City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening, everyone. Hope if you would start the meeting, your segment of it.

Okay, thank you. 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 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 nine if you are calling in. This evening's invocation will be given by Pastor Fred Benzel of Grace Life Church. Once the invocation has concluded, Mayor Pearl will call the meeting to order.

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for your love, your grace through Jesus. And Lord, I thank you for our council members, not just our council, but our entire city staff. We just pray your hand of wisdom and strength would be upon them, Lord, as they navigate all the things concerning our city and for the well-being of our community. We thank you for that. We pray, Lord, your hand also upon our schools as we begin the school year. May your hand of protection and safety be upon our students, our staff, also our first responders. We thank you for them, Father. May your grace and protection be upon them as they serve our community as well. We thank you for these things and we give you praise for them in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you, Pastor. Thank you very much. All right. Call the meeting to order. August 25th, 2026, City Council meeting. All right. Hope, call the roll, please.

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

Here. Thank you very much. Okay, Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Foote, would you lead us in the pledge, please? Mr. Attorney, do we have any report from a closed session?

Mayor, direction was given to staff, but there was no reportable action taken.

Agenda modifications. We're going to move on the printed agenda number 13 to just after number 9. Up. Items and disclosures. 9A. Anyone else have anything that they want to change? Okay. Staff, anyone changing? Okay. Very good. Presentations. All right. Recognition of Lincoln Youth Global Disc Golf Champions. We're going to be presenting this, but is anyone going to be giving a talk on it?

Go ahead. Thanks. So I saw these boys be recognized at church a few weeks ago. And I thought what an amazing opportunity for the council to recognize them. We always like to highlight students and residents who go out and do great things and represent Lincoln well. And all three of these boys who are brothers, participated recently in the global disc golf championships, not just national, but worldwide. And I'm going to let you read their awards. But I thought, and I appreciate the mayor and council allowing us to do this, that it would be really great to bring them here to recognize them for all their hard work and for representing Lincoln very, very well. We're very proud of you. So the mayor is going to read your certificate. And then if you guys want to come up and say something, you can, and then we'll take a picture with you if that's okay. Okay, great.

Thank you much, Holly, and thank you for that introduction. Okay, let me move this. All right. There we go. Okay. Okay, so Certificate of Recognition presented by the City of Lincoln to Jack Bucher, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Bucher, thank you. Thank you. William Bucher. And since the brothers Cody, okay.

And Mayor, would you please say what place that each one of them got on their certificates? It should tell you there.

Cody, first place. Yeah. Jack, second place. And William, second place also.

William, second place. And so I just want to reiterate that this is global. This is worldwide. What amazing achievement. Congratulations, boys. Would you like to say something? You don't have to if you don't want to, but you can if you want to. Great. Thank you.

Okay. I want to thank my sponsor, Innova, for getting me to second place. He's sponsored, and he's sponsored, and they've helped us, and we get 50 discs a year just to help us. And I would hope that we can get a disc golf course in Lincoln.

All right. All right.

Excellent. And young men, if you would like to come up over here so we can all grab a picture with you.

Congratulations.

Nice yeah, we got it, yeah.

We often have to deal with a lot of hard things. And when we have the opportunity to do something fun and to recognize wonderful young men and women in our community, it's a great thing to do. So thanks for allowing us to do that. That's awesome. That's so great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Holly. Okay. So we're going to be moving up on number 13, which is information items and disclosures. Does anyone, any of my colleagues have anything to add or to disclose at this point?

Well, not disclosure, but the information items. Okay. I just wanted to add in that if you hadn't had time to go down and check out our, um, Thursday night, um, Farmers market, please, please do is like from four to like eight or eight 30, something like that. It's, it's pretty amazing. It's been, it hasn't been going for a long time. It was just reinstituted recently. I've been a couple of times and I think it's a real big community booster. So.

I go along with that, Ben. I think it was like 10 years that we didn't have one. And this is the third time and they've been very, very successful. More so, I think, as much fun as the people have in being able to shop at night. They were also able to go out to the stores and all our stores are getting an uptick in sales, which is really good. And also the plaza, what they told us they would start filling in on the plaza with with the information things for our community, and that's being done. So it's cooking along very well. And they'll probably go till about mid-November, and then they'll hold it until the spring.

The other information, I'll let you take over and do the plug, but the wings and wheels.

Since I have to talk about wings and wheels, okay, I'll do that. Okay, so this Friday night and Saturday, wings and wheels, Lincoln's, I think this is about our 15th time we're doing this out at Lincoln Airport. Friday night, we'll have a moonglow out there with hot air balloons. It's open to the public, $5 admission charge. There'll be food trucks out there and a band and just a lot of fun. But the Moonglow at dusk is really fabulous just to watch these five hot air balloons. They elevate and you can just see the lights shining through. It's fabulous. And Saturday, we just have a lot of aircraft and cars coming in, about 75 aircraft, about 250 cars, five hot air balloons, two tethered balloons for everyone to go riding. especially for the young people. We've got a lot of youth aviation activities in our youth expo from the Aerospace Museum. We have just some flight organizations out there. So lots of things going on, lots of people, lots of vendors, lots of food trucks. And the weather is going to be absolutely fabulous this year. We had rain when we had super high heat and this time it's going to be low 90s which is just going to be fabulous so we're expecting about 10,000 people between Friday and Saturday. Saturday is the Entrance fee is $10 for adults. Under 18 is free. Best $10 you can spend. No fee for parking. Family-oriented, so we're going to have a lot of fun. Thank you for that segue, Ben.

I appreciate it. Bring your fast cars and wear your best swag.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Anyone else for information items? Okay, very good. Okay. Okay. Public comments on non-agenda items within the subject matter of the jurisdiction of the council. All speakers' time will be limited to three minutes unless extended by the mayor. All comments or questions should be addressed to the mayor. And in most cases, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any items not appearing on the posted agenda, but may engage in brief discussion, provide direction to city staff, or schedule items for future meetings. So, Madam Clerk, what do we have?

We have two speaker cards. I'd like to call up Stan Nader followed by Purple Paws for Peace.

Mayor and Council, my name is Stan Nader and I live in the 12 Bridges area. At your last city council meeting, you approved a contract for a management company to relieve city staff of the majority of the daily operational responsibilities at the airport. This is something that has been long sought after since the city lost their onsite airport manager many years ago. So if the contract proves successful, it will be a great step forward for the airport and the city. As city staff was responding to council member Reedy's question about the cost benefits of the contract, the assistant city manager gave a very detailed response to his question and did explain some of the potential future revenues that would help fund the contract. At the very end of her list, she mentioned an alternative contract. I will assume it was referring to section six of attachment A and item nine in attachment B, which both describe a separate master development agreement. In item nine, it states that if the city and the contractor do not come to agreement on a master development agreement, the contractor may terminate the contract within a 60-day notice. In my mind, this is a pretty big deal. And it would have been good to have it mentioned in the presentation of the contract. contract in more detail than referring to it as an alternative deal. On two occasions, I have shared with the city manager a retail opportunities brochure this that Sean Tillman the economic development director at the time prepared in 2015 which shows a map of the market area of the city which is much broader than the city limits of the city it lists demographics of the market area inside the brochure it has a detailed map of where residential units are under construction, those entitled but not yet built, and those proposed. It identifies residential development sizes, commercial types. On the back of the brochure, it has a chart, charts and graphs showing five top market segments by different graphic type, population, Household age distribution household income market area potential and retail demand. These are all information that potential businesses and developers would like to know, and I have a copy to give to the city clerk that she can make copies and provide for your review, thank you, Stan.

