Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good. Let's call the City Council meeting closed session to order of May 12, 2026.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and start with roll call. Council Member Andreatta?

Present.

Council Member Reedy?

Here.

Council Member Brown?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Eklund? Absent at the moment. Mayor Pearl?

Here. Okay, very good. We have closed sessions. We have one, two, three, four items on a conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, existing litigation, anticipated litigation, and public employment. Okay, those are the four things we'll take into close in a few moments over here. Do we have any public comments on the closed session agenda items only? I see no one in the audience. Do we have anyone on Zoom?

No one on Zoom.

In that case, we're going to close the public comment, and we will adjourn, and we'll meet back here at 6 p.m. Meeting adjourned. Okay, we'll call the meeting to order. Roll call, please, on a clerk.

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

Here. Okay, very good. We're good on that. Report from closed session. Do we have any reports? I don't think.

No reportable action. Direction was provided. Stop.

Yes. All right. Evan, would you lead us in the pledge? And a very good suggestion. Thank you, Holly. And welcome to the meeting, Evan.

It's great to have you.

Agenda modifications. Is there anyone who wants to amend anything? We will be making a correction to the item. Ben? Yes. Before we get into that, I just wanted to ask if there's any other modifications that anyone knows about. If not, we'll move the information item. from the back to the front over here, which will come after any agenda modifications. So if we don't have any from our council, anything from staff? Okay, very good. Thank you. Okay, are there any informational items that people want to share at this point, my colleagues?

Nothing tonight.

Very good. All right. Asked and answered, very good. Presentations, we have no presentations tonight. We are rocking along. Public comments. Do we have any cards?

We do, Mr. Stan Nader.

Okay, let me just read what we have to say before. All speakers, time limit will be limited to three minutes unless extended by the mayor. All comments or questions should be addressed to the mayor, and in some cases, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any item not appearing on the posted agenda, but may engage in a brief discussion, provide direction to city staff, or schedule items for future meetings. Okay, very good. Stan.

Mr. Mayor and council, my name is Stan Nader, and I live in the 12 Bridges area. As I mentioned at the last Council meeting, I would be providing additional comments on the dangers of e-bike riders present to our community. This matter requires stronger enforcement and more severe penalties for these riders and their parents for violating basic traffic laws. I'm dead serious about this issue. And why would I say that? It's because that is what happened on April 16th to a Vietnam veteran in Orange County who was struck and killed by a, quote, e-bike, unquote, which was really an e-motorcycle of which the rider's vehicle had the ability to reach speeds of 60 miles an hour. The mother of the writer is being charged with involuntary manslaughter and misdemeanor child endangerment, which if convicted, will land her in prison for seven years. The police had repeatedly warned the woman she had handed her son a deadly weapon. Similar occurrences could easily happen in our city. And if the city does not have strong policy of enforcement and penalties, the city could potentially put themselves in legal jeopardy. The Meninas transportation Institute located in San Jose State Campus recently conducted a survey of, quote, e-bikes located on a number of middle school and high school campuses, and they found that 90% of the, quote, e-bikes were determined to be illegal, meaning they could exceed this legal limit by eight times. Cal Bike is sponsoring legislation to restrict how e-bikes are labeled and advertised. policy changes to specify that 750 watt max motor powered bike requires a peak refers to a peak power, not continuous power. The author of the study stated, I do not think the legislature intended children or people who have never studied the rules of the road to have access to a device that gives them the power equivalent to a horse. Recently, KCRA News posted on Facebook that Amazon is stopping selling e-bikes. I suspect that that is because they have concerns that they are having potential legal exposure. I would strongly suggest the council revisit the e-bike ordinance and increase the penalties for e-bike violators and hold these riders and their parents accountable for allowing their children to have these dangerous weapons.

Thank you, Sam.

Yeah. Do we, just because I had a, I agree with him, but do we need to have specific policy or things in place to enforce state laws on that already, that are already in place?

So it kind of depends. This is a complex area because there's many different classes of e-bikes and different rules associated with all of them. you have a council pass an ordinance on all that long ago that allows for kind of additional localized enforcement of those. Because the issue is concerning and it continues to come up, we're going to schedule kind of a council update on how things are going thus far. We're pretty early into this. Good news is that our... next door to us uh in rockland every city is dealing with this but uh rockland in particular um their chief has taken the lead kind of uh regionally uh on trying to sort out what the best way to address the issue is and um It probably is too much for me to explain in public comment, but there are some interesting corollaries between what type of enforcement is effective because this is different. Enforcement in this area is a little bit different than a speeding ticket in a vehicle. When you were 16 and you got your license and you may have got a speeding ticket, you're going to keep driving, you know, potentially for the next 70 years or so. And so that, is a standard that you have to live with. The difference with e-bikes, it's interesting is that at least in this infancy phase, you have kids in a age range of call it eight or nine to 13, 14, 15 that want to use e-bikes to, to get around. It's the fun thing to do. So you can do a lot of enforcement with those folks. Problem is, is that the next class of them, once those kids get their licenses, they're probably not driving e-bikes all that much anymore. And now a new class of e-bikes, you know, has come up and started e-bikes. So I can share with you a lot about their success and some of the things that we've kind of mirrored in terms of coordinating with the school district. And then there's some other stuff that I believe it's Marin County has asked the state for special legislation, which they've received to do a pilot program for different kinds of age-based enforcement programs. just within Marin. And so what I heard was that Placer County was working on getting something similar so that we could carve out here. And there's also like 10 bills at the state house right now on various regulation of these kinds of things that may move the needle. So it's kind of complex, but it would be better. Maybe next week I can bring something that's a little bit more robust for you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Sean.

Very good. Thanks, Ben. That's a good comment. Do we have any other cards?

No other speaker cards.

I do have. Sorry. Byron?

Thank you, Mayor, council members, city staff, those here and those watching at home. On the same subject Mr. Nader had brought up, you could probably, well, if you had a really good arm, you might be able to get his house from mine. I have a better shot at it because it's going downhill. But he runs into and sees the same people that I'm seeing. I've given this a lot of thought too. I'll square this off a little bit in that as I get older, the one thing I have learned and learned and learned, and that is the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. And that has not changed. But when I was growing up, It wasn't the bikes that were causing the problems. It was thefts. Bikes were just getting up and being hauled away and parted out, and it was an epidemic in three different cities, large ones. So what they ended up doing is they literally got whatever resources they did. I was a young, I don't know, probably 10, 12 years old, so I don't know the ins and outs of it. But what the mayor did is they put in, you know, the license sticky part that you put on there, your license now is good in 2027. Boy, you have to make sure you put that thing on there right the first time because you're not getting that bad boy off. And they used a very similar to that, except it wasn't near as modern as we have it today. And it was just like a stamp. It typed in a number and it went under a particular location all work so that if an officer or someone came along, you didn't have to search the whole bike. You knew that that's where it was going. But what was important about it is the fact that it wasn't the student's or the child's name. It was the parent's. And they had the address, they had the phone number, they had all the stuff. So what it was is if somebody in the neighborhood or five blocks across town or whatever it might be, it didn't matter who they were figuring out was stealing them when they found them and they were doing periodic checks at schools.

So they would go to school.

So if you go down to the schools, junior high, high school, I think elementary, But the whole point to it is they're going there. And if you start monitoring those then, and now the parents know that it isn't just their child or children that do that, I almost came unglued from the standpoint of nervousness of something horribly was going to happen. Here was an e-bike with two people on it. The person in front had a helmet on. The second one didn't. What got me was the fact that not only were they talking to the person behind them, they're talking on a phone. And they were going around a corner at the same time. And just about that time, the scary point came up. The car was coming around the street, wasn't real speeding. That child almost ended up in a basket. So there's a way in which to tag them. It's a possibility. Thank you.

Thank you, Byron. Yeah. More food for thought. Yeah. Excellent. Okay, anyone else in the audience would like to make a comment at this point? All right, very good. And do we have anyone else on Zoom?

No one on Zoom.

All right. In that case, we will close public comment over here. We want to the consent calendar. Anyone, any of my colleagues want to pull any items off the consent? I don't see any staff. Do we have any questions from anyone who would like to make a comment on any of the items on the consent calendar? Madam Clerk, do we have comment cards?

No comment cards. Is there anyone in the audience? No one in the audience. Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment? No hands raised.

