City Council / Lincoln Redevelopment Successor Agency / Lincoln Public Financing Authority - Regular Meeting

I will wait for John for a second. And there is okay. John, we're good. We're good. Okay.

Good.

Good evening. Good evening, everyone. We're gonna call the meeting of July 14th, 2026.

Mayor Pearl, if I may. Go ahead. All right. 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 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 nine if you are calling in. Once public comment is open, 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 given by Pastor Tom Galovich from Valley View Church. Once the invocation has concluded, Mayor Pearl will call the meeting to order.

Thank you very much. Would you bow your heads with me, please? Father, we thank you for this opportunity that you've given us to come together, the betterment and the improvement of the city of Lincoln. We thank you for our council members. I pray that you will give them wisdom, open their eyes, their minds, and their hearts to what is good for Lincoln. Father, we thank you for this great country as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. You have blessed this nation, Father. And we thank you for that.

And with that, we say, God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains to the prairies to the ocean, white with foam. God bless America, my home sweet home. God bless America, my home sweet home.

Thank you. Thank you. And Jeannie, that was a test and you passed it very well. Thank you very much for calling me on it. Okay. So now we're going to call the meeting of order. It was in July 14th, 2026. And if you would call the roll, please.

Council Member Angiata.

Present.

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

Here. Thank you very much. We had our closed sessions. We're going back into closed sessions following the conclusion of this meeting and we'll report out after that. Thank you very much. The Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Rozier, would you lead us in the pledge, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

Thank you, Linda. Okay, agenda modifications. Any of my colleagues?

No, Mayor.

Okay, staff? Good, okay, very good. Presentations? We have none. Okay, informational items and disclosures. Any council members have any conflicts to report? Okay, very good. Any informational items to share at this point? Okay, good. public comment on non-agenda items within the subject matter 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 actions on items not on the posted agenda, but may engage in brief discussions, provide direction to city staff, or schedule future items for meetings. All right. Do we have any comment cards?

Mayor Perl, yes, I do. I have eight cards, but before I announce the first and second name, I'd also like to state that we did receive, council members did receive a thank you card. It is labeled Lincoln Fourth of July Foundation. And this is what it's read. And we will also scan and include this in the minutes. Thank you to the City of Lincoln City Council and staff for your partnership and support in making our 4th of July celebration possible. We truly appreciate your collaboration, time, and effort that went into such a monumental community celebration. So many resources worked together for that day to pull that event off for Lincoln. We are grateful for your continued support and look forward to working together for many years to come. And there are about two, four, six, nine signatures on here, so we will scan that and provide that to council.

Very good. Thank you much, Janie.

Going to the public comment cards that I have received. Again, I have eight. The first two names are Stan Nader and I think it says Reva K. Bradley and in parentheses it says Tim. So Stan Nader could be up at the podium and Reva to be next.

Mayor and Council. My name is Stan Nader. I live in the 12 Bridges area. Earlier this month, our nation celebrated 250 years as a free republic, and the founding fathers risked their lives to create the living documents of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights. Enshrined in these documents is the right to work hard and experience success. My parents instilled in my brothers and I that if we were to succeed in life, we must be prepared to work by the sweat of our brow, which was easy to do growing up on our family farm. I was the first member of my family to graduate from college, even though my high school and junior college counselor told me I would never make it through college. After returning from college, I joined my father for 20 years operating a diverse farming business, which included rice, oat hay, vegetable seed crops, a feed store, and a hay delivery business. In early 90s, I moved the feed store into Lincoln and built the store into a business with a million dollar a year in sales. After selling that business, I partnered with a friend of mine in a composting and landscape supply business where we were shipping compost all over California for Caltrans projects as a component of hydroseeding operations, allowing us to receive 10 times the normal price for compost. You may be asking yourself, why is he sharing his work life experience with you? It's because without diligence and tenacity that I was ingrained in me, I would not have achieved success and enjoyed and understood what it meant to work hard and realize the goal. Here's my point at a recent economic development committee meeting for Chabon's concepts for presenting their consulting work on the city's economic development strategy action plan. At the end of her presentation, a committee member asked the question, what is the secret sauce for the plan to be successful? The consultant's immediate response was it takes work. I am imploring the council and any citizen in the city who's interested in seeing the city achieve financial stability to place their hand to the plow and to put in the hard work to bring businesses to our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Stan.

If Reva Bradley can come to the podium and after Reva, it will be Brittany Dennis.

Hello, my name is Reva Bradley and we have lived here for almost 13 years and I've never been here before. I've been to other city council meetings many times in my lifetime, but not here because everything that you guys do, most, agrees with us until now. I come from a law enforcement background and I have to say that I understand that we had a big thing going on with the 4th of July this time. I understand that. But all around us, there was dry grass. There were all kinds of fireworks. My husband and I were both in fear. Our immediate neighbors were in fear. And I understand also that the police can't do everything. And the drones are great, but they're after the fact. We have five friends that have lost everything to a fire in Santa Rosa and in Los Angeles. I think there's got to be something that the everyday person can do to change what happens. And after it happens, it's too late. People lose their memories. They lose their pets. They lose everything. i would like to know if there's anything that i could do my husband can do our friends can do because it's tragic when you see what happens to people after a lifetime of hard work and they lose their homes they lose

everything.

So anyway, I'm just here because I think there's got to be a way to change it for next year. I understand this was a big year, but the year before that was also kind of scary. So I thank you very much. And like I said, I'm from a law enforcement family and I understand there's not, They can't do everything. So what can we do as citizens? And so everybody is still enjoying the 4th of July, but it changes as far as being dangerous. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Sean, perhaps you'd like to comment on what protocols we have and what we've done.

You bet. So first of all, thank you. Everything you said, I think probably most of us here agree with. It's really over the last 10 years has become one of the most frustrating public safety problems that I've had, because one of the problems that not just Lincoln has, but really almost everywhere has, unfortunately, at this point, that the last fireworks of any kind is, um, a mass ignoring of the rule of law related to that specific thing. And so this isn't an excuse because I'm going to explain what we are doing, but it makes it very difficult for our police department to enforce this law when well over half of the folks that are having parties are participating in this kind of behavior. Law enforcement is not designed to address the vast majority of people not you know, vast majority of our population not following a law. It's designed to get the kind of fringe people that refuse to follow. And so it becomes really complex when the problem is so widespread. With that said, this year we did institute some harsher enforcement and penalties. So the chief had a unit, four police officers, each in separate squads. Were they teamed up chief or in separate cars? Literally taking, only handling legal firework calls and showing up on site, in some cases, citing the individuals. The other complication being in law enforcement, one of the problems with this is that this crime is a misdemeanor. And in many cases, when that misdemeanor is not committed in the presence of a police officer, where they can't verify, even if there is video, verify with their own eyeballs that something happened. There's very little that they can do at that point unless the ordinance is right out in front of them. So it makes for a very difficult kind of crime to combat. Now, with that said, we were flying drones on the 4th, trying to identify pockets and areas that were particularly bad, so we could go address that. I'm not sure that we can enforce our way. I'm just going to be honest. I'm not sure that we can enforce our way out of this problem. It is going to take some kind of more specific and serious a policy either by the city council. or more specifically lobbying the state of California to be much more serious and sort of stopping the influx of this kind of thing into California where people can easily purchase it almost anywhere. And I only say that because, as I said, this has been going, I've been involved in this for over 10 years and In some cases, we were levying in other communities $8,000 and $10,000 fines per occurrence, and it wasn't changing behavior year in and year out. So I wish I had a better answer aside from that we're committed to continuing and beefing up that enforcement each and every year and You know, perhaps there's other things we can do in terms of just appealing to people's morality that, you know, this kind of behavior is risky. It does affect people that potentially have PTSD and animals. And certainly in our fire environment, it makes for a really dangerous situation. So we're going to continue to work on it and maybe work with some other communities that might have seen a little bit more improvement. Where you see that mostly, honestly, is in communities that outlaw fireworks altogether. No safe and sane, no nothing. And that's a different kind of discussion at some point for the council to have.

Anything that the average person that lives here and owns a home can do? Because what you're talking about is that disaster has to happen first, and then we lose our homes, and then we get the idea. All you have to do is go to Santa Rosa, go to Los Angeles. It happens, especially with hot weather and dry grass. And I really have been kind of surprised that Lincoln is intelligent, as most people are here. And most people are very aware of what's going on in the world, that they would be negligent that way. Because we live in 12 Bridges Village. I don't want to see it burn down before people say, maybe we shouldn't have done that.

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. If you want something that's even, Fire Chief could probably opine on this, but even more depressing would be that there certainly are many communities where a home burns down and people have died and it has not changed the behavior the following year.

What can we do?

I don't know. But what I could tell you is that we're going to continue to pour resources into it. If your question is what can I do as an individual, what I would say is first protect your own property. Make sure there's some things that can be done to minimize that likelihood. But second would be that I think everybody that's a neighbor in Lincoln needs to be having discussions with their communities about about, hey, listen, I know that it might be fun when you're young to light off Roman candles in the sky, but there's actual real damage to this and you're affecting your neighbors when you do this kind of thing and other people. And the social pressure, I think, is as important. Mejia, do you want to add anything to this?

Yeah, first of all, just know that, you know, we took this situation very seriously. We double-staffed all of our resources. A lot of planning and preparation came into this. Like Sean's been saying, this is a battle that the fire service has been fighting for many years in many different cities. And so unless you outlaw it completely in the cities, what that allows you to do is really pinpoint those areas that are actually launching them. But mixed in with Safe and Sane and then you have illegal fireworks, it's a very difficult thing. You know, they launch off in a couple seconds. By the time we can get there, You know, it's very hard to convict anybody with sort of that crime. But what you're kind of speaking of is really, really, I think, where Sean was leading to is it's public pressure. If you're right now at home and you see somebody launching off illegal fireworks, call 911. You know, make a report for those if you have to, if it feels like it's something that's threatening. So unfortunately, a lot of times they're out in the distance, and so they're just very hard to try to track down. But really, all we can do on the fire side is really try to do good prevention, really good information ahead of time. and then staff up resources accordingly for those events. And so I would let you know that on the 4th of July here, we staffed every piece of apparatus we had, and we were ready for anything that happened. And at the end of the day, we had no fires that had taken place, a lot of firework calls, but nothing actually was an event that happened.

i think i think that that shows the diligence of our fire department and police department but i'm because i have known like i said five families that have lost everything I think that we should nip it before it becomes something that we all regret. This is a beautiful town. It's a beautiful place. And if you go to parts of LA and where my daughter lives and Malibu, which was gorgeous, it's all burnt down. And I know that it wasn't fireworks, but it doesn't matter how it starts if it's fire. And the same thing with Santa Rosa.

We got your message loud and clear.

What I wanted to come here for, was there anything that the everyday person can do? Anything that we could do with anything that could get things to change so people were more aware or more diligent? Is there anything that the average person can do?

I know that we can't go on for very long, but I just have a couple questions that might lead to this. So is there a limit on the fee that the city could impose if someone's actually caught setting off illegal fireworks? Like I know you said $8,000, $10,000 didn't change the behavior, but is there a limit to what that fee could be or fine, excuse me?

No.

Okay.

No.

So one of the options is, other than what the chief already says, public pressure and talking to your neighbors, but the city council, if we chose to, could impose a very steep, steep fine. And then the other thing too is, again, I'm not trying to be big brother here, but we do know areas that are notoriously guilty of setting off illegal fireworks every single year. Is there a possibility to send out Preemptive notices to neighborhoods to houses to say in preparation for fireworks. We are we are watching close the fine will be X number of dollars. I mean, and I'm thinking a large number so that people are pre pre warned. They know they're being watched the fine is going to be very high if they are caught. And whatever the message could be. I mean, is that something that we could work on for next year.

Absolutely. So one of the things that Chief Alves has been working on is this concept of a social host ordinance. So most of the time when you see these things that are going on on the 4th, it's because of a party that's occurring, almost always, right? And the social host ordinance is this way, not just for fireworks, other things as well, where you don't go and try to find the individual that's doing the thing. The property owner is responsible. So if you have renters that are lighting off illegal fireworks, guess what? You're getting the fine. If you own the home and your kids are doing it, guess what? You're getting the fine. And so it makes the administration of what the police department does, it sort of takes it a little bit out of the normal penal code that they're working under and puts it under a municipal code, which is administrative in nature. And so you can pass that law and it can be much more heavy handed. I think your idea about pr and marketing and direct contact to residents well in advance of the fourth to just sort of say hey heads up you know we're not messing around this year maybe it does affect some behavior we can probably also we can also work with the hoas thank you i was going to suggest that uh actually in in council initiated business that we

talk about this further and maybe workshop it, which we plan to do. And then I think, honestly, we get caught up in other initiatives and discussions. And then 4th of July comes back around. And FIRE is always working on this. But us as a council, to have a workshop and talk through in public about all the different options that we've discussed one-on-one with our city manager and then come up with something to try for next year would be my suggestion. Because I know Sean and I have talked about this a lot and then before and after 4th of july and there are things that we talked about last year and and then new ideas this year and then i'm surprised when i think that i have maybe a new good idea and then it turns out well actually there's a secondary and tertiary issue that comes from that although it seems like a home run it ends up costing this and so anyway i think it would be good for the public to hear those discussions too and then we can come up with another perfect very good thank you very much jenny

After Brittany, it will be Tim Lyons.

