have a total of 11 participants, one member of council, one finance department rep, one member of SCIU, one member from the Police Association, one member from the Fire Association, and six members from the community. The idea here is that the community has the majority as far as voting and making decisions and so on and so forth. we provided you with a charter, at least a draft charter, that tells you what the task force is about. And what it is about is the review of our financial reporting, an overview, for example, at the end of every month, our bank reconciliations, when we are looking at forecasts, a review of our assumptions. And before I continue, let me back up a little bit. Let me introduce you to our interim fire chief, fire chief haley who has officially joined the city um and so i had asked him to come so that you can at least see who he is i've had shared with you his resume but he is he is here with us chief you want to say anything All right, let me continue. I think they want to get out of here. And so the idea here, of course, is that this group will be very much a hands-on group. We will be looking for candidates that have, potential candidates that have a background in financial analysis, budgeting, banking, accounting. We are really looking for individuals who enjoy getting their hands into Excel sheets and reviewing numbers, crunching numbers, calculating, et cetera. It is very much a working group and not a policy group. So I want to make that distinction for members of the public who may be interested in joining this task force. This is not a think big thoughts type of body. This is a here are 20 Excel sheets group. go through them one by one to make sure there are no mistakes. So it's very much micro focused. The idea here would be to have folks come in six month terms. Also one term would be equivalent to six months. Why? Because we will do a lot of work during those six months. So the reality is that people should say, okay, I'm done. I've given you my time and I'm ready to move on. And then we bring another group of people for the next term. The proposal that we have right now has a charter that we've created, ground rules that will guide the interactions of that group. And we've also created a form for people who want to apply to be part of the task force. We will receive applications. The finance department will review them for qualifications. And when we find six qualified individuals, we will bring them to you for your ratification. So you will be making the appointments to that task force. we will simply review the interested parties. The intention here, as I said, is to provide people direct access to our books. We have nothing to hide. The more eyes on our books, the better. And so this is our attempt to make sure that we have all the stakeholders at the table. And that goes also for the unions during the very productive negotiation and discussions that we have had. And the theme of how do we make sure that this doesn't happen again has come up. And the best way to make sure that this doesn't happen again is by reading the reports, by going through the numbers, by checking to make sure that the math is correct, and to do so on a periodic basis. So with that said, any questions?

Okay, thank you for that. Any questions? Any questions on this slide? Council Member Morales, go ahead.

I have a comment.

Go ahead, yeah, comment. It's fine, too.

Thank you, city manager. I'm hoping that maybe the council or you would be open to considering our position for middle manager. And would the treasurer be appropriate for this committee or no?

Actually, you are correct. You had mentioned that. I think that would be a fantastic addition, yes.

So that would be my recommendation, to add the treasurer and the middle manager representation.

Go ahead, councilman.

Thank you, Mayor. So I just noticed a quick typo. We can fix it later, but it says page 114. It says, does not apply, yada, yada, yada. The second bullet point says, or one business in the city hall. So I believe it's supposed to say own. And then I just want to put it on the record that I'm not in favor of giving $100 stipends to the community members for obvious reasons. Like, that's $3,600 at six months. I think in total. But yeah, I just think that we shouldn't be paying people $100 to come each month to be a part of this. So I'm hoping that they would volunteer and do it. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions or comments by Sumire? Are there any speaker parts on this item, Daisy?

We have no speakers.

Okay, so let me bring you back to the diaries. Let me just, what do you guys think about moving forward with an action today, or is this something that you think we should put off and ponder a little more, maybe get more public input, and then come back and make a decision? What are you guys thinking? Council Member Morales, go ahead. I'd say move forward.

Move forward. A third... one this is not going to be fun committee unless you love numbers um and i think if we really want some expertise it's going to take a little bit of time to actually recruit that um and we'd have some very talented people in the city of pollister so this would allow us the summer for people to apply and then review and then hopefully get it started in august i mean this is just the beginning we're gonna have to review numbers come december for potential action in january and then again in june so we should have everything completed by march april So for us to get started, we need to do something now.

Yeah. Okay. Good point. Thoughts?

I was just going to say that I'm not against giving community members $100 to attend a meeting that they're going to have to prep for. There's going to be a lot of effort necessary. They're going to be subject matter experts in the finance field, which is... French numbers isn't always the most fun for a lot of people to be a lot of like I said we're going into every meeting so you're gonna have to prep for every single one so. i'm ready to move forward with this everything looks good to me. we're just have to hit streets find some people that want to help out.

Okay. Okay by smear any thoughts from any comments questions.

No, I just think that this is a thank you. I would first like to say thank you, Anna, for bringing this forward. And I think this is much needed, especially in terms of transparency and the financial difficulties that we've had working up to this point. I'm hoping that this. be an added asset for us to move forward in terms of getting our city's finances moving in the appropriate direction. So I just want to thank you for that.

Okay. Okay, and then let me just make this comment. Ana, when we had the conversation about this before, we talked about the number and how we wanted the community members to outnumber The others by one individual also have an odd number so that if there's a vote that's taken. So if we add the treasurer, then we're at an even number. And I think already six members is a lot. It's a lot to recruit. I think it's going to be difficult to get that many people to participate. But I'm not sure if you have any thoughts about that, about how we might want to...

So regarding the two additions, so for the treasurer, if I could make the suggestion, yes, indeed, he should be part of this, Mr. Machado. We do not need to make him a voting member. So that way it would not impact the total vote. And as far as the middle manager position, I would suggest that the finance department assign a middle manager to be part of this. And I think there'll be an excellent professional development opportunity for that person and also for the department.

