City Council - Regular Meeting

Council Member Andreatta.

Present.

Council Member Reedy. Present. Council Member Brown. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Eklund. Here. Mayor Pearl.

We'll be adjourning to a closed session, a conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, gathering in. Do we have anyone wishing to make a comment on this? Okay. Claire, anyone on Zoom?

There is no one on Zoom.

Okay. In that case, we will close. Comment? And we're adjourned.

Bye-bye.

good evening and welcome to the city of lincoln's regular meeting of the city council tonight's meeting will be televised and available on cable channel 18 youtube and zoom those wishing to address city council on either a non-agenda or agenda item will be called upon at the appropriate time those who submitted a speaker card will be called first followed by those in the audience and finally those attending through zoom for those participating through zoom that wish to provide public comment please use the raise your hand feature or press star 9 if you are calling in once public comment is opened please wait to be unmuted by the city clerk once unmuted your name will be called and you may proceed in making your public comment this evening's invocation will be giving given by council member andriotta once the invocation has concluded mayor pearl will call the meeting to order

Thank you. So Pastor Tom Galovich was going to be here, but he had an emergency. And so I'm not going to pray, but I am going to just do a little quick recap history and just remembrance of our great city of Lincoln. Being that we're almost at the 4th of July, the America will be celebrating its 250th birthday. Lincoln is not 250, but we are 136th. And I look forward to maybe in a few years we can do a big celebration for ourselves. But I just wanted to share a little bit, and everybody knows we all love Lincoln, and we're all here for the same purpose. So I just wanted to share a couple thoughts here. One of the things that we could say about Lincoln is the clay that shapes us. It's a powerful metaphor that connects Lincoln's literal geologic history to its enduring civic spirit. Lincoln's entire story is defined by its ability to reshape itself when circumstances changed. Lincoln can be called the train town that didn't quit. Born in 1859 as a temporary railroad end of the line, Lincoln could have easily faded into a ghost town when the tracks moved north. Instead, its citizens adapted. And just as a fun fact, when the gold rush happened and Lincoln was born as a village, there were seven other towns in the vicinity, all which are gone now except for Sheridan. And Lincoln remained there. In the 1870s, residents dug deep into the earth discovered rich clay and birth Gladding McBean, an industry that quite literally built the architectural terracotta facades of San Francisco and New York. And being that this is our 136th year of existence, we can remember and honor that our community has never broken under pressure. It molded itself into something stronger and more beautiful. In the 2000s, Lincoln transformed from a sleepy pottery town into the fastest growing city in America, expanding by over 280% in a single decade. exploded in population modernization, and through all of that, Lincoln successfully protected its core identity, which we still work on every day here. Today, multi-generational families and newcomers alike still walk the historic tree-lined grid of downtown Lincoln, proving that progress does not have to come at the cost of heritage. In 2006, Lincoln's unique community spirit earned it the prestigious All-America City Award from the National Civic League. This award didn't just honor the city's history, it honored how everyday citizens, local nonprofits, and business leaders collaborate to solve problems. And we will get that distinction again soon. And so at 136 years, the most meaningful compliment to pay Lincoln is that it remains a place where neighborliness is actively practiced. I always say that nobody comes together like Lincoln. We look out for each other, and neighbors take care of each other, and we generally love each other. So whether that's at the annual Holy Ghost Festa or the classic Fourth of July parade or Christmas parade or any of the other things that make Lincoln Lincoln special, We work to hang on to those traditions that make us who we are. And so as America celebrates 250, Lincoln can be proud of who we are at this point in our history. And I look forward to serving the community for a long time to come. And happy Independence Day almost, everyone. And God bless you all.

Well said. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Very good. All right, we'll call the meeting to order. This is the June 23rd meeting of the Lincoln City Council, Lincoln Redevelopment Successor Agency, and the Lincoln Public Financing Authority. Blair, call the roll, please.

Council Member Andriotta.

Present.

Council Member Reedy.

Present.

Council Member Brown. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Eklund. Here. Mayor Pearl.

Here. Very good. Report from closed session.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Direction has been provided to staff.

Very much. Very good. Okay. A Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Dolansek, would you lead us in the pledge, please? Thank you ron see no good deed goes unpunished Thank you again. agenda modifications anyone from. colleagues have any agenda modifications or from the staff.

Yes, Mr mayor, we do have an agenda modification on item. 15 be we noted that the exhibit to the first resolution declaring an election had the. wording that did not match the. The wording of the measure that is included in the second resolution, and so we have corrected that and provided red line copies to the Council of their dais as well as red line copies available for the public to see.

Very much okay. Presentations, we have none so far. Information items and disclosures. Anyone, any of my colleagues have anything to disclose, have conflicts to report? Okay, I do not. Okay, very good. Informational items. Okay. On that, very good. Public comment over here. Madam Clerk, do we have any speaker cards?

I do have one speaker card, Mr. Stan Nader.

Stan, as you're walking up, just let me go through this. Keep on walking up, sir, if you would. All speaker's time will be limited to three minutes unless extended by the mayor. All comments and questions should be addressed to the mayor, and in most cases, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any item not appearing on a posted agenda. We may engage in a brief discussion, provide direction to city staff, or schedule items for future meetings. Welcome, Stan.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor and Council, my name is Stan Nader. I live in the 12 Ridges area. Tonight, I would like to speak with you about economic development. Later in this agenda, you will be discussing a potential increase in the sales tax the residents of Lincoln could be paying. As I see it, the bigger issue is the level of current economic development when you compare the ratio of housing to the amount of commercial development in the city. When the residents of Lincoln are only 15 minutes away from a wide variety of retail businesses. It's just difficult to convince a business to locate in Lincoln when Lincoln is so close to our neighboring community cities. I know the city staff is working diligently to change this paradigm. the Economic Development Director and the Economic Development Committee member recently reported at an ADC meeting on their attendance at the International Council of Shopping Center Conference in Monterey, where they engaged numerous businesses looking for new locations. They shared three of the most asked questions about the city of Lincoln. First was, what is the population of the city? Most businesses have a certain number they want before they will consider a potential site in the city. Second was, what is the turnaround time on the permitting process for businesses' time as money? Third was, what incentives does the city offer? Because startup costs for a business are significant. When I was on the council, many residents would tell me they would go to Roseville to get Taco Bell and bring it back to their homes for dinner. My concern was what other shopping would they be doing while they were out of town? Another concern was why was gas in Lincoln 10 cents higher than Roseville? When I asked why that was, I was told it was because Lincoln is a tourist city. I know that could not be true. By doing some investigation, I discovered the way to get gas prices down is to get an ARCO station in your city. So Sean Tillman, who was the economic development director at the time, and I attended numerous international council or shopping center conferences and convinced Taco Bell and ARCO to come to Lincoln. Increasing economic development in the city is an all hands on deck effort by the city council, city staff, the chamber, ADC committee, and interested citizens who want to see the city succeed. Thank you.

Thank you, Stan. Blair, do we have any other comment cards?

Is there anyone else who would like to provide public comment on non agenda items? Seeing no one in the audience, I will move over to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to provide public comment? I have no hands raised.

Thank you very much. We're going to close the public comment over here. Consent calendar, would any of my colleagues like to pull an item?

No, sorry, I was a little slow on the draw. I don't want to pull anything, but I do have a question about 13 G. So and I read it. So I understand what's happening. But I just wanted to clarify that we know that the contract amount was raised significantly by the county. And but it's about to expire. So we're going to go ahead and sign that new contract. However, we're going to be looking for other alternative. Is that what we're doing? Yeah.

Yeah, so the increase in costs from last agreement to this agreement is approximately 60%, which would not be in a free market where we could go to 14 other vendors. We would not be with said vendor any longer at 60%, I think it's fair to say, even though they tend to do a good job for us. Um, so, um, when chief was lead on this, uh, initially, um, we looked and we've contacted other agencies that could conceptually provide service. No one is interested in doing that at this time. I think they have their own issues providing those services themselves. Um, and so what he and I have discussed is, uh, if you go back and I went and looked at a number of other reports that I'd written over the years on contract renewals for, for animal control. And in each one, there were some price increases and we kind of said, look, we'll keep an eye out to see if there's a better deal out there or an alternative that makes more sense. And haven't come across anything. This time I did something, I got a little bit cute with the resolution and I actually wrote in there, that the chief and I agreed that we were returning to you by November with a model of how we could stand up our own animal control department here. There's quite a bit of work that's going to go into licensure and equipment and staff and all that. But we feel pretty confident that all things being equal, we can provide the same or better service for less money with internal funding. outside of the contract model. So that's what's in here. But we decided that we put it in front of you for approval so there's no disruption in service in the meantime.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Did we get any information as to what caused that steep event increase? Oh, yes, we did.

Yes. I'm not criticizing the folks that work in this department in Placer County are really good people and they provide really good service. I'm not sure that we, that Chief and I have agreed with their assumptions of why costs has increased that much. Some of it is related to the fact that the community has grown substantially. And so More people means more animals means more calls. That's one part. The other part is that the Placer County used to have a contract until just this year with Citrus Heights for the same kind of service, primarily kenneling. And they were a significant customer in terms of financial contributions. And once they left, those of us who remain, which is essentially Loomis, Colfax, Lincoln, And then Rockland, but only for shelter services, are picking up the fixed cost of the remainder of the service. So as far as I can tell, there's no budgeting that includes additional employees, et cetera, at this time. It's simply a very expensive operation to run, and less of us are paying in at the moment.

Do they have any conversations if they're looking for any other clients or cities to bridge the gap?

I didn't get that sense from them. I think that one of the concerns they shared with me was that when Citrus Heights was a customer, the shelter that was built up there not all that long ago was intended to last for really long times in terms of capacity, and they're already at capacity. So there's no more room. And so on some level, having that customer not part of the pie any longer will provide a little additional room for all the animals that need to be – boarded there, but it's a super, super expensive proposition because we're billed by Animal Night State. So your dog runs away, you happen to be on vacation, it gets picked up by a control officer and you're not back for five or six days, and this is a no-kill shelter. We're billed for all six days of that. And that really, we had, I don't remember exactly, Chief, if you remember, but it was something in the neighborhood of like 9,000 animal nights stayed over the past year. I think I'm right about that number. So it's just a really expensive service. But I don't see them looking for other business unless one of the Placer County cities wanted it.

Well, I agree it's a good idea for us to figure out a different option that's more economical.

I'm sorry, I didn't mention that, but it is in the report that they have indicated when I said, hey, we may be looking at an alternative. They said, well, let's sit down and talk and see if there's ways to cut costs before you make that decision. So we'll see.

Okay, very good. Any other questions on any other items on the consent?

No, I was just, yeah, I move approval.

We have to go to public comment first.

Yep, okay.

Is there anyone in the audience who would like to provide public comment on a consent item? I see no one in the audience. I will move over to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to provide public comment? I have no hands raised.

Any final comments from council? I suspect not. Very good. I'll second. OK. Holly first, and Ben second. Thank you. For the motion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you very much. Public hearings, we have none today. OK. Wall of Recognition presented by city clerk Hope .

Yes. And Hope is online. She is, I think, going to lead you through this PowerPoint. While we get her kind of plugged in and the PowerPoint up, what I'll just mention is this is something Council's discussed a couple times. The concept was trying to create something new that would give the community the opportunity to recognize members of the public that have contributed a lot to our community. And fortunately, Hope, in a prior engagement, was the city clerk in Rockland and helped stand up this exact program in Rockland. And so we've changed it to meet Lincoln's needs. And so she's the most appropriate person to brief you on it. You there, Hope?

I am. Hi, Sean. Mayor, council, is everyone able to hear me okay?

We can hear you now. Let me lower her volume a little.

Okay.

You're good.

Okay, perfect. So good evening. So sorry, I can't be there in person. However, I am presenting via Zoom. So is everyone able to see the presentation?

Yep.