Okay. In that case, I'll accept the motion.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second. Second. Move and second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? No. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you very much. All right. Public hearings. We receive a presentation and hold the public hearing on the draft 2026-230 consolidated plan and annual action plan by Ms. Racker. We're going to open the public hearing. Bye. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Nita Racker, Assistant City Manager. Community Development Director and Finance Director for the city. And so we are back before you with the consolidated plan. This is our second public meeting before this council related to this and second public hearing to take input and comments. So we do have now a, I'll say mostly complete depending on comments we received tonight, a mostly complete form of the plan and online is our consultant meeting Frankie Lewington with Root Policy, who's going to be presenting this item for you this evening. Frankie, are you available?

I am. Can you hear me?

We can. And are you presenting from your screen or am I presenting here on the slide deck?

It looks like I can send a request to share my screen. So let's see if that goes through. It's easier to share from your screen too? Yeah, I have it here.

That works.

Okay.

All right, great. Our screen, frankly, and if you want to take it away, I can and can you hear me?

Okay. Yes. Great. Great. Well, good evening. Mayor Pearl and members of the council. My name is Frankie Lewington. I'm a senior associate with root policy research. We are housing research and community planning firm based in Denver, Colorado, and we are assisting the city of Lincoln with their 1st consolidated plan. The intent of the public hearing tonight is to collect feedback on the draft consolidated plan and annual action plan for the City of Lincoln before submitting the plans to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in early June. Next slide, please. So the City of Lincoln received what's called entitlement status. from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This means that the city became eligible to receive a direct allocation of housing and community development funding. As a condition of receiving that funding, the city needed to put together this consolidated plan. So this plan is a plan that will be put together every five years as a condition of receiving housing and community development funding. We use a combination of a variety of data sources, census, American Community Survey, local data as well, and community outreach to help determine and distill housing needs, community development issues, and then gaps in supportive services for low and moderate income households. Next slide, please. These are the components of the consolidated plan. The housing needs assessment, this section identifies which households experience disproportionate housing challenges, such as cost burden, overcrowding, and units lacking kitchen or plumbing facilities. We also include an analysis of special population needs. And special needs populations are a specific HUD term. This includes but isn't limited to older residents, those over the age of 65, residents living with disabilities, as well as survivors of domestic violence. The housing market analysis provides an overview of the city's housing market, including the number, type, cost, and condition of housing units. It also identifies barriers to affordable housing development as well as a summary of the community's non-housing community development assets and challenges. The strategic plan provides a summary of the identified priority needs, strategic goals, and allocation priorities. And this plan guides the city on how it will allocate its funding over the next five years. And then the action plan, this is a plan that the city will submit annually to HUD, and this details how the city will spend its resources for the upcoming program year. Community engagement as well, and next slide, please. So this is an overview of the community engagement outreach that we conducted to help inform this plan. As a requirement, as a new entitlement jurisdiction, the city of Lincoln had to develop a citizen participation plan. This essentially identifies how the city will engage with the community throughout the development of that plan. So we developed the plan in late September, early October, and then had a public comment period from October 10th through November 14th. We did not receive any comments on this plan. As Ms. Racker indicated, we held a public hearing in October of 2025. HUD requires that during the development of the plan, we hold two public hearings, one during the development of the plan, and then one during the 30-day comment period, which we are in now. After the public hearing the following evening, we held an open house event, again, to introduce the plan to the community and get feedback on housing, community development, economic development, and other public service needs. We engaged with representatives of over 15 stakeholder organizations serving both Lincoln and the broader Placer County. We had a housing and community development survey available and received approximately 215 responses. And as I mentioned, we are holding the public hearing tonight during the 30 day comment period for the draft plan. Next slide please. So through our data analysis and the community engagement findings, we distilled the priority needs from what we saw in the data and what we heard from the community into essentially five categories that you see above. So public infrastructure and improvements was identified as a significant need in the community. So this includes upgraded water, street and road infrastructure, improvements to existing parks, sidewalk upgrades, and then better lighting. We heard a need for affordable and accessible rental housing, particularly for aging residents on fixed income. Housing rehabilitation was another need that we heard, particularly for households living in and around the downtown area of Lincoln. Community services was identified as a priority need, including services that just provided basic needs, such as food and clothing. We also heard a significant need for mental health services, affordable childcare, housing navigation and support services, and then other supportive services for specific populations, such as survivors of domestic violence. And then finally, economic development was another need that was identified through this process. Specific activities included job skills training, enhanced workforce development opportunities, business and commercial revitalization efforts, financial literacy assistance, as well as small business support in support of low to moderate income individuals. Next slide, please. So with those priority needs, we distilled those into three goals. The first goal is supporting community and economic development revitalization. The second goal is increasing the availability and access to critical community services. And then the third goal is program administration. So this is The through the entitlement that the city will receive 20%, a max of 20% can go to administration of the program, which will be important for the city, especially in this first year and setting up the program. Next slide, please. So HUD released the 2026 program year allocations on April 3rd of this year. The city of Lincoln received $272,325 from the Community Development Block Grant Program. On the screen are how the city is proposing to use these funds for the upcoming program year. So approximately $218,000 or 80% of their allocation will be uh going to accessibility improvements at mcbean park and then the as i mentioned the 20 the remaining 20 will go to administration of the program you might notice that there are not resources allocated to community services the city will be setting up a process during this upcoming program year to distribute resources for community services in years two through five. So while they're not, no resources are allocated for this specific program year, you will see those community services organizations to provide community services will be eligible to receive funds over the next four years. Next slide. And so with that, I will turn it back over to the mayor to open the public hearing to receive any comments on the consolidated plan and action plan. Thank you for the opportunity to present this information to you.

And the mayor did jump the gun on us and open the public hearing right away, which we appreciate.

So that is completely move this along.

Yes. So with that, we will be happy to take any public comments to add or to inform this plan.

We have no speaker cards on the item. And then we'll go ahead and open it up to the audience. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment? Seeing no one, we'll go over.

Darla, please come to the podium.

On the improvements at Gladding McBean, is that where you're going? McBean Park. McBean Park. Where exactly are they going? Because the area where the little kids play baseball, the cement is all up and people are always tripping. Are those the improvements for 200,000 or what?

That's a great question. So the play structure at McBean Park, as this council has received information on before, is quite old and made of wood and Some people call it the splinter factory. I don't, but some people do. So we had identified replacing that play structure in this coming, probably next fiscal year, really. But there was a funding gap in replacing that play structure. And we thought that it would be a good opportunity to utilize some of these funds to help fill that gap. and also to ensure that the play structures, not that we don't always, but to ensure that the new play structure would be as accessible as possible. And that will make the play structure purchasing it a bit more arduous because it will have to go through the federal purchasing requirements, which are a bit more extensive than the city's purchasing requirements. It becomes more like a public works construction project than it does a typical replacement of play equipment. But we wanted to, I'll say, get the most bang for our buck for these dollars because they are such a small amount. It is challenging to find good projects that have a significant community value. Typically, these lower dollar amounts end up being bubbled in with other engineering type projects for things of like replacing water lines or perhaps ramp upgrades for ada requirements in certain areas of the city there are hurdles to use these funds for this play structure that we'll have to go through with head but you know it's head so there's always hurdles but that's the current plan for the dollars

Darla, real quick, are you talking about on the D Street side or the McBean Park side?

Where the little kids play baseball next to the big kids play baseball. Okay, so on the D Street side. Where you buy snacks. The snack bar. They're always tumbling there. So it's on the D Street side. Okay, so on the sidewalk you're talking about? We're inside the park, not the sidewalk. And then the other thing is, is there any money left to spray the trees or something? because there's tons of cockroaches even falling from the tree. That's close.

These dollars couldn't be used for anything of that sort or type of project. But I could already see Matt Medill over there making a note about the sidewalk areas that need to be addressed. And I'm sure that Scott Boynton, knowing how passionate he is about the maintenance and maintaining of our parks, is already googling how to get rid out of bugs and trees now. I'm sure he has a plan already.

So Matt, what's your plan?

How are you going to address the tree roaches?

We'll have to report back on that one, but we'll all follow up with Darla to identify the sidewalk area.

Thank you very much. Anita, is there a way that we can use any volunteer labor on any of these projects?