Good evening, Mayor. My name is Justin Terwilliger, and I am the Chief Operations Officer of Purple Paws for Peace. We're a domestic violence crisis response nonprofit here in Lincoln. We provide emergency sheltering and crisis response care for the pets of domestic violence survivors. These animals belong to families that are escaping abuse, and for many survivors, the inability to safely shelter their pets is one of the biggest barriers preventing them from leaving a dangerous situation. There are important statistics that illustrate this. Red Rover reports that 48% of survivors delay leaving an abusive situation if they cannot bring their animals with them. And the SPCA reports that up to 89% of pet-owning women entering domestic violence shelters reported that their abuser had either injured, killed, or threatened their pets. Only about 17% of US domestic violence shelters accept pets. These numbers come from a review of 12 studies and reflect the deep emotional and practical bond many survivors share with their animals. This safety barrier is very significant, even in our community. Our mission is to remove that barrier so that families can flee violence sooner, safer, and with better outcomes. We've been told directly that because of our services, survivors don't have to return to these dangerous and abusive situations. They can focus on themselves, give their children a better future, and begin rebuilding their lives. Survivors have even called our executive director, Mildred, an angel on earth who gives hope and empowerment to women and gives them the ability to take their lives back. We're already serving Lincoln families and boarding and veterinary dollars stay right here in Placer County. To attain our goals of responding to cases involving Lincoln residents, we work closely with local and regional partners, including domestic violence shelters, to ensure that no survivor is ever forced to choose between their own safety and the safety of their children or the safety of their animals. In addition to our crisis response work, we're developing a regional initiative called Bridge, which is still in development, but I can share that bridge will allow Lincoln to participate in national research on early intervention strategies, violence linked data and community safety outcomes. It's an important opportunity for our city to be part of a forward thinking evidence driven approach to public safety. As we continue expanding our crisis response work, we look forward to ongoing conversations with city leadership, including the city manager's office to ensure that our services remain aligned with Lincoln's public safety priorities. Purple Paws for Peace is growing very quickly. We're receiving support from local funders, community partners, and corporate giving programs. As demand increases, we want to ensure that Lincoln families have consistent access to our services and that our crisis response work remains aligned with the city's public safety goals. We wanted to be here tonight to formally introduce ourselves to you all and to share our services with the community and express how much we care about Lincoln and the people who live in our community. we would welcome a conversation with staff about how we can best support Lincoln's public safety and animal safety related goals. Thank you so much for your time and for your commitment to the safety and the wellbeing of our residents here. And I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for bringing that information to us.

I have no additional speaker cards. We'll go ahead and open it up to the audience. If there's anyone that would like to provide public comment, please come to the podium.

Good evening, everyone. Byron Chapman, 12 Bridges area. Mayor, council members, city staff. Sometimes these sort of things happen and they go around us and we get used to it and we kind of forget what the benefits are and how it works. This summer, like many in the past, has been really, really hot and we got a good rain last year. I just want to thank the city for looking at how we bring down that low-hanging fuel of fire, being scrub brush and that sort of thing when they're up on the bankments and so forth. So if people drive around and see all the open space areas around Lincoln, you don't see somebody out there with a weed whacker kind of taking their time and getting there one. It would never happen and nothing would be done. But the animals that go out there, they do their job. I would really, really hate it if they got out to a golf course or somewhere because they really know how to eat that stuff down. So for what it's worth, it's one of those things that oftentimes we don't think about. We don't want to have it happen in the way of a fire. But that low-hanging stuff really becomes an issue, and it's a great way for that to take place. And I see it happening everywhere. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Byron. It's nice to see you again.

Mayor, council members, thank you for honoring my boys and the family here. I grew up in Rockland, was born and raised, couldn't afford it when I came back from college. So I am here in Lincoln and I'm raising a family and I couldn't be more proud. Watching the city grow since 83 and what it's become today is something special. I think there's a big miss in our community with respect to outdoor activity. I know there's a big amount of money going to removing the skate park, putting in pickleball. But the fact that Auburn, Roseville, Rockland, two courses in Grass Valley, we have to travel. And this is a, you know, I go to Carlin Seat Coppin and pick three of my four up every day, and there's at least a dozen kids walking out with Frisbees. I implore you to really encourage any of the, you know, impending proposals that will be coming to you from Economic study reports environmental impact reports that you guys will be reviewing in the next coming months, because I think there's a plenty of land there's plenty of partnerships with other. Private agencies, but we've been resulted to going to private courses and just building our own on some of the courses and properties out by the lake and out by gladi McBean. And I think that this would be a huge impact to the community if we could offer something that's kind of a set it and forget it. Really, the clubs take care of the course management. And they would be willing to invest and fundraise to get the tee pads and baskets. And once it's out there, it's there forever. And it's a great addition. Rockland has had a course for 41 years. And it's a staple in their community. So thank you for today. Thank you for your time. Appreciate that. Thank you very much.

I have a quick question really quick. I know we've already talked about this before, but I don't remember, and I wasn't looking it up recently, but since we're on the topic, what is the average acreage that's required or minimum for disc golf course?

You know, usually they're in regional parks. You have Auburn Regional Park. They use a portion of that park. Johnson Springview Park has renovated their soccer field area with a gazebo and a lot of places to rent. Very much like McBean. If you put something behind down by the creek line, that's what you see often in Orangevale. You see it in Auburn. You see it where they can't really use. It's near walking trails, but it's kind of the outskirts. I would estimate... between 20 and 40 acres is about, you know, the size that you would need to adequately at least put in a small to medium-sized course. But these have real impacts. I mean, yes, this last weekend they had 165 players show up, some coming from more than an hour or two away, Redding and various areas in Stockton, staying the night, eating in our restaurants and living in Rockland. Or we hosted a few families here in Lincoln and drove Sierra College to go play. But I would say probably 20 to 40 would be the minimum. But there's plenty of areas, I think, within the community that we could leverage today.

Well, we had a proposal a few years back that became very contentious, and we moved forward with that. But I was going to ask Shawn, I'm trying to picture the ground. Is there enough room left at Bosket Park, or is there another location that would be feasible? Because we've talked about this a lot.

Yeah, I really appreciate your comments. It's nice to hear that. I'm going to tell you that I have a little bit of PTSD from the last experience. But, you know, in fairness to them, it maybe wasn't. It's a very linear location, and so it might not have been the best spot. But one cool thing, I don't know if it's you, but one of our staff has been working with a person in the disc golf community about a similar concept kind of behind Coyote Pond, where it's a really big open space area. And it has rolling hills. And I don't know about the topography of disc golf, but I can assume that it's like golf. You probably want a lot of... movement. And so we actually have sort of a little generalized layout and we were trying to learn the lessons that we didn't get right the first time. And have some conversations with the community that lives in that area of 12 bridges to see how we could set it up because that open space section with trail. in my opinion, is actually a little underutilized for how beautiful it is and big it is. And so this would be a nice way to do that. So perhaps we can connect and see if that's something.

