City Council - Regular Meeting

Mister Caskey.

Thank you very much. I'm honored by the nomination from HPC, and, I'm honored to serve the city to honor its history. Each of our previous city historians have brought not only honors the role, but sort of but each one has colored it in their own way. Gary Drummond started history talks and walks through downtown, and he brought kids and adults through and explained to them how the how the town had effect had grown up and what about the town made it the way the thing that we see today. Anne Homan wrote what is essentially an encyclopedia of Livermore.

It's called Livermore A to Z, and it's a reference that we still use today to understand all manner of different aspects of the town. Don Meeker showed up in front of this council nearly every council meeting and gave you a little bit insight into what might have happened a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago in this town. Each one, and I don't wanna skip one, Richard Finn or Alan Frank, both of whom served admirably and did a lot of work for the city. I will let you know that my particular interest and passion has been in bringing the stories of local history to our children, to our students. The Livermore Heritage Guild brings the history mobile to all of the third grades.

We've been doing this now for a number of decades, and every third grader gets to learn about what makes their community special, what history their community brings. And I look forward to expanding that. We find that once we talk to them as third graders, they remember it. We have people at this point who are bringing their third graders when they remember their own time as a third grader going through our program. It's something that's important.

It's important to a resident. It's important to understand the heritage of your town. So as you've said, clearly, these are big shoes to fill. I have no pretense of being able to live up to the folks who came before me, but I am honored to have the role to to move along our history for the next generation. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you, mister Kasky.

Councilmember Rayantas.

I wanna thank you for what you do. If you haven't been to the heritage to the heritage guild in here in the ranch, you miss a lot of things. I've seen his old mobile running around. He's very good about the history of of Livermore. He has I don't think he has any axle grind for the city. He does a lot for the city and put a lot of information about us, and and he's right now in a big struggle to try to get, you know, a teacher, a a schoolhouse down to our city from way in the inside of the hills. And so I really appreciate the work you do here, and and I know you've been dead. That's it. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And that's Midway School because it was Yes. Midway point. But And it

was a little more shameless, I'd come right here and ask you for donations.

So this is going to be a big year for The Historian because this is the one hundred fiftieth year anniversary of our incorporation. We were incorporated 04/01/1876, so this is a big deal. And we'll be celebrating that and the one hundred twenty fifth anniversary of the light bulb. So there's a lot of stuff going on this year, folks. So stay tuned and and celebrate.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. Moving on to the open forum. Oh, oh, yes, Richard. Swear a minute. I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Okay. No. No. Sorry about that. Now we move on to the open forum. This is an opportunity for people to address the council, and the city clerk will tell people how they can participate.

To provide comment, please fill out and turn in a speaker card found at the entrance of the council chamber. Speakers will be announced in the order received. Once public comment opens, each participant's name will be announced, and their three minutes will begin once at the lectern. Please note a speaker is not required to answer any questions from the city council, and the city council is not required to answer questions from the public. The mayor has the discretion to ask staff to address the speaker's comments when a council member believes that it's relevant to a particular business item.

Okay. And I know we have at least one speaker.

The first speaker is Joe Lee.

So just continuing the cheerleading. I'll re re recap the four essential software freedoms in trying to encourage the city to adopt more free software in its computing. The four essential health software freedoms that define free software are the freedom to use the program for any purpose. That's the first one. The second one is the freedom to study the source code of the program and to modify it to make it do what you wish.

The third freedom is the freedom to share, either by selling or giving away exact copies of the the software. And the fourth freedom is the freedom to, sell or give away, your own modified versions of the program if you wish. The so the third freedom, is, that's the freedom to share exact copies. So if, for example, the city was to purchase a copy of free software for an exorbitant exorbitant price, it there's nothing in the in the license that would prevent the city from then going on and sharing the software with any other city it wishes without ever having to seek permission from the original distributor or the developer, or to sell it even. So sell it for a reduced price.

There's nothing that prevents the city from doing that. And then, just to have a minute, I'll I'll just quote Nina Paley for really quick. Nina Paley, the the cartoonist animator, this is published on archive.org. It's copying is not theft. Stealing a thing leaves one one less left. Copying makes one thing more. That's what copies are for. If you steal my bicycle, I'd have to take the bus. But if you just copy it, there's one for each of us. Copying is not theft. That's that's pretty much it. And so I'll just get out of here.