That is to be determined. We will have to speak with HUD because of the funding and the requirements and the, again, hurdles that HUD likes that throws up. In order to ensure that these dollars are spent in an effective and appropriate way, we will have to check with them on this project, every aspect of it, while the dollars that we are discussing would be identified to replace the equipment. because there is existing equipment we will have to have a communication with them about removal of the equipment if that could be done with in some method that such as using a volunteer aspect yeah because we have tremendous volunteers in this in this community without a doubt okay any other questions from colleagues i would like to one more comment uh i will follow up with aaron hookins about

potentially treating our sewer laterals in that area. Typically the cockroaches sometimes are down in that area. So we'll make sure to get that addressed. Okay, very good. Thank you, Matt.

Mayor, just one thing, just so it doesn't go unsaid. This is a really cool opportunity for the future because while this year we may get the play structure project completed with this, in future years, it really gives, especially the downtown area, bucket of money every year and i think we need to mention it i don't love this because i'd like to bank those dollars for a couple of years and do like a bigger project but in a sense having the requirement that you kind of use it or lose it every year will put the organization in this place where we have to do even if they're smaller scale projects every year to make sure that we're getting each and every one of those dollars out and spent and so you know those

quality of life improvements for infrastructure that downtown really benefit mostly from this yeah and in future years we did allocate that portion i think it's 15 to go to like a public services element and aspect and we have in the plan what those dollars could be used for and but we just need a little time to try to spool that up and honestly i need to identify a person to help me do that within the city staff

Any other comments? Holly? I have questions. A couple questions. I know we're not doing the community services until next funding year. What I heard, some of the examples were mental health services, affordable child care, things like that. Does that mean that we will use these dollars to give them to organizations that already exist to help people in our community, or are these programs that we are going to do ourselves? How does that work?

It could mean that we develop a program to give the dollars to, say, something that would be considered like a subrecipient or on a contract basis, or we could contract with an entity, for example, like Lighthouse or Granite Wellness. if they have a program that kind of meets the requirements of this, where we're partnering with them to help fund a program. So I would say it's a bit of an open door, but again, also everything that these dollars are spent on, gotta go through my friends at HUD.

Well, sure, no, I understand that, yeah. And then on the housing rehab item, Does that mean like older houses in Lincoln in the downtown area to be referred? What does that mean? Help them refurbish their houses or rebuild?

Rehab is limited by the income of the individual who owns the home, not rents, but owns. And so it really is not necessarily the age of the home, although that could be a factor. that the primary driver is the income of the person. And again, we wanted to put housing and housing needs to the side while we evaluate other resources that the city has available for that.

Okay, that makes sense. And then my last question is the administration part of the program. So what does that actually entail?

So those dollars are set aside for, as Frankie said, once this initial plan is completed and submitted to HUD for their acceptance and approval, that there is annual reporting that has to occur. That as these projects move forward, And every time I say I have to communicate with HUD, that's a person within the city who has to communicate with HUD. And so their time spent on administering the programs that are created, as well as creating the annual reporting, it would help fund some of that. But it would not pay for all of it.

Right. No. OK. That makes sense. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Good. Do we have any other comments? Jason, did you have a comment? OK. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from any of my colleagues? Did we exhaust Zoom and everything else?

I see no hands raised on Zoom.

In that case, we'll close the public hearing over here. Any final comments from the council?

Most probably not. OK, then we're good.

Yes, very good. Very good.

And will we just continue to reach out to the public and letting them know that public comments can be submitted by email or by telephone, either by emailing the public comments at lincolnca.gov or reaching out directly to hello at rootpolicy. But once this comment period is closed, which is coming up here, then we will move forward with finalizing the plan and moving on to the next steps.

Very good. All right. With all that being said, do we have a motion on this? Second? I'll second. Thank you very much. Moved and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you very much, Nita. Okay, moving on to general business. Water construction contract for CIP 654, water distribution rehabilitation by Jacob Grosser. Good evening, sir.

My name's Jacob, associate engineer. Let me get my presentation started here. So I'll be speaking briefly about our annual water replacement program, and more specifically about the construction that we will do this year. So this year's title is the CIP 654 Water Distribution Rehabilitation Project. A little bit about our program. But to the infrastructure in Old Lincoln, downtown Lincoln is near the end of its useful life. So every year we get ahead of it and do replacements. This program specifically is for water mains, services, hydrants. The way that we choose which area to do each year is primarily identified through our public works team. They're the ones who go out and fix all the leaks. They know which parts of the system are the most vulnerable. We also do maintain a pressure model that we can identify areas that might need to be upsized a little bit to maintain adequate pressure and flows for fire safety. This is a map, kind of a general plan of areas that have been identified to be replaced and a kind of a corresponding year. So again, it's primarily chosen through feedback by Public Works. Again, they know which spots are the worst, which spots need to be replaced first. So this year we'll zoom in a little bit and see what we're doing this summer. This is kind of a map of where we're doing this summer. This is near the Glen Edwards Middle School. So you can see in red the streets that we're doing. 4th Street, Stephanie Court, M Street, L Street, 3rd Street, O Street. We aim for roughly a mile a year. This year we're doing about a mile and a quarter. It just kind of depends on how bids come in and how much budget we have annually to do. But that's kind of our soft goal is about a mile a year. So this year we're doing just over 6,000 feet, which is again, almost a mile and a quarter. The water mains are anywhere between eight inches and 16 inches. Some of them have been upsized to kind of meet more standard sizes or upsize so that we can again, maintain adequate fire safety, fire flows. There's about 82 services within the project. So those laterals are the ones that connect the mains to people's homes or businesses. And then there's about nine fire hydrants that will be replaced with new ones as well within this limit. So fiscally, again, The budget's kind of the primary driver for how far we can go, but again, trying to target about a mile a year ends up being in the between $4 and $6 million range. So this project's funded half and half by the Water Replacement Capital Fund, which is partially funded through the Water Bill, and the Water PFE, which I believe comes from developer fees. I think that's how that works. Not a finance guy, so. Anyway, this this year we hit our target pretty closely we've got about 5.7 to play with, and the whole project through between design construction all the other fees are about 5.6 over estimating so have a little bit leftover. about it for my my quick overview once you guys have any questions at all.

Questions for the Council.

Um, no, we're going to do the same thing where we'll find that money that we need to make sure that the whole surface of the road gets redone and not just where the water pipings.

Yeah. It kind of depends on, um, the, uh, grade of the road, but sort of like I street, um, I street was uniquely bad, um, worse than I think almost any road in Lincoln. Um, But that is kind of the idea is that to the extent that it can be married with the appropriate road treatment, I've been taught by engineers not to call it a slurry or something else because it could be something else. But to the extent that that's the best time, that's the best time because nothing is worse than tearing up a road, putting in a water line, patching it up, and then coming back two years later and resurfacing that same road. Right. Or even worse is when you resurface a road and then later tear it up for water lines. That's even worse. So, yeah. Thank you.

Any other questions for the council? I just wanted to say I appreciate the replacement of the fire hydrants. That's important. Yeah. Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Medill.

I did have to just add a dose of reality in that we don't have the funding to replace a mile of roadway and resurface a mile of roadway every year. And we are targeting doing the pipeline replacement for both water and sewer each year. So that'd be two miles of roadway. I know Vin was very creative in how we were able to couple different funding sources together to do the I Street road repair, but it's gonna be very challenging to do that in the future for all the utility replacements that are gonna be happening. So we'll probably again target the worst road areas or where we'll get the most value out of our pavement dollars. But unfortunately, the utilities cannot pay to repave the entire street. They can mitigate the impact of the utility work. but in coupling full width pavement restoration with all the utility replacements is not feasible with our current roadway funding resources.

Yeah, I completely get that. And it wasn't indicating that we find the resources through just that but it makes sense to me since we're doing a lot of that repair and the road needs to be fixed at some point anyways that it makes sense to figure out where we could how we could do that yeah like the other thing is ice street's actually a really bad example because ice street was so far degraded that there was no

extension of life treatment that would have been worth our money. And so that was a full grind down to dirt and rebuild project. And I'm not sure that that's the case in most of their other roads. So we'll just evaluate those. We'll keep you updated on what we can add in and what we can't afford to do, but they're all on the list as Matt always says.