Okay, awesome. Thank you, Sean. All right, so tonight I will be presenting on the wall of recognition. We'll be talking a little bit about the concept overall. We will explore process components and then end with next steps. Okay, so as Sean mentioned earlier, I cannot take credit for this program. We are borrowing it from a neighboring agency in terms of best practices and the concept overall. So what is this program? This program is designed to recognize members of the community that have made a significant contribution to the city, leaders who have shaped, in our case, Lincoln's history, and those who continue to build upon the foundation of excellence for future generations. So there are different categories within this program, and they are as follows. Individual, community business, group or organization. And so the true spirit of this is to create a program where community members are nominated by other peers. And we as a city come together and we build something that is going to last for future generations. Some kind of, I call it like a monument, but something that will be visible within the city that is going to actually list the names of these people or the organizations. And it will be a permanent memory for us. So typically it's placed within a plaza, a park. And the way that this can happen is either through some kind of like granite stone, maybe some kind of signage. And then those names would be engraved within that medium that's chosen. And we'll talk a little bit about the process, just very high level right now. So the way that this works is that there is a nomination period. So first step is to open that nomination period. City staff would conduct some promotional outreach, generating some buzz about this, really wanting to just solicit nominations from others in the community. The committee that is created will then review the nominations received and determine who those honorees are. And that would follow with the ceremony itself, wall of recognition ceremony. This is held in a public space where that monument will be placed. And then those honorees would be recognized at a future council meeting. Okay, so there are some things to think about, decisions to be made. And to help with that, I'll just go into details a little bit deeper in terms of the different components. So there's quite a bit of work that happens behind the scenes, lots of administrative support, organization. So the first step would be to establish a timeline and everything's going to center around that ceremony date. We would then create a program procedure guide. Council would determine the review committee composition. We'll talk more about that later. Also determining what kind of criteria you would like within the nomination. Staff would then draft the rating matrix in the nomination form. And we would also need to identify that site location and then other details. And at this time, we determined the budget should be about $25,000 to get started. So this is a one-time upfront cost, $25,000, hopefully less, to get the program established. And then with every year, that cost being very, very minimal. Okay, so I did put together some examples to share. to help with this discussion. So one of the most critical parts of this program is going to be the composition of the committee itself. So you can do this a couple of different ways. One example I have here is that the committee could consist of two council members. So that would be below our threshold of the majority. that would require a brownout committee. We could have, for example, representatives from the city manager's office, either city manager himself or designee. And for now, let's just assume that that office is going to be the ones that provide the oversight and administer the program. So some of the benefits of this model is that it's very flexible. So with this flexibility, it will assist in those members and when they meet, how they meet. We can talk more about that later, but truly I'm just envisioning the first year there's going to be more meetings. to establish and kind of work through some of the bumps in the road, but also noting that the committee would work under the guidelines that are established by the policy procedures. And then one alternative, and we can talk more about this in detail later, we could have a committee that's truly just, you know, it's comprised of community members. So it could be a combination. We could have you know, the majority members from the community. They could be from maybe different establishments within the community. We could have a mix of city staff that also serve on the committee that would be able to provide some guidance. And we could have, you know, a mix of maybe one council member, majority community, and then city staff as well. All right, so the criteria, we do have some examples. And again, I just have borrowed this from neighboring agencies. And this is something we are not planning on the nominees to hit all of these points, but they would need to qualify for at least one of these. So we're looking for nominees that have provided long-term service to the committee. demonstrated creativity and or initiative in providing service to the community, made distinct significant contributions resulting in the betterment of the city, and or demonstrated exceptional character, commitment, and leadership. This is a sample timeline. Hypothetically thinking, if we are, if council desires for this to take place within this calendar year, The clock is working against us right now. So I'm just assuming that we are going to hold this ceremony outside. We don't want to do it too far into fall because of the weather. So let's just, you know, let's say we hold this ceremony on October 22nd. So I'm going to go ahead and back up from that date, which puts us at August 20th. If we open up that application period and open it for just six weeks, it would close on October 1st. After that, staff would need to review the applications to confirm eligibility. That will take a few days. After that step, then staff will prepare the packets along with that rating matrix for the committee to review, assuming that it'll take maybe two days for the committee to meet and review those applications. I've got that marked out for October 8th and then 9th. And then we'll need a couple of weeks to finalize those preparations for the events. make those announcements to the honorees that they're being recognized and promote throughout the community, which will end with the ceremony itself, October 22nd. And we would probably want to select a meeting date close enough to the ceremony date. Assuming that we do that on the 22nd, we could potentially recognize those honorees at our October 27th meeting. Okay, so next steps, if council's desire is to move forward, oops, sorry about that. If the desire is to move forward, then we are going to want to establish that timeline, create the procedure guide, council will need to determine the committee composition, staff will start drafting the related documents, nomination form, the rating matrix, And finally, identify that location and decide on other details. So that is my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. And I look forward to receiving some direction to move forward.

Thank you, Hope, and a great presentation. Thank you very much. Questions or comments from my colleagues?

Okay, that's good.

It's a great idea. I always love recognizing people who have contributed greatly to the community. Couple things. $25,000 is not a lot of money, but considering a lot of the budget constraints that we have coming up, where will this, maybe she said it, where will this come from? How are we funding this?

I mean, like,

Yeah. So that's my first question. And then, well, I think she answered my second question about the criteria of, like, who would be eligible. Because I certainly, I wouldn't want, you know, any... future council member or community member picking someone that they just happen to be friends with who actually is a disaster you know like that's happened before with news stories and stuff and so the criteria is good just would like to see that be solid right um so i think my first question is really um and then also i guess another question to be where are we thinking i know so we need to choose a location are there locations that you guys have been thinking about

Yeah, so on the financial side, we put the number in there just to kind of give an idea about the worst case if we were just going to fund the project the whole way through. The reality is with these kinds of things, I suspect that aside from some staff time put into the effort – All of the other components of it will be, could be donated or fundraised for through nonprofits and local businesses. One idea we had that we've been kind of working on is perhaps Rockland's model of this is a granite rock, which is appropriate for that. Probably not appropriate for Lincoln. We had kind of thought that maybe a decorative gliding pipe that we have fixed or chiseled the names into might be a little bit more representative of the community. And I feel pretty confident that this kind of thing would have a lot of support so that it's not something that is coming out of the general fund or other departments, because you're correct. Well, as you will hear in a moment, there isn't a whole lot to take out of that fund. Separately, the location, we talked about a couple, and I think that's really up for sort of council discussion. My limited perspective was that one place that would make sense to me would be right across from right at the entrance of the plaza when you walk in, maybe in the centerpiece of where the grass is so that people walking to lunch will stop by and have a look at it. But really, anywhere. It could be at McBean Park. It could be in any of the parks. It could be in front of City Hall, for that matter. Anywhere you think that it would be seen enough to be worthwhile. Whitney?

Yeah, this is an idea that just kind of popped in my mind that I didn't think of until literally just now. But I think it would be really neat to maximize the traffic and just make it more engaging and interactive. if we can possibly explore a component of like the QR code add-ons to the legacies or the plaques and maybe the people that are maybe the family members would pay for the additional fee to have the QR code attached to their name so that if they have a really, well, I think everybody has a really interesting story, even somebody that might not seem that interesting. Everybody has a story. And I think that that could be a really interesting way to even format or place them and organize them so that even maybe kids that are on field trips could go visit and learn about, like, this is the veteran area, this is the historical area, the Gladding, I don't know, maybe we could have, like, a sort of be even more of, like, not just a wall of recognition, but maximize Potentially the historical and touristic tourism aspect. I think that that would be really cool. And it's only like $30 to, I was looking, the most expensive one is $150. And it's a one-time fee, and it covers the cloud costs and storage and everything. So it's not that expensive. It's not an ongoing thing.

It's a great idea because we can't exactly chisel everybody's life story into the pipeline.

No, no one would want to read it anyway.

We'd have just one person on there.

Yeah.

So, you know, I know that the mayor has said he will be the first and it might be a pretty long story if we put him up there.

Maybe there's an option to do like 2X, 3X.

Yeah. But, you know, the reason why we thought this was important to sort of continue to push forward, even though I've got plenty of other things to do, is we've talked a lot. Council Member Rada was talking about, you know, retaining kind of Lincoln's culture. And this is one of the ways you do it. If you don't have ways to recognize people in this last year, we've done a lot of this stuff. We have the hometown heroes, a banner program that's starting to really pick up steam. We have the former police and fire chiefs that now have roadways that are associated with them. A gentleman just came in today, a former friend of a former chief that was really excited because he's in his mid eighties. And who knows how much time we all have left and was hoping that we're going to have those signs up before, You can't see it. So this was just one other kind of example of kind of celebrating people have made Lincoln what it is.

I think it was maybe 18 months ago, maybe two years ago, when Ron Dolencek brought the idea to me. And I thought it was absolutely super. He took me down to Rockland, see what was over there. And I know that he and his wife, both here today, were instrumental in making that happen. I think, Ron, you said your wife really was the guiding force behind that, if I remember correctly. Would you please stand, both of you, so we can recognize you? Thank you. It's a great idea, and I think that really speaks to what Lincoln is and why we just love this community so much. There are lots of people out there, there are lots of businesses out there that really speak to what Lincoln means, and we're looking at this not just for today but for the future. So I think that's a great idea about the QR code. to embed it in there and and just to be able to respond to people and of what maybe a couple years from now what what life was back where we were at this point so thank you very much ron well john any comments okay ben okay very good thank you very much okay blair do we have any speaker cards is there anyone in the audience who would like to provide public comment on this item

Seeing none, I will move over to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom? Oh, I have Lena with her hand up. You are now unmuted. Please provide your public comment.

Good evening. I'm just wondering who would choose the people. Would it be a committee or maybe she... gave that information. I missed it. I don't know. But just wondering how that would work as far as choosing the people that would be on these monuments. Thank you.

John, that's a quick answer. Yeah. So the way we recommend is that you have sort of an open nomination process and we put all those together and then we prefer a subcommittee of the city council reviews those. And, um, uh, based on, we try to make it, uh, what we've learned about prior models of this elsewhere is that it, you know, even though it's a ceremonial thing, it can become very, um, intense. And so we, it needs to be fair and generally objective and have a couple of different guardrails so that, you know, certain individuals aren't just hammering through people that they may really want. It has to be a mutual decision. And so the committee, and this will kind of be up to council about how you'd like to form it, but the committee makes their choice. And then like many things, it ends up at city council at a subsequent meeting for ratification. So there's a few different guardrails to get to the end.

Thank you. Neither. Does that answer the question? Okay.

Okay.

All right, very good.

Any other comments back from my colleagues? Okay, whoops, Ron.

Mr. Mayor and council members, and this is offered particularly of interest for the public with questions that they might have. But the first thing that I would do is congratulate you for your selection of Hope to head this up, because she's got a lot of deep experience in other cities and projects like this. So I can assure you, and at least with what I know about her, that the job will be done and it'll be done right for you. The city of Lincoln, though, would want to put their own fingerprint on anything and everything that's done, and that should be done. Holly, I just wanted to comment, too, how appropriate and timely it was, your comments about the roots of Lincoln and its history, when we're here talking about this subject of special recognition today, though, that just seemed to be so timely. I'll leave it at that, though. But I think my wife and I are obviously pleased and fully supportive of this project, and wish her luck in that regard.

Thank you, Ron. Okay. This is information only. Do we have to get a sense of the council to move this forward, or what's the procedure on this?

Yeah, it's just a discussion direction. So what we really, the two kind of key things is if everybody likes the idea, we'll, we'll run with it. Uh, but the, the committee composition is really the most important thing. We'll bring you something separate that shows you the design and the location and all that detail, but committee composition is kind of critical because, um, You know, if the council wanted it to be, you know, more than three or more of you, then this is a whole Brown Act thing, and we have to notice meetings, and it might be a lot of extra work for not an additional payoff.

Well, that was one of my other questions, but I didn't feel like I needed to ask it because everyone seems to be, you know, on board with it. our staff has a lot of work to do and I don't want to throw more things on them. So as long as they're willing to help us facilitate this, I think we should stick to that. We don't need to notice meetings and that's a lot of work.

Yeah, I'll just be honest. The first year is going to be a little bit of a learning experience. We learned this with the John Fett Accounting Development Incentive Award where one week before we realized we hadn't figured that out yet. So this will be a little bit more. It'll require some community outreach and letting people know what this is and why you might want to put your name in. Yeah. what we'll probably do is we'll give you a little update with, if we need a little additional direction, we'll be back here and maybe August, or as we get a little bit closer to our, to our deadlines, if that works for you. But if everybody's okay with the committee concept that we can sort that out and we'll have a consent item or something in the future where council can decide who those two people are, or perhaps what'll typically end up happening is you'll just assign that as part of the normal committee assignments on a yearly basis. And again, It doesn't only have to be the same two. You could choose a different two every year so that everybody gets the opportunity to participate.

A head nod would be okay, I think. Good. Okay. Very good. All right. Very good. Thank you very much. Okay. 15 Bravo election services and sales tax item by city manager and city clerk.

Yeah, so Hope is going to start this item. This is going to be a joint effort here. Hope's going to start the item because there's some legal proceedings she needs to talk about for a moment. I'll then introduce it. Nita will take the heavy work, and then our chiefs are going to have a couple things to add in, and then we'll come back to the council if that works for you. Perfect. Thank you.

And we are going to adopt the resolution separately, sir, so you could adopt the first one after Hope is done.

Okay, perfect. Sounds good. So again, good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. Very excited to present this item. Before you tonight are two resolutions related to the City of Lincoln's general municipal election, which will be held on November 3rd, 2026. The first resolution calls for the general election and requests the services of the Placer County Clerk's Office to conduct the election on the city's behalf. In this election, voters will be asked to fill two city council seats for two full four-year terms. District 1 is currently held by Holly Andreatta, and District 2 is currently held by Ben Brown. The nomination period opens on July 13th and closes on August 12th. Our elections webpage has recently been updated and we will continue to update the page as it will evolve over the next few months with information regarding our upcoming election. There are several websites and resources listed on the webpage for those interested in how to run for office. As a reminder in serving as your city's elections officer to qualify, a candidate must be a resident and registered voter of the city of Lincoln and must reside within the district up for elections, specifically district one or district two. For those that would like additional information, I encourage you to contact me. And again, I would like to thank those in advance for their interest in running for office and serving our amazing community. So Mr. Mayor, this concludes my portion of the presentation. I'm available to answer any questions. And if there are no questions for me, then I'll hand the presentation over to our city manager, who, as noted, will present on that second portion of this agenda item, the proposed general tax measure.

Thank you. And our assistant finance director will be giving this presentation. Thank you, Nita.

Well, as always, City Manager Sean Scully would like to lead us into this item.

I'm not going to do what I did last time. Blair's going to time me so I don't steal Nita's content. However this ends up working out through the remainder of this conversation, what I want the community and council to know is that this has been a multi-year effort and I'll have more to say at the end, but, um, there have virtually not virtually almost every single staff person that sits in this room has put in time, um, contributed thought about, um, what makes sense and how to better communicate with the public to get a better idea about what people would be willing to consider, um, what their values and what's important to them as it relates to Lincoln. And what you're going to see here in a moment is that it actually is almost an organizational audit. Um, we have almost never had the ability to go out and get statistically valid views of how the community views their government, how they view their departments that serve them, what kinds of things are important to them on this wide of a basis. This is, you know, tens of thousands of contacts and through all manner, you know, electronic, in person, written, et cetera. And so as she's going to show you, this is the labor of multiple years to get to this point where you get to consider what probably is one of the most consequential decisions that the council, this city council at least, will ever make. So I'll have more about that a little bit later, but I think Nita wants to step you through the detail.