We have the backing of the most powerful manufacturer in the sport and world champions here.

If they want to sponsor our course, that would be great.

We have their conditional verbal approval. I'll wear their shirt.

Yeah, no, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Awesome.

Anyone else in the audience like to make a comment? Yes, sir.

My name is Todd Benzel. I'm Pastor Fred's son. Obviously, growing up here in Lincoln my whole life. And I have a local business, Squeegee Guys, window cleaning and all that. So I have kids and a family raising them here in the community. I just want to add to the disc golf. Me and my son play. And my son's not a world champ, but he won a tournament last month up north of Grass Valley. And so he plays a lot. And I have twin girls that are six and they like to play. And so just to add on to what Ben was saying, you know, a lot of kids in the community, my family, we're all invested in disc golf. And I just think it'd be a great, great thing for our community, you know, born and raised here. And, uh, I love a disc golf park here, so we won't have to travel. So I would just, uh, you know, add to the Buker legend. Maybe my son can win, but, and represent Lincoln the same way. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I support the disc golf here in Lincoln. So yes. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Anyone else like to make a public comment at this point before we go out to zoom? Okay.

See no hands raised.

Okay. In that case, we will go through, finish off on public comment over here, a consent calendar. Does any of my colleagues want to pull an item off the consent calendar today? Okay. Nope. Okay. Staff, anything that we're good? Okay. In that case, we'll take one motion for all the items. Do I hear a motion?

I move approval of the consent calendar.

Do we? Second. Second over here. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no. 5-0. Thank you very much. Okay. We have no public hearings tonight. General Business 15A, authorizing the issuance of a response to the Placer County Grand Jury 2526 report titled Public Communication by Placer County Cities, Correctionable Deficiencies, presented by City Manager Sean.

Thank you very much. Good evening, Council. So we received, as we have more years than we haven't, notice from the Grand Jury that they have a report that is related to Lincoln and has findings and recommendations related to their investigation. I'm going to step through. I'll try not to take too long, but I think the context matters here. so um broad strokes uh the placer grand jury uh is um made up of community um appointed community volunteers and their job is to sort of be a watchdog for local government and associated services in placer county and they study all kinds of things every year they've had reports on um human trafficking, they've had reports on utility rates, they've had reports on finances, etc. And their most recent report was related to responsiveness in incorporated jurisdictions in Placer County and I apologize I have my Wi-Fi is not working correctly so I'm pulling up my response here but essentially they received some complaints about cities in Placer County, all cities in Placer County and They decided to do an investigation to get to kind of the bottom of what responsiveness looks like as it relates to cities communicating with their constituents and citizens and residents and any gaps that might exist and how those can be improved. And so they do that through their own research as well as interviews, in some cases with senior staff at all jurisdictions. And so their report, which is attached to your agenda and is located on the grand jury's website if anybody would like to read it. has a series of critiques of every jurisdiction, city jurisdiction in Placer County, along with some affirmative findings and some recommendations. And while they deviate a little bit from city to city, you see kind of commonalities across. And as I go through this, you can assume that many of these kinds of comments are reflected across the board. some more than others and some more specific than others. I think it'd be easiest for me to just go through the sections that are relevant to Lincoln and what my proposed response is based on reviewing the report and doing our own kind of research into the matter. And before I start reading these, also understand that I think I maybe had started work with the city of Lincoln for a couple of weeks, five years ago when I had my first request to go up and visit the grand jury. And I don't know how many times I've been up since, but many, many times over the years. And I'd want to just say to the extent that anyone's listening out there that in general, I've appreciated working with them. on their various reviews. And some of the reports have been a little more critical of Lincoln and others have been very, very positive of us. So we sort of go with what they have and respond accordingly. They identified four findings and I'm going to read them verbatim and then I'm going to read generalities of what the proposed response is. The city of Lincoln is either non-responsive or slow to respond to citizen phone calls and emails, resulting in potential citizen frustration and lack of confidence that their city government is receptive or will resolve certain citizen issues. The response that is proposed is the city of Lincoln disagrees with this finding. Fun fact, we receive around 11,000 incoming calls per month. on all manner of municipal business, day in, day out. And that, by the way, does not include calls to dispatch. That's just business phone calls that come in to us. We track complaints pretty closely here, and management has not received any consistent complaints regarding responsiveness beyond, you know, we have email correspondence with many members of the community, and depending on the nature of that correspondence, sometimes they require lengthier timeframes to get back to folks because they require some research and work. versus routine, simple questions. In the rare instances where we do have responsiveness issues, we work really hard to address those immediately and reinforce to our staff that customer service is a core principle of our organizational culture. The second finding is that the Placer Grand Jury was unsuccessful in getting a response from City of Lincoln officials via email and phone calls requiring an onsite visit to get a response. We partially disagree with this finding. When we received the report, we researched internal records of attempted contact by the Placer County grand jury. We're able to verify the grand jury did attempt to contact us approximately four times during November of 25. Based on our call log system, it appears that three of the four calls were actually made to the Lincoln Police Department, not the city of Lincoln main line, which would have been the appropriate location to reach city hall officials. For the one call that did make it to our main line, it appears that the caller was not routed to another number, which logically indicates the caller hung up before reaching a live person or mailbox. And we know this because our phone system logs every phone call that comes in and we're kind of able to tell where it ends up in our phone tree. Additionally, city staff search email inboxes for any email correspondence to the city of Lincoln. We're unable to identify any emails from the Placer Grand Jury. until City of Lincoln staff contacted them via email after a hand-delivered note was given. So while we agree that it's true the contact wasn't made, it does appear that whoever was reaching out to us may have simply just dialed the incorrect phone number. You know, if you need to reach city administration, you typically call City Hall. our police department doesn't have a phone system that routes you to other geographic locations here. So with that said, responsiveness is really important to us and we agree for a variety of reasons that the contact was not made in that limited instance. City of Lincoln lacks timeliness, excuse me, third finding. City of Lincoln lacks timeliness and consistency in their policies for communicating with the public. We disagree with this, partially. The city, as a city that provides a full suite of municipal services, was as distinct and different from a number of other communities in Placer County that are not full service cities, meaning they don't provide all of the, or most of the normal municipal services. Timely across, we consistently provide timely response across the spectrum of our various individual departments. There are exceptions to that responsiveness, but those are the exception, not the norm. When we do find those exceptions, management works to address those as quick as we can so we can continue with our core value of customer service. We do partially agree that there is no consistent response standard that applies across all city departments. Some departments, for example, human resources, has a 24-hour response standard or sooner. Other departments may have slightly longer response timelines, and those are usually associated with departments that have much larger email or phone traffic and also have limited staff to manage incoming calls and emails. There's also time of month constraints depending on what may be happening. For example, there are portions of the month in utility billing where we have hundreds of people a day coming in to pay bills and ask questions and call us on the phone when bills are due, and then we may have lulls for a week or two thereafter when bills are not due. But with that said, prompt response is an expectation that is balanced alongside providing robust customer service versus less than helpful rapid response not paired with quality assistance for our constituents. Finally, finding 17, the phones at City of Lincoln are frequently not answered by a live person and are forwarded to utility building department's voicemail. This situation wastes time and leads to possible citizen frustration. We disagree with this finding. Upon receiving the report, staff tested numerous city phone systems in various departments that had no issue reaching a live person. We do recognize that depending on call volumes being received at any given time, it is possible that calls will roll over to voicemails, but those voicemails are expected to be returned on a timely basis. Again, non-prompt response would be the exception, not the norm. Now to the three recommendations, recommendation 10 or one in our case is that the city of Lincoln should review its formal response protocol for citizen concerns or complaints by including a requirement for an email or phone call response within 24 hours by October 1st of this year. Our proposal is that the recommendation be partially implemented with the remainder to not be implemented as not warranted or reasonable. City of Lincoln agrees to review its standard response protocol by department to evaluate current standards for responsiveness to phone calls and emails. The city will not include a requirement for email and phone call response within 24 hours. It is not warranted. To require this standard broadly across all departments is not feasible, depending on the volume of calls and emails, which vary significantly depending on many different factors, depending on the service being provided. It's worth noting that Lincoln has the lowest per capita staffing ratio within the greater Sacramento region, which can create some delays in immediate response on a rare periodic basis. With that said, reasonable, efficient response within 24 to 40 hours will be the general goal for each department. The second recommendation is the City of Lincoln should update its city's communication policy and provides training to management staff and city officials on communicating with the public by August 1st of 2026. This recommendation is proposed to not be implemented as it is not warranted. We consistently review our internal response policies to adjust for varying workload and customer service demand, and we will continue to process and ensure responsiveness is swift and robust. With regard to training, we already provide all types of training for staff, including communication, customer service, etc. The City of Lincoln will continue to evaluate responsive needs of the community and apply additional training as necessary. Finally, this one's a little longer and I'll wrap up. The city of Lincoln should update its phone system, allowing the option of a live person to be contacted for all phone calls placed on October 1st by October 1st, 2026. For calls answered by the auto attendant, the city of Lincoln should change the transfer feature from the utility billing department to a general mailbox by October 1st. The proposal is that the recommendation will not be implemented because it's not warranted. The main line already has an option by pressing zero on the auto tenant to reach a live person immediately. The transfer feature to the utility billing department for general inquiries will not be changed at this time. Utility billing is a core customer service arm of the city of Lincoln and has the greatest number of dedicated customer service staff to handle our call volumes. Redirecting these calls to a general mailbox would be antithetical to the actual live personal responsiveness, thereby pushing callers into being forced to leave a voicemail, thus lengthening response times unnecessarily. I wrapped up the response by just stating that we do take responsiveness and customer service very seriously, and we're not perfect. We do what we can to be as responsive as we can while at the same time providing each resident as much as we can of our time, expertise, and and assistance. While we may not agree with the totality of the findings, we do appreciate it being pointed that responsiveness is a core function of our service to our community, and it's a constant effort of improvement. We do have some new things that we've rolled out. We have our new chatbot feature on our website, which will help people receive response in a different manner, and we've been working on different ways for the community to contact us and receive immediate response from minor inquiries, thereby kind of lowering call volumes that, you know, otherwise could be handled more efficiently in other ways. And that kind of wraps up the response. And so there are a couple things that we have partial agreement with and a little bit of follow-up to do on our end. But in general, we're going to just circle back around with our teams and make sure that we're reminding constantly that we need to make sure we're being responsive to the community, even when workloads are quite heavy and we're otherwise engaged. Happy to answer questions.