That were the, the lines are they on the center of the streets on the side of the streets?

Oh, I'm sorry, where are they located? Yes. They're usually, the ones in this area are pretty close to the gutter pan, so they're kind of near where the bike lane would be, if you can. Okay. Yeah, around there.

And just out of curiosity, are typically the sewer lines along the same area?

Usually they're on opposite sides of the road. Opposite sides of the road, okay. Yeah, you don't want them to be far apart. Good.

Okay, any other questions over here? All right, in that case, any speaker cards?

No speaker cards.

All right, anyone in the audience like to make a comment? Not yet, okay.

No hands, yeah, no hands raised through Zoom.

Okay, very good. Any final comments in for my colleagues? If not, we'll take, accept a motion. I move.

Okay, thank you.

Move and second.

Can we do all three at the same time?

One, two, and three.

As long as the motion reflects it and as long as no one wants to vote differently on any of it, you can take them all at the same time.

So we're all good on that? All good, yeah.

So just clarifying that all three are included in the motion. Yes. And in the second.

Yes. Perfect. Very good. In that case, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. OK. In that case, carries 5-0. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jacob. That was awesome. Yes.

Thank you, Jacob. Okay. 14 Bravo update on Lincoln's unhoused services and support initiatives.

Awesome. I think I'm going to take it up there if that's okay. While I pull this up, I'll just point out, not for nothing, that that $5 million we're spending on 1.25 miles of a water line is a direct result of water rates. So when you have water rates that fund capital and replacement, you can do things like replace things you should have probably replaced a while ago. Okay, here we go. So... It's working. Sweet. Thanks, IT. Okay. So if you just give me maybe five or six, maybe at the most 10 minutes, I wanted to share with you and with the community a little bit about some of the programs and initiatives that we've put in place over the past four or five years. It goes back a little further than that. To assist... to help our unhoused community in Lincoln. There's been narratives recently and even going back before that about Lincoln in the media and even just generally online in and around Lincoln that I think paint an inaccurate picture of how serious we have taken you know, the desire the council has had to find ways to provide support and lift homeless people out of what can be pretty serious situations when you live that lifestyle. And so this is not related to any specific matter. It's just generally to share what I think is objectively could be qualified as success in serving homeless individuals in Lincoln. So before I get to collaboration, one of the things that you should know is that Lincoln's homeless population was pretty tiny for a very long time, even as the community started to grow. And then we really started to notice sort of a concentration, an increase in homeless population right around COVID. And that happened everywhere and here as well. And one of the things that we noticed was that as our population grew, both from Lincoln residents and from folks that weren't from Lincoln that relocated here, was they picked a couple of key areas to congregate in and live in. And they were primarily along the Auburn Creek, along Lincoln Boulevard, both sides of the bridge, and then some up north of town in an area called Turtle Bend, It's just kind of straddle city limits. So during the months of the year where all the leaves fall, the homeless encampments in that area were very visible. So we had lots of phone calls. Almost every year you could kind of time it. As soon as they could see in, folks were concerned that... We had a lot of homeless folks there and the council over those years thought of a bunch of different ideas about what to do. And the question was really difficult question. How do you, how do you set up some programs that might help with almost no resources to do that? We don't get homelessness money from the state. Um, we have some collaboration with the county, but not so much in terms of, uh, housing. And, um, So this predates me. Our prior city attorney helped stand up and was at least the initial staff support with the Adopt-a-Creek program. And that sort of set the standard for what would become a whole lot more. And our approach focused on compassion, public safety, accountability, regional partnerships, environmental stewardship, but in particular the creek area, which is a preserved habitat. and long-term solutions. When the rabbi was up, it was really interesting. He said three terms when he was giving his prayer. He said, kindness, freedom, and responsibility. And it struck me as I was, you know, I always prep way in advance for these presentations, like 10 minutes ago, that that is... that that's actually kind of representative of what we tried to accomplish. It wasn't only let's do all the nice fuzzy things. It was also we have to have standards and we have to have responsibility that's associated with it. So there's lots of partners. There's code enforcement. We have Kim here who's been the lead with homelessness efforts in Lincoln really since she was hired. We have our Police department and we'll talk a little bit more about the things we stood up there public works has been huge partners, especially in cleanup efforts we've had. We have really good relationships with health and human services and probation and other departments that work with homeless individuals and then perhaps most importantly, we have volunteers in our Community. Dr creek and as a series of faith based organizations and nonprofits salt mine number of churches that all have decided hey you know what we're going to support you as well we're going to work on this together. So. What we had been doing for a long time, and we didn't know, it's funny how this worked out to be successful, because we didn't really know, I don't think, at the time that it was going to become this. At first, Adopt-A-Creek was literally folks that care about the creek going down and cleaning up trash, mostly left by our unhoused population. on a weekly basis. And you may recall we used to come to council once a year and we'd talk about the hundreds of tons of trash that we would take to the dump every week and Scott's team would, Matt's team rather, would go out and with a big trailer every week and they would haul it to the dump and we just did it over and over and over again. And what also was happening, although we were managing that population, what we were also doing was we were learning about our population. a lot of our volunteers and staff got to know the name. Kim knows virtually every name of every individual that's homeless in Lincoln. She probably knows their story. She knows who they dated last week. She knows who they're going to, what they're going to do next week. Um, and that actually ends up becoming really useful because you get to a place where you start, once you know the person, then you know, you know, what's the likelihood that we might be able to lift them out of this or would they be interested in services? And so that sort of, uh, was our foundation for services. Um, then, um, The former city attorney and I and Mata Bass, three or four years ago, we got into a car, we drove around Lincoln, and we said, where can we stand up some kind of program that might at least start something here? We have very little money to do it. And fortunately, we connected with a church that's in downtown who were interested in hosting some trailers that we had received from Placer County free that they received and no longer needed. And they were in relatively good shape, and Public Works gave them a little shine, and we brought them down. The council at that time funded... About $70,000 in site improvements to site all of these three trailer locations there, create kind of a safe environment. We went and spoke with the community that lived in the immediate area to make sure that everybody was going to be okay with this concept. Created a process. So we wanted this, if you wanted to... be admitted to this program and get the opportunity to live in these trails for a period of time until you found permanent housing, you still have to go through a pretty rigid process. You apply, just like you'd apply to live in an apartment, for example. You agree to different kinds of monitoring and rules, there's drug testing, there's services that are associated with it. And and then a committee that I'm not part of that is part of the nonprofit that was later stood up, decides who the most, who the best applicants are that have the highest likelihood of success. So, Once that was up and running and we were learning as we were going, nobody that's been part of this process, nobody is a homeless services expert or professional. These are just people like you and me that wanted to find a way to be, you know, give people a pathway out. And eventually it became, it was clear that this could have legs, it could work. And so we encouraged the group to go fund, and thanks to Lincoln Community Foundation who helped with this, they formed their own nonprofit, which is called Lincoln CA Cares. And they have their own board. The city is a participant on that board. And we make business decisions about how to move forward with the program. So today, if you are accepted into the program, at first we had this sort of very rigid timeline of you get in on this date and you're out on this date. And what we learned was that that doesn't really work because every individual has sort of different advantages and disadvantages in terms of when they're going to finally get to a place of stability where they can move to the next step. So since that time, we've sort of lessened the rules about in and out and are spending much more time on the pathways to get them the tools they need so that they can make it to that apartment or that room or that home that they're going to rent or purchase. I have a couple of broad examples respecting privacy of some folks that have their objective success stories here. In addition to that, the council allocated about $300,000 to the salt mine for the remodel of a real professional shower and laundry facility at their location here on Lincoln Boulevard, which allows them to serve the homeless in a much more efficient way. And Pastor Eric has come down a couple of times and shared the success of that project. Kind of covered this, but this gives you kind of a general idea of how much work has gone into this just from a volunteer perspective. These are folks that I think started just wanting to clean up the creek and ended saying, hey, you know, we want to see homeless people be served in a way that helps them to the next step of being housed. And the good news is, and I'll get to it in a moment, comes on the responsibility end, is they still exist and operate, but their need of getting down there and digging out 400,000 pounds of trash has been reduced to very low levels at this point. So let's talk about responsibility or enforcement. What we learned during this journey is that not every individual wants to really leave homelessness or find a way to another part of life. And so when they're ready to do that, we are willing to work with them to that next step. In the event that they are not, the different conversation it's had. And so