Thank you. And so we do have a PowerPoint presentation for you this evening. If IT can pull that up. Thank you. So we've addressed this matter. We talked about it at last meeting and in some of the mailers that we've sent out to our community discussing maintaining the city and maintaining Lincoln. Because this city, even through the lean years of the recession, continue to provide the essential services that the community has come to know and demand and require. And we are looking for ways to ensure not only that that does not change, but that we continue to improve and advance those services to meet our community's needs. And that is the main purpose of why we are bringing this forward is because the community has told us that they want certain things, certain things that we're not currently providing because we don't have the funding. A little background. Lincoln is one of the safest cities in the region, the third safest city in the state. But as we've talked about over the past number of months, that we are facing budget challenges. Those challenges are real, they continue to loom. Lincoln has done a great deal to live within its means, as we've heard some community members comment. But even with that, being a city that does more with less, being a city that has fewer staff per capita than any agency in this geographical region, continuing to provide core services to the community, especially public safety. We're seeing increasing challenges with maintaining 911 response times as a result of issues with the ability for AMR to provide ambulances on a timely basis. We're seeing strains on our police services due to limited personnel. And so that brings us here. You're all familiar with this five-year forecast by now, I should hope. We did update it between the last time we presented a few weeks ago and now, and I do have some correcting information. So we did include all of the general fund expenses as well as those expenses that are currently being funded through limited term and one-time dollars. They are now all rolled into this forecast, the forecast that you see before you. And even with those additional revenue sources through the limited term, you can see that the expenses are continuing to outpace. And we can see that the fund balance goes down to zero still in 2030. We were able to squeeze out an extra year, and instead of it being 2029, 2029 is almost zero, but 2030 is the zero fund balance. So why? Why do we have these budget challenges? There's a lot of factors that are outside the city's control. The city is a lean machine. We provide more with less. We are the little engine that could. But we cannot control the things that are outside of our forces. So, for example, we have state takeaways of revenue, and that's things like reduction in the gas tax, elimination of the triple flip, as well as the unfunded mandates, additional reports that are required for arena numbers, the housing elements, the public safety demands, all of those mandates that come down to us from the state, from the various agencies, even from the feds to an extent that we just don't have additional funding. It seems like almost every month there's a new mandate, for example, a really good one that we've just implemented and that some agencies are still struggling with. is the requirement that all agencies are going to have to record and publicize and make available through Zoom all public meetings, all forms of public meetings. The city has done that. It's an unfunded mandate. It requires an additional resource from IT. The accessibility. that Jen Brown, our IT director, rolled out for our website. I know from a fact our neighboring agencies haven't completed it yet because it is a huge lift. It's an incredible cost. It's an unfunded mandate that is required. We also have the expiration of the temporary funding from Placer County. That funding was never intended to be long-term. It was designed to dwindle over the years, over the life of the agreement. And we have seen that happen. We knew that was going to be the case. We knew entering into that agreement with the county that in order to continue to move forward, additional revenue sources had to be found. And then lastly, there's the inequity in the property tax sharing agreements that we have discussed briefly with this council and the public, where we have certain areas of the city where the tax sharing agreements, the amount of tax property taxes that we receive are significantly lower than the rest of the city and lower than the rest of the county. We're discussing that with the county. We are working with them in order to try to find an equitable resolution that's still ongoing, but that has been the case for decades back to the nineties of a lower amount of property tax being received. So you, when you ask why, why can't you just live with the revenues that you have? Well, because the revenues that we have are lower than all of our neighbors. And not for lack of trying, although we're going to talk about econ dev. So as Dan mentioned, the city is behind in economic development. Councilmember Reedy and I were discussing just last Friday the economic development that has occurred over the last several years, numbers of years, really. And it averages out to about 90,000 square feet per year. John, correct me if I'm wrong. However, if you look at the last, say, within five years, that commercial development is closer to 30,000 square feet. That's incredibly low for a city of our size. We know the sea change is coming. We can see it. We can see it with the developments that are about to come online for our pavilion, the 12 Bridges Retail Center, the West Lincoln Square. And so we see the change finally coming for Lincoln, but that slow commercial and non-residential development over the years has hurt us and put a bind on us. So what have we done to try to keep from standing here to ask our community to provide additional support? And I think this is really important, that we're not just like, we need it, we need it, give it, give it. This agency has done a tremendous amount to try to avoid this position, even with less, even with all the hamstrings that we've talked about to our revenues. We've delayed projects. Papadil sits over there squirming all the time over the number of projects that are in the dockets for public works. We've held positions vacant. We're going to talk about the number of public safety we provide per capita later. When Sean first started here, he had an IT director, an HR director, and a police chief, public safety chief, really, who was over police and fire.

Library, too.

And library. Thank you. That was it. Finance was vacant. Community development was vacant. City engineer was vacant. Public works was vacant. So many vacant positions in the city to provide essential services, and still Lincoln has managed to do it. So we've had to prioritize what we're providing to our community, providing the core. We're not providing everything that the community wants, everything that we believe this community needs in order to continue to grow and flourish. We've also performed comprehensive reviews of city services. When Sean came on board before hiring the previous community development director, he hired a consultant to perform an evaluation of that department. What does it need? What should it be? And what he found is because that we were relying so heavily on outside consultants that we had staff that were, instead of doing the work, they were overseeing consultants. So we shifted that model. And you're like, well, you hired more than yes, we hired more reducing consultants, which turns out to be a better service model. I'm not going to say, you know, the cost is is relative, but a better service model for our community. We also initiated a new pension trust for the city. This council directed the finance director to provide a way to help manage the PERS unfunded liability that this agency and every agency, every PERS agency in the state has to pay. We know that unfunded liability is going to continue to grow over the next several years, and it is going to grow in an astronomical amount. But we were looking for a way to not fully fund it, but to kind of cut the top of the growth off to keep it at a same level to make it affordable. And we're able to provide a contribution to a pension trust. That money can only be used for retirement. It can be used for regular retirement expenses as well as the unfunded liability expenses to help mitigate that, again, that big expense that we know is coming.

We've also negotiated with some of our employee groups to phase out retiree medical.

The guys behind me are probably going to throw something at me here because several employees in the room. Retiree medical is an incredible cost to this agency and many agencies across the state that is something that is on the the negotiation, top of the negotiation list of how do we manage this expense? How can we mitigate this expense? How can we reduce this expense? We're not the only agency working on phasing that out. Reducing consultants, not just in community development, also in other departments, IT, financing across the board. Consultants require management. They require management of staff that they're not able to do their jobs because they're managing those consultants. These actions have helped stretched our limited resources. Some days we feel a little paper thin. I'm not really exaggerating. but they can't offset the rising costs, right? It's still just things are more expensive as we move on. So we began talking to our community and this isn't the first time we haven't been talking to the community just for the last year, because we're like, we gotta do something, we gotta do something. We've been talking to the community for almost the last couple decades. How do you feel about Lincoln? What is it you want from Lincoln? What is it that you want from your community? So when you look at this, you're like, hold on, hold on now. 2009, 69% of the people said that we were going in the right direction, and now it's 39%. That's correct. Sean and I have shown to this council and this community that transparency is the only way to go. What I will say about this information is that the majority of the populace now, compared to 2009, when they look at the way they feel about government, that it is about in this range, this 35, 42%-ish range of belief that the government, your government, is going the right direction. That is just the post-COVID effect. that shift in the way people feel about government. And when I say feel, it's important to delineate feelings from facts. Feelings are important, right? The way our community feels about us is incredibly important. It's not also, it doesn't always align with the facts of what this agency is really doing. When you look at everything that we have accomplished in the number of years, the way that we've managed our staff and our expenses in the number of years, But I'm proud of this 39 percent, that 39 percent think we're going in the right direction. I think that it is an amazing percentage, and I think it is amazing that it has held steady for the last three years. So then we ask, how do you think we're doing? We're just curious. How do you think Lincoln Fire is doing? How do you think Lincoln Police is doing? Do you approve of the way that they are managing this community? How do you feel that the city government is doing? So when we look at these approval ratings, we add up this dark blue and this medium blue to come up with the total rating. Police and fire always rank high when you do this type of survey, when you ask this question, right? Fire always ranks higher than police. Fire is the friendly guys. Police are the enforcers. Sorry, it just is. But even at that, for police to rank at 86% and fire to rank at an incredible 92%, Chief Mejia's head over there is getting big, but it's OK. Those percentages, I have not seen another agency that have those high of approval percentages for their public safety. And it's not that this community is a safe place or a safe city or ranked as one of the safest cities in the states. I think it has more to do, again, that feeling of the community. Lincoln is a safe place to live. Lincoln is a safe place to raise your kids. It is a beautiful community to live in. And that continues to shine through. When we look at the city government overall, Okay, the previous slide showed like 39%. But when you ask the question, because we continue to ask these questions in different ways to try to get the truest information. When you ask the question, do you strongly approve of each of the following departments?

Okay, well, government overall, 56%.

Man, I'm putting this one up on my wall because I don't ever expect a better percentage than that, really. When we take a look at the approval ratings over the years, 2009, 2023, 25, 26, The fire department is consistently in the high 80s, low 90s. Police is consistently in the mid 80s to low 90s. Government overall in the last three years, again, post-COVID, consistently in that 50 percentile. So what does that tell us? That the job that we have been doing a little bit more than adequate with the limited resources that we have, with the low staffing that we had four years ago, with the prioritizing core services, with the reduction in revenues. So then we asked, what is it you're most concerned about? What is the thing that really keeps you up at night Everybody said utility rates. I want you to note that we didn't qualify that. PG&E rates, City of Lincoln rates, we just said utility rates. Utility rates across the board are high. PG&E has the highest rates. Not just in this state, but you know a couple others so as well as the that we had to do that severe correction in our own utility rates in water sewer and garbage and so those have an impact on people, they have a burden. The next thing traffic on local freeways and highways. There was a road measure that failed. Link had passed it, but it was a regional mayor measure, including Rockland and Roseville, and there weren't enough votes between all three cities in order to put it into effect. We know the congestion on 65 and even a bit in town is only going to increase, and we're working on ways to mitigate that. Cost of living, everything's more expensive, Are wages keeping pace? That's a bigger social economic discussion, but it's something that's very important to our community. The city's budget deficit. That's number, what, one, two, three, four on the hit list. Even though that this is number four on the hit list, I, as your former finance director, still part-time finance director, assistant city manager, I am proud that our community has heard us say that there is a budget deficit, because we've been saying it for the last four and a half years. And we say it a lot. We say it in different ways. We say it in different venues. And it is hard to get a community to hear that, because finances, they're boring. OK? They've heard it, which is amazing. The cost of housing rising across the state. Too much growth and development. Now, the fact that this is a concern tells me that we need to continue to do the work of ensuring that our community knows that new development pays its way. But at the same time, many people are concerned. When I read this, I see concern for the loss of a small town. Lincoln has that small hometown feel. We have a beautiful downtown area. We have a tight-knit community. I will tell you that I have never lived in a place where I have felt more welcome and accepted as a new person than I have living here. And so we have to manage that that concern for too much growth and development that concern for a loss of a of the small town to continue to promote the what I would say is a core value of Lincoln is that hometown feeling. potholes and street repair oh my gosh potholes they're everywhere. the amount people pay in local taxes. And I think that's primarily related to the CFD taxes that are on many of the new homes within this city. And the traffic on local seeks, which is kind of conjoined with traffic on local freeways and highways. The traffic on the freeways, when it gets to be too much, people start looking for alternative routes to go through residential areas. And that has an impact. Or to go through our main street, instead of taking 65, that has an impact. And then finally, the waste and inefficiency in city government. So Sean and I talked about this one earlier, the waste and inefficiency in city government. And again, I said transparency is our middle name. And so we meet with anyone who says, I think you're not doing this right. Let's talk about that. Please show us what else we could do to tighten the belt because I'm on my last belt loop and I'm willing to punch more holes in it. That's okay. But I need you to show me how to punch those holes. So when I see this, I say, please show me where that is. Let's have a conversation about what you think that waste is, and where you think it is, and what we can do together to resolve it. OK, following statements. Do you believe the city is facing a budget deficit? I'm going to focus on this one for a second. I know, former finance directors. Always talking about the budget. When we look at where we were for 2025, 22% of the population believed we were facing a budget deficit. And now 36% of the population. 14% increase in one year. Unheard of that you could get that many more additional people to have knowledge that there is an issue. It's just amazing to me. The City of Lincoln is dependent on funding from Placer County, again, up 11%. We have gone out, and we're going to talk about public outreach, but we have gone out in public outreach in every way possible, except for carrier pigeon, to try to help educate and bring this information to our community. Lincoln's finances are well managed. Finance manager, finance director, she's over here, happy again. It went up 3%. I'll take it. Next. And we talked about this slide last Tuesday, but I thought it very repeating. Do you think that there is a need for additional funds? 57% with the information and the education that we have done. believe that there is a deficit, or they believe that they want something that can't currently provided with the funding that is available. For example, like advanced life support or ALS through fire. And Chief Anthony is going to talk about that, so I'm not going to steal his thunder. Financial oversight. So let's say we get more money. How do we stay and remain transparent and accountable to our community? We asked them that. What would you like to see to feel comfortable if we had more funds? They said, well, we want to make sure that they all stay here, that we have control, that they're spent locally. And we want to make sure you, council and staff, disclose to us how you're spending those dollars. We want audits. We want disclosure. We want oversight. Sean and I, we are all about that. We want that, too. We want the community to feel secure that any dollar and every dollar that they give us is being expended in the way that does the best for this community that we possibly can, the most bang for the buck. And so everything that they want, if a measure is adopted, we're going to give it to them. We'll do a community oversight. We will do public disclosure. We will do selected audits. We may create a new dashboard just for this funding. Jen, sorry. Because we want to make sure that they feel secure.

Can I ask you a quick question before you go? So we have public spending disclosure and then disclosure, public disclosure down one, a couple more. And then you have annual audits, annual independent audits. Is there a difference between the first spending disclosure and the second public disclosure? Again, it's mostly in the way that the questions are asked, right?