Thank you, John. You and I have seen a lot of grand jury reports in our careers. And this city has received some that are very critical. We've cured all of them. We've received some that are pretty benign. And I think that certainly goes into the benign category. I thought your responses were very charitable, frankly, because we really do go to great extents to try and make sure that we communicate with our, with our citizens or anyone else that calls in. So yes, thank you for that. And I think we'll make the corrections that have to be done and move forward. But I think it's, I look at it as a win. That's what they came up with after years worth of studying Lincoln at this point.

Well, and look, I would encourage people to go read the response to all of the other communities in Placer County that, This is, you know, look, we're a service-based business. Everything we do is to serve segments and members of our community. And so the customer service and responsiveness aspect, everybody that works here, that's literally their job. We wouldn't have much to do if no one was calling. So when you get a couple hundred phone calls a day, you can imagine that we're pretty good at that at this point in terms of... be on board. But we certainly appreciate and want that. I take no offense by it. I like the criticism and I like the critique because it makes us better.

Comments? So, John, it's a requirement to send the response from the city. Do we ever get any comments or feedbacks from our response? We don't generally, do we?

I don't believe, I probably responded to six or seven reports over the years. I don't recall receiving any response afterwards.

Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Very good. Let me see. Do we have any speaker cards on this?

Mr. Mayor, we do. I've received one speaker card, Stan Nader.

Mr. Mayor and Council, in any business or organization, being responsive to their clients and customers is very important. especially in a city where the residents are truly the owners of that entity because of the taxes they pay to that city. In the city's response to the grand jury, it states that the city has received very few complaints regarding phone calls and emails not being answered. If you are a current observer of Facebook, you would know that there are routinely complaints from Lincoln residents that they cannot get anyone at City Hall to answer their phones or emails. It is disappointing that the city's prepared response to the grand jury, except for one response, dismisses the grand jury's request to do corrective measures. I would hope that you will encourage the city staff to make answering phone calls and emails a number one priority, regardless of what important project they may be working on, because causing the citizens of Lincoln to be frustrated will not make them being willing to support any revenue measure. I have had my own personal experience with this matter. After one council meeting, I emailed city staff a question and waited for two weeks for a response. I finally received a response an hour before the next council meeting, and I had already prepared my comments related to that question. timeliness and respect matter and i'm hoping city staff will take this issue of being responsive serious thank you thanks dan anyone else in the audience okay zoom mr mayor i do not see any hands raised on zoom okay very good bring it back to my colleagues any comments

All right, very good. So we're just, we'll consider approving the draft response to the Placer County grand jury reports entitled public communication by Placer County cities, correctable decision deficiencies. And I'll take a motion.

I move to authorize the issuance.

Thank you, Ben. Second. Thank you, John. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Five, zero. Thank you very much. 15B, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager or designee to enter into a pledge agreement and amendment to the school facilities agreement between the city of Lincoln, Lincoln Landholding, Western Placer Unified School District and the South Placer Regional Transportation Authority for the deferral of up to 50% of the tier two spotted development fees. That'll be presented by assistant city manager, Nita Racker.

Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for that. So the item you have before you is consideration of the pledge agreement for the deferral of the SPARTA Tier 2 50% fees for the Village 7 Phase 1. So this is a request that we submitted to SPARTA back in September of 2025, the City of Lincoln's first deferral of fee request. There are many agencies within this county that have requested deferred fees, including Roseville, including Placer County over the years. The city has not taken advantage of this program before now. Prior to submitting this request, we did contact the executive director of SPARTA to touch base with him, ensure that the deferral program was still viable and available to us. He did make affirmations to the city manager that it was. So we move forward with our request on September, and that was after the formation of a community facilities district for the Village 7 area. After that request was received by SPARTA, they reviewed it. They also reviewed the CFD. They reviewed the corresponding school facilities agreement, and they found the CFD lacking in sufficient language to allow a deferral as allowed under the MOA. the memorandum of agreement with Sparta and its member agencies. In that memorandum of agreement, there is an alternative path, another financing agreement or another financing mechanism, as it's called. And so we requested that route. That route, to my knowledge, hasn't necessarily been used by Sparta before. And so we are developing this process as we go, which is the agreement that you have before you. It states and in concurs that the city is responsible to pay the fees that is in accordance with the memorandum of agreement basically says that we are adopting this agreement, which agrees that we have already agreed to pay the fees. And so we are asking your consideration of this pledge agreement. It is a bit of a complex agreement in that it requires the signatory of the city, as well as the developer and the school district. In addition, consenting signatures from the rest of the member agencies of SPARTA the City of Rockland, the City of Roseville, and the County of Placer. And then I believe, according to the MOA, that it would still have to be approved by the SPARTA Board. I am happy to answer questions.