Hello, Council and Mayor. My name is Brittany Dettis. I'm here today with my husband and some of our neighbors. We live on First Street. We back up to the Pulte properties and the homes that are being built in between First Street and Highway 65. You're going to hear a lot about this tonight because it is really affecting us. We as community members, as citizens, as taxpayers are fighting a billion dollar business that has stolen our property, built on it, is now telling us that we have to be responsible for it and is effectively ignoring any solutions that we're providing and any sort of attempt we're making to solve this problem that we didn't create. It just showed up in our lap one day. Specifically for my husband and I, we grew up in Roseville. And we grew up in Roseville in the time where it wasn't busy. There were still two lanes and we could ride our bikes everywhere. And when we got married, we wanted somewhere very similar to that to raise our family. And for us, that's Lincoln. It checks those boxes. It's still small. We know most of the police officers that come to our neighborhood. They wave at us. It's exactly what we want. We toured multiple houses in our neighborhood until we found our house. We were in escrow within 48 hours of touring it. And it's been great. We've been fixing it up. We love it. And then Pulte started building. And at first it started kind of with confusion of there's this gap. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's happening. And then we start getting the letters that it's our responsibility. They built it on our property. and now we're responsible for managing it. And the problem that we're having with Pulte is that they have no initiative, they have no requirement to do anything about this process because they are printing money. They're building, they're closing escrow on those houses, and they are not going to stop because they are making money and we don't matter. We do not matter to them in the grand scheme of things. And there's no way for us to stop this matter unless we sue, which is extremely expensive, Or if we ask you to step in. So you're going to hear from other neighbors with other ideas, but my request is to enter a stop work order and enforce steep fines. put their money where their mouth is, and tell them that they are not allowed to continue to work until this is resolved, until they've resolved with every single homeowner. Because if we don't, we're going to get stuck with another winter of flooding in our backyards, and we're going to get stuck until they can't build to fix the problem. And, sorry.

Thank you. Question, because this is the first time I've heard of it. Have you brought these concerns to the city? what they're talking about.

Yeah, actually, Mayor, I was contacted by another one of your neighbors, Mr. Lockwood, and I had a phone conversation with him, brought to Sean. Sean spoke to him on the phone. And so we're absolutely happy to listen to the rest, but Sean had a conversation with Mr. Lockwood, and Sean is right on top of it.

So yeah, take this very seriously. Yeah, so this is a super frustrating situation. So Doug has been working with their attorneys, We have actually City Engineer Institute's stop worker at the beginning of this process with the hope that the message being quite clearly that every solution to this problem property by property is going to be unique to each individual property owner because y'all have different backyards and I get it, right? Um, so what we've said is, is I'm paraphrasing Vin, but you Pulte need to go and sort out a solution individually for each and every one of these folks, because, you know, one of the things about development that we believe in everywhere, but here in particular is that development, um, will have some impacts of course, but it shouldn't impact the ability for you to do the basic stuff in your property that you want to do. You know, You shouldn't have to worry about portions of your property being peeled off for some other improvement. And so when I talked to David last night, one of the things that he shared with me is that it sounds like for some of the folks that live along first, that's occurred. They may have different needs, but not for everyone. And that's, from my view at least, not acceptable. And I don't know, Doug, if you wanted to add anything to that.

Do it wrong?

Get straight now?

Okay. So this issue came up, I think it was the first week or second week that I started. We issued a letter on March 26th of 2026. We deemed it a threat to public safety at that meeting, and we also threatened Pulte with the idea of the fact that we could withhold, and we gave them the municipal code section, signing withhold permits for construction and things of that nature. So to that extent, I want to assure you you're not in this fight alone. It was something that we identified very, very early on in it. And we laid out specific procedures that there was an expectation that they needed to follow. And at least to some degree, at least the discussion aspect has gone on. I know that there hasn't been with at least every home, you know, adequate, not everybody has agreed to a particular solution. And as Sean kind of alluded to, It is probably going to unfortunately have to be a house by house kind of deal because each house has unique attributes. And part of it's because this is part of it has a storm drainage function that kind of goes through this anyway. The biggest thing is, you know, the city is, you know, not in the business of letting public health and safety issues be created to the extent that the city has powers. You know, we have already begun to exercise those and put them on notice of it. And so I guess what we can assure you is that it's not just, it's not something you don't have to come here to tell us it's a problem. We're aware of it and we're trying to do everything that we can to support you. and the issues that you guys are facing while still recognizing it's an issue that's complicated and that we have to ultimately resolve.

The hard part about that, though, is that we're running out of time. We have another winter coming where we're going to have flooding, and their motivation is to close as many houses as possible while it's nice out, while they have the ability with no delays. We're not priority number one. We're the last priority. Because they want to make money. They want to close on those houses. They want to make that money. So we're not on the top of that list. So forcing the hand of making sure that we get taken care of because we were wronged, Pulte lied, Pulte stole, Pulte created this problem. and we shouldn't be at the bottom of the list in this case because what happens if we don't resolve this by the time the winter comes and all of the houses are flooding and now you do have an actual safety concern of all the water running down the storm drain and you've been aware of it since march And nothing has been done to assist us in trying to solve this problem while we are still fighting Pulte weekly, trying to get results, trying to figure this out. We are doing it. We're trying to individually. But it's important to understand that saying that you're doing something about it and that you're aware and that we don't need to come here and tell you, this is us raising our flags saying we need help. And we are in July. Rain starts in September, October. Like, this is not something that we can just wait for. We have to work on this immediately so we can get results that protect everyone.

Sean, are there any other hammers that we would have?

Well, the only other detail that I'll mention is, so you're correct that like all developers that are selling these days are closing homes. The difference between closing a property, especially when it's a subdivision like that is that, you know, you close on it before it's built. And we have this amazing hammer that's called occupancy and occupancy. It means that you need to meet our standards in order to habitate the building the facility the whatever and we're not really in the business of giving occupancy on substandard properties that are creating flooding issues for themselves or for someone adjacent to it and so it it is to i think almost everybody's benefit that this gets sorted out because you know we can't allow development to continue where it's going to adversely affect somebody else and they of course want to continue so hear you and also do appreciate you attending and the the alarm is rung we're super aware of it and happy to come out and do maybe we could figure out some way to do kind of regular check-in meetings with the community over there just to sort of say hey here's where we're at here's what we're hearing we don't want to be representing what you want to them because everybody's individual but we certainly want to be supportive to make sure you're not

I really wanted to appreciate you coming up, Brittany, because this is probably the biggest advocate that I've ever felt government has ever been created for, is to protect the rights and the property of the individual. And so whatever it is that we need to do, we'll be there to do. And for sure.

And I have David's information, but maybe I could get yours, too, before you go. Yeah, I have a lot of cards. Fantastic. OK, Brittany, hold on one second, John.

One, I just want to thank you for coming. And I think between the back and forth, I pieced together what's going on. But could someone just give me the Cliff Notes version of what this issue is?

Yeah, real quickly. So I'm hearing water flooding. But it appears drainage. So the homes on this section of First Street probably were built 30 years ago. Yeah, 20 to 25 years ago.

Yeah.

And when they built them, and this is sort of common, whoever the developer was of those homes, in some cases, the survey work was either deficient And they set the fence line a couple of feet into her property and her neighbor's property.

So our property line extends past our fence.

Oh, roughly two feet, right?

Yeah.

And so what happened was when in a normal subdivision that's building up against another one, you'd meet fences. And you might even have a scenario where you just put in a new fence and everybody's happy with the new fence. In this scenario, they knew development built to their property line. And there's a gap. Right. A no man's land. It's really her land. And inside that gap, the original solution, which the city engineer has already said is insufficient, was essentially a ditch, an improved ditch that ran the length of the way that we didn't think was going to work from not only a drainage perspective, but also we were super concerned that when you have a two foot gap in between fence lines, I worry about pets and kids and whoever getting in there. Right. So we call timeout when we're aware of it and say, look, we're not going to come up with your solution for you, but you got to fix this. And it needs to be something that's going to work for your project and also the property owner. The other reality that is likely, I haven't verified this in the field or anything, but it's likely that when these homes were built 25 years ago, portions of the backside of these lots were draining into the field. And so for a really long time, the natural pathway of water was dropping into this vacant parcel that was behind where they live. And so when you change the nature of the grading adjacent to it, it screws up what's been happening for 20, 25 years, right? Which is why some of the property owners are concerned that they're going to experience pooling or localized flooding in their backyards. So that's the issue in a nutshell. Did I miss something?

The other portion of that, too, is that when they were building it, we had no idea what was going on. They built the retaining wall that is the property line. The gap was there. And then one day there's a drain in it and there's rock and we get a letter that says that drain is your property, your responsibility. You have to maintain it. And so that was our first awareness that there was a problem. And then in addition to that, Pulte has tried to say, we had no idea that there was a property line issue. But if you look at their retaining wall that they build, it goes from six inches in certain spots off the fence to 18 inches back to eight inches. And it wobbles following the line all the way down. They wouldn't have built it that way unless they were following the actual property line. So during this whole process, Pulte has lied, cheated, stolen the entire time. So the trust is just totally broken down. And we just have no recourse. We have no ability to do anything besides just asking for mercy and help.

John, I think over the next week or two weeks, you could pull something together just to get everything down on paper in one spot and then work with the homeowners. You bet.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Brittany.

I was just wondering if...

Do we know off the top of our heads, is that legal for them to do that? Or is it usually, we can talk about that later?

I'd rather not say that.

OK, we can talk about that later. I'm curious about the legality. And then also, I think we can all write a letter at a minimum and see if that will help be, can help advocate as a group.

So we sent the letter in March. late March, right? We prescribed certain expectations from Pulte. those conversations have at least been happening and it's our expectations. It's going to get resolved at least for most of them and that we're going to get an update on it. If there's the perception or the belief that that's not good enough or that that process is failing, then we have other mechanisms to go to. And so I'm going to volunteer Sean without his permission, but I'd rather, you know, it would probably would be more productive, you know, I'd be happy, Sean and I would be, you know, if he wants to join us, I don't want to volunteer everybody sitting here, to sit down with them and kind of go over what we're doing, what the expectations are and some of our analysis of it and what options are available to us. Because, I mean, we do want to support them and we don't want a public health and safety issue created. There is challenges just because of the history of it and where fences were and where they are now and then what got installed and so on. And so I think it's fair to say it's a complicated issue that we as a city have some say in, but it's going to require some cooperation of multiple. It's going to require some cooperation of homeowners. It's going to require some cooperation of Pulte. And then we have to use the tools that we have to make sure everybody is incentivized to get it taken care of.

Brittany, I know that you said you wanted, there were several other people might want to speak. Is it what they talk about? Will it be additive to it? Or do you feel that we have the message and we'll be working towards that very shortly? We're certainly happy to hear everyone who wants to speak. Perfect. Thank you.

If we could, we need to stick with the order of the comment cards. So let's see who's next. Jeannie.

After Tim Lyons, it'll be Lucinda Noreen.

And then just for the record, we have to keep it at the dais just because otherwise anyone who's online or for the minutes when we go back, we won't be able to capture it. So that's just why that's the dais.

Again, we need to stick with the order of the comment cards.

Hi, my name is Tim Lyons, and I'm, I guess, ringing the bell as well for this. And you mentioned occupancy as another lever. So I'd like to hear more about that, but I'd maybe like to hear their discussion first, but if you could address that when they're done. Thank you.

So when he says occupancy, we're talking about the issue of a certificate of occupancy. It's the last step with the possibility of somebody with, withholding that if there's a public health and safety issue, which also means that they can't sell the home, even if they're in contract to whoever's in contract with them.

After listen, after listen, there will be David.

hi my name is lucinda noreen i'm also part of the first group first street gang. we're trying really hard to band together here we we i've lived in this House for almost 25 years and if the flooding happens for me, I have a pool in my backyard it could be incredibly devastating. I do want to say I appreciate your concern. I appreciate you guys trying to help us out. I love Lincoln. I have five kids that graduated Lincoln High. This hopefully is going to be my forever home if it doesn't sink into the abyss at some point. So again, I do appreciate you guys, you know, trying to meet with us, do what you can to help us out. You know, we are David versus Goliath. And I would very much like to see us have your support, back us up, do what we can so that this isn't a horrific issue years down the road. The fence, in my case, is only about five feet built to where my back fence is. And it's about this wide. So if there's an issue and it has to be fixed, they're either tearing down that fence to fix it or they're tearing down mine. because there is no way they could fix anything back there right now without tearing that fence down, one or the other. There is no room to walk. So anyway, I appreciate you guys being receptive to our dilemma. And, you know, we as a neighborhood have been meeting and, you know, you know, have, you know, 30 people show up to our meetings. We're just, we're just trying to do what we can. So we appreciate you guys taking that are under consideration and any help you can provide for us.