So we ask the questions using, we change the word slightly. We kind of come from it from a different direction. We may ask the same question later on in the survey because, again, the pollsters, not me, that's not my profession, but they say that when you do that, you're more likely to get the truest response, right? And so that's why you see these slightly different iterations of very similar information. But the fact that all of these slightly different iterations of the same wants shows up tells me these are the wants. Yeah. This is the way they want to ensure that we are providing oversight. But that's a great question. Thanks. Community outreach. Like I said, we've done every possible thing except carrier pigeon. So we have engaged with the city with surveys, mailers. Our chiefs have gone out in informal settings providing what we started to call coffee with the chiefs. Sean has given educational informational presentations. It says 20 town hall type meetings. I think that number is a bit light. I know there was one day he gave three presentations of the same information to three different groups. What we identified when we started talking with our community, besides the survey, we did an online survey, we did a poll, we did a mailer. Besides that, when we were just talking one on one to our community, we said, what's the thing that's important to you? What is it that you want that you need that we can't currently provide? 911 response times. At the last meeting, a community member got up to talk about a loved one of his that was impacted due to a longer 911 response time. Chief Mejia could give you dozens of stories where they are standing there helpless because we don't have advanced life support personnel in the fire department waiting for the ambulance to arrive and that those response times are getting longer and longer. At the last meeting, we showed a picture of all the ambulances waiting at the hospital, waiting for their patients to be offloaded, waiting for the ambulances to be restocked, to be released. All of that affects their ability to get to our community as well as the other communities that they serve. They also said, we don't want you to cut anything. No cuts to fire. No cuts to police. We want to keep what we have, and we want you to make it better. We want to make sure you have the right people in the right seats, retaining and attracting qualified police officers and firefighters. Chief Alves talked about last time that some agencies are providing signing bonuses for police officers that is so competitive. So when we are trying to attract employees, we're banking on they live or they have family nearby and that Lincoln is a great place to live and raise a family. And that's what we're selling on. We're selling on our good name and our incredible environment. They said, we want you to keep the public areas healthy, safe, and clean. We want safe places for our kids. We want parks. We want rep programs. We want library. We want more library. They said, we want paramedics. We have to have it. I think Mayor Pearl was the one who told me that we are the only city with the Sun City that does not have our own paramedics on staff in the state. this was the flyer that we sent out the survey one of the surveys that we did as well letters that we've sent out saying we want to hear from you we're trying to maintain this city help us define what that means to you what's important to you with that i'm going to turn this over to chief alice

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Matt Alves, Chief of Police. And this evening, I'm going to delve a little bit deeper into what I spoke about at the last meeting. Just give you a little bit more detail. I'll keep it brief. Again, like last time, our focus is on basics and priorities. It's not asking for the world. It's not asking for the nice to haves. It's just asking for the need to have in being able to deliver proper service to our citizens. I do want you to be aware, and I think you know this of me, that since I've been overseeing the police department and also from my predecessor and a chief prior, we've gone through extreme lengths to eliminate waste, be very mindful of our spending, and making every dollar count. And a question that I asked myself when asked about making a purchase, regardless of what it may be, is, will this expenditure allow us to better serve our public and how will it? And if it won't, then it's something that we're probably not going to do and look for other ways to fund something. So I know that's important and that hasn't always been the case in our history. I just also want to briefly mention the word oversight that came up a couple of times in that survey. You might be shocked to hear a police chief say this, but I welcome oversight on this topic that we're discussing here tonight. One of our core values in our police department is transparency, and that's anything within our house to anything outside over here at City Hall, and Seeing how we spend our money, I welcome that because I'll stand behind every purchase we make, every person we hire, because I know it's a need and it's not a want. We created a Lincoln Public Safety Foundation to work on more of the wants. A needs is general fund. Getting into the topic of retention, I do want to say that we have built a great team over the years, and we need to keep them. We need to be able to offer opportunities and compensation that makes our people want to stay with Lincoln PD. Loyalty to our department matters, and that can keep people here. But as I would expect, loyalty to family supersedes that. So if there's a better opportunity elsewhere, I would expect our people to be able to go and take that opportunity to provide for their family. Giving our current and future staff reasons to stay is critical. We invest time and money into our members, and long-term retention just cements that return on investment. We're looking for training opportunities everywhere we can to improve our staff so they can go out and provide a better service, but also improve other staff members below them. We invest in our people. That's something that when I have the introductory conversation with new hires is we will invest in you. If you need something, if you're deficient in something, you have an interest in something that's going to benefit others, we're going to invest in you and do that. We have a lot of time and money invested in our people. We need to keep that and not give that as a freebie to another agency who has a nice little carrot out there. Getting into the recruitment topic, I've been with the city for 27 years. I was here during the difficult times. I was here when our department was slashed in half. And I want to say the reasons that we've experienced so much positive progress and been able to correct the errors of the past as a city as a whole is because we've attracted quality individuals. Nita mentioned the vacancies that Sean walked into. Sean's predecessor had a philosophy on hiring individuals, and Sean carried that through his administration. And that has proven true in the staff that the city has hired and that we've hired over at the PD recently. We were in a rough spot back in the economic downturn, just financially and administration-wise. We were in a rough spot. I'll leave it at that. That has been corrected, and that's been because of the retention efforts and the recruitment efforts that the city has done. That being a proven concept, We at the PD need to continue to attract quality individuals so we can add to our abilities and provide better service to our community. It's a proven, we have proven to attract the right people. Things change 180 degrees and a ship is corrected. We've experienced it. We need to do this at the PD. Talking about patrol staffing, Nothing's changed on that. Currently, on a good day, we're three officers and a sergeant. We're actively working to fill some vacancies. It's interesting. In a meeting this morning, and I wasn't happy about this. In a meeting this morning, I was informed that on July 3rd, the day before the 4th of July, a Friday, it's going to be a party weekend. Our current staffing is two officers and a sergeant for day shift. That conversation didn't go well. And granted, my staff understood that it wasn't going to remain like that, but as of today, two weeks prior to that date, my staffing is two officers and a sergeant for July 3rd. Not okay. It's going to get filled with overtime. Hopefully we don't have to mandatory someone, but the fact is I don't have the staff on the books at the moment to be able to fill that. Getting to specialty unit staffing, again, just to reiterate what specialty units are, those are the units who don't work patrol, the sworn units. We're talking detectives, traffic, SRT, or specialized resource team. And their job is just much more specialized where they have special training and time to investigate and handle things within the city that patrol just doesn't have time to do. Patrol is just a mobile force where they stick and move all around the city and they're at the beck and call of the radio all the specialty units are typically. assigned to just more longer-term things, talking about what we need for that. Currently, we have two detectives full-time. I need four detectives full-time. Our two detectives, their primary responsibilities, investigating sex crimes, crimes against children, human trafficking, horrible crimes against people. Crimes against property are if we can get to them. Your house gets broken into. Patrol might be able to investigate that, but chances are it's not going to get to an investigator because they're dealing with more critical, violent, and personal crimes. I need to hire a detective sergeant to supervise those four investigators. They need to have somebody who can bring leadership and guidance and mentorship to the detectives and help them through their investigations and carry them along as they're working through. Talking about traffic, currently we have one traffic officer, and his duties are split between being on the bike or in the car, actually enforcing traffic, and dealing with others on traffic issues, working with the planning department, working with streets on mitigating issues kind of before they happen or as they're happening, just on a more design level. So I need another traffic officer so we can have two. And then I need a sergeant to oversee that so the sergeant can take over the roles that our current traffic officer is working on. And it's just much more appropriate with the rank and the authority behind it. And finally, SRT, the Specialized Resource Team, that was a team that I've talked about with you for many years, and we were able to finally turn that team up due to promotions and vacancies. There's only one member in that team right now, though he is incredibly effective. It's going to be much more effective if we can get another SRT officer and a sergeant to oversee that unit. Just the work that the one officer has done, Officer Rogers has done in that unit has just been incredible when it's been coming to enforcement of smoke shops and dealing with populations out there. He's done an amazing job just by himself with that and the collaboration that he's done with the DA's office in the state has just been incredible. And he's just going to be so much more effective if we can get another officer and a sergeant to oversee that unit. So with all that being said, that's really only seven positions at the moment, and that gets me to where I'm comfortable. Now that's assuming that nobody's injured that we don't have any vacancies you know as of uh getting into july i'm looking at having between vacancies and other reasons i'll be offline about five officers so i'll be about five officers down from being able to work just due to a variety of reasons which is that no need to be shot because that's just a reality of policing you're going to have vacancies you're going to have people hurt you're going to have people on leave for whatever reason um But on a good day, if everybody's there, adding the seven officers, I'm where I'm comfortable. So building a buffer would be great, but that is where I would be content and could be able to sleep a little better at night, knowing that we're able to deliver the services to the city that they want and that they deserve so with that thank you very much and i'll turn it to chief mejia and chief alice if you could just share with everyone the total number of officers you have for a city of 58 000. currently we're authorized 32 officers that's including me so i wouldn't quite you know uh so 32 sworn um from the top down for a city of 56 ish thousand

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, Anthony Mejia, Fire Chief. I want to thank you again for this opportunity to present the need that we have for this tax measure for the Fire Department. Really what I'm going to do is kind of walk you down a path. We really are a fork in the road for our Fire Department. We're a fork in the road of what we're going to do without a tax measure and what we can do with one. And so what I want to walk you through is what that looks like. Without funding from a tax measure, we're looking at staffing cuts. We're proposing losing positions to add into our staffing model that we currently need. Those positions will be off the table if funding doesn't come. We will not be able to bring in ALS service. That is just something that's not going to be able to happen. The history of Lincoln is that we'll make it work. We'll figure out how to run calls when we only have two stations. We'll figure out how to make it work if we cut down one firefighter per engine company. But this is not a program that we can just make work. This is something that needs substantial funding. It needs to be supported. And it's not something that we can just do on our own. It's something that we have to make right and make it foundational. Next is that widening service gap. What we already kind of talked about, Roseville's going to grow, Rockland's growing, and it's all going to those hospitals. What that means is a longer response time for all of our community members. With that widening services gap, the only issue that we're going to really have is we're going to be having an increased risk for all of our community members. We heard first accounts from Jason and what happened to his daughter. Exactly like Nita was saying earlier, this is not a problem that is going to be going away. These calls are going to continue to happen and they're going to have grave consequences if we don't do something to change them. So what is it going to look like if we can get funding? First thing that we're going to do is increase staffing. We're going to start to bring on some more command staff, some training staff to help support this program that we're trying to bring on that's going to be so substantial for the city of Lincoln. We're going to bring ALS service into the city. We're going to bring top tier ALS service in. We're going to try to bring in lateral hired firefighter paramedics that we can bring in some of the best talent around to be the foundational members of starting this program. I'll tell you right now, this is a very pivotal point, but I'm glad to be the fire chief at this point in time of our city. I think you should all be proud, mayor and city council and the staff, that this is an era that we can actually usher in paramedics into the city of Lincoln and actually make a difference. Next is that sustainable service model. No community member is ever going to have to worry about, is a paramedic going to show up at their doorstep? This is not a model that's going to break after a couple years, two or three years. This is something that's going to last for many, many years to come. And lastly, is it's going to increase safety. It really is going to make an impact. It will ultimately save lives. This is going to be a thing that's going to be tangible. I've told this to our city manager multiple times. I said, as soon as we turn this program on, you're going to hear me coming up here, podium after podium, talking about life-saving measures that our firefighters are doing out in the field. Tonight, I think you're going to hear from some of our firefighters that are coming here in support of this measure. Why? Not only because they're looking at trying to expand or increase their services, but because they're on the front lines and they're seeing what this is doing to community members and this is impacting them. So really what I want to leave you with is that, you know, this tax measure is really that fork in the road. It's really the destiny for the Lincoln Fire Department. Is it, are we going to lose what we have right now and watch our services decline and watch this situation get worse and worse? Or are we going to pass this measure and be able to really improve this service and do something that's really gonna impact all of our community and make it sustainable for many, many years to come. Thank you very much.