Thank you. First, questions from the Council before we open it up for comments, and then we'll bring it back for comments. Okay, good. Okay, let's open it up. Do we have any speaker cards?

We have no speaker cards. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment, please approach the podium. Seeing none, I'll move over to Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised.

Thank you. Bring it back to my colleagues for comments.

John? Yeah. Is someone from SPARTA here that could help me understand some policy things? Oh, great.

For the record, Matt Click, Executive Director, SPRTA, SPARTA.

Thanks. So SPARTA affirmants, somewhat common, happened before this, yes?

Yes.

Okay. What is the process that was used in some of those other ones?

And Nina put it in her staff report, and it's there, just to give you a high-level sort of executive summary of it. The real big difference in those, when they formed their CFD, they had inside that CFD basically the method to do a second bond issuance to pay the deferred fees in 30 years. Your developer CFD was formed, executed without that assurance. So what Nita is saying is we're sort of doing this for the first time. This will be the first time we allow anybody to defer tier two fees without basically an obligation. So you're looking to defer it with unsecured debt. And that's why we're asking for that extraordinary step of getting a legal opinion from Roseville, Rockland, and the county, right? Because we're essentially doing something that the MOA has agreed to by all parties, never considered. So we're trying to come to a middle ground to get you to be able to have this tier two deferral.

Right. Okay. So are you saying that the CFD that we adopted does not permit it to be used for deferred fees?

As it is, yes. It does not meet what the MOA of SPARTA has in it for Tier 2 deferral.

Right. Okay. Well, that wasn't the question I asked. Oh, I'm sorry. So I asked if the CFD we adopted permits us to use proceeds from a second, third, or fourth issuance to pay deferred SPARTED fees.

Is your opinion that it does not allow us to do that? Yes.

Can I get someone to weigh in on that? Because it was my understanding that it very clearly allows us to pay fees.

Yeah, I mean, there's no question that under the CFD, the city council acting as the board for the CFD gets to decide how that money is spent. There's a list of eligible types of expenses and improvements that can be financed through the CFD. This falls within what would be eligible to be done. The refinancing is a little bit of an odd concept for me because when you refinance you're only dealing with the original debt and obligations to start off with so the fact that you can issue the debt and then it's a covered or allowable expense would be no different than there's nothing special that comes from a refinance so i'm trying to understand this feels like you're drawing a difference where there isn't one and i'm not clear on if the cfd permits the use of bond proceeds to pay deferred fees

What's the issue?

Let me bring up general counsel because you're getting into a technical hair here. Okay. You know, I'm not the finance expert. Cool, cool. Thank you. Can you come on up and give me a hand with the technical answer to this question?

All right. Good evening. Aswan Mussey, general counsel for Sparta. So this all stems from the MOA, the language in the MOA, which is all the parties have agreed to. And it essentially requires that a second bond issuance of the CFD be referenced in the CFD, meaning you can use the Tier 2 fees. You have to have the backstop of the ability to issue a second bond issuance. The current CFD that was created in 2025, I believe, did not have that language. All prior ones we have dealt with have had that language consistent with the MOA. So that's why we've had to come up with this creative solution to the issue, because the CFD that's currently in place does not allow for the second bond issuance to secure the tier two fees.

Okay, so I'm sorry, because you feel like you're repeating the same thing to me, and it's the same words and you're drawing a differentiation. The CFD we adopted, the city council under either CFD verbiage, is the one that controls the issuance. And we have, every time they do it, there's a resolution that comes that we have to approve. It's pretty perfunctory normally. It's allowed to cover SPARTA fees, right? Our CFD that we adopted in 2025 can cover SPARTA fees. So if the city of Lincoln says that we agree to pay the fees to you and our CFD allows us to ensure that those come from the CFD that we have adopted, I'm not understanding what the problem is.

I think the issue that we're missing here is the projections that have been provided are insufficient.

Now, projections aren't verbiage. You talked about verbiage before, and now you're talking about projections. Right. The CFD can't generate enough money to pay the $2.9 million? That's correct. That's correct.

then you wouldn't be able to... Well, hold on.

Okay, so as someone who was pretty involved in the development of that CFD, I can assure you that there is a lot of money in that CFD that is available in PAYGO and otherwise to cover the $2.9 million, because there's millions in there to help for a school, plus extra to help them if they run into a problem, plus extra on top of that. I mean, it's nearly a billion dollars, but those are obligated for... They have other obligations to this. They have the obligations in the CFD the exact same as the SPARTA fees. Because what you really need is the city of Lincoln to commit that we're going to pay the deferred SPARTA fees, which is what our obligation is under the MOA, right?

We have been in conversation with staff for over a year about this. We've had a myriad of technical conversation. And what you're bringing forward in the claim that there is enough money in there to pay wasn't even made by your staff. So we're sort of arriving at new ground here today to think that that can pay it. All of our analysis showed that it was insufficient to pay it in 30 years.

I just want to point out something that's logical. You don't need to refinance something that you can originally finance. So if you can't pay for it with what you could originally finance, then you wouldn't be able to refinance it. The fact that it's covered initially means that it should be covered and you would never have to refinance. The issue is whether or not there's an obligation to pay it, whether it's through a refinance or whether it's through an initial trance. Everything in the CFD has to be approved by a board. Nothing goes in and goes obligated. It's through developer finance plans. So the idea that there's infrastructure that's spoken through, if there's a shortfall on the infrastructure that's contemplated through the finance plan, This board gets to control whether or not the developer has to make up the shortfall or who's going to make it. So there's no extra security that comes from a refinance that doesn't exist in the original financing. Okay.

Yeah, staff did actually provide extensive financial information on the amount of pay go that is expected to occur each year during the life of the CFD. Staff has contended to SPARTA throughout this process that there is sufficient funds in the CFD to pay the fees. SPARTA chooses not to agree with that.

And correct me if I'm wrong, as far as the pay go goes, and when we crafted this deal, we crafted it to that where Lincoln has control over the pay go, correct? Correct.

It's actually controlled by a three-party board that is encompassed of the city, the developer, and the school district.

Right. But we had language in there that made sure that we weren't just giving it away. Correct.

And we are legally responsible for it in any case.

We are legally obligated to pay the SPARTA fees as a member of SPARTA, as agreed to in the MOA and the JPA already.

So let me so when I when I read through it there's there's two mechanisms, as I read it, maybe you can clarify if I have this wrong. The first mechanism is this proposed language which i'm still not failing to see the difference that you're drawing between. How much they obligate us to do it or not, but the second one is is that the board of Sparta has the ability to adopt an alternative one correct. So is there a reason that we can't provide an agreement with us and Lewis to solidify that these will be paid and provide to the SPARTA board for approval as an alternative mechanism?