Thank you very much.

After David will be Tori roast. You can put them to my foundation.

Hello all, David Lockwood here. I am a father of students who are here in the Lincoln School District. I am a resident. I love Lincoln. I'm a realtor. I have a website, liveinlincoln.com. That's how much I love Lincoln. So it's a pleasure to be here. And I wanted to first say thank you to Council Member Andriotta. and City Manager Scully for their approachability and their willingness to hear my concerns on this. I wanted to also say thank you in general to everyone in this room who has been part of making Lincoln a better place to live. The improvements that I have seen that are benefiting my family personally and many others like the bike park, the skate park coming in, the shade on the pickleball, all those things are greatly appreciated. We want to thank you for your service to us. And yeah, we'll get that out of the way. I wanted to speak quickly and add a few things. I won't try to replicate much of what was said, but part of the issue with those of us on First Street uh myself as well as others brought this up to the city council meeting as well as talk to building department employees two years ago when this was when this was being planned and the farm that used to exist back there was about two to three feet lower than all of our properties and so when when we found out they would be adding three feet of dirt we said all our all our lots drain that way it's going to create a problem Our lots are at different points. Our fences, retaining walls are at different points in regards to the lot lines. And so it created a problem. I talked to Pulte at the time. And John Caucus from Pulte said, well, if we have to, we'll build a retaining wall to deal with this. So I've dealt with John Caucus and Aaron Head from Pulte a couple times. And there have been problems in our interaction with them. The other thing that I wanted to point out is that when they built their retaining wall, in that gap between us, I went back there one day and saw workers that looked like they were on my property. And sure enough, they were digging out where my trees were and installing a drainage pipe on our property that was trespassing. They were building on our property that no one had ever been warned about, no one had given them permission to do. So I called Pulte and I said, you need to stop this right now. And they did stop it, but they had already put pipe in, they dumped a bunch of rock in there. So that is obstructing the free use of our property and our land. And that is where part of the concern comes from. Even with this drainage pipe that they've installed, they are hoping that it kind of alleviates the problem. And they are trying to get us to accept responsibility because if my trees, the roots break that pipe eventually, because it is literally the pipe, the trees are right here and the pipe is touching the trees because they dug on my side. If that breaks because my trees roots break it and my neighbor's homes flood because of it, this becomes a big problem. So I just wanted to fill in some of what's going on, but I really appreciated talking to City Manager Scully and Council Member Andrietta. I felt like they heard our concerns, so I thank you for that, and I thank you for backing us in this, and we hope that that will continue. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. on before toward comes up real quick, so I appreciate all of you coming and speaking, and I know Sean you're right on it, and I didn't realize that I had sent a letter back in March, which is great so. Just for the residents to know and i'm sure we're all on the same page here, is there a way that we could contact faulty and basically. cease and desist now until they fix this because I'm really, really upset about them coming onto people's property, installing pipe without them knowing causing problems for the future and the arrogance and the disregard for their, for their rights and their concerns is really, really upsetting. And I'm not in a mood to like just continue letting them have permits and build if they're going to act like that. Cause that's not how we, that's not how we want things to be done. So. What's our next step here?

So if, if, uh, the community council would give Doug and I, uh, Tuesday, give us 72 hours and we'll get some communication back to the community about what's happened. We'll get the information flowing. Um, David has my email, David, feel free to share that liberally. Um, but not too liberally. And, um, and we'll report back to you with what Doug needs to spend some time thinking about what kind of legal levers we can pull to get the result we want. But I will just say this, if we'd like some optimism here. It was only a couple of years ago that we had a, it was a different problem, but we had a similar set of problems with Richmond, with a different developer in Lincoln, in a different area. And it wasn't the same problem, but it was the same, the nature of the problem was similar in that they were not getting a suitable response. And we brought that developer into city council meetings numerous times in a row until most, if not all of those issues were sorted out for those homeowners. And if we have to do that here, then that's what we have to do. A part of our responsibility is to make sure that our residents, current and future, are protected. So we take it super seriously.

Great. I think that's the next best step. The cease and desist is something that we take it to. Yeah.

Jeannie? I think Tori's up.

Yes, Tori is up. After Tori will be Kevin Siddall.

So I asked if I could come and just speak briefly to the fireworks. So I wanted to give a huge thank you to police and to fire. There were a lot of resources that helped. I know, thank you for reading the letter that put that day together. And I just wanted to read some stuff that put together that would to address some things, lot of people don't know what goes into that so um i know fireworks are not exactly what everybody likes sometimes people like other things and we respect a lot of the concerns and safety has always been and continues to be our highest priority every show has been conducted by a licensed professional and coordinated with both city fire department and police department and emergency services our goal is to continue to provide a safe memorable and free community celebration while being responsible stewards of the donations and sponsorships entrusted to us as technology evolves and costs become more realistic we'll continue to evaluate all options when communities have a safe permitted event it gives residents a place to celebrate together under the supervision of licensed professionals and public safety personnel and we would not have had an amazing safe Larger than ever, 250 turnout without everybody here at the city and our police and fire. So I just wanted to give a huge shout out to everybody with Public Works and police and fire. Again, I can't thank them enough for everything they did. So that's it.

Thank you, Tori. It was a great day, without a doubt. Starting with the parade in the morning and fireworks at night. Yep.

Mayor, let me just also add that. So Tori and Willie have been part of that. Well, Willie Langer, Tori's been part of the foundation for a while this year. She's the president. And so what people may not know is that many years ago, when the city wasn't able to fund the firework show any longer, a very small group of residents got together and made sure it continued. And they work hard together. All year round to fundraise and to put that day together I I haven't been as involved last couple years just because of schedule but been very involved in years past and. it's, it is a tremendous amount of work for a very small group of people, and the reason they do it. Is because this is a very time honored tradition of Lincoln, so the city in the Chamber and all the volunteers put the parade together. in the morning, and then the foundation, which a few years ago, we stood up our own foundation with our own bylaws and nonprofit and all that so they could fundraise on their own. There was a lot of drama with that a few years ago, but this amazing group of volunteers did a really great job putting that together. I was fortunate to help with that. And then they put together the park activities and then the fireworks show. And then a few years ago with the Potters coming in, the baseball game, and then the Potters will partner with us in the fireworks. So the last few years has really kind of just... become um even bigger and better uh with all the pieces together but it it would not happen and i think i don't one of these days we need to do the research i think other than the um the portuguese holy ghost festival and and that activity which is the longest running I think Lincoln probably has the longest running continuous fireworks presentation in the state or maybe in the nation. I don't really know. I mean, I can wish, right, Willie? I don't know. But it's been quite a number of years. And the reason that has continued, because other communities around us, Roseville will cancel. Rockland doesn't do it anymore because Destiny will do Celebrate America. Sometimes Auburn does it. Sometimes they don't. but Lincoln has always done it. And it's because there's a very small group of residents who are dedicated. And this year, uh, Tori was the head of that, um, been involved several years. Willie's been part of this for many times, Richard bus, Don, um, so many people, I know I'm going to forget somebody and I want to hurt anybody's feelings, but, um, Very dedicated. And so we owe you a great thank you. It was a beautiful day. I do hope you are going to get some money back on the pyromaniacs. Pyrotechnics. Thank you. I was thinking that old cartoons that my kids used to watch. Because it was great up until then. But anyway, so thank you very much. And I know I've taken up too much time. But I just want people to understand that this is a huge amount of work. to make this day amazing, and people come for free, and they don't realize that it's a very small group of people that put it together every year.

Holly, thank you. If I could just add, I mean, as far as I know, and again, this is going back to what my father had told me when they started to shoot fireworks back in the early 70s, but it was him and a number of volunteer firefighters that took the reins upon themselves because there wasn't enough money, you know, same story that we often hear. There wasn't enough money, so they started to do the fireworks show themselves. My dad, former explosives guy, he got licensed along with a couple other firefighters. And again, it was just community people coming together. The chamber organized some fundraising, and that really is what brought this event up. And I remember as a small child sitting in one of the fire trucks, you know, as the show was being lit. And, you know, that's 50 years ago. And so 50 years of history that I've seen here in town with this Fourth of July. And again, it's been different groups in charge, whether it's the chamber, the city, I think the lions club was actually heading it up for a small time, a lot of different groups. And now the foundation specifically just for this purpose to raise money and to organize this event. So it's all about community volunteers and everybody shows up to volunteer, whether it's you and your husband, we've got other council members that are there. And you know, there's a lot of people in our town that just step forward to volunteer a couple hours. to make this community celebration happen. And that's why we do it. So thank you.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. Willie, I'm reminded of Winston Churchill's comment of never has so much been owed by so many by so few. Yeah, amazing what the crew has done without a doubt. Okay, very good.

So Mayor Perrault, we actually do not have any more comment cards. I would like it open. I would like to open to the chambers if anybody would like to speak, if you could raise your hand. Okay, there are no hands raised here in chamber.

Hold on a second, I see one gentleman. Is he coming forward? Okay, okay. He's leaving.

Moving on to online.

Yes.

Is there anyone on zoom that would like to provide public comment? I see no hands raised. So Mr. Mayor, there are no additional speakers for public comment.

Thank you very much. We're going to close public comment then move on to consent calendar. We will have any questions from the council person on any of the consent items. Okay, very good. Any questions from anyone in the audience? Cards.

I did not receive any comment cards for consent. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak on consent item? I don't see any hands raised. I'll move along to zoom. Is there anyone on zoom that would like to provide public comment on consent items? I do have a hand raised. Stella, unmute your mic. Yes, I have unmuted you.

Great. Thank you. Hi, everyone. This is Celadrine House, and I live in downtown Lincoln for the past three years. One of the things on the consent items, not necessarily interesting, but this thought came to my mind. But in 13L, it says adopt a resolution approving the establishment of one college intern position within the information technology department. And one of the things I thought of quite a while ago, and I don't think I've brought to the city council before, is more so of like a volunteer coordinator. And now seeing so many people that are stepping up into the meetings and asking what can we do as a public. But I think that might be something that might be helpful within the city organization is having some kind of volunteer coordinator that can coordinate all the desired people involved. that want to step up. So I know this is in turn for information technology, but as we talk about adding positions or adding free support or whatever it may be of developing people, I think that's something within our city that we have the opportunity to do is to talk about a volunteer coordinator of some sort. So thank you.

Thank you, Stella. Jeannie, anyone else come on?

There are no other hands raised online. Mr. Mayor, there are no additional comments.

Thank you very much. I'll accept a motion then for approval of consent. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carries 5-0. Thank you very much. All right. Public hearings. We have no public hearings today. Good. General business. Okay. 13, I'm sorry, 15A, consider a fee waiver and approval of F Street closure and plaza for Farmer's Market community events presented by Assistant City Manager Nita Recker.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the item before you is a consideration of a fee waiver and approval of the F Street closure and closure and plaza for the farmers market. Some community members and local businesses brought forward the concept of revitalizing the city of Lincoln's farmers market. requesting a closure of F Street. However, as this council may recall that they recently adopted a policy regarding street closures, which specifically states that no one entity can receive a street closure more than four times a year. And so in order to approve that, council is required to make a determination that they want a variance from their policy. In addition, they're asking for a waiver of the fees for the startup of this new event. The fees are indicated in the staff report. It's about 5,500 in fees from mid-July to December that they would be requesting for this calendar year. And there are members of this event that are here to speak on this tonight. We have Bob Bonk. Apologies if I messed up your last name. who is bringing forward and would manage the farmer's market aspect of it, and then Nicole Siddle, who would manage the community aspect of it.

Before we open up for public comment, comments from my colleagues.

I would just reiterate, Mr. Mayor, that he's not making a public comment. He's helping to present this item.