a couple of years ago, we made a pretty aggressive decision. The camping situation at the creek had gotten so bad that we instituted an ordinance, a camping ordinance that this council passed that set up some reasonable guidelines about if you're gonna be here because there's nowhere else to go, things like you have to limit your space to a 10 by 10 area, everything that you have must be portable and packed up during the day. you know, this isn't staking your land and creating your own facility here. And we found that some individuals down there were just unwilling to follow those guidelines. And so we cleared the creek. We provided notice to all of them. We gave plenty of opportunities for alternatives. And some folks ended up in our programs or other programs. Many ended up back in a house situation with family or friends. Some unfortunately had warrants and went to jail, but the vast majority of them were moved out of the creek and into some other scenario. So it was, I think that what we've learned is that it's not enough to simply offer a lot of the soft techniques to help people out of homelessness. You also have to have some real responsibility to the individual, especially when it's public space. And that's come in the form of Lincoln Code Enforcement. Kim can probably tell you that the first year or two years of her job here, what do you say, Kim, 70% of your work? 70% of her work was related to homelessness. Kim is one of two code enforcement positions that do all the other code enforcement stuff in Lincoln, thousands of cases per year, and they were spending three quarters or so of their time on this. A police department stood up a special response team, which was funded by the city council. Those folks spent a good portion of their time during that time period working on various law enforcement related homelessness issues. Public works has spent a ton of time, whether it be gating areas of the creek to limit some of the negative effects or cleaning out creeks or coordinating third parties that come in and do cleanups. And then I mentioned all of the Placer County folks that come out and help on a regular basis. The SRT was a really interesting decision by the city council because the reason it was put forward was we needed more law enforcement involved in working on this issue. because many of the problems that you have sometimes in homeless encampments is all manner of crime that are occurring in camp and then a variety of other things that have occurred outside of camp. But it wasn't designed simply to be, you know, the police showing up on a regular basis arresting people. They built relationships with these people. They learned their names. Same kind of story I already told you. And has allowed them to have a better handle on the issue. And it was a major investment because that program still exists today. And the less resources they're spending on homelessness, the more they're spending on other quality of life issues the SRT can deal with. This is my favorite chart ever. Okay. Okay. So these are point in time count data points. If you don't know, every year the federal government has almost every jurisdiction in California across the country do a point in time count of unhoused individuals in their jurisdiction. In 2020, our count, and this is not definitive, this is just a point in time, was 53 unhoused individuals in 2020. Today that number is more like 11. So a 79% reduction in less than six years. One of the things I said when we first started this is the best part about the challenge of homelessness in Lincoln is that our population relative to our total city population is very small, which means that our ability for us to actually have meaningful impact is much greater because, you know, you have 20 homeless people and it becomes 10, you've reduced it by 50%. Very difficult when that number is 2000, right? We think that it's worked for a variety of reasons. One is we've, built partnerships with all of the different sectors, private, nonprofit, public, county, state, on and on. We have focused on what the core, at least it relates to the creek, the core mission was to create safe public spaces for people. One of the things I used to hear all the time from people that grew up in Lincoln is, gosh, I used to love to go down to that creek and hang out when I was a kid. And I don't feel comfortable anymore. I don't feel safe. And we've heard that sometimes from homeless individuals that were down there. Sometimes I don't feel so safe down here. So a lot of our decision making was related to how we address that particular issue. Improved environmental conditions. The creek today compared to three years ago is a different place. Just is. That is a preserved natural habitat. The Wildlife Heritage Foundation, I believe, holds that easement. And it's really important that we hold up our end of the bargain and keep it what it's supposed to be. Better coordination of services. We know a lot more today about who to call when someone has a unique issue. So if you have an addiction issue, we now have relationships with Grant Wellness. We have relationships with the White House. We have relationships with Health and Human Services. We have people to call who are willing to help. On the law enforcement side, I kind of covered that On the housing side, we're getting better every year. We're building relationships with whether it be nonprofits or faith-based organizations to find creative ways to address what we have going on. And then we now are more proactive in outreach and engagement. We have just recently, Kim was briefing me, that we have a small encampment that's popped up again. Well, in the past, we would have just kind of said, well, I don't know what there is to do about that. let's go talk to them and see if there's some sort of way to work this out. Now we have a tried and true method of giving them options and opportunities for other pathways, or there's a responsibility. And I think we've said it a couple of times in these meetings that there's nothing wrong with a community deciding that it's unacceptable for people to live in substandard conditions. That's okay. And I think sometimes there's a stigma associated with that, but what you're really saying when you're saying that is I don't think that people should have to be surviving in 107 degree heat outside all day long, all summer, or in the freezing cold during the winter. I think that's an okay perspective to have. And so the numbers kind of speak for themselves, but what we're really excited about is now we're at a level where we can manage this I don't like calling it a problem, but this condition that we have in our society in a way that actually serves individuals. So I just want to give you a broad example about breaking any confidentiality. So we have individuals that have gone through our program that have been effectively homeless their entire lives since they were children. And in some cases, this is many decades, over four or five. So quite literally, it's all some of these individuals have ever lived is versions of homelessness. And we've had some of them come into the program. And fast forward months, six, eight, 12 months, we have some that now are fully employed, that have dealt with a variety of medical issues they couldn't have dealt with before they were here, that have recovered from a variety of addiction or mental health issues through various resources that we have, that some of them reach a point in the program where they begin to pay rent in the trailer they're in. That's not a lot of money, a handful of $100 a month, but it gets the person used to doing that, that there's value in paying for a place to have a roof over your head, right? And then we've had a number that have left and have moved on to stable housing situations outside of the program. But what we've learned is we've succeeded because the flexibility of our program allows us to be a little bit more, like view every single patient, for lack of a better term, in its own vacuum. I don't have all of the studies associated with this data, but my understanding is that in traditional shelter scenarios where you check into a shelter and you may stay there for a defined period of time and then you've got to figure it out, the failure rate... of placing someone into permanent housing after that is between 70 and 93% in this country. Meaning on the worst case, maybe one out of 10 people might make it and the other nine don't. They go back into some form of homelessness. And so our perspective is that we may have low numbers, but we can take the time with the numbers we have to get that percentage up, we hope, to 50 or something that would be objectively good. Last thing is just to get an idea about how much resources we put into this program. Much of this program was originally funded by the COVID ARPA allotment. I will remind everyone that many cities took those dollars and absorbed them into their general fund, thereby making their budgets look a little more pretty for a few years. The city council at the time made a conscious decision outside of helping to accelerate fire department staffing. Pretty much everything else was given out to business group. We did business grants and assistance. We did nonprofit assistance, and then we spent a good chunk of that revenue to address this issue. But that's not, it's not simply federal dollars that have gone into this. The general fund has jumped in, and the subsequent funding of code enforcement's time, special response team, and a variety of others. some back of the napkin budgeting that I did last week, I think we've probably spent somewhere between federal dollars and our dollars, somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 to $1 million, 700,000 to $1 million on this effort. So moving forward, the good news is if we kind of spent a lot of the base dollars we need to spend to stand this up, and now what we're funding is just sort of relatively minimal ongoing operations, And our job now is to continue what we've been doing, keep working the sort of mind-numbing work that it can be at times to continue to try to find new and innovative solutions, but also we've got to start leaning into things like long-term housing for folks that need it. No one likes to say it, but one of the primary issues with homelessness in California is simply the cost of housing and availability of housing. And I know the council spends a lot of time thinking about that. And then my favorite thing at the very end here is the balance that we want to continue to have of compassion and care for our people, because they are our people, but also accountability, that we are willing to help you, but that doesn't mean that rules do not apply to you as well. So I think that kind of wraps up my presentation. I can go on and on. I really like this topic, but I'm happy to answer any questions. And we're going to make this available for public viewing. And we're going to spend a little more time in the coming months pumping out information that just sort of makes the community aware. Because I think your average community member that doesn't track things real closely here at the City of Lincoln might say, hey, yeah, I remember noticing we had kind of a growing homeless issue a few years ago, but I don't see it anymore. So I don't know, something must have just happened. Well, a lot of stuff happened.

It's just we haven't spent a whole lot of time parading it around.

So this is your parade, and I'm going to go sit down now.