One hasn't been presented to us. And if it was presented, it'd have to be a run by each of the members of the MOA because it's contemplating something that's not originally in the MOA.

Okay. So the MOA very clearly says the FD language reviewed by staff. Right. or alternative funding approved by board. It does not say that all the member agencies have to effectively do an amendment to the MOA in order to do it. It says the SPARTA board can approve an alternative, which could be an agreement that says the City of Lincoln and Lewis Development commit to do the thing they were already planning to do the whole time. So is there any reason why we can't do that and it be brought to the SPARTA board for approval?

What we have not received one in the year we've been talking about this, we have not received as staff, any sort of alternative.

But his question was, no, if we provided you one, you can provide to the SPARTA board and meet your MOU criteria as written today.

We would have to evaluate in terms of the financing and whether it's sufficient enough to, to support like the, the, if it's enough, the projections are enough and the, a security is enough and that it would be an evaluation from us as staff as well as potentially consultation with other members to the moa parties to the moa well their representation is on the sparta board as the moa currently calls for

The approval of an alternative mechanism to approve a deferment is the board. And they're represented by their representatives. What you're doing here in this document that I'm seeing is effectively an amendment to the MOA, which is crazy.

So the disconnect is the board. The board member, they comprise of Sparta's board, right? So the MOA was signed by individual jurisdictions. They can't bind the individual jurisdictions. You still have to go to the individual jurisdictions.

That's not what the individual jurisdictions all approved that the Sparta board can approve an alternative deferment. That was already done. It's those four people's decision about whether they will accept that deferment or And staff can provide advice about whether to do that or not. But the decision was already made by the four jurisdictions that those four presentives have the power to approve an alternative. It's already in the MOA.

We're speaking in hypotheticals here because at this point, we have not been presented with an alternative that's been viable.

There's two separate things.

There's what the MOA says, which is the SPARTA board can approve a deferment.

That's a process that was already adopted by the four jurisdictions that gives those four people the power to approve it. And then there's what the actual agreement would be before them to approve, which can have lots of opinions and needs to have specifics that you're talking about. Those are separate things and you're conflating them.

So the action before you is to give staff the authority to enter into this negotiation and go around and walk around this. It sounds like there's not council support for that action. So what I would advise is that if the city of Lincoln is not going to vote to the positive on that, that this is something we can just agendize and you can bring this right to the SPARTA board. And we can see and we can agendize it there and have that conversation there. That would be my suggestion. And see if you can do that and get the deferral there. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's worthwhile to have... Staff and general counsel will give our recommendation to our board. You can make your case and we'll see where we land on the deferral.

Yeah, I mean, I think... Do you want to do that? My problem is that this process is crazy. It involves our staff going around the whole community to get everyone else to agree on essentially what amounts to an MOA amendment.

We have a legal opinion, which you've heard and you disagree with, and I respect that disagreement. So if we can't get to some sort of compromise here tonight, then let's just take it to this part of board and we can air the deferral there. General counsel, staff, we will give our opinion as to whether or not the deferral is legal. You can make your case. We'll call the vote. That's why we have boards.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, and we don't know because we haven't voted, but I wouldn't say that there's not support here. The point is we kind of resent having to go through this process when literally what he said and then your council's arguing and then you just said, just take it to the SPARTA board, which is exactly what we're just saying.

What I'm saying is from a staff position, We have been working for more than a year. We have tried to figure out a way based on our interpretation, which you disagree with, and you have every right to disagree with. And our opinion is we disagree with your interpretation, right? That's why we elevate and we escalate to policymakers, right? We are advisors. if that is the case that you want to go this alternate route. But from our perspective, we have been working for more than a year to come up with a way to get you to a tier two deferral that we don't see a path in the MOA, the way the CFD was constructed. Mr. White is disagreeing with that. Mr. Reedy, you are disagreeing with that. So that's where we're at. But it has all been in the spirit of trying to get you to your tier two deferral.

Right. I understand that you got the right, you're trying to do the right thing.

Okay.

You've got the chair right next to you. I am just beside myself that it has taken this long to come together to make a determination of what is acceptable based on things that have been said already tonight. The whole point of a JPA for for all of these communities to come together, for us to work together. Everything I've seen in this year that we've gone through is beside that. It has not been at all coming together and working together for the benefit of all. In my opinion, based on what I've seen and how I've, been party to it is there was one word that was left out and because it was left out that that there isn't there isn't any collaboration to fix it other than well you know you didn't come to us so because you didn't come to us you know now you got a let's do a circus and do all of the stuff that really is not necessary, based on your point of view or how you interpret what's going on, that to satisfy the one word of what you call a guarantee, it just makes me sick inside that we can't come to an agreement based on interpretation. Because in future... Any city council could take a look, and they could look at it and have a completely different opinion of how that's going to be done. And guess what happens? You end up in court, somebody's suing somebody, and none of that is collaborative. None of that is let's come together for the betterment of all and get stuff done. That's what makes me sick inside. If you want to just stand your ground just because you feel like you have to have a fiduciary responsibility to a word that we can't hold really anybody to because future councils or anybody can have a view of an interpretation. And that's why you go with suits, right? You have one legal counsel here and another legal counsel. They disagree, guess what? Now we need a judge. That's why you have suits. But to me, that's not collaborative. That's, I'm sorry, I can't see that what you're proposing is going to meet what you're talking about in the future because of a word. And please forgive me for being expressive

I don't I absolutely you don't require any forgiveness, I completely understand your point and I sit here at the podium. addressing the dais to people who I consider friends, and I don't like the acrimony either. Trust me, I really wish that word was in there. And I think you sort of made the point as well. In 30 years, none of us will be here, maybe a couple, most of us aren't going to be here. And, you know, it's going to be that contract in that document that's going to ensure that Sparta gets that 50% of deferral fees. So it's an important word. It's not I'd rather be at home watching Star Wars right now. But I'm here. And I'm having this conversation because the CFD, as developed by the developer, is inadequate. But the thing that makes me super sick, Matt. Yeah.

is why are we here tonight more than a year later going over this when collaboratively you could have said hey you know what it really doesn't need it based on a word that we really need to have in there why don't we bring it to the board and provide a solution that makes it easier for everyone to collaborate yeah and do that instead of just digging your heels in and causing what we're going over now.

I think what we were trying to do is bring a recommendation to the board that everybody agreed with. None of us had the foresight that we were going to arrive at this position tonight. I don't think your staff or my staff thought that. We were working through a process to try to figure out how we could do something that the MOA does not contemplate. That's really important. The MOA does not contemplate what you're asking us to do.

And so we were trying to figure out a way to get you the deferral. But that's in your point of view, right? Yes, that is the legal opinion of counsel. Correct. So is there any reason that you couldn't have said, look, we don't agree here. Why don't we just bring it to the board and say, hey, board, We don't agree with what they're doing here. This is what they're proposing. Ultimately, it really needs to come down to what you say. Why are we so far in the process? We have not crossed that road yet.

Well, because now tonight we have arrived at the impasse. We did not have an impasse until tonight. We were working throughout it, right? So our last correspondence to your staff was in June, right? I got notice and a response to that in August, 10 weeks later. So if you have an issue with the fact of this being a year long, there's a lot of other business that takes place. It's not just one-sided.