Okay, sorry. So, Mr. Mayor and Council, thank you for allowing us here tonight. I just thought I'd give you a little bit of history of who I am and what I do. So for about seven, my family grows mandarins here in Placer County, has since 1974. We're one of the smaller growers, so agriculture is near and dear. I was the board president of the Foothill Farmers Market in Placer Grown for about 17 years. Over that time, we managed anywhere between probably 18 and 20 different farmers markets in Placer, Nevada, and Sacramento counties. As that footprint shrunk, we spun some of those markets off the farmers. And then in 2023, Placer Grown, the organization, determined that we'd kind of reached the end of our mission, and the organization was sunsetted. And as it sunsetted, we spun the brand back over to the county who now does the marketing for the plaster grown brand that you see today. And as a certified producer, I took over the permits to operate the markets at the fountains and the market in Auburn. Auburn is one of the oldest farmers markets in the state of California. We've been in that parking lot for almost 40 years. And along those lines, one of the things that most people don't realize is that a certified farmers market is an extremely regulated environment. At any given time, I'm dealing usually with anywhere between eight and 15 different federal, state, and county regulatory agencies. So we have become one of the most restrictive places for an individual business or a farmer to sell their product at. However, we have quite the list of vendors who would like to get in. So the Certified Farmers Market, we operate with two different permits. The Certified Farmers Market is a standalone entity. Our main permit comes through the county from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, who's our main regulator. As part of that, I'm required on a quarterly basis to submit a report with every vendor that was there and submit a fee for every tent that went up, every time it went up, to the state of California. So those fees can be quite substantial at times. In conjunction with that, I also operate the market with a community event permit. And that community event permit is all the other food and non-agricultural product that you see. Because the farmer's market is near and dear to me, I operate the community event side like I operate the farmer's market. A certified farmer's market means that the person selling the produce or the meat has to prove that they're the one raising it. They are practicing the agricultural arts. And the Ag Commissioner in their county has verified it, and they have a certification hanging in their booth to verify it. On the community events side, I ensure that my vendors that come are producing the product that they are selling. There's very little, if any, resale. Any resale that occurs is because it's a product they cannot necessarily make that's complementary with theirs. A lot of our vendors have been with us. Some of my farmers, I've known their kids since the day they were born, so it's quite the family atmosphere. We did operate as Foothill Farms Market and Placer Grown, a market here in downtown Lincoln. I think the market was in existence for almost 18 years, from what I understand. And about 10 years ago, that market went away. And here, the hope is to bring that market back, but to actually give it an opportunity to be a larger community event. Because one of the things to me, when I look at the farmer's market, the farmer's market is my community, right? But it's also the community's community. So when you look at what we do in Auburn, it's not the placer farmer's market. It's the old town Auburn farmer's market, what it's always been known as. The Fountains is the Fountains farmer's market. This is, or would be, historic downtown Lincoln's farmer's market. And as one of those entities that by regulation can hold an actual certified farmer's market permit, the entire operation becomes my responsibility. And under state law, I am held personally responsible for what the vendors do. I do have to pull county permits with both Environmental Health and the Ag Department, and we do pull those. And to that extent, all of the vendors that come are vetted to the highest standard that's allowed by law. And that's because I take that liability and that responsibility I have to my consumers and the community very seriously. One of the things, and I get asked to put on farmers markets in a lot of places and I turn it down. One of the things that really impressed me with this proposal was that here I had what I'd always wished we had as the president of Placer Grown, and the Foothill Farmers Market. And that was all of a sudden a community and a community of business members that came to me and said, hey, we want to do this. We want to support it. Because a lot of times we're looked at as the enemy. I'll be honest with you. You know, we're coming into town. We're setting up more like any other event, right? Our vendors are coming in. They're taking money away from the businesses. That is not the intent here. When you look at the fountains and when you look at Auburn, we operate and support those businesses in the community. In the fountains, I could bring in food trucks all day long. We don't allow it. And we don't allow it because our role there is to get our customers to come and not just experience the market, but also experience what's there at the fountains, to stay and play, to stay and shop, to stay and eat. Whole Foods, years ago, we were the first thing that operated in that parking lot. We moved up the street from Trader Joe's. Whole Foods went in front of the city of Roseville town council and admitted to the fact that we boost their sales $100,000 on a Tuesday. Tuesday is the slowest day in the grocery world. Any boost they can get to their sales is great. And that is because the customers come, and they go into Whole Foods, and they buy everything else that they need. And they go to those restaurants and eat lunch. That Pete's that's on the corner, if any of you are familiar with it, it's one of the highest-grossing Pete's in Northern California, in that district. And it's because of the Tuesday. So we bring that aspect to the community. The intent is to really see what we can do to support the community, right? To use Bearman's Plaza as a place for service organizations and different community groups to showcase what they do to really share themselves with the community, whether it be the Arts Council, whether it be the library, whether it be whoever else we can kind of bring to the table that fits that whole overall appearance of what a true community event should be. And then when you look at F Street, F Street's purpose is to not just bring agriculture back into downtown Lincoln, but also to bring some unique products and also give the businesses and restaurants here the opportunity to showcase themselves to a populace that hopefully we're going to bring in. Hopefully, we're not just going to bring in a populace that's right here around South Lincoln. Hopefully, we're going to turn this into a destination event, which is truly what a farmer's market and a community event needs to survive. So when you look at it, one of the reasons to ask for the, and I'll be honest, I didn't even know about this policy until a few days ago about a repetitive event. But one of the reasons to ask for a fee waiver is that unlike a normal event, we don't charge $100 or a couple hundred dollars every time a vendor appears. We try and keep our costs at a minimal so that our vendors reoccur. Because the success of the market in a community event is based upon the fact that your businesses and the vendors can continue to operate on a weekly basis. So typically what we try and do is limit the startup part of it. And in all honesty, fees the city has are pretty heavy. We don't pay fees anywhere else we go. City of Auburn, pretty much it's a hands-off policy. When you look at traffic control for the market that occurs on Saturday, as the operator, that's all on me. The City of Auburn does not contribute anything to that. They do have recently installed garbage cans in the parking lot there, the jury parking lot that we use. But that's about the extent of our interaction with them. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have interaction because I love interaction. You know, the more support we can get, it's good for us. But I would really love the fact that the city would come forward like the businesses have done. And what I've heard from the residents in the area who are already making the trip to the fountains on a Tuesday morning to shop, who are coming up to Auburn on a Saturday to shop, I would love for the city to do what they can to support us in trying to get this effort off the ground. I'm really enthused. It's been a long time since I've been this enthused about opening a farmers market. And like I said, I get hit by a lot of applications. And I'm really enthused by the fact that it's been a good group of individuals and business owners, the chamber, to actually get to know in kind of what is really a pressure situation here, because we're trying to do this fast, right? I went to two meetings, and so you'll do this for us. No. The third meeting, no, you're not listening. We're asking you to do this. So I said yes, and here I am. So I guess mostly what it comes down to is your support, and hopefully that's forthcoming. Do you have any questions for me?

Thank you very much, Bob. Questions for my colleagues first? OK.

Thank you.

OK. Any questions from the audience? Cards?

Hey, Mayor, did you want Nicole to come up and talk about the other?

Hi, I just hope that you guys support us. We really want to bring this to downtown. We wanna support our businesses in historical downtown. We wanna support our community. We want, there's a lot of service clubs and non-profits that fill the hole in our community that there's so many people that don't know about them we want an opportunity to share with our community what those service clubs do how many holes they fill because it's crazy to me when i mention we have a museum we have this people are like we do and so that that's sad i want to be able to bring that to the community's attention and help fill those holes so i just hope that you all support us and I'm grateful that you gave Bob an opportunity to talk about what he can do because he's a really amazing guy.

Do you have any other questions?

Any other part of the presentation that I've missed?

No, that's it, Mr. Mayor. When you move on to public comment, we will make you aware that we placed at your dais a copy of an official position statement from the Downtown Lincoln Association regarding the fee waiver.

I do want to say one thing about the whole fee waiver is that I have done a lot of events in downtown. I cleaned up trash in a city parking lot the other day that never got cleaned up after 4th of July.

I love our community.

I feel like we will clean up after ourselves. We don't need that support. If it comes down to it, eventually if this blows up like Tuesday night in Roseville and we need more support from the city services then we will come I mean you'll say hey we need you need trash bags you need this you need that we're willing to talk about it going forward that's all thank you thanks Nicole

Mayor, one thing I just want to add, because there's been an interesting process, because just to kind of put some context, it's in your report, but I think it's super important to remember that prior to about a year ago, we had... a very loose policy related to how we managed events downtown. There was really no, we, we, our special events committee might say no to certain events, but it was usually from a safety perspective, you know, portions of Lincoln Boulevard have been proposed to be shut down. There's problems with that, you know, things like that. And then we were approached by a large group of business businesses that are in the downtown and they had sort of expressed some frustration that they were kind of an event overload. And they felt that, um well some of them brought value some of them didn't and there were and so we put together a policy um that i actually think is pretty clear about what the council said they're going to allow and not allow and one of the things was um making sure that events um you know dates that are being reserved for events were not being swallowed up by just a couple people and and also this kind of, you may recall like a philosophical discussion about like, what would you want your downtown to be? Do you want it to be a place where there's always an event every single day or, and what's the value of that? And so you landed on a number of the policies that we've been trying to kind of hold to since then. The reason there, there has to be for virtually all policies and staff decisions and ability to appeal to the And so Nita, when she was taking these folks through the process, got to a place where it even exceeded what authority you gave me to kind of make some reasonable decisions. And so that's why it's in front of you tonight. What I can tell you, and it's the sort of tone of the letter from the DLA, which is supportive of the event, but wanting to understand how do we determine who gets a fee waiver and who doesn't, and shouldn't there be a really specific rubric for deciding that? You can do that and we can develop that for you. I will just tell you that it will get broken and it will get broken again because each and every event is unique and different into itself. And there might be other spillover benefits from approving something and providing some support from the city that might be a priority of the councils at some point in the future. I'll just say this, the difference between this proposal and many others that would have great arguments as well is is that this is, for the moment, is an unproven concept that has the potential for some benefits for the downtown that hasn't been tested here, at least in the last, what, Bob, 10 years, 15 years? um and and so um our perspective from a staff level was that it was worthy of your consideration if only that it is a little bit novel and unique at least for the downtown and and um a more consistent kind of called a mini event versus taste of lincoln or something like that that's a much larger production so i just want to make sure you had the context for that because we've heard a lot in the last week at least i have of folks kind of trying to figure out how much pliability does this policy have, or is it set in stone? And we'll administer it any way the council wants. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that when you get a no from me or from Nita, it's not no because it's my personal perspective. It's because what is written on the page, and I'm trying my best to follow it.

Thank you. And thank you, Sean. Very good perspective. Thank you very much.

Um, Mr. Mayor, we did not receive it. Are you asking for a public comment? Okay. Mr. Mayor, we did not receive any speaker cards for this general business 15 a item. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make, uh, provide public comment on this 15? If you could please come to the podium, state your name.

Hello, council. My name is Ricky woods and I'm a 2026 graduate from Lincoln high school. I come to speak mainly about what the recently graduated class and also many of the young adults in Lincoln would like to see. Third spaces. Somewhere between practice, home, and whatever jobs we may have, there's not much to do in Lincoln, and I think the farmer's market is an excellent opportunity for that. Libraries are only open at odd hours, and there isn't a lot of social time that you can get where you don't have to pay for it. So I think if we had a farmer's market every Tuesday, it's a great opportunity for community to join together. You get everyone from different backgrounds and whatever interests you have in order to come together on at least one night a week. And I think it would be an excellent opportunity for the community. That's mostly all I have. Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else in the audience would like to meet? Please state your name at the podium, please.

Hello, my name is Madeline Blackthorn. I am also a recent graduate from Lincoln High School. I spent four years in the FFA program, so I know how great our Lincoln FFA program is with educating students about agriculture. I think adding a farmer's market to Lincoln can show them the sales sides of agriculture. We have a great high school farm. It shows you how to produce and get the commodity, but how to sell it to customers is something that we're not really taught. For me personally, I internship at a farm right now, and I know that I got a closer relationship with other farmers in Lincoln through the farmer's market at Fowler's, and that's how I was able to open up my community and learn about that. And as someone who's also going to college to study sustainable agriculture, I think that the farmer's market is a great opportunity for young entrepreneurs and people who want to learn how to create a business, especially based on agriculture, which I think is a great and a beautiful thing in Lincoln. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else in the audience would like to speak? Please state your name, Mr. Siddle.

Mr. Siddle, Mr. Mayor, council, city staff. Something that has not come up with this farmer's market, it is a non-profit endeavor that has not come up. Every penny that we make outside of the expenses will go back into the community. That is why we're asking for the fee weight.

Just a clarification that the organization is not a nonprofit entity. That's why it's not listed on our report that way. What this group does with the money that they make does have a benefit to the community, but is up to them.

All of the monies will go back into one of the organizations that

benefit the community. We just had to make the distinction between a non-profit and a non-profit.

It's a non-profit. It's a not-for-profit organization.

Thank you, Kevin.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to speak on this general business item? You can please state your name at the podium.

My name is Joe Varm, and I'm lead singer and guitarist for Lincoln's number one band, the Blue Jays. Thank you very much. I'm also a brick and mortar business owner in historic downtown Lincoln, and I support this project. This is culture coming from the community. It's sprouting up right before you. So there you go. Thanks.

Thank you.

No, well, the presentation portion is over.