Chief, how many full-time firefighters do you have? 32 for a city of 56,000. It's the same number as P&E. So let's talk about per capita spending. I alluded to this earlier. And over the years, not just like today. But if you look, and I understand, the print is small. So I'm going to help you out here. Each one of these graphs is a little snapshot of a year for each of the cities in our regional area. So we have Roseville, Auburn, Rockland, Colfax, Loomis. Lincoln is on the end. Every single year. not just on the end in the pictorial sense, but on the end in the number of dollars that we have spent on a per capita basis on public safety. When I say we have been doing more with less, in 2021, Lincoln spent a total of $240 per thousand residents, right? Have I got that correct? In public safety. That's below Loomis. That's below Colfax. Let's fast forward to 2025-26. So we have been able to add some staffing. We added the nine firefighters as a result of the one-time funding. We added five police personnel as a result of the one-time funding, the funding we knew we were going to have to fill the gap for. We've added a fire chief, which we have not had in this agency, and I'm not even sure how many years. Lots of years. Yeah, 12 years, she says. So our spending per capita is up to $367 for Lincoln. Still the lowest. Loomis is $399. Colfax is $513. So when people talk about, well, you know, you just need to work harder, we could accomplish so much more if you just worked harder city staff. You have 32 firefighters and 32 police officers for this entire city. I hope that Chief Alves does not have to pull the mandatory overtime card for July 3rd and July 4th weekend. But I know that, and I am almost positive that one of our officers will change their life plans and come in and work that day on overtime. Could be wrong, but I think that's what's going to happen. So what are we asking you for? We're asking you to adopt a resolution declaring an election on November 3rd. And we're going to ask the county to then place a measure on the ballot if this council should so approve. That measure would submit to the voters of Lincoln, to this community, asking the community What do you want this community to continue to be? Do you want it to continue to approve with a one cent sales tax? It's important, Lena, I hope you're listening. This sales tax is a general tax. It can be used for any general governmental purposes. It's going to go into the general fund. Why? Well, because if we pass or attempt to pass a tax that is specific to public safety, that requires a two-thirds vote. A general tax requires a 50% vote plus one. When we did our polling, we don't have the numbers for a two-thirds vote because we asked. I said, would you accept, would you adopt this if it was just public safety and we don't have the margin of the yeses? So I know someone's going to ask, well, how do I know this council and future councils will spend it on the things that are important to me? So the general fund in this agency and any governmental agency, the majority of it, the gorilla in the general fund is public safety. It's police and fire. It just, it has to be, right? That is the essential core service that any agency is going to provide to its community is police and fire. They get the dollars first. They're the last ones to be cut. Could cuts occur in public safety if this doesn't happen? I'm sorry to say it's likely. Would we decimate the library and break Catherine's heart first? We would. Would we consider closing the rec program and have parents up here at the podium saying, what am I going to do with my kids in the afternoon? We would probably recommend that too. I don't want to do any of that. I really don't. If this community doesn't pass a measure, we will look under every rock. I'll pull up every sofa cushion and I'll start, you know, collecting pennies on the corner to keep that from happening. Could happen though. Here's the ballot measure for the record. Shall the measure to prevent cuts to Public Safety Services 911 emergency medical response, police fire protection, qualified police and firefighters, add life-saving equipment for medical emergencies, keep public areas, streets, parks safe and clean, and other general governmental uses by establishing a one-cent sales tax providing Six million annually with funds spent locally until ended by voters with the citizen oversight committee an annual audit and public spending disclosure be adopted So let's say it's adopted There's gonna be somebody from the fall in the audience who's gonna say what is the library gonna get out of this So if the gorilla in the room gets a new staff police and fire they get new staff as a result of this measure and That naturally frees up general fund dollars. A high tide rises all boats, right? So if those dollars are freed up, then we can consider things like more library hours, like full-time staff in the library. We consider things like recreation programs for adults, which we don't currently have any of. We can consider expanding the rec programs moving quicker on our park builds that we are responsible for. We can set aside money for businesses and economic development. The council can then start to make value decisions about the dollars. And instead of us running around all the time saying, no, you can't have that cost too much. We can then say, OK, it's not like we're going to be rich, right? That's not what's happening. But we can then say, OK, community, you asked for these things. We can now give them to you. The last time we polled, we said, would you vote for a $0.01 sales tax? And of the yeses, the definitely yes, the probably yes, the undecided, but as we continue to ask the question, we ask the question again, we ask the question in a slightly different way, they're leaning towards yes, 59%. Here's an important thing to keep in mind. Look at the plus minus at the top of the graph, the 4.9%. Five points. Five points. That's the margin of error. Even with the five points, we believe the votes are still sufficient to pass this one cent sales tax measure. We've talked a lot in previous meetings and in many of the educational talks that we've given about a term for this tax. And we initially said, let's do it for nine years, the whole 999 that Sean talked about in previous meetings. It's under 10. It's one digit, nine years. What we started hearing from community members, and Sean mentioned this at the last time he was at Sun City, one of the community members was like, we just want to be done. We want to know this is taken care of. We want to know the future generations aren't going to have to bother with this, that this is a done deal, that it provides the service going forward forever, that it's not like it's going to be shut off, like Chief Mejia said. So we asked that question. What if we do a tax for nine years? So here's an important thing. Yes, you've got the yeses, right? 56% yes for nine years. Okay, that's still over the 50. The margin of error is seven points. So if that margin of error swings the other way, it doesn't pass. The important thing that I really wanna focus on a bit is the definitely no. for nine years is 27%. When we ask the question, what if the taxes until ended by voters? The yeses go up to 62%. I've still got the seven point margin of error, track seven from 12. And I still have enough votes to pass. And more important to us, to Sean and I anyways, when we look at this, is that definitely no's go down with until ended by voters, down to 22%. Our survey is perfect science. Boy, I wish they were, but they're not, right? And so that's why we have continued to talk to the community. We've been listening to them. What do you want? What works for you? And what we are hearing from them is the until ended by voters language. That ends this very long presentation. I think I've set another new record for the longest presentation ever. And with that, we open the floor to discussions and questions.

Mayor, just to kind of close up with another 40 minutes. Just really quickly, I just wanted to add two last things. First off, just a big thank you to all of the people, community members whose many community members spent their own time and thought helping us think through what made sense, giving us advice. Every single one of you can count how many times we've had this discussion. One of the things the community and everyone really should understand is that this has been a key point on virtually every strategic plan in my time here. And there was all types of reasons when was the right timing to have this discussion. We were in the midst of a road measure at a certain point, so we sort of held back. We have contractual obligations with Placer County under a variety of different agreements to pose this question to the community during a defined period of time. And so what I spent a lot of time explaining to the community is that it isn't like we woke up one day or I woke up one day and said, geez, you know, we've got financial issues. We should really look into this issue. This has been something that has been conceived for a very long time, and it took a lot of effort to get here. And so regardless of the outcome, I'm very, very proud of the work and the time that the staff has put into this. The final thing I'll just say is something that I mentioned in all of my presentations that seemed to resonate with people. I really think it's important that the discussion about this issue now and potentially into the next number of months acknowledges that people are going to have different perspectives on this and that's okay. There's not one person that I spoke to that was skeptical about this where, you know, I felt like it was my job to convince them. It is a valid perspective if you're not as excited about this idea. Um, Our job is simply to put forward what we think is a solution to a complex issue and add value to that issue in terms of the service that people will receive. And I hope that we've done that at least to some level this evening. And at the end of the day, this decision really comes down to what kind of community does Lincoln want to be in the long term. And there's not really a wrong answer to that. It's just a preference. And so we're happy to answer your questions and any questions the community might have.

Well, thank you. Normally, the mayor would speak last, but I'd just like to make a few comments and then open up to my colleagues. First, I want to thank the staff for a fabulous presentation, both the administration and our police and fire crews over here. This is an incredibly difficult decision for us to make at this point. For me, it's an inflection point of where we want to be, not just for this year, but going forward. I think as I was listening to the comments today, I'm reminded of a couple of things. Number one, I am so proud of our team here for bringing the transparency to the fore, to really to walk that walk and talk that talk and to live transparency for our community. Because that's the only way that Confidence is built on both sides. And we have done just an amazing job, we think, over the years in doing that. It hasn't been easy. It hasn't always been easy to be transparent, but it's the only way truly to work together with the community for the betterment of everyone. The whole situation that we're talking about now starts first with transparency, but also starts with looking at a recognition of truly where we are. One of the slides that Nita showed was the five-year projection. Most cities don't do a five-year projection. They do a one-year plan or a two-year plan. We wanted to build this five-year outlook so that we know, we as a community, know what we're facing. Because I've always believed that when people understand what they are facing, they understand the implications, and they understand what it's going to take to fulfill the dream, they'll step up. They will understand it. Sometimes they won't always like it, but they'll understand it. So starting with that, we know exactly where we are right now. We know that in five years, it's not just the fact that there'll be no reserve funds. That's a nice way of saying that the next year, we have to do serious, serious cuts to everything over here. It also means that if something goes bad, like we have another economic slowdown, there are no reserves. And all that means is that we... push forward the agony but what we've done is look into the future and say yes we have a pretty good idea of what we're facing and so we are now in the we can take command of this moment and we the citizens will decide how we want to see our city not just for us but also for our children and grandchildren in in the future now i think some of the slides that nita presented are absolutely startling, absolutely startling, how much we've been able to do with relatively so little. When a community is at the lowest end of every single spectrum and still gives fabulous service to the community, that says something. That says something about the staff. It says something about the commitment to the common goal. It says something that we really are We consider ourselves a family in this city over here. And we in the staff are just doing everything possible. But there's only so much that you can do. And especially when we are demonstrated that we are lower than Colfax and Loomis in delivering services and we're still delivering great services, that says something about what we're able to accomplish. But we need to do more. I think both the chiefs very, very well what they want. out there for the community. These are not beautiful, nice things to have. These are absolute requirements. I think everyone recognizes that these are truly public, especially public safety services that are impactful, they're life-saving. It's what Lincoln makes, it's what Lincoln is as the third safest city, both in police and fire. But we need to carry that forward. We need to be able to bite the bullet and say, what do we want to do in the future? Is it going to be easy? No. We're going to have to talk to our friends and neighbors and say, here is what the reality is, and it's 50 plus 1. We're going to have to be upfront with them and saying, also, what happens if we don't? do this over here. Will everything turn upside down? No, of course not. But will the service levels go down? Yes. But it's not just much what we can't have, but it's really what we can have. And I think both the fire chief and the police chief, when they put forth their requests for the service that's going to truly help our people, I think that's the message that we have to bring to our folks over here. Asking people to pay more in taxes is not easy. No one wants to be in this position at all. But sometimes at our level, where the buck, where the metal reaches the road, you know, here we are. We deliver as a city the basic services that we live and breathe every single day. We're not concerned with foreign, with... with defense or economic spending and everything else. We deal with public safety, with library, with recreation, with public services. Water comes on, stuff goes away, refuse gets picked up over here. All these things cost money. I think that what we have demonstrated over the years is that we have been careful stewards of the people's money. We have done absolutely as much as we can with what we were given to do. And now it's at the point of decision for the community of do we want to step forward to keep moving this city forward? So it's going to be a heavy lift without a doubt. And it's going to take all of us to talk to our friends. We haven't decided. We're still going to be deciding, the council over here, whether we want to put it on the ballot. If it does come on the ballot, I am hopeful that all of us who really care about the city, really love the city, will be out there and be the champions for this because we're really working it and we're serving ourselves. So I do have a number of questions afterward. Let me open it up to some of my colleagues first.

I do have a couple of questions, but did we want to hear from some of our public safety staff? Are they wanting to speak first or did you... I just wasn't sure what the... Do we want to have some, Nita?

It's up to you, Mr. Mayor, if you'd like to take comments from the council members first, or if you'd like to... Just get the council members first, and then open it back up, and then out to the community.

I have two questions. So, the estimated amount of money we would generate from a one-cent sales tax is around six million a year? Approximately. Okay. When we finally are able to get some conclusion from the county on the tax renegotiation areas, what do we estimate from that?

It really depends on what's agreed to. What I feel comfortable sharing is that Depending if everything occurred the way that we think it should, somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 to $2.5 million on a yearly basis.

So if our sales tax measure passes... Mm-hmm. Well, let's just say the county money is extra. I feel confident we're going to get it because that's just the right thing. But let's just say the self-tax measure passes. All these things that we want to accomplish, keep what we have, hire more, ALS, all of it, all the police things. If we get the $6 million, will that get us to a place that we are – comfortable with, that we're happy with. I guess, let me phrase it this way. If we get to that place, what will we still need? I mean, obviously, as the city grows, we're going to need more. But if we get that sales tax measure passed, then we get $6 million a year. Will that get us to where we want to be? Will everybody be happy or

what we'll still be lacking i guess is the way it went well there's the deficit amount um yeah go ahead it's so the the current deficit is uh around two and a half three million uh and as the one-time dollars continue to decrease it goes up to about four million so that's the that's Base right without adding anything so once we add the additional personnel. We believe that there it's it's not like we're going to add $2 million of fire and police personnel that would be a lot of a lot of them. So once we add those number of personnel that the chiefs discuss that there will still be dollars available.

Yeah, I think like, I understand where you're getting at, customer Adriana, because what you're trying to get to is, does this meet all of the needs we think we know of today and are we comfortable? And the answer to that question is no. We need both things to work.

We need both things, yeah.

And what it does though, is it puts us in a, what I would call like a B position. Like if you're grading on an A to an F scale, we're at a relatively secure position where we can make sure that we're retaining and keeping really good staff. And we are strategically hiring. I was just asked recently whether we have a list of all the positions we would hire if this were all to work out. And the answer to that question is no, because what we would want to do is be very conservative with our implementing those dollars. We want to make sure first that we're protecting and retaining really good folks in those departments. And then the second step is to start to make surgical decisions about adding on an incremental basis. So it'd be very similar to kind of what you witnessed the first part of the 2020s here, where You know, each budget cycle, we make some reasonable decisions that the council considers over the budget process. I've looked to Chief Alves' point. We'd like to allocate dollars for an additional patrol position on all three shifts. So we have that covered. In Chief Mejia's view, we may... add some staff but also change or offer promotional opportunities for firefighters to become paramedics. And so they would be paid more for that specific designation. And then, you know, as the city continues to grow, it puts us in this position where we're not always playing from super far behind. We've caught up and now we can make reasonable budgetary decisions on a yearly basis. So we're not in a position where we are so far behind in service delivery that that it almost is a monumental task to catch up so it's it's a really good position that i don't think a lot of communities find themselves in but it is certainly not a position where you know there's we're going to be sitting around wondering what to do with excess reserves every year right um and then my next question is once this council if i'm i mean i'm going to vote yes for it i mean i'm nobody needs to convince me i'm all for it but

Once that decision is made, what is the plan to promote it once we vote to put it on the ballot? Because I know, like, as a council, we have to step back and we can't do it from here. But what's the plan?

Yeah, so I suspect that some of the folks that are going to give comment tonight will have a perspective on what the plan should be. One of the beautiful things about this is we ask the community what they want. We aggregate all that information. We form it into a package that you can consider and potentially approve. And then after that, it becomes a true democratic process where community members that are interested and want to see this they view this as valuable. Committees will need to be established probably to start talking about how to properly campaign for this. What is clear and what Nubia would tell you is that any, after tonight, any City resource, aside from education, you know, me verifying detail is strictly prohibited so you won't see me talking on my city cell phone about this, you know, lobbying someone, you're not going to see me out in my official capacity. Talking with community members about why this is so important that is going to be left to those folks that really want to see this happen. There is allowances outside of our official duties for people on their own time volunteering, etc. To participate in that kind of activity and that happens places. But as we stand here today, I can just tell you that there are a number of groups that have expressed overwhelming interest to either be lead or supplemental in helping to push out the message regarding this matter.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I had a couple of questions. Most of them have been answered with the presentation. That was great. Let's see.