Did you want to say something?

I mean, we've been transparent through the entire process. Like Matt said, our last correspondence with this proposal was in June. We heard, I think it was Friday or late last week that this item was here. I, I, I, I was never contacted by council or anyone else to discuss this, if this was an issue. I've never had a discussion on it, but with, except for meeting with staff. So, I mean, and one other thing I'd like to clarify, because we keep going back to the CFD as it's currently constituted and the fact that the city council controls it, you have a third, the other, the land, the developer, as well as the school district are all there, right? So it's the judgment of that entity, not just the city council alone. So I just wanted to clarify that. So use of those funds could be used elsewhere, even though the city prefers to use it towards the chair too.

Not the way that it's crafted. Again, as Holly had clarified, although there's three in there, the language ultimately shows that the city has the first say of how those are going.

Let me just, I'm gonna address them quick, because there's some just crazy things being said. Number one, the city acts as the CFD board. There's no other entity that acts as a CFD board. There are infrastructure that gets paid for that benefits other entities. But the decision of who pays for that and what gets paid for is vested in the city council acting as the board of the CFD. So that's a complete misrepresentation of who's involved and who has control. So that's number one. Number two. There's no need for a refinance if it's covered within the finance. In addition, the only way that you can create new debt is if you actually have a rate reduction and that you're able to get cost savings from a rate reduction. You don't get to create new money through a refinance. Whatever money is created is because you've gone from a 5% interest rate to a 3% interest rate, and now the money goes further. So the idea that we're having this entire conversation over the word that you would have to be able to refinance when it doesn't even create new debt, to me, is just crazy. In your defense, you and I have never had this conversation. And I'm happy to have, if the council would like us to have this conversation.

Yeah, I'm happy.

But I just want to make sure none of these, the debt is a debt. Whether or not it's through a refinance or not, the only thing that you could pick up is the savings from a rate reduction. there's a cap on what it could be done. It's vested when the project starts. So we're going to have to work with what we've got to work with. And again, unless interest rates go back way down from where they were when the bonds are issued. With that being said, 100%, I want to make it really clear, the city council acts as the board for the CFD. Nobody has input. They get to decide what gets paid. And so you have no more assurances through refinance than you do if it was through the original financing.

But that's it.

I'm happy to have more conversations about it here.

Thank you, Doug. I'm done. Any other comments? Do we have a motion?

So it'd be my motion that we either say no or table this proposal and direct staff to come up with a deferment agreement that looks more like the one that they did with the county between us and Lewis in consultation with Sparta's staff that tries to meet their obligation without this crazy whole thing and then take it to the SPARTA board as an alternative mechanism. Before we take the crazy out of the direction.

I was gonna leave, I feel like the crazy is in there just inherently. So that's fine, yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I am in favor of the deferral for the project and we'll get there. But I don't think that we need to do all this. I think it needs to go to the SPARTA board and let them decide.

So is there a second to John's?

Yeah.

OK, good. Second. Does staff have any problems with the language?

Nope.

Good. Any comments on it? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. 5-0. Thank you very much. You're welcome. 15C, adopt a resolution. approving the reclassification of the police department's public safety director position to police chief and adopt the revised police chief salary schedule presented by Veronica Rodriguez.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. This item before you tonight is mostly a classification and compensation cleanup item. It's based on the change in the oversight for police department and fire department. So with the appointment of the fire chief in last year, the police department or the police chief is no longer overseeing the fire department. The police, public safety department chief concept was originally created back in 2019 with the establishment of the shared services agreement with Rockland. And so with that model, the police, it's actually, I keep getting confused because it's, we call it the police chief, but it's not, it's the public safety chief. It's public safety director. That's how it was established. I don't know why it was established that way, but anyhow, um, So the public safety director was responsible for the oversight of both the fire department and the police department. And now with the hiring of the current fire chief, that model is no longer necessary. So we are asking to have the police director position, the public safety director position reclassified to the police chief position. The reason for doing that is to ensure for future recruitments that this position is properly allocated. The other portion of this request is to change the salary schedule for that position because the police chief, although it remained on the salary schedule, it has a salary that was assigned to it in 2022. So we need to update it to the current executive level salary band. And so those two actions are what is being requested tonight. The responsibilities remaining for the existing police chief are those of the oversight of the police department, no longer the fire department. So this just basically aligns us with the duties that are being assigned by the position. So I have, that concludes my presentation. If there's any questions you have, I'm here to answer them.

Thank you, Veronica. Any questions from the council before we go to public comment and bring it back for comment? Okay. In that case, oh, do we have any cards?

I have no speaker cards. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment, please approach the podium. Seeing none, I'll move over to Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised.

Very good. Going back to my colleagues for comments. Anyone?

Oh, I think that makes sense.

I was just going to say, you know, we did this because it was necessary under the circumstances, and Matt did a fabulous job in maintaining the continuity and the morale and the professionalism of both departments. But this is the time to go back to where it's the proper venue for it, and so we're back there again.

Honestly, I thought we already did this. So when I read this, I was like, oh, did we already not do this?

We did it in our mind.

We did, yes. I don't ever remember anybody saying director. Right.

So I move approval. Okay, very good. Second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nope. 5-0. Thank you very much. Okay, city manager report.

Thank you. Yeah, I can't think of for a police chief or a fire chief, for that matter, to be called a public safety director. Sounds pretty dorky. It's very underwhelming. So actually, it's a timely item because I this is not probably news to everyone that that. follows what we do here. But to those that don't, you may not know this. So we're going this is just an announcement. Next meeting will be our chief's last city council meeting here. And he's super sad about it. And and so I'm going to share a little bit about a little bit out of a press release that we released this morning. related to Chief Matt Alves' retirement, and then one little anecdote, and then I'm going to save all the other mushy stuff to make him uncomfortable next meeting. But the city of Lincoln would like to announce the retirement of Chief Matt Alves, concluding a distinguished career in law enforcement, more than three decades of public service here for the city of Lincoln. Al's roots date back to 1981 when his family moved to the community. He attended Glen Edwards Middle School, graduated from Lincoln High in 94, where he met his wife, Denise. The two married in 96, raised six children in this community. They are grandparents to three, and a fourth grandchild is now on the way. He began his public safety career, if you can believe it, in 1994 as a volunteer firefighter for Placer County Fire Department Station No. 75. He earned his paramedic license in 98. And here we are, what, a little less than 30 years later, 20 years later, trying to actually bring paramedics on as paid people here. So he was one of the first, I guess you could say. In 99, he joined the Lincoln Police Department as a dispatcher before becoming a police officer trainee in 01. And the department, which we can't do so much anymore, sponsored his attendance to Yuba College Basic Police Academy where he served with distinction. Alves served nearly every capacity within the Lincoln Police Department. And I do mean every capacity. He at one time was our IT guy at the police department as a uniformed badge soldier, officer rather. And has served in a variety of different detectives. I mean, you name it. He's worked in virtually every job that you can work. And very few police officers also served as a dispatcher once in their career. And then in 2021, just a few months before actually I came here, he was appointed public safety director, overseeing both police and fire. And I think he let out a big sigh of relief when we hired Chief Mejia. He came to me one day in my office and said, you know, I really need somebody to watch over the fire department. I just... can't make the time for it with all the other things we have going on and I said oh wow sheesh you know that that does sound like a lot well what he was really doing that whole time was we were hiring a new fire chief one that we made uh only about a year and a half later um and so chief returned to just being a plain old police chief after that and has continued to be excellent Known for his steady leadership, professionalism, and commitment to public service in Lincoln. One thing I do want to mention about him that is my favorite thing about him. We spend a lot of time together. I've worked together on a lot. Some public servants, and you could probably put me in this category, serve their community loudly and others let their work speak for itself. And Matt falls into the latter category. He never raises his hand for praise. He does not pursue direction on the purpose of self aggrandizement. And his direction has traditionally been focused on what's best for the police department, his staff and the city of Lincoln. And that's the nicest thing I can say about him. So I'm gonna leave it at that.