So technically, just for the record, he was during presentation, so if he wants to make a public comment, he could, because I messed up. I was thinking it was that. So technically, you can make a public comment. It just can't be a continuation of the presentation because you already did the presentation.

Okay.

Any other audience who would like to speak? I will move on to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment on this general business item 15A? I do not see any hands raised. Mayor Pearl, there are no additional speakers.

Thank you very much, Jane. Okay. Questions and comments from my colleagues?

Okay. So first of all, I'll say that I'm very supportive of the farmer's market. I think it's a great idea. And I'm hoping that we can get to a place where they're able to to do it and be successful. I am a little concerned about changing the policy that we made not too long ago. So I think we need to talk through the four times a year event, how we're gonna get there and make it fair to other organizations. And just really quickly, to clarify, we understand that what you're doing is non-profit, but I think the point that was being made is that you have not created an official legal non-profit where you're restricted in how you can use the money. You can say non-profit, but that doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want to it and nobody would ever know. So that's the difference there. The other thing is that the farmer's market and the fountains are in a closed parking lot, correct? So they're not on the streets. There's no street closures. There's no law enforcement needed. No public works, really. So that's an easy thing. So that's comparing apples and oranges. I think that doesn't help us.

So...

I am i'm also really concerned about the. animosity between Chamber DLA and the new brick and mortar like I want everybody to be successful, I want to support as much as possible. So i'm hoping that whatever we do here will help bring entities together not cause more division so and that's not a indictment or criticism on anybody I just. We hear these concerns and we need our downtown and our business community to be, what was that? Cohesive? Well, yes, but we want everybody to be successful and work together, yeah, and be productive. So I guess my question is, I'm looking at the numbers here. So the estimated 5,500, that is... All together for the 20 weeks, correct? Okay. So, and the $2,400, that's public works costs for street closure? That's what we'd, that would cost us to pay our staff to do that?

Yeah, that street closure fee, which includes, Matt can probably clarify better than I can, but staff time, also the barricades, and it includes the cleanup of garbage in the area. Okay.

I understand Nicole said that they would pick up all the garbage. Although I, yeah, I've been involved enough of these things to know that, you know, good intentions, like it might end up being a lot more work than you think it is, Nicole, but I like what you said about Well, if something happens, we can talk about it in future, right? If you're not able to, if there's a problem, we can talk about it. So I guess I don't really have a lot of questions. My comments are just, I'm concerned about fairness. I'm concerned about changing our, because we made that four time a year rule for a very specific reason. We had a lot of issues. And so, although I love the farmer's market, I'm just curious how we're going to get there to the 20 weeks after we just made this policy. And also, to Sean's point, And to the DLA's point of being very clear about who gets a fee waiver and who doesn't. So I guess I do have one question. Sean, how many times in the last couple years and for who have we waived the plaza fee for or waived the street closure fee for?

It really depends. Sometimes, see, the difference, Anita and I were actually discussing this a couple weeks ago. it's not that big of a deal for me in the authority that you give me to waive things once for a one-off event that's unique in some way or that the impact is so minimal that we don't think that it's appropriate fee to charge. Those are easy because it's one-time. And the difference in this instance is this is many times and a little bit more than a one-off event. And so, you know, the problem with the policy, and there's no way we could have foreseen this because we weren't getting requests in the last 10 years really for weekly or, you know, twice monthly events. That wasn't a thing, at least from individual promoters. It was usually, you know, Four to six a year at the most was an individual doing. I'm sure they would have done more. But we have our chief's team and other chief's team, they all participate in our special event committee. And what they would tell you is we are inundated almost always with event requests, mostly in the downtown but not completely. And so we're constantly kind of juggling scheduling and making sure that everybody gets an opportunity to do the thing they want to do. And so the policy really couldn't have foreseen that something a little bit different and unique. And that's really the problem with policy, which is why you exist. So that where it doesn't line up, we can come back and go, okay, this is different. There's a different intrinsic benefit here. What do you want to do with it? And so I hear the concerns about fairness. We care about that the most because we're the ones that enforce it. but I don't think that it dilutes your ability to exercise discretion if you think that it's a valuable net benefit to the community that's unique in some way. If this was... you know, an event that we're used to here in Lincoln, a craft fair, for example, and they want to do a craft fair every single week, you'd probably say, I would think you would have a tough time making the nexus that that's a unique thing that we need to be, you know, because what you're doing when you waive a fee is in a way you are subsidizing the event. And so in order to do that, you have to find that there's a public benefit to doing so. I'm not sure if that helps.

How many times we have waived fees for people and who that was?

I'd say that on a yearly basis for minor things, complete waiver of something rarely, almost never. small-scale waivers, some community events that are city-sponsored. In other words, we do ourselves with the chamber.

Well, that doesn't count.

But in terms of events that we're not party to or have any control over, I would say almost never, and if I've done it, it would only be to supplement the event because they had trouble. We've helped with port-a-potties at times and things like that.

I guess what I'll say is that I'm at the moment, and I'm anxious to hear what everybody else has to say at the moment, I'm okay with us tweaking the number of times per year so they can start the farmer's market and see how it goes. I'm a little stuck on the waiver of the fees the whole time, but I'm not saying I can't get there. I'm just a little stuck on that at the moment, so.

Well, you have to convince me that this is a good idea. I love farmers markets. I think that they are a benefit. And they increase foot traffic. It's great for a local economy. And probably before a year ago, it would have been, I would have bet everything that this was just a heck yes um my concern is similar to council member andrea is is that i'm not looking at it as do i support it do i not support it of course i support it i want it to be successful i think it's going to be amazing i'm looking at it through a lens of stewardship of taxpayer dollars and And the precedence of being fair and and then the recent history that we experienced where we. We created this policy and. it became an issue amongst a lot of the downtowns that were unforeseen and you touched on some of them and it ended up being, It ended up being a lot on operating demands for our staff. So it wasn't just subsidizing permitting or waiving fees. It was all of the extra costs outside of public works, which I think that that probably doesn't cover much. all of that because it's a lot more than that um we've kind of gone over you know rough numbers of what it costs the city for these events um but then the meetings that we had to have and um and uh and of course you know we're gonna have discussions and work through it because that's also our job but to what extent do we put ourselves in the middle when we have other priorities and obligations that probably would take a front seat to to an event so that's kind of my concern is that you know is there is there other is there partner buy-ins with the rest of the downtown has everybody been Have you had conversations with all of the people down there, the restaurants and the people that were upset with other events in the past? Okay, good. I'm assuming that all that due diligence has been done because that creates a lot of extra time and work and money. And then I'm sure also you've just done your analysis on competition in the area. You run other ones, but there's the one over on Fowler. So do you foresee that that's going to be any issue or it's going to be healthy competition? Or how does that work? Because it's pretty close in proximity, but this is a better location.

Fowler, please go. You know there's always a little bit of healthy competition that goes on between the farmers markets, I think the difference here, and one of the only reasons I really one of the main reasons why I said yes. To the group was that we have a large. percentage of, it appears to be the population between Rockland and here and around Lincoln itself that are commuting, that who are actively seeking to shop at a farmer's market or a community event after work, who maybe go to church on Sunday morning or go someplace else and don't necessarily have the time to make the trek up to Auburn. on a Saturday morning either to shop because of sports and things like that. So this is kind of that niche where it falls into. I can tell you that when the market was in operation here, a few of my vendors who did sell there were quite excited to hear it was gonna come back, a few of the farmers, the local farmers. Or there was a potential that it was going to come back. So I think that that's kind of the niche we're falling into.

With their why just forgot and just remembered, but isn't there one in some cities to.

Some cities that's very studies extremely seasonal runs June through through September yeah and it's yeah it's one of my vendors, who you know is one of the farms from. Okay.

Yeah, and do we know about how much this could potentially cost us over the waiving of the $5,000 and change?

You know, my perspective is that assuming that what has been set up by Bob and Nicole Holds it'll be relatively minimal, not substantive, relates to our budget. It's why one of the things I've kind of shared with everybody is that this really isn't a money decision. It's not. it's not substantive enough to move the needle for us, even if they paid all the fees, it won't change anything significantly. So really it's more about whether or not you think that the waiver, setting aside the finances for a moment, is reasonable given the other things that this is going to develop and bring in the downtown. And one idea, I would have gone through it super in detail with Bob or Nicole yet, is, you know, I think there are, There's a lot, but Bob and I had a lengthy conversation the other night. I didn't know him, and Nicole put in touch with him. And boy, did I learn a lot about Farmer's Market in that 40 minutes. And that was cool. But it was, from my perspective, it was really good because, as I've shared, I think, with some of you, I've seen a lot of Farmer's Market's concepts come through my career. And they always start with the best of intentions. And they don't always start with a professional that actually knows how to run a farmer's market and all the rules and laws that you have to follow. And so once that was sort of set aside, Bob said, look, I got that. I've been doing it forever. The bigger question for me was, how do we draw a line between what this is versus all the other things that are requested of the downtown community? And from my perspective, at least, I do see it as different. It's limited in time, limited in scope. It's a, you know, people might come and hang out for some of the entertainment and the fun, but you're probably not going to, I don't go to farmer's markets for six hours. I go for 40 minutes, get what I need, hang around, buy some stuff I probably shouldn't, I probably hope won't go down. you know, bad in my fridge, and then go home, right? And so it is a bit different from what we're used to. And so one idea that we had kind of thought about internally a little bit is maybe you do a check-in. If council's inclined to try this out, maybe you check in after, you know, a month or two months of real operations, once it's spooled up, and check back in. How's it doing? Do we have operational issues? Are we incurring costs that we didn't think we were going to? Is it actually working out just fine? And we can sort those issues out as we move along so that, you know, obviously Bob and Cole want to be successful in this. And I think it would be reasonable if the council were to say, hey, look, we want to make sure it's successful too, which is why we want to have some, you know, check-ins with you to make sure this still makes sense for us. If for some reason it's not working out great. Just giving you another idea if you wanted to mull it over.

I've been pretty on board with putting this together and appreciate everything that Bob has to say and his experience. One of the things that I did mention that I believe that Holly brought up is the stewardship of somebody's got to pay for it, right? If we don't wait, there are some costs. And I believe that if it does what it should for the community, that that's a cost that I'm willing to bear. But I think that if we put a, like the check-in, I think that it should be, you know, let's do six months or something, right? Because you got to prove the concept, even if you have, super knowledgeable person running the whole thing. You still have to approve it. You still have to have it set up. You still have to have a check-in because there's costs to stuff that are unforeseen for any event that you're putting on. I'm supportive of it, but I would recommend maybe a fee waiver for six months and then come back and revisit. If it is successful as we want it to be for the vibrant downtown and what we're looking for, then continue it.

Jonathan?

One quick question on that.

So is the fee waiver something that you feel like you need for the full six months to get up and running? And then if it is successful in the following six months, you are comfortable agreeing to pay the fees? Where did you land on? How does that work?

I'm going to be honest with you. We got into this with Tahoe City probably about 15 years ago. And that was one of our longest farmers markets running anything. to the point where the city hit us with $20,000 in fees. Farmer's market is not sustainable at that point. It's probably not even sustainable at $10,000 in fees. You know, right now what we're looking at, it's not going to, at that point for me, it becomes, as a business owner, it becomes a financial decision, right? Do I see, I have to maintain, I have to pay fees to the state, I have permit fees, I have insurance. I have to pay a farmer's market manager to be here because I have to have a person in charge every night who's not me. So when I started looking at those costs, which kind of caught me a little unawares, I'll be honest with you, it comes down to pencil and paper and whether or not they are sustainable in the long term. If it's not a successful event, they're not sustainable. If it is successful, I'll be honest with you, it's marginal. And it's marginal because of the cost we're all seeing. One of the things that has come up is trash, just real quick. So what most people don't realize is that the condition of your county permits, as a permit holder with the county, environmental health, every vendor is required to haul away their own trash at an event. So that should be something that should already be being enforced. I mean, as the farmer's market manager, my vendor, they get holy hell if they leave trash behind. I mean, it all goes with them in the car. It leaves. So, you know, there are things like that that we are automatically responsible for. But as to as the long term, as to whether or not those fees are, you know, I'm not somebody who says that you shouldn't get service for a fee. But what is the service you're going to get for it? And how does it pencil out, in some ways, to the benefit of all? And the intent here, too, is not, I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life. I'm 58 years old. And I told them that. I said, my intent here, and my intent when I originally was introduced to Nicole and Tori and the group to talk to them, was because I teach direct farm marketing at Sierra College every spring. And I have for eight years. And so for me, it's about the big business incubation. You know, that's really the thing that jazzes me with the whole thing is how do I help these businesses incubate what they want to do in a place like the Fountains or Auburn? How can I help the other businesses that surround me incubate what they want to do with their storefronts? How can we contribute to each other? So the thing with this, too, is how can I help this group, the chamber, the city, incubate this event so that at some point, five years from now, maybe I say, all right, now you're going to give me somebody that's going to spend a year with me shadowing me and learning 20 years of what rules and regulations you have to conform to so that they can do it properly for the benefit of the city and not run afoul of it. Because like Sean has said, I've seen a lot of farmers markets fail. I've had farmers markets fail. I've seen concepts fail. I've seen people get off. To be honest with you, we have markets operating in the county right now that are in arrears to the state for tens of thousands of dollars because they're not paying their fees. They will eventually be shut down. I'm not going to be associated with that type of operation. It has to be there. I'm in business. And, you know, and farmers, it's one of the things that everybody forgets about with farmers. Farmers have a hard time. A lot of them have a hard time making money because they think they're supposed to be poor, but it shouldn't be that way. You know, if they're not in it to make money, then they shouldn't. There's thought process that has to go.