Now it's just a mess.

I was curious, and I don't remember, do we have like an average or an estimate of how much ALS costs to start and then maintain?

You want to take that, Chief? $100 million. Just kidding.

Yeah. So the beginning part of the service is going to be the equipment, which we've already got funding sources for. That's not the expensive part. The expensive part is going to be the staffing for paramedics. So really kind of like what Sean was saying, it's going to be a phased in process because we don't have all the openings for the engine companies. So we're going to be bringing one engine company on, which would be three paramedics. And then that would be coming from probably incentive pay again, where we would have to bring up that bottom line. what we're going to be in is competition with our surrounding cities. Rockland right now is struggling to get paramedics. Their last paramedic promotion or recruitment only got maybe one paramedic out of that. Roseville's even losing paramedics at this time to surrounding agencies. So really what we have to do is just be competitive. So that number will, by the time we go full scale, three engines, you know, we're probably looking at, you know, maybe 2 million, two and a half million dollars by the time we escalate all of that. But yeah, Rough ballpark right now to get started, probably under a million.

Okay, great. Thank you. That's exactly what I was curious about. And then on oversight, I like that you had brought up the dashboard idea and that that was in the presentation because that just seems like it fits perfectly with what we already have started or what Jen's already built with our transparency dashboards. that's something that we can do and have just the ability for all residents to go and see exactly where the dollars are allocated?

Yeah, so the way I think we would, it probably ends up, if I had it my way, would look a little different than our transparency dashboard. I think it would be, that is a, you know, almost down to the checkbook level kind of process. I think in general what we're hearing is that people want to be able to go on a website and, you know, we'll update it pretty regularly, but get an idea about, okay, what was received this year? Have you spent it? Some pie charts, some examples, maybe even a little bit of editorial information in there about like, look, we're rolling out ALS in June and come check it out. Or we're going to do some community meetings about it. It's a place where people can go and, and see how it's going and hopefully it ends up being kind of a forever record so that way down the road um one of the things that people ask a lot about is well what would prohibit a future city council from just taking these resources and applying them the the joke the mayor and i have is you know to build a golden statue of richard pearl in the middle of lincoln um and One of the ways that you can fight that and prohibit it, because it's very difficult for councils to bind future councils on anything, is to create transparency portals that show full historical context of where we were. This meeting will be recorded. I'm sure we replayed in the future. And people will be able to go back and go, what were the affirmative promises that were made so we can make sure that we're keeping those? Because, you know, promises made, promises kept. So that, in addition to audits and oversight, creates some guardrails.

Excellent. Yeah, I would like to see an annual update. It doesn't have to be down to the same level as your amazing project that you implemented with 1%. But I think that would be great. And then I know that we would do annual audits. That just seems like a no-brainer. And we're already doing all that. Then I think all I have left that I'm still just wondering, and I don't think that it's going to affect my decision on this or my support or lack of or anything, but on an economic development level, Has there been any analysis on how, like, Placer 1 and our development, you know, with the county just south of us could affect our sales tax or competitiveness, or has that played into any of our analysis or sales tax leakage?

There's been a lot of discussion about that. And I would hope that there's going to be a little bit more tonight. My view is that it's a really difficult question to answer because there are just many different factors that could affect it. To put a finer point on it, Lincoln and Placer won. are in a foot race at the moment. Those two commercial projects are coming to maturity in the same-ish time frame. And we have had a lot of discussion about, regardless of whether or not it's something that the community would consider, are there downstream effects that we don't know of necessarily today but may put us in a competitive disadvantage? And there may be. I can't say that for sure because so much of what happens in the retail and commercial world depends on timing and opportunity, and there's too many variables to calculate that. What I think I could say is, as we've talked through this a little bit more, let's just, for the sake of discussion, say that Lincoln's marginal sales tax rate is larger than Placer One's is. which would be the case if this happens. Will it always be the case? Don't know. Could be that they seek one. But let's just assume they don't. The question is whether that materially impacts buying habits and equally as important commercial siting habits from retailers and other types of commercial businesses that may care a little more about sales tax than others do. And you can find plenty of analysis that could point you both ways, depending on what you're looking for. Um, generally for smaller, uh, lower priced goods. So we're not talking about, you know, the classic example I've been giving is like RV sales. Cause you could buy super expensive RVs now and a 1% tax on that is a lot of money. Um, if it's about 500 grand, you know, for example, um, Perhaps that has an impact on some level. However, lower priced, most of the things that we spend most of our sales tax dollars on, taxable purchases, I don't typically see, and based on the experts we've consulted, significant changes in buying patterns. Buying patterns typically revolve around convenience and access to the good that you want. Those are the two top ones. and then price of good, and then taxes thereafter, right? So I'd love to give you an absolute answer to it.

I cannot give you that.

I don't feel overly concerned about it, but I'll end with this. One of the ideas that we've kind of kicked around a little bit is that when Aaron and Daniela, who do our economic development, go out and talk to businesses, one of the things that's a struggle for them is that our ability to attract businesses, if you don't work in the field, you would think that it's just a lot of sweat equity making money. connections and getting people to be interested in your community salesmanship, right? And there is some of that, but that's really not where the needle gets moved. The needle gets moved when incentives are created for retailers and other commercial developments to come here. Whether that be inherent incentives and that they just want to be here because it's a great place to have a business or Financial incentives that the city offers to encourage that kind of activity and we don't really have resources to do the latter. We never have. And if you ever come to an EDC meeting and encourage everybody to come to them. One of the frustrations that we have periodically there is there are things we know we could achieve if we had money to do it and we don't And so there is an opportunity here if councils decide the future to peel off portions of this to reinvest into our business community to bring in more and provide, you know, pathways that businesses may, if they're trying to make a marginal decision about whether they're here or there and we can move the needle by helping them financially, then it's worth it. And I think that, you know, those will all be decisions that councils have to make in the future. But it does give you some tools to try to counteract some of that.

No, I really like that and I appreciate that. And I did hone in on that part of your presentation that this will give us potentially some more tools in our tool bill after public safety because public safety is obviously 100% our first priority. But that being said, something that we all hear often is, why can't we have this? Why didn't we get that store? Why didn't this come here? And it's frustrating because, like you said, that sometimes it comes down to a small margin of competitiveness that we end up losing to our neighbor or another community for something really small that we have. just can't afford to do so um i appreciate that and um yeah i could go on for a long time but i won't i'll say um that that public safety i believe is our brand here in lincoln and i think that's by far what makes us so special it's one of the main reasons why we're so special and why we all live here and our numbers and the data is astonishing that we have done so well with so much less and Yeah, I'm just so I'm just so proud of our public safety officers and departments and I thank them with everything for doing such an amazing stellar job with less and I hope that we can give them everything that they need to maintain and and meet the best of our abilities. And the ALS is just something that our community deserves, especially with Sun City. And my worst nightmare, like we talked about at our last meeting, is making that call and not having somebody respond in enough time or anybody else having that experience. that to me would just be the worst and the last resort that we would end up in that position. So that's it.

A quick question to follow up to Whitney's. Do we have an idea of what the average impact would be on a typical family in Lincoln?

Sort of. So let me give, I'm going to try not to take too much time with this, but I think it's a really important question. So let's start with a few things that we know or think we know. The modeling that we've done indicates, depending on the year, that we probably leak on average about 40... An average Lincoln family leaks about 40% of their taxable sales to other places, Rockland, Roseville, wherever. Meaning... on average, our residents spend roughly 60% of their taxable sales or taxable purchases in Lincoln. So, and that kind of makes sense if you think about it, 60% of your taxable sales are typically the things that you kind of just need on a regular basis, toilet paper, et cetera, right? I don't know why I picked that one. That's weird. Sorry. Yeah. Uh, it's been a long day. Um, but, uh, 40% would make sense because if you think about the things that would be items that would be difficult to get here, the example that I've been giving a lot lately is like, if you want to learn how to play golf, like Nina just started playing golf recently and she needed to go buy some golf clubs, you know, you could get them at the place, uh, the big five. I don't actually think they sell clubs there, but, um, really she had to go down to exporting goods or a few other places that are not here. Right. And you see that with things like, you know, you want to buy a Mac book, you want to, um, make those big purchases that are a little bit more expensive in the hundreds of dollars. You typically are not making most of those purchases here in Lincoln because they don't exist as a retail. So that makes sense to us. Now, um, Depending on, you can use IRS tables, you can use, there's estimates that range. I've seen anything ranging from like $10,000 in taxable purchases by the average family on a yearly basis all the way up. You could probably go as high as $30,000 depending on your income levels. And so if you apply on the low end, you The rate that's being proposed, you could assume $100 would be the net impact all the way up to $30,000, $300. But that calculation isn't really good enough, in my opinion, because that $10,000 would assume all $10,000 is spent in Lincoln. And so if you deduct out 40%, so that would mean $4,000, you're really only spending $6,000 in Lincoln. So when we've had this discussion with community members who have asked this question over and over and over again, what we've told them is, look, what you really need to do is figure out for yourself how much time you're spending shopping elsewhere, because if that elsewhere is in Roseville or in areas of Sacramento County, or Rockland has a measure on right now, so potentially Rockland in the future, you are paying that sales tax there. We just aren't receiving it, right? So to me, the calculation needs to take into account our leakage to have an idea about what the impact to the individual is in Lincoln. Um, so, uh, you know, what I've generally been telling people just to be a bit conservative is somewhere in the $120 to at the very high end and the 300 to $330 a year range, um, roughly. But it, again, it just depends on buying habits and, and whether you're buying a lot of taxable goods or not.

John. Um, most of my questions actually have been answered. The, When I did the number you asked, I did it the other way and said if you assume 78%, which I think at one point our consultant said about 78% of the sales tax we collect is from Lincoln residents. So if you take 78% of $6 million divided by the 22,451 homes, it's about $200 per family. Going in that direction.

Oh, we arrived almost at the same number.

But my other questions have been answered. I'm looking forward to public comment. Ben?

So I really kind of look at this a lot like our real tough decision about the the rates water rates and it's not easy to yeah it's needed it's like it's one of the you have to do it kind of things. Well, I can't say you have to, but I mean, the consequences are such that if you don't, you don't set yourself up for success long-term. And so I'm interested to find out what comments that we have that generally a real hard thing to tackle. It's a heavy lift for everybody in the community, but one that when you, When you do the harder right and the easier wrong, then you generally come on. Pretty good. That's it for now.

Chief, do you have a set order of firefighters who would want to come up, or do we just call anyone? We have cards on here? Cards, all right.

I have three speaker cards. First up is Stan Nader, followed by Evan Fedesk.

Mayor and council, I realize the staff report indicates the ballot measure is listed as a general tax, which allows the city council to use the monies collected where they feel it benefits the community best. This allows the ballot measure to pass with a 50 plus one vote. But the language as shown in the staff report seems to be very specific. about how the monies will be spent, which would give the impression that this is a special tax measure, which requires a two-thirds rule to pass. I know city staff have been diligently working to inform the citizens of Lincoln why this additional resource is needed and that the polling of the city has shown favorable support for the tax measure and that the city has committed to a citizen's oversight committee and annual audits and public spending disclosures. I believe an important step has been passed over by not having a citizens initiated group to promote the measure while well in advance of the city even discussing the matter. It is not that the citizens would not believe what the city staff is telling them. It is just because it is equivalent to the fox watching the hen house, so to speak. When the city of Roseville passed their tax measure years ago, their citizens group was the lead voice on the measure and the city was successful in passing their measure. The city of Lincoln is currently experiencing a 40% leakage of sales tax to surrounding communities. To paint the picture, Roseville has nine times per capita retail sales than Lincoln. Total retail sales is 13 times higher in Roseville than Lincoln. What is interesting is the mean household income and per capita income are very similar in Roseville and Lincoln. One thing I was hoping to see in the staff report was how the city was working to reduce operating costs for the city, giving confidence to the citizens that the city was doing all they can to be transparent as possible about how this city was spending their tax dollars. Advancing economic development and securing additional resources is hard work and requires an all-hounds-on-deck approach. Thank you. Thank you, Stan.