Okay, okay. Yeah, and I'll just chime in on the $100 stipend. I mean, I agree with Councilmember Pichet. I'm not opposed to that either. I think, I mean, I understand Dr. Resendez's concerns about, because every dollar counts. I also understand that this may be a way to get people to participate in something that is oftentimes the thing that we get most criticized on, because it oftentimes is the most complicated issue, our budget and our finances. So I think it's okay, but I do think that it would be good to bring forth any concerns that you have, city manager, about paying that out

for this function for this body i don't know what what are your thoughts about that so one of the uh one of the the structures i guess that we're putting in place is that the participants will receive the compensation after the term so you have to serve your full term to receive the compensation you don't get paid for every time you attend you get paid for having completed the term

Okay, and I guess fulfill the duties of that. Okay. I mean, it does serve as a good incentive to encourage participation and for people to actually do what the role was intended for, right? I mean, I think that would be a good incentive for them. Okay, all right. Well, I mean, I think we're ready to move forward then. It sounds like we're ready to move forward. So if somebody wants to make a motion, I will entertain a motion.

I'll move to that.

Okay, can I have a second? Second. Roll call, please.

Council Member Pache. Aye. Dr. Mvendez.

Aye.

Vice Mayor DeAnda.

Yes.

And Mayor Stevens.

Yes. Okay, thank you for that. Then we'll move on then to the next item. We're at 4-4, a resolution approving the appointment of an interim parks and rec director pursuant to government code section 2122-1G. Staff report, please, Mayor.

Madam Mayor, members of the council. Council member to the last committee.

I'm sorry, say that again.

Do you need to appoint a council member to the finance committee?

Yes.

Indeed, you can do it now. You can do it in August. I mean, we still have to get the other members.

It's your call. Let me check in with the rest of you. What do you guys think? Do you guys want to appoint somebody now or do you guys want to do it later?

I say we wait till August.

Wait till August? Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then everybody think about it because I'll just put it out there. It won't be me. I'm going to expect one of you guys to step up. Okay. But we'll talk about it in August. Okay. All right. Okay. So we will, how about the first meeting in, in, in August on it? We just make sure that we put that on the agenda and then we'll make sure that we do that. And that'll give my, my colleagues time to do that. All right. Okay. Now, so let's go ahead then go and move on to item 4.4. Staff report, please.

Good evening again, Mayor and Council members. Before you this evening is a resolution requesting approval to appoint a CalPERS retired annuitant as the interim Parks and Recreation Director under the correct government code, which is section 21221G. This sounds familiar to you, I'm sure. We had it last meeting under 21221H. So, government code section 21221G authorizes a public agency to temporarily employ a retired annuitant without reinstatement from retirement when the position is vacant due to a leave of absence, which is different than 21221H, which is due to a true vacancy. Okay. Also, this leave of absence interim position cannot exceed one year, and also the position must require specialized skills. So this item is being brought before the council to make the findings required by the government code and to formally authorize the appointment. The retired annuitant possesses the specialized experience necessary to ensure continuity of leadership and operations within the Parks and Recreation Department during the incumbent's temporary absence. Therefore, staff respectfully recommend that the City Council adopt the resolution approving the temporary employment of a retired annuitant as the Interim Parks and Recreation Director pursuant to Government Code Section 21221G.

Okay, thank you. Any questions or comments? Questions or comments? Okay, not seeing any. Do we have any public cards on this one?

We have no public comments.

Okay, so let me bring it back then to the diaspora motion.

I'll move to adopt.

All those, oh, roll call, sorry. Roll call.

Council Member Pache. Aye. Dr. Resendez. Aye. Council Member Morales. Yes. Vice Mayor DeAnda. Yes. And Mayor Stephens.

Yes.

Aldo. Aye.

okay great thank you okay so let's go on for 4.5 a resolution of the city of the city council for the city of hollister authorizing an amendment of the authorized representative from development services director to mayor or designee for the state of california department of housing and community development permanent local housing allocation program that's a mouthful

Staff report, please. Madam Mayor, members of the Council, the Finance Director will make the presentation, I believe, or one of her staff members.

Actually, it will be. Good evening, Council Members, Director of Finance, Jessica. It will be Delia Pichardo who will be presenting this item.

Okay.

Delia, you're muted and your video is off.

Okay.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, so this item updates the city's existing permanent block and housing allocation program resolution at the request of HCD. They are requesting this change. They have advised that our previous resolution adopted in 2023 no longer meets their legal requirements because it authorized the development services director to sign PLHA documents. The amended resolution instead authorized the major or the major's designee, following council approval, the major can designate the finance director. Can you hear me?

Sorry.

The finance director to continue signing and administering and signing all PLH grant documents on behalf of the city. So there's no change into grant funding or approved activities or the city's five-year PLHA allocation plan. This is simply an amendment required by HCD so we can complete the city's PLHA application.

Okay, does that complete your report, Delia? Yes. Okay. Do you have any questions? Any questions for Delia? Questions on this side? Okay, Vice Mayor, not seeing any. Okay, do we have any speaker cards on this one?

We have no speakers.

Okay. Okay, well, let me bring it back for either further questions or comments or an action.

I'll move to adopt.

Can I have a second?

I'll second.

Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Pache. Aye. Dr. Resendez. Aye. Council Member Morales. Vice Mayor Deanna. Yes. And Mayor Stevens.

Yes. And I think we are done. Right? Yay. That was probably the quickest meeting on record for all those items. Okay, well, thank you to all the staff for your presentations. And Chief, welcome. Look forward to getting to know you. We have a lot of exciting things happening in Hollister, and we're glad that we heard that you're jumping right in. So thank you for that, and we look forward to getting to know you. Welcome. Okay, with that, meeting's adjourned.

Thank you.