Just for context and proportionality, when you were talking about 10 and 20, you're talking about annual. $10,000, $20,000, $20,000 in toxicity. Was that $20,000 in fees annually?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it was... So we closed the market, and eventually they brought one of our farmers back to run it. And the fees up there now are getting back up to the point where that farmer is contemplating shutting the market down again because it's unsustainable. So there's just... There's checks and balances there. But it's the open conversation, right? If something's going on, it's like we were talking about how to mitigate the impact to the grass at Beerman's Plaza. Well, we don't put vendors on the grass. We do what we can to protect it. It's that open conversation between us, what we're doing, and the city, and saying, hey, we notice this. When we first started at the fountains, I'd get the property manager would send me a picture. The groundskeeper found garbage in the island. Okay, it was from one of our vendors. Well, we don't know that for sure. All right, we'll take care of it. So we go around and we get all the vendors to collect, you know, make sure their garbage is getting trucked out of there. And it's the same thing in Auburn. We didn't have, to be honest with you, we didn't have garbage cans, city garbage cans in Auburn for years. And why? Because the community itself was dumping mattresses, washing machines, you know, and so we actually had them come in and remove them and they just recently reinstalled it. So I understand all those concerns. It's just when you open a new farmers market, you always look for partners. And hopefully in this case, maybe the city can be a partner.

But a thought just came to me. Kevin was saying that it's a not-for-profit type of a deal. Well, I didn't say you said it was a nonprofit. It's not for profit. And every dollar goes right back into the city, whatever way. I mean, if there are some dollars that can go back into it, maybe those dollars can go back into some fees for future.

And that's the thing, right? You're looking at things. Totally. How can we support each other? And for me, this is an opportunity to do that model that my CEO of Plaster Grown and I always wanted to do. to actually work collaboratively with a city. You look at Davis, look at what's happened in Davis because that city council got behind that market and put that structure that they built in escrow. And every vendor that went to that market until that structure was paid for, paid an extra $2 from their stall fees to pay for that structure. So you start looking about how can you enter into some kind of cooperative agreement to do that, to build something within the city of Lincoln that preserves the historic nature of this place. And don't get me wrong, I didn't grow up here. I'm from New Jersey, so I'm very forthright that way. My wife grew up here. Her and her sister rode rodeo at the rodeo grounds. We used to sell our products to Rainbow Market. Miss it to this day. It was one of our best clients. But it's about trying to help preserve that rural nature and the farms and the landscape and the face and the businesses that are here and help them do that.

And yeah, I bring in what's called my professional vendors and stuff like that.

But these are not outside the realm of possibility. It's what those fees are that could be outside the realm of possibility, right? And that's a conversation that I think can only be had over time. And so once again, the ask is, give us the opportunity to see what we can do, and then let's reinvestigate this. I would love the opportunity to do a year-round farmer's market in Lincoln. Whether or not that's possible in the long term, who knows? Right now, we're looking at, even if you okayed this tonight, it's going to be two weeks before I can get county permits. So we look at July 30th, right? Which typically, it's a horrible time to open a farmer's market. You know, seasons are winding down and stuff. But we've got farmers that are ready to go. We've got vendors that are ready to go. So we've got that support. Then we're coming into your guys' busy holiday season here with events. The intent is not to step on anybody's toes. So we wind down the week before Thanksgiving, that last Thursday. We're also dependent upon the weather because of liability insurance. We're dependent upon the wind. So there's a lot of what ifs. We may not be physically able to open every Thursday night. If the wind's over 20 miles an hour, liability insurance lapses. We can't hold a market. So we've got all these concerns that are at play, too. Sorry, I probably... I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thanks. So I share many of the thoughts of my colleagues on this particular item. The waiver of the four times a year is a little easier for me to get to because of the nature of the event. You've got to give them a runway to do it reoccurring to build up the habit to go to it. So that part I don't have a problem with. The fee waiver I'm still having a little challenge with. I think... I have empathies to some of the points that the DLA made, and I understand that a rubric, Sean, is going to be, you know, difficult to do, but I feel like having some criteria around wholesale, you know, it's the one-off thing versus whether it's they, you know, the event holder taking some responsibility for services like they're going to take responsibility for the trash and putting up and down the barricades and reducing it. Maybe that's part of the rubric. I don't I don't think we're going to solve it from the dais today on it, but I do think if we do have some kind of waiver related to this, I feel like we do need to have a follow-up conversation about some context around it and give people a path to it. Say, well, if you do this, this, and this, then yeah, we can waive it because that's what they did. Something along those lines. I also wanted to echo something Holly said about the partnership with the DLA and the chamber and the city in you know, ensuring how that continues moving on, because I understand that that may not have been as cohesive as it would, my preference would be. on that. But so I'm fine. So kind of the recap for me is I'm fine with the waiving of the four weeks. I'm probably okay with the fee waiver as long as we're having an ongoing conversation both here about what that policy is to do it moving forward in a wholesale way, and then they can kind of adopt into that policy. So If there are actual costs, then maybe it isn't the full waiver over time. It's a little bit because to the point earlier, it's kind of a fair deal. And again, I don't know we can solve that tonight, but I think that would be the path that would be my preference.

I've got a couple of questions. Number one, I understand that There will not be any bathrooms provided, but that any of the people who need to use restrooms will go into businesses, and that's been cleared by the businesses downtown. So that's a question. Yeah, come on up, Nicole. I got a couple questions for you. And then also on the street closures, but on the barricades, I don't know whether you've got the barricades or you can use our barricades. You're going to be setting it up. And while I understand that Bob, I'm sure, as a professional, is going to make sure that his clients are going to be picking up after themselves, there's still residual trash that's going to go around, and who's going to be responsible for that?

We will make sure there is no trash in the plaza or on the streets.

And then how about on the bathrooms?

The bathrooms, we have talked to all the businesses that will be open and the bathrooms will be available for all of their customers.

A couple of questions I saw on your site plan over here. You've got from 5th to 6th Street on both sides of S Street. It looks like there's quite a number of stalls over there. And then you have a number of spots in the plaza. What's going on in the plaza? And Nicole, you and I have had a conversation about community groups going in there and exactly what's your vision for that?

So just nonprofits. I've talked with the Art League about being involved. They're super excited. I've talked with the library about being involved. Like I said, just a lot of nonprofits, the museum, I talked with them about, And then the nonprofits, as far as like the Kiwanis, I've talked with them. They want to host a booth at least once a month in the plaza for literacy and handing out books. The Rotary, I've talked with some of them. They would like to. And so I think getting the community involved with the nonprofits and the service clubs in the plaza, plus there'll be a stage with some music and some kids' activities. OK, so there won't be any vendors in there.

This would all be non-profit cycling through whatever seems to work. One of the things that I have, and I'm just looking at this as kind of maybe a compromise. Well, first of all, if I just do the math, $5,500 divided by 20 weeks divided by, I don't know, 40 vendors is $6.60 per vendor per week, which doesn't seem to be a lot. One compromise might because i'm sensitive, I think all of us are to to where do you stop that slippery slope as your as your other people come in and and and request waivers also because there's the the waiver fee for the plaza and there's also the waiver fee for the. for F Street closure. And I'm wondering whether a pathway here might be we waive the fee for the plaza, the closure fee for F Street gets paid if you're doing it on a quarterly basis, on a check-in, you can pay it in arrears. I mean, just so that there's a continuity here that we say, yes, we understand, we recognize it. And the impact on any one particular vendor or Bob or who's ever getting involved is truly minimal. on a weekly basis. I'm just tossing that out as an idea. What we're trying to do here, as you understand, is thread the needle. Because we all love the concept of the farmer's market and bringing people downtown.

I understand that. One of the things when you look at the site map is those spaces aren't filled. That's based upon what the potential could be over time. And that's one of the things with a market. Market ebb and flows. And until it opens, And until the market opens and you get a little bit of that track record, you're not going to fill those spaces. The intent here is to open big, right? So I've already had vendors that I've twisted the arms a little bit. So you're trying to open with as many tents as you can. Are we going to fill that space opening night? No, I don't think so. And so that's what I look at as the long-term potential. One of the things that happened in Auburn and happened in, it's a bad situation to have, right? We have no space. We're out of space. There's always a waiting list. I'm hoping the same thing happens here. So it's a long-term proposition. But as to what you're saying, like I said, I don't think we're unopened to negotiation here, to trying to figure out what works. And I love the check-in ideas and stuff like that. And we don't want to be bad partners. We don't want to come into the city and set up and leave, right? And the vendors themselves are... Some of my vendors are going to be the best supporters of your restaurants and stuff like that because they're tired of eating market food. So they're going to want to go to the restaurant. They're going to want to go to the taquera, you know. And one of the other things we're talking about here is we're not going to bring in Mexican food. We're setting up right in front of the taquera who's excited about having this event there. So why am I going to bring in somebody to compete with them? You know, it makes no sense. So, you know, it's... The conversation just needs to unfold. And I understand if this had been before the policy, it would have been a little bit easier probably, right?

Would you be open to a situation that you open, we circle back after a quarter, we go, to me, waive the fee on the plaza because that's going to be all for nonprofits, local nonprofits. and we talk about how things are going, but we're not waiving the fee for the street closure. We're going to be talking about it and coming up with a negotiation agreement after a quarter and after half a year, something along those lines.

Boy, you know, knowing what the... There's a reason why I don't just run farmer's markets. I work three other jobs. I also work part-time for UC Davis because I subsidize, right? So I'd have to kind of get an idea of what some of those numbers would look like. I think in the long term, I'd be a dumb business person if I didn't.

Well, the only number we're looking at right now is 2,400. Yeah, and you know, that's... And that's over that long period of time.

And so... I guess what I would ask then at that point is, so we're talking about that for the street closure, right?

Correct.

So is the city going to put out the barricades for that $2,400?

That would be included in the cost, yeah.

So now maybe we have something to talk to, right?

That, in fact, is what the fee pays for.

So service is a fee. So service for a fee. So that's the other thing here is that this is, because of the way the process is unfolding and stuff like that, it's been a lot of, a little bit, I don't want to say shocking off for me, but it was, I was, I texted Sean the other night because I received an invoice for $4,900 for permit processing. And I was like, what is this? So there's a lot here that we're looking at. But no, I wouldn't be adverse to that. But it's service for a fee.

I have a quick question. Something I just thought about. You were talking about how you've got to go to Placer County and deal with their permitting fees. Is this something also that you're approaching with them? Is there room also to negotiate some of their costs?

Oh, with the county?

Yeah. No.

Okay.

No.

And that's the other thing. Permit costs just went up substantially. Right. Well, I know.

We heard about that. And we're trying to help mitigate that and work with that, too. And so there's that whole dynamic.

The county, yeah. And have no doubt, we will be inspected by state and county agencies. Both of them will be here. I see inspections quite a bit in Auburn and at Roseville on a regular basis by multiple agencies.

So have you tried to have these conversations with county board of supervisors? For 20 years, yes.

Yeah, for 20 years.

And they're not willing to.

The main permit entity, right, is environmental health. So when you look at the ag permit that I have to hold, and only certain entities can hold the agricultural permit for a certain amount, by farmers market because of the right agriculture in Placer County, all those permits for me are free. Same thing with a CPC for a certified producer in the county. They're free. However, environmental health, first thing they'll tell you is they get a very small portion of the general budget from the county. So they have to self-fund, right? So they self-fund through fees and permits. So they're very reluctant to have that conversation. Other counties, what I do, what's done with farmers markets is there's a separate process for the permits. Because typically it's the same vendor over and over again every year, right? So they get a renewal. Our county refuses to have that conversation. They treat every vendor. So every permit in the county expires June 30th. Every permit renews July 1st. You cannot apply for your new permit renewal. They won't remind you until two weeks prior till June 30th. As a market operator, I can't get my permits cleared till every one of my vendors cleared. So you look at the process right now in Auburn and Roseville, I'm operating without a permit right now because they have been taking their time at the county clearing all the permits through for existing vendors. So that's a liability that I have to absorb and operate on. So yeah, the negotiation with the county, as president of Placer Grown in the Foothill Farmers Market, God, if somebody could help me with that over the 20 years with that, we would have loved it.

thought that we were working on that and there was a conversation that was going on with our supervisor and remember with the event with the chamber we were trying to we connected them and then because that was the the day after they raised the fees was our event and then everything just kind of went yeah i think it was related to their um

their food permitting process for prepared foods. And there was some frustration that they raised fees quite significantly. And it wasn't kind of like Bob was saying about planning for events. Like it wasn't anticipated that that was going to occur is my memory. Yeah. I don't remember what happened with that to be honest.