Thank you. Thank you, mister Lee.

That was our last speaker.

Okay. Well, in that case, we're going to close the the open forum and bring it back to council for the consent calendar. The consent calendar are typically routine items that are passed on a single motion. Is there anything that anybody wishes to pull for consideration? Come in. Seeing none, do we have anyone who wishes to speak on the consent calendar?

No public comments been received.

Okay. Just a couple of questions that I have with regarding actually, I I had those answered already. The question regarding the Singular Wireless, but I believe that's already been this is just a sing the Singular Wireless is just a lease agreement. Is that correct? It's renegotiating the lease agreement?

Yes. It's a modification.

Yeah. So it's already there.

Yes.

Okay. Very good. Thank you very much. With that, I'll entertain a motion for the consent calendar.

Move approval.

I'll second.

Motion made by council member Dunbar, seconded by council member Branning. Stunned by your vice mayor for so long. Okay. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor, signify by saying

aye. Aye.

Any opposed? That passed unanimously. We have no public hearings. There's no matters for consideration. So we just go right into committee reports and matters initiated. Customer of Variantos, we have your, your report out. Anything that you wish to, to highlight?

Most of my things to highlight are not city council, either Lions Club or Alright. Wrestling team. But one thing I was kidding the people over at these townhouses. I was looking at the right ones. Should have a a health test, give you two bags of groceries and climb to the third story. If you can get there without having a heart attack, you're you can qualify to buy one of these houses. It's a long climb for older people to get to the top of these some of these townhouses over there, but they're really nice.

Oh, very good. Thank you.

Councilmember Dunbar.

Although we always try to keep some townhouses with a ground floor ADA. A bit a simple stack flat. Yeah. We're stacked flat. I missed the deadline this morning as my eyes were dilated for an optometrist appointment, but the only thing I had to report was for the fire, same as Miramar Chand, the JPA. I had two weeks down with my parents and my brother in Rio Grande. Took a nice relaxing vacation and walked on the beach and walked the dog and talked to mom, and I think nothing else to report. Happy New Year, everybody. Thanks. That's for Dunbar. Branning. Branning. Sorry. Branning. Yes. Sorry.

So I wanna wish everyone a happy New Year, first of all. And then, I don't have anything particular I wanted to highlight from my report, but I just do wanna say that, it has been quite cold out, and we do have a lasting cold spell right now. I wanna give some appreciation to the city, first of all, for looking at solutions where we can find warm spots for people who might not have a place to sleep at night. And I would call out to the, community, reach out to the local shelters, reach out to local donation centers, ask them what they need. They often have specific needs at these times of years for things like socks, very commonly, minnets, hats, things like that that will help keep people warm.

So reach out, see if you have a local shelter, local donation center that you would like to give to, and I encourage everyone to give a little something at this time of year. Thank you.

Vice mayor Wong.

I just wanna mention one thing from my report. This this was from December, but it happened since our last meeting. I wanna just recognize the Livermore Youth Council. They have been so active planning lots of events in the community. And in December, that first weekend after school let out, for the holidays, they hosted a holiday carnival at the library, and it was so well attended. It was a rainy day. Families had nowhere to go, and they all showed up. And they had over 200 people there, kids and parents, and in a matter of few hours playing games. And it was all these, the Lemoore Youth Council students that were, you know, organizing the games, and it was really great. It was great to see.

I just wanted to give them a shout out and thank them for all their hard work that they do on the council.

Very good. Well, thank you so much. Couple of things I wanted to highlight. Was a busy last month, but I presented a certificate of recognition for the DelVal High School bicycle program. They repair bicycles. They build bicycles, and then they donate them back to the community. So it's a wonderful program, and some of the kids, go on and use this is their vocation. They're, some one of them is actually working for one of the local bike shops with skills that he had learned from this program. Also, we had the walk off for walk off retirement for officer Andrew Estes. He served our our community for a couple of decades very honorably.

And, also, our city clerk retired. Debbie Elam was honored last week. So we have a lot of great people and a lot of great people moving in and and taking over for the people, that have left because they've been well trained, by their by their mentors. So with that, wow. This is a a land speed record here. So, greatly appreciate that. With that, seeing no further business