After Evan is TJ Thomas.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. My name is Evan Faddis. I'm battalion chief with Lincoln Fire Department, and I'm also a Lincoln resident. First, I want to thank the council, the city staff, and the community for the work that has gone into evaluating paramedic services for Lincoln. The fact that we are having this conversation reflects our shared commitment to continuing improving the services we provide to our residents. Paramedic services provided through fire departments have been a standard model across the country for decades and have become an expected level of service in many communities. Lincoln would benefit greatly from having paramedic services, especially given our large, active adult population and the residents of Del Webb-Lincoln Hills. As a paramedic myself, I've experienced the frustration of arriving on scene and having to wait 20 plus minutes for an ambulance to provide treatments that could be initiated immediately by firefighter paramedics, such as medications for chest pain or breathing treatments for respiratory distress. Those early interventions can make a significant difference for our residents and their families. Approximately 75% of the calls handled by the Lincoln Fire Department are medical in nature, and our call volume continues to increase. The addition of paramedic services would represent one of the most significant service enhancements our department has ever provided, as these advanced skills would be utilized on the majority of our calls. However, with that increased level of service comes increased responsibility. For many years, when funding was limited, our department operated with two-person staffing and did an outstanding job serving this community with the resources available. Through collaborative effort between the city council, the city manager, and the firefighters, we work together to restore three-person staffing, significantly strengthening our ability to serve our residents. As we consider adding paramedic services, we must recognize that this advanced level of care requires a long-term commitment to adequate staffing, training, and support. Once we begin staffing fire engines with firefighter paramedics, we cannot go backwards. We must be fully committed to building and sustaining this program because our community deserves a level of service that is reliable, sustainable, and high quality. Over the last decade, recruiting and retaining firefighter paramedics has become increasingly difficult. Even neighboring agencies such as Rockland and Roseville have experienced challenges attracting and retaining qualified paramedics, despite being larger, well-established organizations. Currently, Lincoln Fire Department salaries and benefits are on the lower end compared to surrounding agencies. Departments that are not competitive often experience high turnover, increased training costs and staffing shortages. If this measure passes, I encourage us to work together to begin recruiting and hiring immediately as early as November. to ensure that we are prepared to launch an effective and sustainable paramedic program. The citizens of Lincoln have made it clear that paramedic services are the number one service they desire. I strongly support bringing this service to our community and I hope we move forward with a full understanding of the commitment required to provide this critical service for years to come. I just want you to know as I wrap up that your Lincoln firefighters will take the lead on this and we will work to educate the community of the benefits of this sales tax measure as we walk the streets and educate the public.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is TJ Thomas. I'm the Battalion Chief of the Lincoln Fire Department, and I'm here tonight to ask your support on the tax measure before you. Right now, our department responds with EMT-level care. That's a solid foundation, but it has a ceiling. EMTs can't start IVs, can't push cardiac medications, and can't perform life advanced airway procedures. For the most serious calls, the calls where minutes truly decide outcomes, we depend on AMR to arrive and provide that higher level of care. The problem is that AMR doesn't always get there quickly. They cover a wide service area, and like most private ambulance providers right now, they're stretched thin. When a resident is in cardiac arrest, having a stroke, or struggling to breathe, the gap between when we arrive and when ALS level care arrives can be the difference between a positive outcome and a tragic one. This tax measure changes that. It allows us to bring ALS level paramedics directly onto our fire engines. That means the moment we're on scene, the patient is already getting the highest level of pre-hospital care available, not waiting for AMR to arrive. This isn't about replacing AMR. They'll still be there for our transports, and we'll keep working with them as partners. What this measure does is close the gap in critical minutes before transport even happens, the minutes where treatment can change everything. But a measure like this isn't just about what we're asking for. It's about how we deliver on once it's approved. I want to speak briefly about execution, because a program like this is only as good as how it's ran. If this measure passes, my role and the role of our command staff is to make sure this isn't just funded, it's built right. Proper deployment of paramedic units across our coverage area, clear protocols on how engines and AMR coordinate on scene, and ongoing quality review so we know that the program is performing the way we expected it. This is a significant operational shift for our department, and we don't take that lightly. But it's the kind of shift that fire departments across the country have made because it works and because community like ours expect it. I'm confident that with the right planning, the right partnership, and the right oversight, we can deliver a paramedic program this city can rely on for the long term. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you very much.

Was there anyone else in the audience who would like to provide public comment? Please step up to the podium.

Mayor, to the council members, thanks for having me. My name's Antonio Verga. I'm one of the two detectives for the Lincoln Police Department and currently the president of the Lincoln Peace Officers Association. I'm kind of an examples type of guy when it comes to... you know, everyone talking, convincing you. So I want to bring up an incident that we had that could have potentially been disastrous for the department had we not gotten lucky. So in February this year, we had a major incident that was an all-hands-on-deck incident. It happened around 6 p.m. Yeah, 6 p.m. in the evening, which is right around shift change. As Myself, my partner, and my sergeant responded to the scene. We were there for about 12 hours through the night after just coming off work that day. So it was about a 24-hour day for us. At the end of this incident, as we were finishing up, we had a second major incident that broke out on the other side of town, which required almost the same type of response. Luckily, we had a command staff that was able to take over the detective role of that incident. But we have gotten lucky with a few incidents in town as far as when it comes to staffing. For this particular incident, had this not happened at shift change, it could have had a much different outcome with officers minimum staffing, or two and a sergeant, or if we lucky had three and a sergeant, we would have not been able to handle that, both those scenes, with the staffing levels that we currently have. So with that, I just wanted to give you an example. And like the fire union, police union will also be out there on the streets knocking on doors, trying to promote this as well. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Ron?

Thank you. Three times in a day, that's a record for me. Mr. Mayor and council members, I've seen some of these presentations before, and when I look at some of the graphs today, that's important information. And the projections do not reflect sustainability. And before I go on, though, I might mention, yes, I am on the Finance and Investment Committee. I'm not here as a committee member. I think that a committee needs to operate on consensus and like. I'm here as an individual to talk about my personal opinion in that regard. But what I think when I talk about sustainability, from my own experience in the business world, I've been into two organizations, one that wasn't expected to survive. And fortunately, it did. And another one I walked into that wasn't expected to survive, and it didn't. And what it reflected is the importance for operating with a sense of urgency. And what I do see here is if the trends that we're looking at are not sustainable, I think there is an elevated sense of urgency that needs to be considered. which you have over time if we don't make early on decisions or recommendations or corrective actions. You get the compounding effect. And I think that that's some of the history that we see here in Lincoln well before. That is not a good place to be because what you end up with is an environment where the cure is more painful than the disease. Whatever decision that you make, my recommendation would be to operate with a sense of urgency and move forward accordingly if you can. Thank you. Thank you, Ron.

Was there anyone else in the audience who would like to provide public comment?

Hello, I'm Maureen Bauman. I've been in Lincoln three years. I've been in Placer County about 40. I moved to the retirement community and I just wanted to, this is my first council meeting and I'm happy to be here. I sit on the Lincoln Hills Foundation. So I have an interest in the foundation as well as the city. And I really want to support the priority of this initiative focusing on public safety. It makes a lot of sense to me. Clearly there's support and I can't imagine that this is, you know, this seems like a lot of support and I would really encourage the council to consider this. Sun City would benefit from this clearly with increased services on all fronts. But I'd also like to just mention that the whole area beyond that, the general county service, I mean the general, or for the county for a lot of years, sorry. The general city services with the parks and the recreation are very important. Lincoln Hills actually supports the library, and we're happy, happy to do that. And that is like a little gem that we have here in Lincoln. So I know that the bigger focus is public safety, but the library is mentioned, and I would just like to support that. That's a critical issue. It helps kids and families. The number of programs that go on over there are amazing. And they do things for seniors. They do things with the school. So it's really quite a gem that I think we need to keep in mind as this whole thing rolls out. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Darla?

As you all know, I'm Darla Gutierrez, but my question is more for Sean. How do we guarantee, because technically the 1% tax was for these guys, which I'm 99% until you answer my question on what happens when the seats come open and we get new council people. How do we guarantee that they're number one?

Thank you, Mayor Gutierrez. It's an inside joke.

Yeah, it is.

There's a shirt that says something there. So... You don't. And... It would be disingenuous for me to try to represent to you that five new people could be elected to this body and lay waste to this entire concept.

That conceptually could happen.

But...

um, the list that Nita put up of all of the sort of transparency and accountability components, I think create an armor around this to make that highly, highly unlikely. It's unlikely really for two reasons. The first reason is that, um, People like you and engage people in the community now and in the future will call out that immediately. If we agree that 89 to 92% of the community greatly supports the police and fire department. I think that's just sort of a no brainer. Um, Also, the gentlemen that sit behind you that have badges affixed to them will likely be very loud about some of those decisions, knowing them. And the third reason is that the simple reality of the general fund is that its primary purpose is to fund things that we can't otherwise really charge fees and services for. And 85%, somewhere between 75% and 85% of that is public safety. And so removing out the resources the community gives for that purpose would only come in the form of cuts, which would then signal to everybody else in the community, hey, they're not using the resources that we approved. And then so what's the blow off valve? Well, there's a few blow off valves. Council members get recalled for that kind of thing. More specifically, taxes get recalled. And so in the ballot language, you may have seen that there was very specific language included in there to say until ended by voters. And it's not an easy process, but it does happen. where a community becomes dissatisfied with how the resources that they've approved for the community to use are misused. And the voters overturn the tax and it goes away completely, thereby creating damage for everyone. So I won't lie to you and say that it's an absolute, that that can never happen. It could happen. Do I think it's likely given all the protections we put in? I think it's highly, highly unlikely.

the reason I ask is the chief said he needs another seven bodies I believe so that's for now okay in 10 20 years if I'm not here to speak up for them and they're going to need another five or ten more bodies and we get new people that no that's too many that's not enough whatever That was the reason I was asking this question.

I think it's a fair... I think it's a super fair critique of it. I think that's kind of the nature of all tax, though.

And...

As long as people are putting people in these seats that value that service, I think that the risk of that is – it's not 0%, but I would put it in the very low single digits, 1%, 2%, highly, highly, highly unlikely. But the other thing about the tax that's important is that dollar figure that Nita mentioned earlier of $6 million, that's the base level. That doesn't include when retail starts to move. Lincoln, new stores that come into town, all of those things add dollars because that cent gets assessed to all those taxable sales. And so in 20 years, when you and I both aren't here anymore, they will have more resources to be adding that additional five bodies or 10 bodies to meet. the need that, um, this isn't really related to your question. So I apologize, but I just feel like it's important to note. Um, we talk a lot about affordability here and there feels like, especially with new development, very few ways we can actually help with affordability. Um, and this path may give us the ability to not be assessing significant Melrose's or as significant Melrose's or CFDs on properties, because we were able to pay for it with the, the contributions that those same people are making into sales tax. So instead of paying it on your property tax bill, you're just paying as part of your normal purchases.

And then my other question was, I know you guys are already working on the new shopping center over there on Nelson in 65, but that can be what, in 20 years?

Okay, I'll tell you this. What we're told is that the store that's very interested has a target timeline of next year. And actually live next door and they're moving dirt right now.

The reason I say is because it's come up over and over again. I use my 90% of my income in Roseville and there's a lot of people like me. So that's why I'm saying that the right stores need to come in, not just A gas station in every corner. Yep. Or a Starbucks. I know you love the tax, but we don't need a gas station in every corner. Yep.

Thank you.

Was there anyone else in the audience who would like to provide public comment? Seeing none, I will move over to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to provide public comment? I have no hands raised.

Thank you very much. Okay, in that case, we'll bring it back to the council for comments and questions.

Just one final thing. I wanted to just kind of reiterate what Sean said to Darla. Darla, you didn't hear me when you came up. I said, let's go mayor. So obviously, there are people who have run for office that don't have best interests at heart. They do it for themselves. But by and large, My experience has been, at least since the last 10 years or so, that people who step up to run for Lincoln City Council, I won't talk about other places because we're talking about our home, they do it because they love this community and they do it for the right reasons. They're not doing it for self-interest or because they want to get in and take a sledgehammer to all the progress that's been made. And so I just want to reiterate what Sean said that Yes, it could happen. And we've talked about this a lot over the years of can't tie hands of future council members. However, there are very specific things that we have built a very strong culture and supporting public safety is one of them. And this has been a long time coming. And so I just can't see future council members. I mean, like Sean said, it could happen, but coming in here and going, yeah. we're done with all of you. We can do it without more. I just don't see that happening. And also, let's take the redistricting thing that we had to do right after I came on the council. We used to be elected at large. We were forced into going to electorate districts. And so now we're elected by our district. And we made the promise back then, and it's held through a few elections now, that Yes, we are elected. I'm District 1, Ben's District 2, and so on. But we're not just looking out for those districts. Yes, that's the first stop. Like, that's our area. But we are representative of the whole town. And a lot of times in communities where you have to go districts, council members and commissioners or whatever they're called, different places, it's like, oh, that's my district. That's all I care about. We haven't gone that way yet because we made the commitment. Yes, we're forced into this. yes, that's our district, we're elected there, but we are advocates for the whole city. And so that's something I'm really proud of that we have not disintegrated into just fighting for just our district, which we will fight for our district, but we don't need to do that because we all care about the whole community. And so the same thing goes for when new council members come on board, 99.9 percent of time a lot most of time 100 in lincoln people do it for the right reason they do it uh because they care about the community um and obviously everybody cares about public safety so you had a really great question darla it's it was really important question but i i think that we can say with with pretty much certainty that we put this in motion the voters vote for it and and it'll stay and it'll go where it where it should go And, you know, hopefully we're raising up the next generation of leaders that hear this and they understand the importance of it. And so when you and I are gone, Darla, there'll be people like you that will stand up and fight. So thank you.

Thanks, Holly.

Well said. Good points. I was thinking the same thing along the same lines that kind of sparked a couple of different thought trains in that I hope that there are more Darla's. I hope that we can not only be the good stewards that we are right now, but we can inspire other people through conversations and relationships out in the community and do more advocacy to get more people engaged as our city grows. And we have more people to kind of we can pass the torch and know that there's always going to be people looking out for the community. as well as in the elected seats and and uh districts um yeah i think uh that council member andrea said it well that we're all here thankfully for the right reasons and we're not competing against each other we all just want to see the city thrive and grow the right way and this feels right in line with that and we're giving the city if we vote yes this passes the opportunity and the voters to decide what kind of community they want and what they want to invest in and what that looks like and then uh did you just say when we're not here in 20 years are you gonna die when you're 60 i don't think you should have said that depends on how tonight goes okay I'm going to be here longer than 24 years. I hope you will, too. We're going to all still be here beyond 20 years, and I'm excited for the future. I think this is a really good step, along with all the ones that have already been taken that our recent council has implemented. Just keep doing the next right thing.

I'm not going to comment on the 20 years, however.

Oh, gosh. Wait a minute.