The other part of it that's crazy, right. And so you have, so I'll use the Takiyara as an example. So they have a permit with Placer County environmental health, right. If they come off their patio into the street or on the sidewalk, they're no longer covered by that permit. They have to pull what's called a TFF, a temporary food facility permit. So you've got a group of businesses here that want to have booth space out at the farmer's market. They're going to have to pull separate permits Bob, we're getting way too into the weeds.

So do we have any other comments?

Sorry I drug you in there. It's my fault. I can go. I went for it. I always have more curiosity.

I was just going to throw something out and see where. So how does the group feel about waiving the four-week limit through December of 26, waiving the plaza rental through December of 26, waiving the app fee? waiving the F Street closure for three months, checking in in three months. You're going to take some load of that barricade set up and take down while we're waiving those fees. But we'll come back in three months and look at it. We'll have another check in in December of 26. And we're going to work on a rubric of how we're going to do this fee waiver thing in a consistent way moving forward.

That's what I was going to say is that as long as we can come back and I appreciate the DLA's letter, but have some kind of clear, consistent, transparent process for who and how and when we waive fees. But I like what you said, John, that's good. I'm good with that.

What is the benefit of only doing the limited on the closure? I missed that, sorry.

We want to check to see if they're actually filling in the gap there, if it's actually costing us, what's actually costing us, right? Kind of check in to see what the expenses are. We were waiving that fee, but is it having a negative impact on city staff, all that.

Following up on the check-in kind of idea halfway through.

And helping them be successful. I'll second. Question?

Sorry. I just still think maybe we just do the whole thing and then reevaluate it instead of just the one-off. I still don't understand why we're just doing that piece part-time. We don't just try it all and then

Well, let me get off for three months. And because the plaza part is attached to our nonprofits, you know, the mayor was sort of like feeling like, okay, there, that isn't where the moneymaking part really is where there's revenue associated to that part. So I kind of lead taking his lead said, okay, well, the six month that this staff report is talking about is through December ish. And then we talked about doing a check-in to kind of see how things are going and you know, part of the waiver of that part for the three months is kind of putting some onus on them to do some of that lifting, and we can kind of circle back and go, they're like, nope, charge me the fee because I want you to do the barricades. And then we do the next three months that way because he wants the fee for service because it makes more sense for him than to have the manpower to do the thing that would relieve the fee.

Okay, so we have moved and seconded. Any final discussion? I think it's going to be great.

It's amazing how long we can talk over $5,500. Well, that was not the issue.

It wasn't the money. It was the

Hey, Mayor, just before we move on, I didn't want to interrupt the discussion. There are certain things that just for liability reasons the city will have to take on that they wouldn't be able to do so. So when we just talk about stuff, I just wanted to be part of the minutes and the records that are certain things for liability reasons the city will still have to do.

Okay.

Perfect. Like the actual put-up-up barricades for the street closure.

Good. Okay.

Okay.

15, Bravo. Execute a cooperative funding agreement with Placer County for Sierra College Boulevard and 12 Bridges District. drive signalization intersection improvements. Just to get.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. This item is really pertaining to the improvements along the Sierra College Boulevard corridor from State Route 193 to south of the 12 Bridges intersection. Staff has been working on this project actually predominantly my public works director colleague has been in direct contact with the Placer County public works leadership ever since April of 2024. So I think we're finally at a point where, uh, the item before you tonight is asking for approval, adoption of resolution that helps to fund the project that improves its corridor. And, um, You know, very importantly, that includes signalization of the intersection of State Route 193 at Sierra College Boulevard, as well as signalization of 12 Bridges at Sierra College Boulevard. You know, the project itself is really a offsite improvement obligation of the Bigford development. the way that development agreement was written, the project is not obligated to construct that until they have the 750th building permit. And at the pace of the current development, I don't think we're anywhere close. Last we spoke with Placer County leadership, I think it was well under 200 permits. So therefore, staff was asked to look into whether we can help expedite this project. And just a little more information about the project itself. Let's see, total cost for the project, about $12 million. And the portion that the county and the city are responsible for funding is north of 12 Bridges, inclusive of the intersection. And then south of 12 Bridges will be funded by the SPORTA program, or South Placer Regional Transportation Authority Impact Fee Program. the county staff and city staff have engaged PCTPA and they were successful in procuring and obligating the funding for that portion of the work. And from all communication with the county, they believe they're ready to move forward with this project. So, you know, that's really the gist of the item before you, We believe this is a very, very important corridor because much of our community, you know, does utilize Sierra College Boulevard. And, you know, beyond that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. That's really my presentation.

Just a couple quick ones. One, what fund is the $2.32 million coming from? Where do the money come from to go into that fund? What's its current level? What other obligations does that fund have over the next 24 or 36 months?

I'm going to test my finance director skills. So the answer to your question is that the only place for us to pay for this project is out of our transportation PFE program.

Unfortunately, Matt's department, the streets department, has to live with this year in and year out, just like every city.

Our ability to contribute towards improvement or even maintenance projects from a gas tax perspective and some of the other tools that used to exist for cities is just dwindling away year over year. To put some context on this for everybody that doesn't know, the concern about 12 Bridges and Sierra College is not new. it's been a concerning location for a long time. As Bickford has built, Lincoln has built in Village 1, and Rockland is doing what they're doing, the traffic in that area has increased significantly, and we're now hearing what was once a once-every-so-often kind of complaint. Now it's pretty routine that we're getting that. So when the county, when we sort of lobbied the county, hey, we really need to figure out a way to prioritize this project because if Bickford's going to move slower on their development scale, we may be waiting many years for this project to get improved. And so Council Member Eklund and a number of other council members started to kind of work on asking the county if there was a way for them to accelerate this because we have the least perceived and real opportunity traffic safety issue there. So when they came to us, we had some issues. The first was that no one really knew at the beginning what this was going to cost. We had ideas. We're still not sure. We're not sure what it will cost at the end of the day. The project has not been bid. It's been estimated that And engineers are pretty good at that, but the market is, it's a market, so it can change. And initially, when we had negotiated some of this with the county, they had said, well, you know, some of that responsibility is actually yours. In a vacuum, what would have happened if we didn't have the safety issues, we would have waited a much longer period of time and then eventually made that improvement when we had cash on hand to do so. Being that this is accelerating, one of the problems that we've run into is we have a transportation PFE fund that has, maybe Nita can pull up the balance while I'm looking at this, but it has significant funding in it. Problem is, is we have significant project obligations in it as well. So next year we're going to be building, count them, three roundabouts in and around, in Lincoln. We have Vince McBean Bridge project coming. We have other capacity expansion things that we've been looking at. some of which and many of which are not exactly project obligations necessarily of a project, but people pay in fees and then we go do the work when we build up enough. So this will all come down to timing. We believe we're going to have enough cash on hand to make our obligation payments when the project actually starts to build. And if you read the agreement, one of the things that NEDA ensured that was in there is we don't just send the county $2.3 or $4 million and they bank it. we will pay our proportionate share of invoices as they're being built to Placer County. So then an intersection of this size and location with all the other kind of rage challenges they have, is this a... Let's not take Oak Tree Lane as an example, but is this a year-long construction project?

Is it six months? In conversation with county engineering staff, the bulk of this improvement, as you can probably see, I would say half of the improvement has to do with grading earthwork. They need to bring in a lot of fill. And my understanding is that due to ongoing construction at Bigford itself, there may be availability of fill dirt that they can utilize and they can move quickly on this project. So timing is important. And again, what we're asking for in the item is for authorization of approximately $2.3 million and not to exceed that amount out of the total $12 million. If the numbers come in higher or differently, of course, we're gonna ask the county staff to justify that, but we're hopeful that they can come in within budget or under.

So the financial maneuvering that Nita is reminding me of is that so much of this comes down to timing. Let's say that this project happens a lot faster than we think, and that's great because we need it. We do not have adequate fund balance in the PFE transportation fund to do all the things we're committed to doing and also this project. So the concept that Nita came up with is that we are going to charge it to 248, which is community developments fund, which has a significant fund balance that we've been drawing down to do regional planning efforts and a variety of other things. It's, it's close to $20 million. Um, And the idea would be that this is certainly a regional improvement. And so we haven't had the discussion yet, but I think the correct thing to do would be that over time, PFE transportation, if we're accounting for it correctly, and council agrees during your budget process is going to have to pay back some of that to 248 and that's we could that's something we can discuss later but our marching orders based on the sort of severity of the problem was to find a way to at least put our money into the pocket to the bucket so that the project wasn't further delayed there is alternatives um one alternative which we haven't explored with the county is that they um they bear the cost of the total project and we pay them back as we receive fee revenue to do so over time. But we felt that it was important to try to really put our chips onto the table, so to speak, so there was no impediment, at least on our end, to making sure that the project gets done. So hopefully that answers your question, sort of.

Sort of. Close. I mean, to that point, I'm fine with 248 as long as we pay it back. Like, not part of it, but pay it all back. when we get the fee revenue forward because I wouldn't want... This project is in that program, right?

Did we decide we needed to add it or was it... I don't remember, Matt. Was it in there? It's not in there. It was not conceived when they did the most recent update. And I think it actually is a mistake because... Certainly, if you go back and look at some of the CEQA documents in Village 1, I cannot imagine that some of the upstream traffic improvements would not be mitigation measures that were included in there. So it should be. But here's my philosophy about impact fees and PFE's. is that they're a snapshot in time of what you need. And there's nothing to say that as long, and correct me, Doug, but as long as there is a nexus and regional benefit to the improvement and it's for an enhanced capacity, which this, you can make that argument. This is a widening that's associated with this. that those things can be added in to your PFE programs as you do new updates. We've even funded some things out of PFEs that were not in the plan at all but had a regional benefit and made a note that, hey, next time when we do an update, we got to make sure we're collecting for that. So as long as you're making the reasonable nexus that you're not doing R&R, replacement and rehab, you're doing true capacity expansion, you could use PFE dollars for other purposes, even if they're not listed in the initial report.

yeah just one one small clarification um the northern intersection 193 at shara college boulevard is included in the pfe well bridges is not um but sean is correct when we do update the pfe we should include the entire amount for this work

I'm super supportive of doing it. I'm fine with putting the chips on the table and clearing our responsibility. So we're not an excuse to not do it sooner rather than later. And I'm fine temporarily using 240. I think when the time comes, this needs to be fully funded from the PFE. Just to write that shit.

Yeah, I share the comment about being paid back the city got itself into trouble a couple of years ago by by agreeing to pay backs when there was no possible way to do it. So as long as that there is a there's a path to success on this. I think that's fine. It sounds like it meets the legal test to do that. Certainly needed over there with me.

We're supposed to get reimbursed at the end of the development. Isn't that correct? Like, this is just a temporary, I was under the understanding that we were funding this, that this actually all fell under County Bickford and that we were funding this just to get it started, but we were all going to get reimbursed. That's not the case.

Um, I'm going to have to defer to Matt and or Vin on that. I don't remember whether or not that their project obligation was the complete improvement of that intersection or something less than that.

After their 750th permit trigger...

I never thought that we were... Yeah, I never thought that this was us funding this permanently. I thought this was just us temporarily funding it because Bickford doesn't have to do it until the 750th. We know that's at least a decade out. And the county basically... In my very, very first conversation over a year ago, that was what was proposed back to me to potentially get the project started is only if we would contribute. But we were all going to get reimbursed. We just had to do it earlier because they don't have to yet.

The devil's kind of in the details. It really depends on the sections of improvement we're discussing. Right. So there's widening that occurs here. There's signalized intersection that occurs here. And you may be correct. I don't have that exact detail. My understanding, I think our understanding was based on Sparta's analysis of who's responsible for what here. They've created a percentage share, which is why we're at the 2.4 million, of what Lincoln's impact to this intersection is v. Placer County, to include Bickford. And so the way it was negotiated was our share would have been this. You may be correct that the project, we have to dive the project documents into on Placer County side, but their obligation was the majority of this project, probably not all of it, but the majority of this project. And we would be due fee reimbursement as well so that we're made whole at the end. We'll verify that before any kind of documents are signed, of course. It also may be the case that this was a longstanding project obligation that was going to have to get done sooner or later, whether or not Bickford builds, in which case we would have been covering our 40. What is it? Do you remember, Vin, 45% share of the southern half?