Just a big round of applause for him.

And his family and the community and his staff are all going to have the opportunity to come to the next city council meeting where we'll be having a formal agenda item recognizing his service and kick him in the rear end and sending him on his way. So that chief. Did you want any more or is that okay Okay. Um, I was going to mention wings and wheels. I don't need to do that. The mayor did it. One cool thing I wanted to mention is that we have, we have, so we hold now that we've restarted the mayor's cup, which is a golf tournament that the city of Lincoln throws throws every year where we raise money for a scholarship program that we use in our recreation program. So if you can't afford to put your kid into one of our rec programs or we have basically a bank account that will subsidize or fully fund your participation in the program. And while we advertise it a lot, the community doesn't, it's a really nice thing about Lincoln is only really the people that really needed ever asked for it. And so it doesn't get used as much as we'd like it to. So one really cool thing that Recreation's been doing this year is they've teamed up with Coppin, First Street, and I think Creekside Oaks with administrators at those schools to identify families that likely could use that assistance. And over the summer, what we did for the first time ever is we used some of that money to throw free pool nights for the community. And so we had one night almost 100 families come down And there was a party and they could come into the pool and everything was free for them to come and enjoy and then subsequently use those scholarship programs a lot more at the pool over the summer, which we traditionally haven't done. We've usually used it for kids camp, which are pretty expensive programs and others.

So Mayor's Cup is coming up. I think we do it in October.

And I encourage everybody, if you're interested in playing, it goes to a really great cause. And we, if we don't use the money that year, it rolls over to the next and we keep building the bank account to, to help folks participate in the program. And then finally also in October, I believe we are doing the state of the city. So we're we're, Mayor Pearl will be giving a presentation on what's happened in 2026. Still working on some details about location and the production, but we'll get that information out to everybody. We partner with the chamber on that effort. And every year we try to do a little better. So we're hoping this is exciting. We want it to be fun. We don't want people to just be talked at for 30 minutes. So we'll do what we can. We're going to kind of depend on Mayor Pearl for that. Don't worry.

That's what I got tonight. Thank you.

that okay very good thank you okay uh council initiated business anything that my colleagues have um there's been as you are all aware quite a lot of talk about uh flock camera misuse and so on and so forth

With some concerned citizens, I feel that it would be a good idea to maybe do a workshop, community workshop, so that we can involve the community members that are very concerned about it, allow them to present information that they feel like they've gathered, allow us to collaborate back and forth to get some good education on the matter so that the concerned citizens.

Yeah, I agree. Didn't, didn't we say we were going to do that? Did we talk about that last time?

Yeah. So quick update on that. Um, we, we had contemplated perhaps putting something on this agenda. Excuse me. Um, uh, we had contemplated putting something on the agenda, uh, for this meeting. Um, some, so, um, there's been a, the flock, um, debate has sort of caught fire nationwide, um, and beyond that even, um, and we've been trying to wrap our heads around what the concerns are. Um, there's sort of a spectrum of concerns. Some of the, the furthest end of the spectrum is none of them should be in any public space at all. Um, Then you go down the line a little bit and it has to do with what are the reasonable controls, who has access to the information, if you're going to use it, how do you use it, and how do you ensure that bad actors don't abuse the tool. So there's a lot to it, right? And then as we really about a week and a half ago, well, a couple weeks ago, Flock, the company itself, have proposed that they're going to be instituting a series of changes and kind of somewhat in response to the public outcry about the technology. And we really wanted to get a better idea about how their changes may affect how we administer our flock system before we... have the conversation with the community because one of the things we've learned is that there are going to be a lot of questions and we want to have very specific detailed answers for people. In addition to, you know, um, the chief and I've spent a lot of time being kind of self-critical about how we use the program, where we may have gaps and where we could tighten things up a little bit, if it makes sense. At the end of the day, this is a city council policy decision. You fund the infrastructure and equipment and, um, when council adopted this number of years ago, there was some discussion on that and perhaps it's ripe again to have a discussion now that times have changed a little bit. So our idea is in September to have a, workshop, probably not on a normal council night, on a night where this is the only item where we can discuss so that people can get their questions answered and share their opinions about the technology and its use thereof moving forward. So that's the plan. I'm hoping in the first couple weeks in September, Chief asked me to schedule it on September 18th would be the day after his retirement.

Thanks, Chief.

Yeah, it's forthcoming. And thanks very much to Council Member Brown because he's reached out a few times on that. And we want to have the discussion. It's important.

Yeah, this is a topic that is evolving right now with the companies themselves making significant changes.

So let's figure it out. Good. Very good.

Cool. Thank you very much. Okay.

Committee reports.

Holly? I don't have a lot. I had a SACOG meeting last Thursday, and we really didn't get to do much business because we didn't have a quorum. They didn't have enough supervisors. Some of them were at the State of the City of Roseville. Some of them were at a funeral. So we talked about the CEO, the executive director's performance review, and then we literally had to go because there was not enough people there. And so we had budget information to talk about. So that was kind of frustrating, but... getting back in the swing of things, you know, summer's over, unfortunately, and so we're back to work, but that's all I got. Thank you. Whitney?

I don't really think there was anything really important that I needed to report out from library and EDC, but let me know if you think of something that I might be missing with EDC.

Yeah, just some new initiatives, sports complex. I've Okay john anything else, so I had what ma and not wasn't so much with the with the facility, but an important update and there's. regulation called 1383 about organics and it's a critical factor for why mama the landfill invested $150 million in an update. is to become a 1383 qualified facility that provides for all of us that are part of that to be qualified, which allows us to continue to have the one big Ben, which is a huge cost infrastructure savings for us not having to run extra routes and everyone having three bins versus two and all that. It's not official yet, but they just completed their third audit there for they have to go through to meet the requirement and they've passed on the first three so you've got one left. If that happens in October, then the facility would be qualified as a high diversion facility, which is one of the first, I think, in the state to meet that requirement. So it's super exciting. It's a long time coming, but it's really exciting. First, yeah. Do we use that term? We just use MARF. MARF, okay. Material Reels Recovery Facility. Ben?

uh next meeting i'll probably have something to talk about because i have sparta tomorrow okay no doubt in my mind okay oh and dolly parton died today so oh yeah that's right not that it has anything to do with the city it's just sad we should also point out the same dolly parton that sent a direct message for city council during um the naming of highway 193 remember

That's right. She sent a direct message for Joey Mitchell when we named the highway because she met him. They were friends and we watched the video. She sent a message to us. Yeah. So, yeah, it was very cool.

Yeah. All my committees were adjourned for the month. So with that being case, we're adjourned.