Again, I just want to reiterate my appreciation to Sean, Nita, the chiefs, and the entire staff here who've worked for years to bring this to us today, and I'm very appreciative of all that effort. As was shared, and I share some of Ben's earlier comments, I agree this will be one of the more significant decisions that we'll make. For those that are skeptical, I'm sensitive to the burden our families are already under from a tax perspective. Sales taxes typically are regressive and can negatively impact our low and fixed income families. And if we adopt a 1% increase, Lincoln would have the highest sales tax rate in Placer and Sutter County. All that being said, I have no reservations about how this money would be spent. As was shared by others, we have a phenomenal team that is super diligent about the way money is spent and allocated. It's clear to me these additional resources would be used for important and valuable services and make Lincoln the community we all want. And I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that for some, these additional resources and services could mean the difference between life and death. So at the end of weighing all of the issues, I do think we should pass a measure before the community and have them weigh in as Councilmember Eklund, Vice Mayor Eklund articulated. The only thing that I am less clear about is some of the details about whether we should have a sunset and maybe a little bit about the rate. On the sunset date, I think the accountability, I mean, the polling was helpful, but I'm not sure that it was determinative. For example, they didn't ask if they supported a sunset and ended by voters. They tested one or the other. Putting the polling aside, I actually think the accountability piece here is more important. If there is a sunset, it probably requires extra effort on behalf of us at the dais and staff to educate the community about how those monies are being spent. I honestly think the community deserves that higher level of effort and transparency, and I think we would be in a stronger position if we did that. On the rate, My concern here is about sustainability. So you can do kind of back of the math and you're like, well, we're three or four million behind here. ALS takes a million there. This thing is six. Maybe you plaster our property taxes can get two, two and a half. But it seems to me this pivots entirely around commercial absorption. um and my concern is that our commercial absorption has been de-accelerating over the last 15 years even as residential growth has increased and if that continues to lag i'm not clear on how sustainable even this is because i would the last thing i'd want to do is do all of this put in als and be back here sooner than we expect um to make sure that we can maintain that program so You know, I have done a little research on the issue, but my question for staff is not, you know, some elaborate model, but just from a back of the napkin perspective, have we looked at what level of commercial absorption we would need to maintain NLS once we implement it?

Yeah, so yes, the question is, when you use the term absorption, I'm assuming we're speaking the same language in that we're talking not only about amount of commercial retail, also time at which it's being brought online, right? So that would have been really difficult for us it is really difficult for us to model because unlike residential development, which in general, once a lot gets what we call papered, in other words, ready to build, unless there's some sort of like national change in housing issues, which doesn't seem like it's gonna happen for a long time, we know that something will likely happen within a defined period of time, call it three years, right? And if not, there's so many significant financial challenges that we couldn't have foreseen that anyway. On the commercial side, it's far more complex because commercial development by and large is a build to suit lease to retailers model. Very few corporations actually own the dirt that they're on for a variety of reasons. And so I'm going to answer your question, I promise. But But take a couple of illustrative examples. Take 12 Bridges closest to the highway. That project has had a number of entitlements over the years and has just started, and they're going to take their time to find the right tenants, and they won't move until they do. Pavilion is an even better example. They're entitled a number of times over the years, was good to go a few different times, fell apart, is now approved again, still hasn't started. the answer to your question I think is we have to, uh, delineate between infill and expansive, um, commercial. So, um, we do see in some of our, um, we did some analysis when we were trying to come up with tax sharing agreements in Sudby and village five, and we had to come up with some ideas about that's our, that is where we're pushing all of our chips into the proverbial poker game and saying, here is where our commercial is going to be and hopefully be successful. And, um, until about six months ago when we started seeing the commercial activity really start in earnest and permits approved for and design review approvals come forward for that project on the corner of nelson and 65 i couldn't have answered your question now what i i feel is that once that project happens and as i mentioned earlier we we just as of last week we had a meeting where um People that have the ability to make this happen said that they have a goal of getting into construction this year. In fact, some of it's already began. And stick buildings start going up in 2027. So if that's the case, I think that's your waterfall effect. The difference between infill retail and this project is this project corners on a state highway that gets, I don't even, I'd have to go and look at the math, but it gets at least tens of thousands, if not more than that trips per day, which draws interest in retail. And so Maybe you could talk to the Village 5 side, but on the Sud B side, which I've worked more on, I think you see that project and the subsequent one to the north complete within the next two to three years. Those retailers I can share are going to be big boxes. They're likely going to generate more than our largest tax producers in Lincoln, which would be, I don't think I'm breaking any rules right now by saying that it's certain large box retailers that are over by Lincoln Crossings. Just guess. They are going to dwarf those sales, some of those retailers. And so that's an immediate shot in the arm. Do you want to speak to kind of where you think Village 5 rolls in here?

So village five slash seven area. That's a longer horizon. You know, they have a huge lift in the infrastructure that needs to be required. We're talking over 5,000 residential rooftops and 3 million square feet in the village five area. And when we add in village seven, it's, I want to say like 5 million square feet of non-residential commercial. And so longer horizon that's probably, but they're eager. They're after us all the time to move quicker. I would say the commercial is probably within the next five to seven years on the outside, like the outside. We don't know what that's going to look like yet because it's too conceptual at this point. But at some point, they're going to want that commercial to support the homes because it's easier to sell houses when you have a park. It's easier to sell houses when you have a school. It's easier to sell houses when you have the thing nearby that sells the stuff that you want, you know, like toilet paper that Sean needs. So sorry, boss. So, you know, I see, I don't see that, that retail stalling because they are so eager to get moving on the entire project.

And just to add to that, let's just talk about dollars for a second. So a really large box retailer, um, one that is a warehouse type model. Depending on the brand, they start around $70 to $80 million in sales per year in a community of this size and ramp up to $150. So at a base model, what we would receive on our normal sales tax with no additional increase is call that $800,000 a year in taxable receipts to the city up to $1.6 million. Now, when you add a cent onto that, this is crude math, I'm not exactly right, but essentially double that figure. So $1.6 million up to $3.2 million. So I don't worry so much about us keeping pace unless the bottom falls out from under the economy, which is always a possibility, in which case, you know, you'll have a tool that you can work with, but you'll have to be, you know, the council's going to have to be really careful about how they allocate these dollars and don't be, we can't be, it's why we haven't brought you forward a full, here is exactly how many positions we intend to hire today. because we want to be able to make those decisions with you in the budget process where you can feel super comfortable that, you know, we're not stretching ourselves too thin here because what if project A, B, or C doesn't actually come online and we don't realize it. On the other hand, what I've really enjoyed about working for this council and previous ones is there's a risk tolerance here that I'm not used to in other places where we've bet on ourselves a number of times over the years. When we, oh, and Evan mentioned that, you know, we worked together to come up with this idea to use one-time money to hire a bunch of firefighters and get to 30 staffing. That was lunacy in a sense, because I remember I stood right there and somebody asked, are you sure that we're going to be able to afford these people in four years when the funding dries up? And I said, I don't know, but I hope so. And I think we can make it work. And in this sense, I think that this gives us a tool if we're really careful with it and future councils are really careful with it, not to stretch it so far that you're in a position where, you know what, you've gotten this tremendous gift from the community to provide these services. And now you've overextended yourself and you can't make good on your promises. So there will be some temperance we're going to need to have internally to not feel like we want to go and bite the largest bite of the apple, so to speak. And I don't know if that's a really good answer to your question, John, but it's a really hard question. Yeah.

Yeah, I only ask the hard ones. No, I appreciate that. I don't think there's a perfect answer, and I don't think, you know, none of us can predict the future with any accuracy. But I think it's probably worth, you know, putting a pin in and remembering to have that same mentality. I think you said it quite well. The community, you know, agrees with us and provides us these additional resources that we need. you know, do that super responsibly because commercial is so fickle and we've had a kind of a checkered past with fits and starts on that and so much of this is entirely resting on that and just want to, you know, protect it and invest in it and make sure we're paying attention to it. So thank you, I appreciate it.

Ben? Okay.

All right, good. Any other final comments?

All right, in that case, we'll bring it back for a, we have two resolutions over here. We'll do a roll call vote. The first one is adopt a resolution declaring an election to be held November 3rd, 2026, requesting the Placer County Board of Supervisors to consolidate the election with any other elections conducted on said date and requesting election services by the Placer County Clerk.

and mr mayor i would just like to remind the council that there was there were some edits to the exhibit this resolution which i would request to read into the record now and have that be included in the motion should someone want to make a motion on this resolution for the second one yeah it's actually for the first resolution and it's in both

OK.

So the exhibit to this resolution that you just mentioned, declaring an election, shall read exhibit A, Lincoln Public Safety Taxpayer Protection Measure. Shall the measure to prevent cuts to Public Safety Services 911 emergency medical response, police fire protection, qualified police firefighters, add life-saving equipment for medical emergencies, keep public areas, streets, parks safe and clean and other general governmental uses be established by a one cent sales tax providing six million dollars annually with all funds spent locally until ended by voters with the Citizen Oversight Committee and annual audits, public spending disclosure be adopted.

Okay. I move approval. Second. Second. Roll call, please.

Council member, Council member Andriotta.

Yes.

Council member Reedy.

Yes.

Council member Brown.

Yes.

Mayor Potemaklin.

Yes.

Mayor Perl.

Yes. Okay. Number two, adopt a resolution authorizing the submission of the ballot measure to the city of Lincoln qualified voters to approve a local one cent sales tax for general city revenue purposes.

I move approval.

Second. Roll call, please.

Council Member Andriotta? Yes. Council Member Reedy?

Yes.

Council Member Brown?

Yep.

Mayor Pro Tim Eklund?

Yes.

Mayor Pearl?

Yes. All right. Very good.

Now you guys go make it happen.

Excellent. All right. Woo! Okay. City Manager reports.

Great fire guidance.

You are not dismissed.

I don't get this opportunity very often. So I would just like to, uh, because, uh, So for the community that doesn't know, when we do promotions and new hires, we do badge pairing ceremonies, and we usually do those at the firehouse. But just because two of them are here tonight, we haven't had a chance in person to recognize their promotions. Evan Faddis and TJ, both who spoke this evening. Evan was a little while ago, actually, but TJ very recently. Both have been promoted to battalion chief, and that is a very prestigious honor, and it's a lifetime of fire service to get there so i just wanted to say congratulations to you both because it's a big deal congratulations um okay uh i oh now you can go oh yeah um I only have one update that I'd like to give tonight. Actually, one and a half. We have strategic planning tomorrow. It will be at the Willow Room at the 12 Bridges Library. It starts at 9 o'clock. It'll probably go, depending on how much discussion there is, till noon, 1 or 2. um community is certainly invited we've pushed out information about this we don't usually get a ton of interest in this meeting which is too bad because it's a pretty important one this one is going to be more of a touch up to some of the plan that we've done and sort of a restructuring of it a little bit but it basically informs a lot of our work product for the next year And so if you can't make it, no big deal. We bring the plan back to council to have them adopted at a future meeting. And if in the meantime you have ideas about something you'd like to see us focus on more or a project you think is super important, you can email me or any of the staff here and we'll make sure that gets represented and talked about.

It will be recorded because it's a public meeting.

Yeah, it'll be recorded.

Are we doing Zoom? I think we are doing Zoom. We'll have a Zoom option.

If you can't make it in person. And then the other thing I just wanted to put out there for council to think about at some point is... Usually we should be doing this at the beginning of the year, but in one of the future meetings, I think I'm going to bring a meeting calendar back to city council so that we can just iron out the remaining meeting dates of the year and also give council the ability, which you haven't had since I've been here, make decisions about whether you'd like to cancel a meeting or two during the calendar year to facilitate you know people like to go on vacations and people like to sometimes we've had council members that need to get medical procedures done and they try to do them around city council meetings and many other cities sort of have a look at that every year and if council's interested we were going to try to put that on so you could manage your schedules amongst the 50,000 other public meetings you're required to attend. So, and that's all I have tonight. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Council initiated business. And then for anyone over here, committee reports.

Did you give us a formal update on the tax sharing renegotiation with the County? And I mean, we've touched on it throughout the presentation and in our discussion, but Yeah, because I was thinking back, and I could swear that they thought, again, it was just casual meetings and conversations early on, preliminary discussions, that this was going to be something that they were going to be able to address and get on their agenda by May, and now we're getting close to July, and it just seems like, yeah, I'm just not quite sure where we're at.

yeah um i was just trying to pull up the latest correspondence um we had received a response but we've met a number of times on this county's request additional information we received a response to that information on may 24th april 24th rather we turned that around within i think a little under two weeks we wanted to make sure it was a clear and complete response, which I think we succeeded in. I did ping the county just the other day to kind of see if I could get an update because I assume it's going to be a topic of discussion tomorrow. And I have not heard anything back. So we have submitted a proposal for consideration. It's no longer just sort of conceptual talks. We have submitted an actual proposal that we've requested a yes, no, maybe, or counter proposal. As soon as I get something, I will make sure I pass it along.

Thank you. We'll definitely talk about this tomorrow.

Good. Another committee report. Just a note for the community that last Saturday, Rods and Relics had their not downtown car show, but McBean car show. It was a fabulous success. Weather was great. They probably had 8,000 to 10,000 people there, close to 450 cars. Great time was had by everyone. John?

Yeah, so since the last meeting, Watma, the landfill had a meeting. We did two pretty big agreements. One was use of land gas, which I think will triple or quadruple the amount of money the authority makes from its land gas production, which is helps with repairs. Also, we did a restatement of our main operator agreement, which provides some additional protections to all of us who are participating in that JPA. Had less while, not a whole lot going on there, although we're in the midst of hiring a new GM and looks promising. Ben?

I have PCTPA tomorrow, so I will be late to our strategic. I would miss it so that I could be there, but if I don't go, they won't have a call. Got it. Perfect.

Okay. We'll see you when they get there. All right. We all good? Nope.

Yes, Lasco. We have some big news. We hired a new executive officer and our city manager, Sean Scully, was a part of the interviewing process in the final rounds. We had three really good candidates and they all would have been great. We ended up going with the one with the most experience in LAFCO. He has over 20 years in LAFCO experience, was until now the existing executive officer in Marin LAFCO. And he's going to be moving here. And I think he's going to do a really great job, especially with the projects and the complex projects that we have coming in, not just in our city with potential annexations, but with potentially the tahoe incorporation project and all the comings and goings of the complex patchwork that is placer county and i think he is going to be looking to live maybe in the auburn area try to get him to move and look into lincoln but he wants to be able to maybe walk to work and um i don't blame him for not wanting to drive as much anymore after leaving the bay area that was leaving the bay area coming here you're not going to be driving probably anything you're right nothing compares to the bay area traffic i remember yeah that's it good we all good good evening guys