Well, thank you, Sean. You know, this is one of the most rewarding reports that I think I've heard in a long, long time. What we've done is just, I suspect, unmatched in this state. I just made a quick calculation over here. I took 11... unsheltered, but divided by the 56,000 people. And that means our homeless population ratio is 0.0002. I mean, that is just incredible. And I think what it really says is that we have taken the time to create a workable program, not just thrown money at something. I look at what's going on in Sacramento and Sacramento County. They think nothing of renovating a hotel to stick people in at $300,000 per room when you can't make this stuff up. And at the end of the day, their success stories are abysmal, frankly. And we've taken our local resources with our people and gotten in there, rolled up our sleeves, and made this happen. I mean, this, I think, is what sets Lincoln apart. This is a fabulous story. As I said, I believe it's probably unmatched in this state, what we've been able to accomplish. Because it hasn't been done just by the city. I mean, as you pointed out, all the community groups that got involved, the faith-based organizations, everyone is pulling together to make this a success. And the things that we want to do is to make sure that we don't retro and go back. And by what you were talking about, we're not going to do that. we're going to continue doing. There certainly is always going to be people who are experienced being without a home. And so if people want to do something to help alleviate that system by themselves, taking responsibility, work with them, it's not a handout, it's a hand up. And I think what we've done is just fabulous. So kudos to everyone who's done it, city staff, private, individuals, and faith-based organizations. Congratulations.

Questions? Yes. So ditto to everything the mayor just said. And I spend a great deal of time sharing with residents what we've done for our homeless population. And there's a couple of things that have come back to me that I just I wanted to. have you answer um for the public's benefit um so the first thing is uh are we working on new partnerships with other churches so that we could implement more trailers because i know we have some that we haven't used yet because we need this we need space yeah i think we've got two two or three more that we haven't cited yet it was actually really interesting um

initially we actually had a couple of, uh, of churches that, um, after the first one signed up, we're very interested, but, and I don't blame any church for this. They, they all sort of took a pause and said, Hey, we'd really like to see how this first one turns out because you think about it. If, if you agree to this as a congregation and you cite this there and it's doesn't work out well, you could have, um, Then they're there, and you have a – so there's like a reasonable skittishness about it. But I think now we have a good year and a half, two years of really positive experience in the area. I haven't – I could be wrong, so hopefully no one yells at me, but I'm not sure that we've had hardly any issues in terms of annoyance to the neighborhood. At all.

And there's sort of a no tolerance for that.

You know, we set that up to begin with. This is a place that you need to respect or, you know, you're not welcome. But yes, there are two others that have expressed interest, and so we'll see.

So now that they've seen the success and that it's not a problem. Okay, great. So in this process that we've been going through the last few years, and then also with the issue that we're dealing with right now with the proposed project on 3rd Street, We've noticed, and it happens in every town, but we've noticed over the last couple of years that every now and then a new homeless person will show up that's not from here and roam the streets. And the last probably year, it's been a little bit more noticeable. And my question is, how do we handle that? Like it's, it was one thing. And that's why I tell people all the time too, is that our code enforcement and our, um, our law enforcement team, all that, like in our, in our adopted great volunteers, they knew these people by name. They know their dog's names. They know their story because most of them were homegrown. They're, they're ours here. Uh, when we have new people just show up and then they're like, you know, spreading all their stuff out in front of our businesses, how do we handle that?

Okay. McHugh.

She really didn't want me to call her tonight, but she's the most appropriate subject matter expert. While she comes up, I think the answer to the question is we try to treat everybody the same regardless of whether or not they're from here, but the where and why is an important question that I think Kim tries to find out early on. Do you want to speak to that a little, Kim?

Yeah, go ahead. I approach it the same way I approached initially getting to know the folks down at the creek when I first started getting down there. So you actually go up, you get to know them, you find out what the issues are. But then as far as I'm concerned, I treat folks in Lincoln the same way I parent, which is there's that accountability. And so I immediately let them know what their boundaries are here. We don't have, we have a no camping ordinance. So they're not allowed to just set up a camp. They have to pick up and go. And those who are here know that.

Okay. Okay. Because just even yesterday, and again, I had there's another resident who works in Sacramento, and she had, you know, driving back and forth and then some of her employees have been in town and they say, don't have any you don't have any homeless people in lincoln like yeah like it's very low so we're very grateful for that but like yesterday i was over there at mr pickles and there's an alley there right there and there was a lady never seen her before big shopping cart full of stuff she had just gotten a bunch of food from the seventh-day adventist uh which was great right um but then i i had the thought to myself okay well i wonder where she's going right like

what what's the plan for her and and yeah so so like i think what you're getting to is um what the reason covid was sort of an extenuating circumstance but in a in a normal time um those people and this is why kim is so good at what she does those people need to be contacted real quick because what we find is especially when the creek was the main place is If you get to them four or five months after they've set up shop, it becomes a real push and pull sort of scenario to figure out what the next step for them is. Her getting to them within the first, you know, typically people call a lot around here when this kind of thing happens. And so she's usually in touch with them or PD is within the first few days that they're around. And when she set the standard about like, look, here's what is acceptable to us and what is unacceptable to us. And by the way, we have all these options for you if you're interested. you minimize those individuals that end up kind of just hanging for a really long time.

Good. Thank you. And then my last question is, you know, as we've been sharing information, there was one resident who was criticizing us on social media, which is fine. It's their right to do that. And the question was, if what I was saying was true, that our numbers were going down, which they have like dramatically, right? I think I even cite from right before I got elected in 2018, we were probably up to about 80 people. And so we've reduced homelessness by 90%. So why would we give the salt mine that money in partnership with them if the numbers were giving them taxpayer dollars if the numbers were going down? So I already know the answer to one of those things is that it's not local tax dollars that came from ARPA money right I mean it's technically all of our tax dollars that goes to the federal government but to your point that the federal government was giving out COVID relief ARPA dollars to everybody and on a on a principled or theoretical standpoint we would say that we wouldn't agree with that but if the government is giving every city millions of dollars well we're going to take it and we're going to use it the way we did and it was very beneficial to us so Setting that aside, right, it wasn't local tax dollars. It was the ARPA money. And we used it to build their shower and laundry facilities larger. But how would you answer the question, if our numbers are going down, why would we give them that? I know the answer, but I want you to share with the public.

Well, I guess I'd say two things. At the time, our numbers weren't going down. They were still pretty elevated. The second is you either have infrastructure and relationships and systems in place to address needs of unhoused individuals and therefore give yourself greater success in addressing it, or you don't. And then you're playing from behind, which is what we were doing in 2018 through about 2022. You're playing from behind, you're making stuff up, you're having to react versus having a system in place. Now, is it a lot of money? Is it expensive? Yeah. If you wanted to, you know, put out a pro rata share of every single dollar spent on homelessness and divide it by the actual population of homeless people, it would be a lot of money per individual. But that's sort of the standard that exists almost anywhere. It's a lot of money to spend to get people into a different frame of mind to improve their life. And so my perspective is a couple of things. First off, the salt mine is a critical resource because people view homelessness as just the folks that are living out somewhere where you can see them. That's not even a, that's a fraction of the people they serve. They serve people that are couch surfing, living in garages, multiple families per home, et cetera. And then they also provide a safety net because one of the things we've discussed at council is you have, you think about like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? You want to have like cleanliness, laundry, those things start the pyramid of self-respect, right? And so that kind of service is critically important if you want to maintain a relatively low homeless population. To me, it's an investment.

Well, and the salt mine also, to your point, helps a lot of people to keep them from becoming homeless, right? And on the other side of that, the salt mine has been helping homeless individuals and families in need that are on the verge of that for decades. They've done it with their own money, their own donations, their own congregants, and all of that, that they have served the community of Lincoln in the broader area. And so in my mind, when we had the opportunity to partner with them, that was like, the right thing to do because we're partnering with them from the city to them, but they've already been doing the work for decades, and it was, to me, the right thing to do. So I appreciate you going through that, and I'm probably going to post this video clip later because people need to understand that, like you said, a lot of narrative in the media That is really unfair and false because we have done tremendous work all of us together from our from our volunteers who live here who just want to help people all the way up to the city manager and the city attorney and everybody in between. because we care about people in this community, but you said it right, Sean, that compassion without accountability is disastrous and accountability without compassion is harmful. So there has to be a balance. And I, I'm very proud of Lincoln for the balance that we have found in that. And we're going to continue to do the work because people are still people and we're never going to eradicate homelessness altogether, no matter what we do, no community is going to, but the fact that we have reduced the population by 90%. And, and I imagine it will probably continue to drop as we continue to work very proud of that. And, and, And I'm thankful that you guys have put in the work so that we can start really telling the story to the community members and at large. Because frankly, I'm sick of the negative spin because there are entities and people that they wanna have their way with us and we're not allowing them to do that right now. So they're trying to make us look bad, but we have our head held high and we've done great work and we're gonna continue to do that. Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for everyone for the years of this, and we're going to keep loving people and doing what we do best.