Approximately 45%. So let me see if I can clarify a little bit how this works. Yes, the improvement obligation is of the developer of Bickford. But the funding... of the improvement is actually funded by SPORTA and is funded by the county and the city. Now, more than 6 million of the 12 is being funded by SPORTA, which is a fee, impact fee program that's paid into by our developers as well as Placer County's developers, right?

Right, but sorry, not to cut you off, but just so I can follow. And from my memory, that was a funding issue source that you identified after we were trying to figure out how to come up with the beginning of this whole entire negotiation.

That's correct. Initially, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about Sparta's responsibility for half of this. I think, and I can't speak to why, except for it could be that Sparta is a the amount of work and funding that Sparta needs to complete its mission of all of these projects is significant. I mean, this is a teeny little part of it. So I don't think it was ever prioritized as a thing we should really do now necessarily. Sparta board has fixed that. But at the time it was in the beginning of this, that was not part of the discussion until we went back. And I think Matt and I both read through the plan and were like, Wait a minute, this is a part of the improvement, so Sparta should cover their half of it. Right, I remember that. Which is great, because otherwise we'd be talking about $6 million today, or $7.

Okay. Okay, all right, now I'm with you. Sorry.

You may approach him. What might be helpful is if you kind of looked at it from a public developer's standpoint. So a lot of times, any time that they're not going to receive money back within two years, For their books, they count it as a loss. It stays within their accounting to be able to recuperate it, because they're not going to obviously walk away from money, but they consider it as loss. So when a project like Brickford, is challenged, right? Not an indictment on it, but it's just challenged. If you go through the process and you assume it comes from this net because it has to be done that way, the reimbursement obligation, if you hit it, right, then that's just, then that's great, but you haven't relied on it. And to Mayor Pearl's point, then it prevents you from making any, you've relied on money that you're anticipating getting back, and if something happened, never prevented that from happening, it doesn't put you in a bad spot, so. Gotcha, okay.

And my recollection was that they had to put the Bigford had to put in that intersection when they sold half of the half the homes now is it on there and then it just ratcheted away from that. Okay, but you'll you'll do a dive into that.

Well, I have another concern because I was listening to the last Placer County Board of Supervisors meeting and they were talking about funding and it was clear to me that there was not a lot of support for this project. Maybe, maybe one. One was an absolute no. One supervisor who has part of their, this is part of their jurisdiction, and I'm concerned what the sentiments shared perspective was, who is very strongly against this project, doesn't feel it's safe. And he feels that it should be an overpass and cloverleaf and that this is a temporary expensive fix and that that's the only solution. If this doesn't get support and doesn't move forward, then what? What if they decide that that's what they're going to go for, but that's, you know, however long, another decade or more out.

Do you mean if the overpass idea?

Right.

Yeah. So let's just play it out. Let's assume that the Board of Supervisors decides, yeah, we don't want to do an intersection, signalized intersection there. We want to do this. more expensive improvement. That's their right to do, it's their jurisdiction. I believe they have kind of the ability to make that decision kind of almost on their own if they'd like. What I've shared is, look, We only have the resources, and as Council Member Reedy kind of inquired, it's clear that they are stretched thin as is. So this is about what we can do. And so we've tried to be pretty clear that, like, look, we can't afford a project that's that significant. So they would either have to figure out a way to fund it on their own, and we're not going to be able to be a party to it aside from maybe what small contribution we would make here. Or... Or it doesn't happen at all. I will say that I don't think the tone I've received from at least staff at the county is not, hey, we should just not do anything until we really figure this out. I think there's a push that, you know, we've been notified that people are concerned about this. There was a fairly serious accident there just a few weeks ago. And I don't see that. Um, I think that the reality is, is that from Bickford's perspective, they were going to have to do this anyway at some point. And so, so, you know, accelerating a little bit now is probably not what they planned for, but, but at least it'll be done and they can move on with their project. Um, I don't see that. I think if, if they come, if we get, if it gets to the board for project approval and they decide, you know, something, we're going to stop this and study a, um, overpass concept fine. Um, but I don't think that the pressure of addressing this issue immediately is going to subside at all. So I suspect that, you know, cause alternatively the mayor mentioned a couple of times, um, that if, you know, we can't get anything done out there, then we have to look at the opportunity of a temporary signal there of some kinds that just lasts until they do some sort of larger scale improvement.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, let's comment cards.

Mr. Mayor, I did not receive any speaker cards. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to provide public comment on this general business item 15B? I see one hand raised. If you could please state your name at the podium, please.

Good evening, everyone. Byron Chapman, 12 Bridges area mayor, council members, city staff. I, too, travel that route all the time. One of the big things I think that really catches people off guard, you can almost tell who hasn't. come from the 12 Bridges area and making that all of a sudden big dive. And if you're not riding the brakes at that point, you're gonna probably end up being surprised. And I've had literally, I've seen cars come there and you have that shoulder lane to literally try to catch up almost from a dead roll if possible. And you've got people doing 55 coming into play. So at some point, one way or the other, just based on the traffic that we're even having now it's already an issue of when and not if. So obviously that's something that we're going to have to come up with because one way or the other, it's only getting worse. It's not getting any better. So one or the other is going to happen for just that reason alone. So thank you.

Thank you, Byron.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to speak on this item? I see no hands raised in the room. I will move to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment on this general business item 15B? I see no hands raised online.

Thank you very much. Okay. Final comments? Council?

i just want to thank everybody for supporting this project and for the 100th time i don't know how many times we've talked about this and discussed it with staff and engineering public works i really appreciate how much time over the last year everybody's dedicated this is a priority and we've figured out a plan. I hope it works out, and I just want to say thank you again to my fellow council members as well for this being in our district.

Okay, very good. Second. I move. Okay, second over here. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Carry 5-0. Thank you very much. All right. City Manager reports.

Thank you. I just have a few things over here. First off, I wanted, you know, I thought you were going to take actually a little less time with that item. So you actually kind of averaged out the amount of time spent per dollars given here. Because if you'd only taken five minutes, we would have spent quite a bit of time on $5,000 and almost none on 2.4 million. Yeah. which actually is really normal, honestly, with council members, head councils. So we have just a few little committee announcements. We have a fiscal investments and oversight committee tomorrow at three o'clock. I'd encourage the community, if you have a spare afternoon and you're tired of Netflix, you should swing on down to FIAC because I actually find it to be a very interesting meeting. They're a really good group. We talk a lot about the city's finances and you could get a good idea about, you know, what's great and what's not so great with regard to our position. The other one is airport committees at 10 a.m. tomorrow. We are in the process of going through a variety of labor and legal related matters, but we're getting really close now to professional management contract coming to the Lincoln City Council, which is a huge deal because it's something that's been discussed for 20 years, Richard. And we're finally there. We think we have a really good partner and we think it's going to be a net service improvement to the city if we get there. And then finally, just to plug, because I'm a supporter of it and I know a lot of staff here are, if you are of a mind to be charitable, the DLA is holding their back to school bash where they generate some dollars and donations for school supplies, backpacks, et cetera, for kids that need those. And plug, if you go to Five Below in Roseville or even online, you can get lots and lots of backpacks for reasonable prices. And if you're also of a mind just to contribute, these dollars go into putting on the event for the kiddos. And it's just kind of a nice Lincoln thing that you don't see everywhere. So I just wanted to throw them that level.

What day is that?

It's the 25th of July. So not this Saturday, but the following. at uh 9 30 a.m to noon chairman's plaza yeah so sorry that's it okay council initiated business

I have one thing. I'm hoping it's fake news, but maybe Mr. White can speak to it, and I sent this to Sean. So I saw a story pop up the other day that said Sacramento was at it again, and they passed a law that went into effect July 1st that would legislate that goat herders have to be paid $20,000 a month, whereas the sheep herders get paid $4,938 a month. And so if that actually is enforced, then the goat herders will have to sell off all their herds. And he said, there's a guy in the store, he said, nobody could pay for that. We can't pay for that. So I sent it to Sean because I'm like, well, this is going to have serious impact on our service. Like, is that for real? I mean, what in the world? And I sent it to Whitney also, like, That is crazy.

There is some truth to it. So I'm trying to get all the detail. Apparently, we're not the only ones that are super concerned about this. Well, yeah. Please, no one out there quote me because I'm still researching. But what appears to be the problem is that some of the goat herders are Peruvian. And they work, my understanding is they work here on a visa of some kind. And there's a push at the Capitol at the moment to create some carve-outs, I think, to make sure that we can kind of retain those workers so that they can continue to do what they do at a reasonable cost. The alternative to it is correct. It's far, far more expensive, which would then accelerate one of the oddest strategic planning goals that we have, or I've had in my career, which is our research into creating our own goat enterprise and farm.

Which is on priority A. That was my thought. We might as well just accelerate our own plan.

Which I just got done forming up the plan the other day with the consultant and he said to me, are you sure this is priority A? I go, yep, it sure is.

It just shows how far we've come in four years.

I'll circulate the bill for you so that you guys can take a look at it.

Right. Thank you. Well, we did talk about that in our strategic plan. And this could accelerate it. But I do really still, I know we were talking about it last year and you talked about it the year before, but I do see... an opportunity for us, probably not alone, but collaboratively with our partners like county, Cal Fire, other cities and municipalities that we could do a shared program. That might be, I think it would easily be cost neutral, but even potentially from just the AI math I've done and hours digging into this Silly topic, but very important, it could even be a profitable situation, especially the more people that we partner with because the greater land area that we're trying to cover then. The better because they actually don't keep because initially I was researching with the school district to see if you know we could do a partnership with. Lincoln high school they've got their AG program I think they were looking at some sort of really small scale tiny model. to integrate into their curriculum but for what we're needing to do as a large-scale operation it they never actually stay in a place the goats and they constantly graze and they don't need a home it's more of like veterinary services and you know the a smaller one-off situation for their um health and well-being but really they just need to do their job they just graze um and so you need a lot of land but not too much because then we could we could even get more grazing out of them if we had our own herd that was a region because you know it wouldn't just be maybe once a year it could be two or three times a year and then we're even more mitigated because it's ours we're not necessarily paying as much so

Yeah, so it's on the strategic plan. And so when that is on that plan, I tend to like to make sure that we knock off as many of those as we can. So you will be getting a pro forma, a business plan. I've already reached out to somebody that's in the field that, you know, does this privately to tutor me up on what I don't know, which is everything about goat herding. And, but actually I think you're right. I think there's a, it's at least worth the work to determine because when you're spending as much money as we spend every year grazing, it would, it would be like, you know, it's no different than if you had a really large yard and you were paying a ton for landscaping services, you should at least go look and see what it costs to buy a mower. Right. So it's the fun part about public service. You, I didn't learn about goats in my graduate degree, but you know, I'm going to learn now. So we'll figure it out.

So for those who are interested to read about goats, this goes back to a bill passed in 2023, SB 143. And it goes back to some labor commission findings. The problem was SB 143 had a sunset clause in it where it expired on July 1st, 2026. And with the expiration of it, then goat herders became subject to standard wage and hour rules. And so there are legislative considerations currently underway for it. But again, I'll send the Labor Commission ruling as well as SB 143 to the council so that they can take a look at it. But it really just has to do with the sunset date of it and then there not being another law in place at the moment to replace it at the moment.

so if we set up an enterprise fund uh nita do we have to depreciate the goats yeah so while livestock is considered property i don't know that it would actually be depreciable okay i just had to yes okay

all right i've got one item um i sent sean a a question about whether the city has had in the past a sister city program uh because i thought it might be interesting for us to do it we're close to 60 000 people a lot of cities have sister city programs uh we may have had one in the past because we have some artifacts downstairs and so staff is going to be going through researching it and seeing how we want to do it obviously we want to engage the community and in which uh city somewhere in the world that we want to partner up with. But it's a great way for cultural exchange.

I just want to make sure that I said it during the proper time, but to get it on a future agenda to discuss and workshop, just if there's any improvements that we can do, I'm going to rehash 4th of July.

Good, yeah. Ben? Ben? Okay. Committee reports. Sean touched on airport committee. I've got fine air next week.

Okay.

May be of significance to us for PCTPA. The program HE42 residential care group homes zoning update for airport land use. They changed that from seven to 16 licensed non-medical residential care homes to 17 plus residential or apartment like residential care facility. It becomes more of an update to state standards so that they're more in line with what they call right to use. this type of a care home instead of a CPU type of thing. So we may or may not be looking at potential something going on over by the airport. Okay, more to come on that.

Okay. We might have a sister city in China. That might have happened in the past. Yeah, I think you're correct. I think we do, yeah. but we can look into it, yeah. Okay, good, yeah, excellent.

Okay, before we adjourn, we will go back into closed session. And then we'll come back over here after that and report out.

We'll do the report out after we conclude closed session.

Very good, thank you very much, meeting adjourned.