John, the other thing I just meant, you mentioned $700,000 that we've invested so far, and all of a sudden it just dawned on me, we were front-loading success. I mean, when it comes down to that, I mean, we spent the money up front, and it's paying off. I mean, that's a great outcome.

And, you know, unfortunately, two of our council members who were part of those last city councils are passed now, but... Wherever they are, hopefully they're looking back because at the time, I remember vividly bringing this to you with Christine and we told the council, this is a risk. This could be sunk money. We may not receive much intrinsic benefit from this. at all. But, you know, it actually could serve, I think we'd have to figure out a way to package it a little more succinctly, but it could serve as a nice model for smaller communities that have a manageable population that, you know, you think maybe there's an opportunity to provide better services to them. And it doesn't necessarily need to cost you $10 million or 300 grand a door. It can, you know, it sounds sort of cliche, but you get all of these groups together to kind of want to do something and you can do pretty cool stuff. The nonprofits in particular and volunteers, if we were paying people to do all of this work, we would have bankrupt the city a long time ago. Comment.

I, I'm extremely proud and like my colleagues have said that I think it was well worth and we're so appreciative of you taking the time, even though it was only 10 minutes of preparation to put this together.

I know it took you a lot longer than that.

And it has been very sad. I won't go into the weeds, but Councilmember Andreatta touched on the fact that there's been so much work, so many years. And I've witnessed it from different seats. And I know how many hours of blood, sweat, and tears have gone into increasing the success and getting people to a better place that seeing that get twisted and the misinformation and it not being appreciated and recognized is sad. But, you know, we can't change that other than just keep pumping out the truth and information and letting people know what we're doing. I think it's worth it. It does take time. It took a lot of time, I'm sure, to put this together. And we've had I don't even know how many hours of conversations about this topic, but it's important for us to take the time to share it with everybody else, because this is, we're doing this not just for us, we're doing this for the community, we're doing this for our community. residents and maybe this will help other communities learn from us and see the success because I do think that there is some, it's a special recipe of accountability and helping and kindness and compassion. You can't just throw money at a problem and I think we've seen that across the state that you know, it, it doesn't work. There are parts of the solution that cannot be disregarded or skipped. You can't just keep pumping out money. And, um, you sort of alluded to the fact that, you know, nonprofits have helped and been part of our success. Um, I think part of that is that there isn't anybody profiting off of the situation here at Lincoln. So, um, You know, that's my 10 cents. So I am just so, so proud of you all and our former council members and our former city manager and our code enforcement and everybody that, Dr. Creek, it's just so many people have put their... City Attorney and all the volunteers. So thank you. We will definitely, I'm sure, speak for all of us. Keep supporting these efforts so that we can continue to be successful.

No, I just wanted to echo my colleagues' comments and thank you for the presentation. and express my gratitude to our team here, past and present, and most importantly, to our community partners, who, again, they do it because of how they care about our fellow citizens, regardless of their economic status or their housing status. And I just greatly appreciate all of their efforts because they make Lincoln what Lincoln is, and they are why this was a success. So I just want to express my appreciation for that. Thank you.

I wasn't really going to say anything, but after Whitney said that you can't profit off of something like this, it's absolutely true. Because the moment you come in and you try to say, I'm going to help you, and then you find a way to monetize and try to make money of it, you're going to find people that are not honest. And you're going to find people that you're it'll be ruining life and not helping it as much as you think you are going to be. And that's, anyways, I just, I wasn't, wasn't going to go there, but you see.

And I love the recipe comment over there. Recipe for success. Um, we have any, any cards hope?

No speaker cards.

We have anyone in the audience who would like to make a comment. Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, I had to live in my car once. I didn't have money. It bit really, really hard. I mean, it was bad. But now, I mean, I have so many opportunities in life now. And just to hear this, it makes me want to even do more in this city. This is a wonderful blueprint. And my question is, how do we share this with other cities and counties? Because it seems like we have this wonderful blueprint. And yes, the city took a risk. And no one's getting rich off of this. And it's a city project. It's people coming together, which is so, I mean, that touches my heart. So it's like, so if we have this secret sauce, how do we share it? How do we do more? How do we build on top of this?

I think that's the next step, Ed. That's exactly what we're doing.

I saw Aaron's making notes over here. We'll have a full program tomorrow morning.

He's the only person here that could do that, actually. I mean, the reality is that, and I think this is the case for most cities of a size or greater, is that, you know, I've said this many times. If you go back 20 years ago, it didn't used to be that homelessness and homeless services was a city function. It was a county function. They receive health and human services dollars. We do not. So it never was a thing. And then, you know, a couple of years before COVID, it really shifted as the numbers got much worse in California to being a city burden without funding to bear. And fortunately, I think we've set up something that's economical enough for us to keep going. And, you know, look, it may come to a place where it's no longer needed, but I think that's unlikely. And at least we have something that's reasonably scaled for Lincoln that we can keep using until such time as there's no need for it anymore, although I just don't think that's likely. Thank you, Ed. Thank you.

Anyone else in the audience? Byron.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members, city staff, Byron Chapman, 12 Bridges. I too, sometimes when you look at something that is so immense, it's really hard sometimes to just sit back and go,

how do you attack this?

And what I've seen over the time and with the city and the community, really, once that word got out to everyone, not just once or twice, but wherever you meet, wherever you go to have coffee with somebody or a picnic day or whatever it is, sometimes it's just that you don't have to make a big So our speech about it, you just have to go, wow, look at what this is doing and look at what that's doing. I think one of the big issues is that really for a number of years now, the city of Lincoln literally has a lot of things to use the term, be proud of. not bragging, but to be proud of. And I've seen that the city government and those living here, organizations and such, they really have the back of the community. And more and more as I see this happening, more and more from my neighborhood to other people that I know in town, there were years ago where if you were up and down a residential area, You know, you would know 10 people on this side of the street and 10 people on that side of the street. And it wasn't just a question of waving at them when you were going to work or when you were coming home. They'd pull up alongside the road. What are you doing? You knew everybody. And I kind of see some of that returning. And that's what we want to foster is that. That's the only way it does it. And like I said, it's those small little bites of this is where we are. This is how good it's working. And, oh, and by the way, if we keep doing this, it's going to get even better. And this is kind of the start of the proof. And the blueprint, I think, is probably a darn good one. It's not a brag. It's just a matter of fact. And that's what you need to embrace. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Very well said, as always. Do we have anyone else in the audience?

No hands raised.

Yes.

Yes.

Quick question. I saw recently a council member from Roseville stating that we are potentially dropping off homeless residents in Roseville. Is there any truth to that?

No. Captain Eaton? I know you're new, but I can't imagine that you've been ordering that app.

That is not something we participate in.

My presentation would have taken a different turn if that were the case.

That is not something Lincoln PD participates in. No, I mean, I could see something getting construed that there's some type of service that Roseville offers to where we would take somebody when they request to go to a certain facility. But the practice of dropping people off in Roseville is not something that we do.

I didn't think so. But you know, while we're dispelling misinformation and rumors, and the source was concerning, to me, I wanted to make sure that we're not just picking up homeless people, random homeless members, and just driving them down the street and plopping them over the border. Because that doesn't seem like something that we would ever

I would say that that violates the concept of compassion that we have kind of as a cornerstone that you're not really compassionate about an issue or an individual if you just simply move them somewhere else.

Right.

You know, or someone with the same exact conditions.

And if I could just add one more piece to that, our officers do often give courtesy rides to people at their requests when we're not busy. So I could definitely see something getting misconstrued to the fact of when we do give somebody a courtesy ride that they say, oh, well, hey, Lincoln PD dropped us off. That's something that we do when we have time to do that. So it's not that we're taking homeless people and dropping them off in another city. It's A lot of times we're doing it at their request because they have people that they know in the area. There's, like I said, there's a certain shelter that they go to there. So we will then take them there, but that's not a practice that we do on a broad level.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for bringing that up. I just Googled how many homeless people there are in Roseville. You know, 260. Do the math. Anyone on zoom? Okay. Information item. This was information. So thank you very much. Great presentation, Sean. Absolutely.

I'm going to be sharing that too.

Okay, good. Uh, city manager reports.

Um, thank you. Uh, so two, very brief. Um, the best one, uh, so I, I guess I'll just re-mention it. Um, I hope I can get it on for next meeting. Please. Give me a little grace if I don't, but one of the next two meetings will get kind of an update and legislative update on e-bikes to you for the community to have a broader discussion about it. Um, fun bit of news. Um, first street elementary school was awarded the gold star school, um, designation, uh, just this last week, which is, I don't know a whole lot about it, but it's a pretty big deal. It's a national sort of, uh, identification of, um, institutions that, um, meet a variety of standards. Um, so it's pretty cool. Um, next meeting we have, um, likely going to be a heavier agenda than we've had usually the way it works is we kind of have relatively light agendas for the first couple months of the year and then we really start cooking in the summer through the remainder of the year so the packets are going to look a little bit bigger I believe we have urban water management plan on next meeting if you're interested in reviewing that document it's on our website but we also have a paper copy at the city clerk's office if you'd like to come it's a big binder so you'll need to spend a lot of time with it but That's on the docket. We have fee schedules that are coming to you and a variety of other pretty important things as we get a little bit closer to budget. And I don't think I have any other substantive reports tonight. Thank you very much.

If I could steal the city manager's time, please.

Can we additive or deductive?

Fees. We're going to talk about e-check fees.

Yes, please, please.

Okay.

So I just wanted to give an additional shout out to our community to let them know that we have been working diligently and we have eliminated the e-check fee for our utility billing portal. And we are encouraging our customers to come back to auto pay. Come on back. We have staff available in the finance office five days a week to assist customers with either setting up their account or changing it so they could come back to auto pay. We also, at the same time, after some intensive negotiations with the city manager, myself and members of the bank, reduced the credit card fee from 3.5% to 3%. That one customers still have to pay. It's a convenience using a credit card. But if you're paying with your bank account information through our portal, now free, free, free, free,

We'll be very happy to hear that $1.95. That's so good.

Yep.

Thank you, Nita. Very good. Thank you for that. Okay. Council initiated business. Do we have any, anyone?

I have one thing. So I know that, that streets are a thing, right? Like the funding is limited. But I've been speaking to, in fact, I actually saw one myself and I took a picture of it. And then I was speaking to some other Sun City residents, and I'm sure you know this, Matt, but I promised I would bring it up and see what we could do. There are a few streets up there that have, they're not just like cracks, they're like gaps in the street that are not good. And so I've got pictures to show you. If you don't already have them, I'll send them to you later. But I thought I would just put that on the radar and see if we could get some of those repaired without a ton of cost. But it's, you know, when I saw one myself, I was like, oh, wow, that's, you know, Interesting well yeah it's actually it's not just a crack it's like there's a gap, and so you can see that they've been repaired, but we need to find a way to to repair them so they're not gaps again in the next year so anyway. wanted to bring that to your attention.

i'd like to briefly respond the mayor about a month ago brought me to the sun city coffee with the mayor and where I reported that we are doing a pilot project. to repair an intersection and a stretch of road in either direction of the worst area of the cracks in Sun City. We're also looking at having some additional funding to do some spot repairs on some of the worst cracks. We're targeting doing both of those this summer. One of the problems when Sun City was constructed was that the lime, there was lime introduced in the subgrade soil and compacted and it becomes really hard and it has block cracking underneath and actually pulls the pavement apart on top. Typically, there's an aggregate base layer in between, and that is not a component of the structural section in some areas of Sun City. So that's why we're experiencing that issue. So we're going to continue to address it, but this summer you will see some repairs being made.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Matt.

Whitney?

uh yeah so i was thinking about i just wanted to remind everybody in the public that if there is something that they see like a pothole or cracks or anything of concern we do have the the website it's on the city website is that correct there's it's on this public works page report a problem so yeah just to reiterate that if you see something then it goes right to the source and get it taken care of and then um how would you recommend you know we're doing our advocacy on our unhoused and homeless how would you recommend if if there's residents because we'll we'll get emails and text messages and then it just seems like it's not the most efficient way to get the information if there's a new person that's out and about to our code enforcement how do you recommend residents handle that

You know, it's not the most efficient, but honestly, the reporter should be called report an issue section of our website is a pretty efficient tool in terms of depending on how that report comes in, it could go to a couple different folks. So if the idea, like, for example, if you have a resident that says, hey, there's an abandoned camp on 3rd Street, And no one seems to be there and it hasn't been cleaned up well then the person that monitors that inbox will know well that probably should go to public works or some other department that deals with that if the issue is hey there's a you know, a homeless individual the sleeping in the in the park. um and i'm concerned for them then that'll probably go to kim and pd and they'll start there so it really that generalized reporter concern um inbox is really useful to us because they all go to a central place and then a certain person that you know that works in my office puts them to the right department to take care of them so we don't get the duplicative work from multiple departments

Okay, so recommending that it goes to the report a problem.

Is that, is it called report a concern or what is it called?

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay. Report a concern. But if it's somebody who is, I mean, if there's different kind of levels of concern, if it's somebody who's maybe under the influence of something or appears to be severely mentally ill, who is.

That I would say is a non-emergency dispatch call.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

Okay.

We have people manning the phones 24-7. Okay.

Okay, that's it.

I don't have anything, John.

I was just gonna follow up on that and a quick search pulls up a report a problem page. Yeah, so if you search for it, it has a report a problem page and there's public works report a problem, code enforcement report a problem, cyber crime report a crime, traffic concerns report a problem, and then Union Pacific Railway emergencies.

I think almost all of them typically end up in code enforcement or public works. But maybe we'll create one additional one that is more specific.

Maybe a couple more. How do you say it that way? Maybe consolidate and rename. Yeah.

Or consolidate and rename. Also, I meant we have people staffing the phones 24-7, not manning. I was corrected.

Okay, nothing. It's good. Okay, Ben? Ben?

Yeah, well, we received an award on Friday evening.

Yes. We received, okay, we received two awards, actually, but John, do you want to go through it?

Yeah, so I think we talked about the last one. Last meeting, we received an award from the California Economic Development Association, Caled, and that was for the school funding agreement in Village 7, the second award. And then the other one that's pretty cool is we received one on the commercial corridor of Village 5 for, help me out, Aaron, what was the competitiveness award and it was pretty cool there were four awards given out that night and three of them were to private businesses that are in the greater sacramento region and one of them was given to a public agency and that was us so we went down to sacramento and got our the seven seconds of fame and we should have brought it do we have it with us it's i should have brought it it's downstairs we'll bring it to the next meeting bring it to the next one absolutely

Yeah, so thank you all for going. You all know that was very sad not to be there. My daughter graduated from Boise State this weekend, so I was there with, you know, family comes first. But very proud of the work that our staff has done and the investments we've made. And so you guys looked wonderful in the pictures, and so thank you for going and representing well. Yay. That was a great night. Okay, good.

We had a very fancy Uber on the way down there.

We're not going to go there. Okay. Committee reports. We'll start. Ben, anything?

Nothing significant.

I had PCA, it was a preliminary budget review, and LISWA already got a few updates on the capital improvement projects there.

And also still moving through the process of looking for a general manager. Whitney?

We have... of lafco tomorrow and that's when we're going to be going over our budget and then if anybody is curious we i think i've already shared but just in case we received an application for the incorporation of north north lake tahoe which is a pretty big project pretty big deal and we're going to receive a presentation on that as well so it could have a big impact yes a very big impact on the whole county

And I just have a pioneer community energy. We'll have a board meeting next week, and we'll be talking about stuff. So that's it. Okay, anything else for the good of the order? In that case, we're done, folks. Thanks, everybody.